For all of the talk we engage in about Islamist extremism, it’s hard to believe we don’t have anything resembling a coherent policy to tackle this menace.

Canada doesn’t have its act together on this most vital of global issues. But we’re not alone. The United States, for all of its conflicts with al-Qaeda and ISIS along with homegrown extremism, doesn't have a clearly articulated philosophy.

Case in point: The other week the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee held controversial hearings on “Ideology and Terror: Understanding the Tools, Tactics and Techniques of Violent Extremism”.

They were controversial both because of who testified and, shockingly, because some of the Democrats on the committee didn’t even think the hearings were necessary.

Two witnesses who testified had extensive personal knowledge of Islamic extremism: Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a former Dutch parliamentarian and victim of female genital mutilation. Asra Nomani is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and co-founder, along with Canadian Raheel Raza, of the Muslim Reform Movement.

They should be welcomed as valuable voices in such a discussion. But instead they were sidelined, at least by liberal minds, for not following the naive progressive conception of radical Islam as a benign and misunderstood victim.

“This is extreme moral relativism disguised as cultural sensitivity,” Hirsi Ali and Nomani write in a recent op-ed piece they co-authored for The New York Times. “And it leads good people to make excuses for the inexcusable. The silence of the Democratic senators is a reflection of contemporary cultural pressures. Call it identity politics, moral relativism or political correctness — it is shortsighted, dangerous and, ultimately, a betrayal of liberal values.”

Yes, when you deliberately avoid tackling Islamism – the political agenda that seeks to enshrine orthodox Islam as the dominant force in society – you’re also turning your back on the social progress made by Western society in recent decades.

But at least the U.S. Senate had these hearings and allowed these brave women to speak about their experiences and knowledge. Even if you don’t care for their specific testimonies, the West’s discussion about radical Islam should incorporate more voices and more conversation, not less.

Canadians are eagerly waiting to see what the witness list for the M103 “Islamophobia” hearings, soon to get underway, will look like. Will it be made up mostly of pro-sharia apologists? Or will we hear from Muslim reformers who reject the orthodox elements of their religion?

These questions matter because they help set a tone for how the government, media and general public think about the spread of Islamic fundamentalism.

Back in 1946, George Kennan, an American foreign service officer based in Moscow, submitted what’s now known as the Long Telegram to the State Department.

It was an 8,000 word document that detailed the post-war Soviet philosophy, how they planned to export that philosophy across the world and what the U.S. should do to combat it.

This was the first robust Soviet policy to be articulated on an official level and created the concept of “containment” that was used throughout the Cold War. Kennan then revised this telegram into an essay for Foreign Affairs magazine, which influenced the broader political culture’s perspective on the Soviet agenda.

Without such a unifying policy driving the West’s response to the USSR, the Cold War and the 20th century’s experiment with Communism could have turned out very differently.

“Our first step must be to apprehend, and recognize for what it is, the nature of the movement with which we are dealing,” Kennan writes in the memo. “We must study it with the same courage, detachment, objectivity, and same determination not to be emotionally provoked or unseated by it, with which a doctor studies an unruly and unreasonable individual.”

Kennan considered the issue “undoubtedly the greatest task our diplomacy has ever faced and probably greatest it will ever have to face.” He clearly did not predict the rise of political Islam, which has hobbled many a Middle Eastern community and is now on the rise in countries as diverse as Turkey and Indonesia.

Give the memo or the Foreign Affairs essay a read. Kennan’s work is a refreshing exercise in sober threat assessment, something the Western policy apparatus is not doing – at least not publicly – when it comes to the threat of radical, political Islam.

Canada needs to incorporate this degree of thoroughness into its public policy – in the M103 hearings, in relevant ministerial mandate letters, in committee hearings and more.

Even those progressives who’d prefer to downplay the threat should be on board with such an approach. Ignoring the issue serves no one.

“I am convinced that there would be far less hysterical anti-Sovietism in our country today if the realities of this situation were better understood by our people,” Kennan observed. “There is nothing as dangerous or as terrifying as the unknown.”

Let's take this topic out of the unknown and give it the attention it deserves.