Digby, at Hullabaloo, highlighted something that Wes Clark, once a Democratic Presidential contender, recently said:
Clark: We have got to identify the people who are most likely to be radicalized. We've got to cut this off at the beginning. There are always a certain number of young people who are alienated. They don't get a job, they lost a girlfriend, their family doesn't feel happy here and we can watch the signs of that. And there are members of the community who can reach out to those people and bring them back in and encourage them to look at their blessings here.
But I do think on a national policy level we need to look at what self-radicalization means because we are at war with this group of terrorists. They do have an ideology. In World War II if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn't say that was freedom of speech, we put him in a camp, they were prisoners of war.
So, if these people are radicalized and they don't support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States, as a matter of principle fine. It's their right and it's our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict. And I think we're going to have to increasingly get tough on this, not only in the United States but our allied nations like Britain, Germany and France are going to have to look at their domestic law procedures.
This is very disturbing to me. I don't know what standing General Wesley Clark has in the Democratic Party - but I am quite certain that he is not part of a lunatic fringe. And here he is, suggesting internment, on what basis? In this nation, we are supposed to have freedom of thought and speech; and only conspiracies or real incitement to violence can be considered to be speech that crosses the line. On what basis are we going to distinguish between a devout Muslim whose intentions are peaceful and a devout Muslim who believes in violence? On what basis can this proposed internment work? We will end up indiscriminatingly "segregating" all Muslims from the "normal community".
If someone like Wesley Clark is suggesting this, you can imagine the ideas germinating in the heads of everyone that is politically to the right of him, which is a substantial portion of the country. And that means we may re-enact some of the most unfortunate eras of our history.
That is why, in the face of dailykos members' disapproval, I've been saying that Liberals need to speak up. What do liberals need to do, in my opinion, is below the fold.
Before I go into what I think liberals must do, let me quote Pakistani-Canadian liberal Tarek Fatah from the Toronto Sun:
For 15 years now the question, “how to combat Islamism” has been avoided in the West so as not to offend the powerful urban Islamist lobbyists and vote banks.
Here are three suggestions:
Interview and debrief every adult male arriving alone from Arab countries, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Somalia, irrespective of religion, colour or nationality.
Tell every mosque in North America to end any and all derogatory references to “kufaar” (Christians, Jews, Hindus and atheists) including in ritual prayers, or lose their charitable status.
End cash donations in mosques and overseas donations from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab sources.
If we do not take these steps now, there will eventually be a very large appetite for Clark’s harsh prescription to prevent Islamist terror on Western soil.
A lesser evil, perhaps?, than what Wes Clark thinks necessary, but an evil nonetheless. Tarek Fatah is of liberal belief and of good humor, but perhaps is speaking from fear, from his own experience with Islamists.
What must liberals do? First, acknowledge that the literal interpretation of the Islamic canon of the Quran, the Sirah and the Hadith is profoundly anti-humanitarian. Yes, so is the literal interpretation of the Bible. But liberals have no problem in vociferously criticizing Bible fundamentalists without disrespecting Christianity or Christians. Of course, the criticized complain of a "war" against them, but that doesn't stop liberals. So do exactly the same for Islam.
Second, acknowledge that the aforementioned Islamic fundamentalism has a wide, if sparse appeal. By wide appeal, I mean is that Muslims from every geography and every circumstance of life have been attracted to it. By sparse appeal, I mean that the percentage of Muslims in most areas attracted to this ideology might be numerically a small percentage. In only a few areas it approaches a majority. The point is that they are violent and are sufficient in number to be very disruptive. The Taliban in Afghanistan, the alphabet soup of jihadis in Pakistan, including its own Taliban, Lashar-e-Taiba, etc; the Jamaat-i-Islami in Bangladesh, Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia, ISIL in Iraq and Syria, the jihadis in South Thailand, etc., etc., etc.
Now people can argue whether regular Muslim societies knowingly or unknowingly provide fertile ground for fundamentalist seeds to sprout. You may have seen a poster to the effect that "just as not all smokers die of cancer, not all Muslims become extremists, but we don't doubt that smoking causes cancer". To my mind, this poster is wrong, is offensive and is besides the point. A vigorous liberal critique of fundamentalist Islam will help stop fundamentalism, that is my article of faith, otherwise there is little value to civil society.
If the civil society does not push for change, then the uncivil society will take over. Salman Rushdie already despairs.
"It seems we learned the wrong lessons," he said in the interview printed in French. "Instead of concluding we need to oppose these attacks on freedom of expression, we believed we should calm them through compromises and ceding."
The "politically correct" positions voiced by some -- including a few prominent authors who disagreed with Charlie Hebdo receiving a freedom of speech award at a PEN literary gala in New York in May -- were motivated by fear, Rushdie said.
"If people weren't being killed right now, if bombs and Kalashnikovs weren't speaking today, the debate would be very different. Fear is being disguised as respect," he said.
There is Sarah Haider, of the ex-Muslims of North America; having made the difficult transition from Muslim to atheist, a change that is legally punishable even in some of America's allies, and my heart sank when I heard her say this:
"....an audience on the Left now frightens me nearly as much as an audience of Islamists does."
She explains:
Those who oppose Christian authoritarianism will find that the broad majority of liberals, religious or non-religious, side with them and will ofter their support in the fight to push religious morals out of our politics and public life. Even religious liberals sometimes look upon the politically-charged religious right with distaste and some work with secularists to keep them out of our politics. The executive director for the Americans United for {Separation of} Church and State, for example, is an ordained minister. Atheists and secularists can feel secure in the knowledge that their allies on the liberal Left will stand with them when their target is the far-right Christians. It makes sense, liberals don't share much, many common values with the religious right. But when the same scrutiny is applied to Islam, you find that inexplicably some people on the Left begin to align instead with the Islamic religious right. The consistent exception has been the secular and atheist communities.
There is an instinct to pigeon-hole anyone who says something negative about Islam, to broadly label them in such a way that nearly guarantees that most on the Left will ignore what they have to say.
But Sarah Haider points out, in her speech titled "Islam and the Necessity of Liberal Critique" criticism does work; Western criticism and pressure helped end slavery in the Islamic world; and, I add, without the Civil War that was needed domestically.
You may call me a modern Cassandra, but if you, people of liberal belief and humanitarian intentions, do not speak up and set the terms of the narrative, then someone else will, whom you almost certainly will dislike, and who will lead us to something even worse than what Wes Clark or Tarek Fatah proposed.