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Transcript:
SCOTT HORTON:
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MAN:
[UNIDENTIFIED] Thank you very much for your support.
SCOTT HORTON:
All right, you all, welcome back to the show. It’s antiwar radio. I’m Scott Horton. Our next guest on the show today is Suhail Khan. He is the senior fellow for Christian-Muslim understanding at the Institute for Global Engagement and a Washington, D.C. based attorney. He used to work with—he was press secretary and policy director for U.S. Congressman Tom Campbell. And is a Republican activist. Welcome to the show, how are you doing?
SUHAIL KHAN:
Hey, good. Thanks for having me on.
SCOTT HORTON:
Well, I really appreciate you joining us today. So you’re in the New York Times. You guys apparently wrote an open letter to the leadership of the Republican Party, is that right?
SUHAIL KHAN:
That’s right. That’s right. We just kind of really were growing concerned that a lot of this rhetoric surrounding the center and—proposed center in New York City was beginning to spill over into kind of crazy talk—not only from some of the fringe that we’ve been used to hearing from, specifically post 9-11, but from what we would consider otherwise responsible leadership within our party. That they were coming out, not only opposing the construction of a center in New York, which of course is a controversial issue, but opposing the construction of mosques around the country, some were calling for a moratorium on Islamic centers and it’s really starting to kick sand in the face of the Muslim-American community here in the United States and so a lot of us that have been working in the trenches for the last twenty-odd years, got together and drafted and published that open letter to the party to say, hey guys, let’s just take a step back here and not go down that way of, in fact, demonizing one particular religious minority.
SCOTT HORTON:
Mm-hmm. Well, and you know, the New York Times points out here that it’s a very select list of co-signers here. That you decided not to reach out any kind of—in any kind of broad way, you decided to make it all hardcore Republican party activists, right?
SUHAIL KHAN:
Well, yeah, it’s basically what it was, I mean, first there was the issue of timing. We didn’t want to, you know, we could have put together a letter and circulated it and taken days if not weeks to get all kinds of numbers of signatures on that and that would have been one way to do it. But we thought in the interest of timing, because the issue is raging on and every day another, you know, Republican official and in some instances even Democrats, like we saw with Harry Reid and Howard Dean, were coming out and saying silly things, so we thought, why not get together this list of folks that are very well-known in Republican circles. We worked with, you know, House and Senate elected officials everyday. We deal with the RNC and so we’re—we may not be household names across the country, but folks know us inside the Beltway from our work both in the last—I worked in the last Bush Administration for all eight years and some of the signers worked for Reagan and worked for George H. Walker Bush and so we’ve—we’ve been around and kind of know the folks so we thought, let’s just get this letter together. Let’s get it out. The people that, you know, again, the responsible adults in our party will see this letter and we hoped—and that’s coming true, will, you know, begin to hold some of this back. And that’s been happening. We’ve had positive response from Republican officials. From Republican leadership. And from the rank and file. Folks have been calling and e-mailing me since we got the letter out earlier this week, saying right on. This is, you know, we’re glad somebody’s saying this. And, you know, folks like Ed Gillespie, just yesterday, Ted Olson, came out in support. So the response has been very positive and we just want to keep pushing.
SCOTT HORTON:
Mm-hmm. Well, you know, you mentioned the heat of some of this rhetoric—and it really does seem, well, it’s surprising to me, I have to tell you. I really am kind of taken aback at how far this has gone. As you mentioned, even some prominent Republicans talking about a moratorium on building mosques anywhere in America. I mean, what are we talking about? What?
