Muslims around the world look with joy, and more than a little trepidation, at the expressions of freedom under way in the Middle East and North Africa,
The celebration against tyranny began in Tunisia, spread famously for 18 days in Egypt and sparked passionate protests in a half of dozen other countries, including Iran and now Libya.
Lessons about peaceful protest provided hope and enthusiasm; they fueled the imagination of millions who previously believed there was no non-violent way to overcome dictatorship, or no alternative but radical fundamentalism. Instead, their yearning is clearly focused on a more democratic system.
But instead of celebrating that joy and promise, some American congressional leaders are eager to create a different focus in the next few weeks. A controversial congressional hearing aims at American Muslim communities to highlight the threat of the most radical among them.
Call it the triumph of the spirit of fear.
Supporters of the hearing set to begin on March 10 say they see nothing but danger in the unchecked rise of “Islamofascism.” Anything that contradicts that view is considered just being “politically correct” and wrong-headed.
But others insist that plans for the hearing are just a method of political grandstanding that is as likely to serve as an al-Qaeda recruiting tool by alienating American Muslims from the larger community.
Overseas, the Obama administration has been trying to weave carefully between support for traditional allies and strategic interests while recognizing that the protesters have legitimate and longstanding grievances and are showing the world a peaceful path toward democratic change.
Seeing the remarkable transformation in states that have been run by royalty and the ruthless, it’s more than odd for the U.S. Congress to shift suddenly on a search for the enemy in our midst.
Feeding on what is clearly a strain of Islamophobia in the U.S., the hearings are political theater to make it seem that Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY)and his fellow Republicans are more concerned about security than Democrats and the Obama Administration.
As national religious and rights groups have repeatedly pointed out, the planned hearing puts suspicion on a specific ethnic and religious community in much the same way that Americans rounded up Japanese-Americans at the start of World War II.
Rather than allow law enforcement and counter-terrorism investigators their own pursuit of suspects, the divisive hearings raise the fear of disloyalty toward America by an entire population.
It smacks of the witch hunt tactics of the McCarthy era when Americans were threatened, their jobs imperiled and reputations ruined if they had even an association with anyone or any group considered sympathetic to Communism.
On Friday, Newsday reported that local religious and community leaders are asking King to cancel the hearings on Muslim “radicalization.”
Newsday quoted Sister Jeanne Clark, a Catholic nun from the Peace group Pax Christi, who said: “It’s very dangerous to speak about a whole group of people as one sweeping thing. What this could do is make all the Muslim people feel fearful.”
Rejecting calls by representatives of all faiths urging him to reconsider, King said it’s important to recognize the terror threat within the Muslim community.
“I am disappointed that these religious leaders and peace advocates wish to obstruct my search for the truth,” he replied in an e-mail to a local group of advocates. “Obviously, I am going forward.”
King also swept aside a proposal to expand the hearings to investigate American extremists of all kinds, such as radical militia members, neo-Nazis, etc. Instead, he said he wanted Muslims to appear and make his case that their leaders have failed to cooperate with law enforcement in identifying terror threats.
[field name=”embed1″]However, a report from the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security put a great deal of perspective in the numbers, something that is unlikely to occur in the planned hearings.
The Center report found that 48 or the 120 Muslims suspected of plotting attacks since 2001 were turned in by fellow Muslims, including parents, mosque members and even one Facebook friend. (Full report, right).
The study also provided these statistics:
- The number of Muslim-Americans engaged in terrorist acts with domestic targets declined from 18 in 2009 to 10 in 2010.
- 75% of the Muslim Americans engaged in terrorist plots in 2010 were disrupted in an early stage of planning. This is consistent with the pattern of disruption since 9/11 (102 of 161 plots – 63% — were disrupted at an early stage of planning).
- Less than one-third of the perpetrators did not come to the attention of law enforcement until after an attack was executed. However, a large majority of these Muslim American terrorist activities (35 out of 46 individuals) took place outside the United States.
- Domestic plots by Muslim-Americans are more likely to be disrupted than foreign plots. 48 of 69 individuals that plotted against domestic targets were arrested at an early stage of their activities.
- Eleven Muslim Americans have successfully executed terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11, killing 33 people. This is about 3 deaths per year. There have been approximately 150,000 murders in the United States since 9/11. According to the FBI there were approximately 15,241 murders in the United States in 2009.
King, whose congressional district is a swath of conservativism in a largely liberal New York landscape, has a history with his Muslim constituents, one that seemed to change radically after the September 11 tragedy.
He even has addressed the issue of Muslim extremism from his literary side. King is the author of “Vale of Tears,” a 2004 novel about a congressman who heroically stops a terrorist plot hatched in a Long Island mosque that also involves remnants of the Irish Republican Army.
See the current issue of The Nation for a more complete and dire examination of King’s views.
