King Hearings: Muddled Thinking on Muslim “Radicalization”

Like all good theater, the U.S. Congressional hearing “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response” works on multiple levels. The pretext of the hearing, chaired by Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY), was to consider the extent of radicalization and whether the Muslim community is cooperating with law enforcement. But the real meaning of the hearing was the demand for a Cold War–style ideological offensive within American Muslim communities against an ill-defined enemy called “radical Islam.”

We heard two stories in which mosques were accused of recruiting young Muslims to terrorism. In the first case, Melvin Bledsoe testified that the FBI failed to intervene to prevent his son Carlos traveling to Yemen, despite his being under surveillance. After returning to the U.S., Carlos carried out an attack on an Army recruiting station in Little Rock that left one man dead.

The second case was that of Burhan Hassan, who left Minneapolis to join al-Shabaab in Somalia, where he was killed. In both cases, there were scarce details of any criminality on the part of mosques. Real evidence in either case would presumably have led to prosecutions of those involved, given the wide-ranging powers available to prosecute material support of terrorism, and the eagerness of the FBI to do so.

But little attention was paid to identifying potential crimes, or the failure to prosecute them. Rather, as Zuhdi Jasser, a self-appointed expert on Islam, testified, the focus was the ideology that he thinks gives rise to violence, not the violence itself. His target was what he called “Islamism” or “political Islam,” what others referred to as “radical Islam.” If this was to be something of a show trial, it was this ideology, not any individual, that was in the dock.

The hearing portrayed a minority of American Muslims, the leading Muslim community organizations and an unspecified number of mosques as complicit in this ideology. King’s clear aim was the creation of a new Muslim leadership that would, as Jasser put it, go on “an ideological offensive into the Muslim community to teach liberty.” And King hoped the hearing would break the barriers of political correctness that he thinks prevent such a leadership from emerging.

For this to have any plausibility, we would have needed to hear a definition of “radical Islam” and evidence of how it leads young people to become terrorists. At one point, Jasser pointed out that his biography was almost identical to that of Nidal Hasan, who carried out the shooting attack on Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. What led to one becoming a murderer and the other a regular commentator on Fox News? No answer was forthcoming.

In fact, the hearing only offered one real account of a young person’s path to violence, that of Carlos Bledsoe. But in describing this case, little distinction was made between his radicalization and his conversion to Islam, giving the impression that Islamic belief itself is dangerous, and implying a hopelessly broad suspicion of Muslims en masse. Yet prosecutors in the Carlos Bledsoe case tell a different story, saying his radicalization began years after his conversion.

More generally, the basic problem with the hearing was that it blurred the distinction between opinions and action. It is one thing to go after those involved in violence, quite another to pursue those whose only offense is belief in a “radical” ideology. Indeed, this distinction is precisely what defines the American approach to liberty. Rather than calling for Muslims to be taught the meaning of freedom, King and Jasser need some education of their own on the constitution.

Similarly, while Jasser held the separation of church and state to be the key issue dividing moderate from extremist Muslims, he himself violated that separation with his call for a concerted political intervention into the religious beliefs of Muslims.

Such muddled thinking and lack of systematic analysis are wholly counterproductive in understanding how to prevent terrorism. But it makes for great political theater. And it bolsters the efforts of those on the Right who want a new Cold War, with radical Islam replacing Communism as an enemy ideology.

Therein lies the great danger of the King hearing—that it encourages Americans to think about Muslims through a McCarthyist lens. If that happens, all of us, not just Muslims, will need lessons in liberty.