Democracy Now! Wednesday, September 9, 2026

0:00From New York, this is democracy now. I find myself defending myself, my faith, my people, my community, my fellow Americans of our Muslims is Islam and terrorism, not synonymous. A head of the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, we look at the impact of 9-11 on Muslim communities in the United States. With long-time organizer Fahad Amin and journalist Rizina Ali, her new book, Seasons of Fury, four families and the rise of Islamophobia in America. But first, Mayor Mamdani releases 170,000 long-hidden records from the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks.

1:05We'll speak to Ben Shaba of 9-11 Health Watch, which sued the city for release of the records. Mr. Mayor, I want to thank you for being the mayor who after 25 years begins to answer the question, what did the city know about the dangers from the talks of cloud at ground zero and when did it know it? All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, democracynow.org, the war and peace report, I'm Amy Goodman. The governments of Canada, France and the United Kingdom said Tuesday they will ban goods and some services from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. They joined several other U.S. allies, including Bill Jamaril in the Netherlands, Norway and Spain, which already have taken steps to ban imports from settlements, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced the sanctions and a speech to the House of Commons Tuesday, where he accused Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank.

2:12Ethnic cleansing is defined by the UN as a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas. The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists and all too often the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this. Miliband also tightened restrictions on UK arms exports to Israel. However, the limited embargo does not exclude the transfer of F-35 fighter jet parts. Israel responded by closing the British consulate in East Jerusalem. Far-right minister Bezalowski-Motric declared the Oslo Accords no envoy demanding the expulsion of the British ambassador. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports British diplomats privately told the US the sanctions are largely symbolic and will have no material impact on the UK's wider relationship with Israel on trade or security.

3:18Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to sue the newspaper Harats. After it reported, he failed to heed a warning that Hamas was planning a major operation ahead of the October 7, 2023 attacks. Harats said in response that it stands by its reporting. On Tuesday, the paper published excerpts of a forthcoming book by its reporters that found that UAE President Muhammad bin Zayed warned Netanyahu a week and a half before the attacks and that the Israeli leader failed to inform his security chiefs. On Tuesday, opposition politicians accused Netanyahu of evading responsibility for security lapses and called him unfit to serve. US forces bombed five Iranian tankers Tuesday, including one near Iran's main oil export terminal, Kharag Island. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at a US base in Jordan.

4:18Jordanian forces say they intercepted nearly all of them. Iran's revolutionary guard also claimed retaliatory strikes on US and commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries a fifth of the world's oil and gas. US Central Command denied Iran's claims that struck two Navy destroyers. The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since the US war on Iran began in late February. On Tuesday, Brent crude oil futures topped $100 a barrel, the highest fuel prices since the US Iran ceasefire collapsed in July. In Missouri, a pair of court rulings has thrown planning for November's midterm elections into chaos. On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court refused to allow Republicans to use a Trump-backed map, Jury Mandor, to target Democratic Congressmember Emmanuel Clever's Kansas City seat. The ruling left in place in Missouri Supreme Court ruling that sends the new map to a public referendum.

5:21Hours later, US District Judge Stephen Clark, a Trump appointee, ordered Missouri to use the Jury Mandored map anyway. Ruling switching maps after the August primary would lead to voter confusion. Judge Clark's order has been appealed to the eighth US Circuit Court of Appeals. The Postal Services Inspector General says it will review a whistleblower's warning that the Trump administration's new mail-in voting rule could result in thousands of legal ballots being discarded. The new rule would require states to hand over lists of mail ballot recipients and use approved envelopes with unique barcodes allowing the agency to refuse ballots that don't follow those standards. This comes as a federal judge has extended a block on the rule. The Trump administration's asked the Supreme Court to allow it to enforce the rule before the midterm elections.

6:21A federal appeals court has blocked the IRS from sharing taxpayer data with ICE. ICE had demanded the last known addresses of 1.28 million people, it says, are in the US unlawfully. The three judge panel for the US Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., found ICE's request violated laws passed after the Watergate scandal when the Nixon administration weaponized tax files against its enemies. The IRS and ICE had set up a mechanism that allowed immigration officials to submit lists to tax authorities to check against their records. Judge Cornelia Pallard wrote, quote, the IRS is now unnoticed twice over regarding the legal inadequacies of its summer 2025 disclosures. The government and its personnel face steep civil and criminal consequences for willful disclosure of information. You and experts warn a sharp rise in wildfires and heat waves intensified by the climate crisis is undercutting air quality worldwide.