SUHAIL KHAN:
Yeah. It’s—it’s just scary. And, you know, from a purely philosophical perspective, it was just shocking, because—I mean, I became a conservative because I favor, you know, limited government, individual liberty including religious liberty, you know, personal property—the right to own personal property and control your own personal property, state and local government as opposed to giving power to the feds. And here, in this instance, all these principles, religious liberty, state and local government, rule of law, these are all being turned on their ear by some within the party in the name of political expediency. Because, unfortunately, the polls do show that a lot of Americans do oppose the construction of the mosque at Ground Zero and I understand that. There’s a lot of—a lot of emotion surrounding the tragedy of 9-11. And I completely understand that, but to use that emotion for partisan ends by some is not only wrong, it’s just, you know, that is something that I would argue also to our folks within our party that it’s not even wrong morally, wrong constitutionally and un-American, but also just from a purely partisan perspective, you know, it’s just the wrong way to go. We might win something in the short term, but we’ll lose in the long term when it comes to our democracy.
SCOTT HORTON:
Mm-hmm. Well, it seems like it’s logically wrong, too. I mean, none of the people involved in this mosque did 9-11, right?
SUHAIL KHAN:
Right. Exactly. It’s—these are, you know, the folks involved with this mosque in New York City are exactly the perfect antidote for the hijackers. These are guys that have been working with the Christian and Jewish communities in New York. This is meant to be, you know, an open cultural center with an interfaith component for conversation with various neighbors. They’ve gone through the process locally. You know, the legal process, and have gotten all the approvals they need to. They’ve purchased, you know, the property openly. And so that’s—that’s the rule of law. I think it’s just a situation that because there is a lot of, you know, concern and a lot of animosity towards—by some—towards the Muslim-American community, that low level chatter that was kind of on the internet for months surrounding the center has now suddenly kind of morphed into a national conversation and again, you know, because the poll numbers right now reflect that a lot of Americans are concerned about having a mosque near Ground Zero, it’s not on Ground Zero as most people would have you believe, but rather near Ground Zero. That that’s enough to demagogue the issue for partisan purposes and that’s just something that we couldn’t stomach as committed Republicans and more importantly as committed Americans.
SCOTT HORTON:
Mm-hmm. Well, you know, oftentimes with party politics and stuff, the real issues get buried under simply narratives that are easy to get across because, after all, politicians are trying to collect the most number of voters. And it’s easy to see why, you know, people are struggling. They got to put food on their families and things like this and a lot of people don’t have much time to sit around and read about what’s going on. And if the basic narrative seems to be that maybe somehow the Muslims figured out a way, you know, foreigners figured out a way to make, somehow make their guy our president and now they’re building a mosque on top of Ground Zero. And it seems like maybe–
SUHAIL KHAN:
Right.
SCOTT HORTON:
–maybe there is an Islamofascist caliphate that’s coming for us. If Tom Rich says we ought to get duct tape and plastic sheeting, you know, it must be serious.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Right. Yeah. And that’s exactly the narrative out there and it’s a two-way street. The Muslim-American community has to, you know, really redouble their efforts to get their story out there. You know, I was in the White House for 9-11. And I know that there were hundreds of Muslims that died on 9-11 in the Towers. There were Muslims serving in the New York Fire Department and in the New York Police Department that were the first responders and, you know, the terrorists—and it’s sad that I have to remind some of our friends this, but the terrorists want to divide our country and they want to make this into a religious war. And it’s up to us as Americans to unite as Americans, regardless of our faith, to fight terrorism and to fight these extremists and to not let them dictate the agenda that we’re suddenly going to try to paint one religious minority with a broad brush and really divide our own country and compromise our own Constitution that has served us so well for over two hundred years.
SCOTT HORTON:
Right. I mean, after all, this is the heart of the First Amendment. I mean, forget free speech and free press and everything else. The right to practice one’s religion, I mean, that’s the first thing I learned about America and it was before I ever heard of a Constitution or a Bill of Rights. When I was very, very young. That’s what makes America America is anybody can believe and practice their religion however they want. That’s the core of what makes us us.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Yeah and, you know, but it’s interesting that you bring that up because that’s what made us Americans that, you know, the early Americans with people escaping religious persecution from Europe. They came here to practice their own faith. And indeed, if you look at the early history of New York, when the British were in control of New York, they had a ban on synagogues, believe it or not, in New York City so it’s interesting that some friends from the Jewish American community, particularly in the New York area, who remember that—or know about that history, have been the first to come to the Muslim-American community to say, hey, we’ve seen this movie before. This is wrong. We want to help you. And it’s been very heartening. But that’s just, you know, what we’re facing right now in the way of challenge and as a Republican activist, we’re just trying to say, look, there’s an election coming up–
SCOTT HORTON:
Right. Hold on, Suhail, we got to hold right there and go out to this part break here. We’ll be right back, everybody, with Suhail Khan. Talk a little bit more about Islam in America after this.
