King's Hearing Promotes Hate, Undermines Homeland Security

“We need to conduct a thorough, fair analysis and do no harm. The approach of today’s hearing, unfortunately, does not meet these standards.

Today’s hearing is entitled, “The extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s response.”

It is true that specific individuals, including some who are Muslims, are violent extremists. However, these are individuals – but not entire communities. Individuals like Anwar Al-Aulaqi, Faisel Shazad, and Nidal Hasan do not represent the Muslim American community. When their violent actions are associated with an entire community, then blame is assigned to a whole group. This is the very heart of stereotyping and scapegoating, which is counter-productive.

This point is at the heart of my testimony today. Ascribing the evil acts of a few individuals to an entire community is wrong; it is ineffective; and it risks making our country less secure.”

Minnesota representative Keith Ellison articulated the problem with the approach the House of Representatives is taking in addressing perceived areas of homeland security in his testimony at the House’s Homeland Security Committee’s March 10th hearing, “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.”

The committee is chaired by representative Peter King and the hearing focused exclusively on Islamic extremism and the threat Islam poses to the United States. Rather than look at new solutions to improving homeland security, King’s hearing paraded witness after witness and drummed up the same type of destructive, divisive rhetoric seen in Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations.” Although King’s stated intentions of this first hearing in the series were to examine Al Qaeda’s targeted recruitment of American Muslims, none of the testimony actually addressed this.

Ellison is exactly correct in his assessment of these hearings. Placing blame on an entire community for the actions of very few individuals does not help solve any problems. And this blame is not applied to all communities uniformly when one individual characterized in a certain manner happens to act violently. Stereotyping serves to only further alienate an important part of the American population, and an approach such as King’s might in fact serve Al Qaeda and other extremist groups’ interests in the United States.

And this is a serious problem. Of all the testimony of the course of the several hours that the hearing lasted, only Ellison, Laura Richardson, and Sheila Jackson Lee actually spoke out about the counterproductive and discriminatory nature of this hearing. Why are they standing alone while 3 million Americans are reduced to nothing more than one aspect of their identity and held accountable for actions perpetrated by a miniscule minority?

As Richardson writes in a letter imploring King to cease such discriminatory hearings, “Our concern is that holding a hearing targeting this community, will have the unintended consequences of breeding alienation and fostering feelings of resentment. As a result, we risk hindering law enforcement’s efforts to detect, deter, or prevent potential threats that hide themselves within these communities.”

America's Epidemic

President Obama has canceled his trip to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, which was supposed to be one of the stops on his up-coming trip to India. Apparently, the administration canceled this portion of the visit out of domestic political concerns that Americans would see images of President Obama in the traditional Sikh head-covering necessary to enter the temple and interpret this to mean that he is a “secret” Muslim. Aside from the fact that Sikhism and Islam are two completely different religions with completely different histories, cultures, etc., the cancellation and concern of the ignorant reaction of the American people point directly to the ridiculous bigotry of the American public towards Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim.

First of all, this is the Golden Temple. It’s insanely beautiful, and it's an important piece of India. If you are lucky enough to have the opportunity to go there, how could you ever pass it up?!?

Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a president, on a state visit to another country, participating in and experiencing important elements of the cultures of that country. It is crucial for building stronger relations and developing understanding between the two countries. India is an extremely diverse country and having the opportunity to learn about the cultures and hopefully educating the American public through exposure, all while continuing to foster stronger positive relations, is amazing – definitely not an opportunity to be squandered. And again, the Golden Temple is beautiful.

That the White House has to be worried that 1) most Americans apparently don’t know what Sikhism is, and 2) the American public is so unreasonably fearful of Islam or things that “look Islamic” are absolutely ridiculous. Today, Juan Williams was fired from National Public Radio for his comments on The O’Reilly Factor, espousing his fear of Muslims (thank you, NPR!). What was even more concerning than his comments were the comments of readers, posted below the story, that felt that he was correct in his statements and that the statements made were not bigoted or hateful. It seems that the best way to combat such pervasive ignorance, fear, and hatred is through exposure to improve cross-cultural understanding. Who better to lead such an initiative than the President of the United States?

