King: Next hearing is on radical Muslims in prison

by Laurie Kellman
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP)—The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee is pressing forward with his public examination of Muslim extremism in America, pointing to his first, tense hearing on the subject as a step toward desensitizing a taboo topic and rooting out terrorists on U.S. soil.

“There’s an elephant in the room and nobody wants to talk about it. We talked about it today,” Peter King said after the four-hour, emotion-filled session March 10.

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CONTROVERSIAL HEARING—Zuleyha Ozonder, Hashi Shafi and Zuhmer Ahmed watch a hearing on the “radicalization” of U.S. Muslims, chaired by Rep. Peter King of the House Homeland Security Committee in Washington, from Minneapolis, March 10.


Just holding the conversation, he said, advanced the fight against al-Qaida’s efforts to recruit one-man terrorist cells from within American Muslim communities and to suppress any effort to report those activities to law enforcement officials. King next will turn to the issue of Muslim extremism in American prisons in hearings planned later this year.

“I remain convinced that these hearings must go forward—and they will,” King said as he opened last Thursday’s session.

But the conversation—a government examination of one religion in the U.S.—is fraught with distrust and political pandering that reflect the nation’s ongoing struggle against terrorism nearly a decade after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The White House said America should not practice guilt by association.

“We also believe that Muslim Americans are very much part of the solution here and not the problem,” presidential spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday.

With photos of the burning World Trade Center and the Pentagon on display, Thursday’s hearing opened with a defiant King condemning criticism from some Democrats, Muslim groups and the media as hysteria and political correctness. He did not release any new statistics on how many Muslims were helping root out terrorists or how many refused, or invite federal law enforcement officials to testify on the nature and extent of the threat he was examining.

Instead, the hearing featured testimony from the families of two young men who blame the Islamic community for recruiting them to terrorism. On the other side, one of the two Muslims in Congress wept while discussing a Muslim firefighter who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Democrats said King should have focused the hearing on all groups that foster terrorism on American soil, including racists like the Ku Klux Klan and skinheads. To focus on just one group, Muslims, amounted to an abuse of power, discrimination and propaganda for al-Qaida, they said.

“Our words transcend this hearing room,” said Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the senior Democrat on the committee. “Acknowledgment of an obligation to be responsible does not equal political correctness.”

“This committee’s approach to this particular subject, I believe, is contrary to the best of American values and threatens our security — or could, potentially,” added Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to Congress.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, challenged the assertion that some American Muslims resist cooperating with the search for terrorists in the U.S. by pointing to two witnesses who practice Islam.

“Muslims are here, cooperating. They are doing what this hearing has suggested that they do not do,” she shouted. “Where are the uncooperative Muslims?”

The American Muslim community is diverse and widespread. No single organization speaks for everyone, and the religion itself does not have a leader, as Catholics have the pope.

Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, said he hopes Congress develops the political will to deal with extremism.

That means “a patient and understanding and thoughtful communications process that doesn’t label anyone that discusses this as being Islamophobic or hateful,” Jasser said. “As a Muslim I am telling you: It is not offensive.”

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