Author: David Keene
Publication: TheHill.com
Date: February 20, 2003
President Bush has come under some
criticism recently for his outreach to the U.S. Muslim community because
administration officials have apparently met with some groups that have
ties -- direct or indirect -- with extremist groups here and in the Middle
East.
Still, and in spite of the criticism
he continues to reach out.
The president's position is understandable
and even commendable. He doesn't want to do anything to make it appear
that he's leading an anti-Muslim crusade because this would drive millions
of Muslims into the extremist camp with Osama bin Laden and his buddies.
The problem is that the ideology
driving the terrorists is in fact religion-based. Wahhabism is more than
just the state-sponsored religion of Saudi Arabia. It is a branch of Islam
that is warlike, anti-Western and bent upon our destruction. These folks
hate us as well as any Muslim that doesn't dance to their tune. They have
been responsible, in fact, for the slaughter of literally millions of their
fellow Muslims in their drive to remake one of the world's major religions
in their own image.
If the Wahhabis restricted their
activities to the Middle East, it would be bad enough, but they're also
active here. Thanks to their Saudi sponsors, they have leveraged resources
to recruit followers on our college campuses, to create a virtual base
in our prisons, and establish cells wherever Muslims gather. They control
well over half the mosques in this country and virtually every organization
that purports to speak for Muslim interests.
Make no mistake about it: these
people are our enemies. To deny this would be foolish and to empower them
in any way is a mistake of the first order because doing so legitimizes
their claim to speak for all Muslims.
The problem is that moderate Muslims
control few organizations and have virtually no voice. Most of them, in
fact, know better than to challenge the Wahhabis.
Non-Muslim experts know too that
challenging the Wahhabis' extremist view of the world can be dangerous.
Anyone who even remotely threatens the Wahhabis can expect to be denounced
by supposedly mainline Muslim organizations and their friends as anti-Muslim
and a religious bigot to boot.
These groups are, in the main, acting
as de facto defenders of the sponsors of extremist terrorism. Those who
would defend this country are not lumping all Muslims together. It is the
Wahhabis and their fellow travelers that see the Muslim population as a
homogeneous sea in which they swim, hide and operate.
I have run into these zealots twice
in the last six months or so. On both occasions their targets were recognized
experts on Islam and terrorism who they denounced as "racists," "bigots"
and men "who know absolutely nothing about Islam or the Middle East."
In both instances they sought veto
power over who should or should not be allowed to discuss the extremist
Muslim connection to world terrorism and in both instances they were rebuffed.
Having failed to keep the objects of their enmity from speaking, they then
proceeded to denounce publicly in the press and on the Internet the sponsors
of the events at which they spoke as, you guessed it, "bigots and racists."
So who were these ignoramuses whom
the Islamists see as mere bigots running around the country slandering
an entire religion?
You've probably heard of both of
them. One is Steve Emerson, a prize-winning journalist, who produced a
major television report on the influence of Muslim extremists in this country.
His "Jihad in America" aired on PBS, that hothouse of religious extremism
and bigotry, and won him recognition as a leading journalistic expert on
terrorism. He writes and lectures extensively on the subject and is called
upon for analysis by the networks and the government, among others.
The other is Dan Pipes. Formerly
of the Chicago and Harvard faculties, Pipes is currently director of the
Middle East Forum. He has published at least 10 books including Militant
Islam Reaches America, which has been widely praised for its analysis of
just this problem.
I think I know why the Wahhabis
hate these guys and will do anything they can to silence them. It's not
because Emerson and Pipes are kooks, bigots or racists. And it's certainly
not because they don't know what they're talking about.
Rather, it's because they know exactly
what they're talking about. Neither man has ever said that all Muslims
are the same and neither has ever tried to blame either mainstream Islam
or its millions of followers for the war in which we are engaged.
The only people who have argued
that no distinctions can or should be drawn among Muslims are the Wahhabis
and their apologists and that should tell us all we need to know about
both.
David Keene, chairman of the American
Conservative Union, is a managing associate with the Carmen Group, a D.C.-based
governmental affairs firm.