Figuring Radicalization: Congressional Narratives of Homeland Security and American Muslim Communities

Abstract

This essay focuses on the language of domestic radicalization as it has been invoked in recent debates regarding homeland security and the specter of homegrown Islamic terrorism. The language of radicalization is not new. However, beginning in 2004 and 2005 this language began to be appropriated into legislative and law enforcement discussions of domestic terrorism and national security. Using the rhetorical figure of polyptoton as a critical frame, this essay explores how the language of radicalization has evolved and how it has come to shape available arguments and define the legitimacy of participants (and non-participants) within recent congressional hearings and legislation.

Keywords:

• Ideology
• Islam
• Polyptoton
• Radical Rhetoric
• Terrorism

Notes

[1] House Committee on Homeland Security, Compilation of Hearings on Islamist Radicalization, Vol. 1, 112th Cong., 1st sess. 2011, 2.

[2] In total, five House hearings and one joint hearing on radicalization were conducted between March 2011 and June 2012:

1. March 10, 2011—Radicalization in the Muslim-American Community

2. June 15, 2011—Radicalization in US Prisons

3. July 27, 2011—Radicalization Linked to al-Shabaab

4. December 7, 2011—Radicalization in the US Military (Joint hearing with the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee)

5. March 21, 2012—Hezbollah Threat in the US

6. June 20, 2012—Response of American Muslims to the Radicalization Hearings

[3] Report on Human Rights Conditions in Turkey, March 2, 1995, 104th Cong., 1st sess., Congressional Record (March 28, 1995), E705–6; Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on European Affairs, The Crisis in Kosovo, 105th Cong., 2nd sess., 1998, 66, 68; Human Rights in Uzbekistan, 105th Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record 144 (September 25, 1998), E1818; Iran Nonproliferation Act of 1999—Resumed, 106th Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record (February 22, 2000), S662; Barton Gellman, “AIDS is Declared Threat to Security—White House Fears Epidemic Could Destabilize World,” Washington Post, April 30, 2000, submitted by Representative Lee of California, 106th Cong., 2nd sess., Congressional Record (May 8, 2000), E664.

[4] Arun Kundnani, “Radicalisation: The Journey of a Concept,” Race and Class 54, issue 3 (2012): 4, 7.

[5] Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Current and Projected National Security Threats to the United States, 109th Cong., 1st sess. (February 16, 2005), 58.

[6] See Jonathan Githens-Mazer and Robert Lambert, “Why Conventional Wisdom on Radicalization Fails: The Persistence of a Failed Discourse,” International Affairs 86, issue 4 (2010): 889; Mark Sedgwick, “The Concept of Radicalization as a Source of Confusion,” Terrorism and Political Violence 22, issue 4 (2010): 480; Kundnani, “Radicalisation,” 5–6. The four steps in the NYPD report were: “Pre-Radicalization,” “Self-Identification,” “Indoctrination,” and “Jihadization.” See Mitchell Silber and Arvin Bhatt, Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat (New York, NY: New York City Police Department, 2007), 6, 21.

[7] Hakimeh Saghaye-Biria, “American Muslims as Radicals? A Critical Discourse Analysis of the US Congressional Hearing on ‘The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and That Community's Response,’” Discourse and Society 23 (2012): 520.

[8] Saghaye-Biria, “American Muslims as Radicals?,” 510. Saghaye-Biria draws heavily on Teun A. van Dijk's research on “critical discourse analysis” and the “reproduction of racism.” See, for example Teun A. van Dijk, “Political Discourse and Racism: Describing Others in Western Parliaments,” in The Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in Discourse, ed. Stephen Harold Riggins (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1997), 42–43.

[9] Charges of racism and anti-Muslim sentiment have been consistent in the criticism of these and similar hearings, and some of the committee members have made statements that have been seen as lending credence to these charges. King, for example, has been associated with a number of divisive statements about American Muslims, including a September 2007 interview with Politico—included as an attachment to the March 10, 2011 hearing—in which King said that there are: “too many mosques in this country” (a statement that King later claimed “was taken entirely out of context”). Although such statements provide interesting context for the 2011–2012 hearings, I have chosen not to fixate on the personal motivations of King or any other participant in the hearings. The language of radicalization affects discourse across diverse personal and political perspectives, and it is this language that I have chosen to focus attention on in this essay. The Politico article was submitted into the record by Representative Laura Richardson of California. See House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 180–81.

