Jasser: America Will Benefit from Muslim Radicalization Hearings

U.S. Islamist groups like the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) have reacted hyperbolically to news that the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), plans to hold hearings on American Muslim radicalization.

But Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, writes in the New York Post that critics of the hearings like MPAC, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) are attempting "to deny and obfuscate the connection between 'political Islam' or Islamism, and terror."

Political correctness dominates public discussion of incidents involving Islamists, Jasser writes. One example was the Pentagon report on Nidal Hasan, currently charged in last year's Fort Hood massacre.

"The report was intended to convey to military commanders whatever lessons were learned from the incident, so as to prevent similar attacks in the future," Jasser writes. "Yet it never mentioned the word Islam or Muslim. Nowhere to be found was any dissection of Hasan's slide into militant Islamism or of his relationship with his homegrown jihadist mentor, Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki."

Major American Muslim groups like CAIR, ISNA and MPAC were built on the ideology of political Islam. But "knowing where most American Muslims fall in the spectrum of Islamism-vs.- liberalism, as King hopes to find out in his hearings, would be a key step toward counterradicalization," Jasser writes.

Congressional hearings are just one step in crafting a strategy against political Islam.

"Only liberty-minded Muslims working from within Muslim communities can counter the narrative of Muslim victimization. But America needs to be unashamed of taking the side of those Muslims who advocate reform against political Islam," Jasser adds. "In 2011, more Americans need to understand that jihadism is a natural by-product of a political Islam that is incompatible with Western secular democracies based in liberty. America is at war with theocratic Muslim despots who seek the imposition of sharia and don't believe in the equality of all before the law, blind to faith. They detest the association of religious freedom with liberty."

Reader comments on this item

Real Immigration Reform

Submitted by John Coelho, Jan 5, 2011 22:44

Immigration policy for the Islamic World should give priority to religious minorities, secular humanists, feminists, women escaping oppression, and Muslims who are moderate within the Western point of view. Why do we continue to allow indiscrimnate admission of Muslims ? Because, IMO, if we kept all the intolerant Muslims out, the Saudis would jack up the priceof oil. Such exclusion would hinder their major agenda of bringing sharia to the US. Theyhave us by the b***ls.

Since, so many left-liberals are hoplessly deluded on the subject of Islam, little has been stated about what liberal agendas are consonant with the war against islamism. The green energy revolution, advocated by liberals, would be good for the environment and allow us to tell the Saudis where to go and cut off the flow of intolerant Muslims into this country..

Also, a more progressive redistribution of wealth in this country would create a greater sense of national unity behind the war agains Islamism. As it is, now, the dispossessed are the ripe target for Muslim prosyletization.

Liberals should be the vanguard - I am definitely a liberal.

Submitted by Ellen Hunt, Jan 4, 2011 12:39

It has long been clear to me that liberals should be the vanguard calling for investigation of Islamism. It is still a puzzle to me why this is not the case. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that it is an accident of history.

Current day liberals know literally nothing at all about Islam. They do not know its doctrine, they do not know the life of Mohammed, and they do not know Ha'dith. But they are intimately familiar with Christianity and the old and new Testaments. They are distantly familiar with Judaism and Torah. Consequently, they presume that Islam's books are the same.

Because of apologists like Karen Armstrong and the fact that the first vocal Muslim group in America that spoke to liberals starting in the 1960's were Sufis, liberal views on Islam were set by that experience. Almost no liberals in America know that those Sufis have fatwas declaring them heretics. (Which is one reason they fled their native lands - threat of death for heresy.) Many liberals believe that Ba'hai's are orthodox muslims and Sufis are the mystics. Muslims, of course, know that Ba'hai's are not muslims.

I think that is why muslims were adopted by liberals as being "like buddhists or hindus". (A quote.) Buddhists and Hindus are different, but neither religion was founded in war by a man who committed what we now would call war crimes. Those religions are deserving of the wholesale tolerance given to them, as are most new religions (we call the latter "cults".)

America was founded on tolerance for different forms of religion. But that milieu was one in which the foundations of the tolerated religions were peaceful. Certainly the doctrines were. And the many Pietist sects, from Labadists and Shakers to Mennonites and Hutterites are doctrines of radical pacifism. It was that pacifism that brought difficulties on their heads since they would not sign up for Europe's wars. The Hutterites were slaughtered and pillaged by both sides in several European conflicts before coming to North America. Similarly, many peaceful Sufis and Ba'hai's sought refuge here.

Thus, for liberals, Islam represents a serious challenge. It does indeed have a tiny splinter minority of Sufis who practice itjihad. Bahaism arose within Muslim lands and were mistaken for muslims by liberals in the past. That microscopic minority of refuge-seeking heretics to mainstream Islam are what most liberals believe Islam to be.

Thus, the major task is to dispel this confusion. The confusion is understandable. The problem is not helped by the fact that the political movement trying to address the confusion is, across the board, dead-set against 99% of what liberals in America believe in. It is extremely difficult for American liberals to listen when the images they see calling for investigation of CAIR, etc. are young white men insisting on their right to carry an unloaded AK-47 near the first black president of the USA.

So this outreach is a big challenge. It is an educational matter, and it is very challenging. It must be accomplished though. Win that group over, and you have won your case.

About time

Submitted by Tater Salad, Dec 31, 2010 19:04

As soon as these hearings get started and the truth of CAIR, The Muslim Brotherhood come out to the public then maybe, just maybe, the left wing loons will then have to take another approach to their reporting of Muslim hate and terror on non-believers of Islam. After the Muslim hate of non-Muslims is exposed and their support and funding to Hamas & Hezbollah are also exposed, immigration reform and exposure of Sharia Law will also take a back seat to western civilization one would hope.

Maybe the R.I.C.O. statute will be used on CAIR and the Brotherhood as the criminal enterprises they are.

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