Right-wing group’s secret database on Muslim Americans sparks alarm
Think tank's 20-year archive of more than four million data points on Muslims — including members of Congress — could serve as "target list," rights advocates warn
PHILADELPHIA (MNTV) — A right-wing U.S. think tank spent about two decades quietly compiling a vast database on thousands of Muslim Americans and their institutions, an archive civil-rights advocates warn could be used to monitor, intimidate, or target a religious minority already facing rising hostility.
The Middle East Forum (MEF), a Philadelphia-based group that civil-rights organizations say has long spread misinformation about Islam, built a database of more than four million data points over roughly 20 years, drawn from public records including tax filings, corporate registrations, property records, names, and social-media accounts, according to a report by HuffPost.
The archive held entries for over 5,500 individuals and 10,600 organizations — mosques, schools, businesses, and advocacy groups — tracking people across 45 countries, most of them in the United States.
MEF disclosed the database only after HuffPost, which had obtained a copy, said it planned to publish; the group said it would let researchers apply for access.
Those catalogued included prominent Muslim officials — Representatives Ilhan Omar, Andre Carson, and Rashida Tlaib, and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison — as well as non-Muslims connected to Muslim communities; Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was reportedly labeled a “Fellow Traveler,” a term used during the McCarthy era to brand suspected sympathizers.
MEF says its work targets what it calls “lawful Islamism,” and defended the archive as ordinary mapping of ideological networks.
But the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Caleb Kieffer called it “very concerning” amid intensifying anti-Muslim rhetoric, and Mobashra Tazamal of Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative warned it could function as a “target list.”
The distinction between individually public information and a searchable archive of millions of records is central to the alarm, advocates say: assembling the data creates a capacity to monitor people and map their relationships that no single record allows.
The concern is sharpened by history — the surveillance and profiling of Muslim communities since 9/11 — and by the present, as the administration has drawn on groups like MEF in a campaign against speech supporting Palestinian rights; the forum published a dossier on Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown scholar later detained.
For communities already under pressure, advocates argue, being systematically documented and categorized deepens the message that ordinary religious and civic life is something to be watched rather than protected.
We must take charge of our narrative. Research indicates that 92% of their Muslim coverage is negative. Help us change that.
Have Your Say!
Have you been affected by the issues raised in this story? Please share your experiences by emailing haveyoursay@soundvision.com.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a Muslim Network TV’s representative. You can also get in touch in the following ways:
Tweet: @MuslimNetworkTV
