Congressional Hearings on Muslims in the U.S.
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-03-10/congressional-hearings-muslims-us
"The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response." That’s the title of a hearing by the House Committee on Homeland Security which opened today. The committee chair says the hearing is "absolutely necessary” but critics say it puts Islam on trial. This isn’t the first time Congress has tackled the subject of homegrown terrorism, but the tone is different this time. Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder weighed in disputing the accusation that the Muslim community hasn’t helped law enforcement in terrorism investigations. Diane and her guests discuss reaction to the hearings on Muslims in America.
Guests
Akbar Ahmed
chair of Islamic studies at American University, former Pakistani high commissioner to the U.K. His latest book is "Journey into America."
Juan Zarate
a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a senior national security analyst at CBS News; former Deputy National Security Adviser for Combating Terrorism under the G.W. Bush Administration.
Marshall Breger
professor of law, Columbus School of Law, The Catholic University of America
Charles Kurzman
professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Author of "The Missing Martyrs: Why There Are So Few Muslim Terrorists."
Comments
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Peter King is crazy like (a) Fox. Media has made ill-informed and envious, jealous people ready for some Nazi-styled scape-goating, and a mis-elected House of Reps. is ready to provide it. The frightened and toadying Islamic spokesmen sicken me because no one should bow down down to bullies. Yes, this nation is brimming with resentment, hatred and seething violence but 99% of it is coming from racist, Christian, right-wing militia and T-party groups- very little from Muslims.
When there are many groups of various types threatening the peace the Homeland Security Committee is narrowly focused on Wahabi Muslim influence. You idiots, don't you understand that Saudi Arabia is a Wahabi state and that their royals are the caretakers of that extreme Muslim minority sect? You have to get up mighty oily to solve that! Here we go with repeating lies and half-truths endlessly and gunthugging all who disagree. This is a land divided by money, a land of structural violence and profitable war. We're in trouble and King is worsening our plight.
It seems to me that King and his supporters conflate violent extremism with "radicalism". They then, as witness Zuhdi Jasser does in his prepared testimony, define "radical" to include most American Muslims. While King issues the usual disclaimers about most Muslims as being law-abiding, at the same time he says that 80-85% of Muslims are "radical".
There are two problems with this. First, holding and expressing political and religious views are protected by the First Amendment. King and his witnesses say that certain religious views lead to violence over time and avocate putting pressure on American Muslims to change their religious views. This is a fool's errand. The second problem with this approach lies in the consensus among terrorism experts that the best recruiting tool for violent extremists in recruiting terrorists is the notion the the US is engaged in a war on Islam.
King and his supporters such as Jasser, Brigitte Gabriel, Pamela Geller, Steve Emerson and many others contend that mainstream American Muslim organizations are part of a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy. They point to normal acts of piety such as prayer and modest dress as signs of extremism. This is only a few degrees of separation from Glenn Beck.
Unfortunately, these same views are heard in parts of the US government itself. As the Washington Monthly recently reports, millions of taxpayer dollars are spent by Homeland Security and other agencies to hire "experts" who "train" law enforcement and intelligence officers about Islam along the lines expressed by King and his advisors. The Justice Department released a list of about 300 "unindicted co-conspirators" in the Holy Land Foundation case that includes most mainstream Muslim organizations and many community leaders, thus tarring them with links to terrorism.
Is it any surprise that some Muslims think the US is engaged in a war on Islam?
I love how these right wing fanatics point a finger at someone they donot like. when are we going to have ahearing on the racist groups in this country that lynched, burned churches, etc.? The souther Baptists preached intolerance against blacks for decades which led to terrorist attacks against us. Are they going to be investigated? There are skin heads who terrorize. How about an investigation on them? Yet, they will talk until they are blue in the face because two, count 'em two new black panthers were found. Wow!!! People like King and his ilk use racial profiling as a talking point and then cry reverse racism when called on it. Leave these people alone and look in your own back yard. A black church was burned here, the person who did it received four years. A Muslim did not do it. They did not make jim crow laws. THEY did not make us less than human in a constitution. They aren't the ones who tell us the 14th amendment, civil rights legislation and voting rights went too far. One of you did. Your house is made of glass, brittle glass. Get your own in order.
If they are going to explore religious extremism and its connection to terrorism they should be including those extreme right wing Christians who advocate killing medical personnel associated with abortion (a legal right) and bombing clinics that provide such services. This is terrorism too.
Religious extremism comes from fundamentalism and is not restricted to Islam.
