“In the imaginations of FBI agents, immigrant Muslim communities are made up of monolithic blocs headed by patriarchs—like the “tribes” many ex-military FBI agents thought they were confronting in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan before they joined the bureau. What this ignores is that communities are complex tapestries, not only with different ethnic strands, but with multiple interwoven power relationships of class, gender, and age. Who represents Muslims is not something that can be decided by empirical indicators such as influence or the number of members in a congregation or an organization. Communities do not come ready-made with leaders—to identify one is to make a political choice. And potential leaders who take a civil rights stand are often vilified as conveyors of the extremist ideas that supposedly make people into terrorists. While the Obama administration has rhetorically embraced the idea of forging community partnerships with moderate Muslims in its domestic war on terror, in practice the role communities are allowed to play in preventing terrorism has been reduced to intelligence gathering and the self-policing of radical views.” – Arun Kundnani, The Muslims Are Coming!
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 06:08:00 +0000
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