I just had a great phone interview with Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, the transcript of which will be published in the Dallas Morning News this weekend. At one point, I brought up David Brooks' column today, especially this point of Brooks's:
A shroud of political correctness settled over the conversation. Hasan was portrayed as a victim of society, a poor soul who was pushed over the edge by prejudice and unhappiness.There was a national rush to therapy. Hasan was a loner who had trouble finding a wife and socializing with his neighbors.
This response was understandable. It's important to tamp down vengeful hatreds in moments of passion. But it was also patronizing. Public commentators assumed the air of kindergarten teachers who had to protect their children from thinking certain impermissible and intolerant thoughts. If public commentary wasn't carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage.
Worse, it absolved Hasan -- before the real evidence was in -- of his responsibility. He didn't have the choice to be lonely or unhappy. But he did have a choice over what story to build out of those circumstances. And evidence is now mounting to suggest he chose the extremist War on Islam narrative that so often leads to murderous results.
The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality.
Dr. Jasser says this is absolutely correct, and that by refusing to discuss the role of religion in this act, the U.S. media and elite opinion makers are not doing American Muslims any favors. The only way the U.S. Muslim community is ever going to be forced to deal with the radicals within their own communities -- and in their pulpits -- is through outside pressure. He told a story about an imam at a Phoenix mosque who, during a sermon, held up a provocative propaganda picture from the Iraq war, which featured an Iraqi woman holding up a sign claiming that a U.S. soldier standing next to her impregnated her. Dr. Jasser said the image was probably Photoshopped in the first place, but the more important thing is how provocative it was. He told me he confronted the imam afterwards, and chastised the cleric for poisoning the minds of people in his congregation. Dr. Jasser said there must have been 500 people in that congregation, but to his knowledge, he was the only one who spoke up. He added that everyone he talked to from the congregation subsequently objected to what the imam had done -- but they had remained silent.
This can't continue, Dr. Jasser said, because the American people aren't stupid. He said it's really true that American Muslims, as a whole, don't sign on to the anti-American Islamism of the Muslim-American leadership class (e.g., CAIR, ISNA and other wolves in sheep's clothing). But if things like the Hasan massacre keeps happening, and there's no real attempt by Muslims to confront Islamism in America, Americans are going to quit giving their Muslim countrymen the benefit of the doubt.
We in the news media who keep ignoring the inconvenient truths about this story are in harming the long-term interests not only of America, but of American Muslims. Along those lines, a reader makes a good point here:
Another thing that is aggravating, at least to me, is how the media is piling on the Army for not rooting this guy out earlier. I'll agree that in looking at what the army knew it doesn't look good, at least in hindsight. However, as a reader of Nassim Taleb's books, I'm sure you'd agree that things always look obvious in hindsight as we can pick the details that fit with the outcome that happened and build a story out of them.Like I said, maybe they should have been able to figure it out.
However, here's the aggravating part. If they had kicked this guy out of the army, started watching him, charged him with subversion, or whatever before anything happened, can you imagine what the story would have been like then?Of course I'm just guessing, but I bet it would have been framed as "Here's this upstanding Muslim citizen volunteering to serve his country who is being picked on by the very people he serves. All he's doing is exercising the free speech rights we all hold so dear, and his opinion is as valid as the next guy's, maybe moreso..."
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I do have one direct response:
Moderate Muslims indeed face hardships in this country. They are unfairly tarred with a broad brush by many people. But how does that keep them from standing up to the radicals in their midst and saying "enough is enough"? How does that keep them from acting on the principles they say they have and either firing the radical Imams or leaving these mosques altogether and doing as the AME founders did some two centuries ago?
There is a catch-22 inherent in that. Faced with an oppressive atmosphere, a group (and individuals within it) will overlook even some egregious things when their only viable alternative is being even more vulnerable as a result. Jews in Europe faced that, those who voluntarily converted to Christianity being an example, as were those who stuck to their "ghettos" rather than try to find a safer home. There was a complementary example there, as well, one from my own family history: Italian peasants daily risked their lives to hide, feed and house Jews. Not one of them took up arms against their fascist governors.
We can judge the actions of our fellows. I don't hold to the "judge not" admonition, not as it was stated originally anyway. ;-) Our judgment, though, must be tempered by awareness of and acknowledgment of the constraints under which people find themselves.
Moderate Muslims indeed face hardships in this country. They are unfairly tarred with a broad brush by many people. But how does that keep them from standing up to the radicals in their midst and saying "enough is enough"?
hlvanburen,
If non-Muslim Americans don't notice things like this, then who is to blame?
Center for Islamic Pluralism
Founded in Washington, DC in 2004, the Center for Islamic Pluralism (CIP) is a think tank that challenges the dominance of American Muslim life by militant Islamist groups. Specifically, our mission is to:
* Foster, develop, defend, protect, and further mobilize moderate American Muslims in their progress toward integration as an equal and respected religious community in the American interfaith environment;
* Define the future of Islam in America as a community opposed to the politicization of our religion, its radicalization, and its marginalization, which has taken place because of the imposition on Muslims of attitudes opposed to American values, traditions, and policies;
* Educate the broader American public about the reality of moderate Islam and the threat to moderate Muslims and non-Muslim Americans represented by militant, political, radical, and adversarial tendencies.
