Excerpt:
American Muslims have long complained about being singled out for negative profiling and unjustified surveillance by law enforcement agencies in the United States. Last week, one source for this mistreatment was revealed during a routine three-hour-long Senate hearing.
On Tuesday (Nov. 8, 2011), the Senate Committee on the Judiciary conducted a hearing on "Oversight of the US Department of Justice." The main witness was Attorney General Eric Holder.
Way down in the third hour, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois expressed concern about how FBI training manuals negatively portrayed Islam and Muslims. He pointed out that agents receiving counterterrorism training were taught stereotypes of Islam and Muslim Americans, such as, "Islam is a highly violent, radical religion," "Mainstream Muslim Americans are likely to be terrorist sympathizers," "The Arabic mind is swayed more by ideas than by fact."