[10] The language of radicalization in reference to homegrown terrorism crosses party lines. Indeed, calls for “counter-radicalization” have become common features of the Obama administration's anti-terrorism strategies. See, for example, The White House, Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States (August 2011); Executive Order no. 13584, Federal Register 76: 179 (Sept. 15, 2011); Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States (December 2011): 10. See also Kundnani, “Radicalisation,” 6–7.

[11] Carol Dyer, Ryan E. McCoy, Joel Rodriguez, and Donald N. Van Duyn, “Countering Violent Islamic Extremism: A Community Responsibility,” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 76, issue 12 (2007): 4, 8.

[12] For example, in a 2005 Senate hearing, FBI director Robert Mueller said:

Through our joint terrorism task forces, we also understand that persons absolutely have the right to practice religion in whichever way they want. … But I'm going to say, on the other hand, we have the obligation to determine and identify those persons who are becoming radicalized and become a threat to the United States.

See Senate Select Committee, Current and Projected National Security Threats, 57.

[13] See, for example, Leland M. Griffin, “The Rhetorical Structure of the ‘New Left’ Movement: Part I,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 50 (1964): 113–35; Parke G. Burgess, “The Rhetoric of Black Power: A Moral Demand?” Quarterly Journal of Speech 54 (1968): 122–33; Robert L. Scott, “The Conservative Voice in Radical Rhetoric: A Common Response to Division,” Speech Monographs 40 (1973): 123–35; James F. Klumpp, “Challenge of Radical Rhetoric: Radicalization at Columbia,” Western Speech 37 (1973): 146–56.

[14] James Darsey, “The Legend of Eugene Debs: Prophetic Ethos as Radical Argument,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 74 (1988): 434–52.

[15] James Darsey, “The Legend of Eugene Debs: Prophetic Ethos as Radical Argument,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 74 (1988): 435.

[16] James Darsey, “The Legend of Eugene Debs: Prophetic Ethos as Radical Argument,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 74 (1988): 435.

[17] Phyllis M. Japp, “Esther or Isaiah?: The Abolitionist-Feminist Rhetoric of Angelina Grimké,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 71 (1985): 342.

[18] Stephen H. Browne, “Encountering Angelina Grimké: Violence, Identity, and the Creation of Radical Community,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 82 (1996): 66.

[19] Darsey, “The Legend of Eugene Debs,” 435–36.

[20] Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (London, UK: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), 318.

[21] James Darsey, The Prophetic Tradition and Radical Rhetoric in America (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1997), 31.

[22] “Affairs in Georgia: Splendid Prospects of Wheat—Political Movements—The Negro Vote,” The New York Times, June 19, 1867; See also “Southern Radicalism,” The Louisiana Democrat, May 8, 1867; “The Devil and Mr. Stevens,” The Charleston Daily News, December 19, 1867.

[23] “Seymour and Blair,” The Charleston Daily News, July 25, 1868.

[24] Klumpp, “Challenge of Radical Rhetoric” 150.

[25] Klumpp, “Challenge of Radical Rhetoric” 146–47.

[26] Klumpp, “Challenge of Radical Rhetoric” 146.

[27] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 2.

[28] Jeanne Fahnestock, Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011), 131.

[29] See William Reid Manierre, “Verbal Patterns in Cotton Mather's Magnalia,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 47 (1961): 407; Andrew F. Stone, “On Hermogenes's Features of Style and Other Factors Affecting Style in the Panegyrics of Eustathios of Thessaloniki,” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 19 (2001): 320–21.

[30] Aristotle, “Topics,” in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, trans. W. A. Pickard-Cambridge, Vol. 1. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 190; See also Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. George A. Kennedy (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1991), 191.

