Frankie Martin

(cross-posted from CNN)

Editor’s Note: Frankie Martin is Ibn Khaldun Chair Research Fellow at American University’s School of International Service and is a contributor to the new book Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam.

By Frankie Martin, Special to CNN

As I got off the plane in St. Louis in September 2008, I didn’t realize I was beginning a journey that would change my life.

On that day, I–along with several researchers working with Professor Akbar Ahmed, American University’s Chair of Islamic Studies–began a grueling project aimed at studying America’s Muslim population and its relationship to American identity. Now, nearly two years, 75 cities and 100 mosques later, Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam, will be published by the Brookings Institution Press this month.

In addition to providing unprecedented insight into America’s Muslim community, it also led me to look at my own country, the United States, in a different way.

I had taken Professor Ahmed’s class on improving relations between Islam and the West as an underclassman shortly after the US invaded Iraq in 2003 and had traveled across the Muslim world with him for the book Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization, listening to Muslim voices in countries including Jordan, Pakistan, and India.

On that trip, during which Muslims in eight countries cited “American negative perceptions of Islam” as the greatest threat to the Muslim world, I was ready for anything and eager to learn. After all, I had spent the second half of my life living and traveling widely around the world, from Kenya to China, and studying foreign lands in my international relations courses.

America was a different matter. This, I thought, was a country that I knew. Yet although I lived in the Baltimore suburbs until I was a teenager and went to college in Washington, DC, like many Americans I was familiar with only a few states, and had never experienced entire regions like the South.

Assisting a world-renowned anthropologist on a De Tocqueville-esque quest would change this. Like that earlier foreign traveler, Professor Ahmed saw his endeavor as a tribute to a nation that had welcomed him so warmly in crafting a study which would examine both the strengths of America and the parts that could be strengthened.

Within a few hours on our first day—which took us to Somali refugees in a St. Louis housing project—I realized I was experiencing something unique. Though I’m a Christian, I was seeing the country through Muslim eyes, including those of my professor.

But this was only part of the story. In order to see how Muslims were fitting into America—and what it meant to fit in—we would need to talk to Americans from all backgrounds and religions. Assisting us would be data from the roughly two thousand surveys we distributed in the field as well as countless conversations on our travels.

Over the next long months, we saw the ravages of inner city Detroit and the mansions of Palm Beach, Florida; the serene, impoverished Hopi Indian reservation in Arizona and a Silicon Valley “hackers conference” with scientists talking of settlements on the Moon and Mars. We spoke at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, spent an afternoon with Mennonites in Texas, were welcomed by the Mormon leadership in Salt Lake City, and visited coal miners in the West Virginia wilderness.

The diversity of people and beliefs was striking and inspiring. And, for the first time, I saw the fall colors in New England, the Grand Canyon, and a Hawaiian sunset.

We found the Muslim community to be hospitable and patriotic, as they often said that America was the best place to be a Muslim because of religious freedom. But the community is on edge, divided and facing a leadership crisis—contributing to the “homegrown terrorist” phenomenon—and reeling from post-9/11 hatred and prejudice.

I was shocked to see the challenges American Muslims are facing, from kids beaten up and called terrorists at school to people incarcerated without charge and subjected to inhuman treatment and mosques being firebombed. A Muslim community that feels accepted as true Americans and is encouraged to enter the mainstream will be the best defense against homegrown terrorism.

Witnessing the challenges facing the Muslim community led me to ask a question I never had before: what does it mean to be American? Although we met Americans who had a different idea of the country (one official at a Church of Christ chapter in Austin named “pluralism” as the greatest threat to America and the Founding Fathers as the source of this threat) for me, the team, and my professor, being American means embracing the ideals of the Founding Fathers, which include pluralism, rule of law, and civil liberties.

Today, feelings against Islam are running high, with a prominent radio host recently expressing his hope that the proposed New York mosque near Ground Zero would be blown up. Every week seems to bring a new controversy, from the high emotions of the mosque debate to last month’s discussion about the current Miss USA, a Lebanese immigrant, who was slammed as a Hezbollah agent because her surname was said to be shared by people linked to the organization.

In this environment, I was inspired during countless hours of research into American history to see how clear the Founding Fathers were on the subject of Islam in America. Thomas Jefferson learned Arabic using his Quran and hosted the first presidential iftaar during Ramadan, John Adams named Prophet Muhammad as one of the world’s “sober inquirers after truth” alongside Socrates and Confucius, and Benjamin Franklin, who cited the Prophet as a model of compassion, wrote of his hope that the head cleric of Istanbul would preach Islam to Americans from a Philadelphia pulpit, so passionate was his belief in religious freedom.

Today, America faces a crisis of identity. One focal point at the core of the debate is Islam, which some Americans see as a monolithic threat seeking the takeover of the country. They are fearful and suspicious of the Muslims in their midst. For many of these citizens, being a good American—and, for some, a good Christian—means opposing and fighting Islam.

My journey has led me to conclude the opposite. Being a good American means welcoming Muslims as the Founding Fathers did and following their guidelines on matters of law and security as laid out in the Constitution. As for Christianity, the attitude of the Founding Fathers was shaped by Christian thinkers like John Locke, who declared that the true Christian’s duty was to “practice charity, meekness, and good-will in general towards all mankind, even to those that are not Christians.”

Giving us hope for the future was data from our surveys, which showed that over ninety percent of Americans would vote for a Muslim for public office, and the similarly high percentage of people who are open to Muslims living in and being a part of this nation.

Some, however, inserted “if” clauses, indicating they believed Muslims could be American only if they followed narrowly defined rules, such as ceasing to identify as “Muslim” in favor of an exclusive “American” identity. The Founding Fathers set no such qualifications for “Americanness.”

Discovering America over the past few years has made me appreciate the inclusive vision of the Founding Fathers. Having traveled abroad, I know that their ideals also inspire people around the world, especially in Muslim countries. I can now say I am American with an awareness and pride I never had before.

With all of the challenges facing the country, perhaps the most important thing we can do as Americans is to consider who we really are. For me, being American means assuming and implementing the Founding Fathers’ vision of tolerance and religious freedom. The rediscovery of that vision has reaffirmed my belief in the promise of America.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Frankie Martin.

Shahed Amanullah

By Shahed Amanullah

In the wake of the self-censorship controversy surrounding South Park‘s portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad, artists intent on defending freedom of speech have responded by organizing an event they call Draw Muhammad Day, to take place on May 20. The goal, according to the website hosting the endeavor, is to defend free speech by showing Muslims that artists “don’t back down” when threatened.

But the fact is that millions of Muslim-Americans — many of whom have known about South Park caricatures of Muhammad for years — behaved exactly the way free speech advocates wanted them to: by remaining silent or expressing their feelings peacefully. The handful of thugs at a New York-based site called Revolution Muslim — who, by the way, are unwelcome in every New York mosque for their extremist rantings — were the only exceptions. And now these Muslim-Americans are being subject to mass insult as thanks for their respect of South Park‘s free speech rights.

Let’s think for a moment about what is motivating the people behind Draw Muhammad Day. Is it revulsion at religiously motivated death threats? I don’t think so. Just this week, Congressman Bart Stupak wrote that he had received so many death threats (that’s actual phoned-in threats, not just one passive-aggressive blog post) that he was advised to beef up his security. It’s safe to assume that most of those death threats were fueled by religious fervor, but since the religion in question isn’t Islam, it gets a pass.

Maybe it is to show all Muslims that attacks on free speech won’t be tolerated. But the fact is that over the course of 10 years, millions of Muslims respected the free speech of South Park and didn’t even lodge a polite complaint with Comedy Central. What exactly are we being punished for? Our inability to enforce a zero-tolerance policy and prevent a blogger from hitting the Enter key?

If free speech advocates want to target someone, why not target Comedy Central, who exhibited self-censorship in the face of a mere web post? Or better yet, why not target the Revolution Muslim group, who issued the warnings that brought this whole crisis to bear? (I know plenty of Muslims who would join in this effort.)

In other words, target the people responsible for sullying free speech, not those who respected it.

Imagine for a moment if an African-American blogger complained about an unfair stereotype in a cartoon in the same crass manner as the Revolution Islam folks. Would free speech advocates respond by hosting a contest to draw as many vile stereotypes of blacks as they could? I can’t imagine that anyone would even propose such an idea. So why, then, are millions of Muslim-Americans who said nothing about South Park in the past decade being subject to this mass insult? To prove a point? What point would that be?

To be clear, the folks behind Draw Muhammad Day have every right to organize and participate in such an endeavor without threat of violence or coercion from Muslims (as I have written previously in an op-ed published all over the Muslim world).

But the participants shouldn’t claim any sort of moral high ground in doing so. In fact, unless they are willing to push the same limits of free speech with respect to other minorities, they are nothing but hypocrites that apply collective punishment to a vast majority that did them no harm and wished no ill on South Park, and are letting their thinly-veiled hatred show in the process.

Unfortunately, the right of free speech means that sometimes we have to tolerate hearing things we don’t like. Nearly every Muslim-American (with the exception of the few previously mentioned) has proven that they respect that, and I’m confident that they will continue to do so.

But it doesn’t absolve people from being assholes. And with Draw Muhammad Day, the participating artists are proving themselves to be just that.

