Excerpt:
If the point of Sen. Dick Durbin's Tuesday hearing on anti-Muslim discrimination was to undermine Rep. Peter King's hearings on Muslim radicalization, it ended up achieving the opposite -- and highlighting exactly why King's investigation is so necessary.
For the last few years, a few small but vocal groups claiming to represent American Muslims have stoked fears that hate crimes against Muslims are a growing epidemic, despite the fact that FBI statistics show nothing of the sort. In fact, anti-Muslim hate crimes have actually dropped since their height right after 9/11.
Claims of rising Islamophobia allow certain Muslim "spokesmen" to avoid addressing the problem of radicalization. But they've also created obstacles for law-enforcement officials, who are viewed suspiciously by some of the same advocacy groups.