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Hello, and welcome to the LawFair podcast, I'm Benjamin Wittis. Our subject today is a new

article in the Stanford Law Review by NYU Law Professor Sam Raskoff entitled, Establishing

Official Islam, the Law and Strategy of Counter-Radicalization. Sam visited the Brookings

Institution today to discuss the new article. What is official Islam? Well, here's how I

think about it. In the name of doing what the government sometimes calls countering violent

extremism, but is more frequently known as counter radicalization, officials from Washington

down to the state and local level have inevitably gotten into the business of saying what

Islam is, and frankly putting a thumb on the scale in the favor of what they regard

as mainstream Islam as opposed to some of its more radical variants that they regard as

being implicated in potential terrorist violence. So the government really from top to bottom

in the name of performing a national security function is getting into the business, I think,

of managing the boundaries of permissible Islam within the United States.

So let's talk about some examples of that. You say from the federal government on down,

let's describe several examples at different levels of government, of the government managing

the boundaries of permissible Islam. Yeah, well, it's really happening all over the place.

So take, for example, John Brennan, the president's top advisor on counter terrorism. Brennan

has given a number of speeches across the country in which he's offered an account of what

Jihad means. And in particular, Brennan has taken exception to the view that's out there,

...