Some time ago we published an article entitled “All terrorists are Muslims, except the 94% that aren’t“, in which official FBI records were reviewed and it was determined that–contrary to public perception–only 6% of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil from 1980 to 2005 were committed by jihadists.

We also linked to a study (via CNN) released by Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that concluded that “the terrorist threat posed by radicalized Muslim-Americans has been exaggerated.”

Now, the RAND Corporation–the incredibly influential nonprofit global policy think tank (financed by the U.S. government)–has released a report that confirms that the threat of jihadist terrorism in the United States  has been heavily exaggerated.  The report documents and analyzes acts of terrorism in the U.S. from 9/11 to the end of 2009.

The otherwise helpful report is only slightly marred by the misuse of the word “jihad”, something which has unfortunately been used synonymously with “terrorism”.  Jihad means “struggle”; the spiritual struggle against one’s ego, for instance, is considered by Muslims to be a type of jihad.  As for armed struggle, Muslim Americans view it as the Islamic equivalent of the “just war theory”.  Terrorism then is considered antithetical to jihad and in fact, a jihad is to be waged against terrorism.  In any case, the oversight on the part of RAND seems unintentional and therefore benign. We have ourselves retained the usage of the word “jihadist” in our own analysis, making a distinction between “jihad” and “jihadist”–using the latter in a purely pejorative manner.

The RAND report includes a time line of all acts of terrorism on U.S. soil committed by jihadists.  Not a single U.S. civilian has been killed by jihadists since 9/11.  However, fourteen soldiers have been killed, thirteen of those during the Fort Hood Shooting.

Not only were no civilians killed by jihadists in this period, but only three jihadist acts of terrorism were committed. Jihadism thus accounted for only 3.6% of terrorist attacks.  The RAND report states:

[Of the] 83 terrorist attacks in the United States between 9/11 and the end of 2009, only three…were clearly connected with the jihadist cause.  (The RAND database includes Abdulmutallab’s failed Christmas Day attempt to detonate a bomb on an airplane.) The other jihadist plots were interrupted by authorities.

Fifty of the 83 terrorist attacks were committed by environmental extremists and animal rights fanatics, “which account for most of the violence.”  Five civilians were killed by the anthrax letters.

The RAND report includes a number of other interesting findings:

(1) The number of jihadist recruits is “tiny”, and the overwhelming majority of Muslim Americans oppose jihadist ideologies.  Therefore, a mistrust of Muslim Americans is unfounded.  The Muslim American community is not a fifth column, and does not seek to do harm to their fellow Americans.  Rather, jihadists remain “lone gunmen” and commit “one-off attacks”, with no community support.  The report reads:

…The number of [Jihadist] recruits is still tiny. There are more than 3 million Muslims in the United States, and few more than 100 have joined jihad—about one out of every 30,000—suggesting an American Muslim population that remains hostile to jihadist ideology and its exhortations to violence. A mistrust of American Muslims by other Americans seems misplaced…

The homegrown jihadist threat in America today consists of tiny conspiracies, lone gunmen, and one-off attacks…

There is no evidence that America’s Muslim community is becoming more radical. Overt expressions of Muslim militancy are muted and rare…

That [overseas] jihadist leaders have been reduced to appeals for others to carry out even small-scale attacks in the United States is evidence of an operational decline that America’s homegrown terrorists will not be able to reverse..

That, then, is the threat America faces at home today: tiny conspiracies, lone gunmen, one-off attacks rather than sustained terrorist campaigns (although a lone gunman killing at random could sustain a campaign, as we saw in the case of the Beltway sniper attacks in 2002).

(2) Jihadist websites, not the mosque, were the main source of radicalization. The report reads:

Many of the jihadist recruits in the United States began their journey on the Internet, where they could readily find resonance and reinforcement of their own discontents and people who would legitimate and direct their anger.

This confirms what is already well known amongst Muslim American circles, namely that mosques in the U.S. are a poor place to search for jihadists.  Mosques and the mainstream Islamic organizations that run them are seen by jihadists to be “sell-outs”, “traitors”, “puppets”, “stooges”, “house slaves”, and “Uncle Toms”.  In turn, mosque management in general shuns jihadists, forcing the latter to “go underground”, usually seeking like-minded people on the internet.  Monitoring militant websites is necessary, whereas excessive spying on mosques will be less fruitful and even detrimental.

(3) Many homegrown jihadists are not observant Muslims, but criminally inclined.  They are often attracted to jihadist ideologies due to the sense of adventure and thrill rather than religion or spirituality.  The RAND report declares:

Some of the recruits gained experience on the streets. At least 23 have criminal records—some of them very long records—for charges including aggravated assault, armed robbery, and drug dealing…Some were naïve, some were adventurers, some were misguided…The jobs they held and the criminal records of some suggest that many are high school dropouts (or immigrants in entry-level jobs). But at least 16 are known to have had some university training in subjects including computer sciences, engineering, pharmacology, and medicine, and at least four had graduate training.

(4) A glance at RAND’s list of terrorist acts indicates that a disproportionately large number of jihadists are converts to Islam.  If we combine points (2) and (3) above, we may conclude that many are criminally inclined and convert to Jihadist Islam as a means to fulfill their sense of adventure; they have very little if any interaction with the mainstream Muslim community or local mosques, but instead seek out jihadist websites which radicalize them further.  This voluntary isolation and involuntary exclusion from the main body makes it harder for the Muslim community to control or root the jihadists out, as the jihadists are–and remain–somewhat exogenous to the community and operate independently from it.

(5) Many of the jihadists had intention to harm but were arrested before they could actually act on it; convictions were based on intent, not action.  They were “ready to be terrorists” but had not yet committed terrorism.  Notwithstanding heavy-handed policing tactics that may be unconstitutional, this finding indicates that the U.S. authorities are keeping us safe, and as such we ought not live in mortal fear of jihadism. The report says:

A good percentage of those arrested could be described as having the experience and skills that would make them dangerous. But what is most at issue here are intentions, not ability. The 46 cases demonstrate earnest intent. The individuals were ready to be terrorists. Their ideological commitment was manifest…They came into contact with U.S. authorities when they tried to act on their beliefs. They had, in the words of one prosecutor, “jihadi hearts and jihadi minds,” and juries convicted them on their intent…

Most of the plots could be described as more aspirational than operational…[often] fantastic schemes…

(6) The need to prevent terrorism before it occurs promotes overly aggressive prosecution that may lead to people being convicted for “thought crimes”.  The report cautions:

That puts the American justice system perilously close to prosecuting people solely on the basis of what is in their hearts and on their minds. It is slippery terrain and not a domain where one ought to feel comfortable.

Furthermore, the authorities may be guilty of using entrapment, inducing radicalized Muslims to commit offenses which they would otherwise have been unlikely to commit.  Confidential informants can become agent provocateurs.  Some Muslim American leaders feel that efforts should be made to de-radicalize brainwashed youngsters instead of entrapping them.  The report warns:

Often, police intelligence depends on the use of confidential informants, which may be the only way to break into a conspiracy. There are, however, possible abuses in the employment of confidential informants, especially given the very broad interpretation of providing material assistance to a terrorist group and the difficulty of determining intent, particularly since one of the characteristics of many terrorist perpetrators is their malleability. Confidential informants are often determined to prove their value to their police handlers, whether the currency is cash or avoiding trouble relating to other criminal charges. Informants are also likely, of necessity, to display undiluted zeal in order to gain credibility among jihadist zealots. Thus, the informants can easily become agents provocateurs, subtly coaxing radicalized but hesitant individuals into action. Even without providing overt encouragement, the informant often plays the role of an enabler, offering people with extreme views but faint hearts the means to act, thereby potentially facilitating actions that otherwise might not occur.

Despite the fact that actual acts of jihadist terrorism remain relatively low, a disproportionately higher number of Muslims are convicted on charges of terrorism.  Objective observers have argued that many of the defendants have been railroaded by the justice system, due to a variety of reasons.  This overly aggressive prosecution has caused feelings of distrust in the Muslim American community.  The report reads:

Not everyone agrees that justice has been done in all cases [prosecuted]. Professional intelligence and law enforcement officials themselves wonder how far they can reach without repeating past excesses. Objective observers remain skeptical of the charges in several of the cases. Juries comprising frightened citizens do not always reach unbiased verdicts. National consensus is fragile. Risks must be carefully weighed…

Some of the recent arrests have been heavily criticized as reflections of post-9/11 paranoia, Islamophobia, and national hysteria.

