This week, the House Homeland Security Committee will begin its hearings on homegrown radicalization, which looks like it will be a sober analysis of one of the most serious national-security threats facing the U.S. Obviously it’s important that hyperbole on either side of the issue doesn’t overshadow the focus of the inquiry. And that’s why two competing rallies being held in New York today are disconcerting.
The first is an anti–Peter King protest entitled “Today, I am a Muslim, Too,” which is being led by the Cordoba Initiative’s Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Al Sharpton, and music mogul Russell Simmons. This rally is being billed as a protest of “a unified stance against a rising Islamophobia caused by anxiety, misinformation, and ignorance.”
“Despite best efforts to engage and integrate into American society, certain leaders nonetheless, continue to see Muslims outside of the American family portrait,” claims Daisy Khan, Rauf’s wife and the organizer of the protest. “Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.) for example, will hold congressional hearings addressing ‘The Radicalization of Muslim communities in America,’ with testimony solely focusing on the communities of Muslim community.”
Clearly critics of the hearing can’t oppose an investigation into homegrown radicalization on its face, so they instead have to paint it as “Islamophobic” and smear King as a bigot.
But the “Today, I am a Muslim, Too” rally is only part of the problem. It has unsurprisingly sparked a counter-protest, the theme of which is, of course, “No, Imam, Today I am Not a Muslim, Too.” The organizers of the pro-King rally say they are protesting the “false accusations of ‘bigotry’” against those who are “voicing concern about radicalization in American Muslim communities and the threat of Shariah law to the Constitution.”
While King is certainly addressing the problem of radicalization, the hearings have absolutely nothing to do with the threat Sharia law poses to the Constitution, and absolutely everything to do with the threat of deadly terror attacks being planned and carried out on U.S. soil.
So if King’s supporters actually want to do him a favor, they’ll tone down the Sharia rhetoric when they’re defending him. There’s no doubt that King’s opponents are itching to tie him to the type of Sharia hysteria that greeted the “Ground Zero mosque” proposal last summer. It was a distraction from the real problems with the mosque, and it would be a shame if it overshadowed the King hearings as well.