[31] Jeanne Fahnestock, Rhetorical Figures in Science (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999), 170–71.

[32] Chris Holcomb, “Performative Stylistics and the Question of Academic Prose,” Rhetoric Review 24 (2005): 202.

[33] See, for example, Ilon Lauer, “Ritual and Power in Imperial Roman Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90 (2004): 427–28.

[34] Fahnestock, Rhetorical Style, 131.

[35] Fahnestock, Rhetorical Figures in Science, 170–71; see also Holcomb, “Performative Stylistics,” 202.

[36] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 3–4.

[37] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 3–4.

[38] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 11, 15–16, 108.

[39] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 10.

[40] Sedgwick, “The Concept of Radicalization,” 490–91.

[41] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 205–6.

[42] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 280.

[43] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 20.

[44] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 101.

[45] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 2.

[46] Jack Cloherty and Pierre Thomas, “Attorney General's Blunt Warning on Terror Attacks,” ABC News, December 21, 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/attorney-general-eric-holders-blunt-warning-terror-attacks/story?id=12444727.

[47] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 35.

[48] HR 1955, 110th Cong., 1st sess. (October 23, 2007). While criticizing the use of radicalization in these hearings, Representative Ellison emphasized that he voted for this bill, although, in his oral testimony at the March 10 hearing, he mistakenly referred to it as the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2010. See House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 15, 284.

[49] US Congress, Compilation of Hearings on Islamist Radicalization, Vol. 2: Homegrown Terrorism: The Threat to Military Communities Inside the United States: Joint Hearing Before the House Committee on Homeland Security and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 112th Cong., 1st sess, 2011, 5.

[50] US Congress, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 2, 27.

[51] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 4.

[52] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 3.

[53] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 36.

[54] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 38, 40.

[55] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 64.

[56] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 63; House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 62, 59, like Bihi, Bledsoe also compares radicalization to “brainwashing.”

[57] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 110.

[58] Fahnestock, Rhetorical Style, 47

[59] US Congress, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 2, 57.

[60] On some of the problems with this relationship between tolerance and collectivity, see Wendy Brown, “Subjects of Tolerance: Why We Are Civilized and They Are the Barbarians,” in Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, ed. Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2006), 310–13.

[61] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 34.

[62] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 26.

[63] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 36–37.

[64] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 89.

[65] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 336.

[66] Githens-Mazer and Lambert, “Why Conventional Wisdom on Radicalization Fails,” 900.

[67] Saghaye-Biria, “American Muslims as Radicals?,” 519.

[68] See Dyer et al., “Countering Violent Islamic Extremism,” 4.

[69] House Committee, Compilation of Hearings, Vol. 1, 59.

[70] Githens-Mazer and Lambert, “Why Conventional Wisdom on Radicalization Fails,” 901.

[71] Kundnani, “Radicalisation,” 5.

[72] See, for example, Peter Neumann, Perspectives on Radicalisation and Political Violence: Papers from the First International Conference on Radicalisation and Political Violence, London 17–18 January 2008 (London, UK: International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, 2008), 4, quoted in Kundnani, “Radicalisation,” 4–5.

[73] Kundnani, “Radicalisation,” 8.

[74] Aziz Z. Huq, “Modeling Terrorist Radicalization,” Duke Forum for Law and Social Change 2 (2010): 40.

[75] Sedgwick, “The Concept of Radicalization,” 480–81.

[76] As has often been observed, exploitation can be presented as a form of care. See, for example, Friedrich Engels, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1978), 758.

[77] Roderick P. Hart, “Introduction: Community by Negation—An Agenda for Rhetorical Inquiry,” in Rhetoric and Community: Studies in Unity and Fragmentation (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), xxx.

[78] Faiza Patel, Rethinking Radicalization (New York, NY: Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, 2011), 1.

[79] Darsey, The Prophetic Tradition, 30.

[80] Jeremy Engels, Enemyship: Democracy and Counter-Revolution in the Early Republic (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2010), 19.

[81] Fahnestock, Rhetorical Style, 232.