The incoming chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security said yesterday he will hold hearings on the “radicalization of the American Muslim community.”
Rep. Peter King (R-LI) said in an op-ed piece in Newsday that such hearings are critical because al Qaeda “is recruiting Muslims living legally in the United States — homegrown terrorists who have managed to stay under the anti-terror radar screen.”
He also told The Associated Press that the Muslim community “does not cooperate with law enforcement to anywhere near the extent that they should.”
“With al Qaeda trying to recruit from within their community, it’s important that they cooperate,” King said.
In the Newsday piece, King said, he was outraged that some Muslim leaders “were insisting there was no evidence that al Qaeda was responsible for the [9/11] attacks — even saying it could have been the CIA, the FBI or the Zionists!”
A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations said he fears King’s hearing will “become a new McCarthy-type hearing.”
The spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper, noted that Muslims helped foil several recent terrorist plots by cooperating with law enforcement.