King's Hearing Promotes Hate, Undermines Homeland Security

“We need to conduct a thorough, fair analysis and do no harm. The approach of today’s hearing, unfortunately, does not meet these standards.

Today’s hearing is entitled, “The extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s response.”

It is true that specific individuals, including some who are Muslims, are violent extremists. However, these are individuals – but not entire communities. Individuals like Anwar Al-Aulaqi, Faisel Shazad, and Nidal Hasan do not represent the Muslim American community. When their violent actions are associated with an entire community, then blame is assigned to a whole group. This is the very heart of stereotyping and scapegoating, which is counter-productive.

This point is at the heart of my testimony today. Ascribing the evil acts of a few individuals to an entire community is wrong; it is ineffective; and it risks making our country less secure.”

Minnesota representative Keith Ellison articulated the problem with the approach the House of Representatives is taking in addressing perceived areas of homeland security in his testimony at the House’s Homeland Security Committee’s March 10th hearing, “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.”

The committee is chaired by representative Peter King and the hearing focused exclusively on Islamic extremism and the threat Islam poses to the United States. Rather than look at new solutions to improving homeland security, King’s hearing paraded witness after witness and drummed up the same type of destructive, divisive rhetoric seen in Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations.” Although King’s stated intentions of this first hearing in the series were to examine Al Qaeda’s targeted recruitment of American Muslims, none of the testimony actually addressed this.

Ellison is exactly correct in his assessment of these hearings. Placing blame on an entire community for the actions of very few individuals does not help solve any problems. And this blame is not applied to all communities uniformly when one individual characterized in a certain manner happens to act violently. Stereotyping serves to only further alienate an important part of the American population, and an approach such as King’s might in fact serve Al Qaeda and other extremist groups’ interests in the United States.

And this is a serious problem. Of all the testimony of the course of the several hours that the hearing lasted, only Ellison, Laura Richardson, and Sheila Jackson Lee actually spoke out about the counterproductive and discriminatory nature of this hearing. Why are they standing alone while 3 million Americans are reduced to nothing more than one aspect of their identity and held accountable for actions perpetrated by a miniscule minority?

As Richardson writes in a letter imploring King to cease such discriminatory hearings, “Our concern is that holding a hearing targeting this community, will have the unintended consequences of breeding alienation and fostering feelings of resentment. As a result, we risk hindering law enforcement’s efforts to detect, deter, or prevent potential threats that hide themselves within these communities.”