The fact that a substantial proportion of Americans believe that Obama is a “secret Muslim” is reminiscent of John F. Kennedy’s comments regarding the freedom of religion in the United States when he was campaigning in 1960. President Kennedy stated that there are far more critical issues facing the country and that “they are not religious issues, for war, hunger, ignorance, and despair know no religious barrier.” Obama has emphatically and publicly stated that he is a Christian, but honestly, it should not matter at all, nor is it any business of the American people. In the words of President Kennedy:

...It has become necessary for me to state once again, not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me, but what kind of America I believe in. I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute…and where no man is denied political office because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him…today I may be the victim, but tomorrow, it may be you, until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped apart...

The American public is infected with an epidemic of fear, arising from ignorance and the lack of interest in at least attempting to understand different cultures and religions. For those Americans who cannot appreciate the freedom of religion and are seemingly incapable of tolerance, what is it about this country that you just don’t get?

Why Building the Mosque is Important

"Try to learn instead of burn, hear what I say." ~Jimi Hendrix

The "war on terror" has been compared to the Cold War, and while I think historical comparisons can obscure important nuances, the comparison makes sense in at least two ways. First, invading a country and imposing a government on it is going to be seen as imperialist, even if it's well-intentioned. And second, both wars are fundamentally wars of ideas.

Al-Qaeda's idea is obvious: Western liberal democracy is incompatible with Islam and must be fought. Looking at our history, our idea is also obvious: Islam and liberal democracy are compatible.

There are those who would cede the first point to al-Qaeda, who believe that our idea should be, 'Yes, democracy and Islam are incompatible, but it is Islam that must be fought.' But a war of ideas can not be won by force; it can only be won by persuasion. And the more we act like we are at war with Islam, the more Muslims will be at war with us.

A war on Islam is not a war that we can win, nor should it be a war that we want to fight. No, we win the war on terror by encouraging moderate Muslims to say and say it loudly, "Al-Qaeda, you are wrong. We do not need to fight democracy but to foster it. We reject your ideas, and you are not the true face of Islam." But if we continue to lump in our moderate friends with our extremist enemies, we undermine our allies and we lose the war.

Ground Zero Mosque

Recently, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the construction of the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque," actually an Islamic community center located not on Ground Zero itself, but two blocks away. Newsweek magazine summarizes the background of the project in its August 8th, 2010 feature article by Lisa Miller, with an excerpt below:

Locally, the fight over the mosque has been more than ugly. Its founders—a well-known interfaith activist and spiritual leader named Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf; his wife, Daisy Khan; and a downtown Manhattan real-estate developer named Sharif El-Gamal—originally called their project Cordoba House, after the medieval town in Spain where a Muslim caliphate fostered one of the most vibrant periods of interfaith flourishing in history. But critics seized on the name as a signal that Rauf and the others had Islamic hegemony in mind, and the founders changed the name to the generic Park51 (based on the site’s street address)...

Park51 was born several years ago, the vision of Rauf, Khan, and El-Gamal. In 1997 Rauf and Khan founded the American Society for Muslim Advancement, an organization devoted to interfaith work and promoting the cause of moderate Islam. In addition, Rauf had been the imam, or pastor, of a mosque in Tribeca, just 10 blocks north of the new, controversial site, for nearly 30 years. El-Gamal had his office nearby and prayed there frequently. The mosque, which still exists today, is a tiny storefront wedged between a bar and a French bistro. On Friday afternoons—which for Muslims is like Sunday morning—congregants overflow onto the sidewalk.

Frustrated by the cramped quarters, El-Gamal, an American born to a Polish mother and an Egyptian father, was inspired to improve facilities for Muslims downtown—and, after 9/11, to show his friends and neighbors “a new face of Islam, the voice that is not heard.” He bought the building at 45–51 Park Place two years ago for $5 million, and together with Khan and Feisal sketched out a plan. They would demolish the existing building and put in its place a deluxe, multipurpose center big enough to house a swimming pool, a gym, exhibition space, conference rooms, day care, a senior center, and a 500-seat auditorium. It would accommodate all the downtown workers—lawyers and laborers—who wanted to pray on Fridays; it would have an interfaith board and interfaith programming; and it would present to the world a moderate, peace-loving, diverse, ordinary Islam. As of last week, El-Gamal says, they had gotten all the necessary city approvals to begin construction on Park51, though lawsuits are still pending. The budget for the proposed construction is $100 million, which Khan says they hope to raise mostly through a bond offering.

