[Senate Hearing 110-942]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 110-942
THE ROOTS OF VIOLENT ISLAMIST EXTREMISM AND EFFORTS TO COUNTER IT
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HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 10, 2008
__________
Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html
Printed for the use of the
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TED STEVENS, Alaska
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
BARACK OBAMA, Illinois PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri JOHN WARNER, Virginia
JON TESTER, Montana JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire
Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
Todd M. Stein, Counsel
Marc B. Cappellini, FBI Detailee
Brandon L. Milhorn, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
John K. Grant, Minority Counsel
Lisa M. Nieman, Minority Counsel
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
Patricia R. Hogan, Publications Clerk and GPO Detailee
Laura W. Kilbride, Hearing Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Lieberman............................................ 1
Senator Collins.............................................. 3
Senator Voinovich............................................ 27
WITNESSES
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Maajid Nawaz, Director, The Quilliam Foundation, London.......... 5
Peter P. Mandaville, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Government and
Politics, George Mason University.............................. 10
Zeyno Baran, Senior Fellow and Director of Center for Eurasian
Policy, Hudson Institute....................................... 14
Fathali M. Moghaddam, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychology,
and Director, Conflict Resolution Program, Department of
Government, Georgetown University.............................. 18
Michael E. Leiter, Director, National Counterterrorism Center.... 36
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Baran, Zeyno:
Testimony.................................................... 14
Prepared statement........................................... 68
Leiter, Michael E.:
Testimony.................................................... 36
Prepared statement........................................... 95
Mandaville, Peter P., Ph.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 57
Moghaddam, Fathali, M., Ph.D.:
Testimony.................................................... 18
Prepared statement........................................... 83
Nawaz, Maajid:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 49
APPENDIX
``Report on the Roots of Violent Islamist Extremism and Efforts
to Counter It: The Muslim Brotherhood,'' by Steven Emerson,
Executive Director, Investigative Project on Terrorism,
submitted for the Record by Senator Coburn..................... 102
``The Muslim Brotherhood's US Network,'' February 27, 2008,
article submitted by Zeyno Baran............................... 119
Questions and responses for the Record from:
Mr. Mandaville............................................... 137
Mr. Baran.................................................... 140
Mr. Leiter................................................... 144
THE ROOTS OF VIOLENT ISLAMIST EXTREMISM AND EFFORTS TO COUNTER IT
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THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2008
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:32 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joseph I.
Lieberman, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Lieberman, Collins, Voinovich, and
Coburn.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LIEBERMAN
Chairman Lieberman. Good morning and we will convene the
hearing. Welcome to the seventh in a series of hearings this
Committee has held and is holding to examine the unique threat
posed by what we have called ``homegrown'' violent Islamist
extremism and to determine what steps we can and should take to
identify, isolate, and ultimately eliminate this threat and the
ideology that supports it.
On May 8, the Committee released a bipartisan staff report
titled, ``Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet, and the
Homegrown Terrorist Threat.'' That report concluded that the
use of the Internet by Islamist terrorist organizations has
increased the threat of homegrown terrorism in the United
States because individuals can essentially self-radicalize over
the Internet.
Since then, about a month ago, a college student in Florida
plead guilty to a charge of material support for terrorism.
According to the plea agreement, the student admitted to
producing a video that he uploaded to YouTube which
demonstrated and explained in Arabic how a remote-controlled
toy car could be dissembled and the components converted into a
detonator for an explosive device. The student admitted in the
court papers that in producing the video, he intended to help
those who wanted to attack American servicemen and
servicewomen.
So we are here today to learn more about the ideology
behind terrorism, the ideology that inspires people, including
young people like the student in Florida, to take such hateful,
violent, and anti-American actions.
The 9/11 Commission Report, I think, outlined quite
eloquently and succinctly the dual challenges that we face. It
is said, and I quote, ``Our enemy is two-fold.'' They mentioned
specifically ``al-Qaeda, a stateless network of terrorists that
struck us on September 11, 2001,'' and second, ``a radical
ideological movement in the Islamic world inspired in part by
al-Qaeda,'' but I would add not only inspired by al-Qaeda, but
that al-Qaeda is in effect a result of that radical ideological
movement.
Our first witness on the first panel is Maajid Nawaz. He
will offer the Committee insights into that ideology and the
role it played in driving him to become a member at age 16 and
eventually a leader of the Islamist extremist organization Hizb
ut-Tahrir, or the Liberation Party, in the United Kingdom.
Although Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is called for short HT, claims
that it is non-violent, the exposure of its members to a very
extreme form of Islamist ideology seems often to have laid the
foundation for the planning and execution of terrorist attacks.
Mr. Nawaz recruited others, including his own family, to join
HT and was sent to Pakistan and Denmark to set up additional
cells. He was later arrested in Egypt in 2002 for being a
member of the organization, and in fact was in prison for 4
years.
Upon release, Mr. Nawaz returned to England, where he
eventually denounced the organization and the ideology that was
at its foundation. Today, Mr. Nawaz is one of two directors of
the Quilliam Foundation in the United Kingdom, a
counterextremism think tank committed to discrediting the
Islamist ideology that inspires Islamist terrorism around the
world.
Mr. Nawaz, it is my understanding that this is your first
visit to the United States and I wanted to extend a personal
welcome to you, but also a thank you to you for making the
effort to travel this distance to testify before our Committee.
I believe your testimony is very important to our purpose.
The other three witnesses are equally distinguished and I
know will be equally helpful to the Committee. They have
extensive experience studying Islamist movements around the
world--Dr. Peter Mandaville, Zeyno Baran, and Dr. Fathali
Moghaddam. We look forward to your testimony and your
collective insight into this ideology and the organizations
that espouse it. As the three of you know, we are particularly
interested in how the ideology facilitates the radicalization
process, the end point of which is, of course, the planning and
execution of terrorist attacks, which it is our aim to stop.
Our second panel today will have one witness. That is the
Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael
Leiter. This is the Committee that initiated the legislation
that created the National Counterterrorism Center, so we are
always proud in a somewhat paternalistic and maternalistic way
to welcome Mr. Leiter, its Director, to testify.
I close with another quote from the 9/11 Commission Report
as follows: ``Our strategy,'' the Commission said, ``must match
our means to two ends, dismantling the al-Qaeda network and
prevailing in the longer term over the ideology that gives rise
to Islamist terrorism.'' I agree. The testimony of our
witnesses today, I am confident, can help us measurably in our
efforts to better understand the roots of Islamist ideology, to
distinguish it, of course, from Islam, with the overall purpose
of better directing our international, national, and local
efforts to counter the spread of this ideology and to stop the
terrorism it aims to inspire.
Senator Collins.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLLINS
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I,
too, saw Michael Leiter outside in the anteroom and he said
that he was looking forward to testifying before the father and
the mother of the National Counterterrorism Center, so
obviously he is thinking along those same lines that you are.
On a more serious note, he did say that he thought the Center
was operating very well and was bringing a great deal to our
counterterrorism operations.
I am very pleased to be participating in this important
hearing this morning. Islam is a major world religion with more
than one billion adherents worldwide. Like most other
religions, Islam has myriad variations that are adopted or
rejected by people from all walks of life who view these
different alternatives through the lens of their own
experiences.
Obviously, but I believe it bears repeating today, the vast
majority of Muslims lead peaceful lives following the tenets of
faith, prayer, fasting, charity, and pilgrimage that
characterize mainstream Islam. There are also some Muslims who
subscribe to an extreme variation of Islamic ideology that is
antithetical to our Western culture and our constitutional
democracy. Yet they, too, may pose no threat to our way of life
nor to the free exercise of other faiths.
But there also exists a subset of violent Islamist
extremists who seek to impose their world view, including the
creation of a global totalitarian state, through all means,
including violence. These terrorists turn to violence to
achieve their ideological goals, seducing recruits and
supporters with religiously laced rhetoric that legitimizes and
in some cases exalts violence.
To better understand the roots of violent Islamist
extremism, this Committee is exploring the radical religious
ideology that can be used to incite or justify acts of terror.
Specifically, we seek the answers to the following questions:
Is a certain ideology a necessary, albeit not sufficient,
factor in leading an individual to embrace violence? How do
some extremists use the ideology to legitimize terrorist acts
and incite others to commit them? What other factors contribute
to turning an individual from the non-violent advocacy of an
ideology to violent extremism? How can we deter the use of
violence in the support of any ideology?
Learning more about Islamist extremist ideology is
important, but it is only part of our inquiry. To understand
why an individual becomes violent, we must also consider other
triggers, including the social, political, and psychological
factors that may combine with ideological fervor to lead
recruits down the path to terrorism.
This is a complex area of inquiry. It is not susceptible to
easy analysis nor quick fixes. I do not believe that we can say
that ideology is the root cause of terrorism any more than we
can say that racism or perceptions of injustice or oppression
are sufficient in and of themselves to explain violent
extremism. Indeed, experts have debunked myths that all
terrorists are psychotic, poor, uneducated, or otherwise fall
within an easily identifiable profile. To actually gain a
better understanding of all the factors that might contribute
to terrorism, we must also work with the leaders in the
American Muslim community to address these root causes and to
delegitimize violence as the means of promoting a system of
beliefs.
As the Committee explores these issues, we must be clear
that our efforts are designed to prevent terrorism, not to
suppress the peaceful expression of ideas, even those beliefs
which are repugnant to us. For example, I am alarmed when
extremist ideology is used to justify the oppression of women
or those of other religious faiths. As a public official,
however, my personal abhorrence cannot color my judgment as to
the fair treatment of those who may espouse that ideology as
long as it is not accompanied by violence.
Let me emphasize the point. I condemn any group or
individual of any ideology that supports, condones, finances,
or otherwise uses terrorism to advance their goals. But let me
say in equally uncertain terms, I also condemn any action by
any government that would punish individuals merely for the
exercise of their unalienable rights to worship and speak as
they choose.
More than 230 years ago, as this country declared its
independence from tyranny, it also declared through the
protections of the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights that
on these shores, the clash of ideas would be waged with words,
not with guns and bombs. To that end, our duty as policy makers
is to protect the political institutions that give individuals
the right to express their views and exercise their rights
without resorting to violence. For in a world where terrorists
kill innocent men, women, and children to forcefully impose
their beliefs on others, the true battle is between those who
are violent and those who are not.
The Constitution protects an individual's right to hold any
belief he or she may choose. This constitutional principle also
underlies some of the unique features of the American way of
life that thus far have helped to prevent violent extremism
from taking root in this country. Those values, such as the
openness of our society, tolerance for different viewpoints,
and the assimilation of peoples of different faiths and
ethnicities, are incompatible with extremist ideas like the
suppression of other religions.
This is the ongoing struggle, and today, we are continuing
our efforts to better understand the triggers of violent
extremism and the threat that they pose to our way of life.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Collins. Thank you very
much, and thank you, Senator Coburn, for being here.
Senator Coburn. Mr. Chairman, I am not going to be able to
stay, but I would like unanimous consent to enter something
into the record, if I may.\1\
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\1\ ``Report on the Roots of Violent Islamist Extremism and Efforts
to Counter It: The Muslim Brotherhood,'' by Steven Emerson, Executive
Director, Investigative Project on Terrorism, submitted for the Record
by Senator Coburn appears in the Appendix on page 102.
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Chairman Lieberman. Without objection, it is so ordered,
and we will welcome you as long as your schedule allows you to
stay.
Mr. Nawaz, we are going to go to you first. Thank you again
for taking the time and making the effort to come from the
United Kingdom.
Mr. Nawaz. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. We welcome your testimony now.
TESTIMONY OF MAAJID NAWAZ,\1\ DIRECTOR, THE QUILLIAM
FOUNDATION, LONDON
Mr. Nawaz. Thank you, Chairman Lieberman and Ranking Member
Collins. I really don't think I can add anything more to what
you have just said, so really, perhaps I should just go on now
because what you just said is a very eloquent expression of
what I believe. So thank you for that and thank you for having
me here. I wish to congratulate the American people on the
recent July Fourth celebrations. It is a shame I couldn't be
here for those.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Nawaz appears in the Appendix on
page 49.
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But moving to the discussion of the day, I did join Hizb
ut-Tahrir when I was 16 years old. I moved to London to recruit
for Hizb ut-Tahrir. I joined Newham College, where I was
elected as President of the Students' Union, and regrettably
and sadly, due to the radicalization that occurred on that
campus, myself and Ed Husain were both on the campus of Newham
College at the same time--he is the author of the widely
acclaimed book, ``The Islamist.'' Sadly, that radicalization
eventually led to a situation where another student was
murdered on campus by somebody who was a supporter of our
activities, and really, that should have acted as a warning for
me in those early days because what played out in Newham
College ended up being the microcosm of what would play itself
out much later on with the attacks on September 11, 2001, in
the United States of America, and that is that people who were
inspired by our ideology, Hizb ut-Tahrir's ideology, but merely
differed with us in tactics, decided to use that very same
ideology to bring about violence and chaos in this world.
Ed Husain, when he saw the murder at Newham College,
decided to leave Hizb ut-Tahrir. I very foolishly decided to
stay, thinking that perhaps we could carry on with our
intellectual mission rather than focusing on encouraging anyone
who is violent to support us. But I didn't realize that the
problem was not in necessarily the associations we made with
people who were naturally inclined to violence, but the problem
was in the very ideas themselves.
I went on to, as you have mentioned, export Hizb ut-Tahrir
to Pakistan from London and also to Denmark from London. I also
know by personal experience that Hizb ut-Tahrir was exported
from London to many other countries, including Indonesia and
Malaysia. Europe generally acts as a diplomatic hub, a funding
source, and a media platform for Islamist radicals, whether
they be of the terrorist type or whether they be of the
revolutionary or radical type.
I ended up, as you mentioned, in Egypt where I was
convicted to 5 years in prison for being a member of Hizb ut-
Tahrir, after taking a route via their torture dungeons in the
headquarters of the state security, where people were
electrocuted before my eyes for being associated with us. I was
thankfully adopted by Amnesty International as a Prisoner of
Conscience, and that was the first step for my heart to open up
for the first time in 10 years after having joined Hizb ut-
Tahrir. I began to think in a way different to how I had been
speaking and thinking about non-Muslims because Amnesty
International extended the hand to me, despite the fact that I
had been propagating that Amnesty International and other such
human rights organizations were, in fact, the enemy to Islam
and Muslims.
And as you have mentioned, I left prison in 2006, returned
to the U.K., and after having joined the Leadership Committee
of Hizb ut-Tahrir, finally decided that I could no longer carry
on with the hypocrisy that I felt inside me because I no longer
believed in the Islamist ideology, and so I resigned.
