Abstract
Policing certain minority groups based on their religious affiliation appears to be antithetical to the idea of democratic policing. Yet, in the twenty-first century it is a tactical approach exhibited by many police forces around the world, one that appears to challenge not only the common sense of what equality and parity stand for but also defies the operational wisdom and effectiveness of such a direction. This chapter draws upon the accounts of “policing by religion” in the United States and Northern Ireland, and highlights a personal experience of one of the authors while policing in Israel from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s, and the lessons that can be drawn by this comparative approach for democratic policing of today. The “Combat/Peace” environments are defined as environments in which one segment of the population is policed in a focused manner, based on the assumption that their religious affiliation makes them prone towards engagement in terrorist activities against the larger society.
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Haq, Q., Haberfeld, M.R. (2012). Policing Muslims in a “Combat/Peace” Environment: The Case of “Policing by Religion” in Israel. In: Policing Muslim Communities. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3552-5_8
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