The site is huge, nearly 100,000 square feet. Standing in front of the building, you cannot see Ground Zero; tall buildings entirely block the view. Khan says they chose it because it was big enough and it had the right zoning. Moreover, it was symbolically advantageous. “We want to provide a counter momentum against extremism,” says Khan, who spoke to me in her office. (Her husband was out of town.) “We want peace, and we want it where it matters most. This is where it matters most.”

However, responses to the project have been severe. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert weigh in on some of these reactions below:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 16 August 2010:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Mosque-Erade
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

The Colbert Report, 16 August 2010:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Growing Intelligence Community - Richard Clarke
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

Finally, President Barack Obama stepped up and directly addressed the issue, stating his emphatic support of religious freedom and tolerance for all beliefs.


To borrow a phrase from Stephen Colbert, Obama nailed it. If there is anything that the United States should have learned in the past decade, it is that straying from the fundamental principles outlined in the Bill of Rights and the subsequent abuse of these principles has caused more harm than good to American interests. If the United States really wants to improve relations in the Muslim world, demonstrating tolerance of Islam and all religious beliefs has to start at home. Furthermore, the problems in any faith lie at the extremes. It would behoove the American public to recognize this and work to support and encourage moderates who are interested in interfaith work in order to diminish the influence that these extremists can have on a population.

Tolerating this (and other) Islamic Center(s) is not something "extra" that Americans have to do - it is part of what comes with living in a country that draws strength from its diversity, even if the American people need occasional reminders of this. In the words of the late American author Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "The purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved," (Sirens of Titan).

Reactions and Overreactions to Fort Hood

"[T]he more devout a Muslim is, the more of a threat he is to national security."

~Bryan Fischer, American Family Association

"Our diversity, not only in our Army but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse."

~Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., Army Chief of Staff

On November 5, Nidal Hasan walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood and opened fire, killing 13 and wounding dozens more. Hasan was a major, an Army psychiatrist, and yes, a Muslim.

On November 6, Bryan Fischer, the "Director of Issues Analysis" at the American Family Association, posted on an AFA blog his idea to prevent future Fort Hoods: Forbid Muslims from serving in the U.S. military. Some excerpts:

Devout Muslims, who accept the teachings of the Prophet as divinely inspired, believe it is their duty to kill infidels...

Of course, most U.S. Muslims don't shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine. As soon as Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates, we'll go back to allowing them to serve...

This is not Islamophobia, it is Islamo-realism...

While Christianity is a religion of peace, ...Islam is a religion of war and violence, founded by a man who routinely chopped the heads off his enemies, had sex with nine-year old [sic] girls, and made his wealth plundering merchant caravans.

(To give AFA some credit, there is another blog post--rated higher by AFA's readers--that argues that expelling Muslims would be un-Christian.)

"Islamo-realism," eh? This realism tells you that because one person--with their own, personal, psychological issues--goes on a rampage, we should draw conclusions about an entire group of people? There are over 3500 Muslims in the military: we should expel them based on one incident? This is not "Islamo-realism," this is bigotry, pure and simple.

We should, if anything, be encouraging more Muslims to join the military: Linguistic and cultural knowledge would be useful in a counterinsurgency campaign. The Army can effectively "break down barriers [between] different ethnic groups." (The complaint that, as AFA's Fischer says, "[t]he military is not about social engineering" has been debunked here before.) Efforts to enforce current anti-discrimination standards should be redoubled, both to catalyze the barrier breakdown and to prevent an anti-Muslim backlash.

Diversity and tolerance are fundamentally American and are part of what makes us strong. Those who would discard these values so easily would be--and this is an analogy the AFA should appreciate--Delilahs brandishing scissors at Samson's hair.

Last word.

Busta Rhymes Busts His Brain

Busta Rhymes bust a few too many this time with his video "Arab Money." While BET has been playing the video, Busta Rhymes pulled it from play after controversy surrounding it.

The video is here:


Muslims and Arabs in the USA and the UK called for the video to be pulled due to the song's wrong (and racist) characterization of the Middle East, Arab culture, and using Islamic verses from the Quoran in a derogatory manner.

So, Dubai-based rapper The Narcicyst put out a song, "Real Arab Money," in reply to Busta Rhymes' video.