Now, what I would like to very quickly address is what I
believe in the way to differentiate between Islamists and
normal ordinary Muslims, and through my experience, the work we
are doing in the Quilliam Foundation and also my academic
studies, I went on to study for a Master's degree in political
theory with modules in terrorism, conflict, and violence, in
multiculturalism, and in religion and politics at the London
School of Economics. I believe that we are able to identify
four core elements that Islamists will share regardless of the
tactics that they employ to bring about that ideology.
I wish to discuss briefly about those four core elements,
and then the different strands of Islamists who adhere to those
four core principles and how they differ in their tactics, and
then if there is time--I am very conscious I have to adhere to
the 10 minutes--just to mention something about the role that
grievances play in radicalization vis-a-vis ideology itself.
So first of all, the four core elements that I think are
common to all Islamists regardless of the methodology they
employ--and the first one I identify is that Islamists believe
that Islam is a political ideology rather than a religion. Now,
traditionally, Muslims would believe that their faith is a
religion, but Islamists insist, beginning from the 1920s with
Hassan al-Banna, that Islam is, in fact, a political ideology.
Now, the roots of that perhaps can come out later, but just
very quickly, that is traced through the influence of communism
in the Arab world, especially through the Arab socialism known
as Baathism. A lot of the founding members of Islamists were
inspired by Baathists, Arab socialists, including the founder
of Hizb ut-Tahrir who used to be a Baathist.
So the first point there, the implication of Islam being a
political ideology rather than a religion, is that means there
must be a perennial conflict between Islam and capitalism just
like there was perceived to be a conflict, as well, between
communism and capitalism, and that is one of the implications.
Another implication is that because it is an ideology, it
encompasses everything; there must be an Islamic solution to
everything. There must be an Islamic economic system. There
must be an Islamic car, as has recently been invented in
Malaysia. Everything must be Islamized because it is an
ideology that encompasses everything.
The second core element that Islamists will all share is
the notion that the Shariah religious code, which is a personal
code of conduct, must become state law, and this is again a
modern innovation alien to traditional Islam. Throughout the
history of Muslims, the Shariah was never once adopted as a
permanent state codified law. In fact, the whole notion of
codified law is modern. But the Islamists will insist that the
Shariah religious code must be state law, and if it is not,
then the implication is that state is un-Islamic.
The third principle is that Islamists will identify with a
global community known as the Ummah, and they will consider the
Ummah, or the Muslim global community, as a political identity
rather than a religious identity. Again, drawing parallels from
communism, this is easily understood when remembering the whole
notion of the international proletariat, this global community
where workers owe no other allegiance except to fellow workers,
regardless of borders and ethnicity and nationality.
Islamists have developed, again inspired by communism, the
same notion of a global political community that owes no
allegiance except to itself, and that is the political notion
of Ummah rather than the prophetic understanding of ummah,
which is as a religious community, and the Prophet himself in
Medina, when he signed the Document of Medina, the famous
document, used the word ummah, or nation, to refer to the Jews,
the Christians, and the Muslims all living together in one
city. Yet today, Islamists will use it just for Muslims as a
global community.
Fourth, and the final shared element for Islamists, is that
this ideology with this law and that global political community
needs to be represented by a bloc, like the Soviet bloc. It
needs to be represented by an expansionist state, and that is
the Caliphate, and this state will be expansionist because it
represents that global community, and where that state's
authority has not extended to look after the affairs of that
global community, then it must reach them to liberate them from
being enslaved either by the capitalists or the communists.
Just like the USSR developed this bloc and the whole Eastern
Bloc was expansionist and it had the whole notion of exporting
the revolution, the Islamists, again inspired by the same
ideals, have developed the same paradigm for Islamism.
So this global expansionist Caliphate is the final shared
element that all Islamists believe in, and they have made these
four principles fundamental to the creed of Islam. So if a
Muslim was to say that I do not believe the Shariah code should
become state law, they would consider him a heretic or an
apostate. Or if somebody was to say, I do not believe that
Islam is a political ideology, they will consider there is
something deviant in his creed. They have changed the religion
to make the ideology itself the religion.
Now, these shared elements, though common between all
Islamists, this doesn't imply that Islamists are all of one
shade. Islamists do differ in their tactics and methodologies.
I have identified three types of Islamists. They are first
either political Islamists, who are those who use entry-level
politics and tactics by working within the system through the
ballot box to try and bring about this ideology. These are, by
and large, people who are non-violent, yet they have an
ideological agenda. They are in some way a fifth column. Their
agenda is to infiltrate the system and Islamize the system that
they are working in.
The second type of Islamist, again, from these four shared
elements, are the revolutionary Islamists, such as Hizb ut-
Tahrir, the group that I was with, and their methodology is to
infiltrate the militaries, to overthrow the regimes of the
Middle East through military coups, and those in this category
do not believe in using the ballot box or working through the
system.
And the final category of Islamists are the militant
Islamists, or the jihadists, who believe in an armed struggle
against the status quo.
Now, the order of these three is deliberate because they
developed in this way. In the 1920s, the political Islamists
came about, and through the reaction to them, especially in the
Middle East, they eventually became more harsh, more severe,
and formed into the revolutionary Islamists, or Hizb ut-Tahrir,
and from there, again, through reaction, Hizb ut-Tahrir
inspired the jihadist elements, and I know this personally
because the assassins of Sadat who I served time with in
prison, those who weren't executed in the 1981 case, told me
that their teacher was a man by the name of Salim al-Rahhal, a
member of Hizb ut-Tahrir.
I have to end there, so forgive me for----
Chairman Lieberman. Do you want to take a minute more and
just finish what you wanted to say?
Mr. Nawaz. Sure. Thank you for that. So Salim al-Rahhal was
a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir who taught--he was the instructor
for the group that ended up assassinating Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat. He was deported from Egypt and the group known as
Talim al-Jihad was then formed by those very same people, but
minus their instructor, they decided to then use a different
tactic and that was of assassinations.
I know this, as I said, because they spoke to me personally
about these experiences, and Islamists developed through the
torture in the Arab world from becoming political to
revolutionary to jihadists. Ayman al-Zawahiri, who served time
in the same prison that I was in, Mazra Tora prison, and Sayyid
Qutb, who served time, again, in the same prison I was held,
both had exposure to Hizb ut-Tahrir's ideas. Hizb ut-Tahrir is
graffitied on the walls of those prisons.
Ayman al-Zawahiri used to adhere to the same military
method of recruiting from the army officers to instigate a
military coup, which is why he never joined al-Gama'a al-
Islamiyyah in Egypt, who would go about through the direct
action methodology of violence. These ideas came from Hizb ut-
Tahrir. Ayman al-Zawahiri speaks about the notion of how we
must: One, destroy Israel; two, overthrow every single Middle
Eastern regime; and three, establish the Caliphate. In 1953,
these exact same three principles were put out there by Sheikh
Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, who was the founder of Hizb ut-Tahrir.
And when you hear Ayman al-Zawahiri's theory, it is exactly
Hizb ut-Tahrir's theory as articulated in 1953.
Finishing off, I just wanted to mention very briefly about
how this ideology of Islamism, as has been identified, mixes
with grievances to lead to radicalization. There is a common
misperception on the left in the U.K. whereby they only speak
about grievances as a cause for radicalization. Now, I had my
own grievances growing up in Essex. Many of my friends were
attacked, violently assaulted by racists. My friends have been
stabbed before my eyes, my white English friends, simply for
associating with me. I have been falsely arrested on a number
of occasions and released with an apology, and I have never
been convicted of a criminal offense in any country in the
world. I had my own grievances. What makes somebody, who has
localized grievances, turn into somebody who identifies with a
global struggle in a country that has nothing to do with him?
And again, I want to give the analogy of communism. If you
take a Marxist, when a Marxist analyzes the Northern Ireland
conflict, what we refer to in the U.K. as The Troubles, or when
a Marxist analyzes the Israel-Palestine conflict, he will
analyze that conflict through a meta narrative, through a
theory that he has adopted. So a Marxist cannot but see these
conflicts in the theory of class conflicts, as class struggle.
So a Marxist will speak about the Israel-Palestine conflict as
a struggle between classes, the bourgeois versus the
proletariat, and the same with the Northern Ireland struggle
because the way in which the grievances are interpreted is
through the framework or the prism that the ideology provides,
and Islamists have the same thing.
So in my case, with the racism I experienced in the U.K.,
or the nationalist conflict that was playing out in Bosnia, how
from seeing these as localized conflicts that required local
solutions into perceiving them as a global struggle, and that
is because the ideology came and reinterpreted those grievances
for me and provided a new framework. And that framework for
Islamists, unlike in the case of Marxists where it is workers
versus bourgeoisie, for the Islamists, it is what is known as
the perennial struggle of the truth versus the falsehood,
Muslims versus non-Muslims.
My country's intervention in Iraq is seen by Islamists as
being solely inspired by non-Muslims who are attacking the
Iraqis because they are Muslims. It is reinterpreting those
grievances through that framework, and you can see how that
framework will, in fact, end up in the radicalized person, the
radicalized Muslim, in discovering grievances even if they
weren't there because the framework itself defines those
grievances for him.
And what is key for us to understand is the way in which
the grievances interact with the ideology to lead to a whole
new set of grievances, which for an Islamist can be summarized
in one sentence, and that is that God's law does not exist on
this earth.
I thank you. I have gone much over my time, so please,
thank you very much for taking the time.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you, Mr. Nawaz. It was worth the
extra time. Your testimony is very helpful, very clear, and I
think very powerful.
We now go to Dr. Peter Mandaville, a professor at George
Mason University. Dr. Mandaville is the author of ``Global
Political Islam'' and has done empirical research on how
Islamist groups recruit in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
Thank you for being here and we welcome your testimony now.
TESTIMONY OF PETER P. MANDAVILLE, PH.D.,\1\ ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
OF GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY
Mr. Mandaville. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Collins, and
distinguished Members of the Committee, in violent Islamist
extremism, the United States faces a complex, little
understood, and rapidly evolving threat. I am grateful for the
opportunity to address this important issue this morning and to
provide some background information that I hope will help us to
locate violent Islamism within the much broader and diverse
universe of contemporary Islamist political thought and
activism.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Mandaville appears in the
Appendix on page 57.
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I would also like to address the phenomenon of Islamism in
the West, more specifically in the United Kingdom, and the
question of what the United States might be able to learn from
the U.K.'s experience of dealing with Islamism in recent years.
So as to leave maximum time for the panel to take your
questions, I will limit my remarks this morning to a brief
summary of several points contained within the longer written
statement I have submitted, although Senator Collins
effectively delivered my testimony in her opening remarks, so I
may be able to shorten that a bit.
Just as Islam cannot be said to be a monolith, the same
goes for Islamism as an ideological project. While it is
possible to identify certain key figures and groups as being
central to the genealogy of modern Islamism, those who have
subsequently drawn on their ideas or organized themselves in
their mold have often done so in widely varying ways,
interpreting and adapting their views to disparate and
sometimes even mutually exclusive agendas. Thus, today we can
say that the broad ideological current of Islamism manifests
itself in activist agendas that span the complete spectrum from
democratic politics to violent efforts aimed at imposing
Shariah law worldwide.
There is a tendency today among many analysts of Islamism
to define this ideology by very narrow reference to the most
militant phase of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's history.
While activists and agitators holding to those extremist views
can still be found today in the Muslim majority world, and also
in Europe and in the United States, it would be inaccurate to
characterize Islamism exclusively through them.
Furthermore, it is important, I believe, to distinguish
between the Muslim Brotherhood as a distinct organization and
the Muslim Brotherhood as a broad current of thought. The two
are not coterminous and the latter is far more diverse and
varied in its ideational and activist manifestations.
In seeking to identify root causes of extremist violence in
the name of Islam, I think we also need to question today the
extent to which the answer is to be found primarily in
ideology. Millions of Muslims have read ``Milestones,'' the
famous work of militant Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid
Qutb, or have at some point come under the influence of
Islamist ideology. Only an infinitesimally small number of
them, however, have gone on to commit acts of violence.
While ideas are undoubtedly important, as Mr. Nawaz has
mentioned, they will only drive certain individuals to action
if articulated in terms that resonate with and seem to provide
solutions that address perceived life circumstances and needs.
In this regard, I believe the sociological and particularly the
psychological contextualization of Islamist ideology holds the
key to understanding the conditions under which it potentially
poses a violent threat, a topic I believe Dr. Moghaddam will
address in some detail.
Based on my own study and direct observation of
socialization processes in radical, although not directly
violent, Islamist groups in the United Kingdom such as Hizb ut-
Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun, I have identified the following
factors as playing a particularly significant role in leading
an individual to reconfigure his world view and aspirations in
terms of the goals of the movement. Needless to say, the
presence and relative importance of these factors can vary
considerably from individual to individual. I hope also that
raising these points will go some of the way towards answering
the question that Mr. Nawaz ended on, that is, how it is that
local grievances come to be articulated in terms of wider
global projects.
First, let me point briefly to some important generational
differences around religion within Britain's Muslim
communities. Younger Muslims often see their parents' sense of
religiosity as out of touch and overly tainted by the cultures
of the countries from which they emigrated. In contrast to this
``village Islam,'' as they call it, the younger generation
looks for a universal approach to religion, untainted by
sectarian bias and cultural baggage, and moreover, one that can
address the specific problems they face living in the West.
This search for a universal Islam, however, can cut two
ways. On the one hand, it can lead them to emphasize those
aspects of Islam that resonate with universal values, such as
tolerance, openness, pluralism, etc., or they can be led to
equate the search for universal Islam with a focus on global
Muslim causes, civilizational struggles, and fantasies of a
renewed Shariah-based Caliphate.
Most worrying about the violent strains of Islamist
ideology in my eyes is the fact that it travels so well. It is
portable precisely because it is so decontextualized and
unencumbered by local practicalities. It is very easy under the
right circumstances for almost any Muslim anywhere to see
himself reflected in its story.
Second, radical groups depend and prey upon those whose
knowledge of religion is relatively weak. To this end, they
will frequently target new converts to Islam or those who were
born Muslim but whose sense of religiosity was only awakened
later in life. Thus, someone steeped in traditional Islamic
learning is actually better equipped with the resources needed
to recognize the fraudulent and often decontextualized ideas
that radical groups try to circulate as supposedly authentic
Islamic knowledge. To this end, we might consider to what
extent a scaling up of the right kind of religious education,
rather than a wholesale deemphasizing of Islamic education in
favor of secular subjects, might be an effective tool in
countering violent Islamism.
Third, Islamist radicalism often succeeds in providing a
sense of identity, purpose, and a framework through which to
participate in confrontational politics. It is often
particularly appealing to those of hybrid or mixed identity who
are well educated and newly attuned to global political issues,
that is, easily influenced young people trying to find a way
for themselves in the world. As we already know, recruitment
into radical movements, particularly in the West, does not
correlate with socio-economic disenfranchisement or low levels
of educational attainment. Quite the opposite.
