Yesterday, U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) did his best to demonstrate that McCarthyism is not dead by making Islamophobia the new version of 1950's Communism. Further, his assertions that American Muslims have not helped law enforcement are just plain wrong.
University of North Carolina Prof. Charles Kurzman's new study recently showed that in over 40 percent of documented U.S. domestic terrorism cases, the largest single source of voluntary tips to law enforcement officials came from the American Muslim community.
Our own research in Los Angeles, Northern Virginia, Boston, and London clearly shows that Muslim communities in the U.S. and the United Kingdom share the mainstream public's interest in keeping their communities safe for their families and providing the most authentic intelligence to law enforcement officials.
Both U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca spoke about the importance of working with Muslim Americans to fight domestic terrorism and radicalization.
To implement the vision articulated by Ellison and Baca, we have an established, tested model developed with the help of law enforcement experts that should be implemented on a nationwide basis to work with the Muslim American community to prevent radicalization and homegrown terrorism.
The premise of our program, dubbed Partnering for Prevention, is based on the need for on-going, substantive dialog and in person meetings between law enforcement counterterrorism officials and members of the American Muslims.
Practically speaking, this means assembling real working groups in major cities with key stakeholders and decision-makers at the table, including the FBI, local police, imams, youth, and women. While such an effort now exists on an ad hoc basis in a handful of cities, there needs to be a nationally funded and coordinated effort to expand and formalize such a program.
Real partnerships balance the interests of all stakeholders. Law enforcement officials need community support in dealing with a wide spectrum of issues -- from radicalization and hate crimes to youth disenfranchisement to community blight. And American Muslim communities should be trained and encourage to serve as the "eyes and ears" of law enforcement to spot suspicious activity in their communities, which they know and understand better than law enforcement can.
Significantly, this also means law enforcement must move past the rhetoric and vitriol that seem to dominate US counterterrorism discourse. Muslim communities must be brought into the fold and treated with respect. And law enforcement must even develop the cultural and linguistic competence to meaningfully work with Muslim communities.
Partnerships are about give and take. In this post-9/11 world, all interested parties must show flexibility to keep us safe. And all parties must also be treated with respect. The rewards for partnerships are self-evident -- we will all be safer when authentic partnerships are in place as a key tool to combating terrorism in the US.
Congressman King, when will you stop the Islamophobic rhetoric and join Rep. Ellison, Sheriff Baca and the rest of us in recognizing that partnerships make America safer for all?
Deborah Ramirez is a professor of law at Northeastern University School of Law and Executive Director of the Research for the Partnering of Community Safety Initiative (PFP). Tara Lai Quinlan is a New York City attorney, and serves as the volunteer Director of Research for the PFP.
James Zogby: King Not Fit to Lead
Frank Fredericks: Islamophobia: The Challenge of Our Generation
Jalees Rehman, M.D.: 'Islamophobia' is Not a Phobia
--Christians blowing up abortion clinics and providers, other Christians declaring the actions un-Christian and denying that any Christian ideology supports such action.
--Muslims killing people in the name of Islam--defensive jihad-- and other Muslims declaring the actions to be un-Islamic, but unable to deny that some Sharia law passages seem to justify such actions.
Is it so surprising that we have hearings into one variety and not the other?
why isn't King worried about other homegrown terrorists?
The militias have plans to create havok and kill.
A simple warning to terrorists and all other criminals in general, STAY OUT OF LA COUNTY, you'll get no support from this community we do not fear our law enforcement we work with them to get criminal terrorists locked up. I am proud to call Lee Baca my Sheriff.
It is the same old crap that Muslims are already used to. Muslim 'apologists'...African Blacks against Arabs, and ranting from politicans, pundits and preachers who simply repeated the rhetoric they have always repeated...only they made it 'official' and 'state sponsered'.
Nothing new, except you can belive that some angry Muslim...who may have lost his loved one in Pakistan...perhaps one or more of those 9 boys who were killed 'accidently' by a drone bomb...is watching the vid now, and in the background...some al Quid'a guy is telling him...you suffer because Americans have declared war on Islam.
Of course...that man will lash out...because he hates freedom, not because he lost a child.
Clearly you aren't paying attention.
My Answer: I am a believing and registered Independent and vociferously espouse the secularism that our country is founded upon and hence cannot condone any particular group being singled out because of prejudice and paranoia – that is inherently un-American. If we’re really honest, it’s not only radicals from Islam who have manipulated religion to further their own nefarious political ends!
Al-Qaida has been the inspiration for many attacks! This includes those on the Twin Towers and by the perpetrator at Fort Hood etc. These attacks cost over 3,000 lives. The Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld axis with their zeal and manipulations (which I regretfully bought into!), attacked a sovereign country that we disagreed with ideologically and morally, but that had NOT attacked us!!! That has cost us 4,439 lives. Iraqi “civilian†deaths are in the thousands! Most do not support a war that served to fill private pockets and achieved little else in constructive terms. Such attacks, wars and killings whether by state or non-state actors are wrong and can never be justified! In both, religious zeal played a significant part – we cloak it better!!!
First he has to get some idea of the reality there:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/20113911948670383.html
Not much at all to be jealous about.
That's why they're so desperate- because both their foriegn AND domestic policies are such huge miserable fraud-based failures.
Since Obama continues trying to validate the failed and fraud-based ideology of conservatives, of course he'll make the same bad decisions George Dubai and friends would.
Where is the radicalization hearing for this Congressman?
I think the author misses the point of the hearings. It was to try to find out why some of the muslim persuasion turn into Islamic Extremists willing to strap bombs on there body, try to set bombs off in time square to commit mass murder etc...
The fact that you point out that muslims are the largest source of tips to law enforcement might indicate that there is a large amount of criminal activity in those muslim communities.
Although, I must ask the author if it is common for people reporting criminal activities to routinely identify which religion they belong to? Where did you get this data?
Of course, you wouldnt be saying that bombing, or murder, or child molesting isnt a crime unless the victim is NOT Muslim, and the offender IS Muslim...would you?
Both King's in Congress are all about fear. Peter and Steve have used the anti-muslim card to stay in office.
http://cpost.uchicago.edu/
In constantly demonizing someone else, attention is diverted from what people should be paying attention to. So as much as I laud the authors for taking the trouble to provide valuable insights that should have been common knowledge anyway, I believe it’s never going to change the minds of those who wish to refrain from meaningful dialogue and concentrate instead on scapegoating the “other!â€