As I wrote earlier this week, Rep. Peter King's justifications for holding hearings on domestic radicalization exclusively focused on Muslims are built on several false premises. The first is the notion that "80 percent" of U.S. mosques are radicalized, a completely fabricated statistic. The second is that American Muslims don't cooperate with law enforcement when terrorism is involved, an argument belied by the fact that 40 percent of domestic terrorism cases have involved Muslims offering assistance to authorities.
Now, as Greg Sargent points out, another one of King's arguments has fallen apart -- namely that authorities have complained to him about lack of cooperation from the Muslim community. As far as King is concerned, we'll just have to take his word for it, because he's not calling any of them to testify:
He said he did not expect to call any of the local law enforcement or counterintelligence experts who he said had told him repeatedly that noncooperation by American Muslims is a "significant issue." He says they will say these things privately, but not in public.
Yesterday, the Muslim Public Affairs Council hosted its own event on the subject with several national-security experts present who talked about how important establishing productive relationships with Muslim communities was to fighting terrorism. King can't present one actual counterterrorism official that will corroborate his claims that Muslims are refusing to help law enforcement? King appears to have disinvited Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who says the West is "at war with Islam," but he's retained Dr. Zuhdi Jasser whose views aren't any more defensible. Jasser, unlike Hirsi Ali, still identifies as Muslim, which helps King present him as "the good kind of Muslim." Maybe that's why he's sticking around.
It's beyond clear that these hearings aren't remotely about a defensible government interest in fighting domestic radicalization or extremism -- and more about legitimizing the idea that even when Muslims aren't plotting terror attacks, they're busy cheering those who are. That is, unless they're among the small number of Muslims who are willing to go on Fox News and accuse every other Muslim in the country of doing so.
