[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 107 (Tuesday, July 17, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1254-E1258]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




DR. QANTA AHMED'S TESTIMONY TO HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE ON THE `THE 
    AMERICAN MUSLIM RESPONSE TO HEARINGS ON RADICALIZATION IN THEIR 
                               COMMUNITY'

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 17, 2012

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I submit insightful and compelling testimony 
given by Dr. Qanta A. A. Ahmed before the House Homeland Security 
Committee last month. I commend Chairman Peter King for continuing this 
series of hearings looking at the challenge of radicalization in the 
U.S. and how it impacts the American Muslim community.
  I urge all of my colleagues to read Dr. Ahmed's testimony, especially 
given her first-hand experience with radicalized youth in Pakistan and 
her recent series of columns and editorials on the threat of 
radicalization in the West.

[[Page E1255]]

The American Muslim Response to Hearings on Radicalization within their 
Community--Congressional Testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives 
     Committee on Homeland Security, Washington DC, June 20th 2012

    Qanta A. A. Ahmed MD, FACP, FCCP, FAASM, Associate Professor of 
            Medicine, The State University of New York, USA

       Good morning. Thank you Chairman King and Ranking Committee 
     Member Congressman Thompson and distinguished members of the 
     Committee for the opportunity to testify today on such an 
     important issue.


                           My Muslim identity

       I am a British citizen, and a Permanent Resident in these 
     United States where I have made my home for fourteen years. I 
     am a practicing physician and a practicing Muslim. Religion 
     stems from the etymological Latin root relegere, meaning to 
     be gathered or bound together. An individual's narrative of 
     his or her religious experience is often a catalogue of 
     relationships and my Islam is no different, beginning with 
     the gift of Islam from my parents.
       There is no divide between any of my multiple roles as I 
     have learned following the example of my parents, both of 
     whom remain true to their faith without encroaching upon the 
     public space yet always espousing pluralism and tolerance. 
     They raised me to observe Islam in the same manner.
       I pray, I fast during Ramadan, I find worship in my work 
     and I have also completed the Hajj--the Muslim pilgrimage to 
     Mecca. Each year I am fortunate to be able to exceed the 
     Islamic duties of charity required of me annually. My parents 
     support my views which I express here in this chamber today 
     and all of my actions which have led me to this moment. As a 
     family, for generations, we have explicitly repudiated all 
     forms of violence--including those conducted in the name of 
     Islam--long before the specter of radical Islamism ever 
     blighted these United States.


     My Vantage as an Internationally Experienced Muslim Physician

       In my 21 years since qualification, I have practiced on 
     three continents; here in the Americas in the United States--
     in both South Carolina and New York, in Europe, chiefly in 
     London, and in Asia, namely when I practiced medicine for two 
     years, from November 1999 to November 2001 in Riyadh, Saudi 
     Arabia.
       This peripatetic path has allowed me to engage intimately 
     with Saudi Muslims as I attended them in their critical 
     illnesses, and later work for many years to improving their 
     public health and that for all Muslim pilgrims to Mecca; and 
     with British Diaspora Muslims as I attended them in Britain's 
     capital. I functioned in these roles as a treating physician, 
     a physician-educator, a physician colleague, a mentor to 
     training doctors. My work has led to numerous publications 
     both in the medical academe and the mainstream media.
       For over a decade, I have also been invited to teach and 
     speak at numerous conferences in the Muslim Majority world 
     including for the Saudi Arabian National Guard Health 
     Affairs, for the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health, for the US 
     Consulate in Jeddah, for the Saudi Arabian Soccer Federation, 
     the American University of Sharjah and other settings. I have 
     also been asked to visit hospitals and meet physician 
     colleagues in Pakistan. Most recently in November 2011, as a 
     visiting professor I was invited by FIFA to the first 
     meetings evaluating impacts of Ramadan on the elite Muslim 
     footballer convening in both Doha, Qatar and in Riyadh, Saudi 
     Arabia.
       I have therefore lived among, met, treated, taught, worked 
     with, published with, researched with, befriended and, on 
     occasion, been repudiated and abandoned, by many Muslims in 
     many dimensions.