(7) The report declares that “the 1970s saw greater terrorist violence” than nowadays, yet most Americans today perceive terrorism to be a radically new and emergent existential threat.  It is the perception of terrorism, not terrorism itself, that is greater than previous decades.  The report finds:

While radicalization and recruitment to jihadist terrorism are cause for continuing concern, the current threat must be kept in perspective. The volume of domestic terrorist activity was much greater in the 1970s than it is today. That decade saw 60 to 70 terrorist incidents, most of them bombings, on U.S. soil every year—a level of terrorist activity 15 to 20 times that seen in most of the years since 9/11, even counting foiled plots as incidents. And in the nine year period from 1970 to 1978, 72 people died in terrorist incidents, more than five times the number killed by jihadist terrorists in the United States in the almost nine years since 9/11…

In the 1970s, terrorists, on behalf of a variety of causes, hijacked airliners; held hostages in Washington, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco; bombed embassies, corporate headquarters, and government buildings; robbed banks; murdered diplomats; and blew up power transformers, causing widespread blackouts. These were not one-off attacks but sustained campaigns by terrorist gangs that were able to avoid capture for years. The Weather Underground was responsible for 45 bombings between 1970 and 1977, the date of its last action, while the New World Liberation Front claimed responsibility for approximately 70 bombings in the San Francisco Bay area between 1974 and 1978 and was believed to be responsible for another 26 bombings in other Northern California cities. Anti-Castro Cuban exile groups claimed responsibility for nearly 100 bombings. Continuing an armed campaign that dated back to the 1930s, Puerto Rican separatists, reorganized in 1974 as the Armed Front for National Liberation (FALN), claimed credit for more than 60 bombings. The Jewish Defense League and similar groups protesting the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union claimed responsibility for more than 50 bombings during the decade. Croatian and Serbian émigrés also carried out sporadic terrorist attacks in the United States, as did remnants of the Ku Klux Klan.

Some of these groups clearly benefited from the support of radicalized subcultures or sympathetic ethnic communities, which made suppression difficult.

(8) Jihadists have failed to launch a sustained campaign in the United States.  Al-Qaeda has not succeeded in sabotaging American life.  One of the reasons for this is the Muslim American community, which has opposed the jihadist ideology.  Without sympathetic ethnic support, the jihadists have not been able to sustain themselves.  The report reads:

While radicalization and recruitment to jihadist terrorism remain cause for continuing concern, the current threat must be kept in perspective. What has not occurred is just as significant as what has occurred: Thus far, there has been no sustained jihadist terrorist campaign in the United States. There are many possible reasons: Al Qaeda simply lacked the assets to carry out terrorist operations. The local Muslim community rejected al Qaeda’s appeals and actively intervened to dissuade those with radical tendencies from violence. Domestic intelligence efforts were expanded and improved and thus far have succeeded in thwarting all but two actual attacks. Surveillance of radical venues, real or imagined, plus actual arrests contributed to a deterrent effect. Guns are readily available, but the ingredients of explosives became harder to obtain and were more closely monitored. Security visibly improved. While constant government admonitions early in the decade to remain vigilant seemed silly afterthoughts to dire warnings of imminent attack, citizens became more watchful and reported suspicious activity, which in at least a few of the cases yielded real results, adding further to a deterrent effect…

(9) The heightened sense of fear of terrorism today as compared to the 1970′s can be attributed to 9/11, an event which remains an outlier but distorts perspective.  The report reads:

The scale of the September 11, 2001, attacks tended to obliterate America’s memory of pre-9/11 terrorism, yet measured by the number of terrorist attacks, the volume of domestic terrorist activity was much greater in the 1970s. That tumultuous decade saw 60 to 70 terrorist incidents, mostly bombings, on U.S. soil every year—a level of terrorist activity 15 to 20 times that seen in the years since 9/11, even when foiled plots are counted as incidents. And in the nine-year period from 1970 to 1978, 72 people died in terrorist incidents, more than five times the number killed by jihadist terrorists in the United States in the almost nine years since 9/11.

Since 9/11, no American civilians have been killed by jihadist terrorism.  And if we exclude 9/11, only nine people were ever killed in the U.S. from jihadist terrorism over the course of a decade and a half (from 1990 to 2005).

(10) Americans have ceded their civil liberties to the government due to the misplaced fear of terrorism.  The first group affected by these heavy-handed laws are Muslim Americans, which hampers anti-terrorism efforts by alienating the very community whose cooperation is so necessary.  The report declares:

In response, the country has conceded to the authorities broader powers to prevent terrorism. However, one danger of this response is that revelations of abuse or of heavy-handed tactics could easily discredit intelligence operations, provoke public anger, and erode the most effective barrier of all to radicalization: the cooperation of the community.

We argue that the loss of civil liberties and rise in xenophobia have a more significant and longer lasting effect than acts of terrorism.

(11) The report notes that the first line of defense to prevent terrorism are the relatives and close friends of the newly radicalized jihadist.  Therefore, it is imperative to maintain the trust of the Muslim American community, and not commit similar errors as some police officers did with the African American community in inner cities.  The report reads:

Relatives and friends are often more likely than the authorities to know when someone is turning dangerously radical and heading toward self-destruction…Maintaining positive police relations with all members of the community [is essential] without stigmatizing any group… The continued trust and cooperation of the Muslim community, tips to police from the family members and close acquaintances of those heading toward violence, alert citizens, and focused intelligence-collection efforts will remain essential components of the thus-far successful containment of domestic jihadist terrorism.

It is for this reason that we argue that racial profiling is the wrong way to go, as it will create animosity between authority figures and Muslim Americans.  (Not to speak of the un-American nature of the tactic.)

(12)  Totally eradicating terrorism is an unrealistic goal.  Terrorism is, and always has been, one of the day-to-day risks of living in the real world.  However, this risk must be put into perspective.  Over sixty times as many Americans die of peanut allergies per year than from acts of terrorism.  An American is 250 times more likely to be struck by lightning than be killed by terrorism. As for the threat of jihadist terrorism in specific, not a single U.S. civilian has been killed since 9/11.

The exaggerated fear of terrorism only empowers terrorists, giving them the feeling that they are far more effective than they really are. The Times Square bombing is case in point: it was an amateurish plot that failed miserably, but it managed to succeed in evoking national hysteria.

A calm public reaction is “an essential component of homeland defense.”  The report reads (emphasis is ours):

But prevention will not always work. More attempts will occur, and there will, on occasion, be bloodshed. In addition to traditional law enforcement, police intelligence collection, and community policing, public reaction is an essential component of homeland defense. Needless alarm, exaggerated portrayals of the terrorist threat, unrealistic expectations of a risk-free society, and unreasonable demands for absolute protection will only encourage terrorists’ ambitions to make America fibrillate in fear and bankrupt itself with security…

Bin Laden would not have publicly attached himself to Abdulmutallab’s failed bombing attempt unless he was persuaded that the young Nigerian had caused national upset—a tactical failure but a strategic success. As long as America’s psychological vulnerability is on display, jihadists will find inspiration in the actions of individuals like Nidal Hasan and Umar Abdulmutallab. And more recruitment and terrorism will occur. Panic is the wrong message to send America’s terrorist foes.

Anti-Islam ideologues fan the flames of “national hysteria”, and try to further exaggerate the threat of jihadism in order to turn the majoritarian group against an increasingly beleaguered Muslim American community.  This generated Islamophobia serves the interests of Bin Ladin and co., who seek to radicalize Muslim Americans in order for them to wage war against their fellow countrymen.  Discrimination against Muslims helps facilitate radicalism, and thus benefits jihadists.  Islamophobia gives credence to the jihadist narrative, which revolves around Western injustice against the Muslim people.  Beyond purely tactical considerations, bigotry is simply un-American and corrodes our society more than terrorism ever could.

RAND’s Official Summary

We have reproduced RAND’s official summary below:

Would-Be Warriors: Incidents of Jihadist Terrorist Radicalization in the United States Since September 11, 2001

Between September 11, 2001, and the end of 2009, a total of 46 cases of domestic radicalization and recruitment to jihadist terrorism were reported in the United States. In some of the cases, individuals living in the United States plotted to carry out terrorist attacks at home; some were accused of “providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations”; and some left the United States to join jihadist organizations abroad. All these individuals can be called “homegrown terrorists.”

Forty-six cases of radicalization in a period of little more than eight years may seem significant, but in each case, an average of only three people were accused—and half of the cases, including some of the fully formulated plots to carry out terrorist attacks in the United States, involved only a single individual. Only 125 persons were identified in the 46 cases. Although the numbers are small, the 13
cases in 2009 did indicate a marked increase in radicalization leading to criminal activity, up from an average of about four cases a year from 2002 to 2008. In 2009, there was also a marked increase in the number of individuals involved. Only 81 of the 125 persons identified were indicted for jihadist-related crimes between 2002 and 2008; in 2009 alone, 42 individuals were indicted. The remaining two individuals were indicted in January 2010 in connection with a plot uncovered in 2009.

Who Are the Recruits?

Most of America’s homegrown terrorists are U.S. citizens. Information on national origin or ethnicity is available for 109 of the identified homegrown terrorists. The Arab and South Asian immigrant communities are statistically overrepresented in this small sample, but the number of recruits is still tiny. There are more than 3 million Muslims in the United States, and few more than 100 have joined jihad—about one out of every 30,000—suggesting an American Muslim population that remains hostile to jihadist ideology and its exhortations to violence. A mistrust of American Muslims by other Americans seems misplaced.

Many of the jihadist recruits in the United States began their journey on the Internet, where they could readily find resonance and reinforcement of their own discontents and people who would legitimate and direct their anger. Some of the recruits gained experience on the streets. At least 23 have criminal records—some of them very long records—for charges including aggravated assault, armed robbery, and drug dealing. A good percentage of those arrested could be described as having the experience and skills that would make them dangerous. But what is most at issue here are intentions, not ability. The 46 cases demonstrate earnest intent. The individuals were ready to be terrorists. Their ideological commitment was manifest. Some were naïve, some were adventurers, some were misguided. But many were no doubt sincere in their anger and determination, having made the ideological leap to armed jihad. They came into contact with U.S. authorities when they tried to act on their beliefs. They had, in the words of one prosecutor, “jihadi hearts and jihadi minds,” and juries convicted them on their intent.

