Anti-Muslim Surveillance: Canadian Muslims’ Experiences with CSIS

Abstract

The targeting of Muslim communities through “the War on Terror” has given rise to a variety of schemes and tactics informed by Islamophobia and racializing narratives. Yet, there are few studies examining the specific intelligence practices deployed by governments as they engage in forms of racialized surveillance. This study analyses 95 in-depth interviews with Muslim community leaders in five Canadian cities to map the material structural practices employed by the Canadian Security Intelligence Services (CSIS) in its racialized surveillance of Muslim communities. This study documents how CSIS engages in the mass surveillance of Muslim communities, transforms Mosques into spaces of surveillance, creates a community of informants, and targets political activism. Moreover, we found that CSIS deploys illegal practices such as threatening citizenship and refugee status, intimidating people in their homes during the night and denying legal representation during interrogations. The article also explores how these state-led anti-Muslim surveillance tactics produce internal forms of community surveillance where individuals begin to self-regulate their own behavior. The level of CSIS surveillance of Muslim communities raises questions about the extent to which CSIS is overstepping its powers and engaging in illegal practices.

Keywords

surveillance race racism “War on Terror”Muslims “radicalization”racialized surveillance racializing surveillance and Canadian Muslims CSIS

Introduction

The “War on Terror” has legitimated a rapid intensification of surveillance that has become ubiquitous and has affected everyone; however, the targeting of those identified as Muslim has given rise to specific strategies and schemes informed by Islamophobia and racializing narratives. These racial narratives regarding the “radicalized extremist” Muslim have legitimated and rationalized the sweeping up and monitoring of entire Muslim communities by Intelligence Services in Western countries. Studies on the “War on Terror” have documented the wide-ranging effects of counter-terrorism policies, yet, we continue to have limited understanding of the tactics employed by Western intelligence services and their impacts (Lyon 2003, 2007; Melgaço and Monaghan 2018; Monahan and Wood 2018). Indeed, we were hard-pressed to find any in-depth academic research on Canadian Muslim communities’ direct experiences with Canadian Security Intelligence Services (CSIS), making our study the first of its kind.

To fill this gap, this study maps the material structural practices adopted by CSIS in its domestic surveillance of Muslim communities. CSIS is the Canadian counterpart to the United Kingdom’s Security Service (M15) and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Although Canada has not experienced an overt terrorist attack, CSIS has engaged in widespread surveillance of Canadian Muslim communities. Drawing on 95 in-depth interviews with Muslim community leaders in five Canadian cities, we explore how the racial logics embedded in the “War on Terror” shape CSIS’s tactical operations. Our research explores how particular racial narratives that associate “radicalization” and “extremism” with Islam inform CSIS’s surveillance strategies. These narratives give rise to specific tactical on-the-ground strategies that we define as anti-Muslim surveillance tactics. The research also gives voice to the experiences of Canadian Muslims who have been traumatized by the widespread infiltration and monitoring of their communities by CSIS.

In developing our analysis, we draw on the critical race literature and, in particular, Simone Browne’s (2015) concept of racializing surveillance and Saher Selod’s (2018) concept of racialized surveillance to capture how the surveillance directed at Muslim communities is intrinsically intertwined with historical and contemporary legacies of race relations that underpin the “War on Terror.” We draw on this work to study the dominance of surveillance techniques that categorize entire Muslim communities as the enemy within. By examining lived experiences, we document how racialized surveillance gives rise to specific anti-Muslim surveillance tactics. In doing so, we highlight the distinct ways that the monitoring of Muslim communities is informed by the ideological and structural dimensions of the “War on Terror.”

This article begins with a detailed literature review covering the critical race scholarship on racialized surveillance, racial projects, and the “War on Terror.” Next, we outline the research methodology employed for this study. The findings section documents the anti-Muslim surveillance tactics employed by CSIS and their effects on Muslim communities. Finally, in conclusion, we discuss the implications of our research and directions for future research.

Literature Review

In recent years, academics have made essential contributions to the literature on the relationship between racialization and surveillance. The interdisciplinary field of critical surveillance studies has documented how the “War on Terror” has created a dragnet of surveillance that disproportionately targets entire Muslim communities. This broad literature, drawn from the disciplines of criminology, citizenship studies, law, political science, and sociology, has documented the intensification of counter-terrorism legislation. It documents the formation of a new architecture of intrusive surveillance that allows the arbitrary and excessive use of military and police powers to undermine the rule of law and human rights in the name of security (Ackerman 2006; Dubber 2013; Gandy 1993; Lyon 2003, 2007; Monahan and Wood 2018; Roach 2011). The “War on Terror” rhetoric has been shown to justify the indiscriminate profiling, policing, and targeting of entire Muslim communities (Ashworth and Zedner 2014; Macklin 2007). As a result, law-abiding Muslim citizens are often defined and treated as “threats to the nation,” “enemy combatants,” and “at risk of radicalization” (Monaghan 2014).

Critical race scholars have called this literature to account for insufficiently situating surveillance studies within histories of race and racism (Browne 2015; Cainkar and Selod 2018; Kundnani and Kumar 2015; Razack 2008; Selod 2018; Thobani 2007; Zine 2012). Race scholars have underscored the extent to which racism has historically invoked surveillance methods and how theories of racial inferiority are “fused” with surveillance projects. Race, as a sociopolitical construct, is historically produced and reproduced through systems of surveillance. The very act of collecting information about particular groups deemed threats by the state engenders racialization (Kundnani and Kumar 2015). In Dark Matters, Browne (2015) advances the concept “racializing surveillance” and points to the “‘absented presence’ of blackness” in surveillance projects. She speaks to how surveillance produces technologies, narratives, practices, and moments that “reify boundaries, borders, and bodies along racial lines” (Browne 2015:16). Meanwhile, Selod (2018:24) has coined the term “racialized surveillance,” which she refers to as “the monitoring of select bodies by relying on racial cues.” She points to how racial meanings have been associated with religious identity to allow for new forms of racialized surveillance. While Browne’s (2015) term broadly encompasses different forms of racialized surveillance that arise from multiple racial projects, Selod (2018) specifically provides an important conceptual analysis for understanding the intersection between racialization and surveillance in the context of the “War on Terror.” We draw on these concepts but, at the same time, we argue for the need to specifically name and identify the distinct tactical measures that state security agencies deploy to target Muslim communities. By documenting anti-Muslim surveillance tactics adopted by CSIS, we illustrate how racialized surveillance is materialized on the ground.