Those drawn to these ideologies often have a sense of
Muslims as an oppressed group, drawing on, in the case of the
U.K., a very tangible and real sense of social discrimination,
even where they do not have first-hand experience of this
discrimination themselves. In other words, there is a displaced
political consciousness that convinces itself that it must
fight on behalf of those who cannot fight for themselves.
Finally, moving now beyond the more structured environment
of known Islamist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and into the
less-charted waters of what Marc Sageman recently called
``leaderless jihad,'' it is in my mind increasingly debatable
whether we are dealing with a full and systematic political
ideology as our chief nemesis in the realm of ideas or whether
an increasing number of young Muslims drawn to violent
extremism are doing something more akin to role playing
themselves within a grand narrative of inter-civilizational
struggle, or aspiring to some kind of superhero status, taking
their pointers from larger-than-life figures in video games,
movies, and popular culture as much as from religious scholars
and systematic political ideologies. Such a trend, I believe,
would represent a particularly dangerous development because it
would point to the possibility of an individual moving very
quickly to a point where he is willing to use violence without
having to be systematically staged through various levels of
ideological radicalization.
Let me conclude this morning by making three broad points.
First, we were asked to address the question of how a more in-
depth understanding of the ideology of violent Islamism can
improve America's national security. We need to recognize that
violent Islamism is part of a wider ecology of Muslim and
Islamist thought and practice. By developing a better
understanding of that ecology, we will have a greater capacity
to discern who else within that ecosystem has the capacity to
work against the growth of the extremist current. I believe
that our efforts thus far to address this question have failed
to think effectively and creatively about the question of
potential Muslim partners and allies.
Moreover, and although it may seem counterintuitive to say
so, I would suggest that some of the most valuable
contributions to combatting terrorism in the name of Islam have
and can come from those who have passed through or who operate
on the fringes of Islamist groups and movements. This is,
however, very complex territory, riddled with many, and
sometimes dangerous, shades of gray.
Second, I would like to highlight what I have consistently
emphasized to be the growing importance and concern that I have
around groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir in the post-September 11,
2001, and July 7, 2005 environments. HT in the U.K. has
responded very effectively to the polarizing political
environment around Islam and Muslims. In recent years, the
group has also undergone something of a cosmetic makeover so as
to render it palatable to a constituency beyond the angry
university cohorts that were its mainstay in the 1990s.
While it publicly recants violence and while the number of
active HT members may not be swelling, I think it is fair to
say that the ranks of the group's passive supporters have
increased considerably in recent years. And while HT may not be
the direct conveyor belt into terrorism that some have implied,
there is no doubt that the world view it espouses is
particularly divisive and can render its followers ripe for
cultivation by the enablers of militant agendas. Given the
particular expertise and experience of two of our other
panelists this morning, I am sure we will be hearing more about
this group.
Finally, we should consider the question of what the United
States might be able to learn from the U.K. experience with
radical Islam. In this regard, I think it would be particularly
useful to look at some of the pros and cons of various policy
responses of the U.S. Government and law enforcement agencies
and also the efforts of various Muslim organizations in the
U.K., also to mixed result. In the interest of time, I will not
be able to provide a full inventorying of what has and hasn't
worked in the U.K. in terms of policy and around Muslim
organizations, but would be more than happy to answer questions
on this issue.
In my written statement, I addressed the crucial
differences between Muslim communities in the U.K. and the
United States in terms of levels of socio-economic attainment
and social integration. On the surface, it would seem that many
of the factors that allow violent Islamist ideologies to find a
receptive audience in Europe are simply not present in the
United States, and yet the number of abortive plots and arrests
made in this country over the past few years suggest that the
potential for homegrown terrorism exists here, as well.
While thus far these seem to be largely isolated incidents
with little evidence of a more systematic trend at work, it is
likely that we will continue to see efforts by limited numbers
of American Muslims inhabiting the dense mediascapes of
YouTube, online social networking, and jihadi websites to try
to bring their violent fantasies to fruition. While the theory
of leaderless jihad means that this kind of activity will be
increasingly difficult for any government or law enforcement
agency to detect, it is not all about self-starter, do-it-
yourself terrorism. Enablers of militancy and divisive Islamist
activists still play a role in priming the environment, and
where the individuals, entities, and spaces to which they
operate can be discerned, action can be taken.
Thank you for your attention and again for the opportunity
to address the Committee this morning.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much, Dr. Mandaville.
Excellent statement, and I promise you we will in the question
and answer period ask you to talk some about what your studies
of the activities of the government in the U.K. have shown and
what they tell us about what might work here and what might
not. Thank you.
Our next witness is Ms. Zeyno Baran, the Director of the
Center on Eurasian Policy and a Senior Fellow at the Hudson
Institute, where she researches strategies aimed at stemming
the spread of radical Islamist ideologies, particularly in
Europe. Ms. Baran has done a great deal of research also on the
Muslim Brotherhood movement around the world, including here in
the United States, and in February published an article
entitled, ``The Muslim Brotherhood's US Network,'' which I
would enter into the record of this hearing in full.\1\
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\1\ The article appears in the Appendix on page 119.
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Thank you for being here and we welcome your testimony now.
TESTIMONY OF ZEYNO BARAN,\2\ SENIOR FELLOW AND DIRECTOR, CENTER
FOR EURASIAN POLICY, HUDSON INSTITUTE
Ms. Baran. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Collins,
and Senator Voinovich. Thank you for the opportunity to appear
before you today. I would like to submit my written statement,
please, and summarize.
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\2\ The prepared statement of Ms. Baran appears in the Appendix on
page 68.
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I will very briefly discuss what is at the root of violent
Islamist extremism, which I believe is Islamist ideology. Mr.
Nawaz has explained it in great detail, so I am grateful to him
and I will skip certain parts of my presentation. Second, I
will talk about the institutionalization of Islamism in
America, which is, I think, a very serious problem, a growing
problem. And finally, I will highlight some areas in which I
think the U.S. Government has adopted self-defeating policies
and then suggest some alternatives.
I understand for most Americans, dealing with Islamism is
extremely difficult because it is associated with Islam. Very
few people dare to question beliefs or actions of Muslims
because nobody wants to be called a bigot or an Islamophobe.
That is why we need to be very clear. What needs to be
countered is Islamism, the political ideology, not Islam, the
religion.
The religion itself is compatible with secular liberal
democracy and basic civil liberties. The political ideology,
however, is diametrically opposed to liberal democracy because
it dictates that Islamic law, Shariah, to be the only basis for
the legal and political system that governs the world's
economic, social, and judicial mechanisms and that Islam must
shape all aspects of life. Although various Islamist groups
differ over tactics, they all agree on the end game: A world
dictated by political Islam. While many do not openly call for
violence, they provide an ideological springboard for future
violence.
The first modern Islamist movement, as we know, is the
Muslim Brotherhood, and numerous splinter groups came out of
it, often more radical, and they have in turn given rise to yet
more splinter groups. So consequently, there is now an
exponential growth of fairly radical Islamist organizations
active all over the world, including in cyberspace. Of course,
not all Islamists will one day become terrorists, but all
Islamist terrorists start with non-violent Islamism.
For example, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of
September 11, 2001, was first drawn to violent jihad after
attending Brotherhood youth camps. In fact, the Muslim
Brotherhood's motto says it all: Allah is our objective. The
Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way.
Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.
Islamism is ultimately a long-term social engineering
project. The eventual Islamization of the world is to be
enacted via a bottom-up process. Initially, the individual is
Islamized into becoming a true Muslim. The process requires the
person to reject Western norms of pluralism, individual rights,
and the secular rule of law. The process continues as the
individual's family is transformed, followed by the society,
and then the state. Finally, the entire world is expected to
live and be governed by Islamist principles. So it is this
ideology machinery that works to promote separation, sedition,
and hatred, and that is at the core of Islamist violent
extremism.
I think it is important to underline that violent Islamists
believe they are engaged in what is called a defensive jihad,
which has broad acceptance among many Muslims. The logic is
that under ``just war theory,'' armed jihad can be waged when
Muslims and Islam is under attack. And since the West is waging
war against Islam, if not militarily then culturally, Muslims
have an obligation to participate in a defensive jihad.
Now, let me very briefly discuss two Brotherhood splinter
groups to show how these groups progressively become more
radical. Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), was founded by a Brotherhood
member who over time wanted to use a more radical methodology
and started his own organization. HT's key focus has been the
creation of a worldwide Islamic community, Ummah, and the
reestablishment of the Caliphate. For many decades, these ideas
were considered extreme. More recently, they have been adapted
as mainstream by most Islamists.
HT members claim to want freedom and justice; but the
freedom they want is, I believe, freedom from democracy, and
the justice they want can only be found under Islamist rule.
Under such rule, Muslims who do not abide by Shariah law will
be, in their terms, considered as apostates and liable to
punishment according to Islamic law. Or to put it more
directly, they will be executed.
The freedom and justice HT seeks by overthrowing democracy
can often only be attained through violence. However, HT is not
likely to take up terrorism itself. Terrorist acts are simply
not part of its mission. HT exists to serve as an ideological
and political training ground for Islamists. That is why I have
called them a conveyor belt to terrorism. In order to best
accomplish this goal, HT will remain non-violent, acting within
the legal system of the countries in which it operates.
Actually the same can be said about many of the Islamist
organizations, including the Brotherhood. These groups do not
need to become terrorists because winning the hearts and minds
is much more effective in achieving the ultimate goal. But, of
course, they do not rule out the use of force if they cannot
establish their Caliphate via non-violent means.
HT has led to the formation of even more radical and
militant groups than itself, such as al-Muhajiroun. The
founder, again, was at first with the Muslim Brotherhood, then
became an Hizb ut-Tahrir member, and when he had a falling out
with the leadership of HT over tactics, he formed an even more
radical organization. Note that the difference in all these
splits was not about ideas or ultimate goal. It was about how
best to achieve them.
Al-Muhajiroun has direct links to Osama bin Laden, to Hamas
and Hezbollah, and blatantly advocates for terrorist acts. Over
the years, it has sent hundreds of British men to Afghanistan
and Pakistan for jihadi training. Some of those came back and
attacked their homeland on July 7, 2005.
Now, as we know, people don't just wake up one day and
randomly decide to commit a violent act. There is almost always
a process of radicalization and a network of like-minded people
who become enablers. In the West, Muslims undergoing an
identity crisis are the most vulnerable. There are also those
who are perfectly well adjusted and integrated and simply want
to learn more about their religion. If these well-meaning
citizens end up getting their information from Islamists, they,
too, can become radicalized over time, and that is precisely
why we need to be concerned that the most prominent Muslim
organizations in America were either created by or are
associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and are, therefore, very
heavily influenced by Islamist ideology. In fact, over the
course of four decades, Islamists have taken over the
leadership in almost all Islam-related areas in America, and
today, as a recent New York Police Department (NYPD) report
also stated, there is a serious homegrown threat in the United
States.
How did this happen? Muslim Brotherhood members from the
Middle East and South Asia began coming to the United States in
the 1960s as students, and then they received money and other
support from the Gulf, mostly from the Saudis, to undertake a
whole range of activities to change the perception of Islamism
and Wahhabism in America from extremist to mainstream. And I
think they have been fairly successful.
Following the bottom-up approach that I mentioned, focusing
on education, the first organizations were created in America
were the Muslim Student Associations in universities. After
they graduated, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) was
created in order to expand these radical ideas, and extend the
influence of Islamism beyond college campuses. In the 1980s,
several other prominent Islamist organizations were created,
including the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the
Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), and after Hamas was
created in 1987 in Gaza, the IAP became its leading
representative in North America.
There are a whole set of other organizations that can be
added to this list. I will just mention the Council on American
Islamic Relations (CAIR), which I believe was created by the
Brotherhood to influence the U.S. Government, Congress, Non-
government organizations (NGOs), along with academic and media
groups. Despite being founded by leading Islamists, CAIR has
successfully portrayed itself as a mainstream Muslim
organization over the past 15 years and has been treated as
such by many government officials, including Presidents Clinton
and Bush.
What is critically important in all these organizations is
their support for one another. The same leaders appear in
multiple organizations, tend to have familiar relations, and
move within the same closed, trusted circles. Outwardly, they
all appear to be different entities, but they are actually part
of a carefully planned Islamization effort.
It is also very important to note that despite their
outwardly moderate positions, NAIT, ISNA, and CAIR were all
named as unindicted co-conspirators in a Federal case against
the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which was
charged with providing millions of dollars to Hamas. This trial
provided us with a shocking set of documents. One document
outlining the general strategic goal for the group in America
explains that Muslims in America should consider their mission
as a ``civilization jihadist'' responsibility, which they
describe as a kind of grand jihad in ``eliminating and
destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging
its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the
believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made
victorious over all other religions.'' Clearly, in this case,
jihad is not intended to be an inner personal struggle as it is
often claimed by Islamists when they must explain when they are
caught in calling for jihad.
Therefore it is not surprising that large sections of the
institutionalized Islamic leadership in America do not support
U.S. counterterrorism policy. Far from it. They denounce
virtually every terrorism indictment or investigation as a
religiously motivated attack on Islam instead of considering
whether the individual in question actually broke any laws.
They instinctively blame legal accusations on McCarthyism or
anti-Muslim conspiracies.
So coming back to the title of this hearing, how can the
U.S. counter this extremism and who can be the partners in this
effort? First and foremost, U.S. Government entities and all
those individuals tasked with so-called Muslim outreach need to
know who they are dealing with before bestowing legitimacy on
them as moderate Muslims. There have already been rather
embarrassing cases of top government officials, including
Presidents, posing with their moderate Muslim friends, only to
find later that the person was providing funding to enemies of
the United States.
Many of the American Islamic organizations are established
to further a political agenda. They are not civil rights
groups. They are not faith groups. They are political entities
with a very clear political agenda. Without this understanding,
I believe all kinds of mistakes will continue to be made. For
example, for months now, FBI agents have been trained by CAIR
to be sensitive to Muslims. This is completely self-defeating.
Second, it is an Islamist myth that U.S. support and
engagement for truly moderate Muslims would discredit these
Muslims in the eyes of the community. This, I believe, is a
trick to keep the United States away from non-Islamists while
the Islamists continue to enjoy all kinds of access and
influence. Islamists thrive on U.S. support and engagement,
which effectively legitimizes their self-appointed status as
representatives of the Muslim community. This engagement also
legitimizes their self-appointed ability to judge the
Muslimness of others.