The 1970s Saw Greater Terrorist Violence

While radicalization and recruitment to jihadist terrorism are cause for continuing concern, the current threat must be kept in perspective. The volume of domestic terrorist activity was much greater in the 1970s than it is today. That decade saw 60 to 70 terrorist incidents, most of them bombings, on U.S. soil every year—a level of terrorist activity 15 to 20 times that seen in most of the years since 9/11, even counting foiled plots as incidents. And in the nine year period from 1970 to 1978, 72 people died in terrorist incidents, more than five times the number killed by jihadist terrorists in the United States in the almost nine years since 9/11.

America’s perception of the terrorist threat today differs greatly from what it was 35 years ago. It is not the little bombs of the 1970s but fear of another event on the scale of 9/11 or of scenarios involving terrorist use of biological or nuclear weapons that drives current concerns.

In response, the country has conceded to the authorities broader powers to prevent terrorism. However, one danger of this response is that revelations of abuse or of heavy-handed tactics could easily discredit intelligence operations, provoke public anger, and erode the most effective barrier of all to radicalization: the cooperation of the community.

Are We Doing This Right?

Traditional law enforcement, in which authorities attempt to identify and apprehend a perpetrator after a crime has been committed, is inadequate to deal with terrorists who are determined to cause many deaths and great destruction and who may not care whether they themselves survive. Public safety demands a more preventive approach—intervention before an attack occurs.

As long as radicalization and recruitment to terrorism remain a reality, domestic intelligence collection,
always a delicate mission in a democracy, will remain a necessary activity. Under appropriate controls, intelligence operations can disrupt terrorist recruiting, uncover terrorist plots, and discourage those who would turn to violence.

And by preventing dramatic terrorist actions that inevitably create fear and alarm, intelligence operations can also prevent overreactions by the general public, allay unwarranted suspicions, and thereby protect vulnerable minorities (in this case, the American Muslim community) against official discrimination and even individual acts of revenge.

Meanwhile, expanded efforts must be made through community policing and other means to work with members of the Muslim community. These efforts must entail working with the community actively and consistently to address issues of crime, fears of crime, the suspicions of authorities, and other community concerns. Relatives and friends are often more likely than the authorities to know when someone is turning dangerously radical and heading toward self-destruction. On occasion, relatives and friends have intervened. But will they trust the authorities enough to notify them when persuasion does not work? Citizen involvement is essential, but so is maintaining positive police relations with all members of the community without stigmatizing any group or privileging special interests.

Recruitment Will Continue

The homegrown jihadist threat in America today consists of tiny conspiracies, lone gunmen, and one-off attacks. The continued trust and cooperation of the Muslim community, tips to police from the family members and close acquaintances of those heading toward violence, alert citizens, and focused intelligence-collection efforts will remain essential components of the thus-far successful containment of domestic jihadist terrorism.

But prevention will not always work. More attempts will occur, and there will, on occasion, be bloodshed. In addition to traditional law enforcement, police intelligence collection, and community policing, public reaction is an essential component of homeland defense. Needless alarm, exaggerated portrayals of the terrorist threat, unrealistic expectations of a risk-free society, and unreasonable demands for absolute protection will only encourage terrorists’ ambitions to make America fibrillate in fear and bankrupt itself with security. As long as America’s psychological vulnerability is on display, jihadists will find inspiration, and more recruitment and terrorism will occur. Panic is the wrong message to send America’s terrorist foes.

Related Posts:

All Terrorists are Muslims…Except the 94% that Aren’t

Europol Report: All Terrorists are Muslims…Except the 99.6% that Aren’t

The creators of South Park–Matt Stone and Trey Parker–decided that they would depict the Prophet Muhammad on the 200th episode of their show.  A radical group known as “Revolution Muslim”–based out of New York–issued thinly veiled threats against the South Park creators, hinting that their misdeed would result in their untimely deaths.  CNN picked up the story, and soon the controversy that the South Park creators so desired came to fruition.

Muslim Americans are irate.  But not so much at South Park.  Rather, the anger is directed at two groups: CNN for their poor journalism and Revolution Muslim for their insanity.  Let’s start with CNN: Anderson Cooper covered the topic for over ten minutes and even found time to interview the famous Islamophobe Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  Surprisingly, Cooper did not interview a single Muslim American spokesman, thereby giving–whether he intended it or not–the false impression that Revolution Muslim represents a broad spectrum of the Muslim American population, and that the organization speaks for Islam itself.  In reality, the radical fringe group is composed of no more than two to ten members, and one could easily find similar sized extremist groups belonging to other faiths.

The vast majority of Muslim Americans despise Revolution Muslim and their hate-filled ideology.  The New York mosque the group frequented banned them from setting foot inside the premises, forcing them to preach on the street corner. Many Muslim Americans question whether Revolution Muslim are real Muslims, and instead hold them to be agent provocateurs who wish to smear Islam.  Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said Revolution Muslim is “an extreme fringe group that has absolutely no credibility within the Muslim community” and that the “wild and irresponsible things” they say has led to “a strong suspicion [in the Muslim American community] that they’re merely a setup to make Muslims and Islam look bad. ”

Joseph Cohen, a former Israeli settler and ardent Zionist, is the founder of Revolution Muslim

There’s reason to believe that.  The founder of the group goes by the name of Yousef al-Khattab, but his real name is Joseph Cohen.  He was born and raised in the United States as a Jew, and holds both American and Israeli citizenship.   In the late eighties, Cohen embraced an ultra-orthodox interpretation of Judaism, and began attending a yeshiva (rabbinical school).  In 1998, Cohen hearkened to the Zionist call, and packed up his bags to relocate to the Israeli Occupied Territories where he became an Israeli settler.  As an ardent and extreme Zionist, Joseph Cohen fell in with the Jewish fundamentalist group Shas, an extreme right-wing political party that believes in flouting international law based on their religious beliefs.  Less than three years later, Cohen “converted” to Islam, moved back to the United States, and founded the most radical Islamic group in the country. ^[1] His underling Younus Muhammad–the other half of the dynamic duo–is similarly a mysterious “convert” to Islam.

This pair of former extremist Zionists ^[2]–who together form Revolution Muslim–conveniently read off a script that could only be written by an Islamophobe.  For example, one of the two claimed that the Quran commands terrorism, something that no sincere Muslim would ever say (and a claim that is patently false); those are words that an Islamophobe (or extreme Zionist) would agree with, not a Muslim.  Considering the founder’s background in an extreme right-wing and fundamentalist Israeli political party, Muslim Americans have reason to be suspicious.  Revolution Muslim is just too convenient.  Regardless of whether they are Muslim or agent provocateurs, they are simply inorganic wackos that have no community support whatsoever.  Yet, that hasn’t stopped the media frenzy from portraying two “Muslims” as being representative of millions of Muslim Americans.

Cohen (Khattab) is just selling the mainstream media the narrative they want to hear.  According to these preconceived notions, Muslims lose their minds when the Prophet Muhammad is depicted.  The reasoning is simple enough: Muslims reacted in a frenzy to the Danish cartoons, so doesn’t it just make sense that a similar reaction would take place when South Park depicts the Prophet Muhammad?  However, the reality is that South Park has already portrayed an uncensored Muhammad in 2001, in an episode entitled “Super Best Friends”.  In fact, the image of the Prophet Muhammad was not only used in that episode, but appeared in the opening segment of the show for four entire seasons.  What was the Muslim reaction?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing happened.  No protests, no riots, and no death threats.  The Muslim American community shrugged it off, as they did the recent episode (barring the Revolution “Muslim” group).  Muslim columnist Zahed Amanullah wrote an article for the Guardian entitled “No [Muslim] freak-out over South Park”, saying:

But has there really been any Muslim outrage? The characterisation of Muhammad in a July 2001 episode entitled “Super Best Friends“, where he teams up with Jesus, Moses, and Buddha to defeat evil (even though Buddha “doesn’t really believe in evil”), has been available for viewing online (if not on a spooked Comedy Central) for nine years without censorship, more than enough time to spark another cartoon crisis if Muslims really cared. As should be obvious by now, they don’t.

Somehow “a couple of misfits” from Revolution Muslim are allowed to smear the entire Muslim American community.  The reality is that the vast majority of Muslims in this country barely flinched when they heard of South Park’s intention to portray the Prophet Muhammad.  Anderson Cooper covered Revolution Muslim months ago, and at that time he had concluded that “it’s just a bunch of, you know, four morons standing on the street corner, shouting at the top of their lungs–how many people are really listening?”  That summation of Revolution Muslim, “four morons standing on [a] street corner”, is exactly how Muslim Americans view them as.  Yet flash forward to the recent Cooper report and there is no mention of this fact, and they are instead portrayed as spokesmen of Islam.