My Experience of the burden of Radical Islamism on my American Patients

       Currently, my work as an attending sleep disorders 
     specialist involves personally attending to the World Trade 
     Center First Responder patient population of Nassau County at 
     Winthrop University Hospital. Our hospital provides state-of-
     the-art care to 2500 of these Americans without financial 
     burden each year through the provenance of the Zadroga Bill, 
     spearheaded by Chairman King and his colleagues.
       Hence patients in my personal practice today include 
     multiple members of US law enforcement including active duty, 
     disabled and former NYPD, active duty FBI agents, active, 
     disabled and retired FDNY, former members of the New York 
     Federal Crime Bureau and others who are officially designated 
     as World Trade Center First Responders--6000 of the nation's 
     40,000 first responders live on Long Island. Many of these 
     patients have roles in counter terrorism task forces today.
       I treat these men and women for sleep-related complications 
     developed as a result of their service to our nation 
     including obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, post-traumatic 
     stress disorder, anxiety, depression and other conditions. 
     Attending them gives me special insights into the 
     indiscriminate burden of radical Islamist acts born by our 
     community a decade after they assaulted humanity in my 
     adoptive home, New York City, an assault I witnessed from 
     Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
       Understanding the work and the suffering of my patients and 
     the toll it takes on them makes clear to me the enormous 
     sacrifice they and their families make to safeguard us at 
     times of crisis and in between, a sacrifice much of the 
     nation has forgotten, or remains unaware of. As a Muslim 
     meeting these Americans reveals the devastating impact of 
     radical Islamism to which few others--Muslims or non-Muslim--
     will ever be privy.


       My experience with Contemporary Radical Islamist Ideology

       In Spring 2010, in recognition of my academic work on Hajj 
     Medicine and health diplomacy, I was selected as the first 
     Muslim woman to complete a Templeton Cambridge Journalism 
     Fellowship in Science and Religion at the University of 
     Cambridge in England. Following a meeting with an 
     internationally recognized expert in counterterrorism, I 
     reviewed data exposing me to the brutality of contemporary 
     radical Islamists and decided to focus my fellowship on the 
     psychological manipulation of Islam into the service of 
     terror. I thus specifically evaluated the mechanisms of 
     martyrdom and jihadist ideology as expressed by contemporary 
     radical Islamists. This work both informed my specific 
     knowledge and the many publications I have authored since. My 
     experience of being a Templeton Cambridge Fellow adds special 
     academic context useful to me in interpreting the salient 
     findings of this series of investigative hearings.
       As a result of my work at Cambridge, I have met with some 
     of the leading minds approaching counter terrorism studies. 
     One such meeting with one Pakistani neuropsychologist piqued 
     my interest sufficiently to travel to the North West frontier 
     Province of Pakistan (now renamed KPK) in March 2012 to visit 
     Malakand, now secured by the Pakistani military. There, I 
     spent three days at `Sabaoon', the Pakistani school founded 
     by civilians to deprogram child militant operatives engaged 
     in militancy with the Pakistani Taliban. There I treated 
     local villagers and traveled to nearby Mingora to see 
     rehabilitated child militants readjusting to community life 
     after successful deprogramming.
       At Sabaoon, I met with doctors, teachers, psychotherapists, 
     military leaders and the child militant rehabilitees 
     themselves all boys aged between 10 and 20. I was also 
     invited to attend the relatives of these boys for a one day 
     traveling clinic to provide basic medical care during which I 
     met, interviewed, examined and treated the mothers, sisters, 
     grandmothers, siblings, children and spouses of convicted 
     militant operatives, suicide operation `martyrs' and suspects 
     currently in detention in Saudi Arabia. I recorded many 
     photographs of my visit which I can share in a classified 
     forum if the Committee determines there is a need.
       During the visit, though I was not granted clearance to 
     question the students directly, under supervision of my 
     fellow physician colleagues and with the Pakistani Rangers 
     nearby, I was allowed to meet with one 15-year old Pakistani 
     boy in particular. I listened to him for about an hour as he 
     described his transition from a school boy of 13 walking to 
     school, his seduction by an older boy with tales of a 
     `purer', `more legitimate' Islam--that of the Taliban's--his 
     voluntary decision to run away and join a network of Taliban 
     militants, his deliberate and very labyrinthine confinements 
     in hiding centers called `markaz' (centers), his handlers' 
     persistent and successful maneuvering defeating the dedicated 
     efforts of his parents to retrieve him, his training and 
     preparation which he chillingly termed `Tarbiyyat' which 
     means `religious education' (consisting of advanced training 
     in the use of a handgun, the deployment of a grenade and the 
     successful detonation of a suicide jacket) and, finally, his 
     ultimate surrender to a police officer in the designated 
     target of attack--a nearby mosque. I have in my possession 
     his de-identified narrative which can be reviewed in a 
     classified forum but as is not available for disclosure in 
     this public record.
       This young boy's naivete, his isolated and distorted world 
     view, his lack of knowledge of Bin Laden or 9-11 and his 
     indoctrination all revealed to me that Islamist ideologies 
     are active, alive and moving ahead far beyond the reach of 
     20th Century Al-Qaedah ideology. Further, his halting and 
     unconfident Urdu reminded me much of the nascent transition 
     from boyhood to manhood of my own brothers when they were 
     younger, who fortunately have been sheltered from such 
     manipulations by opportunities our family could give them 
     because we are so attached to our native Britain and Islam, 
     not Islamism.
       Further, the young boy also revealed his Islamist-
     indoctrinated hatred of certain sects of Muslims, including 
     Shias who are a minority in Pakistan, his belief that anyone 
     collaborating with a western-dressed individual was an enemy 
     of Islam--including Pakistani troops who are usually dressed 
     in western trousers--and that any who engaged with US troops 
     was also an enemy to Islam.
       Exactly these ideologies are being promoted in the United 
     States today, often through portals--whether via internet 
     portals, recurrent migration to Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan, 
     Yemen or other locations, circulated videos, or pockets of 
     extremism in numerous centers of gatherings including mosques 
     and this series of investigative hearings have revealed that. 
     The essential construct is the same--separation, supremacy 
     and unquestioning acceptance of nihilistic ambitions--
     including the deployment of brutally violent measures--all of 
     which collude to eradicate any other diversity.
       Since 2009, I have authored dozens of Opinion columns and 
     Editorials published in the

