Recent lawsuits in US highlight anti-Muslim police bias

In two separate legal cases, the Muslim civil rights group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, announced this week settlements in lawsuits alleging anti-Muslim discrimination by members of US law enforcement.

The cases occurred in San Jose, California and Detroit, Michigan. Though different, they both raise concerns over the treatment of Muslims by law enforcement.

In San Jose, in a case that was supported by but not represented by CAIR, Nabil Haidar, a Muslim Lebanese-American police officer, was taunted for around 15 years following the 9/11 attacks, with fellow officers often asking him, "How many infidels are you going to kill today?", "You aren't gonna fly an aeroplane, are you?" and "Have you lost your way to the White House?" They would routinely call him "Taliban" and "Bin Laden".  

The lawsuit referred to a 2017 briefing where the briefing sergeant and captain recognised all present veterans on Veteran's Day. The briefing sergeant reportedly said, "Captain, you forgot to mention Nabil. He is an ISIS veteran. He was with ISIS for two years."

The following year, Haidar captured racist comments on his body camera when he was at the scene of a burglary and a fellow officer approached him, imitating an explosion with a hand gesture and sound. He then asked Haidar if the knife on his belt was a "f***ing Lebanese throat cutter." 

Haidar retired early in 2022 and sued the city and police department for economic and severe post-traumatic stress-related damages. The lawsuit was settled for US$400,000.

"This is a sector where you'd expect people to have each other's backs. We want to make sure the police are holding each other to the highest standards, Zahra Billoo, executive director of CAIR-San Francisco Bay Area, told The New Arab.

"The broader question that this case raises is what the police departments are doing to earn the trust of their communities," she said. "If, on the one hand, they're urging communities to trust them and urging young people to join their forces. If their duty is to serve and protect, when we learn about cases like this, their actions do not match their words."

The 2021 suit in Detroit, filed by CAIR, follows a 2020 incident in which three African American and Hispanic Muslims were arrested after they called the police to assist a woman they saw experiencing a mental health crisis.

Instead of assisting the woman and bringing her to a crisis centre, as they'd expected, the three men were arrested. The men then filed a Freedom of Information Act request to access body camera footage of the arresting officers. 

The footage revealed an officer making derogatory comments about Muslims, saying that "Muslims lie a lot," that "Muslim men are paedophiles," and saying that Muslim men were controlling of women. He then said he would arrest the men and allow someone else to follow up.  

"We litigated that lawsuit for the better part of two years. It was approved by the council this week. The city never apologised," Amy Doukoure, CAIR-Michigan staff attorney, told TNA. 

"It's not as uncommon as people think. We've seen bias against Muslims with them not being given the benefit of the doubt," she said. 

"This settlement signals some kind of healing for our clients. They got justice a little bit, but their complaints were ignored for so long."