Lowe’s has apparently pulled its advertising from the only decent show on TLC, All American Muslim. According to The Hollywood Reporter, something called the Florida Family Association encouraged its followers to email the show’s advertisers, stating, “All-American Muslim is propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda’s clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values.” Luckily, TLC says that advertiser support for the show remains strong– I don’t know about you guys, but I think this is the only redeeming show on the network. Continue reading
islamophobia
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Crasstalk recently covered Congressman Peter King’s double standard on extremism and the betrayal of his Muslim constituents. Today, I am pleased to offer you a counter-point from House Representative André Carson (D-IN), Representative King’s peer in the Legislative branch, a former law enforcement officer, and an American Muslim.
Congressman Carson represents Indiana’s 7th Congressional District; he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in early 2008 as part of a special election, voted in to his first full term in Congress in November of 2008, and was reelected again in 2010. Before his career as an elected official, Carson devoted himself to law enforcement and protecting Hoosiers across the state. He first served as a Local Board Investigative Officer for the Indiana State Excise Police for nine years covering 22 counties before being detailed to the Indiana Department of Homeland Security’s Intelligence Fusion Center in 2006 where he worked in an anti-terrorism unit to protect Indiana and the United States from terrorist threats at home and abroad.
Congressman André Carson graciously shared the following perspectives with us:
Representative King claims that American Muslims and Muslims in general do not speak out against Islamic extremism. Do you agree with this statement?
Since 9/11, seven out of the last ten Al-Qaeda plots threatening the U.S. were prevented by Muslim cooperation. L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca testified he was overwhelmed by the number of Muslims who were ready to assist him in response to his outreach. That is just one of many examples, and the call into question whether Representative King is ill-informed.
Until Representative King has reviewed the statements of thousands of American Muslim organizations nationwide who have denounced every act of violence perpetrated by a person who claims to be Muslim, any generalization he makes regarding whether Muslims do enough to “speak out” against extremism is selectively anecdotal, outcome-driven, and patently unfair.
He also stated that the hearings are aimed at protecting Muslims from being pressured to commit terrorist acts. Do you have concerns about these hearings and do you think that they will accomplish what Rep. King claims?
I fear these hearings will exacerbate suspicion of Muslims in our country. Simply by making Muslims the sole focal point and phrasing the inquiry in terms of whether Muslims “cooperate enough,” Chairman King invites non-Muslims to put all of their American Muslim neighbors under a microscope.
There are extremists who pervert Islam to serve violent ends, and they must be deterred, but violence caused by ideological extremism is a threat in all its forms, regardless of the religion or ideology in which it is rooted. Unfortunately, for too many Americans, terrorism has a Muslim face, and I believe it is causing many, including Chairman King, to ignore other homegrown threats. We should never ignore or downplay ANY form of violent extremism. But we also should not be focusing our attention on a single form of extremism while so many others continue to put the American people at risk.
How do you think that the Muslim American community should respond to these hearings?
The Muslim community is broad and diverse with no single organization speaking for all Muslims. But we need to make our voices heard and show we are proud and an important part of America. Muslims Americans are doctors, lawyers, teachers, scientists, and police officers. Muslims want their families to be safe, just like every other American.
What kind of impact does rhetoric like King’s have on the Muslim community as a whole? Is it ignored or directly addressed in community outreach initiatives?
It is dispiriting. To peace-loving, patriotic American Muslims, it serves as a reminder that no matter how many millions fully embrace our country, and no matter how deep their civic commitment, the acts of a misguided handful who pervert the faith creates a tragic guilt-by-association mentality at the highest levels of government. Cooperation of the Muslim community around the world will play a critical role in our effort to prevent future attacks. But this cooperation will never be possible if we further alienate and disparage the Muslim community in our own country.
As a country with constitutionally protected religious freedom, we risk extremism in every religion. Is this liberty worth the risk?
Absolutely. The very first words of our very first amendment give all Americans the right to practice our faith without government persecution. By targeting American Muslims, these hearings run contrary to centuries of upholding religious freedom in the U.S. and further contradicts the proud American history many Muslim families can trace back for generations. This hearing would be just as wrong if they were focusing on any other religious group. It hearkens back to the era of Senator Joseph McCarthy, when similar witch hunts pitted neighbor against neighbor while failing to improve our national security and distracting Americans from more pressing issues confronting the nation.
As a former law enforcement officer, how important is it to factor racial or religious components into an investigation? Does profiling based on these factors make us more or less safe from terrorism?