7:26A new report finds areas which had slash pollution from vehicles and industry now face fresh risks from wildfire smoke while higher temperatures brought by severe heat waves are driving up ground level ozone. This is Lorenzo Labrador, a scientific officer of the World Meteorological Organization which issued the report. Wildfires have the potential to underman progress made in brought about by your quality measures in many countries because no matter how clean your city or your region is because of reduced animations due to whatever measures you put in place. If you had a lot of pollution brought to brought about by wildfires that has the potential to negatively factor quality in those regions as well. A federal appeal, scored his rule, the US Constitution does not guarantee the right to clean drinking water. Rejecting a lawsuit by residents of Jackson, Mississippi who say their city knowingly allowed them to drink tap water contaminated with lead.

8:30On Friday, a full panel of judges in the fifth circuit court of appeals ruled 10 to 5 to uphold lower courts dismissal of the case, which argued city officials violated residents constitutional right to bodily integrity under the 14th Amendment's due process clause. The Trump administration is looking to obtain greater access to Venezuela's minerals, including gold. That's according to Reuters, which reports the move would open up Venezuela's mining sector to US investment giving US companies access to crucial minerals. President Trump has already taken steps to control Venezuela's vast oil wealth, announcing the US will take majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves. The deal has been widely condemned after the abduction of former President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Silia Flores in January. President Trump has proposed renaming the state of New Mexico, New America, in a series of memes he shared on social media over Labor Day weekend.

9:37Any such move would violate New Mexico's state constitution. In response, New Mexico Governor Michelle Luhangrisham wrote quote, New Mexico's name isn't up for debate. It's been hours since before the United States existed. In August, President Trump issued an executive order renaming like Ontario, Lake America, Google Maps, and Apple Maps quickly complied switching the lake's name for US users of their pop up. But after MapQuest refused to comply with the name change, it saw its app surge and popularity to become the number one download in Apple's app store. President Trump gave his executive assistant Natalie Harp and two other young female White House aides, $45,000 each. According to financial disclosures, the payments are described as quote, cash gift for holidays, unquote, and amount to a third of the aides $150,000 annual salary.

10:41Walhtenowte, the director of Oval Office Operations also reported a $20,000 gift from the President. The Trump administration's published a new study, purporting to show links between support for transgender rights, left wing authoritarianism and political violence. The report claims of that evidence, the killing of the right wing activist, Charlie Kirk, was connected to so-called gender ideology. The unfinished report was commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services and conducted by researchers with Rutgers University, the Manhattan Institute, and the Network Contagion Research Institute, think tank. It has neither been peer reviewed or accepted for publication in an academic journal. In response, the global project against hate and extremism said quote, this study is not a neutral scientific inquiry. Instead, it attempts to reframe a health care consensus as a security and radicalization concern, furthering the administration's aims of dehumanizing and abusing the transgender community.

11:45A researcher at the Artificial Intelligence firm Anthropic publicly resigned Tuesday warning the race to produce frontier AI models could lead to self-improving super intelligent machines that pose an existential threat to humans. Jacob Coxon specialized in training new AI models on vast amounts of data in a social media post explaining his resignation he wrote quote, the people building AI earnestly believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible, but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger, he said. His warning comes just days after open AI released its most capable model yet, GPT6 Astra, which prompted Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang, to proclaim AGI has arrived, referring to artificial general intelligence.

12:58Meanwhile, the Pentagon's as open AI to provide it with a special version of its artificial intelligence technology designed to refuse commands as infrequently as possible. That's according to the intercept, which reports a large language model that would aid in the process of spying on targeting and killing people would require a substantial relaxation of existing safeguards. In Albania, police blocked protesters from reaching the Parliament Tuesday as demonstrations against the development of a luxury resort linked to US President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and his daughter Ivanka Trump turned violent. In the capital, Toronto protesters pelted officers and riot gear with eggs and tomatoes. Albania's Prime Minister supports Kushner's development project, despite critics claiming it would cause massive environmental damage. This is a protestor Tuesday's demonstration.

14:00They were very violent, but they don't understand that their violence is keeping us more pumped and will bring here more people. They think they buy arresting us by legally keeping us in prison. They think they can scare us, but it's kind of opposite. Like, we are not scared. We are everyone is seeing the regime here, how it is operating, so we are not scared anymore. So we'll keep going. And those are some of the headlines. This is DemocracyNow. DemocracyNow.org the war in peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. And I'm Anjali Komet. Welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. This week marks the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. On Tuesday, New York City mayors, or Anmamdani, announce the historic release of more than 170,000 pages of city records from the aftermath of 9-11, some of which indicate New York City officials lied to the public about the hazardous toxins that burned and remained in the air for months up to half a mile from ground zero.

