Winds of War: Could Muslim be Getting a Clue?

Many bloggers and pundits on the Starboard side of the bloggosphere have decried the fact that ‘moderate’ Muslims are predominantly silent on the acts of intimidation and terror that their fundamentalist brethren commit almost daily. We’ve asked the ‘overwhelming majority of moderates’ to get off the fence and be proactive in their support of the war against Islamo-fascism and the Islamist agenda. After all, it’s this type of mindless fundamentalism that they’ve fled from in their home countries.

And it seems, perhaps, just perhaps, the worm is starting to turn. Instead of acting the victim, there are moderate Muslim voices that ask Muslims to be more proactive in their response to Islamo-fascism.

Farhana Ali is a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation. He wrote an interesting piece the other day at the UPI site entitled America’s Muslim Resource. He offered a list on how American Muslims can help the country with its fight against terror.

Today's Muslim Americans are often thought of as part of the problem of terrorism rather than solution -- a fifth column working against America. Certainly, a few Muslim Americans sympathize with Osama bin Laden's call for liberating Muslim lands and small numbers have provided financial support and joined the jihadist ranks. But the vast majority of Muslim Americans have no sympathy for or involvement with terrorists, any more than the majority of Italian Americans are in the Mafia, or the majority of Japanese Americans were agents of the Japanese Empire in World War II.

Some of his solutions have been what the anti-Islamic bloggers and pundits have been saying for months now.

One effective way would be to get the help of more Americans with the language skills, cultural and religious knowledge, and contacts to identify and stop would-be terrorists before they strike…….Good intelligence can't be based solely on electronic devices and satellites. Intelligence is about understanding one's adversary -- and who better to help do that than Muslim Americans? Many are native speakers of Arabic, Farsi or Urdu -- or learned these languages growing up in America from their immigrant parents…………American police departments learned decades ago that hiring African American officers would help them do a better job patrolling black neighborhoods, reducing racial tensions between police and the community, and making them aware of problems over the horizon. Bringing more Muslim Americans onto police forces could do the same today with their community. They can encourage members of the Muslim community to cooperate with local police and be better informed of suspected criminals or terrorists.

He goes on.

In addition to serving intelligence and law enforcement agencies, Muslim Americans also can be valuable to the military and other parts of the U.S. government in fighting terrorism and protecting America. They can work to help improve U.S. relations with police, military and intelligence agencies from Muslim nations that are crucial allies in the war on terrorism. They can enable U.S. military forces in Muslim nations to better understand foreign cultures, traditions, and peoples. By understanding other cultures, U.S. military forces are in a much better position to influence operations and engender long-term partnerships.

How refreshing. He ends his piece, though on a dissonant note.

Today, the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II is recognized as a terrible mistake. In addition to being a grave injustice that deprived Japanese Americans of their liberty and their other constitutional rights, the action deprived America of the services of a group uniquely qualified to help win the war against Japan. The United States can avoid repeating that mistake by utilizing the services of patriotic Muslim Americans to help win the global war of the 21st century.

Is he saying this because he believes that the Japanese interment was wrong or perhaps, he is giving a non so veiled warning to his fellow Muslims that if the moderate Muslims do not proactively show the non-Muslims in our country that they are patriots, they too may wind up in internment camps if the nation has a knee-jerk reaction to a series of new terror attacks on our soil.

I’ll choose the veiled warning.