Selected article excerpts:
- Representative Peter King’s (R-N.Y.) congressional hearings on the extent of radicalization in the American Muslim community are not designed to uncover facts and resolve conflicts. Like the McCarthy hearings of a bygone era, and indeed like the very extremism they claim to fight, the hearings are designed to fuel emotions – not noble emotions like patriotism, solidarity, and love of humankind but base emotions like fear, suspicion, and hatred. No matter how much we wish to argue against emotions with facts, emotions will always be more powerful than raw data. This makes emotions the source of our greatest weakness as well as our greatest strength.
- The largest single source of initial information on planned terrorist attacks by Muslims in the United States involved tips from the Muslim-American community itself. Can we really afford to alienate this vital moderate majority and tell Muslim Americans that they, their religion, their prayers, hopes and dreams for a safer world are unwelcome?
- Singling out and alienating a religious community is not the antidote to extremism. The antidote is to unite against fear and anger, and for security, across all boundaries.
