Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
Peter King’s brand new version of the HUAC hearings and the glory days of the McCarthy era is set to begin Thursday, when King will hold hearings deciding whether or not American Muslims have been “radicalized.” King told CNN’s State of the Union “We’re talking about the affiliates of Al Qaeda who have been radicalizing, and there’s been self-radicalization 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.”
King justified his witch hunt, titled “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response” by citing three terrorist incidents in the U.S. instances involving Muslims – the tragic shooting at Fort Hood in 2009 and two bomb plots in New York. King said “People in this country are being self-radicalized, whether it’s Major Hasan or whether it’s Shahzad or whether it was Zazi in New York. These were all people who were identifying, in one way or another, with Al Qaida or Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.” But while these horrific instances of terrorism are ghastly, they’re certainly not representative of the American Muslim community at large.
King’s no stranger to stoking the fires of fear towards the Muslim community. The Washington Post reports that in 2004 King told Sean Hannity that “no American Muslim leaders are cooperating in the war on terror,” even though a study found that tips thwarting 48 out of 120 cases involving American terrorist plots came from the Muslim community. Furthermore, the study concluded that the number of Muslim-Americans engaged in terrorist acts against America has totaled 28 in the past two years. In addition, the Post reports a Pew Research study found in 2007 that most Muslim Americans are largely “assimilated, happy with their lives and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world.”
Read the full post at Diatribe Media
