Black Americans Need New Friends
by Lorna Salzman
| Recently the House Homeland Security Committee headed by Cong. Peter King held hearings on the radicalization of Muslims. They were taped by C Span and will be available (www. ny03ima@mail.hous.gov was the original access). Summary: the Democrats and blacks did their best to deny, twist, avoid and change the subject by referring to the Ku Klux Klan and Timothy McVeigh. King's three witnesses were superb: Melvin Bledsoe, father of Carlos Bledsoe, the Muslim convert who shot a soldier in Arkansas, and Abdiriwak Bihi, a Somalian whose nephew was one of 20 young Somalians recruited to join Al Shabab in Somalia,where he was killed,, and Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a physician, formerly in the US Army, of Syrian parentage, a devout Muslim and founder of AIFD, the American-Islamic Foundation for Democracy. Bihi recounted how his local mosque and religious leaders threatened him when he became active in denouncing islamist recruitment. They told him that he would be considered an infidel and would end up in Guantanamo; then they said he would destroy Islam; and then told him he would be consumed by hellfire. They also said that if he kept quiet, the Somali men would come home sooner. To date neither he nor Bledsoe have received any apology from their local mosque or from CAIR or any other organization, nor any acknowledgement of the danger of Islamist recruitment. Bihi also said that the African-American community is a preferred target because the islamists can play on the theme of American discrimination and oppression. Jasser's testimony provided a much wider and needed perspective by emphasizing that the problem is not just violence but ideology: political Islam, which aims to impose shariah law and qu-ranic principles. To this end $90 billion has already been spent by the Saudis to build mosques, fund Islamic studies departments at leading universities such as Harvard and George Washington University, as well as support groups like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) and ICNA (Islamic Council of North America), which are in effect fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood. CAIR remains an unindicted co-conspirator from the Holy Land Foundation trial, which proved that the HLF was raising money for Hamas. On the video Medea Benjamin of Code Pink wandered in and out wearing a shirt that read: NO BIGOTRY. One wonders if she wore that shirt when she visited Hamas a year or so back, Hamas of course having a charter whose main objective is wiping out Israel and the Jews. Despite the accusations of liberals, Democrats and blacks that these hearings were witch-hunts like those of the late Senator Joe McCarthy, we need to remind them that, notwithstanding accusations to the contrary, Muslims are not being victimized, harassed, intimidated or threatened, nor are they in danger of losing their jobs or being blacklisted, but that it is the Muslims themselves who are responsible for harassing and silencing anyone who dares to suggest that radical Islam is a threat. Bihi himself testified to this fact. One last thing disturbs me, however, and that is the kneejerk resistance and denial of even the nonMuslim blacks, and their attempts to detract attention from a demonstrated threat and factual evidence. This may well be an instinct to defend another minority group that they believe is suffering from "demonization" and discrimination. If so, then we may well ask just why they have not condemned the growing anti-Semitism expressed in this country and in Muslim communities in particular, and why they have joined enthusiastically in the campaign to tar Israel as an "apartheid state" like Nazi Germany. American Jews were stalwart supporters in the black struggle for civil rights, to the point of sacrificing their lives. Jews have consistently attacked racism and discrimination against blacks. What anti-black bigotry existed in this country was that of Christian whites, mostly in the south. Despite this, Jews as a group have been viciously attacked by people like Louis Farrakhan and former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Black anti-Semitism is far more extensive in black communities than anti-black bias is in Jewish communities. So why have some in the black community aligned themselves with those whose whole ideology is based on supremacism, on hatred of non-Muslims, and on a religion whose fundamental doctrines of the qu-ran and shariah law would, if imposed, mean the death of democracy and civil liberties that enfranchised and now protect blacks? Perhaps they subconsciously or secretly welcome a doctrine that can openly express anti-Semitism. Or perhaps opposing these hearings and suppressing criticism of Islam represents a means of defying "the man", the white establishment. Or they have been brainwashed by radicalIslamists just like the Somalis. Or they are just ignorant. My take on this, but particularly on their failure to speak out against anti-Semitism, is that they feel that their "narrative" about slavery, oppression and bigotry has been overshadowed by the attention paid to the holocaust and that the historic oppression of blacks has been "crowded out" by Jewish history and the Jewish experience. In any case, they are doing themselves as well as Muslims a disfavor at best, and a blow to the very same principles of freedom from which they have ultimately benefitted. |