Racialized surveillance “may be ubiquitous, but it acquires different forms, functions and meanings across social settings” (Monahan and Wood 2018:xx). As Nicole Nguyen (2019) points out, it is shaped by multiple political contexts and racial legacies. CSIS adopts a range of tactical strategies in its surveillance of perceived threats to the nation, for example, it commonly uses interrogation methods to monitor “suspect” communities. However, we illustrate how the specific tactics deployed to interrogate Muslim communities are informed by, and reify, the racial project of the “War on Terror.” As a result, the art of collecting information from Muslim communities differs from the racialized intelligence gathering of other communities.

Racial projects link cultural representation with social structure. They “connect what race means in a particular discursive or ideological practice and the ways in which both social structures and everyday experiences are racially organized, based upon that meaning.” (Omi and Winant 2015). As a result, racial projects include ideological dimensions, such as racial narratives and representations, but they also encompass structural relations of power that become institutionalized in laws, policies, and concrete macro- and micro-level practices (Cainkar 2018; Omi and Winant 2015; Selod 2015).

The policing of Black bodies, the colonization of Indigenous peoples, and the “War on Terror” are racial projects that converge to produce racial formation, racial hierarchies, and racialized surveillance, as well as joint struggles for freedom (Kundnani and Kumar 2015; Nguyen 2019; Omi and Winant 2015). Racial projects are relational and intertwined as practices developed to oppress one racialized group “can be revived and recycled to marginalize other groups” (Molina 2014:7). For example, Arun Kundnani and Deepa Kumar (2015) note how racialized surveillance and dispossession of Indigenous populations enabled the consolidation of the U.S. empire, ultimately allowing for the subjugation of a number of racialized communities. The “War on Terror” has also reinforced the killing of unarmed Black people and immigrants’ ongoing detention and deportation, thus cementing racial neoliberalism and white supremacy (Nguyen 2019).

Yet, although these racial projects converge and accumulate, they are not monolithic but are informed by distinct structural and ideological dimensions (Omi and Winant 2015:124). As Michelle D. Byng (2017) argues, distinct racial projects are uniquely grounded in particular histories of slavery, colonialism, and tropes surrounding the foreigner and cultural outsider, thereby producing different race knowledges (Byng 2017). While both black and brown Americans are subordinate to White race identity, the race knowledge of each identity is contextually different. The social meaning of Black race identity is grounded in the history of slavery, legal segregation, and defamation, while the social meaning of Brown identity is grounded in the history of colonialism (Byng 2017). Similarly, Nguyen (2019) posits that while distinct racial technologies connect racial hierarchies and struggles for freedom, they produce differential forms of state-sanctioned violence. For example, the history of slavery produces the black body itself as a crucial site for anti-blackness (paperson 2017: 12). On the contrary, settler technologies operate through the erasure of Indigenous people from the land (paperson 2017: 12).

The “War on Terror,” as a racial project, on the pre-existing and long-standing history of racism toward Muslims to enable the rapid enforcement of extreme surveillance practices that produce the exclusionary treatment of Muslim people (Razack 2008; Thobani 2007). It is rooted in Orientalism’s specific knowledge about Muslims, labeling them religious fanatics, hyper-traditional, anti-rational, anti-democratic, patriarchal, barbaric, and prone to violence (Said 1997). Although, as Jasbir Puar (2007) points out, the demonization of Islam “goes far beyond forms of neo-Orientalizing or racialization of religious affiliation” (p. 160). In the “War on Terror,” these racist discourses have been reinvented and amplified through Islamophobia to position Muslims as an existential threat to Western civilizations (Nagra 2017; Razack 2008). As a result, even though Muslim communities are diverse, they are racialized as one group that is considered degenerate, fanatic, and incorrigible (Garner and Selod 2015; Razack 2008; Zine 2012). According to Puar (2007), the blending of Muslim with terrorism manufactures a “Muslim race” that reifies racial boundaries and, in so doing, complements and strengthens a normative whiteness (Monahan and Wood 2018) that requires protection from the Muslim other.

Islamophobia provides a tool kit of racist knowledge where Western governments draw upon tropes and assumptions about Muslims to frame laws, policies, and practices as they engage in the “War on Terror” (Sheehi 2011). For example, by depicting Muslims as engaging in a kind of terrorism that is spectacular and lethal (Sharma and Nijjar 2018), Islamophobia removes Muslims from the moral realm of the human community and provides the ideological justification for disqualifying them from civil liberties (Jackson 2005; Sheehi 2011). As Sherene Razack (2008) explains, Muslims are envisioned as too “barbaric” to be governed through fair democratic procedures; as a result, they lack the right to have rights.

Ultimately, then Islamophobia functions as a form of racism directed at Muslims through a symbiotic relationship with the official ideological thinking and material practices of the “War on Terror” (Kundnani 2015). As a racial project, the “War on Terror” relies on Islamophobia to “act concurrently on two levels; the level of thought, speech and perception; then the material level of policies, violence and action” (Sheehi 2011:32). As Erik Love (2017:14) notes, through Islamophobia, racial meanings about Muslims become encoded into discriminatory programs and policies in such a way that they “enable the seemingly non-racial justification of these so-called counter-terrorism policies.” The media is a crucial site where racist knowledge about Muslims is constructed, reproduced, and disseminated. For example, Hajar Yazdiha (2020) finds that the most prominent frames of post-9/11 media stories describe Muslims as a social problem with a predisposition to “radicalization,” militancy, and terrorism.