15:10Mammdani also announced the settlement of 2-9-11 related lawsuits. He spoke at City Hall yesterday. We are together this morning to stand steadfast alongside survivors and their families and to deliver the account of accountability around city governments response to September 11th that New Yorkers have been denied for years. I am proud to announce that our administration has settled two lawsuits between the city and 9-11 health watch, ending what has been a multi-year legal battle and restrictions on New Yorkers' ability to access information that can shed valuable insight on air quality and health concerns. The administration, after administration, has ignored those calling for answers and clarity. Instead, choosing to bury them in legal arguments and in red tape, we will do no such thing. As we mark 25 years, it is time for this painful chapter to end. Mayor Mammdani was joined at the press conference by talk show host John Stewart, who is advocated for years on behalf of 9-11 first responders, survivors and their families.

16:19These people had to fight, sick and dying for years. And I am not saying that the information may have changed the outcomes unfortunately for their families. But I guarantee you it would not have been the struggle that it was to get people to recognize that what they all knew and what we all knew who live in downtown Manhattan is that there was poison in the air. And on the ground and in the window sills and in your air conditioners and covering your pets and your clothes and it stayed there for months. And this is congressmember Gerald Nadler speaking at Tuesday's city hall press conference. My colleagues and I who represented ground zero and the surrounding communities immediately warned local and federal officials about the health risks posed by the toxins in the air.

17:19I was screaming at the top of my lungs to protect our communities, my constituents. But officials like EPA administrative Christine Todd Whitman and Mayor Giuliani denied claims like mine saying the air was perfectly safe. Last for us city hall led by former mayor Giuliani predicted that thousands of responders and community members would face devastating long term health consequences from these toxins despite this. He stayed silent on the hazards. The release of the documents comes as part of litigation brought by the advocacy group 911 health watch which soon New York City to force the publication of the records were joined now by Ben Shavatt executive director of 911 health watch welcome to democracy now give us a little background. How did these documents get released? Why was it your group that's responsible for that? So thank you for having me 911 health watch was created by the state New York State AFL CIO.

18:25How I got here is that I was Congressman Maloney's chief of staff on 911 and I work with for her as she helped to develop the legislation that became the Zagrova Act which provides health health care. So Grova was the detective that we named the bill after who died in 2006 and he was the first person to have have a medical examiner declare that his death was related to dying from 911 exposures to the toxic chemicals that were present downtown. And I work you know at the time we working for the Congresswoman we worked on the legislation we had a real fight because the Bush administration the Giuliani administration all denied that there was an impact from these toxins. I just have to point out one Gonzalez who was at the time the daily news columnists wrote several and that's why bring it up wrote several early columns raising questions about what was called 911 cough and for that the Giuliani administration apparently called the daily news demanding that he be fired.

19:49And that was just an example of people like Congressman Nadler Kimberly Flynn of environmental action the local residents including my mother who was living in Battery Park was 74 at the time was there when the towers collapse was evacuated over the sea wall to Jersey and hitchhike to my brother's house. And then returned in spring like everyone else because the city administration the time said it was safe they brought kids back to school to stifers and not just to all the schools the high school finance which is next towards the stock exchange. And they brought people back and there were questions being raised all the time is it safe and there's been a continuing sort of attempt. We got involved many years later but there were always attempt obviously one wrote a book about it and three to Palmer from the New York Times wrote a book about it there were hints about it in 2007 and three to Palmer mentioned the hardening memo which was written to deputy mayor hardening at the time in October of 2001 which laid out that they would be 10,000 toxic claims they expected because of what was happening.

21:10But this was at the same time that they said that it was safe that the air was safe not just Christy Todd Whitman but the city administration. And the latest sort of effort was really after Congressman Nadler and my oboe's Congressman Bloney wrote a letter to then mayor de Blasio in 2021 to say the 20th anniversary it's time for the city to sort of say what it knew mayor de Blasio didn't respond to that. And he said to mayor Adams when he was coming in who was a 9-11 responder himself and mayor Adams responded but said that he would only reveal what they knew or reveal their documents if the city got more liability protection which was sort of like an admission of well what's in there. And that's really so I went to Andy Carboy and Matt McColley two lawyers who Matt is actually a 9-11 responder himself NYPD and I asked them to help volunteer we filed foyers and the city kept as for you know foyers not a great process.