Perhaps when Rep. King finishes playing McCarthy, he can explain his support of the terrorist IRA. Why is this man allowed anywhere near the Homeland Security Committee when he actively and openly supported a known terrorist organization? He even traveled to Ireland to disrupt the trials of IRA members. Mr King, meet kettle.
You cannot assume because a handful of youths or people have wanted to perform terrorist acts or join terrorist groups that there is a radicalization problem in the Muslim community.
Honestly I'm more worried about radicalized white supremacists in the rural areas of America, which have killed or harmed more of their fellow Americans than any of the radicalized American-Muslims.
The following doesn't break down the offenders by religion, but I would argue that the majority are more than likely Christian since the majority of white Americans are Christian.
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2009/offenders.html
Law enforcement agencies reporting hate crime data to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program identified 6,225 known offenders in 6,604 bias-motivated incidents in 2009. In the UCR Program, the term known offender does not imply that the suspect’s identity is known; rather, the term indicates that some aspect of the suspect was identified, thus distinguishing the suspect from an unknown offender. Law enforcement agencies specify the number of offenders and, when possible, the race of the offender or offenders as a group.
In 2009, the racial breakdown of the 6,225 known hate crime offenders was as follows:
* 62.4 percent were white.
* 18.5 percent were black.
* 7.3 percent were groups made up of individuals of various races (multiple races, group).
* 1.0 percent were American Indian/Alaskan Native.
* 0.7 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander.
This is really an assault on Reason, really. Why are we not having hearings on the War on Drugs? Far more people's lives have been affected by illegal drugs in this country, are currently affected by drugs in the U.S., and will be affected into the future by the cultivation, import, sale, distribution, use, and recovery of drug users. People, innocent people are wounded, killed, live in fear each and every day, due to the influence of drugs in American society. Drugs represent a far greater danger to undermining life in America than any extremist Christian, Jew, or Muslim will do. We focus on a pimple, meanwhile society is dying from the cancer of drugs.
Good points.
Would appear to be a classic distraction technique used by intelligence agencies to divert attention from the "events" of 9/11 opposed to references "since" 9/11. There's a difference. The Southern Poverty Law Center has yet to identify a significant number of radical Muslim organizations within the U.S. verses hate crimes perpetrated by i.e. Nazis organizations. The debate on the radical Muslim community appears weak at best. Pete King is all too aware of factors which effect community action a la Northern Ireland, hence radical Islam becomes more propaganda and a fear tactic than fact. We still don't have the "facts" leading up to 9/11, yet we spend our time spinning our wheels on symptoms without concentrating on the disease.
I really have to laugh about this. Mr King is a proud supportor and fund raiser for the IRA. I would have thought that his statement that the IRA was morally equivalent to British Army would pretty well qualify him as a firm supporter of terrorism. The Brits should have had him extradited and tried.
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The division of people into Muslim and Non-Muslim is a false dichotomy. Daniel Patrick Moynihan spoke of Semantic Infiltration, when your respondent adopts your terms for purposes of discussion. People need to start with water, shelter, food and waste management. Later, we can discuss dogmata.
Yes, indeed. "Muslim extremists" are far less fearsome than our own homegrown variety and much less of a threat to our system. We now have representatives of radical right extremism not just out in our landscape somewhere but right here in our government. After a little more than a decade in which extremism has grown bolder and come out of the closet, our system of self-governance finds itself at risk. We are being asked to accept "my way or the highway" leadership.
No one likes Muslim extremism as it's practiced in some of its home countries. But if we want to survive as a nation and a democracy, and if we're going to have hearings about threats to America, we need to begin with a far more threatening forms of homegrown extremism.
So what are Peter Kings hearings? Distractions. Shameful distractions, reminiscent of earlier generations of rightwing extremism.
Oddly, more and more audio clips are being played of the Army-McCarthy hearings -- at least on satellite radio (which I subscribe to instead of TV). For example: last night a couple of repeats of the dramatic moment when attorney Joseph Welsh, in a moment of historic drama, asked Senator McCarthy, "Have you no decency?"
What I am terrified of is the damaged soldiers, sailors, marines and coast guardsman hearing this kind of hearing and talk, after they gave their blood and treasure for the neocon foolishness, and they will be disgusted hearing it, and can't get away from it, and go out back or some other private place and get away from it all permanently, another victim of PTSD, generated by these hearings, and leave their children behind so your news shows can have cutsie shows. There are more men and women coming back whose only radical act is to 'off themself' to get away from this foolishness, this insanity. Thanks again, all you brownies. I raised my siblings from just such a 'radical act,' and I am sure there will be many more. Thanks, Moral Majority. Thanks Neocons.