Third, the mantra that only non-violent Islamists can pull
radicalized Muslims away from terrorism is completely
illogical. The reason that these people were radicalized is
Islamist ideology. If the Brotherhood and related groups could
keep these people under control, they would have done so
already. These people either left Brotherhood organizations or
do not want to be affiliated with them precisely because they
have moved on to more radical platforms. So, as long as
Islamism is actively spread, its ideas will continue to wreak
havoc.
The only true allies in countering an ideology that is
fundamentally opposed to America and its ideas are those
Muslims who share American ideas, or at the very least do not
work to undermine them. This group includes the pious and the
practicing, the liberal, the secular, and the cultural ones;
the quiet but still the overwhelming majority of American
Muslims. The Muslims that need active support are non-Islamist
Muslims who understand the inherent incompatibility between
Islamism's desired imposition of Shariah law upon society at
large and Western society's pluralism and equality. Non-
Islamist Muslims are on the American side on the war of ideas.
They can be practicing or not. That is irrelevant. After all,
the issues the terrorists raise to gain support are often
unrelated to Islam as a religion.
I can go on and on, but I am already over my time, so in
closing, I would like to underline that to effectively counter
the further spread of violent manifestations of Islamism, the
United States needs to seriously engage in countering the
Islamist ideology and I believe a good start would be to reveal
the deception of the Islamists, especially in America, and
start working with true allies. Thank you very much.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much, Ms. Baran. That
was, as somebody else would say, straight talk. I appreciate
your testimony. I appreciate your courage, frankly, and we look
forward to asking you questions, particularly about the line of
your testimony regarding how the government finds organizations
of what you have described as non-Islamist Muslim Americans.
The final witness on this quite remarkable panel is Dr. Ali
Moghaddam, a professor at Georgetown University and Director of
the Conflict Resolution Program, also a Senior Fellow at the
Center for Policy Education and Research on Terrorism. Dr.
Moghaddam, thank you for being here and please proceed with
your testimony.
TESTIMONY OF FATHALI M. MOGHADDAM, PH.D.,\1\ PROFESSOR,
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY, AND DIRECTOR, CONFLICT RESOLUTION
PROGRAM, DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Mr. Moghaddam. Chairman Lieberman, Ranking Member Collins,
and Senator Voinovich, thank you for the invitation. Because
ideology is a major focus here, let me begin by clarifying my
own biases. Like hundreds of millions of other Muslims, I am
hopeful that Islamic societies around the world, including in
the Middle East, will move toward more openness in political,
economic, and cultural terms. The open democratic Islamic
society will be more peaceful, more productive, more affluent,
more just for both women and men, and better for the global
economy. To a significant degree, the higher oil prices are a
result of the dictatorships, monopolies, corruption, and lack
of open competition and inefficiency.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Moghaddam appears in the Appendix
on page 83.
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But to achieve a more open Islamic society, we need to
overcome violent Islamist extremism. That is one of the
obstacles. In order to evaluate this particular obstacle, I
find it instructive to review the letter of invitation I
received for this panel, which states the purpose of the Senate
hearing to be to explore the ideologies as the root source for
the radicalization of potential followers of al-Qaeda and other
Islamist terrorist organizations around the world.
I believe it is useful to critically assess the assumption
that an ideology is the root source for the radicalization of
potential followers of al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist
organizations around the world. An ideology does not exist in a
vacuum, nor does it arise in a vacuum, nor is it static, as
religion is not static. Christianity 1,000 years ago was very
different from Christianity today and we hope Islam will change
in the direction that is more constructive, away from Islamist
ideology, obviously.
In the Georgetown University libraries, there are hundreds
of books that write about very fanatical ideologies, including
fundamentalist Christian ideologies that could be used to
launch terrorist attacks. Why is it that Georgetown students do
not become terrorists? Well, clearly, because the availability
of violent Islamist ideology serves as a necessary but not a
sufficient cause for terrorist action.
We must ask, then, what are the factors that combine with a
particular ideology to lead to violent Islamist extremism? How
does an ideology supportive of violent Islamist extremism come
to influence individuals to support and commit terrorist acts?
I have addressed this question by adopting a big picture
approach, exploring radicalization and terrorism in the context
of both cultural evolution and globalization.
In order to clarify my viewpoint, I find it useful to use a
staircase metaphor. Think of a building with a staircase at its
center. There are many floors and people are on these different
floors. There are approximately 1.2 billion Muslims on the
ground floor. On each of the floors that lead up to a terrorist
act, there are different psychological processes. I have gone
into the details in my written statement. For here, what I will
do is just summarize.
The millions of Muslims on the ground floor, they are, of
course, potentially influenced by violent Islamist ideology,
but there are many other factors. Some of the factors that I
have explored are perceived injustice, relative deprivation,
identity and inadequate identity in the Islamic world. I have
argued that Islamic communities around the world are
experiencing an identity crisis. Before us as Muslims, there
seem to be two viable options at the moment. One option is to
copy the West. The other option is to become a Salafist or to
return to pure Islam.
Now, why is there not a third alternative option? That is a
very important question, particularly in Middle East. Why is
there not a secular constructive alternative option? Well, the
simple answer is that the regimes of that region in particular
do not allow for a separate option. If you are in Egypt and you
happen to be a secular politician, particularly during election
time, you had better hide because you will either end up dead
or in prison or you must escape abroad. So the potential for a
third constructive identity, particularly in the near and
Middle East, which is at the heart of the matter, is not there
at the moment. I am going to come back to this later.
So in the staircase of terrorism, the few people who do go
and commit terrorist acts, they are influenced by many factors
other than or in addition to the violent Islamist ideology.
Let me now turn to specifically the idea of homegrown
terrorism. I discuss this particularly in relation to what I
call the distance traveled hypothesis. The distance traveled
hypothesis simply states that the distance that an immigrant
has to travel to reach an adopted land is very much related to
the material resources needed. If you are coming from North
Africa or the Middle East to the United States, you need a
great deal more resources than to reach Turkey or France or
England.
If you look at the Muslim population in the United States,
generally, this population is well educated relative to the
indigenous population. It is relatively well off. The
perception of openness in the United States is very important.
Muslims in the United States in major centers such as Detroit
and Los Angeles are doing relatively well. They perceive the
system to be open in general and that is a very important
factor.
Another important factor related to the relative well-being
of Muslims in the United States is that Muslims here are at a
greater distance from the centers of radical Islamist ideology,
such as Pakistan. This is a very different situation from
Muslims in Germany, France, or England. And the historic
advantage of the United States in assimilating immigrants--this
is another factor to keep in mind. I am an immigrant to the
United States and I have been an immigrant--I lived in England
for a long time. I lived in Canada for 6 years. Relative to
those countries, the United States is far better at
incorporating and integrating immigrants. And part of the magic
here is the American dream, the ideology that anyone can make
it.
Let me turn now to the final part of my testimony, and that
concerns a huge challenge confronting the United States,
particularly in the global context. This challenge has arisen
because of globalization.
Back in 1944, the great Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal
published a work that we all know, ``An American Dilemma.''
Myrdal pointed out that there was a contradiction between
American ideology in terms of self-help, individual
responsibility, equality of opportunity, freedom, etc., on the
one hand, and racial discrimination on the other. Myrdal
pointed out that this was a huge dilemma that would have to be
resolved, and it was resolved. Eventually through legislation,
through cultural reform, we have achieved equality in terms of
opportunities in the United States.
There is now a new global American dilemma. This dilemma is
confronting us because, on the one hand, we have had in the
last three decades at least a rhetoric of support for
democracy, support for freedom, support for equality, etc., a
rhetoric that says that democracy is not unique to the West or
a monopoly of the West but should spread everywhere. On the one
hand, we have this rhetoric. On the other hand, successive U.S.
administrations have continued to support dictatorships in many
countries in the Middle East. This dilemma has to be resolved
because globalization would not allow it to continue, and I
believe that it doesn't matter whether it is a Democrat or a
Republican or an Independent in the White House----
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. [Laughter.]
Mr. Moghaddam. What we need is a resolution of this
conflict, of this dilemma, because the dilemma is reverberating
around the world.
If you go to the streets of Muslim countries in the Middle
East, in North Africa, if you go to the Muslim communities in
France, the South Asians in England, the Turks in Germany, you
will find that in the communities there, they discuss this
dilemma, and it needs to be resolved. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Doctor. Very thoughtful
testimony. You have been an excellent panel and I thank you
all.
We will start with a 7-minute round of questions by the
Members. There may be a vote going off around 11, so hopefully
we will each get in a round before we have to go over.
Mr. Nawaz, again, thank you for being here. I have many
questions so I am going to ask you and the others if you can
keep your answers as brief as possible and still respond. I
wanted to ask you, just in terms of your own experience, take a
brief moment and tell us about how you were radicalized at
college. In other words, what was the process? You mentioned in
your testimony you had adequate grounds for grievance in your
personal experience, but how did the radicalization process by
HT occur?
Mr. Nawaz. I can summarize that in two points, and that is
a crisis of identity and a crisis of faith. Being born and
raised in the U.K., growing up in Essex in the early 1990s,
there were a lot of racist troubles in my home county and there
were an organized group of racist thugs who would target us
with violence. And so the questions arose in my mind as to
exactly who I was. Was I British? Was I English? Was I
Pakistani, which is the country of my grandfather? Was I
Muslim?
So these combined with the problems in the mosques--the
imams of the mosques in those days were, and still are to a
large extent today, imported from the Indian subcontinent. The
standards of their education were poor relative to standards in
the Indian subcontinent, let alone to the standards in the U.K.
The tradition over there is that somebody who fails in his
education is sent to become a mosque imam, and that is if he
fails in his education in Pakistan. And yet this man comes to
the U.K. who can't speak English and he is expected to lead a
congregation in a mosque with the vast majority of the people
that pray in the mosque being second- or third-generation
British citizens who only speak English.
So these two elements combined in me to create a crisis of
both identity and faith, and Bosnia, as I mentioned earlier,
was playing out in Europe, and up until that point, I had
identified these problems purely as racial and Bosnia for the
first time brought to the fore that there were white European
Muslims, blond-haired, blue-eyed, who were being slaughtered
despite the fact that they were Europeans.
And it was at the vulnerable stage, being a teenager, being
15, 16 years old, that I happened across a medical student who
didn't have any of the obstacles in communication that the
mosque imams had. He was a medical student, again, educated in
the U.K., who could relate to my problems and had joined Hizb
ut-Tahrir in London when he went to study. And he came across
very articulately and provided the answers to the crises I had
in my identity and faith and demonstrated that, in fact, my
identity wasn't British and it wasn't Pakistani but these are,
in fact, identities given to me by colonialists. My identity
was something pre-colonial, and that was belonging to the
global Caliphate. So he provided an ideology that gave me
black-and-white answers to the very real grievances that I
faced.
Hizb ut-Tahrir's (HT) process of indoctrination is quite
intense. A member is expected to sit for two solid hours
minimum every week in what they refer to as a study cell, and
discuss and engage in debate in this ideology, and that is a
mandatory requirement for members of HT. And then when he
becomes a member of the party, he is also expected to teach for
a further two hours for his own cell, and that is the minimum
and it will obviously be more than that if he is committed.
So this indoctrination phase involves recalibrating those
grievances, which are initially localized grievances, and
turning them into something which is identified with a global
struggle, and I think that we can't miss either of these. We
have to consider the role that real grievances play in
providing recruits who are not yet ideologues in joining the
ranks of Islamist organizations and then the role that the
ideology plays in reframing those grievances and turning them
into some notion of a global or perennial conflict.
Chairman Lieberman. I appreciate that answer very much.
Ms. Baran made a statement. Obviously, we are talking here
about distinguishing between the religion of Islam and the
political ideology of Islamism. She said something I thought
quite direct and provocative and important, which is, and I
paraphrase, that all Islamist terrorists start with non-violent
Islamism. Would you agree with that?
Mr. Nawaz. One hundred percent.
Chairman Lieberman. Let me now go to your definition of
Islamism, the four characteristics you cited. Consistent with
what we just said, these are not necessarily all of them
violent, but they may be the precursor to violence. I was
particularly struck, and I have been through this but I want
you to talk about it, that you said that those who adopt the
Islamist ideology are committed to making Shariah state law. So
do we understand from that that the members of Islamist groups
in the U.K., or in the United States, who themselves are not
violent nonetheless are committed to making Shariah law the law
of the U.K. or the United States as opposed to the existing
law?
Mr. Nawaz. Again, this is an ideational discussion, so in
terms of practicalities and tactics, the groups will differ.
Hizb ut-Tahrir does not target the Western world to establish
the Shariah as state law. Rather, they don't even target the
whole Muslim world. What they have decided to do practicality-
wise is identify key countries, Turkey being one of them, Egypt
being another, Syria being another. Iraq used to be one of them
until the intervention there. Pakistan definitely is one of
them, which is why I was sent there when they acquired a
nuclear bomb.
They target key countries. If you notice with all these
countries, they have military strength, and they target those
countries with the purpose of gaining power first in those
countries, which they call the starting point. The intention
after that is to expand and then encompass the surrounding
lands and eventually the whole world.
Now, that is HT. The Brotherhood's organization, the
Brotherhood has a similar understanding----
Chairman Lieberman. The Muslim Brotherhood?
Mr. Nawaz. The Muslim Brotherhood. They will target the
Muslim world first and with a view to establishing side by side
a federation of Islamic countries, which will then all
eventually become one and then expand from there.
The purpose of these organizations in the West, I again
summarize into three points, and that is to recruit, and those
recruits can then be sent back to Muslim-majority countries, as
I was, to recruit in those Muslim-majority countries and they
have the standing in society as being educated in the West, as
speaking English, as being relatively more wealthy, and so they
command that immediate respect.
The second aim is to raise funds. Now, the Pound Sterling
goes a very long way in Pakistan, I can assure you. It goes
quite far here in the United States, as well. So it is to raise
funds.
Chairman Lieberman. Farther than we would like. [Laughter.]
Mr. Nawaz. That is to my advantage. And the third is act as
a political and diplomatic hub. London especially is the center
for the international Arab media. Now, even before I left HT, I
appeared on the media regularly, and in fact, BBC's ``Hard
Talk'' interviewed me and I was able to use that as a platform
to project what was even at the time a relatively moderate
version of HT's ideology to my own internal confusions.
However, HT and other Islamist organizations, particularly the
Muslim Brotherhood, have been very successful in using the
Western countries as a media and diplomatic hub.
So those three general strands are what they are looking to
achieve. But the establishment of the Shariah law as state law
is focused on, for practical purposes, the Muslim-majority
countries with a view to expanding after that.