Check it out here:


Although this article reports that after Narcicyst released his song, Busta Rhymes contacted him apologizing for the video and stating that he would take the necessary steps to correct the action.

As Billy Johnson, Jr. of Hip-Hop Media Training writes,

So what prompted the re-release?

Has Busta done enough damage control and effectively communicated to the Arab and Muslim communities the message that there was no disrespect intended with the track and has since received their blessing to fully distribute the video?

Did Busta just let the controversy calm enough so that he could take full advantage of an otherwise great, graphics-enhanced video with arguably more A-list cameos than any other video of the past year? Are the multiple remixes with Diddy, Bow Wow, Jim Jones, Juelz Santana, Akon, T-Pan, Swizz Beatz, Ron Browz, Lil' Wayne, etc. too good to toss, controversy or not?

Or has Busta just received enough support from fans who understand that he meant no ill will and was merely doing the ultimate hip-hop metaphor, bragging and boasting about experiencing all things lavish?

While I agree with Narcicyst about Busta's video, I guess it's nice that at least some segment of the American culture is for some portion of the Middle East, calling it "cool" and glorifying it, however terribly it's being done.

But that just leads us to what is "Cool"...

"The Cool" from Lupe Fiasco's album...

"The Cool is the physical manifestation of History's debt to humanity. Payback for every user abused and every family torn apart by History, The Cool walks amongst the living as a zombie. “He” – that term used lightly, considering The Cool isn't human – reeks of death, an ironic contrast to his polished three-piece-suit appearance. Searching for his purpose, The Cool haunts The Streets."

Obama Has Incredible Sunday

First, as J-Mad mentioned in passing, Barack Obama raised an astonishing $150 million in September. Astonishing because it broke the previous monthly fundraising record of $66 million, which Obama himself set in August.

Second, Obama received an endorsement from probably the most respected member of the Bush Administration, former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell is the highest-ranked Republican to endorse Obama, counterbalancing Joe Lieberman's support for John McCain nicely. The endorsement is notable not only for obvious reasons but also for his declaration that Republicans' condemnation of Obama as Muslim is shameful both because it is a lie and because 'Muslim!' should not be a tacit insult. Watch it:

The picture to which Powell referred.

Bajoobahead #1: Chester Bartels

Chester Bartels writes to the Grand Rapids Press:

Why has the press crowned Obama? [I mean so what if he has more delegates/votes than Hillary and has generally acted more ethically than she has?]

He is the most liberal senator, by record, and he has avoided voting on any issue of substance by voting here or not being present at all. What has he done? What has he proposed other than raising taxes and redistributing wealth (pure socialism)?

He is a hollow shell with no substance. Yet the media are largely behind him. Why? Do the media, too, find nothing to be proud of in the United States? [I am nothing but a patriot. I always wear a flag pin, even when I'm not wearing a lapel.] Do they want to ruin "the rich" so government can be the chief if not the only employer?

Do they want to stop an unfavorable war only to let the fundamentalist Islamic cults rule the Middle East? It would seem that a man with the given name of Barack Hussein Obama would have to be scrutinized a bit before we would want him to be a senator, let alone a president! [You can tell a lot about people by their middle name. For instance, my middle name is Hitler, and I'm a secret Nazi. That's why I didn't include my name because I'm hiding something.] Never forget that it was capitalism that won World Wars I and II, not socialism. [But do forget that capitalism also lost World Wars I and II and that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was on the winning side of WWII. And don't consider Marx's complaint that capitalism leads to the objectification of the working class because that will only lead you to conclude that Hitler's Germany was the apotheosis of capitalism.] The opportunity for profit is what drives men to succeed, not the opportunity to be given someone's else's hard-earned dollars.

If the Democrats win the Congress and the presidency, increase taxes as they have promised, institute national insurance as they plan to do, and increase government size and influence, then we can forget freedom as we know it. [I'm talking real freedom here, not the due process and the Geneva Conventions that only the socialist Democrats care about.] Thinking citizens must keep these socialists out of office. Let's find out a lot more about Obama before we even consider him as fit to rule this country[, but not before we write a letter to the editor filled with no new information and conclusions that aren't supported by non-trivial facts].

This post was written in Sarcastic Trebuchet font. This post was intended to mock Chester Bartels' letter to the editor and to expose certain beliefs/conclusions as baseless or illogical. Any feelings of pique caused by this post are purely coincidental.

