Houston Muslims, we have a Problem. It’s Clandestine CVE Grants
03/17/2021
Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) should be a slur in the American Muslim community by now, like how we shudder at the mention of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) or Alt-Right Movement. Instead, the acronym is veiled in mystery in places like Houston, which is probably not an accident. CVE is a federal grant program inaugurated by the Obama Administration in 2011 in order to “engage communities in the process of diminishing the appeal and effectiveness of extremist ideologies.” A review of the program from years 2014–2016 from Duke University noted CVE’s failures from the beginning to clearly define its goals, with key stakeholders basically shaping the program as they saw fit. CVE was a front for enlisting informants or building resiliency within communities depending on who you asked. It was also “virtually exclusive” in its obsession on Muslim-American individuals and spaces while turning a blind eye to white supremacist extremism, which has dramatically increased in the past decade and especially the past year.
The history of CVE in the Houston Muslim community started in 2014 when Mustafa Tameez, the Managing Director of Outreach Strategists, and Wardah Khalid, who was previously affiliated with the same organization, were asked by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office to “facilitate focus groups of concerned citizens, synthesize the findings, and offer recommendations for local efforts to prevent violent extremism” as noted in this report from the Department of Homeland Security. Their interviews with 25 Houston Muslim leaders led to the development of a $500,000 CVE grant application filed in August 2016 which can be found here. The half million-dollar grant was initially awarded in June 2017, but the development of a CVE steering committee with the Mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security (MOPSHS) was delayed until September 2018 due to Hurricane Harvey.
The Houston CVE steering committee members and curriculum development have all been hidden from the public eye and would continue to remain that way were it not for the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which gives the American public the right to request access to records from any federal agency. Interestingly, the DHS report on CVE in Houston even recommended renaming the program to lessen the perception of it being a surveillance initiative targeting individuals. What’s clear is that transparency was never part of the goals of DHS and CVE Houston due to hiding of key facts and frantic efforts at rebranding. Our team used the FOIA to gather emails and pdf files that were exchanged between the Department of Homeland Security, the Anti-Defamation League, which has been involved in CVE efforts throughout the country and the world, and the Houston Mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security in the period from August 2018 till the present day.
What we found was deeply concerning. In the very formation of the steering committee, regardless of the DHS’s claims that this initiative was not “narrowly focused on Islamist extremism,” the only religious organizations involved were the Islamic Society of Greater Houston and Islam in Spanish.
For Non-Houstonians, the Islamic Society of Greater Houston (ISGH) is the single largest local Muslim organizational body in the North America, a non-profit 501(c)(3) representing 21 Sunni mosques. The organization was established in 1969 and considers all Muslims living in the Greater Houston area as “natural members of ISGH,” although one has to file a membership application in order to vote or hold office. It is safe to say that the majority of Houstonian Muslims have had contact with ISGH either through Friday prayer, Eid prayer, marriages, or funerals, especially since it is the only Muslim body providing funeral services in the area. Think of it like the hold the Catholic Church has on places like Dublin or New Orleans. ISGH’s purported vision is to “provide religious and social services to all Muslims and to provide channels of understanding and communication between Muslims and the Houston community in general.” Being involved in a CVE grant goes against this mission. The only way to provide “channels of understanding” between Muslims and Houston in general is to be open about your activities. Since 2018 or even before, ISGH has not held any public discussions about Muslim involvement with CVE in Houston, even though it is a recipient of the grant and was involved in the grant’s creation from the very beginning. The 25 Houston Muslim leaders who were interviewed regarding the merits of such a program in 2014 were involved through invite only. The exclusivity of who gets to speak about CVE and who doesn’t creates a “Muslim Nobility” as aptly described by attorney and CVE expert Ahmed Sheikh in which these individuals are “deputized by law enforcement to push a harmful narrative of the Muslim community and divide it.” The DHS handpicked individuals who would perform a certain role on their behalf among Houston Muslims, and that role was to convince regular Muslims that it’s smart to be wary of yourself and your family as violent extremists in the making. Regardless of these problematic implications, the president of ISGH at the time was an active participant in the development of the Houston Building Resilience Training Guide Draft.
