I was educated as a social scientist;
and as a social scientist, learned that if I wanted to understand a
phenomenon and recognized a variable common to many examples of it, I
would be remiss if I did not investigate it. It would be foolhardy
to claim that a supposed defense of Islam has not been common to many
terrorist events or to claim that there is no such thing as radical
Islam. Now, if the political correctness crew wants to rename it
something like
"radicals-who-claim-they-represent-Islam-but-really-don't-and-certainly-cannot-be-used-to-call-all-Muslims-terrorists,"
they are welcome to do so; but for the sake of brevity, I will call it
radical Islam, and they can consider it short for their mountain of PC
qualifiers.
To hear a bevy of usual suspects tell it --
from the White House and Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) to hip hop
mogul Russell Simmons -- Congressman Peter King (R-NY) should be
outfitted with a white sheet and hood for daring to hold hearings on the
threat of radical Muslims in the United States. Ellison
criticized King for singling out a religious minority. Okay, well
let's see. When was the last time a Christian "terrorist" flew an
airplane into a skyscraper, killing thousands? Or how about an
Irish one (since Ellison specifically warned us not to single out the
Irish)? When was the last time those big, bad Jews strapped on a
suicide bomb vest and blew themselves up in a Pakistani shopping
mall? If Ellison and his PC compatriots want to offer us some
balance by investigating the threat posed by Conservative Christians or
Orthodox Jews, I suppose he can find a way to do it. He certainly
has a ready-made venue in MSNBC. These were also the same people
who claimed after 9/11 that our own actions caused the attacks by
angering "Muslims." Today, however, they find the very same
linkage offensive -- a linkage they blithely made.
More to
the point, however, is the question of what Ellison and the others have
to fear from King -- who after all, as the Chairman of the House
Homeland Security Committee is being quite serious about carrying out
his responsibilities. In fact, we might consider him derelict in
his duties if he did not investigate this threat after foiled plots over
Detroit and in Times Square; not to mention plots like the Ft. Hood
massacre that unfortunately was not stopped. They claim that the
hearings themselves create divisions among Americans; but judging from
the reaction of most Americans to the proposed Ground Zero mosque, it
appears that ship has already sailed. Besides, they never chide
the administration's purveyors of "identity politics" for doing that
very thing.
Are they afraid that King's inquiry might
turn up something ominous? What if they found most American
Muslims good people, but determined that their leaders have failed to
uproot radical "charities" or mosques within their midst? Perhaps
the Obama White House fears that hearings might find that it is more
concerned about political correctness than it is about protecting the
homeland. From their incessant opposition to such things, they
seem to believe that admitting any modicum of terrorism in the name of
Islam damns the entire community -- which I do not think has ever been
King's position. There was a German Fifth Column operating in the
United States during World War II, but it did not mean that the
German-American community was disloyal. Somehow the PC brigade has
a tough time with that intellectual operation.
Beyond
that, we should understand that the left's head-in-the-sand policy is
more than annoying; it's dangerous, and we have a case study that
demonstrates it. I just returned from an extended stay in India, a
nation with the world's second largest Muslim population. The
government's rigid adherence to secularism has given rise to what many
Indians call "pseudo-secularism": a policy that in its fear of
giving offense to the Muslim minority actually gives it preferential
treatment instead. For a while, this meant things like oddball
allocation of funds. For instance, I have been in India during two
budget debates, which resulted in the government giving subsidies to
Muslims going on hajj, but not a penny for the
countless Hindu refugees from Islamic oppression living in abysmal
conditions. In fact, if you ever find yourself at New Delhi's
Indira Gandhi International Airport, you might notice that the
government built a special terminal to be used exclusively by Muslim
pilgrims going on the annual pilgrimage noted above.
More
recently, India's PC policy has given rise to far more sinister
effects. I have been going there for four years and have yet to be
there when there was not a terrorist attack that resulted in the loss
of innocent life. Most westerners have heard about the 2002
anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, but discussion of the arson (set by
Muslims) that burned 59 Hindu pilgrims to death was out of bounds in the
public arena. Just last month, however, a court found that the
arson was set deliberately by members of the Muslim community, acquitted
about two thirds of the defendants, and sentenced another eleven to
death. While the deadly arson does not justify a general riot
against the Muslim community, it shows that the entire incident was not a
problem of "radical Hindus," as the left and apologists claim, but one
of inter-community violence, which if confronted head-on back then might
not have the strength it still does today. It should be noted
that the government long ago arrested those it accused of the
riots-including a member of parliament -- but justice took nine years
for the arson victims and their families.
Worse still, India's PC refusal to confront these issues has led to a situation in which, as I
wrote
recently, "Jihad has come to India." There are uninvestigated and
significant demographic shifts along India's open borders (another
topic they -- and we -- do not wish to address) with Bangladesh, Nepal,
and Pakistan, which has made formerly mixed Hindu-Muslim towns
Hindu rein.
The numbers have been documented thoroughly, but the human impact of
this policy is more dramatically seen in the faces of hundreds of Hindus
I have interviewed as they talked about their fear, the inability of
their women to move outside of the home without being harassed or worse,
of their children being abducted and other attacks that the authorities
do not prosecute for fear of angering the Muslim community or being
called anti-Muslim.
Whether we call it Islamic terrorism
or just plain terrorism (carried out by Allah-knows-whom), there is no
question that the same process which now threatens the world's second
largest country and a nuclear power to boot, is -- progressively --
finding its way to our shores. Whether or not Congressman King is
afforded the freedom of speech and free inquiry to hold effective
hearings will signal to us whether we can expect to face the same
PC-generated terror that India does.