22:25The freedom of information act and for whatever documents for documents for the hardening memo for especially documents because in the October November the Giuliani administration went to Congress and I you know this is not aware of it Mr. Nadler was not aware of it you know in the aftermath of 9-11 there were a lot of legislation going apparently they actually inserted into the law. There's a law a limit on the city's liability to no more than 350 million dollars which sort of says well why were they at the same exactly at the same time they were saying the air was safe why were they worried about liability and and that's really the core of what we were trying to get at is. And I don't want the city in the response to the tragedy and ultimately it's the terrorists who are responsible but instead of mitigating the harm they mitigated the city's liability and instead of maybe slowing down and not bringing kids back or maybe not bringing my mother back and other residents they could have said well maybe we need to be more careful and I just want to be clear I'm not a responder I've talked to a lot of resources.

23:42I've talked to a lot of responders a lot of responders were probably have still gone and done what they did but I think they would have liked to have known and been given that choice and that's really the core of the issue. So we filed this FOIA I think the really sort of the breakthrough here because other people had done it before and the Adams administration was just saying no all along was that I approached a councilman Gail Brewer and we were talking and she said well I'll put her in a bill and her staff doing some research found that the city the last major city charter revision had given the city council the power to order the Department of Investigation. To do an investigation this power had never been exercised by the city council. She put in the resolution at the time Speaker Adams Adrian Adams supported it and last summer the the city council passed this resolution ordering DOI to do this investigation and then three weeks later four weeks later the city informed us that they had found 68 boxes.

24:52Obviously they said there were no there were no boxes there were no in there was nothing available. The way foil works once they made that administrative decision we filed what's called an article 78 which is under New York State law to sort of demanding that the asking the question was the law followed. Once the city council acted and they last September I think it was that they said they found the 68 boxes that's when things really started to happen and you know we the election happened. We're not going to happen. Mayor mandami came in and we've been waiting trying you know hoping that mayor mandami would change the direction of the corporation council because this is really four administrations that have not allowed people to see these documents and what's most important to you about the documents that have been released as we begin to wrap up.

25:53Well I think just that they're being seen people will see it I don't let me be clear I don't know whether there's going to be a smoking gun or like a memo or something like that but we've already seen there was a lot more that the city was keeping from people for actively preventing people from seeing. We won our court case judge clients in our case in one of our cases found that the city violated the law actively preventing us from receiving the documents that we were entitled to see and you know that's really the key part and I give the mayor and then Steve banks the new corporation council a lot of credit to that. And then she'll what's been the reaction of previous mayor's the from the four administrations that did not release the 68 boxes I haven't heard from them or I haven't seen any press reports about it of what they've said. So what do you do with these documents in the last 30 seconds this is still this is just the first batch of documents over the next year there's going to be a lot more we are working as part of our settlement agreement we are working with Steve banks and the.

27:05Banks is formally would legal a formally with legal aid yes and we're working with them on search terms there's just a vast amount of these documents that have to go through people can go through a portal and get. To go to the portal go to New York City go to the New York City website they can go through it and they can see for themselves and we're already hearing people saying well I I see this and just to say that it's. It is difficult to city the city has to make sure there's no personal information we don't want so security numbers I mean it's a vast amount of information so it is going to take time and mondonnie has. What given something like 30 40 million dollars 34 million dollars 30. And I just want to say with the mayor it's not just about the documents the mayor is going to be working to promote the program I mean before you and I were talking before this segment you live downtown you might qualify for it there's so many more people who may not understand what's in the Zagrove act what's available for them and more importantly there's.

28:12Work that should have been done a long time ago there's now this new what's called the youth research cohort that the mayor is going to help to promote. To try to really do some really research that hasn't been done on those who are children at the time and to really see what their health effects have been. Benjamin Chavato and thank you so much for being with us executive director of 9 11 Health Watch he participated in yesterday's news conference his organization is the one that force the release of these hundred. 70,000 pages of 9 11 documents this is democracy now democracy now dot org when we come back seasons of fury for families and the rise of Islamophobia and America we look at what's happened in this last 25 years the targeting of the Muslim community stay with us. So how to win. It on fragile heart.

29:14Open in your eyes won't care. This was the year our fathers fell down. All that we want. They broke up on ground. The crowds they disappeared. The scaffold removed. The circles drawn around me. Oh why don't God she don't hide no more from me don't hide. Oh why don't God don't hide no more from me don't hide.

