A right-wing think tank has acknowledged compiling a massive database on thousands of Muslim Americans, organizations — and even people merely associated with the Muslim community — after HuffPost began asking questions about the secretive project.
The Middle East Forum has spent 20 years building more than 4 million data points, including names, social media accounts, tax information and organizational ties. The database contained entries for more than 5,500 people and 10,600 organizations when HuffPost reviewed it last year.
“It’s a target list,” Mobashra Tazamal of Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative told the outlet. “It’s a list that can be handed to the government to surveil, to monitor, to harass, to intimidate organizations and individuals, especially an administration that views Muslims as the enemy or as the threat to America, and views Muslim Americans as the enemy within.”
High-profile names in the files include Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Andre Carson, along with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.
The list, however, is not just inclusive of Muslims themselves, but also of people who work in fields related to Islamophobia or have close ties to high-profile Muslims, HuffPost reported Friday. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who is not Muslim, was labeled a “Fellow Traveler” in the files because of her perceived ties to Muslim causes.
After HuffPost contacted MEF, the organization announced that researchers could apply to access the database.
“It’s all fascism,” University of Michigan professor Juan Cole told the outlet. He added that the idea of such a list is especially alarming today under the Trump administration.
“It’s an attempt to subvert the Constitution in favor of far-right techniques of social control,” he said.
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