Indeed, Islamophobia helps carry out the economic and social goals of the “War on Terror” (Sheehi 2011). By disseminating anti-Muslim and anti-Arab stereotypes, Islamophobia naturalizes and justifies U.S. hegemony (Sheehi 2011:32). It operates to obscure the economic and geopolitical motivations behind the “War on Terror” by bolstering the belief that the root cause of terrorism is Islamic culture (Husain 2021; Jackson 2005; Kumar 2012; Kundnani 2016; Stampnitzky 2013). In other words, it functions to disavow the political meanings attached to terrorist events that are rooted in empire, racism, and resistance and explains them as products of a “radicalized Muslimness” (Husain 2021; Kundnani 2016). It links cultural representations with structural practices in such a way that the invasion of countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, the extension of state power through counter-terrorism laws, and the cementing of state security agencies in the political arena are legitimized with little opposition. In other words, it paves the way for the “War on Terror” to create what Junaid Rana (2016) calls “the terror-industrial complex,” specifically, the linking of domestic and global security agencies with surveillance mechanisms, police forces, militaries, and contractors. Simply put, the “War on Terror” could not sustain itself without the racialized dehumanization of Islam and Muslims more broadly (Kundnani 2015).

The “War on Terror” has given rise to a number of discriminatory and coercive state practices such as war, rendition, indefinite detention, the use of secret evidence, entrapment, discriminatory border controls, and a wide range of other domestic controls (Kundnani 2015; Nagra and Maurutto 2016, 2020; Romero and Zarrugh 2018; Sheehi 2011; Walby and Hier 2009). In this article, we focus specifically on CSIS surveillance of Muslim communities to illustrate how the ideological underpinnings of the “War on Terror” materialize into state practices. By mapping out CSIS’s material structural practices, as experienced by Muslim communities, we show how anti-Muslim surveillance tactics operate through the ideological and structural dimensions of the “War on Terror.” In addition, we reveal the interconnected relationship between the “War on Terror,” Islamophobia, and racialized surveillance. We illustrate how Islamophobia produces a unique form of racialized surveillance that serves the racial project of the “War on Terror.”

Our findings reveal how the overlaying and blending of Muslim with terrorism allows for a form of racialized surveillance that casts a broad categorical suspicion on entire Muslim communities. We document how state security agencies employ very specific anti-Muslim surveillance tactics to carry out this racialized surveillance. More particularly, we identify how in the Canadian case, CSIS engages in the mass surveillance of Muslim communities, transforms Mosques into spaces of surveillance, creates a community of informants and undermines political activism. Moreover, we found that CSIS deploys illegal practices such as threatening citizenship and refugee status, intimidating people in their homes during the night and denying legal representation during interrogations. Finally, we also document how these state-led anti-Muslim surveillance tactics produces internal forms of community surveillance where individuals begin to self-regulate their own behavior. These self-regulatory practices are a response to pressures imposed by external law enforcement and reflect the struggles constitutive of the racial project of the “War on Terror.” Ultimately, our article reveals how the material structural practices employed by CSIS work to both enact and strengthen the “War on Terror.”

Research Methodology

The methodology consists of 95 interviews conducted in 2014–2015 with Muslim community leaders across five major cities in Canada: Toronto (26 interviews), Ottawa (20 interviews), Montreal (15 interviews), Calgary (18 interviews), and Vancouver (16 interviews). These cities were selected because of their large Muslim populations (Statistics Canada 2017). Muslim community leaders were identified as those who could speak about their communities’ experiences with CSIS. They included those with official and prominent roles, such as Imams and executive members of Muslim organizations and those active in their communities in capacities such as members of women’s and youth organizations, academics, lawyers, and political activists.

The sample was 70 percent male and 30 percent female. The ages ranged from 23 to 74, with an average age of 45. The goal was a sample equally representative of both genders, but men more often hold leadership positions in Muslim organizations. Ninety-one percent were Canadian citizens, and the remainder were permanent residents. Interviewees represented the diversity of Canadian Muslim communities: Indian, Pakistani, Turkish, Nigerian, Somalian, Algerian, Tunisian, Egyptian, Syrian, Bosnian, Lebanese, Iranian, Saudi Arabian, Palestinian, Libyan, Bangladeshi, Fijian, and Sri Lankan.

Interviewees were recruited through purposive sampling (intentional selection of interviewees based on their knowledge of the phenomenon studied) and snowball sampling (research participants were asked to identify other potential participants). We approached many Muslim community leaders by directly emailing and phoning Muslim organizations and Mosques. Academics, political activists, and lawyers readily agreed to participate in the study. However, some of those from Mosques and certain Muslim organizations were more reluctant to participate and often requested more information about the study. Their reluctance was understandable as criticism of the state in their communities could result in state surveillance. In these situations, we often engaged in detailed conversations about the project, providing them with additional information regarding the study’s intent, and we explained our ethical commitment to anonymity. As a result, most community leaders consented to participate in the study. However, a few did refuse to participate, citing the current anti-Muslim climate as a reason for not feeling comfortable speaking about state counter-terrorism policies. In this ethical commitment to anonymity, we only identify interviewees by the city in which they reside and their occupation, such as Imam or lawyer. We do not reveal their names, age, or ethnic background to protect their identities.

Interviews lasted approximately one hour; they were audio-recorded, transcribed, coded thematically, and analyzed using the NVivo qualitative software program. Interviews followed a semi-structured format. Although a general outline of questions was used to conduct the interviews, interviewees were encouraged to elaborate where they saw fit and discuss any topic they felt was important. Because we recruited community leaders, interviews generally focused on what they knew about CSIS surveillance, including their own experiences and those of community members. Interviews also focused on community leaders’ concerns regarding CSIS and how they and their communities were responding to the surveillance directed at them. Interviews were coded using literal coding by focusing on the themes and patterns that emerged across our interviews, as well as focused coding that drew on comparisons between our interviews and past literature (Charmaz 2006). The themes and the quotes selected in this article reflect commonalities in interviewees’ experiences.