To really seal this impression, Anderson Cooper had on his show the vitriolic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an ardent Islamophobe.  Unbelievably, she told Cooper that one religion (Islam) is “beyond criticism” nowadays.  What world is Ms. Ali living in?  Today, Islam is the most vilified religion ever, and you can say things against Islam and Muslims on television that you simply could not say against any other religion or religious group.  On Fox News, that’s simply routine, and guests (and oftentimes hosts) can get away with virtually any swipe at Islam.  And on the internet, the level of Islamophobia is astronomical, with Islamophobic websites being amongst the most popular sites on the net, and anti-Islamic comments being hurled at Muslims from sites ranging from YouTube to our very own LoonWatch.  So it is actually the opposite of what Ms. Ali claims: there is no other religion which is criticized more than Islam.  And it’s gone far past criticism but entered into wholesale bigotry, which explains the hypersensitive reaction of some Muslims to this abuse.

In any case, the idea that only Muslims have ever threatened people for portraying their prophet in a certain way is false to begin with.  The indefatigable Glenn Greenwald decimated this argument here, so I don’t need to belabor that point; for example, he mentions a play by the name of Corpus Christi which was canceled several times, due to death threats from extremist Christians.  It is clearly not a Muslim only problem, and ought not to be used as a stick to beat Muslims over the head with.  Ms. Ali takes this stick not only to all observant Muslims, but to all of Islam itself.  On Cooper’s show, she claims that the Islamic scripture itself advocates killing those who criticize the religion.  Last I checked, the Islamic scripture is the Quran, and not a single verse in it advocates such a thing.  In fact, we find quite the opposite; the Quran commands believers to say “peace be unto you” to those who insult their religion.  In the Islamic holy book, God describes the righteous:

They are patient, and repel evil with good…When they hear vile ridicule (against their faith), they ignore it and say: “We shall have our deeds and you shall have your deeds; peace be unto you!” (Quran, 28:54-55)

That’s what the Islamic scripture says.  As for the hadiths (Prophetic traditions), these are an amorphous body of texts, which Muslims do not hold to be inerrant like the Quran.  Rather, a large number of hadiths are rejected outright as apocryphal in nature, and controversy surrounds many others. ^[3] Muslim Americans focus on explicit hadiths in which the Prophet Muhammad forgave those who reviled him. ^[4] For example, a group of disbelievers cursed the Prophet Muhammad, and his wife angrily retaliated in kind.  The Prophet, however, admonished his wife: “Calm down.  There is not gentleness in anything except that it becomes more beautiful, and there is not harshness in anything except that it makes it ugly.  So be calm.”  He then expounded an integral Islamic belief, saying: “God is kind and lenient, and likes that one should be kind and lenient in all matters.” ^[5] Contemporary Muslims argue that if the Prophet Muhammad forbade even verbal aggression against non-Muslims who insulted him, then physical violence is even more loathsome.

Similarly, if the Prophet Muhammad did not seek vengeance against those who physically assaulted him and even tried to kill him, then how could it be justified against those who merely insulted him?  For example, the Prophet Muhammad was poisoned by a woman who opposed his message, yet he forgave her and sought no retaliation against her.  When the people brought her to him, and asked: “Shall we kill her?”, the Prophet replied emphatically “no.” ^[6] Contemporary Muslims argue that if the Companions were forbidden to kill the one who tried to physically harm and kill the Prophet Muhammad, then it seems safe to say that it is even more forbidden to punish the one who merely insults him or draws a demeaning cartoon of him. One last example I will give here (although there are many others) is that of Labeed ibn al-Asam, a sorcerer who cursed the Prophet Muhammad, and attempted to harm him through black magic. When his wife asked him why he did not seek retaliation against the sorcerer, the Prophet Muhammad replied “I hate to cause harm to anyone.” (Sahih al-Bukhari) Contemporary Muslims ask: if the Prophet hated to cause harm to anyone, then he would hate for Muslims to kill those who merely drew cartoons of him, a “crime” much less egregious than black magic.

Are there certain texts from the hadiths and classical scholars that say otherwise?  Certainly, and I am not denying that.  But the Islamophobes put a standard to Muslims that they themselves cannot meet.  For example, the vitriolic Catholic crusader Robert Spencer would show such-and-such hadith, and then say “well, it says to kill people who insult the Prophet Muhammad, and so an observant Muslim must do that.”  Yet, his own Bible says to kill those who insult his God (Jesus), commanding the faithful to stone the blasphemous infidels to death:

Anyone who blasphemes the name of the LORD must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him. Whether an alien or native-born, when he blasphemes the Name, he must be put to death. (Leviticus, 24:16)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s swipe at Islam can be applied here, with the condescending disclaimer that “not all Christians follow the scripture.”  And what of Anderson Cooper’s comment on his blog: “I have no respect for a prophet or god that needs its followers to defend it by threats and murder.”  Would he now think lowly of the Jewish and Christian God who–according to their most authentic scriptural source–calls for its followers to kill those who insult Him?  Or do we realize that it’s not wise to cherry-pick a passage of a religious text and then vilify an entire creed?  Islamophobes like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Robert Spencer claim that Islam itself and the scriptural sources themselves explain why the riots against the Danish cartoons occurred.  I recently covered the resurgence of Christian witch hunts in Africa; one could make the unsophisticated claim that the primary blame for the witch hunts can be attributed to the Bible and Christianity itself, since the Bible calls for witches to be killed. ^[7] Yet, experts understand that “poverty, exacerbated by the current world economic crisis, often lay behind the [witch hunt] phenomenon as people sought to find scapegoats for their misfortunes and the illnesses they suffered.”  Christianity was simply the currency in which the people expressed their frustration.  In other words, it is a very superficial understanding to reduce the issue to Biblical verses.

Likewise, there were sociological factors behind the anger that fueled the Danish cartoon riots.  Yet, an unsophisticated understanding of the issue would lead one to believe that the riots were simply the result of an Islamic prohibition on the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.  The reality, however, is that–in spite of an orthodox ban on imagery of the Prophet ^[8]–the Prophet Muhammad has been depicted in the Islamic world for centuries. British author Dr. Kenan Malik writes:

Over the past 400 years, a number of Islamic, especially Shiite, traditions have accepted the pictorial representation of Muhammed. The Edinburgh University Library in Scotland, the Bibliotheque National in Paris, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul, all contain dozens of Persian, Ottoman and Afghan manuscripts depicting the Prophet. His face can be seen in many mosques too – even in Iran. A 17th-century mural on the Iman Zahdah Chah Zaid Mosque in the Iranian town of Isfahan, for instance, shows a Mohammed whose facial features are clearly visible…

So, if there is no universal prohibition to the depiction of Muhammad, why were Muslims universally appalled by the caricatures? They weren’t. And those that were, were driven by political zeal rather than theological fervour.

European Muslims have long suffered from high levels of unemployment, social alienation, and systemic discrimination–factors that contributed to the riots more than indignation over the pictorial representation of the Prophet Muhammad.  In fact, most of the rioters had not even seen the cartoons, and the caricatures were–in the words of the Islamic scholar Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl–”the straw that broke the camel’s back” (an ethnically appropriate phrase).  In the Muslim majority world, Muslims had long been suffering from what they view as Western “neo-colonialism”, and the Danish cartoons were viewed as salt on the wounds.  The bewilderment of many in the West–”how could they react this way to some cartoons?”–only underscores a profound ignorance of the problems that plague those in the East, many of which the West either causes or exacerbates.

Dr. Malik goes on:

There were demonstrations and riots in India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iran, Nigeria, Palestine, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Danish embassies in Damascus, Beirut and Teheran were torched. But, as Jytte Klausen has observed, these protests ‘were not caused by the cartoons, but were part of conflicts in pre-existing hot spots’ such as northern Nigeria, where there exists an effective civil war between Muslim salafists and Christians. The violence surrounding the cartoon conflict, Klausen suggests, has been ‘misreported’ as expressions of spontaneous violence from Muslims ‘confronted with bad pictures’. That, she insists, ‘is absolutely not the case’. Rather ‘these images have been exploited by political groups in the pre-existing conflict over Islam.’

Similarly, the Salman Rushdie affair had political not theological roots:

We have come to accept almost as self-evident the idea that the worldwide controversy was sparked by the blasphemies in The Satanic Verses that all Muslims found deeply offensive. It is not true.

The Satanic Verses was published in September 1988. For the next five months, until the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa on Valentine’s Day 1989, most Muslims ignored the book. The campaign against the novel was largely confined to the Indian subcontinent and to Britain. Aside from the involvement of Saudi Arabia, there was little enthusiasm for a campaign against novel in the Arab world or in Turkey, or among Muslim communities in France or Germany. When the Saudi authorities tried at the end of 1988 to get the novel banned in Muslim countries worldwide, few responded except those with large subcontinental populations, such as South Africa or Malaysia. Even in Iran the book was openly available and was reviewed in many newspapers.

As in the controversy over the Danish cartoons, it was politics, not religion, that transformed The Satanic Verses into a worldwide event of historic proportions.

Malik then explains the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, both countries desperately competing for regional dominance.  Each seeks–with its ultraconservative implementations of the religion–to assert itself as the standard-bearer of “authentic” Islam.  Saudi Arabia had attempted to ban the book, and Iran’s fatwa was an attempt to one up the Saudis.  In the words of Kenan Malik: “The Satanic Verses became a weapon in that conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Riyadh had made the initial running (by calling for a ban on the book). The fatwa was an attempt by Iran to wrestle back the initiative…The controversy over The Satanic Verses was primarily a political, not religious, conflict.”  Unfortunately, many Westerners think it sufficient to hold superficial understandings of such complex issues (whereas others find it expedient to do so).