MAN:
This is the Liberty Radio Network. Broadcasting the latest liberty-oriented audio content twenty-four hours a day, at LRN.fm.
SCOTT HORTON:
All right, you all, welcome back to the show. This is antiwar radio. Talking with Suhail Khan. He’s a Republican activist. He’s got a letter that you can read in the New York Times today. It’s on a blog there, Muslim and Arab Republicans take issue with GOP on mosque is the headline there at the Times and you can read about Suhail Khan at globalengage.org. He is the senior fellow for Christian-Muslim understanding at the Institute for Global Engagement. And now, Suhail, here’s the thing about this. Really. Is that the underlying premise here is that Islam attacked us on September 11th and that whoever those people were, whether it was maybe a radical fringe interpretation of Islam or not depending on, you know, who’s doing the talking, it was still the religion that made them do it. The religion that mandated that they attack us for otherwise no reason at all. Right?
SUHAIL KHAN:
That’s an unfortunate narrative and it’s pervasive out there and it’s, you know, my only concern is for those that buy into that narrative, the only people that join them in believing that are—is al-Qaeda. But the vast majority of the world’s billion and a half Muslims don’t believe that. We have six to eight million, you know, Muslims that live in this country that are loyal, law-abiding Americans that don’t buy into that and just want to live their lives as everybody else does. Send their kids to school and put food on their table and just be American and enjoy their—the rights and liberties that we all enjoy. And I think that when you—when some buy into that narrative that we have a war with this faith, it’s just something that is, you know, first of all, not real. It’s just an imaginary narrative and, importantly, you know, we don’t want to be at war with a billion plus people in the world. We’ll be at war for the rest of our existence. So we just need to take a step back and kind of, again, remind ourselves that we’re Americans and that we can defeat this enemy, but only do that, as Lincoln said, if we’re united and not divided.
SCOTT HORTON:
Mm-hmm. Well, you know, my boss, Eric Garris [PH] at antiwar.com likes to say, facetiously, you know, you’ve got to learn to discriminate. You know? And make–
SUHAIL KHAN:
Absolutely.
SCOTT HORTON:
–examine the differences between who you’re talking about. And, in fact, you know, I want to be a little bit more narrow because, you know, when you talk about, boy, if Islam’s our enemy, we’re talking about, you know, a sixth of the population of the world and that–
SUHAIL KHAN:
Right.
SCOTT HORTON:
–is extremely problematic, especially considering, as you said, the six to eight million American Muslims–
SUHAIL KHAN:
Right
SCOTT HORTON:
–who would have to also be rounded up by [UNCLEAR] and shipped off to the moon or wherever. But then the other thing is, though, to hear many of the neoconservatives describe the problem, they’ll say, no, no, it’s radical Islam that’s the problem. And that’s only about ten percent of that billion people. Which is still, if we have to kill them, that’s more than a holocaust worth of people who have to die. So I was thinking, maybe we could even discriminate a little bit more carefully than that and figure out, you know, what exactly is radical Islam, how many different flavors of it are there, and how many of them are actually a threat to the American people and maybe we can narrow down our war to that.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Exactly.