30:18Welcome to the after time. So a child learns to walk and learns wrong from right. Your hold is little hand. Sing to her night. An ear folds in the ear. Play soon. Did the best you could. Wild gods by David Berkeley. This is democracy now democracy now dot org the warring piece report I'm Amy Goodman with Angerly Comet. New York City mayor Zoran Mamdani the city's first Muslim mayor will be attending the 9 11 commemoration ceremony this week along with the families of victims. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and former New York governor George Pataki have led critics who say mayor Mamdani should skip the ceremony. Speaking on Newsmax Giuliani criticized mayor Mamdani for giving a symbolic pen to his chief legal counsel Ramsey Kassam during the signing of an executive order establishing September 11th as an official citywide day of remembrance and service.

31:29Ramsey Kassam previously represented several detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Giuliani then went on and Islamophobic tirade against mayor Mamdani. Too many Americans fall for that Islamic propaganda which is the reason they're taking over certain parts of America and certain parts of Europe. They have every desire to take us over. This is not they want to be just another religion. They want to dominate us. That's what they're taught from the day they begin their extremist religious education. Mamdani is a clear supporter of that. A circulating online petition that expresses concern regarding Mamdani's attendance at the ceremony has reached 100,000 signatures. This was mayor Mamdani's response to Giuliani's remarks. What I want this week to be a focus on is on the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terror of September 11th and the focus also on the first responders who give everything they could to this city and to the people who came together to try and help their fellow New Yorkers.

32:40For more on Islamophobia after 9-11 and its impacts on communities here in the United States were joined by two guests. Rosina Ali is an award-winning journalist a New York Times contributing writer author of the new book Seasons of Fury for families and the rise of Islamophobia in America. She's reported on the global war on terror from Egypt Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. And Fahd Ahmed is the executive director of drum. That's Desi's rising up and moving a grassroots group for South Asian and Indo Caribbean immigrant workers and families in New York City. He also runs drum beats, one of the first organizations to endorse Zoran Mamdani during his run for mayor. We welcome you both to democracy now. Let's begin with Rosina you spent years writing this book. This is a sacred week here in New York this 25th anniversary of 9-11 talk about what happened after 9-11 the rise of hate against people of the Islamic faith.

33:54There were so many responses to 9-11 one was obviously fear and grief and shock but another was rage and so much of that rage was towards Muslims and those who looked like Muslims. Around the country we obviously saw a lot of hate crimes violent killings of actually brown people who were not Muslims but they were actually Sikhs. There were also in bridge view outside of Chicago a massive group of about 300 people who marched towards a mosque shouting death to Arabs. And I think what's particularly fascinating too is what the government did which was in the weeks after in the days and weeks after they started arresting people. They started arresting Muslim and brown men and boys from streets from their homes from their workplaces. I want to bring Fahd Ahmed into the conversation Fahd executive director of drum. They see rising up and moving you've been a grassroots organizer with drum for over 25 years.

35:00Take us back to that immediate aftermath and that panic and fear that Rosina talked about what was it like organizing and what were people worried about and what was going on. In the within a day or two after 9-11 we had printed a flyer and set up a hotline and said if you're facing hate crimes, if you're facing discrimination, if you're facing targeting please reach out to us. And the calls that we started getting were largely related to people experiencing targeting by law enforcement. I remember one call being a children calling us and saying my Fahd lived for work four days ago and he hasn't come home. Women calling and saying they police burst down my door and they grabbed my brother and my husband and I don't know where they are. Workers called and said a black van pulled up and grabbed my coworker and another guy off the street and just drove off with them.

36:03And so in New York City and in New Jersey and across the country but particularly in New York New Jersey we saw these massive roundups of mostly Muslim men or people that were perceived to be Muslim. And this included citizens, green card holders and undocumented people. In the beginning it was just mass roundups and then they held them and then they tried to figure out what is the reason that we're holding them. And sometimes they would dig up false charges like they would make up some charges but most of the time they would be able to use immigration status. And this was happening at there was at least 1200 men that were picked up this way. I want to talk about one person. I want to talk about Muhammad Saman Hamdani. A New York City police cadet trained as an EMT who was headed to work at Rockefeller University with his Quran.

37:04Then race to ground zero. We only learned this later attempting to save whatever lives he could at the twin towers September 11, 2001. Democracy now spoke to his parents on the eve of the second anniversary of his death in 2003 as they joined hundreds in a quiet procession to ground zero. His mother Talat Hamdani remembered searching for him for days. The reality started to hit us at that moment. Something did happen to him. And the third day we went down to the center that they had made for the families to come and write their names of their loved ones. Armory it was he as it was the armory. We went down there and we registered his name and we gave our swap samples for the DNA.