Chairman Lieberman. Very helpful. I am really out of time,
but I want to give you, Ms. Baran, just a moment to get into
this discussion, if you want to add anything to Mr. Nawaz's
characteristics of Islamism as opposed to Islam, and if you
want to say anything about what you take to be the goals of the
Islamist movement within the United States.
Ms. Baran. I agree with Mr. Nawaz. One thing I would like
to add is that I am originally from Turkey, one of the
countries where the groups would like to establish Shariah law.
When I was growing up there, a very different understanding of
Islam was mainstream. And when I first came to this country, I
was quite surprised that I saw so much Islamism at university
campuses, and I do believe, because I was also very actively
involved as a student activist during the Bosnian war, if it
wasn't for my background in a different type of an Islamic
upbringing, I probably would have joined one of the radical
organizations--probably Hizb ut-Tahrir.
In the West, including in the United States, the focus is
to enable having the Shariah law for Muslim communities--so
having Shariah for American Muslims, having Shariah in certain
parts of Britain for British Muslims. We see more and more of
these discussions coming up. In Canada several years ago, it
came very close.
I think as these groups increase their activity, we will
probably hear more demands for Shariah for American Muslims.
They will say it will be compatible with the American legal
system and probably there will be analogies made with Jewish
traditions and others. But, of course, the big difference is
what Mr. Nawaz said; that normally, you don't try to impose
your belief on the whole society and community. The West,
including the United States, is now the best place for
Islamists because of the openness, and of the tolerance of many
different ways of living. This is where the Islamist
communities get organized, funded, provide the structure, but
the focus still is to change the Muslim-majority countries.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much. Senator Collins.
Senator Collins. Thank you. Ms. Baran, you gave us a very
different picture this morning of the efforts of FBI agents to
reach out to the Muslim community in our country. In previous
hearings, witnesses have generally pointed to the FBI effort as
being the model of outreach to the Muslim community. By
contrast, in your testimony today, you stated, for months now,
FBI agents have been trained by CAIR to be sensitive to
Muslims, which you say is completely self-defeating. Could you
expand on why you think the FBI's effort is not an appropriate
and worthwhile one?
Ms. Baran. Sure. Thank you. As I mentioned, CAIR was
created by Muslim Brotherhood organizations. It has ideological
and other connections to groups like Hamas. It does not
represent the Muslim community as a faith community; it is
mostly focused on political issues. Often, we hear CAIR
raising, for example, civil rights issues. But if you look at
the cases, it is almost exclusively of those Muslims who are
following a particular Islamist way of thinking. Issues about
Muslims that are not Islamist or don't follow a particular way
of thinking are hardly ever raised.
So I can give many other examples, but ultimately, it is
about what CAIR will define as sensitive, being properly
respectful and sensitive to Muslims. If, indeed, the Islamist
thinking is the way as Mr. Nawaz outlined, then the agents are
going to be misinformed and they will be overly sensitive and
they will not be able to ask certain questions or go in certain
directions. They are going to be told whatever they want to ask
or do will be offensive to Muslims: It is in Islam. Don't touch
this. Don't go there. So I believe they are not going to be
properly prepared for the work they need to be doing. There are
other ways to reach Muslim communities. It is not just through
CAIR, I believe.
Senator Collins. Whom should the FBI be dealing with?
Ms. Baran. Well, if the issue is to reach to communities--
--
Senator Collins. Right.
Ms. Baran [continuing]. Then other community organizations.
There are women's groups. There are all kinds of groups that
are not organized based on an Islamic political issue. There
are other forums; a whole set of non-Islamist-based
organizations.
Now, going back to Chairman Lieberman's question, where do
you find those non-Islamist Muslims, or Muslim organizations?
Well, as I said, some of these organizations that are there now
and are easy to work with, they have been created over a period
of decades with billions of dollars coming from the Gulf. So
there is this established network and structure and money
already there.
The alternative never has gotten support. This foundation
that Mr. Nawaz is involved in was only created in January of
this year, after there were homegrown terrorist attacks in
Britain and after British citizens had to say, what is going
on, and after people like him left these radical organizations.
We don't have that in America at this point.
Again, if you look at the NYPD report, there are many cases
of homegrown extremism. We have been lucky that some of those
terror attempts simply have not been successful. But I think at
some point, hopefully soon, there will be people coming out and
denouncing the ideology, but then the question is: Will they
get money, will they get support? There is no money outside
government support. The British government started to
understand this and now supports organizations that are trying
to help Britain. They have to somehow counter the money coming
from the Gulf with other money.
Senator Collins. Thank you. Let me ask the two professors
what you think of the FBI's outreach efforts, whether you share
the concerns that we have just heard. I will start with you,
Dr. Mandaville.
Mr. Mandaville. Thank you, Senator Collins. I am not
familiar with the specifics of the CAIR training program for
the FBI and so the answer to the question, I think, would
depend very much on what is going on in those sessions. If they
are primarily aimed at providing basic information about Islam,
Muslims, the basic beliefs, issues of cultural sensitivity,
that is one matter.
I don't share the view that CAIR as an organization is best
understood primarily as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood,
whose core agenda is about the realization of that ideological
project. I do believe that there are individuals associated
with that movement who hold those views, but I think we would
be wrong to simply characterize the organization in its
entirety in relation to that organization.
Senator Collins. Professor Moghaddam.
Mr. Moghaddam. I agree with Dr. Mandaville. I would also
add that we are really looking at short-term issues here. I
mean, in the longer term, the key to changing the situation, I
believe, is to change the situation of Muslim women, and the
way to do that is to make sure they have greater opportunities
for equal participation in economic, political, cultural life
outside the home, and when you do that, you transform the
family, you transform the socialization of the next generation.
The FBI agents that I know, some of whom have been my
students, former students, I don't think they would have
problems cross-examining Muslims in any way.
Senator Collins. Thank you. Mr. Nawaz, I have very little
time left, but let me just read an excerpt from a report that I
found very intriguing. In December 2007, the Dutch intelligence
agency issued a report warning that the Muslim Brotherhood has
a strategy of covertly infiltrating social, political, and
educational institutions, and the report went on to state,
``rather than confronting the state power with direct violence,
this strategy seeks to gradually undermine the state by
infiltrating and eventually taking over civil service, the
judiciary schools, local administrative units.'' Do you think
that is an accurate reflection of what the Muslim Brotherhood's
strategy is today in Western countries?
Mr. Nawaz. I think definitely it is an accurate description
of the strategy the Muslim Brotherhood have been employing
since the 1920s in Muslim-majority countries. In Western
countries, they are beginning to move along this same track,
and the reason why they are beginning to shift in the direction
that you have just outlined is because we are now in the third
generation of Muslims who are being born and raised in Western
countries, such as myself, people who call themselves British
Muslims, people who consider that our expression of faith is
indigenously British by definition.
Now, you have at the same time Islamists who are in their
third generation who express Islamism as a Western expression.
They consider it something which is indigenous. So what they
have decided to do, there has been a shift that the original
tactics of the Brotherhood to gain power, political power in
Muslim-majority countries, these guys do not belong to any of
those countries. They don't have nationality or citizenship of
any of those countries. Their nationality, even their identity,
is becoming Western. And so they are thinking, well, we are
here to stay. What do we do if we are here to stay? This has
become our home.
So a shift is occurring and we saw this in the U.K., that
the institutionalization of Islamism is occurring, and what you
have just described is within many factions of Islamist-
inspired organizations who are not directly Muslim Brotherhood,
it is the tactic that they are beginning to use.
I was the other day speaking to somebody who was a
detective in our police services and happened to be Muslim. I
know I have to keep this brief. And I was speaking to him about
the July 7, 2005 bombings that occurred in London. This man, as
I said, was serving in the police, a detective, and now he is
serving as an immigration inspector at Heathrow Airport. And
this man said to me, well, of course, you know it wasn't the
Muslims that committed July 7, 2005. It was the U.K. government
and there is a conspiracy and these people are the ones who
blew the trains up so they could further their aims and
demonize the Muslim community. I said to him, my God, you
really believe that? He said, of course. These people are
against Muslims. And this is a policeman who is now working on
the immigration patrol at Heathrow Airport.
His ideas come from somewhere. There is something we have
in the U.K. called the Muslim Safety Forum, an organization
that purports to advise the police. This forum has been largely
influenced by Islamist ideals and these are the sorts of ideas
that are coming out into law enforcement officers who happen to
be Muslim. There is a concern we have.
So to summarize, I would say, yes, I am very concerned that
the tactic is shifting and moving towards infiltrating with a
view, because they now consider these countries their homes,
with a view to at least forming what I call Muslim-centric
policies, if not to take over--that is still very much focus in
the Muslim-majority countries--but to form Muslim-centric
policies that only look after the affairs of the Muslim bloc as
a bloc, as a fifth column.
Senator Collins. Thank you.
Mr. Nawaz. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Collins.
Senator Voinovich, a vote has just gone off and I want to
propose this, that you take over and ask your questions. I
think maybe Senator Collins and I will go over and vote, and if
we don't get back by the time you finish your questions, please
recess the hearing and I will begin again as soon as I come
back.
Senator Voinovich. OK.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much. Senator Voinovich.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
Senator Voinovich [presiding]. Thank you. I want to thank
both of you for holding this hearing.
One of the concerns that I have as a Senator, and a citizen
of the United States, is that we have such little knowledge
about the Muslim religion and the Koran. I am not here to
hustle a book, but Dr. Moghaddam, I am promoting your
colleague's, John Esposito's book called ``What Everyone Needs
to Know About Islam.'' It is a fundamental book that I think
lays out what the Muslim religion is about. Do you think this
is a pretty good book? It answers lots of questions about Islam
and what the Koran says and so forth.
Mr. Moghaddam. Yes. It is excellent.
Senator Voinovich. OK. The other is a gentleman I have met
with, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, and he has an effort going
throughout the United States now to try and prove that there is
nothing inconsistent in the Koran with our Declaration of
Independence and our principles here, that you can be a good
Muslim and you can be a good United States citizen. They are
not inconsistent with each other.
And last of all, the book ``Mecca and Main Street,'' by
Geneive Abdo, whom I have met with. It is a very interesting
book because of the fact that she, for 3 years, traveled around
the United States and interviewed various Muslim people and
commented on what she found, and what she said, and I would be
interested in your reaction to this, is that ``the younger
generation of Muslims in particular is charting a different way
of life. They are following new imams and placing their Muslim
identity before their American one. And unlike their parents,
they do not define themselves by their ethnic background as
Pakistani, Palestinian, or Yemeni. Instead, they see themselves
as belonging to a universal faith. Through their new
organizations and websites, they exchange ideas about how to
create a more Islamic lifestyle.
``Are there strident voices critical of U.S. foreign
policies? Without doubt. But these voices, at least for now,
have not made the leap as some European Muslims have toward
violent radicalism.'' That was kind of the summary of what she
found while going to various communities.
And the other point I want to make is this, and it is one
that you have made, Dr. Moghaddam. It is the issue of women's
rights. And I don't know if any of you have read ``Infidel.'' I
am finishing that book, as well as the ``Nine Desires of Muslim
Women.'' All over the world, Muslim women are being cramped and
I believe that the more we can open up opportunities for Muslim
women to get out into society, the more impact we will have on
moving in the direction that we would like, to see a more open
secular society than we see today.
Dr. Mandaville, you said that while there is not yet
evidence of a systemic or widespread threat of homegrown
terrorism in the United States, it is worth considering the
kind of circumstances that might allow such a situation to
emerge. The real issue is what can we do to create an
environment in the United States where it doesn't happen. By
the way, the people that I talk with in CAIR in Ohio, I like
them. I think they are good. I don't know what has influenced
them, but I think they are pretty responsible citizens, and at
least from my observation have been OK. But if these are
organizations that we are not supposed to talk to or they are
being influenced, who do we talk to?
Does anyone want to comment on that? Dr. Mandaville.
Mr. Mandaville. Thank you very much for the question,
Senator Voinovich. To the point of what it would take, what
circumstances would actually bring about a more pervasive or
systemic problem with radicalization, this is where I think the
differences between the United States, the Muslim community in
this country, and Europe are very important. Muslim immigrants
came to this country for the most part with high levels of
education, often professional jobs in hand, and indeed, the
data we have suggests that the average Muslim household income
in the United States is actually at or slightly above the
national average for the United States as a whole, compared
with Europe, where we actually see the average Muslim family in
the lowest 20 percentile of household income.
The structures for addressing grievances when Muslims here
have them, I think are better available than in the United
Kingdom, which again on the surface of it, as I have said in my
testimony, suggests that this kind of homegrown radicalization
is likely to be less of a problem here, although we obviously
have seen instances of it.
My concern in part is that one thing that would lead to
this becoming a more pervasive problem is an increased sense of
victimization on the part of the American-Muslim community, if
it increasingly feels as if it is being singled out. This is
very much a dynamic that has happened in the United Kingdom and
one can explain it and put the blame----
Senator Voinovich. And by the way, I think people should
understand, it is the fastest growing religion in the United
States today.
Mr. Mandaville. Absolutely. Yes. In the case of the United
Kingdom, a number of the Muslim organizations themselves have
not been particularly helpful in this regard. Mr. Nawaz
mentioned the Muslim Safety Forum, and I believe that the
dynamic coming out of that group has been very much as he has
characterized it. There are certain self-appointed spokesmen
for the Muslim community in Europe and the United Kingdom that
have a tendency towards self-victimization. At the same time,
however, some of the funding and some of the outreach coming
from law enforcement and government agencies in that country
has been exclusively devoted to issues of radicalization and
terrorism. Some, particularly the younger generation within the
community being primed in this very polarized environment by
some of the ideas coming out of groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir,
increasingly have a sense of themselves as a community being
defined in relation to terrorism, being told that its sole
contribution to society is to counter radicalization.
Now, this is a concern that the community has. However, the
Muslim community has any number of other concerns, and so my
fear is of a growing dissonance, a gap between the concerns and
issues that the community sees and the priorities of those in
the government and local authorities who are reaching out to
them.
Senator Voinovich. I am going to have to recess this
hearing because I have to go vote, and I am sure that Senator
Lieberman and Senator Collins will be back. Ms. Baran, you did
not have an opportunity to respond to my questions. Do you have
real quick responses?
Ms. Baran. I just want to be clear. I am sure an
overwhelming majority of people in CAIR or other organizations
I have named are good citizens, decent people, wonderful human
beings. That is not the issue. I am talking about the
institutions and the leadership. So I am sure the people you
met are really good, wonderful people. And also being nice does
not mean they don't have a different ideology. We need to be
clear about that.
Senator Voinovich. OK. Well, that ideology hasn't bubbled
up as far as my relationships with them.
I will be back. This hearing is recessed until Senator
Lieberman comes back.
[Recess.]
