Overview

Racial and religious profiling is ineffective and wrong, yet federal and local government agencies routinely target, surveill, and track American Muslims under the guise of a program called CVE or “countering violent extremism.”

This profiling is no different than police targeting African Americans while driving or Latinos at the border yet CVE, which was started under the Obama administration, has a softer image. The money is given to so-called “community” groups to purportedly identify individuals who are “at risk” of radicalization and violence. While this may sound innocuous enough, the reality is that the “at risk” factors these programs use have been consistently debunked as junk science by every single serious study evaluating whether they really do “predict” radicalization.

Since no one knows exactly how to identify someone as “at risk” of extremism, CVE proponents have made up some some very troubling metrics of their own. Do you attend religious services? Do you play video games? If you said yes to either, you might be “at risk” of violent extremism according to these programs.

This targeting of American Muslims is deeply troubling. Learn more about Muslim Advocates’ work to expose and stop CVE discrimination programs.