Rep. Peter King To Hold Hearings on Muslim 'Radicalization'

As soon as Republicans take control of the House, Representative Peter King, a Long Island Republican, plans to get down to business "investigating" what he sees as an increasing "radicalization" of American Muslims. In a Newsday op-ed, King swears he's not conducting a McCarthyesque witch hunt; he's just worried about domestic terrorism, and says he's not going to let "political correctness" hold him back. (As you'll recall, King hates the P.C. police almost as much as the terrorists.) In the op-ed, King blasts the leaders of his local Muslim community:

As I became more immersed in attempting to unravel the radical Islamic threat to our nation and our civilization, it became more and more obvious to me that the moral myopia of Long Island's Muslim leaders and their apologists in the media was the rule - and that there were few exceptions. 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. This noncooperation was perilous enough in the years following 9/11, when the main Islamist threat to the homeland emanated from overseas.
Fortunately, that aspect of the jihadist threat has subsided because of the effective counterterrorism infrastructure constructed by the Bush administration. Some Bush policies, such as sharing and receiving intelligence with and from our allies, were relatively non-controversial. Others such as enhanced interrogations, wiretapping foreign terrorists phoning into the United States, the prison at Guantánamo, and monitoring terrorist financial transactions were routinely condemned—but all were necessary and effective.

King, who will become the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, promises to invite mainstream Muslim leaders to speak at the hearing. But it's unclear if many will accept the invitation. "We are disturbed that this representative who is in a leadership position does not have the understanding and knowledge of what the realities are on the ground," Abed A. Ayoub, the legal director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, tells the Times, adding that King’s proposal "has bigoted intentions." And Salam al-Marayati, the executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, thinks King "basically wants to treat the Muslim-American community as a suspect community." Uh-oh, those two are definitely going on the blacklist!

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By John Del Signore in News on December 20, 2010 10:45 AM

Comments [rss]

Yeanay

Oh, what a tool Congressmen Peter King (-R New York) is for the monied class.

Let's take our focus off of the promise we made to create Jobs in America. Let's take our focus off of the financial crisis in our country that is ruining our personal lives. Let's take our eyes off of the prosecution of the Wall Street Fraudsters who violated federal, state and international laws in order to enrich themselves at the public's expense.

We need a new enemy to persecute, an enemy that we may elevate above everything else, an enemy that we can balloon into a fearful monster in the eyes of the public. In this way, we can take the heat of public scrutiny and outrage off of the Fraudsters who created the scams and the resulting financial crisis and we can distract from the fact that we in the new Republican Congress have no intention of doing anything to create the jobs we promised.

Hmmmmm. Who can we target? Who would be most convenient?! Muslims! That's it, Muslims!

Let's target Muslims. We'll scare the hell out of the American people by evoking the spectre of September 11, 2001, and we'll succeed at protecting our Republican base (the haves and the have-mores), while doing nothing to improve the economy and forcing the American public to swallow the consequences of the whole financial depression themselves.

Brilliant!

Way to go! You're a real Peter, King!

cgallaway2000

Sounds like a complete goon....wonder when he will have hearings on evangelicals and other "christians" who's philosophy is to take up arms against the Government as a way to praise Christ.

Stanislav Sharovskiy

And those groups exist .......... just like the commandments in the Bible to take over governments and kill all non-Christians wherever they are to be found.

Polite New Yorker

Peter King has a record of being a plastic patriot and a blowhard. So while we should indeed be concerned about Muslims in the U.S. becoming terrorists, I doubt Rep. King is going to discover anything we don't already know.

Comparing the Irish Republican Army to Islamic fundamentalists is extremely ignorant. The I.R.A., even at its most violent, has never sought the level of destruction or civilian deaths that is typical of Islamic militants. While the I.R.A. and its various splinter groups did indeed kill innocent people, most bombings and killings were targeted at the military or at paramilitaries directly involved in the conflict.

S.D.

"Are you or have you ever been a ~~communist~~ Muslim?!?!"

Sinchy

Peter King only likes terrorists if they are Irish.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonath...

nice job

mommy the world is scary

Stanislav Sharovskiy

Muslims in the United States ARE a suspect community, and for good reason. Several prominent FBI reports have found evidence that more than 70% of Mosques in the United States routinely espouse Jihadist doctrine. More than 80% of Mosques are funded by Saudi donations, including the latest appearance of the proposed Mosque at Ground Zero. Ideas and beliefs have consequences. Religious zealots need not be violent terrorists. By obstructing law enforcement, withholding information, providing funds to terror groups under the guise of "Islamic Charities", or generally engaging in borderline treasonous activities, Muslims in this country are highly suspect. It makes the most sense to probe this community since no other group has so overwhelmingly dominated and consolidated its hold on terrorism, and religious fanaticism in contemporary society other than Islam.

pd2009

And you know this because....we have thousands of security and intelligence professionals doing just what they have been trained to do. But, King thinks spending millions of dollars grandstanding on C-Span will somehow flush out those terrorists that are evading all the other security personnel?

chuzzlewit

[help needed]

unretrofiedforu

[common sense needed]

Purp

[citation needed]

Stanislav Sharovskiy

Must be nice writing nothing and believing you've actually made a point.

unretrofiedforu

Yeah. It's called responding acutely. Sounds like somebody failed the writing assessment part of their standardized entrance exams.

Just Me

Peter McCarthy strikes again.

Peter Rosa

Please let me know Peter King's waist size so I can send him a box of adult diapers as a Christmas gift. This way, he won't keep ruining his pants when he piddles them out of fear.

But seriously, Islamic terrorism can best be described by the DICKHEADS theory (Desperate, Incompetent, Converts, Kids, Harmless, Economically insignificant, Aimless, Disconnected, Suicidal).