During my time in law enforcement, I worked with informants and cooperating witnesses from all backgrounds on a wide variety of cases, and one reality held true: those who trusted law enforcement, the judicial system, and the government provided more useful information in a timely manner than those who felt singled out or targeted. Security is based on trust. When leadership does not have the trust of a community, regardless of religion or race, it’s extremely difficult to maintain security.
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H/T: Grand Inquisitor, ihatediamonds, Kenneth Gibson, and a special thanks to Lady_E for putting me in touch with Congressman Carson.
Header Photograph: Flickr.
As Peter King looked out over the circus he had convened yesterday he only had one thing on his mind: revenge. And this time it was personal.
“It was personal, he says, for everyone in his Long Island district, which was home to dozens of the police, firefighters and financial workers who died at the World Trade Center.” It was time for him to finally have revenge upon those that had so cruelly turned their shoulders on him all those years ago.
You see, King knows that Muslims are more likely to engage in terrorist activities because, well, they’re Muslim and the Islamic faith is inherently violent. Wait. That sounds an awful lot like racism and gross generalization. Nevertheless, King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee has seen it first hand; that’s right King has seen Muslim-Americans being Muslims, right here in America. King has actually spent a lot of time with the Muslim-American community so he should definitely know what they’re all about. King insists that “radicalization” (I think this means they’ve started skateboarding and listening to Suicidal Tendencies) in fucking rampant in Muslim-American communities, so much so that it’s necessary to hold hearings about it. Obviously these hearings are complete bullshit and really serve to either 1) ease the paranoia of King and similarly minded political friends or 2) maintain the discourse of scary Muslim terrorists maybe working at your local deli, plotting to put a stick of dynamite in your corn beef and rye. Actually, it’s probably a bit of both, wouldn’t you say? And to think King accused his detractors of being hysterical.
You see, King’s hearings smack all too much of political pandering. Back in January people gathered at the Long Island Islamic Center to discuss the upcoming hearings and what could be done to stop them. However, for this mosque the issue was particularly upsetting. “He used to come to our weddings. He ate dinner in our homes,” the mosque’s chairman, Habeeb Ahmed, said of King, the man whom is supposed to represent them in congress. No member of the Islamic Center in Long Island has ever been accused of terrorism and King has had long ties with the community; yet King has now turned on people he once considered friends, calling the Long Island Islamic Center a “hotbed” of radical Islam and accusing its leaders of being Islamic extremists.
It’s hard to guess what King’s motivation for conducting these hearings is (one can assume they’re partly political, King sees the way the country is swinging and wants to be able to say he was on the front-lines against radical Islam, in a district that’s 90% white alienating a religious minority might actually improve you electoral standings), although he had this to say yesterday as he opened the hearings: “Al-Qaeda is actively targeting the American Muslim community for recruitment. Today’s hearing will address this dangerous trend.” King has also maintained time and time again that Muslim communities are not doing enough to stop radicalization within their communities. This is ostensibly the real reason for the hearings being held: King believes that not only must all Muslims be held accountable for the acts of fringe groups that represent an extremely small portion of the actual Muslim population but that they must meet his standards of what constitutes appropriate measures to prevent terrorist acts from happening.
King’s split with his Muslim constituents began immediately after 9/11; when King first became congressman he would deliver speeches at the Islamic Center often and held book signings in the prayer hall. He took in Muslim interns and was one of the few Republicans who supported U.S. intervention in the 1990s to help Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. In return King had received generous outpourings of support from the Muslim community in his district, including significant financial contributions. In the days following 9/11 Americans were confused and bewildered; no one knew what to believe or discredit as false and there was vast amounts of conspiracy theories and conjecture being thrown around. It was in the climate of confusion that one of the Islamic Center’s directors, Ghazi Khankan, made this comment:
“Who really benefits from such a horrible tragedy that is blamed on Muslims
and Arabs? Definitely Muslims and Arabs do not benefit. It must be the enemy
of Muslims and Arabs. An independent investigation must take place.”
This seems like a perfectly reasonable statement to have made at the time and was probably in response to a direct question regarding who could possibly benefit from committing such an atrocity. Personally, if my religion (I don’t have one, but if I did) was being blamed left and right my first reaction would probably also be one of denial; who wants to think their religious brethren could be capable of such a thing? However, the failure to immediately react without thinking whatsoever infuriated King who claimed they were turning their back on America at its time of greatest need, “they were trying to look the other way while friends of mine were being murdered.” So it would seem that these hearings are the culmination of the grudge and resentment that King began to hold deep within his soul when his friends failed to rabidly demand vengeance for the death of 3000 Americans. He was upset that they didn’t mourn as hard as he did, didn’t want to exact vengeance on the perpetrators with every fiber of their being as King did.
