Excerpt from 'Islamist Radicalization: Myth or Reality?'

Rayburn House Office Building, Room B-340

Washington, D.C.

Nov. 17, 2011

Unknown Male:

"Hi. My name is (Unknown). I'm in Congresswoman Jackie Speier's office. And I'm just wondering, for these issues that we discussed of protecting civil liberties or how to better engage the Muslim community in the counterterrorism efforts, I'm wondering if you guys have any specific policy proposals that you could offer to government agencies to kind of deal with these issues."

Faiza Patel , Co-Director, Liberty and National Security Program, Brennan Center for Justice:

"Well I think the basic message that you know a lot of us have is you know you can't expect the community to behave as your partner if at the same time you're subjecting them to intense surveillance and monitoring. And that's you know you can't have your cake and eat it too as they say. Just coming back to New York, some of the key imams in New York City who were working with Mayor Bloomberg and with Commissioner Kelly, you would see them at every public function which involved Muslims, they would be right up there with the mayor, they were precisely the same people who were being followed 24 hours a day over a period of years. And my point is simply that you can't do that and then turn around to those very same people and say – hey buddy, can you help me? I just don't think it works. So that would be the very first thing – get rid of these really flawed training materials, these flawed radicalization theories, and then build a community program where the police and the community together agree on what the problem is. If the community doesn't believe that radicalization or extremism or extremist views or extremist Islamic ideology is a problem in their own community, then you should also understand that maybe they know what they're talking about, and not be spending police resources this way."