SCOTT HORTON:
And maybe we can find out what other motivations they have besides some twisted interpretation of the Koran.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Right. Absolutely. And that’s—so it’s important to ask those questions and it’s important for American Muslims and other Muslims around the globe to stand up and basically take their religion back from the extremists who are trying to use Islam to, you know, further their own political agenda. I mean, if you take the worst of the worst, Osama bin Laden, obviously, he has a problem with American troops being on Saudi soil. And he is trying to—you know, he has gone from that complaint and added to that list of complaints, these issues of Iraq and Afghanistan and the conflict between Israel and Palestine and tried to put together this narrative that Muslims around the world need to unite against the West, but that is a fringe interpretation and while—and he’s smart. While people don’t believe that, most Muslims in the United States and around the globe don’t believe his narrative, there may be some sympathy for the individual political causes that he tries to exploit to get support. So, of course, most Muslims are concerned about what’s happening in Israel and Palestine, for example, and they want an end to the conflict in Iraq or the end to the conflict in Afghanistan. And so, he cleverly uses those political conflicts and the concern that many have for those conflicts in general to exploit a, you know, a very evil agenda. And that’s what American Muslims and other Muslims need to unite against. They’re doing that. But it’s important for Americans in general to make those distinctions just as you outlined.
SCOTT HORTON:
Right. I mean, that’s the whole thing is that here they’re handing Ayman al-Zawahiri the topic for his next podcast. Which is, see I told you their enemy is Islam. They say it’s not, but look at what they do. And this is something, right after September 11th, there was a big pogrom in India and I think it was ten thousand Muslims were killed or something like that and the State Department said nothing. Colin Powell said nothing. And Osama bin Laden put out a thing that said, see, they only care about killing when it’s other people, but when it’s Muslims, man—and so, this is kind of playing into that narrative. In fact, I’m sure you saw in the Post, the guy who was arranging this Islamic community center in New York, he actually was on his way to the Middle East to explain how great religious freedom in America is. To do his PR for [UNCLEAR]
SUHAIL KHAN:
Exactly. That’s exactly right. I was just in Europe last week and—talking to faith leaders in Europe from the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities and two to one, they were looking to the United States for direction, because they were saying you’re the country that’s got it right. You have a separation of church and state. But you still allow for full religious freedom. But then this mosque issue started coming up and it started kind of, you know, getting them to ask questions and saying, wait a second, I hope you guys can figure that out because we’re looking to you for direction to figure out our own challenges. And that’s why, again, you know, going back to the letter, we’re just trying to get Americans to get people in the Republican Party to say, hey, let’s just go back to the Constitution. And we’ll be fine. It’s served us well and it’ll continue to serve us well, but if we drift away and try to make things up as they go along and turn the Constitution on its ear and, you know, twist or have a more grotesque interpretation of what religious freedom means, in other words, just for a select few, but not for the minority, then we’ll get into trouble and we’ll really give our country a black eye and we’ll really just be selling the Constitution short.
SCOTT HORTON:
The first thing I’d like to—I guess as a comment for right now, is, I’ve never heard of this website, globalengage or this organization, the Institute for Global Engagement. And this—you’re the senior fellow for Christian-Muslim understanding here. And I think, of course, obviously, that gets right to the root of it, is the mistaken idea that there’s us and them, we and they, which, I guess would mean that American Muslims are they here. You know, like the communists under the bed, a fifth column, a danger to us from within because the larger narrative is that Islam and Western society are incompatible. That there’s this clash of civilizations going on. So I’d like to give you a chance to maybe explain a little bit about Islam and why it is, apparently, that you think it’s not, you know, incompatible with Western society and why people should not be scared of Islam and believe that it somehow mandates the destruction of what we hold dear here and, you know, that’s going to take a little while, so that’s the question and we’ll talk about that when we get back from this break. It’s Suhail Khan, the website is globalengagement.org. And check out the letter today in the New York Times.
MAN:
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SCOTT HORTON:
All right, you all, welcome back to the show. [UNCLEAR] That was odd. Welcome back to the show, it’s antiwar radio. I’m Scott Horton. I’m talking with Suhail Khan. He’s a Republican Party activist. And senior fellow for Christian-Muslim understanding at the Institute for Global Engagement. That’s globalengage.org. And now, so, when we went out to break, I was asking about the inevitable clash of civilizations between the West and, I guess, the Mideast. Between Islamistan and Christendom. And whether it’s going to have to come to hydrogen bombs or not. I don’t—what do you think?
