Confronting Extremism Close to Home

The war on terror has created extremely difficult circumstances for American Muslims in particular and Western Muslim in general. The feeling in the American Muslim community is that the future of Islam and Muslims in the West is at risk. In this environment, Western Muslims will have to manage their politics with foresight, prudence, and patience.

There are three potential dangers that Western Muslims face.

(1) Increased anti-Western terrorism in the Muslim world fuels Islamophobia, enhances the political influence of Western anti-Muslim extremists, and enables the institutionalization of legislation designed to undermine the influence of Muslims.

(2) The Bush administration's foreign policy is geared towards the projection of American power and reassertion of American hegemony in the Middle East.

(3) Aggressive American unilateralism triggers events and actions within the United States that ultimately undermine the security and well-being of Western Muslims. The third danger to Western Muslim future is homegrown extremism.

While Western Muslims at the moment can do little to reduce the first two dangers beyond engaging in dialogues - political and religious - at various levels, they can and must play an aggressive and decisive role in eliminating internal extremism that resonates with extremism in the Muslim world. Extremist discourse, actions, and postures by a small minority of Western Muslims not only undermine the efforts of the majority to improve Western-Islamic relations, but they also provide concrete evidence of the most egregious stereotypes of Islam and Muslims.

Western Muslim community leaders, activists, and scholars must condemn and reject any and all forms of extremist rhetoric coming from

, public statements on TV and other media, and from Muslim publications themselves. Care must be taken to not only moderate Muslim public discourse but also Muslim-Muslim discourse in order to ensure that extremism and vehement anti-Westernism do not take root in the community. Islam and Muslims in the West can be critical of the West and Western ideals but cannot and must not be anti-West. We must maintain the critical distinction between being opposed to American foreign policy in the Muslim world and being anti-American.

While a majority of Western Muslims have the same basic desires as many others - material well being, cultural acceptance, and the opportunity to practice their faith without social and political intimidation - some of them do wish to use their geographic location as an asset in their war against the perceived enemies of Islam. However, the argument made by some, including commentators Daniel Pipes and Steve Emerson, that radical Islam is embedded in America, is racist and religiously bigoted. Steve Emerson has made statements claiming that the US had become "home to virtually every single militant Islamic group in the world." That notion, and the suggestion that the community hides in its bosom many secret sleeper terrorist cells, is patently false and we should Ciezadlo denounce it as such. No community has been so closely scrutinized as Muslims in America, yet no widespread threat has been uncovered. The 9/11 Commission fully exonerated the community of any connection to terrorism.

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