Enemy At The Gate: The Minority Dance

Aside from military endeavors abroad to attack the ideology of fanatical, nihilist Islamist and exporting the idea of liberal republic democracies, within our own borders, the danger exists.

It should be clear that what many have said is true: we have a large Muslim minority within the United States. Three million, by most estimates. This minority has demonstrated what many immigrants have done in the United States, to be independent, prosperous and productive citizens. This is hardly a plattitude or wink towards mulitculturalism. It is a fact. If it weren't a fact and a large part of the population was in anyway bent on joining their extremist brothers across the sea in destruction, it would be a bloody country right now with vigilantism, internments, mass deportations and destruction.

But they aren't. What there is, however, is a multitude of ideas and practices that, in many ways, reflect American society` and many immigrant populations before, as a whole. Some citizens do not practice their faith at all. Some simply recognize holy days and time to spend with their families. Some practice the basic tenets of their religion, but intersperse their lives with liberal living, free association and living within the frame work of open society. Some are more traditional, adhering as strictly as they can to Islamic tenets and prefer to associate within their own communities. From within these multitudes, a political voice has sprung up in the population represented by such entities as CAIR, MAS and other smaller organizations.

It is unfortunate that it is within all of these differing communities that extremism and potential violent threats can arise from an even smaller, even minute, part of the minority.

Many have pointed to the origins and conduct of the original 19 hijackers from September 11 as proof that it is not within these communities that extremism comes, but from the outside and that these hijackers made special effort to not associate with the Muslim communities or portray any real adherence to their own religious practices. This is quite true and the men went out of their way to hide themselves, not within the Muslim community, but totally separate and behaving as a secularized liberal citizen of our country.

But, history tells us that this is an abboration and that extremists can and do exist within constructed Muslim communities. The first World Trade Center was perpetrated by men who immigrated to the US on false passports, took up residence within large Muslim enclaves and used a residing Islamist cleric and mosque in Brooklyn as their center for coordination. Men already in country were to be the co-conspirators and one was arrested for for killing Rabbi Kahane with an assualt rifle also procured by a local as well. The killing of Rabbi Kahane has never been associated with Islamist terrorism but has always been reviewed as "murder" regardless of the perpetrator's ideology or purpose.

The reason, of course, that Ramsi Yousef and Shiekh Rahman were classified as "criminals" was because we had failed to recognize the danger and. certainly, no one wanted to inflame differences within the two disparate communities.

As time has gone on, and discounting the deep cover which the September 11 hijackers operated under, many of the terrorist rings and actual terrorist attacks within Europe have evinced from established, insular, traditionalist Muslim communities.

It does not mean 9/11 type cells cannot be present within the US, but it does mean that the threat does not eminate from these types of organizations alone.

There is danger in recognizing this threat and voicing it outloud in any security statement or official release. That danger is the possibility of alienating these communities and lending to prejudicial and persecutorial activities against them, regardless of how small the threat may be and how few the numbers involved. Even experts cannot agree on how large the threat is, how radicalized any part of the population may be and whether inflammatory rhetoric within these enclaves has actually created, on any notable scale, persons willing to act. Unfortunately, we know that it takes very few people to kill tens if not thousands of our citizens.

In free, liberal republican democracies, it is a natural act to secure the safety and liberty of even its minority populations, protect their political rights such as free speech. At the same time, these natural inclinations abutt the over all government role of securing the nation and the rest of its citizens.

To ignore the possibility or play it too low also presents its own negative connotations such as allowing extremist rhetoric to expand within these communities and possibly render a larger more insidious problem as time goes on.

The most obvious answer would be to engage these communities and Muslim citizens directly with awareness programs that highlight extremist ideology and the dangers to their youth, children and community as a whole, much as what has been attempted with drug awareness and anti-gang prgrams. Unfortunately, these programs with drugs and gangs have their own problems that bleed into the Muslim communities, as is highlighted by the existence of such organizations as "CAIR". Communities where police and other authorities are not looked upon as protective organizations to keep order and assist the citizens, but instead are looked upon as persecuting those citizens in these communities for ethnic or other prejudicial reasons.

With crime from gangs and drugs still high within the United States, these programs must be seen as less than successful and highly incomplete. Outreach programs and information programs do not receive as much time, budget or thought. Further, there is a fear that "targeting" these communities with information via regular channels, such as TV and radio, may actually incite prejudice and hate crimes from without as such information would be seen by non-community/ethnic/other religionists as possibly re-enforcing their own bigotry.

It is a fine line that free societies that are ideologically set up to protect minorities are loath to walk.

The question is, what is the United States doing to openly engage these communities?

CAIR and other organizations are on the offensive as they feel that any activity by the government to undertake such activities in any form outside of "channels" established by these larger political groups are, on their face, prejudicial and persecutorial already, "demonizing" the minority, thus hamstringing the government and causing an even narrower funnel through which communication passes, slowing the effort and possibly even sowing a greater disconnect from citizens, guests and government. This is even further complicated by organizations such as CAIR having their own political agenda directly related to the Palestine-Israel conflict, Afghanistan and Iraqi wars, and immigration among other foreign and domestic policy issues.

These issues are also apparent in reverse. CAIR's political aspirations and agenda often complicate their message from the Muslim community to the greater American citizenship, lending to discontent with Muslim reaction and suspicion of motives or allegiance.

Thus we continue in the post 9/11 world and in the wake of terrorist attacks around th world, doing a delicate minority dance while we look for answers to our security.