SUHAIL KHAN:
Well, I hope not. I think it doesn’t. I mean, I can tell you that I’ve grown up born and raised in this country as somebody who loves freedom and I think as a committed Muslim and a committed American, I think they’re very much compatible.
SCOTT HORTON:
Well, please explain. Cause I think the common understanding is uh-uh, you want to put all this shariah law.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Right, right. Well, I just kind of bring it home to my own personal story. My parents were both immigrants from south India. And my dad, in the fifties and sixties was trying to get a higher education and he had an opportunity to study in two places. The University of Moscow or The University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming. And he chose Wyoming because as his father told him, he said, the United States is a free country, they’re a democracy and they respect, you know, all freedoms, including religious freedom. You need to go there as opposed to Moscow, which was a communist country in the middle—this is the middle, of course, of the Cold War. So my parents came to this country looking for freedom as committed Muslims. Because they wanted to come to a country where they could get an education and get a, you know, a good job and raise family and raise their family as Muslim-Americans. So I’ve always felt—and I—and the vast majority of Muslims feel that democracy and individual liberty are very much compatible with Islam and that’s just never been a conflict. Unfortunately, we—you know, there are some, as we talked in the last segment, you know, who have this twisted interpretation of Islam and they have their own political grievances and they’ve melded the two to try and, you know, define this clash of civilizations as you articulated and that’s what, you know, freedom-loving people of all faiths need to fight.
SCOTT HORTON:
Mm-hmm. Well, you know, I think I agree with you. It seems like if we live up to our ideals, then that would be us being at our best and that would be the thing that would best protect us. After all, if it’s a fourth generation war and the battlefield is the whole earth and the hearts and minds of the population of it, then celebrating religious freedom above all else, even in the worst of times, which 9-11 was nine years ago, but anyway, even in the worst of times, sticking to our principles above all and winning the admiration of people like your father around the world, would be the best way to protect us from violent attacks, it would seem. Which–
SUHAIL KHAN:
Absolutely.
SCOTT HORTON:
Which kind of brings us back to the war as it exists now. Not just September 11th and how we got into this mess, but, of course, we’ve had a Ft. Hood shooter and an attempted Times Square bomber and–
SUHAIL KHAN:
Mm-hmm.
SCOTT HORTON:
–we’ve had Somalis from Minnesota, Somali-Americans, traveling to Somalia to fight in the war there and it seems to me like, well, for example, well, it goes back to the question of whether we’re out—whether bin Laden and his people can credibly, whether truthfully or not, credibly claim that America really is at war with Islam. Because if they can credibly convince people that that’s what America’s policy really is, then we’re going to see nothing but more Ft. Hood shooters and attempted Times Square bombers from now until forever, right? And isn’t it time for the Republican Party especially to get on board to end these wars, to ramp this whole thing down? Rather than continuing to accelerate into Pakistan, maybe Iran and on and on?
SUHAIL KHAN:
I agree, absolutely. And that’s why we need to, you know, be vigilant and really stop, you know, some of these folks that are trying to push conflict because they have a vested interest in conflict. And stop them in their tracks. You brought up, you know, some of these attempted terrorist incidents and some of them, unfortunately, like the Ft. Hood shooter—that was a successful one where people were in fact killed and murdered. That—those people are there and they need to be stopped and the best people to stop them are people in the Muslim community. If you saw the situation of the Times Square bomber, for example, it was a small—it was a business, a Muslim businessman, a small business owner who was the one that went to the authorities and said, hey, this vehicle looks suspicious. We had five kids in Virginia several months ago that were—had taken off for Pakistan and it was their parents that called the authorities and said, hey, we’re worried that our kids might be involved with some extremists. And if you remember on the Christmas Day bomber, it was his dad in Nigeria that called the authorities to say, hey, my son might have gotten mixed up with some extremists. So it’s important that we don’t buy this narrative that it is a clash between the Islam and the West or between Islam and Christianity or something like that. But rather between people who love freedom and people who don’t, regardless of their faith. And that way, the vast majority of Muslims, as they are, will police their own ranks and help the authorities to police the ranks to make sure that when there is somebody who’s going the wrong way or mixing up with some extremists, that we can get them—stop them before they do others harm.