We use interviewees’ recollections as “evidence” of actual practices in society. The lived experiences of racial minorities are often seen as “perceptions” instead of “real evidence.” Frances Henry and Carol Tator (2006) argue that academics reproduce racial discrimination by negating and dismissing the lived experience and reports of discrimination as merely “subjective” evidence. Such experiences, they say, represent “a body of systematic evidence of individual and systematic racism directed against people of colour” (Henry and Tator 2006:122). This aligns with Dorothy Smith (1987: 8–9), who argues that it is essential to start with the actualities of lived experiences when studying a group of people. Building on these insights, we take the accounts of Muslim communities as evidence of broader social forces, and we utilize their experiences to map out the anti-Muslim surveillance tactics CSIS employs. As discussed in the introduction, there is a vacuum of research exploring the tactics used by intelligence agencies. The very secrecy of intelligence work makes it difficult for researchers to study. The experiences of Muslim communities, thus, provide a valuable entry to understanding how CSIS carries out racialized surveillance.

CSIS and the Racialized Targeting of Muslim Communities

Mass surveillance of Muslim communities

A consistent theme that emerged across the interviews was the sustained and insidious structural mass surveillance of Muslim communities. A striking 87 percent of interviewees said CSIS specifically targets Muslim communities, and 37 percent mentioned a negative interaction with CSIS officials. In addition, 70 percent personally knew a Muslim with a similar experience. One interviewee described the disproportionate targeting of Muslim communities as “the securitization of the Muslim people” (Montreal 9). The mass surveillance described by interviewees underscores how CSIS imagines Muslim communities as hotbeds of extremism that must be contained and from which the larger society requires protection. Our interviewees reported a categorical suspicion where every Muslim is a suspect and marked as a potential security threat. One interviewee remarked that, “Well, to begin with, they (CSIS) are not coming to see you because (they think) there are grounds to suspect you. They suspect you from the very beginning because you are a Muslim” (Montreal 7). Overall, we found that CSIS engages in a structural practice of mass surveillance that touches every corner of Muslim’s lives, ranging from religious participation and community involvement to political activism and social media. These experiences are described in more detail in the following sections. One interviewee mentioned,

Many Muslims are randomly questioned or have CSIS officers visit them for no real reason. This creates a sense of more panic, stress, and fear within the Muslim community. They feel that the government targets them because people assume that all Muslims are terrorists. Such an accusation is so severe that it paints a person’s reputation for the rest of their life, even if it is later lifted or dropped. (Toronto 24)

Intelligence services were not merely targeting a small number of potential threats, but rather the racial project of the “War on Terror” legitimated the intrusive monitoring of entire communities.

Muslim youth, in particular, were described as being heavily targeted and interrogated by CSIS. CSIS perceived religious devotion as a flag that marks youth as “at-risk” of being indoctrinated with “radical extremism.” This corresponds with research that documents how by 2010, CSIS began to adopt a “radicalization” framework that locates Islam as the root cause of terrorism (Monaghan 2014). This directed state security agencies to root out those in the early stages of “radicalization,” before they engage in terrorist activity (Kundnani 2015). The model incorporates a range of predictors, or presumptions, about the characteristics placing individuals at risk of “radicalization” and extremism with Muslim youth especially being seen as vulnerable (Kundnani 2015). Functioning as a security trap (Monaghan 2014), the radicalization framework has extended the “War on Terror” and expanded its’ security agenda, all while justifying the continuous allocation of resources to national security regimes. Western nations have moved beyond fighting external enemies to direct a wide dragnet of counter-terrorism practices to root out the “enemy” within (Walby and Hier 2009).

CSIS and Public Safety Canada define “radicalization” as a process where youth move progressively through stages from “moderate, mainstream beliefs towards extremist views” (Public Safety Canada 2013). Thus, those who appeared more devout, specifically, youth that frequently attended Muslim events, programs, Mosques, and prayer spaces, are perceived as potentially more susceptible to “Islamic extremism.” One interviewee recounted how CSIS regularly questions Muslim youth:

All the youth that were in the (Muslim) program, every single one of them, at the end of the summer session they are interviewed by CSIS. They get a phone call, “Hey, we want to come and meet with you.” And CSIS has meetings with them. (Calgary 5)

The ideological assumption that Muslim communities could be readily “radicalized” provided the logic and justification for the overt widespread targeting of Muslim youth. This ideological conflation of Islam with terrorism reifies racial boundaries that define Muslim identity as suspect and as a potentially lethal threat necessitating mass surveillance.

A common CSIS practice was to interrogate Muslim youth at school, away from the protection of their families. One interviewee recounted, “I know somebody that was targeted; they (CSIS) came to his high school, and they asked him, ‘Who goes to your Friday prayers?’ They bullied him and asked him to write a list” (Calgary 13). University students described an intensive level of monitoring at university prayer spaces; some reported finding recording devices at campus Muslim prayer spaces. When interrogated by CSIS, students were frequently asked whether anyone appeared to be praying excessively. These experiences described by our interviewees reveal how the ideological assumptions embedded in the “War on Terror” that associate Islam with extremism give rise to excessive mass surveillance where Muslim youth lose their innocence and are categorically treated as a potential threat to the nation. Racialized surveillance, thus, cements the label of “threat” and “danger” onto the bodies of Muslim youth. This association of Muslim youth with extremism produces racial meanings and policies infused with Islamophobia but legitimated as necessary neutral counter-terrorism policies. By singling out and identifying Muslim youth as potential “radicalized” subjects that require extensive surveillance, anti-Muslim surveillance tactics justify the ongoing expansion of the “War on Terror.”