The elements that led to the Danish cartoon affair simply do not exist in today’s South Park controversy, which explains why the Muslim American community–notwithstanding the “four morons on [a] street corner”–have had such a subdued response.  Interestingly, there has not even been any significant drive to boycott the show, nor any peaceful protests (let alone violent recourse)–which shows how little they care about this “controversy.”  Most Muslim Americans understand that South Park pokes fun at people of every faith, and even if they may find it personally distasteful, Muslim Americans don’t think too much of it. As CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper put it: “[Muslims] are pretty tired of this whole: ‘Let’s insult the Prophet Muhammad thing.’”  They don’t want to dwell on it, and just want the incident to pass. Internally, Muslim Americans are telling each other to “ignore it”, and they are cognizant of the fact that outrage will only publicize the South Park episode more.

By presupposing that the reaction of Muslim Americans would be the same as their coreligionists in parts of Europe and the developing world (some) non-Muslim Westerners have placed all Muslims into one box. According to this “the other” understanding, all Muslims–of every nationality and region of the earth–ought to react similarly. Yet, one clearly understands this not to be the case when comparing Evangelicals in America with those leading witch hunts in Nigeria. The reality is that Muslims in this country have a distinctly American Islam, one which has incorporated freedom of speech into it. Therefore, it is incorrect to simply assume that the reaction of Muslim Americans would be the same as their religious brethren elsewhere. Unlike the Muslim communities in many (but not all) European countries, Muslim Americans are well integrated; unemployment and poverty do not affect them in the same way.  Instead, they tend to be rather well off, and are “overrepresented” in professional fields like medicine and engineering.  The absence of the sociological factors present in the Danish cartoon affair explains the lack of response to the South Park cartoons, and this is so even though the scriptural texts are still the same–again pointing to the fact that the protests had sociological and not theological roots.

Another reason why the South Park cartoons did not cause a Muslim outcry like the Danish cartoons did is that the South Park cartoons were not Islamophobic in nature.  The creators of South Park are equal-opportunity haters and have lampooned every religion, which really softened the blow.  The Danish cartoons, on the other hand, were Islamophobic in nature, and portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a stereotypical Muslim terrorist with a bomb on his head.  (The same publisher had earlier refused to publish cartoons that were deemed offensive to Christians.)  The Danish cartoons were racist and bigoted.  Can one imagine the reaction of socioeconomically depressed African Americans had a mainstream newspaper (like the New York Times) published cartoons portraying blacks as apes (a stereotypical racist image)?  In the seventies or eighties, such a thing would have led to widespread riots. Would people still be bewildered as to how a population could react so violently to a “mere cartoon“?  How is an ape-like representation of a black person any different than a stereotypical hook-nosed Muslim with a bomb on his head?

Freedom of speech is one of the principles of this country, and without it a democracy cannot flourish.  But let’s not forget that racial and religious tolerance is another bedrock of democracy.  It is a true oddity that certain segments of society have chosen that today freedom of speech is the most important issue to them, only because it allows them to channel their racial and religious intolerance.  The neo-conservatives who are today masquerading as the defenders of the first amendment are the same ones who just yesterday were justifying warrantless wiretapping, racial profiling, suspension of habeas corpus, secret prisons, torture, coerced confessions, state-sponsored assassinations (of even U.S. citizens), and on and on…all because these things were directed at Muslims.  In the words of Glenn Greenwald, the South Park controversy has been exploited so that the “majoritarian group [can act] as the profoundly oppressed victim at the hands of the small, marginalized, persecuted group which actually has no power [i.e. Muslim Americans].”  It is selective and unprincipled outrage expressed by unsavory folks who don’t really care about the principles of freedom and tolerance, but are instead using the incident to promote intolerance and demonization of a minority group…something which threatens our democracy far more than “four morons on [a] street corner.”

In conclusion, this is a contrived controversy, and there was no freak-out by Muslim Americans over the South Park cartoons.  Yes, many Muslim Americans were offended, but no more so than pious Christians whose stomachs churn at the South Park episodes mocking their religious icons.  But most Muslim Americans know that this is the cost of living in a free society, and most importantly, they know that it won’t affect what they perceive is the greatness of their prophet.  As one Muslim American told me: “Barking dogs cannot harm the moon, so let them bark.”  Despite the crudeness of this analogy, it adequately depicts the indifference of Muslim Americans to the South Park cartoon. Dr. Hesham Hassaballa, a prominent Muslim spokesman and former board member of CAIR, said:

I  must admit: I was offended. I was really bothered by the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit on Comedy Central’s satirical show “South Park.” …[But] ever since the beginning of his ministry, the Prophet Muhammad has been attacked, maligned, and insulted, including from his own uncle. The Prophet never retaliated against [them]. When he was brutally expelled from the city of Ta’if, two angels offered to crush the city under the mountains that surrounded it. The Prophet refused, hoping that their children may one day believe in God. After conquering Mecca, the Prophet issued a general amnesty to the very same people that brutally and violently opposed him, including the person who mutilated his beloved uncle Hamza after he was killed in battle.

This is the example of the Prophet Muhammad that Muslims should seek to emulate whenever he is insulted. The Prophet once said, “I was sent to perfect the most noble of character.” He also said, “The best of you are the best in character.” Rather than pray for God to “kill Matt Stone and Trey Parker,” Mr. Chesser should have prayed for God to show Stone and Parker the beauty of the Prophet Muhammad, so they can understand more about the man whom 1.2 billion people around the world revere and honor. It is what the Prophet would have done.

No angry pitchfork, Dr. Hassaballa?  The media thinks to itself: that won’t sell a story and certainly doesn’t fit our preconceived notions of what a stereotypical Muslim is, so let’s forget that you are a respected figure in the community and instead focus on “four morons on [a] street corner” who aren’t even allowed inside their mosque due to how much the Muslim American community dislikes their views. (Phew, that was a long sentence!) Ahmed Rehab, the executive director of CAIR-Chicago, writes:

The latest Muhammad cartoon controversy, courtesy of Comedy Central’s South Park, seems somewhat contrived…[Revolution Muslim is] literally 5-10 people who are widely reviled by the mainstream community for their radical and confrontational style including harassing Muslims outside mosques (where they tend to be banned) with outlandishly provocative anti-American rhetoric.

Most suspect the group is fraudulent. Its mysterious leader, born Joseph Cohen, is an American Jew who converted to Islam in 2000 after living in Israel and attending an orthodox rabbinical school there. Whether, true Muslims or agent provocateurs, the result is the same: they are five community outcasts…

South Park’s provocation was mostly met by silence and indifference [by the Muslim American community]. The widespread Muslim attitude went something like this: this is a free country, you go on mocking Jesus and Muhammad, and we will go on keeping them in our prayers. No harm done. Muhammad’s and Jesus’ value to humanity certainly will not dip as a result of your mockery.

The Muslim American community by and large supports freedom of speech, feeling that the right of the cartoonists to lampoon the Prophet exists and that the best thing to do is ignore such insults. Perhaps the lack of reaction by Muslim Americans has disappointed the sensationalist media looking for a story, forcing them to focus on a few misfits.  Amazing how “four morons on [a] street corner” are allowed to become the spokesmen for Islam. The message to Muslim Americans is loud and clear: even if 99.9999% of you behave, that last 0.00001% will be enough to hit you over the head with. The entire community will be defined by its two (or four) village idiots. Muslim Americans can never hope to have their voices heard, unless of course they become Revolution Muslims.

Update:

In retrospect, I fear that I may have used too strong wording when I was discussing Joseph Cohen’s past.  The way my article is written, it seems as if I am saying that he is really a Jew pretending to be a Muslim, and this could be used by some to promote a vast conspiracy, i.e. “it’s the Mossad!”  This was not my intention, and I caution people to stay away from such conspiratorial talk.

The reality is that I do not know Cohen’s true intentions.  I myself have a nagging suspicion that he is a disingenuous attention whore, as is his underling Younus Muhammad.  They have found a way to become famous, and I believe they enjoy the feeling of self-importance and their fifteen minutes of fame.  Accordingly, I believe that the outlandish things they say come from a desire to grab media attention, not from a genuine belief in Islam.  As I said, it is difficult to imagine that a sincere Muslim would claim that the Quran advocates terrorism, etc.  To fulfill this desire for fame, the so-called Revolution Muslims have adopted the role of agent provocateurs, trying to push as many buttons as they possible can.  “Look at us!  Look at us!”

This is the limit of my “conspiracy,” and I do not at all claim that they are still Jews, even though I realize that my wording in the article above was poorly constructed. I am not one to make excuses for my mistakes, and so I say quite simply: I made a mistake.  Yes, it is a possibility that the group was formed to make Muslims look bad, as Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR said.  But the evidence I presented with regard to Cohen’s past can at most make one question intentions, nothing more.  There is no way to know for sure either way; one can only conjecture.

