Rep. Peter King's Investigation Is About Terrorism, Not Islam

Tomorrow, on March 10, The House Committee on Homeland Security will have a hearing on “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response”--chaired by Rep. Peter King. The hearings will start at 9am and can be viewed live online

As one would expect, the hearing by Rep. Peter has its critics:

Critics say the hearings smack of the effort in the 1950s by Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, who presided over congressional hearings to expose and ostracize Communists and their sympathizers in the United States.


Muslim and civil rights advocates have condemned King's assertions, countering that Muslims in the United States are being unfairly targeted and pointing to tips they have provided to authorities in the past.

"This hearing does not represent the mainstream view," said imam Shamsi Ali, who organized a protest against the probe in New York.

"I don't see any reason for that perception about Muslims not cooperating," he said, noting a Muslim vendor alerted authorities to the failed Times Square car bombing in 2010.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is trying to reassure the Muslim community that "we will not stigmatize or demonize entire communities because of the actions of a few," while at the same time agreeing with Rep. King that "It’s an important issue."

In anticipation of further claims of stigmatizing the Muslim community amid comparisons with the McCarthy hearings, it is important to understand the basis of Mr. King's hearings on the radicalization of the American Muslim community.

Charles Krauthammer explains that the hearings are not an issue of stigmatizing the Muslim community:

The Obama administration is implying that it’s Peter King who’s stigmatizing and demonizing an entire community. I’ll tell you who stigmatizes and demonizes the Muslim community: the Fort Hood shooter who jumps on a table and shouts “Allahu Akbar” as he shoots 13 American servicemen. That’s a way to stigmatize and demonize a community.

The Pakistani immigrant who becomes a naturalized American and then plants a bomb in Times Square and proudly tells a judge he wanted to kill as many Americans as possible. Or Anwar al-Awlaki, the preacher in Yemen, who was a native [born] American, preached in a Falls Church mosque to a couple of the 9/11 attackers, now in Yemen inciting people around the world to attack Americans.

Look, it is not stereotyping to say that the overwhelming majority of terror attacks in the world, particularly on Americans, is because of Islamism. It’s not the IRA, it’s not the Tamil Tigers, it’s not the Basque terrorists. There’s a thread connecting them – it’s political Islam. That is a fact, it’s not a stereotype. [emphasis added]

Deroy Murdock writes that the problem of Muslim terrorist attacks in the US is even more common than implied by Krauthammer:

In a forthcoming report, the Investigative Project on Terrorism counts at least 21 militant Muslims who were convicted on or pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges in 2010 alone. While most American Muslims peacefully practice their faith, Islamic extremists in their midst thirst to spill blood, usually on American soil:

• Last February 22 and April 23, respectively, Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay pleaded guilty to supporting a foiled September 2009 al-Qaeda plot to bomb New York City subways.

• May 26: Hosam Maher Husein Smadi pleaded guilty to attempting to bomb Dallas’s 60-story Fountain Place tower.

• June 21: Faisal Shahzad pleaded guilty to parking a thankfully dysfunctional car bomb outside The Lion King in Times Square on May 1. Sentenced October 5 to life in prison, an unrepentant Shahzad said, “We are proud terrorists and we will keep on terrorizing you.”

• July 28: Madhatta Haipe — a founder of Abu Sayyaf, al-Qaeda’s Philippine franchise — pleaded guilty to promulgating the 1995 kidnapping of 16 people, including four Americans, in Mindanao.

• August 2: Russell Defreitas, a.k.a. Mohammed, and Abdul Kadir were convicted of conspiring to detonate jet-fuel tanks and pipelines at New York’s JFK Airport to incinerate property and passengers.

• September 23: Aafia Siddiqui was convicted of attempted murder and assault against American personnel in Afghanistan. She was arrested with a two-pound jar of sodium cyanide and a computer thumb drive bearing, among other things, descriptions of New York City landmarks.

• October 18: James Cromite, a.k.a. Abdul Rahman, converted to Islam in prison. He and three others were convicted of conspiring to blast a Bronx synagogue and use Stinger missiles to demolish military planes at New York’s Stewart Air Base.

• October 20: Zachary Adam Chesser, a.k.a. Abu Talhah al-Amrikee, pleaded guilty to attempting to support Somalia’s al-Shabaab terror group and threatening writers of the South Park TV show for lampooning the prophet Mohammad.

Remember, these Muslim terrorists are behind bars. Additional terror suspects await trial, such as accused Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan (13 dead, 31 injured), alleged Christmas 2009 Crotch Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and Mohamed Mohamud, who police say planned to detonate a car bomb at a November 27 Portland, Ore., Christmas-tree lighting. According to prosecutors, Mohamud said: “I want whoever is attending that event to leave, to leave either dead or injured.”

To do nothing in the face of the growing number of terrorist attacks goes beyond mere foolishness.

As to the claim that the hearing amounts to an attack on Islam, Rabbi Avi Shafran writes that US law protects against religious institutions being prosecuted on the basis of their teachings being taken out of context and viewed negatively:

[I]t is important to note that the legal bar for what can be prosecuted as incitement to violence is high. It was spelled out by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1969 case, Brandenburg v. Ohio, in which the conviction of a racist for seeming to advocate violence against blacks and Jews was overturned. The Court ruled that “The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”

In other words, for better or worse, government has no right to prosecute—and hence will have no justification for investigating—religious institutions for their teachings, even teachings that advocate lawlessness, unless the institution is plausibly seen as actually calling for “imminent” criminal behavior.

The hearings are a necessary step in the protection of the US against the threat of terrorism--it's as simple as that.

Technorati Tag: Terrorism and Peter King.