What are the chances that this commission/committee on the radicalization of American Muslims is going to address the actual causes of such radicalization? I'm hearing everyone talk about everything BUT what's causing it. The big elephant in the room is our foreign policy and clandestine ops in the Middle East.
In my unpopular view, I feel like these hearings, the guests on this show, and most of the callers are together in a gigantic adventure of missing the point. The question doesn't seem to me to be how Muslim Americans can curb radicalism in their communities, but WHY radicalism is a problem. And it's not just Muslims--many people have pointed out that "radicalism" is a problem with numerous other groups in the country. The fact is that dominant American corporate culture seeks more material wealth and goods while ignoring the ramifications of that to people across the globe. And this makes people around the world angry, and increasingly, makes people in the country angry. Feeling that their voices are too small and the problems too large, "radicalized" folks turn mistakenly to violence. A better solution than these hearings to prevent radicalization would be to move people across the country to understand in their communities how to channel the radicalization in a nonviolent way: but this would threaten the corporate complacent culture far more than the odd whack job who loses it and guns people down.
The hearings have two goals: publicize Peter King and further divide the country into 'us vs. them' groups.
I believe that the issue of religious radicalization is a critical one for us to talk about in a real and substantive way. Clearly, there is an increased tendency for Americans to engage in violence against others whom they consider sinful.
In addition to discussing Islam, the Congressman should also focus on the Westboro Baptist Church as well as other Christian sects that promote hatred and violence.
If there is an expectation that Muslim congregations and Imams should be speaking out publicly against radicalization, why is there no expectation that Christian leaders speak out publicly against Fred Phellps?
This conversation should also include Christian sects that endorse or at least silently condone the bombing and destruction of abortion clinics, gay bars, and other organizations they consider sinful.
These hearings represent a great deal about the state of our nation. I was raised a Christian, am now agnostic and do my best to be open-minded on topics of religion. However, I do not believe that we can say that "Radicalazation of Muslims" is the only part of the conversation. Our country is a populated predominately by christian/Roman Catholics, and there are many christians who are just as much zealots as any islamic radical. The example of the church who leads their congregation in highly offensive protests at the funerals of soldiers to preach hatred and intolerance is the most recent, but hardly the only such example. It is also undeniable the the politcal right is highly influenced and in some cases, funded by, the far Christian Right.
Raising issue with radicallization in our country is a necesary thing, but we need to have a candid conversation about radicalization across all religous institutions in our country, and not only how it threatens our national security, but how it the closemindedness it breeds threatens our nations fundamental virtue that all men are entitled to their opinion and that all men (and women to. Haven't forgoten them...) are entitled to common decency and respect, regardless of race, creed, and gender. Religion is supposed to call to our better angels, not unleash our baser natures.
The professor fails to mention what the death toll would have been had
any of all kinds of intercepted or mishandled plots succeeded.
Ahmed: "....why this one (group) is singled out?"... I have been hearing that incredible remark since 9/11. It is not Presbyterians who are attempting these mass murders.
My disappointment is that Diane lets these guys get by with illogic.
There is precious little balance, which is why, as a conservative, I don't think I should be taxed to support NPR.
“If we put every Muslim in America in jail, we still would not prevent events like the Gabriel Giffords shooting, The Oklahoma City bombing and the Virginia Tech shootings.”
–Diane Rehm
I am certainly not in favor of arresting every Muslim in America, but implying that we should ignore the threat presented by a clearly identified group that contains the potential to produce countless ‘home-grown’ terrorist cells just because there happens to be mentally ill non-Muslim individuals in America capable of violent acts is a dangerous oversimplification of the threat that Islam presents to freedom all around the world.
Political correctness contains the potential to doom America. The free world is at war with an enemy that resides in no particular place on the planet and has infiltrated nearly every country in the world under the guise of a ‘peaceful religion’. Because of the unusual nature of this war, we must be prepared to take unusual defensive and offensive steps if we hope to have any chance at all of defeating this enemy.
The fact is, Islam IS the problem and it has the potential to become the greatest threat that America has ever had. If American Muslims truly desire to convince America and the world that their religion is not a threat to freedom, they first need to come together and recognize there is a problem with their religion that is producing radical terrorists. If they truly desire to address this problem, they will find a way to remove the verses from their Quran that serve as motivation for their adherents to go out and kill or convert every other person on the planet.
Michael Jaquish
International Security Consultant & Author
Gig Harbor, WA
"The free world is at war with an enemy that resides in no particular place on the planet and has infiltrated nearly every country in the world under the guise of a ‘peaceful religion’."
