Peter King, the New York Republican who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, has been a good friend to those of us who work to protect American national security. In launching an investigation into the ideology that fuels the Islamist threat against the United States, he has had the courage to go where Congress has been too intimidated to go before. Still, with the second round of his committee’s hearings on “radicalization” having been completed, it is necessary to question his approach.
The committee has kept on the sidelines the peerless analysts Steven Emerson and Robert Spencer, who were sounding the alarm before most people in this country knew there was an Islamist threat — very much including most people in our government. King holds the work of these experts in high regard. Yet, he has decided the public’s understanding is better served by calling as his main witnesses (a) Muslims, who can give a firsthand account of what goes on in their communities, and (b) law-enforcement officials, current and former, who’ve designed and carried out what passes for the counterterrorism strategy followed by police agencies throughout the country — basically, terrorism investigations and Muslim outreach.
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There are serious problems with this approach. Hearing from Muslims is obviously important, but to limit the committee to their input on what’s happening inside the Islamic community is to fall for the fallacy that you have to be a member of the group to grasp and explain the group’s dynamics. If that were true, why would anyone care what King’s analysis is? Congress is not a Muslim body, so why would its insights be any more valuable than those of experts like Emerson and Spencer?
Moreover, while the Muslim community in the United States includes many patriotic Americans, it also includes Islamists who seek to undermine our country. The latter adhere to taqqiya, a principle that endorses misrepresentation when necessary to advance the Islamist cause. This principle’s operation is not mitigated by putting these people under oath at hearings, because their fidelity is to sharia, not American law — if they think it will help to lie, they will lie.
Recall the testimony of King’s very first witness back in March, CAIR’s favorite congressman, Keith Ellison (at least, I think that’s the name he’s going by these days — he’s used several in his checkered past, well documented by Powerline’s ScottJohnson). As Matt Shaffer recounted on the Corner, Ellison — a hard-Left Minnesota Democrat and the first Muslim elected to the House of Representatives — gave the committee a weepy account of American bigotry against a Muslim American who died heroically trying to save lives on 9/11. Not surprisingly, Ellison’s story was riddled with falsehoods. To be sure, there is value in watching some of these characters dodge, dissemble, and demagogue. But they are a big part of the challenge we face, so it’s foolish to make them our window into the Muslim community.
As for law enforcement, it is seized by political correctness (as I discussed at length in Willful Blindness). Again, there is value in hearing from those who have investigated cases involving jihadist terror and who formulate strategies for gathering the intelligence needed to prevent terrorist attacks. Many of these officials, however, are wedded to the premise that Islam is not the problem; in fact, they say it is the solution to the problem. Even if they privately believe otherwise, they wouldn’t dare say so publicly — not if they want to continue their upwardly mobile careers.
Which is to say that these officials resolutely avoid acknowledging the very thing that King is trying to probe. Moreover, their perspective — observing the Muslim community from without — is obviously no more valuable than that of non-police experts such as Emerson and Spencer, who have been at it for a lot longer, tend to know more about the subject, and are less afraid that making trenchant criticisms sure to get them smeared as “Islamophobic” would be career suicide.
Why can't prisons develop "approved" religious programs, sermons, etc.? Stick with the scripts or you're replaced.
Some may cry about religious freedom, but within prison walls, there is a care and custody role the state must play and it must supercede all other programs.
Have the FBOP develop a 52 week program for the major religions to be cycled throughout the year. Once developed, allow for additions on a case by case basis. The folks in charge of deciding the appropriateness would be a religious panel and members of security.
Tracking radicalized STGs (gangs) in prisons is tricky business. There are safeguards preventing prison officials from singling out inmates solely on the basis of religion. The security folks know this and have remarked how it ties their hands in certain situations. Superintendents aren't calling out in one voice because the STG threat isn't a national one yet. In PA, for example, STGs may only account for 10% of the population. In Cali or Texas, it's considerably larger and more of a concern.
The prisons should allow access to religion, but there's no reason they can't require only approved sermons, for safety and security purposes.
Indeed, Islam is the problem. This is obvious. And, as some have responded to Mr. McCarthy's columns on this topic with the "Christians/Jews (etc.) did this too" and "the complexities of Islam are not understood by the west," let me say that Christ taught us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. The actions imams encourage, and what Islam preaches, are not close to Christian teaching.
To the second charge, the failure to understand the complexities of Islamic theology; frankly, that is a problem for Islamic practitioners, and not for the rest of us. If you truly believe your faith is being incorrectly interpreted by a few radicals, then change it. The burden of proof is on Islam. The west has plenty of evidence that mainline Islam IS the problem behind the violence done in its name.
I am puzzled why everyone ignores the historical fact that Mahomet's followers started their jihad against Western Civilization back in the 600s. YES, the 7th Century!
The jihad has continued for almost 1400 years now, yet we still find it difficult to recognize this existential threat.
This "existential threat" has not managed to manifest itself in 1400 years? This is certainly an inordinately long gestation period. Perhaps the nefarious Muslim plots are of are such complexity and precision that it has required all these centuries to perfect them. Or perhaps the threat is a figment of your fevered imagination. I ride a motorcycle; I'm more afraid of minivans than Muslims.
I fear Rep. King has succumbed to the fierce de-legitimization campaign that Islamists target any individual that demonstrates knowledge about what they are doing.
I am just amazed that interested parties that really do want to get to the truth fall for these defamation attacks against people like Steve Emerson, Robert Spencer or lately, moderate Muslims like Dr. Zhudi Jasser.
This has been a repeated way of neutralizing those rare voices who know what the devil they are talking about in the Islamist agenda realm - so why is it still effective for making our political leaders or media step back away from the most informed of the Islamist experts.
A tragedy if Peter King does not heed McCarthy's counsel and reassess with courage.
Taqiyya is a jurisprudential doctrine in Shi'a Islam that permits a Shi'i to disguise his/her religion if nothing is to be gained be revealing it. It was developed as a defense mechanism in the context of persecution by the Sunni majority. It is not "a principle that endorses misrepresentation when necessary to advance the Islamist cause." The term is (mis) used by the author in a feeble attempt to add a learned, scholarly veneer his assertion that there is something wrong with "mainstream Islam."
Mr. McCarthy may quote Arabic and clothe himself in pseudo-intellectual garb if he so chooses; it does nothing to disguise his Islamophobia.
I have spent time in Muslim countries and speak several varieties of Arabic (all rather poorly, admittedly), all the while not disguising my American citizenship and Catholic upbringing. In that time I have seen enough to tell me that there is no problem with "mainstream Islam," the religion of 23% of the world's population. It is the rabble-rousing, demagoguing bigots that are the real danger.