[[Page E1256]]

     mainstream American, British, Dutch, Israeli and Pakistani 
     press examining the politics and theology of radical 
     contemporary Islamist ideologies.
       Unsurprisingly, I have learned the consequences of opining 
     in the free press. I have been subject to personal attack and 
     abuse online. In my journalistic activities I also have 
     learned how difficult it is for American newspaper editors, 
     American network television producers and American media 
     bookers to approach either solicited or unsolicited opinion 
     pieces or television interviews concerning issues pertaining 
     to Islam. There has been a distinct chill in the public 
     discourse including here in the United States which is driven 
     by the rising cries of Islamophobia, the advancing grip of 
     Islamist claims of defamation of Islam which they advance 
     through Islamist Lawfare, the internationalization without 
     protest of Blasphemy laws and the general fear of political 
     `incorrectness' which leads to an enormous loss of counter-
     arguments in the debate about Islamism and its distinctions 
     from Islam.


          The reaction to the Hearings in the Muslim community

       My community begins with my family who not only supports 
     these hearings but have welcomed them. We have a large family 
     thriving in the United States from coast to coast, settled in 
     this country since the 1960s. One of my family members, my 
     cousin, has served in the United States Navy. Earlier than 
     that, some of my maternal Uncles trained and studied in 1950s 
     America as invited scholars. Many of us are American 
     citizens. We are also very well acquainted with the abuses 
     and discrimination that pass for `official Islam' as 
     expressed in Islamist Pakistan and are extremely aware of the 
     hazards of empowering those who espouse a supremacist 
     ideology born of Islamism but masquerading as Islam. To my 
     surprise not a single member of my family discouraged me from 
     participating in these investigative hearings even though 
     they remain aware of the risks this can pose to me in my 
     every day life.
       I also have a vibrant Muslim readership among my almost 
     100,000 readers of my book, who communicate with me through 
     social network platforms, letters and emails or respond on 
     line to articles I have authored in almost every major 
     mainstream publication in the United States. Many of my self-
     identifying Muslim readers express fear that the 
     investigative hearings will misrepresent Islam and fuel 
     Islamophobia while also expressing excitement that this 
     discussion is entering the public space in such an auspicious 
     arena. Their sentiment about the investigative hearings 
     revolve more around the scrutiny of activities of some Muslim 
     Americans rather than the actual findings of the 
     investigative hearings which few of them could cite.
       For my support of these investigative hearings and for my 
     writings sympathetic to the concerns of these investigative 
     hearings I have also been subject to intimidation on Twitter 
     often from self-identifying Muslims who clearly denounce 
     these hearings. Their abusive hostility is largely centered 
     on the claim that my views supportive of these investigative 
     hearings as unrepresentative of Muslim Americans.
       On a professional level many of my former academic Muslim 
     colleagues now eschew contact with me as my political voice 
     has become more widely heard, some because of the personal 
     affront it causes them and others because they are beholden 
     to theocractic Muslim states and now see their relationship 
     with me as a risk. It is significant that only one member of 
     my circle of academic Muslim colleagues in the Middle East 
     wrote to me with encouragement. They see my support of 
     America in general as `collusion'.
       A recent publication on Huffington Post is more encouraging 
     of the Muslim American reaction. In it I wrote about my 
