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U.S. Police Work To Build Trust with Muslim Populations

Muslims care about keeping the country safe, imam says

There are 94 mosques in Houston, and Muzaffar Siddiqi, a local police officer, has visited them all. Siddiqi's efforts to build trust, one mosque at a time, are typical of recent work by police in cities across the United States.

Police officers want Muslims in their cities to know they can live and pray there just like any resident.

There is fear of police in some Muslim countries, and many Muslims in the United States have to be taught to trust law enforcement, said Siddiqi. In Pakistan, for example, where Siddiqi was born and where he is helping to build a police station, people often do not seek out help from police officers; instead, they hide from them.

In the United States, police officers need the trust of law-abiding citizens, including Muslims, to do their jobs protecting people and communities from criminals.

"I recognize the importance of reaching out to our city's Muslim population," Houston police Chief Harold Hurtt told USINFO.

Siddiqi said police training in the United States long has required diversity seminars educating cadets about the customs and traditions of people from many cultures living side by side. After the terrorist attacks in the United States by Muslim extremists on September 11, 2001, Siddiqi realized his Houston Police Department needed to do more both to educate officers about Muslims and to convince the Muslim community that police officers were there to protect them.

Now, Siddiqi regularly visits Houston's Islamic Dawah Center, where he meets with members of the Muslim community to address problems and concerns. And once a week, Siddiqi sits at a table at the Arab-American Community Center to provide residents with resources and educate them about the law-enforcement process.

"We've encouraged the Muslim community to establish a line of communication with the Houston Police Department," Siddiqi told USINFO.

Building Bridges in Cities With Arab-American Populations

Dearborn, Michigan, which has one of the largest Arab populations outside the Middle East, with nearly 40,000 Arab Americans, established its community-policing center in the heart of the Arab-American commercial and residential district in the late 1990s. Since then, the Dearborn Police Department has developed strong relationships within the Arab community, from religious leaders to business owners to neighborhood associations, Dearborn police Chief Michael Celeski told USINFO.

After September 11, "we were able to reach out and personally meet with community leaders and assure them that the city and the police would be working together to protect them from retaliation," Celeski said. Dearborn police officers are required to attend cultural diversity training sessions every year, Celeski said, with the focus on different ethnic groups changing depending on the issues in the city.

Police Chief Rob Davis of San Jose, California, realized his department could benefit from building trust among the 7,000 Muslims who live in his community, so he made a commitment to fast during Ramadan in 2006. Davis, a Mormon, observed the monthlong fast by giving up food and drink from sunrise to sunset and by breaking his nightly fast among his Muslim neighbors.

"Everyone needs to know that the chief is the chief for everybody - not just the majority, not just for those in power,'' Davis said in published reports. "I need to be a chief for everybody, particularly for those who've felt marginalized."

"The key is you have to find a common denominator," said U.S. federal agent Dave Gaubatz, who works with the Texas Department of Public Safety to train its troopers with a basic knowledge of Islam and Middle Eastern customs. "I knew what we had to do was unite law enforcement with the Muslim community to fight the War on Terror," said Gaubatz in news reports.

Such unity was found at a highly publicized meeting in August 2006 between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Imam Sheik Reda Shata at a Brooklyn youth center. Nearly a year had passed since the FBI charged two Muslims who prayed at Shata's mosque with plotting terrorist acts. According to newspaper reports, Shata told the agents that Muslims care about keeping the country safe.

Connecting With Immigrant Communities

Reaching out to West African and Muslim communities in New York beyond law enforcement became a goal of the police department there, and in January, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly appointed Imam Erhan Yildirim of the Fathi Mosque in Brooklyn as the department's outreach coordinator to Muslim residents.

Siddiqi, the Houston Police Department's liaison to Houston's South Asian and Middle Eastern communities, said this kind of outreach in immigrant communities is essential to law enforcement, and his department regularly organizes luncheons for local refugees from Somalia, Sudan, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba and the former Soviet Union.

Local businesses donate food, and members of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston, Interfaith Ministries, Catholic Charities and the Alliance Multicultural Center use the opportunity to help refugees with job training, English-language skills and familiarity with law-enforcement processes.

For additional information on life in the United States, see Population and Diversity.

Source: U.S. Department of State