SCOTT HORTON:
Hmm. Well, I got to tell you, you make a great spokesman for these issues. You make your case so well and I wonder how much success you have inside the Republican Party. After all, Suhail, the Democrats are running the wars now and there’s a very Ron Paul-ian Republican opposition to empire that can, you know, a case that can be made from the right. Dana Rohrabacher recently said that virtually the entire Republican caucus in the House of Representatives regrets ever doing the Iraq War and I—you know, I wonder if you think there can ever be a change inside the Republican Party from this seemingly permanent aggressive posture?
SUHAIL KHAN:
I think there can. I think that we have to really just be ever-vigilant and just keep fighting for the heart and soul of the party. That we need to go back to core principles and that’s, again, you know, those that are enshrined in our Constitution. And those on both sides of the aisle that have a vested interest in conflict and trying to pick fights with countries where we have no business going, we just need to stop those guys. And particularly, since, you know, it’s our blood and treasure that will be spilled in these far-off lands and we just need to come back. We’ve had, you know, this experience now in Iraq and Afghanistan and let’s pray and hope that the American public will learn from these lessons, that we can bring our troops home safely and just really be careful, like you said, that we don’t get involved in other foreign entanglements just because at some point over an emotion or trying to beat our chest, we feel like we can send troops willy-nilly in all kinds of harms’ way.
SCOTT HORTON:
Mm-hmm. Well, and you know how it is with the Democrats. They got no spine whatsoever. So, assuming they ever want to engage in a rational policy, there’s always just the pressure to threaten more. And so, you know, like in Obama’s speech in November about how we’re going to escalate into Afghanistan temporarily, but we’re going to ramp the occupation down in 2011. He made sure to tack on at the end of the speech, Yemen, Somalia, you’re next. Because he’s got to protect himself from John McCain.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Right, right. And that’s the unfortunate nature of politics. And that is, you know, again, there is always the political expedient and folks sometimes, you know, feel like they need to pander to whatever constituency is part of their own constituency or that might be on the other side that might beat them up. And so everybody’s got to hold their elected officials accountable, people like Ron Paul or others are out there, trying to keep other politicians honest. And it’s just really up to, you know, every American. I know that we’re all busy trying to live our life, particularly in this economy, trying to put food on the table and keep, you know, a roof over our heads, but that’s when, you know, these politicians, when they’re not—it’s like kids, right? When you don’t hear them, then you start to worry what’s going on.
SCOTT HORTON:
Right.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Same way with politicians. We got to keep on these guys and that’s why it’s more important than ever that we vote. And if these guys are not voting our, you know, interests, we’ve got to vote them out.
SCOTT HORTON:
Well, and that’s why it’s especially important to take on these most silly, most ridiculous narratives. I just don’t know how else to characterize it. The idea that this is some terrorist conquering of Ground Zero going on here, this kind of demagoguery has got to be stood up against. It’s great to see you guys within the Republican Party saying, hey, wait a minute now. I guess you guys have a mid-term coming up and everything, but are you sure you want to go down this road? They got to hear that. I mean, the Democrats are caving in already. I don’t know why any Republican would do the right thing at this point. So they need that pressure from inside the party from you. And I guess we’ll have to leave it there with me thanking you for providing that pressure.
SUHAIL KHAN:
[OVERLAP] Thank you.
SCOTT HORTON:
Suhail Khan, thanks again for the interview, man.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Hey, thank you.