38:07We made a flyer searching for him. We put down his name as Sal Hamdani. My brother did not put down his name the first name Muhammad for certain reasons. We searched for him. Nobody had seen him. So while they searched for weeks through all hospitals giving their own DNA samples Salman's parents they then went to Mecca to pray. As they were there the New York Post portrayed Salman as a possible terrorist. The post article was headlined missing or hiding mystery of NYPD cadet from Pakistan. This is what the newspaper. The post printed a very horrible heading missing or hiding and amongst the news that they presented it.

39:15It had incinerations that he was seen near the at 11 a.m. he was seen near the Midtown tunnel. Is he really hiding most probably? Is he really missing? He is not missing but he is hiding and he could be one of the terrorists. Salat Hamdani's mother, Salat Mamdani told me how difficult it felt to be Muslim in the United States at the time. We have this as a nephew in 2nd and 3rd grade they were at that time. They were in 2nd grade and believe me they changed their names. Some Armenian became Ameen and one became Miki and the other one became Miki. And the 4th one became Adam and we asked them why you changed their names then they said you know because we don't want to be called terrorists in the school. We are Muslims. So it came at that moment you know like a year and a half ago like Islam and terrorism was synonymous terms.

40:22And that is where I find myself defending myself, my faith, my people, my community, my fellow Americans who are Muslims. Islam and terrorism are not synonymous. Salat Hamdani, the mother of Salat Mamdani in fact when she was looking for him in hospitals she said his name was Sal because she already knew there would be discrimination. The mayor would later apologize, the police commissioner would later apologize, he's named in the USA Patriot Act and the president, President Bush would praise Salman for the hero that he was. How typical was this? It was quite common. A lot of the people that we were encountering in detention centers were people that were just picked out by other people who said that they look suspicious.

41:22And there was this overall framework of anybody that looks Muslim is likely complicit and let's just round them up and figure things out. And maybe just a given example of to the extent we heard about the let's searching for Salman. We found this Salman Hamdani in the detention center and it turned out to be a 53 year old man. And there was just tons of these stories of particular neighborhoods and in particular New York City, Midwood and Bay Ridge that there was just large numbers of men that just disappeared. And so and it was really disappearance because as I mentioned people would go to work and not come home. And so the campaign that we launched would stop the disappearance campaign. And you know these people were held in Communicato without access to lawyers without being able to contact their families, some for six months, some for nine months.

42:25And there was almost like whatever basic constitutional rights exist, do not apply in the situation. Rosina, I want to go back to you. I know we've been talking about this post 9-11 dragnet and how many Muslim men were kind of caught in this. You've got the 1200 men who were disappeared. But then you also had the special registration. So talk about that and how many people were affected. And also how the Bush administration kind of used its immigration arm to deal with what they called preventing terrorism. So we know one of the things that we have learned over the years is that one of the failures of 9-11, one of the reasons that happened was because of an intelligence failure, not an immigration failure. Except the Bush administration kept using immigration as a tool to clamp down on what they thought were terrorist threats. What happened after the mass arrests of the 1200 people was that the Bush administration thought that they should do something a bit more systematic and something perhaps a bit more orderly.

43:35And they created what is called the national security exit entry registration system and sears, which was basically a registry for men and boys of at least 15 years of age. From about two dozen Muslim majority countries, they had to register with the government. The result of that was that about 80,000 people registered, thousands of them were deported and not a single one was thought to was found to have ties with terrorism. And there has been no apology about that. And it's interesting because I actually years later, I interviewed a few former officials asking about the insures system. And I found two responses. One main response was a lot of them didn't remember that this, that the Bush administration had instituted this. It wrecked so many lives, but officials just have forgotten. But the other thing, the other response I usually get is we did what we had to do and it was necessary. Civil rights may have been violated, but we did what was necessary.

44:46The problem is, I don't think it was necessary. My reporting has found that actually we didn't find terrorists this way at all. We're going to go into the four families that you profile in seasons of Fury, Rosina Ali, award-winning journalist New York Times contributing writer. And we are also speaking with Fat Ahmed, the executive director of Drum, Dezzi's rising up and moving on this week of the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks and what happened after. Stay with us. We're going to go into the four families that you profile in seasons of Fury, Rosina Ali, award-winning journalist New York Times contributing writer. We're going to go into the four families that you profile in seasons of Fury, Rosina Ali, award-winning journalist New York Times contributing writer. We're going to go into the four families that you profile in seasons of Fury, Rosina Ali, award-winning journalist New York Times contributing writer.