Chairman Lieberman [presiding]. Let us reconvene the
hearing. Thank you for your patience. I know Senator Collins
will return. We will go now to another 7-minute round of
questions.
Dr. Mandaville, I want to bring you into the discussion
particularly in regard to what your research tells us about the
policies of the government of the United Kingdom in
relationship to various Muslim groups or Islamist groups in the
U.K. What lessons do we learn from that?
Mr. Mandaville. There are two points in particular, Senator
Lieberman, that I would like to make in this regard. First, in
the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and in the wake of the
July 7, 2005, bombings in London, the chief interlocutor for
the U.K. government in terms of outreach to the Muslim
community was an organization called the Muslim Council of
Britain (MCB), founded in the late 1990s. This is an umbrella
organization representing some 500 Muslim organizations,
national, regional, local in nature, spanning the gamut from
madrassas operating in the Pakistani model essentially up in
rural Yorkshire in Northern England, to quite relatively
cosmopolitan, progressive, professional Muslim organizations in
the southern cities of England. So there is a wide range of
views within this entity, meaning that its claims to be able to
say anything representative on behalf of something called the
British Muslim community were always dubious.
And part of the problem here, I think, and this was a
lesson that the U.K. government learned after some years, was
the fact that most Muslims in the U.K., and I would argue in
the United States, as well, do not understand or pursue their
religiosity or their religious identity primarily through
groups and organizations.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Mandaville. Futhermore, with the case of the Muslim
Council of Britain, the leadership ranks of this organization
tended to feature, in my view, a fairly disproportionate number
of individuals with strong linkages to some of the Islamist
movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jama'at-i
Islami, and they have managed to maintain something of a
stranglehold over that organization. This is unfortunate
because I believe that there are within the second and third
generation of Muslims in the United Kingdom those who are ready
to set off on a different course and I think could have a major
impact.
Now, what happened is that the Muslim Council of Britain,
for any number of reasons that I won't go into, found itself in
a number of controversies and the U.K. government began to see
that it was not necessarily the most effective point of
interlocution with the community. So a couple of years later,
the MCB was, I think it is fair to say, deprioritized as that
point of contact and any number of organizations were brought
into the picture, and I think that move was important simply
because they began to realize that there really was no such
thing as an organization that represents the Muslim community
in the U.K.
Chairman Lieberman. So in reaching to other organizations,
did the U.K. government attempt to reach out to--you posited a
problem here----
Mr. Mandaville. Yes.
Chairman Lieberman [continuing]. Which is that most
Muslims, I suppose like most other people of other religions,
don't belong to organizations. So if minority views or
extremist views, Islamist views are disproportionately
represented, let me put it that way----
Mr. Mandaville. Yes.
Chairman Lieberman [continuing]. In the organizations, how
do the authorities, how does the government reach out to try to
create constructive linkages with the Muslim community? So were
any of these other organizations--for instance, I wonder if
there are not uniquely religious organizations that don't have
a political agenda within the Islamic community.
Mr. Mandaville. Yes, absolutely. The shift that we saw 2
years ago went along two different lines, and I think there is
utility in looking at that, and also, I think, looking at what
the German government has been doing in recent years with its
new Islamic Conference. The German government had the benefit
of the hindsight of the British experience, I think, and when
the Minister of Interior in Germany set up the Islamic
Conference, they made sure to include within its membership a
number of Muslim members at large who are not actually
affiliated with any organizations per se, but who had a
following, who were notable voices and figures representing
particular constituents and local groups.
What the British government has done is to widen its
outreach to include groups that will represent either more
sectarian views or groups such as the Sufi Muslim Council,
which is not at all political in orientation. Now, part of the
problem that they have encountered, I think, is the question of
the extent to which some of the groups they have reached out to
or some of the groups that have come to them wanting to be
reached out to actually represent sizeable constituencies
within the community or have any legitimacy.
A more profitable line that I think that they went down is
to abandon the idea of trying to find representative groups
altogether and focus instead on problems, to get back to this
idea that Mr. Nawaz mentioned that we are talking about local
grievances that get turned into global problems.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Mr. Mandaville. So let us start not by addressing or trying
to find particular organizations to work with but by
identifying problems and work this issue via local problems
rather than particular groups and associations.
Chairman Lieberman. But problems uniquely within the Muslim
community?
Mr. Mandaville. Yes, and in some cases these are problems
that are unique to a community that is often living a highly
ghettoized, insular existence in the peri-urban areas of post-
industrial Northern cities in England where levels of
employment are very low----
Chairman Lieberman. In other words, the problems may not be
uniquely Muslim. Obviously, there are non-Muslims who are
experiencing high unemployment. But the governmental reaction
may be directed at the problems and perhaps focused on the
Muslim community.
Mr. Mandaville. Absolutely right, and what my research
would suggest is that a profitable line of inquiry, or a
profitable line of policy in this regard would actually be to
encourage Muslims and non-Muslims who share those same kinds of
problems to form coalitions focused not on their religious
identity, but the fact that they face a similar kind of issue
regarding access to education, access to social mobility, so
that the focus becomes the shared issue that we face and not
the religion.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Dr. Mandaville.
Ms. Baran, let me ask you to comment on this idea that Dr.
Mandaville has just suggested as one path to find the non-
Islamist leadership or membership within the Muslim community.
I mean, you have said to us today that most Muslim Americans
are not Islamist, and yet if I am hearing you correctly, you
are also saying that a lot of the established Muslim
organizations are, if not dominated, disproportionately
influenced by Islamist groups. I have a quote from your
testimony. You have a section, and which will be part of the
record of the Committee, and it is quite strong and
provocative, but I think very important to listen to.
``The most prominent Muslim organizations in America were
either created by or associated with the Muslim Brotherhood,
and the Wahhabis, and they have therefore been heavily
influenced by Islamist ideology over the course of four
decades. Islamists have taken over the leadership in almost all
Islam-related areas in America. This is scary''--these are your
words--``yet almost no one in the U.S. Government deals with
it.''
So I take it that in speaking about--for instance, as
Senator Collins said, we had testimony here saying that--
including from Muslim organizations and the FBI that they,
surprisingly, do the best outreach to the Muslim-American
community. So I take your testimony not to dispute that in
terms of the volume or quantity of the outreach, but to say
that in that outreach, they may actually be influenced
disproportionately by Islamist ideology and Islamist groups.
Ms. Baran. Yes. Thank you. I think what we just heard from
Professor Mandaville in the British case is a very good
example, and there are a lot of parallels in terms of what
those in the British system end up learning, even though at the
beginning they did not want to move away from established
partnerships. Moving away from these partnerships brings
political cost.
For me, the question is what is the purpose of outreach?
You can always have nice conversations with a whole set of
people. What is the purpose? Is the purpose, as some people in
the law enforcement have told me, to co-opt them? If that is
the case, then I think the people who are doing the outreach
are being co-opted because they are going into an area where
they are not well educated or informed and they are open to
learning. They are not critical and they are not criticizing
because as I said, they think what is told to them is Islam and
they are not qualified to judge or ask questions about a
particular religion.
If the goal of outreach is to talk to the Muslim community,
fine, but what is the point? The point is that we want these
citizens to be happy, loyal, and, of course, also for homeland
security concerns, not radicalized, not engaged in terrorist
acts. Then the issue is not to reach out to them based on their
Islamic identity or based on their religiosity, but based on
the problems.
Chairman Lieberman. Yes.
Ms. Baran. What are some of the problems? Unfortunately,
because Islamism thrives on victimization certain issues are
exaggerated so that Muslims come together in this ``us versus
them'' mentality. They are basically saying, we Muslims need to
be an ummah because Islam is under attack. So you have now all
kinds of stories circulating about Muslims being mistreated,
this and that. Some of them are true and those need to be
addressed; those are basic civil rights, and equal treatment
issues. And there is also some bigotry and there are some
activities against Muslims and those need to be dealt as law
enforcement issues.
Chairman Lieberman. Right.
Ms. Baran. And in general, we are lucky that in America, of
course, Muslims do not have the same kind of problems that we
often find in Europe. So the purpose of outreach, the
counterpart you choose, what you want to get out of those
interactions needs to be much more clearly defined. I think
after September 11, 2001, there was this urge that we have to
talk to Muslims and we have to make sure that they don't hate
us. But I think now that with enough time, we understand that
alone does not really answer the questions and doesn't resolve
anything. I think if we look at the rate of radicalization
among American youth and look at all the activities of
outreach, we don't see necessarily an impact.
So there is one set of outreach that needs to be done to
understand the community issues and resolve them, but there are
also issues that deal with the ideology and what is being
supplied. I mean, ultimately, if you think about supply and the
result, then we have to address both elements.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you very much. I would like to
come back to that briefly in a moment. My time is up, though.
Senator Collins.
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just one final question for Mr. Nawaz. Both the Chairman
and I are very interested in better understanding the
radicalization process and you described witnessing terrible
acts of prejudice and violence and unfair law enforcement
actions when you were a teenager. What would have been an
effective counter message for you to have heard as a teenager?
Mr. Nawaz. On that point, I think that an effective counter
message would have been for localized grievances to have an
outlet to be channeled through localized, or local-based
solutions and channels, especially when it came to the crisis
of faith that I talked about. There needed to be a strong,
firmly grounded, traditional theological leader there to be
able to deal with some of these questions, who is articulate in
English, fluent and able to communicate with the second and
third generations. That was, and to a large extent still is,
missing in the U.K. We do not have the imams that are trained
and raised from within the U.K. They are still going abroad to
take their training. In fact, a recent suggestion was made by
our government and was very conveniently and correctly
forgotten very quickly, and that was the suggestion that we
should take imams and send them to Pakistan for training.
I don't think the solution is that. I think the solution is
that there needs to be an indigenous British Islam, or more
generally Western Islam, that arises. There are some very
encouraging movements in that direction. One of our advisors
for the Quilliam Foundation is a wonderful man by the name of
Usama Hasan who in his youth went to Afghanistan to train with
the so-called jihad there, but has abandoned all of that and
now takes very courageous theological stances.
To give you one example of his stance--this man is
qualified theologically. He is an imam of a mosque and is also
a university lecturer, and he says that Muslim women do not
have to cover their heads from a theological perspective. One
of our advisors. We need to have more people like this.
I think in the U.K., I am very encouraged by signs of the
discussions coming from people like Imam Hasan, Usama Hasan,
that I see, very non-Islamist messages. Though they are pious
or religious in their personal practice, they are very clear
not to encourage, and in fact, they critique the Islamist
message. So there needs to be an indigenous growth from within
the West of Western Islam, and that is something that the
Quilliam Foundation has put as one of its objectives to
encourage.
If that had been there for me in my crisis of faith, I
don't think I would have turned to a political ideological
alternative. I was not able to relate to the village religion
of the mosque imams who did not speak my language.
In terms of the crisis of identity, and this is something
where if you caught my facial expressions, I was very keen to
interject. All I did is I settled for writing ``excellent'' on
Dr. Mandaville's book here. And that is that the whole
discussion--I agree entirely with what he said, and there is
something I would like to add and that is the psychological
state of somebody approaching this discussion in the first
place, is that when we talk about the Muslim community, that is
a paradigm which we have adopted from Islamists and the British
government has recently shifted in this and now they are
talking about Muslim communities, and that is more accurate,
because in the U.K., we have very recent immigrants who aren't
settled as the immigrants who originally came from the Indian
subcontinent are, but rather we have had Somalis that have
immigrated to the U.K. due to the war and the conflict that is
there. There are others, North Africans that have immigrated
due to the conflicts in Algeria, and others have immigrated
from many different regions.
The expression of Islam from each one of these communities
is very different. And in some cases, they are at conflict with
each other. The default form of religious expression for the
majority of Muslims in the U.K. is the Sufi Barelvi tradition
coming from the Indian subcontinent, which is historically
apolitical and, in fact, is anti-political.
Now, if we can grasp that there is more than one Muslim
community but rather there are Muslim communities, we will not
adopt the paradigm of the Islamists in dealing with this
problem as a Muslim problem but rather looking at it as
localized problems and trying to deal with the problems
themselves rather than adopt the paradigm that it is one
community that requires one solution and one representative.
The U.K. government made a mistake with the MCB. I pray
that your government here does not make that same mistake. And
now they have learned from that. The British Government has set
up a department called the Department for Communities and Local
Government (DCLG), that has a 3-year budget of 70 million
Sterling, which again is a lot of dollars. Now, that 70 million
Sterling is allocated specifically for dealing with this
problem. I recently met with the minister responsible for that
department, Hazel Blears, and I am very encouraged by her
understanding on these issues.
Now, that department is there solely to take this money and
to distribute it on a localized basis through local councils,
not through a centralized national body, and I think that is
the encouraging way forward. If these measures were there in
the early 1990s, we would not have had the situation that we
had through the mid- to late 1990s of Islamists pretty much
becoming institutionalized.
Senator Collins. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Collins.
Unfortunately, we are going to have to move on in a moment.
I did want to say, Mr. Nawaz, I am so glad you came here, but I
really object to your rubbing in the dropping value of the
dollar so often. [Laughter.]
All in good spirit.
Let me just see if I can ask this question because a part
of what motivates this hearing is that the insight, which I
quoted from the 9/11 Commission Report, that this so-called war
with terrorism is really an ideological war at its essence, so
that while we are fighting it in a military sense, we also have
to try to figure out how to counteract the ideology.
This is not easy because it requires non-Muslim governments
in countries like the United States and the U.K. to find an
effective, thoughtful, and honest way to reach into the Muslim
community, and I think this is part of what the outreach is
supposed to be about, but it may not be working. You are
absolutely right in the experience that you both reflected from
the U.K. Your testimony, Ms. Baran, should really be a warning
to the U.S. Government about what they are doing and whether it
is really achieving the goals.
But some of the goals are pure law enforcement, there is no
question about it, trying to develop links to the community, to
the mainstream, law-abiding Muslim-American community so that
if they hear of the growth of violent Islamist activities, that
they will let law enforcement know. Some of it, I think, is
also aimed--and this is not easy--at encouraging leadership to
emerge from the majority, mainstream Muslim-American community.
In other words, the picture that I am getting today is that
there is a silent majority within the Muslim-American community
and it is an American community. It is a mainstream community.
In addition, I think you have given us a good idea here,
which is that we have to be not just reaching out to
organizations, maybe we have to do that with open eyes, but
also really to the problems within the community. How do we
create a situation where when someone like Mr. Nawaz as a
teenager develops these grievances--and look, teenagers of any
religion and race will find various reasons to develop
grievances. Yours happen to have been quite palpable and real
and severe. What can we do to create an alternative vehicle for
expression other than Islamism? Ms. Baran.
Ms. Baran. Well, if I can talk about my teenage rebellious
years.