However, the rest of the article still holds: regardless of Revolution Muslim’s sincerity of faith or lack thereof, the point is that they are extreme outliers, completely at odds with the vast majority of Muslim Americans.  The suspicion of the Islamic community is important insofar as it is highlights this very fact, and indicates how far off Cohen and co.’s viewpoints are from the rest of the Muslim Americans.

Footnotes

refer back to article 1. Yousef al-Khattab, My Reversion to Islam, http://www.scribd.com/doc/2901290/Brother-Yousef-al-Khattabs-Reversion-to-Islam-A-Former-Jew

refer back to article 2. I found less information on the character known as Younus Muhammad, and would welcome reader input confirming his real name and Zionist inclinations prior to his supposed conversion.

refer back to article 3. Although several textual proofs indicate that the Prophet Muhammad forgave those who insulted and abused him, a handful of texts seem to say otherwise.  However, many contemporary Muslims view these texts to be apocryphal, including the stories involving Abu Afak (a poet), Asma bint Marwan (a poetess), and a certain blind man’s slave girl.  As for Kaab ibn al-Ashraf, it is argued that he “was assassinated only because he violated the peace treaty and assisted in the war” (Ibn Hajar, Fath al-Bari) against the fledgling city-state of Medina.  With regard to Ibn Khattal and his two slave girls, it is said that they “all stood convicted of atrocious [war] crimes” (M. Haykal, Hayat Muhammad).

refer back to article 4. Perhaps it would behoove me to compile these some day.

refer back to article 5. Sahih Bukhari, Vol.9, Book 84, # 61

refer back to article 6. Found in Sahih al-Bukhari, Muslim, Ahmad, Abu Dawud, amongst others. She was eventually found guilty of the murder of Bishr ibn Al-Bara, and punished accordingly.

refer back to article 7. “Thou shalt not allow a sorceress to live” (Exodus, 22:18), and “sorcerers amongst you must be put to death” (Leviticus, 20:27)

refer back to article 8. The ban was placed to prevent idolization of the Prophet Muhammad, something which early Muslims feared due to the fate of Jesus in the Christian world. However, this ban on pictorial representations carries no worldly punishment if breached, neither in classical or contemporary understandings of Islamic law.

American Family Association Cross

Jason Linkins has this post in the Huffington Post on the American Family Association’s call for American Muslims to leave or be expatriated to other countries. (hat tip: Abdullah)

American Family Association to Muslim Americans: Convert to Christianity or Leave by Jason Linkins

It seems like only a week ago that the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer (who is the AFA’s Director of Issues Analysis, perhaps because he has so many personal issues that need to be analyzed by professional psychopharmacologists), was saying that the Christian thing to do would be to round up all Muslim American citizens and deport them to Muslim countries, because surely that would solve a lot of problems? You know, by sending happy American citizens to other countries?

The most compassionate thing we can do for Muslims who have already immigrated here is to help repatriate them back to Muslim countries, where they can live in a culture which shares their values, a place where they can once again be at home, surrounded by people who cherish their deeply held ideals. Why force them to chafe against the freedom, liberty and civil rights we cherish in the West?

Well, naturally, such remarks call for a clarification, and, in keeping with the traditions of “clarifying,” Fischer basically swaps out one ridiculously abhorrent statement for another statement of equal ridiculous abhorrence, without really retracting the first.

Via Media Matters:

Muslims who have become naturalized citizens, of course, would need to commit an act of treason to forfeit their citizenship and become eligible for repatriation. Based on the Constitution’s definition of treason in Article III Section 3 ["adhering to (the) Enemies (of the United States), (or) giving them Aid and Comfort"] treasonous acts are likely committed on virtually a weekly basis here in the U.S. in many mosques and Islamic organizations.[...]

Muslims continue to have as their objective the Islamization of the entire world, including the U.S., and are taught by their god to use force where necessary to accomplish the goal. The current objective of Muslim activists is to create a brand new Islamic state – meaning a state like New Jersey or Montana – out of existing jurisdictions and establish a virtual Islamic homeland in our midst.

[...]

Many Muslims are on our shores on student visas and such and have not yet become citizens. We must politely decline their request for naturalization (becoming an American citizen is a privilege, not a right) and use the money we would otherwise spend on their welfare, their education, their medical care and their incarceration to graciously assist them in returning to their countries of origin.

Those who are willing to convert to Christianity and renounce Islam, Allah, Mohammed and the Koran may be welcomed, for they can become not just good Christians but true Americans.

Meanwhile, I am reliably informed by the Constitution of the United States that one of the freedoms we cherish in America is the right to worship whatever faith we bloody well please, so maybe it’s Fischer who needs to sail away on a little sloop in search of a land more to his liking?

Here's praying that Islam and Muslims face the blame for Fort Hood

 Since news of the heinous Fort Hood massacre at the hands of Major Malik Nidal Hassan first broke out, “Islam Scholar” Robert Spencer, of f**kislam fame, has been like a gluttonous kid in a candy shop, frantically blogging over three dozen times with one goal in mind: slap down the blame on Islam and Muslims at large.

That is precisely the line that every sane responder has warned against. Whether it was the American Muslim leadership, the US military leadership, the mainstream media, or the President of the United States. But to Spencer who is rubbing his hands praying that a massive backlash could befall the American Muslim community, the sanity that he is hearing and seeing from mainstream America is cause for anger, bitterness, and complaints.

For the “Islam Scholar,” everyone including the US Military leadership are “dhimmi” wimps afraid of the Mooslims. Fancy that, a sedentary blogger who barely gets off his backside where he sits day and night punching away at a keyboard sees fit to accuse those who venture on the war frontiers risking their lives to protect this country (including his) of being cowardly sell-out wimps.

As pretentious and downright sick as that is, Spencer who is drenched in his own bias and deafened by the screeching sound of his own propaganda will likely fail to take notice.

Spencer’s mad response of course is entirely predictable, after all he has shown tremendous consistency and undying loyalty to a line of arguments whose sole agenda is to drive a wedge between America’s faith communities and make a compelling case for the widespread hate of Islam and distrust of Muslims.

Accordingly, only moments after news of the shooting was made public, the opportunistic preacher wasted no time getting on his e-pulpit and positing that the shooter was carrying out a legitimate Islamic Jihad, a religious requirement of all Muslims (unbeknownst to you and them for that matter). Since then, he has immersed himself in whipping out a flurry of dishonest and sinister propaganda posts, cherry picking items to strengthen his case, and completely ignoring those that do not.

For example, Spencer seems to the be the only one who missed the tremendous outpouring of support from the American Muslim community and their organizations of whom CAIR, MPAC, ISNA, and virtually every registered Muslim organization – if not Mosque – in the United States were quick to issue condemnation and condolences as they expressed that such action has no support in their Islamic faith. Some even started support networks for the victims. Not a peep from Spencer. Instead, all the expedient Spencer could see was that one 18 year old kid and this one Imam in Yemen (condemned by Muslim orgs in the US and refuted by American imams) who supported the killing. Oh and wait, there is a radical web forum out there too. “Aha! There you have it, it’s a MOOOSLIM thing! It’s Izlaahm! Am I lying about anything I posted?”

Lying by highly selective reporting and glaring omission, yet another example of the objective scholarly ways of the “Islam Scholar” Robert Spencer.

Spencer’s three dozen posts on the Fort Hood massacre fall into one of three rants:

1) Incriminate the faith of 1.5 billion Muslims who had nothing to do with Hassan’s actions, and 7 million American Muslims who condemned his act (moved ironically by their faith to do so). Question the loyalty of Muslims in the military, ignoring that there are 3500 active Muslim service men and women in excellent standing.

2) Cherry pick any instance of support for the massacre regardless of how off the beaten path they are while turning a blind eye to the zillions of instances of more credible and representative Muslim voices condemning it.

3) Whine when others take a pass on your loon rants. Throw a temper tantrum at the mainstream media, the US military, the public and everyone else; respond by ridiculing them as dhimmis and wimps. (Take solace in the fact that at least Lou Dobbs and slimey Senator Joe Lieberman may come through for you).

Here is a fun little exercise for our wonderful readers, see if you can match each of Spencer’s posts below to its appropriate category above:

• In the wake of Fort Hood jihad, Houston authorities try to assure non-Muslims that steps are being taken to keep them safe — no, wait…

• AP: “Anti-Muslim Backlash Immediate” — but offers not even one example

• Muslim vets group: No reports of harassment of Muslim soldiers. None.

• “Everybody knows Islam is a Religion of Peace”

• Muslims in New York celebrate the deaths of Americans in the Fort Hood jihad

• DHS Secretary warns that Fort Hood jihad must not be repeated — no, wait…

• Muslim at Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, Texas: “I honestly have no pity” for victims of the Fort Hood jihad

• U.S.-born Islamic cleric: Nidal Hasan “Did the Right Thing”

• Fitzgerald: A Nest of Ninnies

• U.S. government vows revenge after jihadist commits mass murder at Fort Hood — no, wait…

• Why He Shouted “Allahu Akbar”

• It wasn’t jihad, it was heartburn

• U.S.-born Muslim cleric praises Fort Hood jihadist

• Lindsey Graham: “At the end of the day this is not about his religion — the fact that this man was a Muslim”

• U.S. Army General: Lack of diversity in Army is worse than mass murder

• Playing the victim card: Florida mosque requests extra police protection, even though it wasn’t threatened

• Fort Hood jihadist’s coworkers saw warning signs, but said nothing for fear of seeming bigoted

• Muslims at Fort Hood blame army command for jihad massacre

• It’s getting harder by the minute to say he just “snapped”: Fort Hood jihadist linked to 9/11 jihadists

• In the wake of Fort Hood jihad, Houston authorities try to assure non-Muslims that steps are being taken to keep them safe — no, wait…

• Fort Hood shooter regularly described war on terror as “war on Islam”

• Fort Hood shooter taught Koran when he was supposed to be giving a medical lecture

• Just before his jihad

• Al-Qaeda last week called for attacks on “any crusaders whenever you find one of them, like at the airports of the crusader Western countries that participate in the wars against Islam, or their living compounds, trains etc.”

