Fighting Terror at Home

This is a partial transcript of "The Big Story With John Gibson," July 26, 2005, that has been edited for clarity.

JANE SKINNER, GUEST HOST: The question, really, this summer has become how to stop terror attacks, any of them, including the ones like we've seen in London (search) and Egypt (search) over the past several days. A coalition of Muslim groups based in the United States is now launching an anti-terror campaign aimed at protecting young people from extremists.

Joining us now is Imam Mahdi Bray. He is executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation.

Mr. Bray, thanks for being here.

IMAM MAHDI BRAY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MUSLIM AMERICAN SOCIETY FREEDOM FOUNDATION: Thank you for having me.

SKINNER: Tell me, if you will, the concrete steps you're going to be taking. If I'm a young Muslim in this country, what am I going to be seeing with this campaign?

BRAY: Well, one of the things you're going to be seeing is an intensification of outreach to youth communities, the recruiting of youth workers and, also, we of the Muslim American Society Foundation (search), we have eight free-standing youth centers in America. We are planning to build eight more — eight to 10 in the year 2006 and 2007.

But we feel that now we need to work even harder to take the resources from our community to build as many youth centers as we possibly can across America, so that our young people will have a place where they can prosper, develop and be free from any influence of extremists.

SKINNER: Mr. Bray, talk about what you know about the recruitment process, specifically in this country. And how do you go about stopping it?

BRAY: Well, you know, I really don't know much about the recruitment process. But what I do know, if I could use the medical metaphor, that there is a disease out there and that disease is lethal. It's called terrorism.

And, therefore, I think the best way to deal with any type of disease is to inoculate. And so, we feel that we can best inoculate our young people by making sure that they're actively engaged and constructively engaged in positive activities that reflect the main views of their faith tradition, as opposed to someone who would like to influence them into extremist points that would certainly lead to death, destruction and mayhem.

So, spotting it, I don't know so much about spotting it, but I do know perhaps what we might need to do to prevent it.

SKINNER: You know, I was looking back at some of the post-9/11 criticism of Muslim groups. And one of the Islamic experts in this country, a lawyer at UCLA, said, "You know, the Muslim groups in this country need to send a clear message to terrorists and it needs to be loud." He said, "I even say they should make bumper stickers that say Muslims against terrorism, exclamation point."

You know, he may have been exaggerating there. But have you been loud enough?

BRAY: You know, I think that, certainly, we've been loud. But, of course, we could be louder.

But I think, also, it's fair to say that one of the great urban myths is that Muslims haven't been vocal about their views towards condemnation towards terrorism. And I think one of the things is that the media certainly hasn't covered it as extensively. I can remember that every year we have a convention with over 30,000 people. In the last four years of those conventions, there's been over 30,000 Muslims united right after post-9/11 to deal with the condemnation.

And not only that. The greatest myth was that, perhaps, right after 9/11, Muslim organizations didn't say anything. Nothing could be further from the truth. On that particular day, at 9/11, all of the national organizations that were in Washington, D.C., we were supposed to meet that evening with the president of the United States.

SKINNER: Mr. Bray, we're going to have to end it there because we are out of time. Mahdi Bray, who is from the Muslim American Society, we thank you very much for your input today.

BRAY: Thank you so very much for having me.

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