- - You can just as easily substitute "a Peaceful Religion" with "Capitalism", "Democracy", and "Free Market Economics". My point is that we have created the enemy that we're now complaining about.
Islam, alone, is not the problem. Organized Religion - itself, is a symptom of the larger problem. That problem being "Class Warfare". And the breakdown of wealth distribution, alone, should clearly illustrate that.
Violence perpetrated by these "terrorists" pale in comparison to the atrocities committed by the U.S., and its allies, in the Middle East. We're offering apologies for killing more children in Afghanistan, while pleading with Pakistani families to accept legal "Blood Money" for the release of a CIA Agent - caught with suspicious items on him. We no longer possess any form of moral authority in the world.
(Mistaken double-post, sorry.)
@cbaldwin, did you hear that a Muslim was charged with the (fortunately failed) MLK parade bombing in Spokane, WA?
Wait, I said Muslim?
I meant it was yet another isolated individual example of right-wing 'Christian' violence perpetrated by isolated unbalanced individuals who are in no way whipped up by violent rhetoric from low-information media.
(No sarcasm tag is required, I hope.)
No innocent would like to hear about hearings pertaining to their religion. I hear your guests say that you cant speak of these things with a broad brush, but in reality you do. Look at the major terrorist acts over the last 50 years and the Muslim radicals are just too prevalent to ignore. If a Muslim is asked to show that his is a religion of peace he can open the Koran and prove his case to the untrained eye, but those who know more about the larger community see that the consensus is that eventually they will extend sharia law across the world and that they are allowed to be more politically correct for now until their numbers are stronger or in an environment that allows them to speak honestly among the radical. They don't speak out enough because too many secretly agree with radical acts.
Targeting a group as large and varied as Muslims seems to me incredibly dangerous to the idea of living in a "free" society. This certainly looks like McCarthyism and serves as one of many examples of why the Patriot Act was a terrible idea, and should have been destroyed in a mass protest by a rational thinking American public. As an above commenter observed, none of these things addresses the REAL problem. The United States treats the rest of the world as it's personal resource bank and will kill and destroy anyone that attempts to stand in it's way. This approach makes some people angry, feel helpless and resort to extremism to counter it. To assert that we were attacked because of our "freedom" seems so absurd and childish to me, I'm flabbergasted that anyone who's even paying a little attention to what's going on in the world could still buy it.
The lies have to stop. 9/11 was the US's fault. I'm sorry, it's time to address this in public forums as policy, blind hatred, terrorizing Muslims(see "hate comes to Orange County" on youtube), and McCarthyesque ideas like king's are growing from the lies about that day. There's ample evidence that the conspiracy theory the American public accepts as fact about what happened on that day may be just another 9/11 conspiracy theory. What we do know for certain is that the people that make obscene amounts of money from war gained a perpetual, impossible to defeat, "enemy", have killed tens thousands of citizens of this planet, and have been able to brand any person that does not fit or wish to go along with their massacre a "terrorist". It's yet another meaningless label, that serves only to separate us further and appeal to our fears. It's time to reject these labels and the men that force them upon the good citizens of the planet. mr. king certainly falls into this category. This is very treacherous water we're treading into and the world, and our country has seen it before. I can only hope we're smart enough to recognize it.
Roy Paris on March 10, 2011 @ 11:20 am wrote: "The professor fails to mention what the death toll would have been had
any of all kinds of intercepted or mishandled plots succeeded. . . . My disappointment is that Diane lets these guys get by with illogic.
There is precious little balance, which is why, as a conservative, I don't think I should be taxed to support NPR."
The facts are indisputable that more murders (in the thousands) have been committed by non-Muslims in America than by Muslim Americans and the best you can do is ask: "But what might have happened?" Oh, yeah, very logical - how typically "conservative" of you, don't let facts get in the way of ideology.
Let's have hearings on how many "pro-lifers" have targeted or planned attacks on doctors or pro-choice supporters. After all no one's mentioned "what the death toll would have been". Let's investigate all those TeaBaggers and Republi-Cons invoking their "Second Amendment Rights" if they don't get their way, after all no one's mentioned "what the death toll would have been".
Your idea of "balance", sir, is unquestioning acceptance of your partisan and ideological views. Most of the guests on this show were stating support for the hearings as a potential opportunity for getting the truth out - though also expressing rational skepticism about Congressman King's motives and intentions, and understandable caution about the results. That's what true "balance" looks like: the employment of fact and reason.