• “A person behind counter stood up, and he said, ‘Allah Akbar!’ And just opened up on everybody”

• Fort Hood jihad shooter handed out Korans the morning of his attack

• Fort Hood jihad shooter was disciplined for Islamic proselytizing

• Spencer: Jihad at Fort Hood

• Fort Hood jihadist is alive

• Fort Hood shooter a devout, observant Muslim

• Fort Hood jihad shooter said “Muslims have to stand up against the aggressor”

• Jihad at Fort Hood? Shooter: Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan

• Islamic Awakening Forum on Fort Hood shooter: “What a brave mujahid”

• Fort Hood shooter was member of Homeland Security Panel advising Obama

Major Nidal Malik Hasan

The Islamophobic blogosphere has gone buck-wild.  Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, and the rest of the goof troop are pretty ecstatic that Major Nidal Hasan, a Muslim American, killed thirteen U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood.  Nothing makes a neo-conservative happier than an attack on American soil; as the family of the victims mourn the dead, the anti-Muslim ideologues gleefully co-opt the situation to market their hate-filled beliefs.

The Islamophobes claim that Major Hasan was simply “being a devout Muslim” when he opened fire on his fellow soldiers.  According to them, this is a part of Jihad, an obligation in Islam.  As such, the enemy is not just extremists, radicals, or terrorists; but rather, it is Islam itself.  It is not then a gross perversion of a religion by zealots that result in such horrific attacks, but rather the exact opposite: it is a faithful understanding of the Islamic religion which results in terrorism.  That’s what they claim at least.

There is, according to these anti-Muslim bigots, a conspiracy by Muslim Americans to overtake the country from within.  The tactics to do so can be non-violent (“Stealth Jihad”) or overtly violent (such as 9/11 or the Fort Hood Massacre), but the goal is the same: to overthrow the U.S. government, rip the Constitution to shreds, and enact Sharia (Islamic law) in the West.  It is for this reason, you–the average American Joe–need to fear your Muslim neighbor.

The Covenant of Security

But experts of the Islamic legal tradition say differently.  The Islamic religion commands believers to obey the laws of the land they live in, even if it be one ruled by nonbelievers.  Muslim jurists consider citizenship (or visa) to be a covenant (aqd) held between the citizen (or visa holder) and the state, one which guarantees safe passage/security (amaan) in exchange for certain obligations (such as obeying the laws of the land); covenants are considered sacredly binding in Islam.  The Quran commands:

And fulfill every covenant.  Verily, you will be held accountable with regard to the covenants. (Quran, 17:34)

The Quran condemns those who break covenants as not being true believers:

It is not the case that every time they make a covenant, some party among them throws it aside. Nay! The truth is most of them believe not. (Quran, 2:100)

The Islamic prophet Muhammad described the religious hypocrite as follows:

When he enters into a covenant, he proves treacherous. (Sahih al-Bukhari)

Citizenship (and visa) is called in Islamic legal parlance as a “covenant of security” (aqd al-aman).  For over a thousand years, Muslim scholars have rigorously affirmed the binding nature of the covenant of security.  This covenant of security can be of two types: (1) a contractual agreement or (2) a customary understanding.

Naturalized citizens in the United States enter into a contractual agreement with the government when they declare the oath of allegiance, as follows:

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same…”

A Muslim is obliged to keep to his word, and thus this oath is religiously binding upon him.

Natural born citizens, on the other hand, do not utter any such oath, so they fall under the second category under Islamic law.  The covenant of security is considered for them a customary understanding, in the sense that even though they did not physically say an oath or sign a document of loyalty, it is understood that there exists between the citizen and the government a covenant of security; this, i.e. customary understanding, is considered by Islamic law to be just as binding as the contractual agreement.  There is no difference between the two.

Betraying the Covenant is Forbidden

What the 9/11 hijackers did was a violation of Islamic law for multiple reasons.  The most obvious of these is the prohibition of killing civilians, but it should also be pointed out that they violated the covenant of security between them and the United States, which granted them visas to enter the country.  Using Islamic lingo, the U.S. government granted safe passage (amaan) to the 19 hijackers, and thus they entered into a covenant (aqd), which they subsequently violated.

The United States government granted them visas with the understanding that they would come to the country to study, or seek medical treatment, or for sightseeing, etc., but not for waging war within their lands or killing their citizenry.  Even if a Muslim country is at war with a non-Muslim one, it would not be permissible for a Muslim fighter to enter into enemy territory by requesting safe passage (amaan) and then subsequently killing enemy troops once he crosses over.

The classical Islamic jurist, Muhammad al-Shaybani (died 805 A.D.) expounded:

If it happens that a company of Muslims pass through the enemy’s front lines by deceptively pretending to be messengers of the Muslim’s ruler carrying official documents–or if they were just allowed to pass through the enemy lines–they are not allowed to engage in any hostilities with the enemy troops. Neither are they entitled to seize any of their money or properties as long as they are in their area of authority.

Both the 9/11 hijackers and Major Nidal Hasan violated this sacred principle of Islam.  They gained the trust of those whom they considered their enemies, and then when those they consider enemies were caught unaware, they killed them.  In other words, these criminals took advantage of the fact that they had been trusted, and violated this trust.  Such a thing is considered unacceptable in Islam.

(It should be noted that Muslim Americans don’t see themselves as living in “enemy territory,” but the point is that even if Nidal Hasan saw the U.S. in that light, then he still wouldn’t be allowed under the Islamic belief system to do what he did.  Of course, the point applies even more to those Muslim Americans who see themselves as distinctly American and who love the country.)

The Quran does say that if the believers are being oppressed in some land, then the Muslims should come to their assistance.  But it forbids fighting against those with whom a covenant exists.  The Quran says:

If [your coreligionists] ask for your aid in religion, then you must help them, except against people with whom you have covenants with. (Quran, 8:72)

A Muslim American Must Obey the Constitution and Never Rebel Against the U.S. Government

A Muslim must abide by his covenant, which includes obeying the laws of the land he lives in, no matter how he entered into the country, be it by birth, legal (or even illegal) immigration.  (Entering countries illegally with forged documents is considered forbidden in Islam, but if one commits this sin, he cannot commit the further sin of then using it as an excuse to violate the laws of the land.)  Salman al-Oudah, a senior religious cleric, says:

[Islamic] scholars have stated that those who enter non-Muslim countries have to adhere to their respective laws and regulations even if they entered those countries illegally, and they have no excuse for breaking those laws, since they were entrusted to abide by those laws upon entry into those countries…As long as [a Muslim] agrees to live in a non-Muslim country, he is never to rebel against the people living in his choice of residence, even it seems too hard for him to endure.

From a religious angle, Muslim Americans are forbidden to rebel against the U.S. government.  They are not allowed to seek to overthrow the government, rip up the Constitution (which they gave an oath to uphold!), etc.  They are not allowed to cheat on taxes, steal from anyone, kill or harm any of their fellow citizens, etc.  Instead, they should be law-abiding citizens–according to the Islamic religion and the consensus (ijma) of the Muslim clerics since the last 1,400 years, in spite of Al-Qaeda’s reinterpretation (perversion) of religious doctrine.

Even if hypothetically the U.S. law were to stipulate a condition which was against Islamic teachings, the Muslim American would still have to follow it, as the Islamic cleric I quoted above says:

[Muslims] have to avoid whatever contradicts Islamic teachings. In case they are obliged by law to uphold something contrary to Islamic teachings, they have to adhere to the minimum that the law requires of them.

This idea–that Muslim Americans should uphold the laws of the land–is taught in mosques across the country with great unanimity, so the Islamophobic fear mongering is ill-founded.

Conclusion

The actions of Islamic extremists–such as the 9/11 hijackers and Major Nidal Hasan–flout the normative tradition of Islam and the teachings which millions of Muslim Americans follow.  It is therefore inappropriate to conclude that the religion of Islam itself advocates such things, or that these attackers were simply following their religion.  Such a thing is offensive to say and quite frankly inaccurate.

In any case, it is too early to say with any level of certainty what Major Hasan’s motivations were.  Was he an extremist or simply a guy who lost his marbles like so many other shooters?  Whatever the case, one thing is for sure: his actions do not reflect the Islamic teachings nor the millions of law-abiding Muslim Americans.

UPDATE: I recently found a similar article to mine found here, from BBC News.

SECOND UPDATE: Another article that raises some good points can be found here, this one by a Muslim cleric specifically about the Fort Hood Shooting.