45:55We're going to go into the four families that you profile in seasons of Fury, Rosina Ali, award-winning journalist New York Times contributing writer. We're going to go into the four families that you profile in seasons of Fury, Rosina Ali, award-winning journalist New York Times contributing writer. John O'Jont by Sunny Singh performing in our Democracy Now studio. This is DemocracyNow, DemocracyNow.org, the Warren Peas report. I'm Amy Goodman with Angela Comet, our guest, or Rosina Ali, author of seasons of Fury, four families in the rise of Islamophobia in America, and the executive director of Drum, Dezzi's rising up and moving. Rosina, you write about the long shadow of post-9-11 use of terrorism prosecutions and the material support laws, and you write one of the families you write about is the family of Matheen Siraj, and he was a young Pakistani immigrant.

47:05In 2007, Siraj then just 24 was sentenced to 30 years in prison for plotting to bomb the Harrel Square subway station in New York City. The attorneys for Siraj said he was set up by a police informant who pushed the idea of bombing. DemocracyNow spoke to Siraj's attorney, Martin Stolar, soon after the sentencing. If we could just go to that clip. Siraj, well they get that clip ready. So Matheen Siraj was living in New York City. He was living in Queens and working in Brooklyn at his uncle's Islamic bookstore. And this was during the time of obviously the Iraq War. There was a lot of conversation about foreign policy and what the US was doing. Matheen was very vocally critical and he was visited one day by a man who turned out to be an undercover and my PD informant who refriended him over months and goaded him towards a plot to blow up Harrel Square.

48:07Now it is worth remembering and recognizing that there was actually no details of the plot. There were no weapons. There was no date or time set for the plot. And perhaps most critically, Matheen actually tried to back out of this plan multiple times. And yet he was still arrested by the NYPD convicted and eventually sentenced to 30 years in prison. We have that clip ready. This is his lawyer, Martin Stolar speaking to Amy Goodman back in 2007. This young man becomes the symbol of terrorism in the United States. In essence, what we have is the NYPD police department creating a crime so they could solve the crime and claim a victory in the war on terror. That is not the way to investigate terrorism as far as I'm concerned. I see recorded on tape saying I don't want to do this. I'm going to talk about this.

49:09He says he has to check with his parents and the attorney for the case and you as well talk about the use of informants. So how prevalent was the use of informants at this time and what did this do to the sort of community of Muslims in the US who could be who are dealing with infiltration, being surveilled. Can you talk about how all of that was related to the prosecutions? So what's fascinating to me is the difference between the pre-911 era and the post-911 era. Before 911 law enforcement really did not have good or close relationships with the Muslim community. Nor did they have a lot of knowledge about Islam or the Arab world. After 911 they were in desperate need of any ties to Muslims. So they started recruiting informants and they could recruit informants by paying them or by bribing them and saying we're going to speed up your immigration status or application or they would use a stick approach and say if you don't help us we might make things more difficult for you.

50:15Eventually the FBI amassed a base of about 15,000 informants which is absolutely wild. But what's so critical is that Muslims became scared of going to the mosque, of going to bookstores, of going to cafes because these undercover informants were everywhere. They were infiltrating practically every restaurant and cafes certainly in the tri-state area but also around the country. You know we have used informants in the past, the FBI certainly has but in those cases usually an informant has a tie to a mafia member or a gang member. After 911 the only tie that informants had to another Muslim was that they were Muslim. Fahad you've worked with Muthin Syrajist family what was the impact of his arrest and his being sentenced to 30 years in prison on the community and I mean 25 years after 911 what's changed for the communities you're working with working class out there in Muslim communities.

51:17We work with the stride channel for more than 20 years and first and foremost this is absolutely devastated the family. Every day that Muthin has spent in prison his mother and his family have been in prison every single day. The family it becomes hard to find work your own family becomes afraid do I stay in contact with them or do I not if I support them will I get targeted. And that same dynamic plays out in the community people that were your neighbors now are like I'm not sure who should I talk to this family who should I talk to and what we saw was the complete devastation of the social fabric and some communities for many many years for almost two decades to where people were afraid to have political conversations. And you know if you know anything about Muslim communities and and mushrooms like it's pretty much all people do is you do the ritual like religious things and then you sit around and talk about what's happening back home what's happening here what do we think about the war what do we think about this.

