Author: Jeff Jacoby
Publication: Jewish World Review
Date: September 27, 2005
URL: http://jewishworldreview.com/jeff/jacoby092705.php3
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney kicked
off a rumpus last week when he observed that homeland security depends not
just on protecting assets but on counterterror intelligence - including keeping
tabs on people and places when there is reason to believe they may be involved
in terrorism or its incitement.
''People who are in settings - mosques, for
instance - that may be teaching doctrines of hate and terror," Romney
said. ''Are we monitoring that? Are we wiretapping? Are we following what's
going on? Are we seeing who's coming in, who's coming out? Are we eavesdropping,
carrying out surveillance on those individuals that are coming from places
that sponsor domestic terror?"
Well, no kidding. After 9/11, after the Madrid
and London transit massacres, it is hard to imagine anyone objecting to Romney's
statement of the obvious. But object they did. The ACLU accused the governor
of proposing ''another giant stride toward a police state." The Council
on American Islamic Relations, shamelessly distorting Romney's words, said
it was aghast that any governor would ''suggest blanket wiretapping of houses
of worship." Groups from the leftist fringe staged a protest outside
Romney's office.
But if they expected to browbeat him into
an apology, they were disappointed.
''This thing is just common sense," he
told reporters. ''Surely we have to recognize that some of this has gone on
in mosques in the past . . . . There have been places of extremism where certain
teachers have been identified as having been involved in . . . terrorist attacks.
Let's not pretend that's not the case."
Again, a statement of the obvious. But imagine
the reaction if Romney had said something not so obvious. Say, like this:
''The most dangerous thing that is going on now in these mosques . . . is
the extremists' ideology. Because they are very active, they took over the
mosques; and we can say that they took over more than 80 percent of the mosques
that have been established in the US. And there are more than 3,000 mosques
in the US."
An American politician who uttered such thoughts
would be smeared as a bigot. But it wasn't a politician who said them. It
was a Muslim scholar and humanitarian, the Sufi sheik Muhammad Hisham Kabbani,
speaking at a State Department forum in 1999. Kabbani was one of the first
moderate Muslim leaders in the United States with the courage to publicly
denounce the extremists. Unfortunately, his alarm didn't wake Americans from
their pre-9/11 slumber. But what excuse can there be now for not taking seriously
his warning that most US mosques are in the hands of a radical minority? As
Romney says, ''This thing is just common sense."
There would have been no hullabaloo if Romney
had spoken of ''monitoring" and ''wiretapping" what was being discussed
by suspected gangsters meeting in the back rooms of Italian restaurants. Or
of ''seeing who's coming in, who's coming out" of a housing project where
drug deals take place. It was the focus on mosques that caused hackles to
rise. Freedom of religion is an engrained American value, and the prospect
of singling out Muslim houses of worship for special scrutiny leaves a bad
taste.
But if Americans want to protect themselves
from Islamist terrorism, monitoring the mosques that foment it must be a priority.
Needless to say, this must be done legally. Romney isn't proposing to do away
with safeguards like judicial oversight and warrants issued only for probable
cause. ''I don't want to change the rules," he emphasized in an interview
last week. ''You can wiretap only when you comply with the Constitution."
The evidence that some radical mosques have
been perverted into terrorist hatcheries has been mounting for years. The
notorious Finsbury Park mosque in London incubated jihadists for holy wars
worldwide; among its alumni are Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th hijacker,
and shoe bomber Richard Reid. Brooklyn's Al-Farooq Mosque is where Sheik Omar
Abdul Rahman, a rabid Egyptian cleric, incited his followers to bomb the World
Trade Center in 1993.
Just last week, Hamid Hayat of Lodi, Calif.,
was indicted on federal terrorism charges; he is one of five suspected jihadis
arrested earlier this year. All five attended the same Lodi mosque, and allegedly
took direction from its two imams, Shabbir Ahmed and Adil Khan - both of whom
have now been deported to Pakistan.
Romney's position is the only responsible
one. We will never be safe from terrorism so long as enemies within our borders
keep spreading the plague of Islamist violence. Homeland security depends
in part on monitoring those enemies and knowing what they're saying. Even
when they're saying it in a mosque.
