Nation’s Largest Muslim Student Group Calls For End to “Religious & Racial Profiling”

(February 21, 2012) The Muslim Students Association of the United States and Canada (MSA National) officially expressed its concern today over new allegations that certain elements of the New York Police Department (NYPD) have been spying on local MSA chapters around prominent university campuses including Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania and other prestigious colleges around the Northeast.

According to a recent story in the Associated Press, the intelligence division of the New

York Police Department (NYPD) went far beyond New York’s city limits and began to

“trawl daily through student websites run by Muslim student groups at Yale University,

the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers and 13 other colleges in the Northeast.”
According to the same AP story, NYPD officials spoke with local authorities about
professors in Buffalo and went so far as to send an undercover agent on a whitewater
rafting trip, where he recorded Muslim students’ names and even noted within police
intelligence files how many times they prayed on a daily basis.

SEE: “New York Police Department Monitored Muslim Students All Over Northeast”

(Associated Press)

“MSA National has always been an organization willing to work alongside law
enforcement agencies to help keep our communities safe,” said MSA National President
Zahir Latheef. “However, we believe that the NYPD clearly overstepped its boundaries
when it began spying on average American Muslim college students who were simply
taking whitewater rafting trips or innocently participating in school activities at their
college or university campus.”

Ms. Aamna Anwer, vice president of MSA National, further added that, “We at MSA
National actively work to distance ourselves from extreme ideologies of any kind. While
we appreciate the efforts of law enforcement agencies to ensure the safety of all
Americans, we hope that in the future law enforcement agencies will conduct
themselves in a manner devoid of spying on people simply based on religious and racial
profiling.”

The Muslim Students Association of the United States and Canada (MSA National) is a
non-profit organization that strives to facilitate networking, educating and empowering
the American Muslim college students of today to be productive citizens of tomorrow’s
global community.

–END—

CONTACT: MSA National President Zahir Latheef, 979-575-5870,
president@msanational.org
MSA National Vice President Ms. Aamna Anwer, 309-335-7665