     Evolution as an Anti Islamist Muslim and I found it generated 
     an overwhelming response many of them very positive from self 
     identified Muslims who commented my views to be ahead of the 
     public awareness and supported my endeavors and views 
     including my call for the exposure of the imposter of 
     Islamism to be distinguished from Islam.
       It is however important to add that as an Anti-Islamist 
     Muslim my community IS America, as Islam demands it, not an 
     enclave within America, but the entire nation. These 
     investigative hearings while entitled to examine the reaction 
     of American Muslims within their communities might be better 
     expressed as our reaction within America because this is what 
     Islam teaches us--that we must collaborate, cooperative, 
     enhance and contribute to the community surrounding us, and 
     not remain in insular, disengaged groups which engender and 
     then empower silos of disconnection and disaffection.
       Unfortunately the reaction in wider America to these 
     investigative hearings has been initial vilification and 
     later disdain as manifested by the extraordinary disinterest 
     of the mainstream media in the hard findings of these 
     hearings. This uninformed response has not been redirected by 
     informed motivated media coverage despite the opportunity to 
     redress the balance, revealing the wider media may itself 
     have some discomfort denouncing Islamism.


              How I interpret the findings of the hearings

       These investigative hearings reveal radicalization is 
     ongoing in multiple sectors right here in the United States, 
     in our civilian community, in our military community and in 
     our prison community. Muslims in America can be radicalized 
     despite the best efforts of their parents or mentors. We also 
     have learned radicalization in America is usually facilitated 
     by handlers and Islamist seducers who operate on multiple 
     planes using multiple forms of media and are facile at 
     identifying or exploiting the vulnerable. This is exactly how 
     Pakistani Taliban Islamists operate in Pakistan and elsewhere 
     based on what I have seen in person and my extensive reading 
     of, and meetings with, counter terrorism experts. We cannot 
     ignore the domestic risks here and threat both to our 
     national security, and by extrapolation, to international 
     security. I cite a few examples revealed by these 
     investigative hearings:
       On December 7th 2011, Daris Long, father of a son murdered 
     by radical Islamists testified ``the political correctness 
     exhibited by the government over offending anyone in 
     admitting the truth about Islamist extremism masked alarm 
     bells that were going off. Warnings were ignored, Major Nidal 
     Hassan was able to openly praise the Little Rock shootings in 
     front of fellow army officers and then commit his own 
     jihad''. This is consistent with the shortcomings of language 
     and the paralysis of political correctness that I identify as 
     one of the barriers to examining radical Islamism in the 
     United States.
       On March 12th, 2011, Melvin Bledsoe testified that his son 
     Abdul Hakim Muhammad was `brainwashed' by Nashville Muslims 
     leading to his terrorist training in Yemen to return to 
     murder one soldier and injure another at a US military 
     recruitment center. This confirms the same forces seducing a 
     Pakistani schoolboy in the SWAT are at work in the American 
     heartland.
       On July 27th 2011, Ahmed Hussen, President of the Canadian 
     Somali Congress recognized our vulnerability in this 
     ideological battle of Islamism with Islam and Islamism's 
     exploitation of victimhood `There has not been a parallel 
     attempt to counter the toxic anti Western narrative that 
     creates a culture of victimhood in the minds of members of 
     our community.' This confirms the utility to Islamists of 
     cultivating a manufactured sense of victimhood among 
     vulnerable Muslims.


