Most successful politicians develop the ability to not answer questions. There is a dizzying range of methods, including the addressing of a different subject (generally introduced with the phrase “I want to be absolutely clear about this”). The thornier the issue, the more important the dodge becomes and the more fervently it is practiced.
There are few thornier issues in America - or the world - today than Islamic radicalism. Although it existed long before 9/11, it was that day that propelled it to the forefront of public attention. But among politicians, the debate has been surprisingly consensual and disturbingly muted.
Despite a string of thwarted and “successful” attacks in the last two years originating on, or aimed at, American soil, politicians have continued to try to hold the line of not addressing the subject frankly. It is as though they fear what will happen if they talk. When he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee last year, Attorney General Eric Holder contorted himself in order not to say “radical” and “Islam” in the same sentence. But whether the politicians want violent forms of Islam to exist or not, they do.
Now, finally, a politician has broken rank, saying that he wants to at least try to address a matter that should be of vital concern to America. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) says he wants to tackle the issue, but the reaction to his plan has not exactly been warm.
You would have thought that after Fort Hood, the Times Square bomb, the Detroit Christmas Day bomb and numerous other plots, that the time was, if anything, over-ripe. The Homeland Security Committee hearings on home-grown radicalization due to start next month claim to intend to draw a wide range of witnesses. But already, the backlash has begun. Or, to put it more accurately, the backlash against the alleged backlash has begun. The hearings may not have started, but the reaction to them has.
Across the media and blogosphere, pundits and certain politicians have been warning of the “fear” that Muslims are said to be feeling about the hearings. Not a witness has been confirmed, but self-appointed Muslim “leaders” have expressed their fears of the mythical “backlash” that is meant to be always about to occur. Talk of a “show trial” has begun. Some, including Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), have even raised - with wearisome predictability - the name of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
When people are this keen to shut down a debate, you know they’ve touched on something that needs to be brought out in the open.
If politicians often avoid the point, recent weeks have provided some master-classes in missing the point altogether. Witness the reaction of James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute. Zogby is just one of those peddling a most pervasive piece of circular logic. “In the wake of the uproar over Park 51” he says, referring to the fight over the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, “and the outrageous comments made by many GOP presidential aspirants and members of Congress, King’s hearings cannot help but cause alarm and deep alienation among American Muslim youth. As such,” Zogby goes on, “King, himself, risks becoming a source of radicalization.”
Got that? If you investigate Islamic extremism, you create it. If you question it, you cause it. If you smelt it, you dealt it. And Zogby is not alone. On the contrary, this line is one of the most pervasive pieces of nonsense to come out of the debate. And it’s worth dwelling on for a second.
For if it were true that questioning, investigating or criticizing Islamic extremism causes such extremism, then there exist only three possibilities.
First, that no such thing as Islamic extremism exists and that everybody must agree that this is the case. Second, that it does exist but that we must not deal with it because if we do, we risk creating more of it. Third, that it does exist, but that the manner in which it is to be addressed is to be decided upon.
All three present problems. The trouble with the first is the inconveniently growing list of attacks and thwarted attacks that suggest that terrorism committed in the name of Islam is not a mirage. To put it another way, it ignores the reasons terrorists give for committing their acts.
The problem with the second stance is not just its circularity but its defeatism. It confuses firefighter and fire. If terrorism is caused by reacting to terrorism, then, when you are the subject of a terrorist attack, all you can do is to sit back and take it as your due until either it, or you, stops.
The problems with the third stance are just as huge. Many people, including many Muslims, are willing to agree that terrorism committed in the name of Islam exists. But from there, the question is how we address it. Ordinary, decent Muslims have only to gain from this debate if it continues to separate out the extremists in their faith. But the extremists are too often precisely the people who would be the gatekeepers of the debate.
Across the country in recent days, Muslim and non-Muslim critics of King and his planned hearings have declared which voices would or would not be favorable to them. Who should be included and who should not. It is hardly surprising that those people who have been critics of certain organizations should be included by certain organizations as exemplars of those who should be outside the debate.
There has even been outrage expressed that one of the most well-known and informed voices in the debate, Ayaan Hirsi Ali — a bestselling author, former Muslim and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute — might be invited. Hirsi Ali has some sharp things to say about terrorists and about Islam. Any hearing that wants to get to the truth should listen to such voices.
Indeed, if King is to get to any truth in his hearings, he should only have the aim of listening to as wide a range of voices as possible and not allowing himself to be limited by anybody. He should include every voice imaginable from the most hard-line Islamist to their most hard-line critics, from those who spend all their time studying the problem to those who say it doesn’t exist.
Only that way will he get a genuine overview of the problem - the denial and the paranoia, the falsehoods and the fallacies. Only by hearing from the widest plethora of voices will he be able to see (and will America be able to see) the full root of the problem and the reason so many people would not have anyone address it.
You cannot defeat an opponent without first identifying it. The enemy of decent ordinary Muslims around the world, as well as the rest of us, is a strain of Islam that is very real and poses a very significant threat. The hysterical over-reactions to King’s investigation should not put him off, nor limit his range of witnesses. On the contrary, they only go to show how important, and long overdue, such hearings are.