04/22/13 – Salam Al-Marayati – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott Horton here for the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org.
CNI stands against America's negative role in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war party's relentless push to bomb Iran, and the roles played by twisted Christian Zionism and neocon-engineered Islamophobia in justifying it all.
The Council for the National Interest works tirelessly to expose and oppose our government's most destructive policies, but they can't do it without you.
Support CNI's push to straighten out America's crooked course.
Check out the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org and click Donate under About Us at the top of the page.
That's councilforthenationalinterest.org.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, and our next guest on the show today is Salam al-Maryadi.
He is the president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, making Muslims part of the solution since 1988, it says.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
Thank you very much.
So listen, I've been hearing right-wingers saying some recycled old crap about how come no Muslims who aren't terrorists ever don't ever say anything bad about terrorists or terrorism?
Just nothing but silence from them, apparently.
Well, I mean, I think, you know, for them, you can't keep screaming to somebody who's deaf.
It doesn't work.
You can only speak to the American public, and what we've been saying is, I mean, I've heard the uncle of these suspected bombers call them losers.
I've heard a sermon where the head of the mosque said, you cannot consider these Boston bombers our brothers.
Our brothers are Americans who are working for the future of our children.
I've heard condemnations, of course, from all the organizations.
So I don't know what else we can do.
All right, now, when you say all the different Muslim organizations, how many is that, and who do they really represent?
And are we talking about, I don't know, the major Sunni imam in every major American city, or what?
Count them up for us.
I've seen 30 major organizations and their statements.
I've seen mosques.
I've seen associations.
I don't think you can find one Muslim organization showing, you know, wavering at all on this one.
I think in the past it's all about getting your message out there in an effective way, and in this situation, American Muslims have definitely done their job.
All right, now, assuming what we're hearing from the police about these suspects is right, what they're saying is the older son, maybe like his uncle said, he was kind of a loser.
He didn't fit in, felt very alienated from society.
And so what it seems like is he found religion, then he went and joined the army, only he joined up on the other side of this thing.
But apparently his finding religion seemed to have had a lot to do with it.
There's quotes from, I think it was ABC News.
I'm trying to remember which one now.
But one of his uncles in Chechnya, when he and his father went from Dagestan to Chechnya, apparently one of his uncles threw him out of the house because he was acting all high and mighty about how they weren't acting religiously enough and this, that, the other thing.
So there's some kind of connection here between religious belief and terrorism, apparently.
What do you have to say about that?
Well, also there was a report that the same gentleman, the 26-year-old, was at a mosque when the prayer was about nonviolence and they showed a picture of Martin Luther King.
And he was upset that the mosque leader showed a picture of Martin Luther King and they threw him out of the mosque.
Obviously there's some disgruntledness, disenchantment, and disaffected youth in terms of what's happening with this individual.
So he was troubled.
So everybody did their job to make sure that his trouble didn't affect them.
I think right now we're at a point where how do we intervene when we can detect signs of a young, troubled Muslim who, for some reason, either gets twisted and distorted views of religion on the Internet from clerics abroad that radicalizes them?
And that's the value of the American Muslim community.
It is really our job to intervene in these situations.
We have shunted these individuals in the past.
And the good of that is that our mosques have rejected the Al-Qaeda ideology, but the problem that is a consequence of this good action is that now we have lone wolves that are not being counseled by mentors or big brothers or somebody that can make sure they don't get influenced by radical clerics abroad.
All right.
Now, Michael Scheuer, who's the former chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit and who certainly if he had the authority would be Al-Qaeda's worst enemy in the world and he tried to be their worst enemy as best he could back when he was the chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit.
He says to call Al-Qaeda and their affiliates and franchisees and what have you as they exist in the world, to call them terrorists, and, you know, again, he's their worst enemy.
He's not apologizing for them or whatever, but he's trying to straighten out the context a little bit.
He says to call them terrorists kind of misses the point that what we're dealing with is a global Islamist insurgency.
And now he'll be the first one to say, what are they insurging against?
Well, America is far from North America, outlording it over Muslims in Muslim lands, no doubt about that.
And what Michael Scheuer is saying is not that, you know, like the kooks claim, the haters claim that, oh, Islam mandates conquering the world and terrorism is some kind of, you know, part of that.
But he's saying that Islam does mandate defensive war.
And so, of course, the people who are the most radicalized in their beliefs will be the first to carry it out, as we can see in Syria.
Those least afraid of dying are the ones doing the fighting and the risking of their lives in order to fight that local version of this same Islamist insurgency, in that case against the Shiite government, Shiite-backed government at least, of Syria.
And so what's your comment about that?
I mean, is that basically right?