    My motivation to enter the public discourse: to combat Islamism

       In the years since 9-11, every Muslim has been compelled to 
     confront his or her identity. This has been a direct function 
     of the martyrdom terrorism acts of 9-11. Since then, the lay 
     audience and much of expert opinion has been unable to 
     separate Islamism from Islam. Today this is our greatest 
     challenge. Distinguishing Islam and Islamism requires nuance 
     and care, which few in the media are prepared to provide or 
     even qualified to identify.
       Some, while well intentioned but deeply uninformed, 
     retaliate against the sound intelligence and counter measures 
     that must be taken, including mechanisms such as these 
     investigative hearings, and instead unwittingly collude with 
     the non violent manifestations of the Islamists which have 
     long since evolved to new elements masquerading as the 
     `peaceful' translators and `owners' of Islam. I am here to 
     tell you non-violent Islamists are not the owners of Islam 
     nor is their intent peaceful.
       I was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia when the Towers fell. Within 
     hours, I discovered my sentiments of loss and sorrow were not 
     widely shared, either by Saudi physician colleagues or by 
     fellow non Saudi Muslim expatriate workers, many of whom had 
     been trained by Americans in New York City like myself or 
     other cities in the United States--some of us even shared the 
     same professors of medicine.
       This discovery came as a terrible shock to my naiveties at 
     the time and I was patronizingly ridiculed for being so `pro-
     American'. I realized the version of Islam my parents had 
     given, and our reverence for the nations who had sheltered 
     and reared me--Britain and the United States--wasn't widely 
     accepted. That fellow physicians, as highly trained and as 
     privileged as I, could be elated at the loss of life and the 
     transient bowing of America's spirit utterly displaced me to 
     a new, harsher reality.
       In the wake of 9-11, I saw Osama bin Laden feted as a hero 
     in Pakistan, nation of my matrilineal and patrilineal 
     heritage. On one trip I recall a Pakistani driver in Karachi 
     explaining to me why 7 years after 9-11, Pakistani families 
     were still naming their newborns Osama in his honor. He was 
     still deified, recognized by many as a `defender' of Islam, a 
     `warrior savior'. Nothing could be more offensive to my 
     beliefs as a Muslim or my principles as a human being. This 
     was extraordinarily difficult to reconcile with the knowledge 
     that Islam condemns all murder, and particularly the 
     execution of non-combatant civilians in any setting. In my 
     mind Bin Laden and his sympathizers had renounced Islam by 
     their acts and represented nothing more than violent 
     terrorists and those who named their firstborns after Osama 
     were lionizing nothing more than a mass murderer.
       Soon after my return from Saudi Arabia, I began to record 
     my experiences in a manuscript that would become my first 
     book, In the Land of Invisible Women now in its 10th edition 
     and published in 13 countries including Muslim majority 
     Senegal, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan and Mauritius. Realizing 
     I

[[Page E1257]]

     would be representing two versions of Islam--mine, and that 
     espoused by the theocracy of Saudi Arabia--I needed to 
     broaden my reading around key areas.
       It was in my reading that I discovered the political 
     ideology termed Islamism, and the many strains of 
     contemporary radical Islamism, both violent and non-violent. 
     I learned unlike my own experience, many Muslims struggled 
     with a pervasive sense of inferiority, influencing their 
     beliefs, sense of justice and identities leading to deep and 
     rather novel resentments. The fascist supremacy of Islamist 
     ideologues was therefore a predictably appealing, if very 
     frightening development, which was completely alien to the 
     Islam I knew.
       Over this decade the Islamist voice has become increasingly 
     prominent both in the United States and globally--whether in 
     advancing the intrusion of the ritual symbolism of Islam into 
     the public space--for instance the battle for the niqab in 
     the public arena in France, the demands for the veil to be 
     permitted in FIFA soccer tournaments, or the most recent 
     debacle involving the vilification of the NYPD for their 
     counter terrorism efforts drawing false accusations of Muslim 
     profiling.
       Throughout the world, including in the United States, the 
     Islamists' goal is one and the same: to stoke the fires of 
     unwitting Muslims into believing in their own manufactured 
     sense of victimhood as a means to exploit both the uninformed 
     Muslim and often times the liberal democracies where we make 
     our homes. It is this last fallacy, of collective victimhood, 
     that most fuels my drive to expose Islamism for what it is--a 
     weak yet vicious imposter for a great religion, an imposter 
     which seeks to exploit and devour both Muslims and non 
     Muslims alike in its pursuit for power and dominance. These 
     forces are at work as we testify now in this room at this 
     hearing--an effort by three Muslims which will predictably be 
     derisively labeled as a collaboration in our own persecution. 
     I am here to testify that nothing could be further from 
     reality.


