Despite Claims to Contrary, NYPD Used Anti-Muslim Training Video

The New York Police Department is in hot water for showing some 1,400 of its officers a film during their training that depicts American Muslims as covert extremists, a controversial decision and one that directly contradicts previous statements by NYPD officials that greatly understated their use of the feature-length film.

The New York Times got the scoop on the latest development, thanks in large part to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School. The full story is worth a read, but here are the highlights and context.

The film, "The Third Jihad," was produced by the conservative Clarion Fund, and describes the majority of Muslims in the U.S. as involved in a "strategy to infiltrate and dominate America." The central thesis of the film is that Muslims are deceptive about their true intentions, which the filmmakers believe to be extremist in origin. It promotes the idea that Islam is authentically radical. Both ideas are popular among the far-right anti-Sharia movement in the U.S., and apparently carry some weight among national and local law enforcement and security officials as well.

Here's how the Times describes it:

Ominous music plays as images appear on the screen: Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, executed children lie covered by sheets and a doctored photograph shows an Islamic flag flying over the White House.

“This is the true agenda of much of Islam in America,” a narrator intones. “A strategy to infiltrate and dominate America. ... This is the war you don’t know about.”

The film includes excerpts from an interview with Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who tried to distance himself from the film earlier this week. Police officials had originally denied that it had been used in training but, according to internal memos, the NYPD obtained the film for training purposes through a mid-level Department of Homeland Security employee or contractor, and played it "on a continuous loop" for months.

The NYPD's relationship to the city's Muslim population has been a subject of discussion for much of the year. About this time last year, Tom Robbins at the Village Voice first broke the news that the film had been used in NYPD training, and this past August the Associated Press published an extensive investigation into the covert tactics the NYPD -- with the help of the CIA -- has employed to monitor Muslim communities in New York City. Needless to say, the relationship between the police and local Muslims has been strained, to say the least.

Also of note, explained in more detail in the Times's piece on the video, is the funding for Clarion. Sheldon Adelson, best known in this news cycle as a major supporter of a pro-Newt Gingrich Super PAC, helped support a previous film by the organization on a similar subject.

If you want to watch the whole film, Capital New York has a link to it here.