Congress hears U.S. "failing" to confront radical Islam
“must go forward, and they will.” He said backing down would amount to a “craven surrender to political correctness.”
Ellison warned, however, that the hearings could unfairly increase suspicion of Muslim Americans by lumping them together with violent extremists.
“When you assign their violent action to the entire community, you assign collective blame to a whole group,” Ellison said. “This is the very heart of stereotyping and scapegoating.”
Representative Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi), ranking Democrat on the committee, warned that extremists could exploit the hearing and use it as “propaganda” to inspire a “new generation of suicide bombers.”
Lawmakers heard Thursday from two witnesses whose family members were lured away from their community by Islamic radicals.
Melvin Bledsoe, whose son allegedly attacked an Army recruiting center in Arkansas, said Americans are ignoring the issue. He described how his son, Carlos, was radicalized when he went off to college in Nashville, Tennessee. He described how his son’s personality changed and how, when he returned home for the holidays in 2005, he told his family he converted to Islam. Bledsoe also said he noticed something was wrong when his son took a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. down.
From that point, Carlos changed his name and eventually traveled to Yemen.
“Some Muslim leaders had taken advantage of my son. But he’s not the only one being taken advantage of. This is an ongoing thing in Nashville and many other cities in America,” Bledsoe said.
Fox News reports that King has had around-the-clock security as he pushes forward with the hearings. The New York Republican had extra security Thursday from Capitol Police who are securing the congressional hearing room and surrounding areas, as well as his office.
This is on top of a larger security detail provided by the New York Police Department and the Nassau County, New York, police, who have been guarding King for the past few months.
A new Gallup poll shows that 52 percent of Americans say these hearings are appropriate, though support is split along party lines.
Sixty-nine percent of Republicans say the hearings are the right thing, while only 40 percent of Democrats say they are appropriate. Independents’ views track closely to the national average at 51 percent supporting the hearings.
Overall, 49 percent of Democrats polled on Tuesday say the hearings are not appropriate, compared to 42 percent of independents and 23 percent of Republicans.
Fox News notes that although Thursday’s congressional hearing attracted a high degree of controversy, it is not the first of its kind.
Through the years, Representative Jane Harman (D-California) held four hearings on extremism while serving as an intelligence subcommittee chairwoman; and Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) held several more as head of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. King’s hearings have been labeled McCarthy-like for targeting Muslims specifically.
In his opening statement, King said he is “well aware” that the hearings have generated “considerable controversy and opposition,” but he’s not talking about anything different than the Obama administration is considering. He said the congressional inquiry is the “logical response” to the warnings coming out of the Obama administration.
The Obama administration has tried to frame the discussion around radicalization in general, without singling out Muslims. King has said this is just political correctness since al Qaeda is the main threat to the United States.