Transforming the Mosque into spaces of surveillance

One of the distinguishing features of how Muslim communities experience racialized surveillance is the blunt targeting of mosques. Within the logic of Islamophobia, Islamic religious spaces are coded as sites of “radicalization” and incubators of extremism that require intensive policing and infiltration. Interviewees described a level of CSIS intrusion that transformed the mosque from a safe religious space to a site of mass surveillance. For our interviewees, mosques are not only places of religious worship and community gatherings; they are policed spaces. As one interviewee reported,

We can clearly see them (CSIS) outside of the mosque. They are monitoring who’s going in and out. (At one point) CSIS was here every second day waiting to see who was coming in and out, and then they would speak to people outside of the mosque, so that was scaring people away. (Calgary 7)

Those who attended mosques recognized that CSIS recorded their names and those of their children and family members. They also reported that CSIS often infiltrated mosques. One interviewee noted,

There are CSIS agents sitting in mosques and some non-Muslim converts pretending to be Muslim. They are there, and we know who they are. (Vancouver 11)

Interviewees expressed how being associated with any mosque becomes a risk. They also explained that when CSIS is interested in someone, they locate the specific mosque that a person frequents and, subsequently, attempt to question the entire congregation that attends the same mosque. The visible and persistent deployment of CSIS operatives at mosques manifests how Islamophobia takes on concrete institutional forms and strategies. Consequently, mosques are experienced as distorted spatial spaces. This finding reinforces Browne’s (2015) claim that racializing surveillance is a technology with the power to define who is in or out of place, but also extends this by documenting how it can also produce a distortion of social place. In other words, because of anti-Muslim surveillance tactics, the meaning of mosques has changed for Canadian Muslim communities. Rather than safe religious spaces, they are policed religious places, where religious devotion is intertwined with surveillance.

Imams, as leaders of mosques, faced the brunt of CSIS surveillance. CSIS targeted Imams to root out those perceived as “radicalizing” their youth but, also, to force them to provide intelligence on their congregations. One interviewee described how dealing with CSIS agents has become a regular duty of Imams:

CSIS agents are always calling Imams. But very rarely will you see CSIS agents calling church ministers or Jewish Rabbis. I spoke to one Jewish Rabbi, and he has received one call from the CSIS agents in the last ten years. And, whereas I, as an Imam, have received excessive calls from CSIS agents in just one year. (Toronto 22)

Unlike leaders of other religions, Imams have to engage with CSIS regularly. They feared that if they expressed any criticism of national policies, however minor, CSIS could identify them as “extremist.” Some Imams recounted how security agents frequently asked questions about the contents of Friday sermons. One explained how “They’re targeting mosques and Imams because they think that they might be passing a message or indoctrinating young people” (Montreal 3). The incessant questioning was so severe that one Imam’s father pleaded with his son to “leave his position” to avoid further dealings with CSIS. Imams were also pressured to inform on their communities, specifically about who attended their mosque, who recently joined, and who expressed “extreme” interpretations of Islam. Imams claimed that they often felt compelled to speak with CSIS as they feared non-compliance would arise suspicions. Ultimately, by coding mosques and Imams as abnormal entities that require constant monitoring, anti-Muslim surveillance tactics serve the racial project of the “War on Terror.” By embedding Muslim subjects within the broad spectrum of “extremism,” this form of racialized surveillance allows for the imperial nature of the “War on Terror” to remain uncontested.

Creating a community of informants

Part of CSIS’s tactical strategy was to turn communities into informants and accomplices of racialized surveillance. This was pursued in two significant ways, first, by identifying vulnerable Muslim citizens who could be turned into informants and, second, through the incessant questioning of Muslim community members. Interviewees recounted how CSIS uses intimidating and coercive techniques to recruit ordinary citizens as surveillance operatives. As one explained,

Many individuals have been approached by CSIS to become informants and are threatened when they say they do not want that role. They are told we will keep on calling you, or do not be surprised if we show up here or if we show up there like your workplace. . . or do not be surprised if you get pulled over a lot by cops. (Toronto 26)

Several interviewees recounted how CSIS regularly threatens to show up at an individual’s workplace if one refuses to act as an informant or declines a CSIS interview.

The more insidious strategy adopted by CSIS was the broad questioning of Muslim community members about themselves and everyone in their social network. As one interviewee described it, “They are not arresting everybody, but the fact that they are always talking to everybody asking questions about everybody else like, ‘Who is that guy? What is he doing?’” (Calgary 17). Interviewees described lengthy, detailed interrogations where CSIS asks “about everyone you know.” A lawyer said,

Clients whom I have advised who are considered to be persons of interest (by CSIS) in the Ottawa community, it is not because they have done anything of concern, it is because they know someone of concern, for example, through the Mosque, or this person went over to your house, or you were seen with them. (Ottawa 17)

This form of interrogation was not a one-time questioning; instead, interviewees described how CSIS repeatedly returned to interview them. The screening often involved a lengthy interrogation where questions were not directly focused on suspicious activity but rather about family members, friends, and acquaintances, and their interactions at the mosque. In Muslim communities, surveillance becomes intertwined with human relationships.

According to our interviewees, the more involved an individual is with the Muslim community, the more likely one is to attract attention. One community leader explained how:

Any member that steps into a leadership position, without exception, has had a meeting with somebody from CSIS. For me, it happened after the London bombings, and, even if there has not been an event that would trigger a response, every time somebody new comes into a leadership position, inevitably, there is a meeting. (Vancouver 7)

Another interviewee explained how, “When every leader of an Islam centre or Islamic school, or (Muslim) institution is interviewed by CSIS, of course, you will think, ‘These guys are everywhere, I better behave’. That’s not healthy for any society” (Calgary 17). Community leaders are seen as entry points to gather intelligence about a vast number of Muslim members. The radicalization model sees partnerships between Muslim community leaders and government as paramount to curbing “radicalization.” It assumes Muslim leaders can identify “extremists” and prevent radical ideas from spreading (Kundnani 2015; Nguyen 2019).

However, what CSIS views as standard protocol for information gathering, our interviewees experienced as a mechanism of intimidation and manipulation that created a culture of suspicion. Most were incensed about having to participate in surveillance practices that harmed their communities, viewing this as another way the state mobilizes the “War on Terror.” This finding differs from other studies that document how Muslim communities actively cooperate, and agree to meet with law enforcement, in part, to demonstrate their allegiance to the nation-state (Kundnani 2015). Indeed, the critical race literature acknowledges that both dominant and subordinate groups carry out racial projects (Omi and Winant 2015). Our research, however, revealed that Muslim communities were most often resentful and felt coerced into meeting with CSIS. Interviewees described a process where the state forced them into participating in the dirty work of the “War on Terror.”