The other Muslim organization represented in the Steering Committee is Islam in Spanish, which aims to “inspire, lead and pioneer solutions in educating Latinos and other communities about Islam through media production and grassroots outreach worldwide.” Islam in Spanish was started by a Latino convert to Islam and Houston native. The inclusion of converts as targets of CVE falls into prejudiced tropes originating from the FBI, that there exists a path to radicalization which includes conversion to Islam, wearing traditional Muslim attire and growing facial hair. Converts to Islam like those hosted by Islam in Spanish often create new bonds after facing rejection from their biological families. For them to be targeted as suspects until proven otherwise is especially repulsive since they may not have safe spaces to exist outside of the mosque or Muslim friend groups. What’s really disturbing about Islam being singled out as a problem faith in Houston is the lack of awareness of other types of religious and fascist extremism that have taken a grip on the area. In September of 2019, Hindutva in Houston organized the Howdy Modi rally, in which 50,000 people gathered together to celebrate Narendra Modi coming to Houston. Modi, the current prime minister of India, was named “The Butcher of Gujarat” after refusing to stop the violence in the 2002 Gujarat Pogroms against Muslims while head of the province. While the rally in Houston was going on, Modi had just revoked Kashmir’s semiautonomous status, leading to mass arrests in the Muslim majority province as well as an internet ban. The rally itself was organized by the Texas India Forum, which has direct links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a fascist paramilitary organization that desires to purify India of non-Hindus. Regardless of troublesome links between American Hindus and the Indian government’s violence towards minorities, there are currently no efforts to expand CVE into Hindu religious or cultural spaces in the United States. This shows how Islam is singled out as a problem faith in the eyes of the federal government and even the Houston Mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security.
The Houston Building Resilience Training Draft uses false assumptions and debunked news stories in order to scare Muslims into being wary of violence in their midst. The first assumption is that it is possible to identify individuals at risk for violent extremism and that crisis counseling may be an effective intervention. This contradicts decades of counterterrorism research which has shown that terrorists do not display signs of mental illness and that social marginalization, alienation and political grievances are not “warning signs” of impending ideological violence according to the Brennan Center for Justice’s Report on CVE.
What’s interesting is, despite decades of research indicating that there is no association between violence and mental health issues, the Crisis Intervention Center of Houston is a significant recipient of another CVE grant, of up to $500,000 in U.S. tax dollars. What’s even more interesting is the callers who are in crisis’ experiences with this hotline, ranging from “These are not the people to speak with. They’re untrained volunteers. Call the National hotline, please…” to “Called 4 times really for the first time wanted to talk to someone… my phone went dead and no one ever answered the phone. I would not donate to the organization” and “On hold waiting for an initial answer for more than 35 minutes now. By the time someone actually answers, this crisis will be ended.”
Later in the Houston Building Resilience Training Guide, the authors even admit that there is no consensus on the definition of extremism, violent extremism or terrorism in itself but chooses to focus on violent extremism as an acceptable term because it’s less “controversial” than terrorism. It includes a description of Far Right Extremism in the area, most likely because only focusing on Islam would make it too obvious about how much they wish to target Muslims. The guide juxtaposes Far Right Extremism and “Islamist in Houston” as if they are equivalent problems, even though there have been just 5 individuals related to ISIS in Houston in a span of 7 years and 4 Houstonians arrested already in connection to the fascist insurrection at the capitol just two months ago. The guide itself says that, as of its writing, the past five years saw 65 incidents of Far-Right Extremism in Houston. That’s around thirteen times more incidents of fascist extremism than ISIS related activity in the city. As seen in the graphical images below, Slide 9 of the module does not indicate the number of Far-Right Extremism incidents that have occurred in Houston, showing only a map of the state, while the Islamist related incidents show no map but scary numerical values (170 incidents on a national level, while indicating only 5 occurring in Houston between 2012–2019). This blows ISIS related concerns out of proportion, seemingly intentionally.