52:25And there were large number of places where people said no political conversations allowed. You know there was like Muslim student associations that started putting up signs political conversations are not allowed. And all of this was happening at a time that several Muslim countries were being targeted by us us wars while civil rights of Muslim communities were being violated. And so our communities were in this difficult situation that at the very moment where people needed to defend themselves there was a high level of uncertainty on can and should we talk or should we not talk should we engage in political activism or should we not. And this of course all didn't begin 9 11 Rosina you write about of Dean Jabara co founder of the American anti discrimination committee and long time leader of the national lawyers guild and the 1970s he exposed Nixon administration surveillance program against Arab Americans and force the NSA to admit it had been spying on him of Dean since 1967 we spoke to him in 2013 about his groundbreaking case.

53:38I had been very very active in Palestinian support work and one day I read in Newsweek magazine in the periscope section that 26 Arabs in the United States had been targeted for surveillance and electronic surveillance. So I thought surely some of those had been clients of mine or had talked to me on the phone about issues and so forth and that's when I brought the lawsuit. I was surprised after all the revelations about the Snowden NSA drew a ha that nobody had looked back at well had occurred back in the in the 70s to show that at that time it came out in the press that over 1600 Americans had been surveilled by the NSA. So that's up Dean Jabara former head founder of American air venti discrimination committee and at the time we had a lower third that said friend of Alex Oda.

54:43Rosina explain. So Alex Oda was one of the vice presidents of the ADC for the West Coast chapter and in 1985 there was a bomb in that office that killed him unfortunately. And his murder was never solved although at the time the FBI did suspect the Jewish defense league and there was actually a lot of conversation about the rise of terrorism in the US against Arab Americans coming emanating from the JDL. Unfortunately what has happened in the in these intervening years since then is that terrorism has become more and more aligned with Islam and and we forget that terrorists can be from any group or any ethnicity or any religion. But really what this long history shows us that how we think about terrorism and Arabs and Muslims has been a problem much longer than 9-11. And where do you see I mean your book is called seasons of fury and you trace the kind of changing Islamophobia both through the institutions and practices and bigotry of people but also different administrations.

55:53Where are we today 25 years later? I mean this is also a time of the rise of so many Muslim politicians outspoken Muslim politicians including our own mayor, Mayor Mamdani who is once again facing Islamophobic attacks. I would say we're probably at a really worse place than we have ever been because it is so accepted and policymakers are peddling anti-Muslim rhetoric but just even take the example of Giuliani. It's funny to me that he apologized to the letham dani because years later he's essentially doing the same thing over again towards mayor Mamdani by saying Muslims cannot be victims of 9-11. Right Muslims can only be the perpetrators and this is a narrative that has been repeated over and over again and certainly around election season. And to be clear this is about Giuliani and former governor Pataki saying that Mamdani the mayor of New York should not be allowed at the ceremonies for the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.

56:56Exactly correct. Yes and one wonder is how much longer do Muslims have to apologize for 9-11? And for how does you look back on these 25 years and your organization drum beats is one of the first to endorse so around Mamdani. How do you see the community having changed from that time of fear and putting their heads down to now having a political voice? I think there's divergent consequences. On one hand we are seeing a resurgence of Islamophobia at levels that is unprecedented and at the same time it's not as effective as it used to be. And I think part of what we see the emergence of mayor Mamdani and Muslim politicians. A lot of it is because of a lot of the organizing efforts that built the foundations in the aftermath of 9-11 that built the communities. And also just the humiliation and the resentment that the communities had for being targeted for so long that part of the ways of being able to resist back is like, alright we've been through it enough.

57:58We're going to organize ourselves and we're going to support people that are going to be much more aligned with the experiences and the perspectives of our communities. And so part of what we're seeing in the rise of more Muslim politicians and you know I unsubscribe to identity politics in terms of just identities enough. But there is a confidence around like, I'm not going to hide it anymore. And I think that deeply resonates with our communities who felt for two decades that they had to hide it. And I think now we're sort of seeing the response to that. We want to thank you both for being with us. Thank you to Rosina Ali, author of Seasons of Fury for families and the rise of Islamophobia in America. And Fahat Ahmed, executive director of drum, desis rising up and moving. That does it for our show. On September 17th I'll be going home to Beishur or New York and Long Island for the screening of Steel the Story. Please check our website at www.muxenow.org and then September 22nd at the IFC.

58:59I'm Amy Goodman with Anjulek Khmatt.