Activists Mount Opposition to Anti-Muslim 'Witchhunt'

At a time when Muslim Americans in communities across the country are feeling abused by federal law enforcement, Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, wants to know why they aren’t more cooperative with those who are targeting them.

King, the new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is planning to hold controversial hearings on the supposed radicalization of Muslims in American communities. The hearings, which are expected to take place sometime in February, have been likened by activists to a “witch hunt” and to the infamous hearings held by Sen. Joe McCarthy to ferret out secret communists in the 1950s.

“You can definitely say overall the hearings are seen with great apprehension, suspicion and distaste — sometimes sorrow,” said Khaled Abou El Fadl, an expert on Islam and Islamic law at UCLA, in a recent interview with Politico. “These hearings have a history of stigmatizing whole groups of people.”

According to Politico, possible witnesses may include two critics of Islam popular in right-wing circles that have made “creeping radicalism” and alleged jihad in America a cause célèbre: Dutch critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali and M. Zuhfi Jassar. Law enforcement officials and people with “the real life experience of coming from the Muslim community” will also be included, said King.

But activists within the Muslim community are loudly denouncing the hearings, fearing that Muslims are being targeted for political show – a dangerous game for which an entire swath of people is being singled out on the basis of religion.

"Sadly, King has a history of pointing fingers and peddling false statistics that paint the Muslim American community with a broad brush," the Muslim Political Affairs Committee (MPAC) said in a recent comment about the hearings, entitled, "Dear Mr. King, Let's Meet to Discuss Muslim Americans Efforts to Combat Radicalization."

But when he first announced in a Newsday op-ed his goals as the new committee chair, King seemed determined to indulge in dangerous generalizations. He said he wanted to "to break down the wall of political correctness and drive the public debate on Islamic radicalization," because, he claimed, "federal and local law enforcement officials throughout the country told me they received little or -- in most cases -- no cooperation from Muslim leaders and imams" on the issue of radicalization and counter-terrorism.

This has been refuted of course by Muslims and Arab-Americans across the political spectrum -- and by the law enforcement community, too, including the nation's top cop. “The cooperation of Muslim and Arab-American communities has been absolutely essential in identifying, and preventing, terrorist threats. We must never lose sight of this,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech just last month.

King has retorted that he can itemize instances in which Muslim leaders have refused to cooperate in terror investigations, and this is what he wants to explore in the hearings. He says there has been a hesitancy to really talk about the evidence of Islamic extremism behind the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, and the radicalization of Somali Americans here in the U.S. He called the backlash to his efforts "politically correct hysteria,” in a report in The Hill earlier this month.

But newspapers like The Washington Post and The New York Times have documented a long and growing tension between King and the Muslim community, and several instances in which it appears that "political correctness" has never been a problem for the New York congressman. Just this summer he told Politico that "yes there are too many mosques in this country," a statement he attempted to clarify afterwards. He's often quoted as using the much-disputed statistic that 85 percent of mosques in the U.S are radicalized. He was also a vocal opponent of the so-called "Ground Zero" mosque. He even used a fictional Long Island mosque for the hatching of a terror plot in his 2004 novel, "Vale of Tears," which was seen as a backhanded slap at the Islamic Center of Long Island.

King's Islamophobia has sparked a backlash, not just among Muslim Americas, but among his colleagues in Congress.

Speaking publicly on the matter last week, Rep. Rush Holt, a Democrat from New Jersey, told the website Talking Points Memo, "I feel like my friend Peter has gone way beyond what is called for there, and I do intend to talk to him about it."

Perhaps the complaints, the letters and the media attention is having something of an effect on King as well. When announcing potential witnesses for the hearings, he conspicuously left out the more radical of the anti-terror crusaders, author Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. The omission drew quick fire from Emerson and others, who now say, ironically, that King's hearings will be a bust: "These hearings are shaping up to be a waste, and worse than a waste," said Jihad Watch's Robert Spencer, one of the most radical of the anti-radicals. "King is apparently rattled by the full-court press of Islamic victimhood rhetoric from Islamic supremacist spokesmen and pressure groups, and is allowing them to set his agenda."

Activists can only hope.

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Photo Credit: Christoph.Schrey