by David J. Rusin • Dec 8, 2009 at 10:33 am
Having discussed the inept reaction of government to the massacre carried out by Islamic radical Nidal Malik Hasan, we now compile insightful commentary on the response of American Muslims and those who claim to represent them:
- Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project notes how some Muslims can become more Muslim than others, depending on whether Islamist pressure groups are able to paint them as victims. Exhibit A: the contrasting approaches to the Fort Hood rampage and the death one week earlier of Luqman Ameen Abdullah, a radical imam killed in a shootout with the FBI. Asked about the meme that “Luqman was shot because he was Muslim, but right now religion has nothing to do with Hasan,” Emerson replies that “the Council on American-Islamic Relations wants to play the victimology argument … So when it suits their purpose, they will identify the [purported victim] as Islamic as in the Luqman case … but when it comes to the perpetrator [e.g., Hasan], then of course he has no religion.”
- Counterterrorism researcher Patrick Poole dismantles Islamist logic that addressing the jihadist threat, whether inside the military or elsewhere, is somehow an affront to all Muslims: “To say that you can’t target jihadist ideology without targeting the whole of Islam is an acknowledgment on their part that the two are inseparable — a point I doubt they are ready to concede. Regardless, they can’t have it both ways: either jihadist ideology has nothing to do with Islam, as Islamic groups constantly represent, and thus it can be addressed without infringing on their freedom of religion; or they must admit, along with the ‘Islamophobes,’ that jihadist ideology and the violence it promotes are part and parcel with Islam. The question for these critics is unavoidable: which is it?”
- Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky drives home the theme of Muslims needing to banish the radicals in their midst: “If Islam, as we hear, has been hijacked by extremists, the logical people to rescue it are Muslims themselves. Muslims in the West, starting in America, have to stand up for democracy and be noisy about it. … We’ve seen mass rallies — in the West! — of Muslims denouncing democracy. Where are the pro-democracy Muslim rallies?” Echoing calls for a “Million Muslim March,” Bykofsky throws down the gauntlet: “If a loyal American Muslim asks, ‘Why should I have to do this?’ my answer is easy: You don’t have to. You should want to.”
- Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, speaks for Muslims who recognize the urgency of reclaiming their faith from the fanatics. He argues that in Hasan’s bloodbath and recent plots, “the common thread is political Islam,” an “ideology that brings Muslims down a slippery slope.” In Jasser’s view, “Muslims that look at this problem as merely a PR problem are living on another planet.” It is time to see adherents of Islam “stepping up to take responsibility and trying to fix the problem.”
Jasser’s colleague Sid Shahid, addressing all who demand that Islam and Muslims be treated with kid gloves, gets the final word: “Enough of this sort of political correctness.”
