The Congressional hearings orchestrated by Rep. Peter King on the “radicalization” of Muslim Americans are misguided and dangerous.
Earlier this year, Fareed Zakaria gave voice to what many U.S. policymakers have long feared, namely the radicalization of Pakistan’s military. “[Pakistan’s] military is undergoing a deep internal crisis of identity, its most serious since Pakistan’s founding in 1947,” Zakaria wrote in the Washington Post. “How it resolves this crisis will determine its future, the future of the Afghan war — and much else.”
But if U.S. Congressman Peter King (R-NY) is to be believed, radicalization isn’t just a threat to the Pakistani armed forces, but to the United States’ own military as well. On Wednesday, the chairmen of the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees, Rep. Peter King and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) will hold the latest in a series of hearings on Muslim radicalization. This time, the subject will address the radicalization of Muslim Americans within the U.S. military, and how the armed services can better protect themselves against homegrown attacks.
According to King, “There is an attempt by Islamists to join the military and infiltrate the military, and it’s more of a threat than the average American is aware of right now.” Yet by singling out the Muslim community as potential threats to national security, the congressman is perpetuating the belief held by some that the United States is at war with Islam. It’s a belief that poses every bit as much of a threat to U.S. forces fighting in Pakistan and Afghanistan as the vow by Pastor Terry Jones to burn the Quran last year, a statement that was met with fierce criticism from Gen. David Petraeus and then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Congressman King’s apparently simplistic view of the world is deeply offensive – and counter-productive. As an academic, I am dismayed by his cavalier treatment of the truth and his peddling of prejudice rather than facts during his recent Congressional hearings, just as I am troubled, as a former soldier in the British Army’s Parachute Regiment, by his support for the IRA, whose white Roman Catholic terrorists have claimed hundreds of lives.
The hypocrisy of the remarks by King is breathtaking. According to the University of Ulster, through 2001, about 1,800 people were killed by the IRA as part of their battle for “religious freedom.” Rather than take advantage of the ballot box, they obtained arms from Libya and financed their terrorist operations by robbing banks and post offices, kidnapping for ransom, dealing drugs, money laundering and other criminal activities.
More than 600 of those killed were my fellow soldiers, who were consistent targets of the IRA. In February 2001, a bomb exploded outside our Territorial Army base in West London just before we were about to leave for training. The only casualty was a 14-year-old cadet, whose hand was blown off. A month later, another IRA bomb exploded opposite the same Army barracks in another random, pointless act of terror.
With all this in mind, it’s difficult to take King’s religious radicalization hearings seriously. Yet by holding them anyway, he could become the Joseph McCarthy of our time.
Photo Credit: Kevin Burkett
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Isabelle
Oh, sorry. As to your other point (the one you didn’t want to be rude about). If King can’t step down or pass it on, I’d rhetar he not bother. It would be selfish of him to taint a good cause by being the face of it. McCarthyism didn’t die for lack of Communists. It died once people came to know it’s public face.
ColomboCharlie
McCarthy was proven correct by the Venon cables. King is correct as well. Islamaphobia = When someone knows more about Islam than they are supposed to know.
ColomboCharlie
** Venona Cables **
Kamile
Hmmm does aonnye else find it disturbing that there are those among us who think choice is not something every American should have when it comes to their lives? I wonder what else they think we shouldn’t be able to decide for ourselves. Scary.
Michael
The problem with the cry of McCarthyism is that McCarthy was right more then he was wrong. The fact that there are Muslims who live among us that are committed to the USA and Democracy should not blind us to the fact that there are also Islamic fundamentalists who long for our destruction also living among us.
Bernie
It is interesting and instructive that the author invokes the Irish troubles to illustrate “the fact that terrorists can be of any race or any religion”. We now observe that since the political aims of the IRA (and others) have been, in large part, accomplished, the practice of terrorism in Ireland and the UK has very largely ceased.
We should ask then, what are the political aims that must be met to bring about the cessation of muslim terrorism? The answer is being shouted in mosques from the UK to Indonesia. Nothing but the destruction of secular democracy, the imposition of the world wide caliphate and the universal imposition of sharia law will do. We should listen.
Assiatu
And even if heaginrs could be in any way productive, Rep King is the WORST person you could choose to hold them. He was practically dancing on the graves of British citizens when defending the IRA bombings. Every time he holds heaginrs, he’s rightly denounced as a hypocrite. Sadly, this more about King’s ego than radical Islam.
Danny
Peter King and the US support racial profiling and endless wars for Israel, it all started a decade ago after a false flag attack.
9/11, US and Israel:
http://www.amazon.com/America-Deceived-II-Possession-interrogation/dp/1450257437
ColomboCharlie
Danny, 9/11 was a false flag attack? Really? Seriously? You are nuts.