In their "Idea of the Day" post, the Center for American Progress warns that the anti-Muslim rhetoric surrounding the Ground Zero mosque Cordoba House Park51 is a threat to our national security.
Hateful speech against Muslims and Islam puts our nation’s security at risk. Gingrich and Palin—and others like them—are playing into a dangerous “us vs. them” framework that terrorists use to prove the United States is fighting a global war against Islam. What better recruiting tool than Newt decrying Muslim civic engagement as a threat to American values? Or Sarah tweeting that a mosque near Ground Zero is a stab in the heart of 9/11 victims? (Never mind that Muslim Americans also died at Ground Zero.)
Anti-Muslim rhetoric is also a repudiation of America’s core values. Right after 9/11 President Bill Clinton walked through the Harlem neighborhood where his offices are. He pointed to nail salons, carryout shops, beauty salons, barber shops, restaurants—dozens of enterprises run by men and women from countries around the world who’d come to America for a better life for themselves and their families, and who were living and working side by side. That is what makes our country great, Clinton said—and what the terrorists wanted to destroy.
Read CAP senior fellow Sally Steenland's fleshed out piece on Islamophobia here.
David H. Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, shares the same concern, but turned a slightly different way. (h/t: @natsecnet) Schanzer says that the attitudes regarding Park51 is symptomatic of a larger problem of American views toward Muslim Americans and that makes the job of those in charge of national security much more difficult.
To prevent such attacks, we need a tip from someone in the community who knows an individual who is becoming radicalized. We also need to counteract the social conditions that lead to radicalization in the first place.
Both counterterrorism strategies are being undermined by the virulent anti-Islamic attitudes now spreading through America — no longer confined to the fringes of society, but becoming acceptable, mainstream thought. The rise of such intolerance is always of grave concern, but is particularly dangerous now because it is likely to inhibit intelligence collection from Muslim-Americans and may contribute to the radicalization process.
Law enforcement officials occasionally receive information about a suspicious person from a fertilizer vendor or some other person in a position to observe potential terrorists. But authorities agree such tips are most likely to come from the community in which the homegrown terrorist lives, which in this day and age is frequently the Muslim-American community.
In the years since the 9/11 attacks, officials have made many constructive efforts to engage and foster information exchanges with Muslim-Americans. These efforts, which make us all safer, are now being severely undercut by the attitudes the Ground Zero debate is laying bare for all to see.
Read Schanzer's piece in its entirety here.
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