WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — A serious error lies at the heart of US attempts to counter violent extremism because policy makers fail to understand that Islamist radicals must be confronted before they become violent, the advocacy group the Muslims for Tomorrow's President Raheel Raza told Congress.
"By the time an extremist becomes violent it’s too late," Raza stated on Thursday. "As such the US must defeat, humiliate, destroy and discredit this poisonous ideology of Islamism stemming from the Wahhabi-Salafist ideology, Khomeinism and the Muslim Brotherhood."
Raza noted frequent claims that ideology is "not a clear predictor of terrorism," a belief that she said "is dead wrong."
"We should not have Iran or Saudi Arabia teaching their version of Islam to our youth," Raza said.
She also urged the United to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, following an example set by Russia, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
"The Muslim Brotherhood seeks to establish a worldwide Islamic state and build a new world civilization based on Sharia law," Raza explained.
Some of Raza’s harshest comments were directed at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which bills itself as the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group.
She blamed labels such as Islamophobia — a label popularized by CAIR — for halting a critical evaluation of militant Islam and preventing Muslim communities "from becoming inclusive, tolerant, embracing of democracy, freedoms, liberties and accepting of all paths and people."
Raza is also active in the Clarion Project, an advocacy group that attempts to expose what it calls an insider view of radical Islam, using with clips from Arabic television broadcasts.
The organization is often depicted in US media and other advocacy groups as either Islamophobic or an anti-Muslim hate group.
