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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Why such an incredible fear of the Brotherhood?
Egyptians will never let them take over.
Yeah and the Palestinians would never elect Hamas to take over the territory, right?
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Muslim leaders nervous about congressional hearing
Politico
© January 19, 2011
By Ben Smith and Bryon Tau
WASHINGTON
American Muslim leaders, who have struggled to present a clear public voice or organize politically in the decade since Sept. 11, are increasingly apprehensive about the direction U.S. Rep. Pete King will take when he convenes hearings next month on the threat posed by radical Islam in America.
King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, plans to focus on the Times Square bombing attempt and the Fort Hood shooting, both involving American-born Muslims, as well as other incidents and on what he sees as the failure of Muslim leadership to combat extremism.
King has been critical of the Obama administration for failing to take the threat of domestic terrorism seriously and has been sparring with Muslim leaders since soon after Sept. 11 for not taking their own steps to combat it.
“The leadership of the community is not geared to cooperation,” King told POLITICO.
His upcoming hearings have caused deep concern and consternation among various Arab and Muslim advocacy groups across the country that fear King’s witness list will help define, for the purposes of the American public conversation, which Muslim leaders are legitimate and which should be regarded as extremists.
“You can definitely say overall the hearings are seen with great apprehension, suspicion and distaste — sometimes sorrow,” said Khaled Abou El Fadl, an expert on Islam and Islamic law at the University of California, Los Angeles. “These hearings have a history of stigmatizing whole groups of people.”
King insists that the goal of his hearings is not to stigmatize Muslims but to confront the threat of homegrown terrorism and to explore the role of Muslim leaders in dealing with it.
“This isn’t a question of scoring points,” said King. “It’s the fact that there’s a real threat coming from this attempted radicalization of the community and it’s, in many ways, coming from overseas.”
In a move that will come as a relief to Muslim leaders, King told POLITICO that he’s not planning to call as witnesses such Muslim community critics as the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s Steve Emerson and Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer, who have large followings among conservatives but are viewed as antagonists by many Muslims.
King aims, he said, to call retired law enforcement officials and people with “the real life experience of coming from the Muslim community.” Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim to serve in the House and a critic of the hearings, will likely be a minority witness, according to both King and the Minnesota Democrat.
The focus, King said, will be on — among other topics — reported complaints from Somali Muslims that the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other groups discouraged them from talking to the authorities about young men who left to fight for the Islamist cause in Somalia and on cases like that of the imam who — while ostensibly cooperating with the FBI — allegedly tipped off a would-be subway bomber off as investigators closed in.
Muslim leaders respond that American Muslims have been key to an array of terror investigations, beginning with the Muslim street vendor who first noticed the smoking car in Times Square.
“I hope my colleague from New York .... does not make the mistake of trying to paint all Muslims with a broad, extremist brush,” Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.), the other Muslim in Congress, said in an e-mail to POLITICO. “Because for one, that’s not an accurate depiction of the millions of peace-loving Muslims, and two, our national security depends on us forging strong partnerships with people across the Muslim world.”
Possible witnesses, according to King, include Dutch critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali and M. Zuhdi Jasser, president and founder of Arizona-based American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Jasser is a sharp critic of leading American Muslim groups, whose agenda he calls “Islamist.”
“We have to admit as Muslims that we need a 12-step program,” Jasser told POLITICO. “The first step is acceptance.”
“If they don’t see us leading a charge for reform, they’re going to see us as part of the problem,” he said.
Jasser is a rare Muslim voice welcoming the hearings. Other community leaders who spoke to POLITICO are afraid that their fragmented community is not ready for this fight.
“This could be a very damaging hearing. It really could be something that spreads a lot of vitriol and poison, and I’m worried about it, and I don’t understand why the community has decided to allow itself to be so unorganized,” said Hussein Ibish, former communications director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee who is now a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine.
“Nearly all Muslim organizations need ... new political leadership, simply because most of the leadership continues to be from the immigrant community. English continues to be not their first language, and their primary education was obtained elsewhere, before they came to the United States,” said Fadl. “Eventually, they’ll learn.”
One group that is ready to debate the likes of King and Jasser on cable — CAIR — has not been invited to testify.
“If I saw the hearings were sober and objective, I’d have no concerns,” said Corey Saylor, CAIR’s legislative director. “But King is opting for a political circus approach.”
The group, which has roots in the Hamas-allied Islamic Association for Palestine in the 1980s, was named as an unindicted cohort in the federal prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development for allegedly conspiring to aid Hamas.
And though it fiercely denies any affinity to radicalism — and while the latter designation was formally lifted last year — those two facts have put it largely beyond the political pale.
“No one in Washington will deal with CAIR except the [American Civil Liberties Union] — which deals with everyone,” lamented a prominent official at one putatively allied group, adding that the group’s past makes it “radioactive.”
Saylor dismissed the alleged Hamas link as a “smear,” as well as the claim that community leaders don’t encourage cooperation with the authorities.
“We consistently advise constitutionally informed cooperation with law enforcement. That is pretty standard for a civil rights group,” he said in an e-mail.
But between CAIR on one end and Jasser and Hirsi Ali on the other is a wide abyss in terms of organized political activity — despite the efforts of half of a dozen small groups.
Organizations like the Islamic Society of North America represent, in theory, hundreds of thousands of American Muslims. But many of those Muslims have little interest in political activity and little ability to project themselves on the political stage. Officials of the society declined to comment on the King hearings.
And the community remains defined as much by sectarian, ethnic and political divisions between groups as by what they have in common.
The community’s most prominent figure at the moment, Ground Zero mosque planner Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is the representative of the minority Sufi sect whose ties to interfaith leaders are stronger than those to his fellow Muslims.
