Orange County Muslims are nervously seething over a report that the FBI is monitoring their activities around Irvine: Muslims leery of FBI activity.

Marya Bangee doesn’t know what to believe. The UC Irvine sophomore thinks the fact that she’s Muslim is the reason she’s been singled out for searches at airports and been scrutinized by police at anti-war demonstrations.

She’s also distrustful of the FBI, uncertain whether the agency is telling the complete story of whether its employees are monitoring Orange County’s Muslim community. Her doubts loom a week after Muslim leaders and an FBI senior agent shook hands and patted each other on the back, concluding a meeting that addressed conflicting reports as to whether the community is being watched.

Los Angeles FBI Assistant Director Stephen Tidwell adamantly denied that his agents were monitoring Orange County’s Muslim community. “The Muslim community is not of concern to us,” he told more than 200 people at the Islamic Center of Irvine.

Bangee called the meeting a “good start to a relationship. But I do not think we accomplished anything as yet,” she said.

The issue arose May 24, when Pat Rose, head of FBI’s Orange County al-Qaida squad, said during a meeting of the Pacific Club that “there are a lot of individuals of interest.” Asked whether citizens should be worried about activist Muslim students at UCI, she said it was “another tough question to answer.”

The FBI is planning to make the Islamic community feel better by having agents undergo training at a Los Angeles mosque.

The FBI on Friday released a statement announcing that its agents plan to undergo training at a Los Angeles mosque to learn more about Muslim religion and culture. “The FBI is committed to ensuring that our personnel become more culturally fluent so that our investigations are more effective and respectful,” the statement said.

Maybe while they’re at the mosque, they could look into this:

lgf: Saudi Hate Ideology Fills US Mosques
lgf: Saudi Hatred Fills US Mosques
lgf: DMN: Anti-US Materials Found at Mosques
lgf: DMN: Stop Saudi Jihad Proselytizing
The Freedom House report on Saudi hate literature in US mosques

UPDATE at 6/18/06 9:24:47 am:

Here’s a video of the appalling hate speech at a recent event sponsored by the UC Irvine Muslim Student Union: lgf: Muslim Hate Speech at UC Irvine.