Here are some highlights from yesterday’s testimony before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency of the House Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. Congress.

First, our own Shireen Qudosi lays out the intellectual history of philosophical reform within Islam, as well as the history of reformers that rose up to challenge the Caliphate.  These have always been silenced for political reasons, by other Muslims who stood to gain from it, she says, as other Muslim groups are trying to suppress voices like hers today:

In this next, short clip, Qudosi challenges the idea that the Islamic State (ISIS) is helped by those who link it to Islam.  ISIS is helped either way, she argues:  if calling them Islamic helps them recruit, refusing to call them Islamic forces you into a silence that lets their ideology fester.  This is because of course ISIS is Islamic:

In addition to Qudosi, Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser testified about the danger of refusing to invoke Islamic terminology when talking about radicalism.  You can’t accurately understand the movements you are struggling against without thinking in terms of the ideology they invoke, he argues.  The move to shut down such discussion is not merely un-American, he said, but it also actively damages the cause against radicals and theocrats.

Former Representative Pete Hoekstra, who has been working with the Investigative Project on Terrorism since leaving Congress, also testified.  The trend-lines on the war on terror are going in the wrong direction, he said.  The fault is embracing radical groups of the very sort we should be rejecting, such as the Muslim Brotherhood groups:

Dr. Jasser returned to the theme of Islamist movements that view Western societies as evil.  The Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom cannot be a suicide pact for the United States, he argued.  Islamic groups in America should endorse freedom of speech, religious pluralism, and should reject the Caliphate — any Caliphate.  That’s only endorsing basic American principles, he argued.

It was a strong hearing full of good testimony and careful thought.  It speaks well of the chairman of the subcommittee, Scott Perry, that he brought together this group to testify.