Targeting ideas and political activism

The repeated intensive forms of intelligence gathering were also a strategic tactic designed to ferret out any form of political or “radical” thinking; it went well beyond locating those plotting terrorist activities to include the policing of thought. Interviewees recounted how security agents were not just interested in those planning or engaging in criminal activity but also those that might be developing “radical” viewpoints on any front. Divergent ideas were redefined as evidence of potential “radicalization.” Hence, one’s beliefs and viewpoints become a target to monitor and regulate. Whereas criminal law targets explicit actions, the racialized surveillance directed at Muslim communities is much broader; it includes the policing of thought.

Unsurprisingly, the ideological terrain on which anti-Muslim surveillance tactics operate works to suppress political activism by marking those critical of the state as “at-risk” for extremism. Interviewees described how Muslims who criticize state policies, particularly concerning the politics in the Middle East or national security, come under intensive surveillance. One commented,

This was at the time when I was having a radio program. It was after 9/11, and I was very critical of the state. And I got a visit from CSIS agents. And they were asking me all kinds of questions, some of them quite dumb. It’s made me feel that if you are going to be critical of the government, then somebody is watching you. This is some kind of intimidation and censorship. (Montreal 7)

Others were targeted for sharing political posts on social media or participating in lawful demonstrations. One interviewee described how

My fiancé is regularly followed, so I went with him for a meeting with CSIS. And these people have hacked his internet, his emails and Facebook. They were pulling out his Facebook posts, and they are actually reading them to him the way they want to read them, without the context behind these words. (Ottawa 13)

Behavior considered normal for white Canadians was framed as suspicious when displayed by Muslim Canadians (Alimahomed-Wilson 2019).

Those who were politically active in their communities felt that CSIS was undermining their freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association. The CSIS Act specifically prohibits CSIS from investigating acts of lawful advocacy, protests, or dissent (Government of Canada 1985). Nevertheless, political activism among Muslims is often used as evidence of potential “radicalization,” justifying intensive interventions. In other words, Muslim activists are redefined as a threat to the nation. This results in a chilling effect, where Muslim communities become fearful of criticizing state practices and mainstream narratives surrounding the “War on Terror.” This reinforces Muslim communities’ position as othered and compromises their freedom of speech. One interviewee mentioned,

There’s a real chilling effect because of it (surveillance). And the chilling effect goes to what you, as a Muslim in Canada, can say or do. Can you really speak out against the government or certain policies? Can you really say what you want on social media without repercussions? (Toronto 11)

Ultimately, anti-Muslim surveillance tactics silence political dissent. Muslim voices that implicate Western foreign policies in the “War on Terror” or that call out the problematic nature of national security regimes are suppressed. Hence, the main modes of thinking behind the “War on Terror” that locate Islam as the root cause of terrorism are left undisrupted.

Illegal and corrosive activities

The Canadian Security Intelligence Act (Government of Canada 1985) places legal barriers to CSIS’s ability to collect information on individuals they believe are security risks. For example, Section 12 of the CSIS act prohibits it from obstructing the course of justice (Government of Canada 1985). The Act also stipulates that if investigations shift from passive collection to active collection, they should be done under a warrant regime, particularly when the actions of policing or security agencies invade a reasonable expectation of privacy (Government of Canada 1985). Yet, we found numerous instances where CSIS was operating outside of the confines of the law.

Our interviews identified several tactical measures adopted by CSIS that cross defensible thresholds into illegal activities. CSIS was identified as threatening the immigration status of refugees, making unannounced visits to people’s homes in the middle of the night and preventing individuals from accessing legal counsel. The targeting, as mentioned above, of political activism also, at times, spilled into illegal suppression of legitimate freedom of expression. The illegality of these anti-Muslim surveillance tactics reinforce the racial identity of the Muslim “other,” thereby allowing Muslim communities to be readily deprived of legal rights and humanity. As Razack (2008) reminds us, the eviction of Muslims from the political community is a cornerstone of the “War on Terror” and must be understood as a racial process; they are seen as having a different level of humanity and assigned a separate and unequal place in the law (p. 7). Because Muslims are removed from the moral realm of the human community and are seen as incubators of “terrorism,” the derogation of their rights is seen as necessary and legitimate (Jackson 2005; Razack 2008).

Those in precarious situations, particularly refugees or those awaiting citizenship, were regularly targeted by CSIS. Their vulnerable status was a factor exploited by CSIS. An interviewee explained, “One person, for example, had applied for citizenship. So, the CSIS officer says, ‘I know that you are applying for citizenship’. So, the implication is if you do not cooperate with us, we are going to stop it” (Vancouver 4). Another interviewee mentioned,

There were a number of people who were hired, especially those who were refugees. They were approached by CSIS to spy on Muslims and then threatened. See if you do not do it, your refugee status will be in trouble. (Toronto 2)

These individuals often lacked legal recourse or adequate knowledge to resist pressure from CSIS effectively.

Furthermore, CSIS was reported to regularly appear at people’s homes in the middle of the night without warning. One interviewee described how “People’s homes have been visited by CSIS at night. And innocent people’s homes. They were not involved in anything. And they have been targeted” (Montreal 2). Interviewees stressed the degree to which these visits were humiliating and traumatizing for entire families, particularly children. Another interviewee recounted how, “in one case, my friend had to kick the CSIS agent outside of the house because the questions became very insulting. The CSIS agents were making his family feel uncomfortable and intimidated” (Toronto 22). Some argued that these unannounced late-night visits are designed explicitly to strong-arm and disrupt Muslim families. It was also perceived as a strategy for undermining legal representation as few could readily access lawyers after hours.