Chairman Lieberman. You are not under oath now, so----
[Laughter.]
Ms. Baran. I was also looking for different identities.
Now, I wasn't born in America; I was a teenager in a Muslim
country and there were many different options. There were the
Islamist options. There were different options. I think having
the variety of options is very important and also having good
role models and trusted sources. Again, I say that if I had
learned my religion from the wrong people, I could have become
an Islamist because the ideas are extremely attractive, partly
because everything becomes so simple and understandable. In a
way it empowers you because all of a sudden, from not being
able to change your life or bringing meaning to it, you have a
meaning and everything easily makes sense.
So there is not a single answer, and like in the British
case, in America, too, I think there are multiple communities.
Some of them are more religious, some of them are less
religious. You can't even say the Arab-American community.
Within the Arab community, there are so many different ones.
In, again, my case, in this neighborhood, the Turkish-
American community goes to the Turkish mosque, and so we don't
even go to the same mosques because there are different
cultures and, of course, when it comes to second generation,
third generation, the issues are also different.
There are many ways that this issue can be addressed, but I
think the starting point has to be that we need to define what
we want in reaching out to the communities because ultimately
they are citizens and there are certain citizen rights and
there are certain needs for their faith, for their education. I
am worried about raising my children in this country because I
would not know where to send them to teach them Islam. I would
have to do that at home at this point. But I would like to be
able to send them to a mosque and be comfortable that what they
are going to learn there is going to be about the faith and is
going to anchor them in a way that they are going to be Muslim
and American and will not find a conflict in the two.
Chairman Lieberman. That is a perfect and strong place to
end the testimony of this panel. I thank you all very much.
Mr. Nawaz, I want to thank you really for the foundation.
It seems to me that is part of the answer, so I wish you well
in what you are doing. I hope that the four of you will remain
available to the Committee as we continue to consider these
really important but difficult questions and try to play a
constructive role. Thank you very much.
Senator Collins. Thank you.
Mr. Nawaz. Thank you.
Mr. Mandaville. Thank you.
Ms. Baran. Thank you.
Mr. Moghaddam. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. We will now call Michael Leiter to the
stand. Michael Leiter is the Director of the National
Counterterrorism Center, served as Deputy General Counsel and
Assistant Director of the Robb-Silberman Commission and then as
Deputy Chief of Staff at the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, also an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern
District of Virginia. Mr. Leiter is responsible for
administering the National Implementation Plan, the Federal
Government's efforts to coordinate the response to terrorism.
One component of that is to Counter Violent Islamist Extremism
(CVIE).
We welcome you, Mr. Leiter. Thank you for being here and we
look forward to your testimony now.
TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL E. LEITER,\1\ DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER
Mr. Leiter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Collins,
and Senator Voinovich. It is a pleasure to be here. I am happy
to talk about the intelligence community's efforts to
understand this very difficult problem, and most importantly,
in many ways, the broader U.S. Government efforts to counter
it, as well.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Leiter appears in the Appendix on
page 95.
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I am going to focus today on the role of ideology, as you
asked, and I am also going to talk about the National
Counterterrorism Center's (NCTC's) effort in that part, and I
ask that my more detailed statement be made part of the record.
Chairman Lieberman. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Leiter. Thank you. Now, before focusing on the very
specific topic today, I do want to make one clear point and
that is that although clearly the greatest terrorist threat we
see in the United States today is from al-Qaeda and associated
ideologies, this violent extremism is not historically, nor is
it today, associated only with Islam. A generation ago, the
violent extremist threat came primarily from the far left and
the Red Brigades, and even today we continue to see a terrorist
threat from organizations like the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Columbia that are clearly terrorists and violent extremists
in their own right. Thus, although I think the focus today is
quite appropriate in light of the seriousness of the threat, it
is not the only terrorist ideology that we face.
Now, as you have already heard this morning, the extremist
ideological leanings that set the precedent for many of today's
groups were articulated first by Sayyid Qutb, a member of the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 1960s. Now, in the
most basic sense, he argued that the notion of Islam's primary
enemies are Western cultural liberalism and its Middle Eastern
ally, Zionism. Al-Qaeda continues in their propaganda to echo
those same views today.
The core narratives repeated in al-Qaeda's message to the
West and repeated in the United States at times is that the
West and its allies are seeking to destroy the Muslim world and
Islam and that Muslims must counter this through violence and
that just rule under Islamic law is the reward for expelling
Western influences.
At the National Counterterrorism Center, we assess the
evolution to violent extremism consists--and this is in very
general terms, it does not obviously speak to every precise
individual--but in general terms, it breaks down to a four-step
radicalization process. Now, first, and you heard this again
from some of the panelists on the first panel, an individual
develops a sense of crisis and it is often brought about, or at
least accelerated by, specific precipitants, depending on their
environment. Second, the affected individual seeks answers to
those perceived or real crises through ideological or a
religious framework. Third, the individual develops contact
with a violent group and that violent group establishes a
sacred authority for the individual. And fourth and clearly
most troublesome, the individual internalizes that group's
values and its support for violence.
Now, of note, ideology is not necessarily central to the
start of this process. Other factors before ideology might be
key. And rather, it gains its greatest importance in later
stages and it takes on a crucial role of preserving the radical
commitment to violent extremist activity.
Now, beginning with the first stage of the process, there
is no single underlying catalyst for this initial period of
radicalization. Although most individuals clearly reject
extremism outright, personal frustration and perceived social
injustices and other grievances can prompt individuals to
reassess their general world view and be open to more
alternative perspectives, some of which can, in fact, espouse
violence. Now, the most common catalyst, but again not the only
ones, in Muslim-majority countries tend to include blocked
social mobility, political repression, and relative socio-
economic deprivation.
Now, the second stage begins when individuals seek answers
to their sense of frustration through a politicized version--
and I want to stress here a politicized version--of Islam, or
in fact, it could be any other religion, and thus they become
what we term religious and ideological seekers. And here again,
I want to stress that in no way do I mean to suggest that
seeking answers to one's problems in life through religion is
in and of itself the least bit worrisome, problematic, or
negative. Rather, the key component here is not the contact
with religion, it is the contact with a violent extremist group
or message and is an ideology which clothes itself in some ways
in religious viewpoints.
Now, the third stage of the process distinguishes between
those individuals who have contact initially with that violent-
prone group and those who are drawn fully into violent
extremist activity, and specifically it is at this stage that
an individual's willingness to accept the sacred authority of
the violent extremist, that is the extremist right to interpret
Islam or provide an ideological framework for violence that
marks the passage to a latter stage of radicalization and
ultimately a support for violence.
Now, simply reaching step three in this process doesn't in
all explain why some individuals absorb this and adopt it for
their own perspective, and some do not, and there are numerous
factors that we assess, that will play into whether or not an
individual will ultimately accept that violent extremist
ideology. Some of those include, first, I would say, a previous
knowledge of Islam. Many academic studies, and our views as
well, have found, especially in the U.K., that many of the
radicals, in fact, have a far lower level of religious
knowledge than those who do not accept an extremist violent
perspective.
Second, who are they learning from and what is their
authority? What are their attributes? Sociological and
psychological studies indicate that individuals and communities
that emphasize rote memorization and an unwillingness to
challenge authority are more likely, just more likely, to lend
themselves to radical indoctrination than others.
Third, we have seen this and it is very vividly illustrated
in the case studies of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri,
those with a technical education, that black-and-white ideology
of violent extremism, often appeals to individuals with that
background.
Fourth, and this is almost self-evident, but whether or not
there are countervailing influences. A lack of exposure to a
variety of Islamic perspectives and non-Islamic perspectives
makes it more likely that individuals will fully internalize
the violent extremist message.
Fifth, and again, this is, I think, obvious to anyone who
has a teenager, peer pressure. Group dynamics are key,
particularly in extremist study circles. Most likely, those
will affect the prospects for successful indoctrination. Family
members and friends with connections to extremist movements are
critical in determining whether or not an individual will adopt
this ideology.
And finally, a lack of exposure to extremist atrocities. In
this case, studies such as a Pew poll published in July 2007
found that the confidence in Osama bin Laden among Jordanians
dropped significantly, by 36 percent, between 2003 and 2007,
reflecting at least in part the Jordanian population's
widespread revulsion to al-Qaeda's attacks against hotels in
Oman in 2005.
Now, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, this gives you
a very small sense of how we look at it in this basic four-step
process, and obviously there is much greater detail and we look
at it differently in different places in the world. I just want
to note that from my perspective, there is simply no more
important issue that NCTC, and in that sense the U.S.
Government, faces in the war on terror. In this regard, we have
significantly increased both our analytic resources with a
variety of expertise and also our planning resources to make
sure the U.S. Government is pursuing this effectively, and we
hope in the coming year, contingent on Congressional approval,
to dedicate even more resources to this issue.
Now, I also want to note, and Chairman Lieberman, you noted
this in part in your closing comments, that this is very
different from classic intelligence challenges. A very small
section of how we will understand this comes from the world of
clandestine intelligence reporting that I deal with most of my
day. To understand and combat radicalization requires new
sources of information, and equally important, new partners,
and it is new partners within the U.S. Government, with State
and local authorities, and I want to stress with non-government
officials and leaders in the Muslim community in America and
abroad.
It also requires us to approach this from multiple angles,
which we currently do, because we now approach this not only
from a religious perspective, which is certainly critical, but
from a sociological perspective, from a regional perspective,
and from a psychiatric perspective. All four of those are
pieces to this puzzle of understanding why an individual
chooses to adopt this ideology.
Now, as we improve our analytic understanding of Islamist
militancy, we can better shape our policy response to the
threat, and through our responsibilities as the strategic
operational planner for U.S. Government-wide efforts, what we
did was we created what we have termed a Global Engagement
Group, and this group's sole function is to coordinate,
integrate, and synchronize all elements of U.S. power to engage
and combat this ideology.
Now, I want to give you a few specific examples of what
this group is doing, and I can do that--I will do that to the
best extent I can here in an open session. First, the group
coordinates potentially divergent department and agency
responses to specific situations that might be used by violent
ideological extremists in their own propaganda.
Second, we are also establishing the capability to provide
situational awareness to U.S. policy makers and officials about
all of the things that the U.S. Government is doing, across
departments and agencies, across the world, to combat this,
because without that situational awareness, we cannot actually
shape what the U.S. Government is doing.
If I may, Mr. Chairman, I just have another 30 seconds or
so.
Chairman Lieberman. Go right ahead.
Mr. Leiter. Third, the group is coordinating the long-term
effort to combat this, and what we are doing is identifying
very specifically through means such as sociological studies,
psychiatric studies, religious studies, and the like,
identifying who the next generation of recruits most likely is,
and that is both domestically and abroad. And then we are
shaping over 5 years and beyond, attempting to shape department
and agency programs and budgets to address those in the long
term.
Fourth, we work extremely closely with our department and
agency partners. I want to just mention two, but the Department
of Homeland Security, the Civil Liberties Protection Officer
Dan Sutherland has been a fabulous partner in this, and
overseas, the newly confirmed Under Secretary for Public
Diplomacy Jim Glassman, two key partners, and also, as we have
talked about before, the FBI.
And finally, and this is, I think, especially important, we
work very closely with the Office of Management and Budget to
identify where these programs are today, how they are
coordinated, and whether or not they are actually synchronized
and complementing one another for the long term.
Now, I do believe that working with partners at home and
abroad that we can develop targeted and refined approaches to
undermining the attractiveness of violence to certain
susceptible audiences. But I don't want to leave any doubt in
this Committee's mind that this is an effort that is going to
take many years and many new partnerships, and I also want to
note that tangible results in this area are going to be both
elusive and at many times very difficult to measure with any
sort of reliable metrics. But none of those make the effort any
less important.
Now, we are going to require cross-government efforts, as I
have already noted. This Committee is a key part of that. And
it is not only going to be about words, it is going to be about
a diplomacy of deeds, both domestically and overseas. And I
very much look forward to working with this Committee and the
larger Congress, because so many committees have a hand in
this, and getting your guidance on how you believe we should
approach this challenge.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Mr. Leiter. That was
very good testimony. I must say, some of the programs you
describe, you have gone beyond at least what I contemplated the
NCTC would be doing, which we saw in its creation as the
central place to make sure that all the dots were connected of
intelligence in a way that was not done before September 11,
2001. But what you are doing also seems to me to be directly
related to counterterrorism, which is what your defining
mission is, so I appreciate it and I am interested in asking
some questions about it.
Let me first talk about the language we use here, because
it is significant and has some substance to it. You said at the
outset that what we have been calling this morning Islamism is
not the only terrorist ideology we've faced, and, of course, I
agree with that, nor is it historically the only terrorist
ideology we have faced. But it does seem to me that it is the
most significant terrorist ideology we face now. In fact, it
motivated the attacks of September 11, 2001, which are the very
reason that we created the NCTC in the 9/11 Commission
legislation. So do you agree with that, that we are dealing
more with Islamist, what we have called this morning Islamist,
ideology-inspired terrorism than any other kind?
Mr. Leiter. Undoubtedly and without question, the greatest
threat we face today and in the world of terrorism is from
Sunni extremist ideology. I will say one thing, if I may, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Lieberman. Sure.
Mr. Leiter. I think part of the challenge here is about
words, and I think just from the four panelists you just heard
from, there are not insignificant differences in how
individuals and professionals would define Islamism. So I think
that is a challenge. But undoubtedly, Sunni extremism is the
greatest terrorist threat we face today.
Chairman Lieberman. As you know, in March, there was a
State Department document released that said, ``Words that Work
and Words that Don't: A Guide for Counterterrorism
Communication,'' and the document recommended that government
officials not make references to Islam when talking about
terrorism. And, of course, our whole focus today has been to
try to distinguish between the religion Islam and this radical
political ideology which we have called Islamism.
I think that there was some misunderstanding, I hope, of
what that report intended to say, but I just wanted to ask you
whether you agree that--because I think if we don't--just
listening to the four witnesses on the first panel, three of
whom are Muslims themselves, that we are not going to be able
to deal with the problem unless we describe it as what it is,
which is originating from a radical political version of Islam
which we have called today Islamism. So how do you understand
that State Department guidance?
Mr. Leiter. Senator, that State Department guidance, I
think was a policy choice by the Department as to how they
believed individuals should speak about it. I would say that I
don't agree with everything that was in that document. I do
think that you cannot separate out the fact that the terror
fight we are fighting today involves Islam as a religion. But
the ideology which motivates these terrorists has very little
to do in reality with the religion of Islam. It is the
difference between a religion and a violent ideology that has
motivated these individuals. But we can't simply ignore the
fact that there is a link to the religion.