              Civil liberties of Muslims are not at stake

       Many critics of these investigative hearings (both Muslim 
     and not) charge them with a threat to Muslims' civil 
     liberties in America. My most vociferous opponents, referring 
     to Muslims' American civil liberties, state: `give away your 
     freedoms not mine' (an American Muslim); `This is not 1910 
     America and what happened to the Jews--Jews have only just 
     stopped walking on eggshells in America. Watching what's 
     happening to Muslims makes me sick' (an American Jew); `We 
     need a Rosa Parks to stand up for Muslim rights' (a non 
     Muslim American); `Park 51 shows Muslims do not have civil 
     rights'; `some want Lower Manhattan to be `An American 
     Jerusalem' (a non Muslim American). They identify my support 
     of these investigative hearings as my collusion in the 
     fictional erosion of Muslim civil liberties.
       While I respect the fears which birth these concerns, I can 
     firmly strip them aside. Muslims in America do not have the 
     painful history of African Americans or of Jewish Americans. 
     Our privileges as Muslim Americans today have been guaranteed 
     in part by the struggles of the Civil Rights era and by the 
     travails of the Jewish Americans before us. We do not, in any 
     extrapolation, face similar disadvantages as earlier American 
     history reveals. To claim such is a gross distortion of 
     history and demographic data in the United States proves 
     this.
       I would also add I denounce the above assertions of an 
     equivalency between the sufferings of other minority 
     populations in America and that of Muslim Americans with some 
     authority. I understand all about being a Muslim woman 
     without civil rights as predicated by my two years living 
     under Wahabi theocracy without any civil or human rights 
     including those Islam bequeathed me 1500 years ago. I also 
     understand the total extinction of civil rights on 
     minorities--both Muslim and non Muslim--as experienced in 
     Islamist Pakistan as described to me by Christians, Ahmadi 
     Muslims and Zoroastrians during my last visit to Pakistan and 
     in my extensive contact with minorities.
       I have lived the impact of the Islamist narrative both in 
     Saudi Arabia, during my extensive travels in Pakistan and in 
     my years treating Americans in New York as well as when 
     examining the lives of my orthodox Bengali British migrants 
     in East London or training some of the very neo-orthodox 
     Muslim doctors of that area.


    Muslims are not victimized by The Homeland Security Committee's 
                             investigations

       As you learn of my biography, know that I am part of an 
     economically powerful American demographic. According to Pew 
     Forum data Muslims are mainstream and mostly middle class. I 
     am rather representative.
       Like me, 65% of Muslims in America are first generation and 
     18% of us have South Asian heritage. The majority of foreign-
     born Muslim Americans arrived, like me, in the 1990s--50% of 
     us have moved here for economic or educational opportunity--I 
     did so for both reasons. 46% of us are, like me, women, and 
     around 31% are my age--between 40 and 54. We are a 
     multiracial multiethnic group with over 68 different 
     nationalities before becoming American. Our income and 
     education reflects the US public and 16% of us earn more than 
     $100,000 annually compared to 17% of the general US public 
     who do the same--a 1% disparity.
       In my native Britain, the income disparity for those 
     Muslims who earn over 40,000 sterling annually is more than 
     10%. Equivalent incomes earned in France comparing between 
     Muslim and average public show even greater disparity of 12%, 
     in Germany 14% in Spain 19%.
       Muslims in America have achieved more, faster, and more 
     often, in America than in any other Muslim Diaspora setting. 
     My experience is very much the mainstream Muslim American 
     experience. I ask the committee to recognize that most 
     Muslims are not mistreated by efforts to protect our 
     integrity as Americans though they are certainly entitled to 
     be offended at these efforts and America guarantees their 
     right to be offended.
       The offence claimed by many Muslim Americans whether at the 
     first hearing in this series or for instance pertaining to 
     the NYPD's activities more recently, is misplaced. Instead of 
     denouncing methods of intelligence gathering, Muslims in 
     America should be denouncing the findings of those 
     intelligence missions: the active Islamists among us. The 
     furore has been misdirected, much to the benefit of committed 
     Islamists at work within this nation's borders.


 Why is it so hard to discuss the Islamist threat to the United States 
                              of America?