Denying or interfering with legal counsel was a common CSIS tactic. In several instances, interviewees described how they, or those they know or represent, were often discouraged from having lawyers present at meeting with CSIS. One lawyer explained how CSIS violates its own policies on civil protection: “CSIS consistently discourages lawyers from being present, despite the fact that the operations manual says that they cannot discourage lawyers from being present. But it is the consistent practice” (Toronto 30). For Muslim communities, access to legal representation was one mechanism that allowed them to mitigate the intimidation experienced by CSIS. One lawyer in Toronto explained the critical need for representation when dealing with CSIS. When representing one of his clients from CSIS, he stated how in the meeting, he spoke out:

I said, “Hang on a second. Unless you have changed the constitution of Canada to say Muslim citizens have a duty to meet with Canadian security and answer questions on demand, I think you are wrong.” My client actually has choices whether he talks or not. (Toronto 30)

He recounted how a CSIS agent tried to pressure his client into answering questions about others in his community by telling him that “it was his duty as a Canadian citizen to answer their questions” (Toronto 30). When individuals refused to respond to questions, CSIS regularly questioned their allegiance to the state and pointed to their need to fulfill their civic duty. The questioning of one’s patriotism was experienced as coercion and manipulation. The pressure put on Muslims to prove their patriotism by complying with security agencies can be understood as what Sunera Thobani (2007) calls rites of citizenship; “the common-sense knowledge shared among nationals that strangers need to prove their legality” (p. 100).

Internal community-led surveillance

The overt and direct surveillance by CSIS orchestrated an internal fear within Muslim communities. Indeed, a key tactic of the “War on Terror” is to produce fear within the “enemy” (Kumar 2012). The ensuing result was the development of community-led forms of surveillance. We found that Muslim communities were policing and imposing disciplinary techniques on their own members. This internal monitoring emerged in response to and as a protective measure to guard against external law enforcement. Yet, it also must be understood as reinforcing state surveillance and as furthering the goals of the “War on Terror” (Selod 2018; Zine 2012).

Individuals regularly adjusted and disciplined their behavior because, as we were informed, one never knows who or when one is watching. As one interviewee described,

You feel this almost self-censorship that people impose on themselves because we are so used to be surveilled in any kind of public space. It becomes this self-policing of the way we express ourselves because we expect that the state is listening to what we are saying. Even if we are not actually being surveilled, the effect that it has on our ability to express ourselves is detrimental. (Toronto 7)

Interviewees recounted how they feared that if they were perceived as too religious or too political, this could potentially be interpreted by someone in their community as evidence to report to CSIS. One interviewee said someone in his community spied on him for several years, but “because I never did nothing wrong, I am no longer under surveillance” (Toronto 2). However, he feared that there was no way of knowing who was an informant and whether others were spying on him or when he might again be monitored. This produced another layer of internal surveillance within Muslim communities where people begin surveilling each other, not only for potential signs of “radicalization” but also for whether someone was working as an informant for CSIS. As another interviewee stated,

The way in which the Muslim community has been focused on for national security breeds a suspicion within the community. There is a feeling that every Mosque or a community center is being reported on. So, the question always comes: who is it in this space that is reporting and spying? So, unfortunately, I think the suspicions will sometimes fall on one another. (Montreal 1)

This culture of suspicion has become endemic within Muslim communities undermining social cohesion and community relations.

The mosque, as a space of mass surveillance, was a site where self-regulation was most pronounced. Interviewees reported being extra cautious about what they say in religious spaces. One commented, “When I am at the mosque, and this place is supposed to be the safest place, but I watch my word” (Calgary 7). Imams, in particular, treaded cautiously: “I am careful in general; you do not want to leave room for any misunderstanding. You have to be very precise with your language. 9/11 was a complete game changer” (Montreal 16). While some regulated their behaviors, others “have stopped coming to mosques” altogether. This self-surveillance mirrors protective mechanisms others have documented as a consequence of extreme state surveillance (Naber 2006; Selod 2018; Zine 2012).

Furthermore, people feared being ostracized from their community if others found out that CSIS had approached them, producing another form of self-regulation. An interviewee explained,

See what happens that if the CSIS comes to your house to ask you some questions, everyone in (the community) will now avoid you because they think of you as someone that is being investigated. So there is this stigma behind it. Like a couple of my friends told me about CSIS coming to their house, but they are not sharing that information with anyone else as it will create problems for them within the community. (Toronto 22)

Because many feared being blacklisted by their community, they kept their interactions with CSIS a secret. This, however, prevented communities from building supportive relationships where they could openly discuss their experiences and understand the magnitude of CSIS surveillance.

Moreover, many spoke of how leaders mandate and seek to impose a top-down regulatory practice within their communities. Mosque executives regularly warned their congregations “directly to be careful about what they say” (Ottawa 12). Imams were regulated by mosque management and restricted from speaking on political issues. An interviewee commented,

I know that BCMA (B.C. Muslim Association) as an organization they are very specific of what they will allow the Imams to say. I know that Imams have actually lost their positions because they have taken too hard of a stance on a certain political topic, and for fear of being criticized, the executive has opted to let that person go rather than deal with whatever would come as a result politically. (Vancouver 7)

Imams who spoke out and refused to follow proscribed limits could be removed from their positions. Several Muslim organizations also actively avoided politically charged events and specific guest speakers that might draw attention. One interviewee commented, “People will say, ‘Let us not go down that road because we do not want, all of a sudden, for people to say that BCMA (B.C. Muslim Association) is a radical organization’” (Vancouver 7). Leaders were quick to crack down on anyone who might attract state surveillance. However, the self-policing within Muslim communities suppressed those voices critical of state policies, thus inadvertently assisting the racial project of the “War on Terror.” These practices illustrate how racial projects are maintained and reproduced, in part, through the internalization of the oppressed (Pyke 2010).

In addition to self-policing, interviewees engaged in what Steve Mann, Jason Nolan, and Barry Wellman (2003) call “sousveillance,” or the repurposing of surveillance technologies by groups who are often their target. According to Mann et al. (2003), sousveillance represents an inverse of power relations where oppressed communities use technology and social media to protect themselves from coercive state practices and, by so doing, assert their agency. In our study, several interviewees said they use technology to record their activities or speeches to have documented evidence of exactly what they said if CSIS questions them. Mosque executives and leaders, in particular, record events and speeches to avoid any misunderstanding. One said,

In our community even, we guard ourselves because we video record all the sermons. We keep it on file. So, this means that no RCMP or CSIS can come to us and basically accuse us of anything like that because we already have everything on record. (Vancouver 4)

While Mann and associates (2003) understand “sousveillance” as an active inversion of power relations, by recording their religious sermons, Muslim communities may also be compromising their own communities’ religious freedom and privacy. Within Muslim communities, sousveillance takes a unique form and is intricately interwoven with religion, mainly because the racialized surveillance directed at Muslim communities targets religious worship.

