Islamic leaders boycott NY Mayor event

NEW YORK: A group of Muslim leaders on Friday boycotted an annual event organized by the Interreligious New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to protest against alleged police spying on members of their community.Some 350 members of different religions, including including some Muslims, gathered in an interfaith breakfast hosted Bloomberg in a room in the New York Public Library.However a group of about 15 Muslims who were invited to the event have refused to go, and instead denounced what they said was police spy on their community since September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "During periods when the rights of a community s are flagrantly violated its leaders can not in good conscience appear at a public meeting with the government official who is ultimately responsible and smile for the cameras , read a letter the group sent to the group mayor.The denounced the "very disturbing revelations" in the media reports detailing how the city police were "tracking and profiling almost every layer of NYC Muslim public life, often with any suspicion of wrongdoing. "monitored data collected and the municipal police" on New
Yorkers about 250 mosques, schools and businesses across the city, simply because of their religion and not because they had suspicious behavior, "the letter read, citing media reports.Letter signatories included the Imam al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid with the Islamic Council of New York leadership, Jamil Ahmed with the Muslim American Society, and Aisha al-Adawiya with the group of women in Islam.