       There are serious shortcomings of language in engaging in 
     this particular discourse. In the post 9-11 era there has 
     been a gravitation towards extreme speech and a pervasive 
     lack of integrative complexity in public speech as shown by 
     critically important research performed at the University of 
     Cambridge among others. Such lack of nuance is very well 
     exploited by the cultivating Islamist.
       The arrival of a sense of `otherization' of Muslims into 
     the public lens has facilitated the grip of Islamist Lawfare 
     on the public dialogue--fueling both the victimhood of 
     Muslims and the outcries of the offended liberal. The false 
     claims and crocodile tears of Islamophobia and the 
     encroaching advancement of the idea of defamation of religion 
     which is pushed by the Organization of the Islamic 
     Cooperation (OIC) elsewhere, here in America intimidates 
     journalists, news media and others from engaging in dialogue 
     who may face spurious lawsuits if they dare engage in this 
     dialogue.
       These profound problems with language have extended to the 
     US government decree banning enforcement agencies from 
     discussing the very threats we have heard at this series of 
     hearings, banning the word 'Islamist' for instance. This 
     sanitization of our lexicon reveals a shocking and perhaps 
     specious reluctance to engage with the problem or worse, a 
     foolhardy embrace, unintentional or otherwise, with the 
     Islamist stance.


                             In Conclusion

       Islam is nothing if not justice. Any injustice committed or 
     pursued in the name of Islam is anathema to the believing 
     Muslim and counter to the ideal which is Islam, yet Islamists 
     demand unjust abominations--foundational to their beliefs--of 
     their subscribers.
       Muslims must remember their duties, not only to themselves, 
     or their Maker, but also to their society wherever they find 
     themselves. Unlike Islamism which mandates it, Islam reviles 
     claims to supremacy, instead appealing for humility. The 
     Prophet Mohammed (SAW) himself admonished his followers not 
     to make claims of supremacy over Moses, or indeed any other 
     messenger of God. The Qur'an repeatedly reminds the Muslim 
     that `to each is sent a Law and a Way' and to each they must 
     `judge themselves by their Law and their Way'. Islamist 
     Muslims overlook this and many other principles of Islam.
       Our role as believers is to cooperate and collaborate and 
     enhance the world, not to oppress, discriminate, exclude or 
     murder others. Major Muslim majority nations under the guise 
     of democracy--foremost Pakistan--are operating as Islamist 
     Supremacists who legally persecute Muslim and non-Muslim 
     minorities to extinction with impunity. These are not the 
     ways of Muslims. These are the ways of fascists.
       We must redirect media interpretation and expose their bias 
     and painful lack of contextual perspective while commending 
     the efforts of these investigative hearings in anticipation 
     of future hearings which will surely assess progress, 
     intervention and outcome data of measures enacted since.
       We also cannot examine the radical Islamist threat in the 
     United States in a domestic vacuum. This is a transnational, 
     cross-continental issue mandating an international response. 
     While we have been pursuing conventional international 
     warfare and in fact have assassinated the leader of Al Qaedah 
     for instance, we have remained dangerously vulnerable because 
     of our delayed realization of the political science aspects 
     of Islamist ideology and the very serious threat this poses 
     to our democracy. These are vulnerabilities which cannot be 
     safeguarded by drones, or gunships but instead must be 
     secured by counter ideological warfare which begins here, by 
     widening the debate, discussion and scholarship in this 
     arena.
       There is an overwhelming need for focused examination of 
     the interface of Islam and Islamism. These investigative 
     hearings provide the first public foray examining this divide 
     in real-time as expressed in contemporary America. Until 
     these questions are asked, and later answered, until more 
     American Muslims confront the discomfort of disarticulation 
     from their unquestioning brotherhood with the `Ummah' and its 
     worst

[[Page E1258]]

     elements, the shifts between Islam, Islamism and the West, 
     between puritanical Islamists masquerading as Muslims and 
     true moderate non Islamist Muslims, will continue to be 
     tectonic and devastating.
       In my position of privilege and opportunity, one shared 
     with many Muslims in America, if I do not oppose Islamism, I 
     am failing in my Muslim duty to American society and in 
     failing American society, I profoundly fail as a Muslim. I am 
     reminded of a saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammed by 
     one of his companions who recounted it to an early believer:
       ``Whoever sees a wrong and is able to put it right with his 
     hand, let him do so; if he can't, then with his tongue, if he 
     can't, then with his heart. That is the bare minimum of 
     faith'.
       This, having both hand, tongue, and heart, I am committed 
     to live by and therefore I thank you Chairman King, Ranking 
     Committee Member Congressman Thompson and the distinguished 
     members of the Committee on Homeland Security for enabling me 
     to fulfill the bare minimum of my belief today.

                          ____________________