Chairman Lieberman. I thank you for that and I appreciate
it personally. Let me go on to something you talked about,
really interesting, which is a quote again from your testimony.
``Much of NCTC's growth over the past 2 years and much of our
planned growth in the coming year is dedicated to government-
wide coordination and analysis to counter radicalization,''
exactly what we are talking about today. I think it is very
important. You talked about it some in your opening statement,
but I want to ask you to expand on it, if you would, for the
Committee.
What kind of people are you hiring? What will improvements
of government-wide coordination look like, and a little bit
more about what other agencies you are working with and how you
are working with them. We know, for instance, that the State
Department cannot be involved in domestic counter-
radicalization, but still they have international experience
that is relevant. So talk to us a little bit more about your
counter-radicalization efforts, because it seems to me that
they are really at the heart of what the U.S. Government should
be doing now.
Mr. Leiter. I am happy to, Mr. Chairman. First, on our
analytic front, the intelligence side, we are significantly
increasing our analytic resources, and the people that we are
hiring come from a variety of backgrounds. I have an individual
with me today who has a Ph.D. in political science who has
looked at these issues and lived in the region throughout the
Arab world for many years. That is one example. I also actually
have an M.D. psychiatrist trained at Harvard who has spent
significant amounts of time speaking with individuals who have
become radicalized from a psychiatric perspective, and so on
down the line. So the stress in hiring has been to get a wide
variety of views, people who have an understanding of domestic
issues and foreign issues because as you well know, our mandate
is transnational, United States and abroad.
Now, on the coordination side, we have also attempted to
bring in people from--the lead from our team of the Global
Engagement Group is a State Department Foreign Service officer
who has spent a significant number of years in Arab countries
and Africa. But working alongside him are individuals from the
FBI and Department of Homeland Security, so we can take those
lessons from places like Africa or the United Kingdom and see
the degree to which they do or do not apply to the United
States, and they are very different situations and much of our
work is trying to understand where the threat has been, how it
does or does not apply to the United States.
In terms of concrete efforts, as I said, one of our biggest
efforts is to actually understand what everyone in the U.S.
Government is doing on counter-radicalization on any given day.
Understanding what the Department of Defense, Department of
State, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and on down the
list are doing globally is important because anything is said
anywhere in the world today can also be circulated in the world
anywhere today on the Internet. So I like to think of it as we
have to think about this globally, to borrow a phrase from
another era, think about this globally but act locally. We have
to think about the global challenge of violent extremism, but
then we have to apply it to individual local circumstances. And
by gaining that situational awareness and working with State,
FBI, DHS, and others, we can then shape those messages in a way
that is consistent and appropriate for the target community.
Chairman Lieberman. Because you have no doubt that we do
have to confront the threat of homegrown terrorism here in the
United States.
Mr. Leiter. Senator, I would agree with some of the--from
the prior panel of comments. We certainly have not seen the
same threat of radicalization here in the United States that we
have overseas, in particular the United Kingdom and other
nations. That being said, we have seen some instances, and I
will certainly not rest on our current good situation to assume
that will continue into the future.
Chairman Lieberman. Thank you. Senator Collins.
Senator Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to follow up on your comments that you provide
situational awareness and intelligence analysis that helps
other government agencies forge a counterterrorism message.
This morning, we heard from one of our witnesses, and I believe
you were monitoring the hearing, as well----
Mr. Leiter. I prefer not to use the ``monitoring'' phrase.
[Laughter.]
Senator Collins. Good point. FISA has been passed now.
[Laughter.]
But I know that you were following the hearing and one of
our witnesses was quite critical of the FBI's outreach efforts.
The FBI has been on the front lines of trying to develop a
liaison to the Muslim communities in this country and it was
interesting to hear from this one expert's opinion that we are
reaching out using the wrong groups or the wrong organizations.
What was your reaction to that testimony, since you, after all,
are the agency that is doing the analysis to provide the
situational awareness that groups like the FBI use in their
outreach?
Mr. Leiter. Senator, I think that outreach by both the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland
Security to both groups within the United States and individual
leaders within the Muslim-American community is critical. I
think that understanding that there are certain groups that
might have individuals with whom the U.S. Government might not
want to associate does not and cannot stop us from doing the
outreach that this government needs to do both to understand
the communities more effectively, but also, frankly, to provide
these communities with a sense that they do have a voice in how
their government operates, that they do not feel
disenfranchised because it is just that disenfranchisement that
we heard from some of the other panelists that has contributed
and acted as one of the precipitants to give people a sense of
crisis and a lack of connection to their government, and
outreach is one way to ensure that does not occur.
Senator Collins. So what criteria should the Federal
Government use in determining who or which groups are useful
allies in developing a counterterrorism message? If you
listened to our previous panel, there are some who believe that
if a group holds an Islamist ideology, then even if it has
renounced violence as a means to achieving the goals of that
ideology, that we should not interact with that group. Others
are saying that as long as the group is non-violent, it does
not matter what its basic ideology is.
Mr. Leiter. Senator, I want to be a bit careful because
ultimately this obviously is a decision for Director Mueller,
the Attorney General, and Secretary Chertoff about exactly what
that line should be. I will say one clear line is if a group
espouses violence, it is quite clear that the U.S. Government
should not be talking to them.
Senator Collins. But that is the----
Mr. Leiter. That is the extreme.
Senator Collins. Right.
Mr. Leiter. Exactly. Beyond that, I think that the U.S.
Government, as a general matter, has to become more comfortable
speaking with more groups who may be opposed to many policies
that the U.S. Government has, and it may be slightly
uncomfortable, but we have to think of this as a full-spectrum
engagement, and what I mean by that is we have to be willing to
engage with most people on most of the spectrum regardless of
how they view U.S. policy. You are going to have to talk to
some people that make you uncomfortable.
I analogize back to my days as a Federal prosecutor. I
would have gotten very few prosecutions successfully--I could
have brought a lot. I would have had very few successful
prosecutions in the world of drugs or organized crime if I
never dealt and spoke to individuals who at one point in their
life had or had not been associated with drugs or organized
crime.
Senator Collins. You talked about the four steps of
radicalization. The third step that you outlined was the
development of contact with radical groups. It used to be that
contact involved a face-to-face meeting or perhaps going to
Afghanistan or Pakistan for training. But today, it is far more
insidious and far easier to accomplish because one has only to
go to the Internet to make contact with a radical group. How
much of our effort is directed toward providing a counter
message through the Internet?
Mr. Leiter. Senator, before answering that question, I just
want to note how well the NYPD has done in some of their work,
so well that we actually brought an inspector from the NYPD who
is now a full-time analyst at NCTC deployed from the New York
Police Department. So this is another example of a new sort of
partnership that in 2000 we never would have imagined having.
Senator Collins. I am very glad to hear that, because we
have pushed to have more involvement with State and local law
enforcement.
Mr. Leiter. Absolutely.
Senator Collins. I am very happy to hear that.
Mr. Leiter. In terms of the Internet, the Internet
certainly is key and I would say that it tends to be key at the
earlier stages when the individuals--they are experiencing the
precipitants. They have that sense of crisis and they start
looking around and the Internet gives them those initial ideas.
Now, we have seen some cases, more overseas than in the
United States, where there was kind of a complete
transformation in the process of radicalization that occurred
almost solely from the Internet. But that still tends to be the
exception rather than the rule. Again, it can be key for that
initial guide towards this world, but more often than not, we
still see the contact with a charismatic leader who adopts it,
that face-to-face contact being very important. And I would
actually venture that is most people's experience with the
Internet, regardless of violent extremism, that once you have
that face-to-face contact with a product or people, it becomes
slightly greater pull than just from the Internet.
Now, we spend an enormous amount of time both looking at
the Internet and then working with various parts of the U.S.
Government on countering messages through the Internet. I will
say you rather rapidly enter in a very difficult area both in
terms of legal policy and the First Amendment. I am certainly
no expert anymore on these issues. But you run into many
difficult challenges there, most particularly because anything
you put on the Internet is by definition a global message.
So what the U.S. Government does and says overseas is often
quite different from what it says here in the United States.
The Internet doesn't give you the option necessarily to limit
your message in the same way. So this is a new challenge with
policies and legal challenges that we really do have to address
more over the coming years.
Senator Collins. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Collins.
Senator Voinovich.
Senator Voinovich. Thanks very much for being here today.
From a management point of view, I am quite pleased with what I
have heard in terms of your efforts to coordinate the various
agencies and the fact that you have a connection with OMB
because I have found that there are many areas where we need
coordination to get the job done and my feeling is that you
have to have somebody at OMB that you can talk with and talk
about the various agencies and how important their budgets are
in regard to various aspects of the work that you are doing. We
don't have it all in one place.
Mr. Leiter. Right.
Senator Voinovich. Second, I was thinking about low-hanging
fruit in terms of things that you can do to influence people,
and one of the things that you mentioned at the end was the
violence and the impact that it has. I was there in Jordan and
absolutely, they know who these people are right now. And I
think that my two colleagues are aware of the fact that the
Sunnis in Iraq found out who these people were and now have
turned against them because they don't like them at all. I
wonder, could we be doing more in that area to get across how
violent these people are and who are the real victims of their
activity?
And then the other one, is the issue of women's rights here
in the United States and even over in various other countries.
There is a woman named Madsen, who is a leader trying to
elevate the rights of women within the Muslim community in the
United States. I wonder whether or not that is something that
we should be more focused on or maybe that is something that we
should stay out of.
I guess the last thing would be the issue that Senator
Collins brought up, and that is, who do we deal with? One of
the things that we have done in my State, we have had a very
aggressive effort to reach out to the Muslim community. In
Cleveland, for example, we have the Ishmael and Isaac
Organization.
But we need some help. Who are the groups that we ought to
be talking to in our respective States and you have identified
as people that we should be talking to, because I think it is
important that we talk to them, too, so that they know that
they are a political constituency out there and that we are
interested in what they have to say and make sure that we are
talking to folks that we ought to be talking to.
Mr. Leiter. Senator, thank you for all three. I will try to
take them in order. First of all, I agree with you. I think one
of the most critical underlying messages that we have to get
out is that this is not--the war on terror is not us versus
them, West versus Islam, and there is no point that illustrates
that more effectively than that more than 50 percent of the
individuals who are the victims of al-Qaeda's terrorist
violence are Muslims. Whether you look at Oman or Iraq or
Afghanistan, the individuals being killed tend not to be
Westerners. In fact, they are Muslims. Al-Qaeda is killing
Muslims and we do have to get that out more effectively.
We work with the State Department on an annual report of
terrorist incidents. We post that on our own website and the
State Department website and we have to get that out more
effectively, and I would say that we have to get it out more
effectively through non-traditional means because it isn't just
about doing press conferences in embassies. It is about getting
it on YouTube and the like so we are hitting the target
population that we are actually most concerned with.
Now, as to your second question, I am going to admit that
as we were monitoring the hearing in the anteroom, and I
listened to your questions about women, I spoke to some of my
analysts about that, and frankly, I think we have not focused
the same attention on it that we probably should, so we already
have it as a do out to go back and think more clearly about how
the issue of women's rights does apply to this. We look at the
issue of women in the Islamic world in some other contexts, and
I think that the idea of empowering individuals to participate
in their political system and political life, in this instance
women, is again one of those powerful elements which starts to
reduce the possible precipitants for people to go down this
path in the first instance. Creating that opportunity to
express themselves in the political system, whether or not they
are women or men, is a key element and it is one that I would
like to come back to you in the future and speak to you more
about it.
Now, on your last point about with whom should you deal,
and I would agree with you, far be it from me to set your
agenda and your schedule, but I think it is critically
important for elected representatives at all levels of
government, from the U.S. Senate down to the city councilman--I
should say council person--to go out and engage with their
communities and understand the issues and make sure that their
concerns are being reflected in the public discourse.
Now, I would be happy both to offer you experts from the
National Counterterrorism Center and I am also more than happy
to help serve as a conduit with you with the Department of
Homeland Security and the FBI and other agencies to figure out
groups and leaders who you might want to engage with, people
who you might want to consider whether or not you should engage
with them, and what concerns other people in the U.S.
Government should have, recognizing that you engaging with
people, you might have a very different set of standards than,
say, the Department of Homeland Security, and that is entirely
appropriate. But I am happy to both offer our expertise and
also help you work with DHS, Secretary Chertoff, and Director
Mueller in determining who you and other Members of Congress
might wish to engage with.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you. Under Secretary of State
Glassman now is our public diplomacy lead. Our earlier witness
indicated that there is a dilemma today, and that is that we
talk about democracy and freedom, and the President articulated
that in his second inaugural address, but it appears that we
have backed off substantially from that. Is that having any
influence at all on folks here in this country?
Mr. Leiter. Senator, I have to apologize. This may have
been one of the moments that I was not monitoring. But I will
say that the idea of democracy is certainly a key
characteristic of any public diplomacy message that we have,
but it is one part of the message, because----
Senator Voinovich. When we began the global war on
terrorism, the President said that we wanted democracy in Iraq.
That is one of the goals that we had. Now, we seem to be
talking just stability.
Mr. Leiter. Yes, sir.
Senator Voinovich. And there is an appearance out there
that we just kind of backed off this effort after we had
elections.
Mr. Leiter. Senator, I don't want to dispute people's
perceptions because perceptions are reality in this case.
Certainly, my experience with the President and senior
leadership is that democracy agenda has not changed in the
least. Now, I do believe we have to make sure if people
perceive that it has, that will be a challenge.
I also want to stress that is one part of a message that
will appeal to one section of the community. We have to have
many other messages and speak to the entire community, because
there are some individuals who could be at risk for the
activities we have talked about, for becoming violent
extremists, that may not actually be drawn or stopped or
countered through a pure democracy message. It is a series of
messages that--some of which we may feel a little bit
uncomfortable with at times. But if we are serious about
countering that radicalization process, we have to be ready to
do that.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Chairman Lieberman. Thanks very much, Senator Voinovich.
Thanks for giving time to this hearing.
Director Leiter, thank you for your testimony. I think we
are going to have to close the hearing here, but I really
appreciate what you are doing, particularly this, I think,
pioneering work on counter-radicalization. I think you are
really on the front lines of the attempt to get at the
ideological underpinnings of Islamist extremism and terrorism,
and I hope you will come back at some point and tell us what
your conclusions are and how you are trying to transport the
product, if you will, the result, down to the field so that if
there is a young Muslim American, like Mr. Nawaz in England,
growing up with grievances, that he not turn to violent
Islamist extremism as the expression of those grievances. But I
thank you very much for your work.
We are going to leave the record of the hearing open for 15
days for additional questions from Committee Members or
statements that witnesses want to add to the record.
For now, that concludes our business. The hearing is
adjourned.
Mr. Leiter. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 12:25 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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