Peter King and the Muslims

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is head of the House Homeland Security Committee and is about to hold hearings on "The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and That Community's Response."

Gustav Niebuhr teaches journalism and religion and is director of the Religion and Society program at Syracuse University. He is also the grand-nephew of the influential theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.

Niebuhr is rightly concerned that the hearings will focus on Americans of one particular religious affiliation. Why not investigate radicalization and terrorism in America, period, without singling out Muslims? And why now? -- just as Muslim young people are giving their lives to establish democratic governments -- not Islamic theocracies -- in Tunesia, Egypt, and Libya.

These concerns are made ten times worse, given that the conservative Peter King is already known for his blunt conservative opinions, crude language, and loose tongue: everything you could want to "make matters worse" in the realm of diplomacy and legislative comity.

Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus says we're over-reacting. She points out that home-grown terrorism is increasingly a threat. Much of it arises among young Muslim men, who are inspired and encouraged by radical recruiters who base their cause in Islam and speak in its name. It is also true that the majority of U.S. Muslims are not part of that and that their religious faith has none of that violent and anti-American sentiment.

So how do you hold reasonable hearings on a genuine threat to our country and focus it on identified groups who seem to be at the center of the storm -- without implications that will offend Muslims worldwide, as well as at home?

Well, for starters, you could put someone other than Peter King in charge.

It's too late now. For months King has been talking up his hearings, and his careless tongue slips into referring to "the Muslim threat to America." He has already inflamed outrage with his comments, such as to the New York Daily News, that the discrimination and hatred that Muslims believe they encountered after 9/11 was their own imaginations. He has also claimed that 80% of mosques in America are controlled by radical imams.

These hearings also come on the heels of an anti-Muslim rally held in California attended by two congressmen. King himself carries "terrorism" baggage, having been personally involved with the leaders, and a public supporter, of the Irish Republican Army, long listed by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. He justifies that, citing his Irish heritage and that the IRA never attacked the U.S., to which he gives his loyalty.

This is of course a committee of Congress over which Obama has no control; but the administration has already tried damage control in the form of a statement supportive of American Muslims and drawing distinctions between the radical few and the vast number of good citizens of Muslim faith.

Perhaps King's own crude language will be so over the top that it will evoke a backlash from moderates in his own party -- and the world will see that Americans are not all like Pete King, just as they are not all like the radical jihadists. And that it will expose the Republican strategy of putting foxes in charges of hen houses and bulls in charge of china shops.

Ralph