Conclusion

The domestic tactics employed by Western intelligence services as part of the “War on Terror” have yet to be fully mapped and analyzed (Lyon 2003, 2007; Melgaço and Monaghan 2018; Monahan and Wood 2018). Unsurprisingly, in the Canadian context, there is a dearth of academic studies exploring the experiences of Muslim communities with CSIS. To fill this gap, this study draws on the experiences of Muslim communities to map the material structural practices used by CSIS in its domestic surveillance of Muslim “terrorism.” In our analysis of 95 in-depth interviews with Canadian Muslim community leaders, we identify and make explicit the anti-Muslim surveillance tactical measures adopted by CSIS including the mass surveillance of Muslim communities, the transforming of Mosques into spaces of surveillance, the solicitation of a community of informants and the policing of Muslim political activism. We also found that CSIS regularly engages in illegal and corrosive practices that go well beyond its mandate. We then explore how these state-led anti-Muslim surveillance tactics produce internal forms of community-led surveillance. In essence, we found a layering of multiple forms of intrusive surveillance that is an endemic aspect of racialized surveillance.

By being the first study to document the on-the-ground anti-Muslim surveillance tactics adopted by CSIS, our research brings to light the way CSIS infiltrates and impedes the lives of Muslim communities. Essentially, surveillance is everywhere for Canadian Muslims. They encounter it at mosques, universities, community gatherings, and even in their own homes. It infringes their religious freedom, their ability to engage in political activism, to use social media and engage in free speech, as well as to form healthy and trustworthy relationships within their own communities. Ultimately, CSIS’s anti-Muslim tactics inhibit the ability of Canadian Muslims to live as free and equal citizens.

Our work examines how CSIS engages in a particular form of racializing (Browne 2015) and racialized (Selod 2018) surveillance that is informed through the ideological and structural dimensions of the “War on Terror.” Rather than targeting a few individuals, our interviews reveal the intrusive nature of CSIS surveillance. Entire Muslim communities are seen as susceptible to “radicalization,” thereby, legitimating mass surveillance with a particular focus on Muslim youth. The framing of “radicalization” as a theological process transforms religious spaces such as Mosques into sites of state regulation and infiltration. Imams, in particular, have come under the spotlight as potential incubators of “extremism.” Community members were persistently coerced to act as informants in both direct and indirect ways. This was most pronounced for community leaders who were seen as key interlocutors to help identify “radicalization” within their communities. Muslim political activism was readily associated with “radicalism” legitimating policing measures that ultimately operated to silence opposition to the “War on Terror.” In addition, the assumed “radicalization” discourses that infuse CSIS embolden it to engage in various illegal and corrosive practices, including the intimidation and harassment of those with precarious citizenship, arriving unannounced to Muslim homes in the middle of the night to initiate interrogations, and the withholding and discouraging of legal representation. We show how this layering of external CSIS surveillance resulted in internal community-imposed forms of self-surveillance.

In our analysis, we document the specific anti-Muslim tactics used by CSIS to enact racialized surveillance. The material structural practices deployed by CSIS are informed by racial logics that assume “radicalization” and “extremism” are intrinsic to Islam. These racial logics function to code Muslim bodies and Muslim spaces as imminent “threats” to the nation legitimating a myriad of intrusions and erosion of rights, bringing the coercive nature of the “War on Terror” into fruition. This erosion of civil liberties appears not as an affront to constitutionally protected rights but as a rational and legitimate practice (Razack 2008). These anti-Muslim surveillance tactics simultaneously authorize the silencing of voices critical of the “War on Terror.” Accordingly, they operate both in the service of and to strengthen the “War on Terror” by suppressing dissent and opposition. Any community resistance to the “War on Terror” is framed as evidence of a potential risk warranting intrusive and aggressive investigation. Moreover, by producing multiple layers of internally led surveillance, racialized surveillance results in the “War on Terror” being carried out by those it oppresses. In this way, anti-Muslim surveillance tactics reinforce the racial project of the “War on Terror” by solidifying racial boundaries, historical tropes, and racial logics that enable the indiscriminate targeting and policing of Muslim communities.

Throughout the “War on Terror,” Western nations have used the language of national security to conceal the inherent racism embedded in counter-terrorism policies and practices (Jackson 2005). By identifying the specific anti-Muslim surveillance tactics employed by CSIS, our research brings to light the underlying racist logics and discriminatory nature of counter-terrorism practices. This research speaks to CSIS’s dragnet of racialized surveillance directed at Muslim communities. Yet, it is merely just one of the tools employed in the “War on Terror.” Future research needs to explore how the ideological underpinnings of the “War on Terror” materialize into other counter-terrorism laws and practices. Such research will shed light on how racial narratives and representations become institutionalized in the “War on Terror.”

Footnotes

Correction (April 2023):

Article has been updated to correct “Omi and Winant 2014” as “Omi and Winant 2015” in text and end reference list.

ORCID iD

Baljit Nagra

Author Biographies

Baljit Nagra is an associate professor at the University of Ottawa. Her research aims to understand how racial discourses are rearticulated in the “War on Terror.” Her intellectual interest is in learning how racial boundaries are transformed through a language of gender, religion, and security, creating “legitimate/desirable” and “illegitimate/undesirable” members of Westerns nations, and reproducing past racialized nation-state projects. Her research has been published in refereed journals such as the British Journal of Criminology, Canadian Journal of Sociology, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. She is also the author of a book titled Securitized Citizens: Canadian Muslims Experiences of Race Relations and Identity Formation Post 9/11 that was published by the University of Toronto Press.

Paula Maurutto is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and cross-appointed at the Center of Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto. She has published in the areas of risk theory, racialized surveillance, urban security, the voluntary sector, and specialized courts. Her current research examines the increased use of risk-based technologies in the criminal justice system with a specific focus on how actuarial algorithms and big data logics are creating new patterns of penal governance.

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