The disorganization is, at the moment, the subject of broad hand-wringing across the Muslim political leadership.
“There’s a lot of flailing around,” said Suhail Khan, former Bush administration official and senior fellow for Christian-Muslim Understanding at the Institute for Global Engagement, describing the Muslim community’s response to the Ground Zero mosque and other recent controversies, like a Florida pastor’s vow to burn a Quran.
Some blame critics of Islam for stigmatizing the community. “You’re dealing with an emerging community that’s still trying to find its political voice,” said Ellison. “There’s not that many new American communities [that] have an organized opposition out to thwart them.”
Others blame CAIR.
“They’ve looked like they’re not as strongly behind counter-terrorism polices that needed to happen,” said Mohamed Elibiary, Department of Homeland Security consultant and Dallas-based community activist.
“That makes them a very easy target,” said Elibiary. “We ought to have some kind of national representative body that then can represent us collectively, as opposed to today.”
“We haven’t matured,” said Elibiary. “The Jewish community didn’t get there until the 50s.”
There has been talk, two officials of Muslim organizations said, of setting up a politically palatable rival to CAIR, though that plan hasn’t been fully realized.
In the meantime, the response will likely be led by a group that many on Capitol Hill choose to ignore — the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
“If we think that it’s political theater, we’re also willing to address this in a very public way. We’ve got a list ready of various law enforcement agents from the local to the federal level who have talked about the work that Muslim Americans have done,” said Haris Tarin, director of the group’s Washington office.
King, for his part, insists the goal of the hearings, which are scheduled for late February, is not to paint an an entire community with a broad brush. “The overwhelming majority of Muslims,” he said, “are outstanding Americans.”
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monolith
climber
Berkeley, CA
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Bluering, 80 million Egyptians used to relative freedom and prosperity would never go for Sharia Law.
Trying to compare a small region locked in, isolated, and embargoed by Israel and ripe for control by Hamas to Egypt is not very bright of you.
Smarten up Bluey.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Trying to compare a small region locked in, isolated, and embargoed by Israel and ripe for control by Hamas to Egypt is not very bright of you.
Have you forgotten that Egypt was literally/geographically the other end of that embargo? Not a friend of Hamas, Mubarak was, young padawan.
Or is that your point? That Egypt was thrown under the bus (like so many in this admin.) to offer a 'relief valve' to Hamas and weapons into Gaza?
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corniss chopper
climber
not my real name
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Wonder what Sun Tzu would have done in Cairo?
Let your plans be dark and as impenetratable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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These camel guys are bad-asses.
I gotta get a camel.
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ahad aham
Trad climber
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but of course fatrad;
"It might seem surprising that Mubarak was so willing to defy the Obama administration’s clear hint that he sould quickly transition out of power. In fact, Mubarak’s slap in the face of President Obama will not be punished and it is nothing new. It shows again American toothlessness and weakness in the Middle East, and will encourage the enemies of the US to treat it with similar disdain."
http://www.juancole.com/2011/02/mubarak-defies-a-humiliated-america-emulating-netanyahu.html
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ahad aham
Trad climber
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mccain is just more of the same, even worse if thats possible
i strongly recommend all read coles piece inked 2 posts above
thank you
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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That's how everyone in Cairo drives.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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It might seem surprising that Mubarak was so willing to defy the Obama administration’s clear hint that he sould quickly transition out of power.
The hint wasn't to Mubarak. It was to the Egyptian and Arab publics, especially whoever forms the new government. The US doesn't care much any more what happens to Mubarak, as long as there is a reasonably orderly transition to a reasonably stable and somewhat better government that the US can live with. The US has concluded that there's not much point to backing a loser, and that in terms of future credibility, you don't want to be seen as doing so.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Did you know that the same day the riots were instigated, the entire Egpytian military command was in Washington at the State Dept's request for meetings?
Did you know tha El Baradei sits on the board of the Int'l Crisis Group along with Sandy 'burglar' Berger, George Soros, Javier Solana, and Brezhinski (Carter aid during Iran crisis) among others?
I wonder if Soros bet against their currency or went long on oil because he knew what was coming.
This crisis was instigated.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Most likely since Omar Suleiman was appointed V.P. he will take over. Israel will benefit as well as the US. [posted earlier in this post on his past]
Notice that tanks have not taken over and calm within the ranks. Military will agree for Suleiman for succession since they liked him at one point but that will change when he gets in.
Problem will be the that the Egyptian people did not rise up for bread alone, but for freedom, pluralism, dignity, national security and sovereignty is a sign that they will not agree to "President Suleiman" taking office. Apart from anything else, Suleiman has been an integral part of the misery and oppression that they have faced for the past thirty years.
Cannot be the same, things will become worse, the Egyptians need to push for free and fair elections themselves and the international community, including the US and Israel, must abide by their choice even if it includes the Muslim Brotherhood.
Something that Suleiman will have to deal with.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Yeah, Suleiman is not so bad. Could be worse. But then why get rid of Mubarak?
Crowley, would you like to see the MB as a part of the gov't? WHy didn't Obama, Hillary, et al. denounce the Iranian leadership when the people rose up much more peacefully? Why not insist that a much more radical leader, Ahmadinajad, step down immediately??? That's what their doing to Mubarak.
You probably won't answer the question directly though...
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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No comments from anybody on my revelations????
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jstan
climber
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Blue:
Could be we doubt your claim.
Let me ask you. Do you think any country would allow "their entire military command" to be outside the country - ever?
You have to allow for your audience's ability to discriminate.
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monolith
climber
Berkeley, CA
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Yea Bluey, it's a conspiracy. Just like the coverup for our Kenyan president.
How's the hunt for that birth certificate going?
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