Do you agree with that, that really, not that a billion Muslims are going to, you know, hop to and take part in the very same thing, but isn't it the case that Islam mandates defensive war and that a disgruntled youth like this has some verses to quote, if he wants to, to justify what he wants to do?
Is that part of this?
Well, you know, Islam only allows self-defense when you are driven from your homeland or people are trying to drive you away from your faith.
And then even if you're going to defend yourself in terms of war, there are more conditions for that.
So if anything, Islam, of all the religions, regulates that kind of behavior.
It tells people, if anything, Islam says you must remain steadfast and perseverant against any kind of oppression and do not act with injustice as a response to injustice, because that in and of itself is a sin.
What we're talking about here is that, yes, there are several grievances throughout the Muslim world, and yes, those that are taking the most extreme actions against those kind of grievances are extremists.
This is exactly what the United States did in the 80s.
They basically hired and gave training to bin Laden because they knew that these guys were going to be the fiercest against the Soviets.
And unfortunately, that has resulted in empowering that group that ended up with the petrodollars becoming very influential.
We, the Muslim American community, are trying to counter that now by saying that these people represent a cult of death, whereas Islam represents an ideology of life, a theology of life.
The problem is we, the mainstream, remain irrelevant to the American public, whereas the handful of extremists are the relevant pieces in terms of discourse on U.S.
-Muslim world relations.
So we have to force ourselves onto the arena, articulate our views, say, yes, there are grievances, but taking violent actions and dealing with those grievances are not going to be helpful.
They're counterproductive, and usually they end up being immoral.
Although, I mean, in a way, they are very productive.
Like in all terrorism, the action is in the reaction.
So, you know, it's a horrible sin under any religion to kill innocent civilians, but if you're bin Laden, it's really smart to knock down the Americans' towers.
If your goal is to bankrupt them and turn all the populations of the Middle East, radicalize them, against them, and spread the jihad to Libya and Syria, if you can, and the rest of that, America served their interests perfectly, played bin Laden's tune perfectly.
Well, it's actually the other way around, that unfortunately we, as the American public, are unaware of several of these situations.
I mean, it's only now that we're talking about Chechnya.
So it took a terrorist act for the American public to finally be curious about what's happening in Chechnya.
That, in and of itself, reinforces terrorism, and I think that's a problem we have in terms of dealing with these kinds of situations.
It's better, obviously, to deal with these situations before anybody feels they have to resort to violence to get our attention, but that's exactly what the terrorists want.
They want to give themselves and their causes attention, and they feel that the only way to get attention is through political violence, and we have to resist that.
On the one hand, yes, of course, we have to deal with these issues, but not wait until somebody acts violently before we start discussing these issues.
Right, yeah, that's absolutely true.
All right, listen, I really appreciate your time, and I really appreciate your efforts.
I know that there's a very organized campaign in this country to propagandize the American people against all Muslims, and it's a hell of a fight to try to defend truth from those kinds of accusations.
So I thank you very much for your efforts and for your time on the show today.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you for the time.
That is Salam al-Maryati from the Muslim Public Affairs Council at mpac.org.
All right, and that's it for the show.
See you all tomorrow here, 11 to 1 Texas time, 12 to 2 Eastern, on NO Agenda Radio, talkstreamlive.com, et cetera, et cetera.
See what happens at wallstreetwindow.com.
And Mike's got a great new book coming out, so also keep your eye on writermichaelswanson.com for more details.
Man, you need some Liberty stickers for the back of your truck.
At libertystickers.com, they've got great state hate, like Pearl Harbor was an inside job.
The Democrats want your guns.
U.S. Army, die for Israel.
Police brutality, not just for black people anymore.
At government school, why you and your kids are so stupid.
Check out these and a thousand other great ones at libertystickers.com.
And, of course, they'll take care of all your custom printing for your band or your business at thebumpersticker.com.
That's libertystickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
Hey, y'all, Scott here.
Like I told you before, the Future Freedom Foundation at fff.org represents the best of the libertarian movement.
Led by the fearless Jacob Hornberger, FFF writers James Bovard, Sheldon Richman, Wendy McElroy, Anthony Gregory, and many more.
Write the op-eds and the books.
Host the events and give the speeches that are changing our world for the better.
Help support the Future Freedom Foundation.
Subscribe to their magazine, The Future of Freedom.
Or to contribute, just look for the big red donate button at the top of fff.org.
Peace and freedom.
Thank you.
Hey, everybody, Scott Horton here.
You ought to consider advertising on the show.
Here's how it'll work.
You give me money, and then I'll tell everybody how great your stuff is.
They'll buy it, and we'll all be rich as Republicans.
Sound pretty good?
Shoot me an email, scott, at scotthorton.org, and we'll work it out.