Counting Devices

At left is a counting device, also called a tasbeeh or tasbih, sold for £4.95 on SimplyIslam.com and commonly found in stores on Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue. The same website sells a set of plastic rosary-like beads for the same purpose: counting prayers.

Acording to the New York Times, of the 13,473 calls the New York counterterrorism hotline (1-888-NYC-SAFE) received in 2007, 644 were worthy of investigation and 45 of those were transit-related.

There were 11 calls about people counting:

"The callers said that the men appeared to be Muslims and that they seemed to be counting the number of people boarding subway trains or the number of trains passing through a station. They feared the men might be collecting data to maximize the casualties in a terror attack."