The most glaring oversight in the whole program is the use of a New York Times created documentary called “Caliphate” in order to substantiate fears about about ISIS recruitment online. The documentary is based on young man named Abu Huzayfah, who was allegedly radicalized, but the New York Times later clarified the documentary was a hoax and fictional account. Now Huzayfah is facing criminal charges for faking terrorist activity.
In his article “Stop Demanding White Christian CVE,” Ahmed Sheikh notes that there are currently around 15,000 spies employed by the FBI and that much of this activity is focused on the Muslim community. For American Muslims to consider outreach by the DHS and FBI as praiseworthy while Muslims bear the brunt of modern-day surveillance suggests that we have deeply internalized islamophobia worthy of many sessions of therapy. We must demand fairness instead. We must demand that federal security efforts against ideological violence are proportional to the threat itself. The transition of power from Trump to Biden was the most violent in the history of the United States, and yet the response from the Washington D.C. police and the National Guard was characterized as lackluster and blindsided. Instead, the Black Lives Matter protest on June 1st, 2020 at the capitol had the Guard training for 12 to 16 hours daily in preparation.
The United States has a history of ignoring political violence against marginalized groups like African-Americans, Japanese Americans and Indigenous peoples when it’s convenient. Muslims inspired by their faith are here to stand for the justice of all groups. CVE is unjust. It is based on faulty science and fictional documentaries. It is still targeting Muslims to this day as seen in the Houston guide, and it hasn’t made our communities any safer while it definitely has roused suspicion, fear and mistrust amongst American Muslims of their own brothers and sisters as well as of the federal government. It is best for the Houston Muslim participants in CVE to end the assumption that they are a protected Uncle-Tom caste and to instead side with the oppressed for once. There is an assumption that CVE cash can help our community, and some are even deluded enough to think that we would be able to earmark the cash for benign interests like serving the poor. It’s useful to know that misuse of federal funds is grounds for litigation, and our organizations being tied to use funds in the way that the DHS wants us to will not help us. The FBI and DHS have done almost nothing to help the American Muslim community since 9/11 but plenty to harm. In light of these concerns, I make the following requests to the Houston Muslims who participated in CVE:
- A complete end to all CVE programs ongoing and cancelling all plans for participation in them in the future;
- A written apology from former and present directors of ISGH, Islam in Spanish, Outreach Strategists and any other individuals and/or organizations for participation in CVE programming without approval from or consulting the communities they claim to represent;
- A detailed written account of all activities that went on during meetings with the Mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security regarding CVE;
- A good faith attempt to answer the questions below from every Houston Muslim participant in CVE.
Questions:
- How much of the $1 Million Dollars in U.S. tax dollars from the local CVE programs (Mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security Grant plus Crisis Intervention of Houston Inc Grant) was offered to your organizations?
- Were there any requests for you to use any grant money to spy on Muslims or to further open religious spaces and make Muslims vulnerable to the Department Homeland Security or FBI?
- Were you asked to identify problematic institutions or personalities amongst Houston Muslims that should be monitored?
- Was the FBI present at any of the CVE meetings?
- Were there any discussions that took place that indicated or alluded to Muslim practices in faith as red-flags for extremism deserving further scrutiny, i.e. growing a beard, wearing hijab, praying 5 times daily, etc. ?
- Why are FBI informants currently present in the mosques in Houston and why don’t they visit white churches, synagogues or Hindu temples?
- Was there any discussion in these meetings of the FBI using underhanded techniques like do-not-fly lists, entrapment, or enlistment of informants to harass Muslims?
May Allah accept our efforts to protect the vulnerable among the Muslims and Non-Muslims wherever they may be. Ameen.