Were You Aware?

Radical Islam Awareness Week was last week. Apparently it comes earlier every year. In an opinion piece in the Michigan Daily, the "Young Americans for Freedom" write:

National Islam Awareness Week is a way to educate students about the genocidal agendas of the global jihadists and the fact that these radical ideas are far more mainstream in the Muslim world today than most Americans are willing to believe. It is also to remind students not to forget about Sept. 11, to remember what our troops are fighting for: Our freedom, the same freedom that allows you to learn at this university without the fear of attack because of who you are.

Our group, the Young Americans for Freedom, is expecting and has had protests against our views. However, we are familiar with the way the Left wages its political wars on conservative students. If someone happens to disagree with its position on racial issues - if one believes, for example, that government-enforced racial preferences are misguided or immoral - the Left will denounce that person as a "racist." The Left's only logic is emotional, and the character of that emotion is hatred - hatred for those who want to raise awareness of the threats we face from radical Islam. This hatred has only one purpose: to silence those who oppose the jihad.

We see members of our generation ready to put their lives on the line to defend our freedoms. We know that this war is being waged at home as well, and we will not let our brothers and sisters in uniform shoulder the burden alone.

First of all, nobody has forgotten September 11 and nobody ever will. People will remember where they were when they first found out about the attacks, much like the MLK or JFK assassinations or Pearl Harbor. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: What people did forget was the shock and the fear that was so easily taken advantage of in order to begin an unnecessary war and expand the reach of the Executive Branch. But apparently trying to ignore any feelings of terror to ponder reasonable solutions to the problem is "emotional logic," and opposing Bush's decisions to invade Iraq and to erode our civil liberties is supporting jihad.

And I'm sorry if the remarks David Horowitz made while visiting Michigan struck me as racist. His insistence that "the Muslim Students' Association is not an ethnic group. It is not a religious group. It is not a cultural group. It is a political organization created by the Muslim brotherhood," and use of the word 'Islamofascism' paints all Muslims as, if not bona fide terrorists, part of a community that unanimously and passionately hates the United States and all things Western. Don't believe that 'Islamofascism' is offensive to Muslims? What if I call Hitler, Mussolini and Franco 'Christo-fascists'? "But they weren't real Christians," you might say. The same argument can be made for Muslims, who, despite what Horowitz thinks, do not universally hate the U.S. This line of thought is particularly damning because victory over the terrorists ultimately depends on supporting moderate Muslims, to which the Sunni Awakening Councils' practical removal of al-Qaeda in Iraq can attest.

The letter to the editor from Aaron Bailey, an Afghanistan veteran and B-school student, which appeared in Monday's Daily, is so good that I have to share it with you in its entirety:

I read Wednesday's viewpoint by the University's chapter of Young Americans for Freedom with both surprise and disgust (The war at home, 04/09/2008). The one clear idea that resonated throughout the viewpoint was YAF's gung-ho, pro-war, chicken-hawk agenda and its contempt for the soldiers who are actually fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While YAF used the typical neo-conservative tactics of mentioning the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (which our own government has determined had no links to Iraq), discussing the suppression of minority rights (although the Bush administration continues to support the Saudi Royal Family's despotic regime) and continually using words like "freedom" to describe its agenda, this group did not speak for me as a veteran.

War, unfortunately, is a complex and occasionally necessary way to confront the greed, corruption and evil in our world. But chastising an entire region by calling mainstream Middle Easterners "jihadists," many of whom I served with, only serves to unnecessarily enflame the disaffected population I worked to assist. If YAF really wants to help our country, I encourage its members to visit www.goarmy.com and join the "brothers and sisters" the group claims to support. In lieu of that, perhaps YAF will advocate deploying troops with proper equipment, a clear mission and veteran's benefits when they return from war, something the group's fellow neo-cons forgot.

Make no mistake, the people who attacked us were, and still are, in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. But for reasons unclear to me, my commander-in-chief has decided to ignore these threats. YAF's members continue to cover for our incompetent leaders, who place America's military at risk to further their own self-interests, all the while advocating others to fight and die in their places.

Also: Were you aware that "[i]f the President were the longest recorded flight by chicken, he would be thirteen seconds?" (Stewart 36)