“The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that ‘main stream’ [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a ‘cult leader’; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a ‘funding mechanism for combat.’”
Entire article here:
Another key passage:
“The stated purpose of one, about allegedly religious-sanctioned lying, is to ‘identify the elements of verbal deception in Islam and their impacts on Law Enforcement.’ Not ‘terrorism.’ Not even ‘Islamist extremism.’ *Islam.”
*
They even have a real scientific-ish graph that proves that Muslims are much more violent than Jews and Christians, and have been for over a thousand years.
One might have hoped that this mindset would have left our law enforcement agencies when the likes of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld retired to write their books, but apparently not.
Does anyone think that this trashing of the religion of over a billion people is appropriate, for any reason?
Can anyone tell me what good such “training” does? Even if those graphs weren’t completely pulled out of someone’s ass, of what use are they in investigating particular individuals for particular crimes or threats?
Does anyone know if similar training was presented when the JDL or IRA were more active?
I figured you must have been exaggerating a bit about that, and went to take a look at it.
O. M. G. :eek:
The stupid!! It burnssssss!!!
Seriously, I could spend an entire class period of my “Defensive Numeracy” course just pointing out the flaws in that graph. The fact that the vertical axis has no quantitative scale whatsoever (just the labels “Violent” at the bottom and “Non Violent” near the top) is only the beginning.
Influence of “Torah” is alleged to begin at “1400 BC” and that of “Bible” at “3 BC”?
Guys, this is supposed to be some kind of historical/social analysis of allegedly real cultural phenomena. You’re supposed to date the adherence of believers to a religious text beginning at the time when the text is thought by historians to have been written, not at the time when the text’s internal narrative starts. FFS, there weren’t any Christians adhering to the Christian Bible in 3 BC!
It’s absolutely flabbergasting how mightily those graphs bring the stupid.
The article strikes me as misleading, even if not inaccurate. The headline reads “FBI teaches agents that …” which makes it sound as if this is standard training. Same with lines like “At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart …” Well, yes, the Academy is at Quantico … as are a bunch of other FBI divisions.
The FBI has all kinds of optional training exercises that go on all the time, many of which bring in outside speakers. All it takes for this article to be true is for somebody somewhere within the FBI bureacracy to have a spare $500 in their office’s training budget, and they need to spend it. Then they get an email from their brother-in-law’s buddy, who is a retired cop who does seminars on radical Islam. “What the hell” he figures, books the guy, and sends out an email to the division saying the seminar is being offered. Twelve people show up, and spend the net hour listening to an ex-cop who turns out to be a nutjob.
That’s an unfortunate waste of $500 and a dozen man-hours, but it’s miles away from what the article is trying to imply: that this is standard agencywide training. The FBI is a massive organization, and putting the entire organization on the hook for something that, as far as we know, may have happened one time in one location is misleading. Honestly, the you might as well change the headline to reads “Eric Holder’s Justice Department” or even “Obama Administration” in place of “FBI.” Both would be just as accurate, and just as silly.
The nutjob isn’t an outside speaker; he’s a Bureau analyst:
I’d be more inclined to accept that this is some kind of isolated practice if these briefings were going on at a field office in, say, Nevada, rather than actually in Quantico.
Meh. It’s a natural response to assume that some analyzable quantifiable measurable process turns people into suicide bombers and whatnot, that some tidy profile exists which can predict who will willingly strap explosives to themselves and walk into a crowd. This unfortunate belief is fed by TV shows about fictional “profilers” who look at one crime scene and rattle off “well, the serial killer is a white male, 25-39, with a low-paying menial job and stereotypical masculine hobbies like gun collecting…”, and if this profile turns out to be wrong, it’s not because the profiler is just guessing - it’s because of some deliberate attempt to mislead the profiler.
It’s comforting to believe that some tidy formula exists to explain crime and violent fanaticism, and easy to ignore numerous counterexamples. This is modern-day phrenology, nothing more, an “expert” who is trying to explain the inexplicable. It’s unfortunate that the FBI buys into this, but the alternative is to admit that the genesis of evil is banal, mundane and frighteningly random.
If there’s a bright side, it’s that the level of Muslim violenceness has at least plateaued over the last 14 centuries, based on the, ah, number of violence units, shown here… well, implied here, on the Y axis… please to contrast, if you will, with the skyrocketing non-violencity of the Muslim apostates, represented by the floating crescents, and the… ah, I couldn’t actually find my “Star of David” clip art, so for now let’s let the floating crosses represent the Christians AND Jews… any questions? No? Okay, moving on…
So, its not one building, but several buildings? Well, that changes everything! So this poisonous thing is not concentrated on one building, but diluted throughout several! Ah!
Meh. I don’t see what’s so wrong with the graph. It says that Jews are the most pious people ever.*
or at least were in, (based upon some estimations from spacial relations), oh around 1890. Extrapolations indicate Christians overtaking our piety sometime mid-century. Frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if the advent of this very graph is what caused the overtake.
Ooh, snap! I guess I should have added something about it costing thousands of taxpayer dollars, and being delivered in government buildings to government employees. But I assumed that the denizens of this board were intelligent enough to understand what I meant by “appropriate.”
