Is it best to deform our society with increased surveillance and government regulation or reduce diversity and the number of people who live here who are likely to hate us so much that they will hurt us? <\/p>\n
Ronald Kessler writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n As we all know, the vast majority of Muslims are peace-loving. We all have Muslim friends or co-workers who are admirable people. And a handful of terrorist plots have been rolled up by the FBI based on tips from Muslims.<\/p>\n But what the FBI finds disturbing is that Muslim leaders by and large are reluctant to cooperate with the FBI to let the bureau know of radicals within their midst. The FBI is not about to publicize this. But for my book \u201cThe Secrets of the FBI,\u201d Arthur M. \u201cArt\u201d Cummings II, who was the FBI\u2019s executive assistant director in charge of counterterrorism and national security investigations, opened up about the problem.<\/p>\n The FBI has outreach programs to try to develop sources in the Muslim community and solicit tips, but Mr. Cummings found little receptivity. He found that while Muslims have brought some cases to the FBI, Muslim leaders in particular are often in denial about the fact that the terrorists who threaten the United States are Muslims.<\/p>\n \u201cI had this discussion with the director of a very prominent Muslim organization here in D.C.,\u201d Mr. Cummings told me. \u201cAnd he said, \u2018Why are you guys always looking at the Muslim community?\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n Mr. Cummings began laughing.<\/p>\n \u201cOK, you know what I\u2019ll do?\u201d Mr. Cummings said. \u201cI\u2019ll start an Irish squad, or how about a Japanese squad? You want me to waste my time and your taxpayer\u2019s dollars going to look at the Irish? They\u2019re not killing Americans. Right now, I\u2019m going to put my money and my people in a place where the threat is.\u201d<\/p>\n Then Mr. Cummings told him to take a look at the cells the FBI had rolled up in the United States<\/p>\n \u201cI can name the homegrown cells, all of whom are Muslim, all of whom were seeking to murder Americans,\u201d Mr. Cummings said. \u201cIt\u2019s not the Irish, it\u2019s not the French, it\u2019s not the Catholics, it\u2019s not the Protestants, it\u2019s the Muslims.\u201d<\/p>\n In response to such points, Muslim groups have told him he is rough around the edges.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not rough around the edges,\u201d Mr. Cummings has told them. \u201cYou\u2019re just not used to straight talk.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Cummings found they respond by getting angry at him.<\/p>\n While Muslims will occasionally condemn al Qaeda, \u201crarely do we have them coming to us and saying, \u2018There are three guys in the community that we\u2019re very concerned about,\u2019\u201d Mr. Cummings said. \u201cThey want to fix it inside the community. They\u2019re a closed group, a very, very closed group. It\u2019s part of their culture that they want to settle the problem within their own communities. They\u2019ve actually said that to us, which I then go crazy over.\u201d<\/p>\n On one hand, \u201cThey don\u2019t want anyone to know they have extremists in their community,\u201d Mr. Cummings observed. \u201cWell, beautiful. Except do you read the newspapers? Everyone already knows it. That horse has left the barn. So there\u2019s a lot of talk about engagement, but realistically, we\u2019ve got a long, long way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n At one meeting, a Muslim group suggested having a photo taken of their members with then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to show their community isn\u2019t a bunch of terrorists and that they are partners in the war on terror.<\/p>\n Mr. Cummings responded, \u201cLet me make a suggestion: When you bring to my attention real extremists who are here to plan and do something, who are here supporting terrorism, and I work that based on your information, then I promise you, I will have the director stand up on the stage with you.\u201d<\/p>\n To Mr. Cummings\u2018 amazement, the answer was: \u201cThat could never happen. We would lose our constituency. We could never admit to bringing someone to the FBI.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, we\u2019ve just defined the problem, haven\u2019t we?\u201d Mr. Cummings told them.<\/p>\n After September 11, according to Mr. Cummings, imams in as many as 10 percent of the 2,000 mosques in the U.S. preached jihad and hatred of America. In a 2011 Pew Research Center poll, 7 percent of American Muslims said suicide bombings against civilian targets are sometimes justified to defend Islam. But in more recent years, \u201cPreaching jihad and hatred of the U.S. overtly has become more unusual and happens more in private,\u201d Mr. Cummings said. Instead, \u201cRadicalization on the Internet has risen to fill the void.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at the websites of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, or the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, you see a passive, almost obligatory approach to condemning terrorism,\u201d Mr. Cummings said. \u201cThe most prominent crisis for the Arab and Muslim communities is this perception that they\u2019re terrorists, when only a small fraction of them are. Why wouldn\u2019t you have a very loud, active program that says murder of anyone is immoral, illegal and not consistent with Islam, and anyone who supports terrorism or harbors a terrorist is a problem?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is it best to deform our society with increased surveillance and government regulation or reduce diversity and the number of people who live here who are likely to hate us so much that they will hurt us? Ronald Kessler writes: … Continue reading