TENSION CONTINUES to rise between critics and defenders of America’s two million-strong Muslim community in the run-up to Congressional hearings on Thursday at the initiative of the Irish-American Representative Peter King.
Mr King has titled the hearings, “The Extent of Radicalisation in the American Muslim Community and That Community’s Response”. His initiative prompted pro- and anti-demonstrations in Manhattan on Sunday, and a counter-offensive by the White House.
Mr King, a Republican from New York, became chairman of the Homeland Security Committee following the November midterm elections. As chair of the Friends of Ireland caucus, he is tentatively scheduled to meet taoiseach-designate Enda Kenny on March 16th.
Mr King has said in the past that "there are too many mosques in this country", and called Muslims "an enemy living among us". He told New Yorkmagazine that he came to distrust Muslim Americans after some suggested that Muslims did not attack the World Trade Center on 9/11.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Mr King also dated his estrangement from Sinn Féin to what he saw as the party's failure to adequately support the US in the wake of 9/11. Critics of Mr King, quoted by the Post, called him a hypocrite for supporting past violence by the IRA but condemning violence by Muslims.
Mr King said President-elect Barack Obama asked him to be ambassador to Ireland, but that he declined because he didn’t want “to be sitting there with a bunch of Europeans spouting anti-American stuff”.
Between 500 and 1,000 protesters attended a “Today I am a Muslim too” rally at Times Square on Sunday, where speakers included Rabbi Marc Schneier and Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Muslim cleric who wants to build an Islamic community centre near Ground Zero. At a separate demonstration nearby, supporting Mr King, a banner said: “STOP billions of Saudi oil money funding the Worldwide Radical Islamic Intolerance and and Terror.”
In a letter to the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, last month, 51 Muslim, interfaith and civil rights groups, including Amnesty USA, said the hearings amounted to modern-day McCarthyism.
Mr King sparred with Representative Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the House of Representatives, on CNN. “There’s been self-radicalisation going on within the Muslim community, within a very small minority, but it’s there and that’s where the threat is coming from at this time,” Mr King said, comparing his hearings to an investigation of the Mafia in the Italian community. Mr Ellison said violent radicalisation was a valid theme, “but singling out one community is the wrong thing to do”.
Mr Ellison will testify on Thursday. The most controversial witness called by Mr King is Dr Zuhdi Jasser, a veteran of the US navy and a former doctor to Congress, who last year criticised President Obama for defending the right of Muslims to build an Islamic centre near Ground Zero.
Two other witnesses called by Mr King, Abdirizak Bihi and Melvin Bledsoe, “are relatives of people who were radicalised”, he said. “They will discuss how they were radicalised, and the lack of co-operation after they went to the local leaders, the imams.”
Mr King’s claim that American Muslim leaders do not co-operate with US authorities has enraged his opponents. He says law enforcement officials have complained to him in private about non co-operation. Democrats have called as a witness Sheriff Leroy Baca of Los Angeles County. Mr Baca says he has positive working relationships with Muslim leaders and has heard no complaints in state-wide and national organisations to which he belongs.
A recent study by the University of North Carolina and Duke University found that 48 of 120 Muslims arrested on suspicion of plotting violence since 9/11 were turned in by co-religionists.
The White House also disputes the idea that Muslims are not co-operating with attempts to stem radicalisation. In a country where up to a quarter of the population believe Mr Obama is a Muslim, it is a sensitive issue.
Denis McDonough, Mr Obama’s deputy national security adviser, told the All Dulles Area Muslim Society on Sunday: “We will not stigmatise or demonise entire communities because of the actions of a few. In the United States of America, we don’t practise guilt by association . . . When it comes to preventing violent extremism and terrorism in the US, Muslim Americans are not part of the problem, you’re part of the solution.”
