The New York Times says that Arab-Americans feel victimized and persecuted by US law enforcement.

Arab-Americans reported an increasing sense of victimization, suspicion of government and law enforcement, and concerns about protecting their civil liberties, according to the study, which was paid for by the National Institute of Justice, a research agency of the Justice Department.

A fear of surveillance ranked high among their concerns. During one focus group, a woman told the story of an encyclopedia salesman who came to her door and asked to use the bathroom. She worried that he might have been an agent trying to plant a listening device in her home. …

A series of post-9/11 policies have sown the deepest fear among Arab-Americans, including unease about the USA Patriot Act, voluntary interviews of thousands of Arab-Americans by federal agents, and an initiative known as Special Registration, in which more than 80,000 immigrant men were fingerprinted, photographed and questioned by authorities.

These new measures threatened to harm decades of work by police departments to build trust in their communities, especially among immigrants, the study concluded.

It might be easier to be sympathetic to their complaints if major Arab-American advocacy groups didn’t do things like this: American-Arab group holds talks with Assad.

A delegation of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee held talks Sunday with Syrian President Bashar Assad on the situation in Iraq and other matters of regional concern, Syria’s official news agency SANA reported.

The talks covered “Syria’s support for the political process to restore stability” in Iraq, the stalled Mideast peace process, combating terrorism and political and economic reform in Syria, the agency said.

Syria has long been listed by the US as a supporter of terrorism. Last week, the State Department included it on a list of 12 countries that risk sanctions for not doing enough to stop human trafficking.