New York: An "explosive" film containing
clips of Muslim terrorists shooting Christians in the head and
an Islamic flag flying over the White House has been shown to
NYPD officers as part of their training, raising concerns over
relationship between police and the Muslim community.
The 72-minute film titled `The Third Jihad` has been seen
by at least 1,489 police officers, including lieutenants,
detectives and patrol officers in the New York Police
Department (NYPD), the New York Times reported.
The revelation that city police officials have been shown
a film that "casts a broad shadow over American Muslims" comes
as law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, are grappling
with allegations that they spied and infiltrated Muslim
communities in the city to seek information about individuals
in the post 9/11 years.
The NYT report said the video shows Muslim terrorists
shoot Christians in the head, car bombs exploding, executed
children lying covered by sheets and a doctored photograph
showing an Islamic flag flying over the White House.
All the while, an ominous music plays in the background
and a narrator says, "This is the true agenda of much of Islam
in America. A strategy to infiltrate and dominate America...
This is the war you don`t know about."
The film is narrated by Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim doctor and
former American military officer in Arizona and its message is
that few Muslim leaders can be trusted.
It includes scenes of violence by Muslims and states that
there were "three jihads: One at the time of Muhammad, a
second in the Middle Ages and a third that is under way
covertly throughout the West today. This is the 1,400-year
war," the film claims.
The film was financed by the Clarion Fund, a nonprofit
group whose board includes a former Central Intelligence
Agency official and a deputy defense secretary for President
Ronald Reagan.
Civil rights advocates and Muslim leaders have expressed
concern about the film being shown to police officials saying
the police department has "trampled on civil rights, blurred
lines between foreign and domestic spying and sown fear among
Muslims."
"The police have shown an explosive documentary to its
officers and simply stonewalled us," director at the Brennan
Center for Justice at New York University Law School Faiza
Patel said in the New York Times report.
Patel had obtained the release of the documents through a
Freedom of Information request. Patel said the police
department is not discussing how and why the film was shown.
"It suggests a broader problem that they refuse to
divulge this information much less to discuss it. The training
of the world`s largest city police force is an important
question." The film also includes interview with city Police
Commissioner Ramond Kelly and has been shown "on a continuous
loop" for between three months and one year of training.
Word had first gotten out in January 2011 that the
department had used the film in training. It is not known how
the film came to be used in police training.
However, a few police officers blew the whistle after
watching the film, with some saying they felt uneasy watching
it and another officer said he was completely offended by it
as a Muslim.
"It defiled our faith and misrepresented everything we
stood for," he had said.
The Police Department`s chief spokesman Paul Browne says
the Department has no plans to correct any false impressions
the movie might have left behind.
"There`s no plan to contact officers who saw it," he
said, or to "add other programming as a result."
PTI