Excellent, R Hampton. Thank you for posting this link.
My earlier question remains. Has anyone found ANY reference to a Muslim cleric in the US being fired from a mosque because of his extremist rhetoric? I can find clerics who have been arrested, deported, and in a couple of places killed during raids here in the US. But at least so far no instances of a mosque handing a radical cleric his walking papers.
Has anyone else heard of or seen record of such?
R Hampton, that indeed is an interesting site you offer up. Might I suggest that you look at some of the articles it links to. For example:
http://www.islamicpluralism.org/articles/
From that page is an article entitled "The Right Way to Lock Up Aliens" written by Stephen Schwartz of the Weekly Standard (who seems to be a regular feature on this website, by the way).
www.islamicpluralism.org/1291/the-right-way-to-lock-up-aliens
The article is written in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Here is an interesting passage that has relevance to what we have been talking about. For example, consider this passage at the end of the article.
---
The Wartime Violation of Italian-American Civil Liberties Act also directed the attorney general "to review wartime restrictions on Italian Americans to determine how civil liberties can be better protected during national emergencies"--a request that turned out to be more timely than its sponsors could ever have imagined. The conclusions of this review, adopted as findings of Congress and released in the form of an executive summary in mid-November (the full report has yet to be released to the public), shed little light on this challenging directive, however. History's bottom line, as identified by Congress: "The freedom of 600,000 Italian-born immigrants in the United States and their families was restricted during World War II by Government measures that branded them 'enemy aliens' and included carrying identification cards, travel restrictions, and seizure of personal property."
BUT WAS THIS the wrong thing to do? After all, what American's freedom was not restricted during World War II? A draft was instituted, and evaders of it were imprisoned; consumer goods were rationed; wages, prices, rents, and other transactions were controlled; the right of labor to strike was abrogated; travel was limited and ordinary people were regularly stopped and interrogated; whole chunks of the economy were requisitioned for military use. Wars are by definition unfair and uncomfortable. Loyalty tests may be especially uncomfortable to some, but should not trouble those whose loyalties are clear.
The official investigation of Italian-American victimization has produced at least one ridiculously exaggerated conclusion: We are told that "the impact of the wartime experience was devastating to Italian-American communities in the United States, and its effects are still being felt." But the document also exposes the extent to which those who drummed up this folderol made exaggerated and ambiguous claims. It turns out that when Italian aliens were "taken into custody," many were merely directed to report to the office of the U.S. attorney for questioning, and were not actually detained. The Justice Department today seems wisely to be following this same course with Arab aliens in Michigan.
Further, the charge that Italian-American fishermen were unfairly prohibited from fishing in prohibited zones falls flat. Venturing into restricted waters was forbidden to all vessels of every kind, whether commercial or pleasure boats, without regard for their owners' citizenship. Allegations that Italian-American fishing boats were confiscated also turn out to be a hoax. Boats were requisitioned by the federal authorities through charter or purchase, and the only craft that were confiscated belonged to owners who had repeatedly made incursions into prohibited waters.
The lesson to be learned from this legislative folly is that in the realm of civil liberties, our government is seldom deliberately malicious, even when sorely tried, and has usually acted practically and sensibly. Quite a few of us already knew that, and more are learning it every day.
---
Clearly the author (and I presume, the Center) is endorsing a regime that seems to coincide with some of the more extreme voices who have been posting since the tragedy of last week. This article seems to be an endorsement of exactly the same kind of activity that you (and others) have been condemning here.
And then there is the following, again from Stephen Schwartz, this time in an article entitled "The Growing Crisis of American Islam" (http://www.islamicpluralism.org/1137/the-growing-crisis-of-american-islam), which was published in April of 2004.
"As I have written and otherwise argued so often since September 11, 2001, it is up to Muslims -- especially Muslims in America -- to demonstrate that Islam is a religion of peace, of support for democracy, and of loyalty to legitimate authorities, non-Muslim as well as Muslim. Now is the moment for American Muslims to form new organizations, independent of the "Wahhabi lobby," and actively committed to these principles. Indeed, time is running out for American Muslims, whether born to or new to the faith, to free themselves of the suspicion of terrorist sympathies."
How is that any different, R Hampton, than what I and others have been calling for here? It is up to moderate Muslims here to DEMONSTRATE, by their actions, that they are independent of the extremists.
Thank you for posting this site.
"I must ask: Are you considering the other factors that are involved? Besides the lack of choice point AB makes, and with which I agree, I get an all-or-nothing impression from you. There must be other, important values and benefits the members of that mosque are getting from that imam. At some point is the begged question: How much must they give up, sacrifice, in order to satisfy an external view of them in the present context?"
Franklin, as I have asked a couple of times. Show me one...just one...Muslim cleric who was dismissed from his position in an American mosque because of radical statements such as happened in Phoenix. Show me one congregation who stood up and said to their radical cleric, "Thank you, but we no longer need your services."
I would accept that as sufficient evidence that the moderate American Muslim community is acting in accordance with what they are telling us in their press releases and conferences.
Just one, Franklin.
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