Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday warned against alienating the U.S. Muslim community, in a veiled criticism of a congressional probe into the radicalization of Muslims at home.
The House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee will open a series of hearings on Thursday about the increasing terrorism threat against the United States, with the first hearing drawing criticism because of its sole focus on Muslim Americans.
The panel chairman, New York Republican Representative Peter King, has repeatedly criticized, saying the Muslim American community has not cooperated with law enforcement agencies and that some mosques encourage radicalization.
But Holder said that leaders and members of the Muslim community in the United States “have contributed significantly” to resolving cases and also said focusing on a single constituency was risky.
“Tips that we have received, information that has been shared has been critical to our efforts to disrupting plots that otherwise might have occurred,” Holder told reporters during a news conference on another issue.
“My focus is on individuals as opposed to communities and I think that is what we need to be focused on, what is it that drives individuals to do certain things,” he said. “We don’t want to stigmatize, we don’t want to alienate entire communities.”
King has repeatedly defended the need for the hearings and the focus on Muslims, citing attempts by the militant group al Qaeda and its affiliates to openly recruit Muslims in the United States to launch attacks.
At the same time, King has acknowledged that the vast majority of Muslim Americans have no connection to terrorism.
Critics have accused King of engaging in a witchhunt and that they have cooperated with law enforcement. Both sides have recent cases to point to that back up their arguments.
U.S. authorities arrested last month a Saudi student studying in Texas on charges that he was allegedly plotting to set off bombs in New York City, at the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush and a night club.
Meanwhile, the FBI is investigating a bomb plot in Spokane, Washington, and trying to determine if it was tied to white supremacists. The FBI arrested a man on charges of trying to detonate a powerful bomb during a Martin Luther King Jr Day parade in January.