Following an attempted terrorist bombing of a flight arriving in Detroit on Christmas Day, the Council on American-Islamic Relations is accusing the Transportation Security Administration of religious profiling of Muslims for subjecting passengers traveling through “state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest” to an enhanced screening process.

TSA has strengthened its security steps, saying that “effective aviation security must begin beyond our borders.”

According to a CNN report, an unnamed senior government official provided the news agency with a list of 14 countries subject to enhanced screening for travelers heading to the U.S.: Cuba, Sudan, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen

TSA’s new procedures take aim at 13 Muslim-majority nations and will “disproportionately target American Muslims who have family or spiritual ties to the Islamic world,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations said, claiming the stricter guidelines “amount to religious and ethnic profiling.”

“Under these new guidelines, almost every American Muslim who travels to see family or friends or goes on pilgrimage to Mecca will automatically be singled out for special security checks – that’s profiling,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad. “While singling out travelers based on religion and national origin may make some people feel safer, it only serves to alienate and stigmatize Muslims and does nothing to improve airline security.”

TSA spokeswoman Kristin Lee told CNN, “TSA does not profile. As is always the case, TSA security measures are based on threat, not ethnic or religious background.”

According to the report, a senior State Department official said the listed countries are places “where we have concerns, particularly about al-Qaida affiliates.”

Awad told reporters security personnel should have paid more attention to would-be airline bomber Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab’s suspicious behavior – paying cash for his flight and not checking luggage – rather than his religion or ethnicity.

Awad has called for additional funds “to obtain more bomb-sniffing dogs, to install more sophisticated bomb-detection equipment and to train security personnel in identifying the behavior suspects.”

According to the report, the American Civil Liberties Union echoed CAIR’s concerns and issued a statement calling profiling an useless tactic.

“Singling out travelers from a few specified countries for enhanced screening is essentially a pretext for racial profiling, which is ineffective, unconstitutional and violates American values,” said Michael German, ACLU national security policy counsel. “Empirical studies of terrorists show there is no terrorist profile, and using a profile that doesn’t reflect this reality will only divert resources by having government agents target innocent people.”

The FBI cut off its ties to CAIR one year ago after the Muslim group was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist-finance case in U.S. history.

U.S. prosecutors believe CAIR, while claiming to be a civil-rights group, is actually a front group for Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups. The Justice Department stated in September 2007 during its prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation in Dallas that the group was engaged in an “ongoing and ultimately unlawful conspiracy to support a designated terrorist organization, a conspiracy from which CAIR never withdrew.”

A new book based on a daring undercover probe of CAIR, “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America,” asserts the group is acting as a front for a conspiracy of the Muslim Brotherhood – the parent of al-Qaida and Hamas – to infiltrate the U.S. and help pave the way for Saudi-style Islamic law to rule the nation.

CAIR has sued the co-author of the book, former Air Force special agent P. David Gaubatz, and his son, Chris Gaubatz, who served an internship with the group posing as a Muslim. But the Gaubatz’s lawyers have filed a motion to dismiss the case, contending CAIR has no claim because it does not legally exist.

A federal judge in Washington issued a restraining order Nov. 3 barring the Gaubtazes from further use or publication of the material obtained in their probe – 12,000 pages of documents along with audio and video recordings – and demanding that they return it to the Muslim group’s lawyers. But the FBI stepped into the case Nov. 23 with a warrant to examine the papers and recordings, presumably because of its interest in CAIR’s terrorist ties.