Rep King’s hearings were too limited

By Ted Belman

I, for one, am not happy with Rep King’s hearing on the Radicalization of Muslims,.

For one thing he excluded the testimony of people like Steve Emerson, Executive Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, and Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch due to pressure from Muslim organizations.

For another thing, when he was interviewed after the hearings which only lasted a short while, he kept talking about the influence of al Qaeda, as though it was the only problem. Not once did I hear about the role Saudi Arabia plays in buiding mosques and installing Wahabbi Imans to preach in them. We must know what is being taught in these mosques.

Now, Abdur-Rahman Muhammad writes, Next Panel Must Hear Activists

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Having once been a part of this militant world, I have in recent years directed my efforts to defeating this radical strain of the religion I still adhere to, most notably through my writings which appear on my blog, A Singular Voice. I firmly believe that the attempts to characterize these hearings as a pogrom against Muslims, or some kind of preclude to the fate suffered by Japanese Americans during WW II, are false and malicious.

As American Muslims, in our own quiet spaces, we all recognize that there is a problem, a very serious one at that. Rep. Peter King made it quite clear from the beginning when he said, “The overwhelming number of American Muslims are outstanding Americans”. I don’t recall any such disclaimer being issued when Japanese Americans were rounded up and herded into internment camps. To even raise the awful specter of this history is completely irresponsible, and indeed counterproductive, since in the end it is Muslim youth, our children, who are at risk. Perhaps if the American public had seen the Muslim leadership in this country take a strong and concerted stand against Islamic extremism in the years since 9/11, and had themselves gone after the individuals who openly promulgated it in this country for years, there would be no need for these congressional hearings. But of course that did not happen, and what we got instead was a strategy of playing the victim by promoting a narrative which said that America is at war with Islam.

The scourge of Islamic extremism will never be fully understood unless and until those who were once a part of it are given some skin in the game. Specifically, none of yesterday’s panelists, however sincere or at times dramatic, could speak about the militant Islamic world from the inside because they were never associated with it. I indeed find it somewhat amusing that those most often turned to as expects and “reformers” in the Muslim community, ostensibly the best equipped to combat radical ideology and provide hours and hours of ponderous commentary on it, have never enjoyed either popularity or credibility within radical Muslim circles.

In order for our nation to gain a deeper understanding of this pernicious worldview they must first consult the activists in the field, who, though few in number, are there nonetheless. What we will find is that out of this group of activists a number of them will be, like this writer, African American converts to Islam. No, they perhaps may not be a “Congressman” Keith Ellison or have the resume of a “Dr.” Zuhdi Jasser, but they can speak with the authority of one who has lived and breathed the very close knit world of radical Islam and are best equipped to formulate an antidote against it.

And Robert Spencer reports Dems at King hearings recite Muslim Brotherhood-linked group’s talking points.

Previously he warned, Predictable: Mainstream media begins handwringing over looming anti-Muslim “backlash” from King hearings.

For all King’s bluster and stand against PC, he was very timid in bringing out the truth and hold real investigative hearings. A lost opportunity.