The White House seems to think the best way to get Muslims to help root out terrorists in their communities is with more “social services.”
That’s the long and short of the administration’s new strategy to counter “radicalization” outlined in an eight-page paper recently released by the White House.
Signed by President Obama, the document presumes that Muslims living in America are mostly downtrodden and may be driven to terror out of a “sense of disenfranchisement.”
Therefore, the government must work harder to “provide social services” for them — including “jobs, education, health care and civil rights” — to “prevent radicalization that leads to violence.”
The White House has already enlisted several agencies to help in this effort. “This engagement can’t simply be about terrorism,” deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough told a Washington-area mosque earlier this year. “We refuse to securitize the relationship between the government and millions of law-abiding, patriotic Muslim Americans.”
He added: “So other departments, like Health and Human Services and Education, have joined with communities to better understand and address the social, emotional and economic challenges faced by young people, because we don’t just want to keep our young people from committing acts of violence; we want them to help build our country.”
In effect, the U.S. is now bribing Muslim Americans with welfare to gain their cooperation in FBI investigations of homegrown terrorist activity, which has spiked in recent years. The strategy is based on dangerously naive assumptions.
For starters, U.S. Muslims generally are not disenfranchised or economically challenged.
They are healthier, better educated and more gainfully employed than the average American. Consider the following stats from a 2008 Gallup poll:
• U.S. Muslims rate their health better than the U.S. population at large (7.8 vs. 7.5 on a scale of 0-10).
• Fully 40% of U.S. Muslims have a college degree or higher compared with 29% of the population as a whole.
• One-in-4 young (18-29) Muslim Americans are professional workers vs. 21% of the U.S. population.
• One quarter of Muslim Americans reported being self-employed, while just 17% of the general population reported operating independent businesses.
• Fully 7-in-10 U.S. Muslims reported having a job vs. 64% of the American population as a whole.
The White House also assumes that U.S. Muslims overwhelming reject jihadist ideology and support the war on terror. They only hesitate to speak out due to post-9/11 feelings of “alienation.”
A more recent Gallup poll, taken last October, casts serious doubt on that theory. It found that 83% of Muslim Americans disapprove of the war in Iraq and almost half say the U.S. never should have sent troops into Afghanistan, even after 9/11. Fully 81% reject terrorist profiling, and large shares distrust the FBI and military.
An earlier survey by Pew found that 1-in-4 young U.S. Muslims think suicide bombings to defend Islam are justified.
Federal indictments of homegrown terrorists clearly show they’re driven by jihad, not by a “sense of disenfranchisement” due to a lack of social services.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden notes the growing number of Americans in terror plots are Islamic males.
“I understand that identifying them as Islamic is kind of a third rail politically here,” he told Fox News national security correspondent Catherine Herridge in her new book, “The Next Wave: On the Hunt for Al Qaeda’s American Recruits.” But “we are not being attacked by Irish nuns.”
In its 2010 poll, Gallup also found a solid majority of Americans do not think their Muslim neighbors are doing enough to speak out against terrorism. We would agree. If there is an ideological war between moderate and radical Islam in the Muslim community, it’s the quietest in history.
Instead of offering free health care, the White House ought to tackle head-on the hateful ideology inspiring Muslim Americans to turn on their fellow citizens. Bring it out of the shadows. Call it by its proper name — jihad — and demand that mosques stop preaching it.
Yet the White House wants to airbrush jihad out of the picture — with outreach and training — so as not to offend the Muslim community.
According to the strategy paper, it’s even rewriting counterterror training manuals used by federal agents — including rookies at the FBI academy — to eliminate “misinformation” about Islam.
Politically correct blinders may make these politicians feel better. But they won’t do a thing to protect the public from homegrown jihadists. They may even give them cover.