“You have to understand the confusion and shock at the time,” continued Khankan, “tapes of Osama bin Laden had just been released in which he praised but was not yet openly taking responsibility for the attacks. Many at the mosque still remembered that Muslims had been immediately and falsely blamed for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.” See, the unfortunate truth is that not every American does feel as strongly about 9/11 as others might. America has an enormous and diverse population with a regrettable history of systemic discrimination against racial and religious minorities. I’m sure most Muslims fervently denounce the 9/11 attacks (King actually claimed yesterday during the hearings that 15% of American Muslims believe suicide bombings are justified, which in itself is a completely negligible percentage but a bit of digging reveals that the poll he was referring to states this: It is 12% with 5% saying it is “rarely justified,” 7% saying “sometimes,” and 1% saying it is “justified.” This adds up to 13 percent) but can we blame them for not all rallying around the flag as America geared up to launch a war into the heart of their religious community? Can we blame Muslims for being wary of rabid, nationalist Islamophobia given the deep history of suspicion that Khankan’s above quotation speaks to?
“My district, I think it is a good barometer. Nobody in my district didn’t know somebody who was killed on Sept. 11. It is still very personal.” Look, Mr. King, I’m sorry your friends died.
I’m sorry that you were upset by your friends too, Mr. King, I really am. I’m sorry that their denouncement of 9/11 (which the Islamic Center did time and again as more information came to light) was not passionate enough or American enough for you. I’m sorry but you should be ashamed of yourself. You are a grown man and because you cannot control your emotions you have brought an invasive and arbitrary interrogation to bear on your own constituents from the very highest level of government. These are people that supported you, they gave you money, they fucking elected you to be their congressional representative and you’ve now sold them down the river for cheap political gain. You’re personal grudges shouldn’t be resolved through the congressional harassment of an entire religious group, Mr. King.
Ten term Congressional Representative Peter King (R-NY) became the House Chairman Homeland Security Committee in December 2010. He brought to that position his fear and distrust of all things not white and Christian. Under the guise of finding the root cause of, and eradicating, extremism among American Muslims, King is holding hearings this week on “The Radicalization of Muslim Americans”. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), has King’s back, “The purpose [of the hearing] is, if you ask Chairman King, to try and assess how we can better work with the Muslim community in America to stop the spread of radical Islam”
Representative King has a history of painting Islamic-Americans with broad strokes of a very unfriendly brush. In an interview broadcast on February 9, 2004 on Sean Hannity’s radio show, he claimed that “no American Muslim leaders are cooperating in the war on terror,” and further claimed that up to 85% of American Mosques are “ruled by the extremists”. More recent statements leading up to the hearings seem to indicate that his opinion has not mellowed in the last seven years. When asked if he would consider broadening the inquiry to all extremism leading to domestic terrorism by American citizens, Rep. King stated, “It would diffuse and water down the hearings”. He added, “The hearings are aimed at protecting Muslims from being pressured to commit terrorist acts.”
Besides his zeal being a moderating influence on our Muslim brothers, Patriotic American Peter King is well known for his very public support for the Irish Republican Army. When recently asked to justify this, he coyly dodged by saying, “The fact is, the IRA never attacked the United States. And my loyalty is to the United States,” A pretty weak defense as the IRA is known to have killed at least one American citizen in a terrorist attack. His statement becomes even more absurd when you remember who was donating weapons to the IRA in the 1970’s; none other than Muammar Gaddafi, Muslim Extremist and Dictator Extraordinaire. If Peter King wants to see what a supporter of terrorism looks like, he should look in a mirror.
My thoughts are that I believe we could improve Islamic relations in the U.S. by letting folks build community centers and not burning down their places of worship. If they weren’t spending all the community’s time defending themselves, both rhetorically and physically, Muslim-Americans could direct their energies to engaging with the public and answering questions, and, ideally, be freed of the stigma of “Otherness”. If the extreme right in the U.S. was more inclined to allow Muslim-Americans their right to be seen and heard freely, without constantly being required to account for themselves, King might not have to ask why Muslims don’t speak up or speak out against violence.
(via: AP, Bloomberg, Washington Post – PostPartisan, Voices – Washington Post, White House Image)