Reviews of Rep. Pete King’s opening round of hearings into “Muslim radicalization” are lousy. King blames the Muslim lobby and the media. But he’s the one who blew it.
King, the Republican head of the House Homeland Security Committee, deserves thrashing not because the hearing was an exercise in Muslim-bashing, as Democrats and the media unfairly charged. Far from it, the tenor of the questioning was respectful.
The problem, rather, was King didn’t even come close to delivering what he advertised with his investigation, titled “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.”
Or lack of response, as King repeatedly claimed in the buildup to the hearings. He said FBI agents and other cops working terrorism cases constantly complain about the lack of cooperation from the Muslim community. Mosque officials and other Muslim leaders actually encourage such resistance, he said.
These are explosive charges. Basically, he suggested that the Muslim leadership in this country is protecting jihadists, and possibly facilitating another terror attack on U.S. soil. Yet the seven witnesses King called to testify included no national law enforcement officials to back him up. Nor did he subpoena any of the offending Muslim leaders to address these allegations under oath.
Instead, we heard from Los Angeles Country Sheriff Lee Baca, who testified at the invitation of Democrats about how most Muslim Americans in his community cooperate with counter-terror efforts. Baca partners with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which recently posted a notice on its website advising Muslims never to talk to the FBI. The group is so shady the FBI director has blackballed it from outreach.
Two relatives of young Muslim men radicalized at mosques in Minnesota and Tennessee spoke at the hearing. While compelling, their testimony did not carry the authority of active or retired law enforcement officials who could have provided first-hand evidence of problems in the Muslim community.
The lead-off witness was Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim Democrat from Minneapolis who has tried to shut down the hearings since King first announced them. His top billing was an odd choice, to be sure. But King said he invited him “as an example of my good faith.”
His gesture backfired, as we predicted days before the hearing (“Rep. King: Don’t Pull Any Punches,” March 9), when we noticed Ellison headlining the witness list.
Ellison, another close ally of CAIR, stole the show when he broke into tears while retelling the story of a Muslim paramedic who died in the World Trade Center. Ellison used the victim as an example of the “witch hunt” against Muslims in America by claiming he was falsely accused of involvement in the 9/11 plot.
Despite scouring the public record, the media can’t back up Ellison’s story about horrible aspersions cast on the Muslim hero. In fact, the man was honored by the government for his bravery.
Too late. Ellison’s Oscar-worthy bit was played on TV on a virtual continuous loop, making the hearing look like the McCarthyite witch-hunting of Muslims that Ellison had warned it would be beforehand.
If there was anything good that came from the hearing, it was that CAIR was finally exposed for the terror-tied group that it is. The hearing resulted in both the Associated Press and the Washington Post confirming on the record — finally — that CAIR was blacklisted by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror-finance case in U.S. history. The bad press has forced CAIR to post a desperately long defense on its website.
But in the final analysis, the much-publicized hearing squandered a rare opportunity to inform the public about the internal threat from Islamic extremism. And now the committee doesn’t plan to hold another hearing for months, while it licks its wounds.