USA: All the King's Muslims

Many Indian-Americans worry that the hearings, led by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., and chair of the Homeland Security Committee in the House, impinge on freedom of religion by targeting a particular community. Some have likened them to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II or the infamous hearings led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the height of the Cold War.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch |
Source/Credit: New India Times
By Ela Dutt | March 11, 2011

A decade after 9/11 radically refashioned American policy and jolted public opinion about Islam, a March 10 congressional hearing on the “extent” of  radicalization among Muslim Americans has deepened concerns about whether a whole community is being maligned because of the actions of a few and what the hearings might mean for other minority groups in the country.

Many Indian-Americans worry that the hearings, led by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., and chair of the Homeland Security Committee in the House, impinge on freedom of religion by targeting a particular community. Some have likened them to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II or the infamous hearings led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the height of the Cold War.


“We were very opposed to it from the very inception. We work with a lot of members of the Muslim community, people who come here because it is a country known for its freedom of religion,” Seema Agnani, founder of Chhaya Community Development Corporation in Queens, N.Y., told News India Times. “These hearings target one specific community and it’s just going to create further antagonism and feed into stereotypes. If they had looked at radicalism in all communities that would have been fine.”

Agnani’s comments have been repeated by other community leaders, who have similar concerns. But amid the deluge of criticism, there is at least one Indian-American who supports King’s actions. Mumbai-born Asra Nomani, a journalist formerly with The Wall Street Journal, says that far from being harassment, the hearings are a chance for American Muslims to acknowledge the local extremism that has caused some young men to go and fight in Somalia.

“As an American Muslim woman who has lived in this country for 42 years, I firmly believe the hearings on Muslim radicalization are not a witch hunt and King is no Joe McCarthy, the senator who led hearings on communism in America,” she wrote in an opinion piece in The Daily Beast.

“Our worst enemies in America, I would argue, are Muslim interest groups and leaders, who do more to deny the problem than defeat it, thus furthering frustrations with the Muslim community. We need to acknowledge that there is a problem. We have seen the encroachment of extremist interpretations of Islam into our American Muslim community, and as a community we have largely sat on the fence about these very serious issues.”

Regardless of how critics and supporters viewed the hearings, King said his goal was to take a look at the very real threat of homegrown terrorism. There is no denying the fact that Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano and other leaders have expressed concerns about the issue.

“The danger comes from a small segment within the Muslim community,” King wrote in an opinion piece in USA Today. “Unfortunately, the issue we are facing is that not enough leaders in the community are willing to come forward when they know an individual is being radicalized. In some cases, these leaders have encouraged individuals to not cooperate with investigations.”

His comments did nothing to assuage the criticism, however. “It’s disturbing for a congressman to single out a community on the basis of religion and painting them with a broad brush,” Suhag Shukla, co-founder and legal counsel for the Hindu American Foundation, an advocacy group, told News India Times.

“We have been pretty vocal in objecting to this hearing,” Deepa Iyer, head of the advocacy group South Asian Americans Leading Together. The hearings, she contended , did nothing to bring out facts or contribute to how to deal with security issues.

She emphasized that Congress is well within its rights to hold a hearing on national security. But she questioned the objectivity of the hearing.

The absence of national security agencies’ representatives, or counter-terrorism officials, did not help.  “We need to explore violent behaviour not a religion,” Iyer said. “A real discussion would need experts.”

The testimonies of real life experiences of families whose children had turned to radical Islam were very moving, Iyer said, “But we need to move beyond scapegoating a community and get at facts.”

Hansdeep Singh, senior staff attorney at United Sikhs, accused King of seeking to alienate religious minorities by calling for hearings that only discuss extremism within the Muslim community.

And that could have far more serious repercussions for all South Asians. Instead of targeting one community, Singh told News India Times, “we should examine the impact of how vilifying a particular group permeates the societal consciousness and inevitably leads to hate or bias based attacks.”

Following 9/11, several Sikhs around the country were attacked and at least one was killed as they were perceived to be Muslims. Just two days before the King hearings, two Sikhs were shot at in California as they were taking an afternoon walk; one later died, Singh said.

“When Muslims/Arabs are vilified, we are inevitably collateral damage,” he said.
Major civil and human rights organizations, Singh said, were being kept out of the hearings. “How can you conduct any meaningful hearings, when the most prominent of voices in the community are being silenced by their exclusion?” he questioned.

As for cooperation between the Muslim community and law enforcement, Singh said, “You can’t ask for the assistance of one group for the purpose of safeguarding national security and then continually demonize them in different forums.”

Targeting a group is offensive to the very notion of a pluralist society, he asserted. It further demonizes that group.


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