In Defense of Peter King...Sort Of

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.)

I hate to put myself in the position of defending Congressman Peter King. So I'm not going to. But he needs a defense attorney, or the wits of one, to explicate why he's holding hearings on the radicalization of Muslim-Americans in the United States. As soon as King's critics caught wind of his plans they charged him with McCarthyism and accused him of leading a witch hunt. I won't defend his hypothesis or his methods, those are both bogus. But King has correctly identified a problem, his heart is in the right place, and the charges against him are trumped up. You can watch King explain his reasons for bringing the issue up in Congress, which critics worry will stoke anti-Muslim sentiment in the public, in the video below. He did a nice job sticking up for himself this week on MSNBC's Morning Joe when he squared off against The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, a formidable opponent by any standard.

Every time a member of Congress holds a hearing that singles out a group of Americans as being a potential threat it's tempting to call that McCarthyism. But it's not always so. When King suggests Muslim-Americans should have to sign loyalty oaths to keep their jobs I'll concede that he's crossed the threshold of McCarthyism, but until then suggesting that Peter King is as bad Joe McCarthy indulges in revisionist history that underestimates just how bad McCarthy was. As for the charge of leading a witch hunt, that's also tempting but not always so. If there were no such thing as Muslim-American radicals planning attacks within the United States and the Congressman was going from mosque to mosque rounding up suspects, giving them "trials" and burning them at the stake, then I would say there was a convincing case to be made on the witch hunt indictment. But Muslim-American radicals planning attacks within the United States are real.

That may be the only agreement the Congressman and I have on this issue. Our viewpoints diverge sharply immediately thereafter. King correctly identifies the problem of Muslim Americans becoming radicalized in their local communities, but he seems to believe that Muslim Americans who aren't plotting attacks aren't doing enough to rat out the ones who are. And the shoddy method he's chosen to prove that phony hypothesis is by inviting Dr. Zuhdi Jasser to testify about a supposed code of silence within the Muslim-American community. The Nation's Sarah Posner sums up Jasser's argument nicely:

Jasser is undoubtedly part of a strategy to deflect widespread criticism that King’s hearings are an attempt smear all Muslims with a broad brush. That’s an accusation that Jasser and others in the anti-Muslim agitprop stable are accustomed to averting. And they do so with a sleight of hand: that it’s not individual American Muslims who are radical, it’s their leaders—Muslim charities and civil rights groups, imams and a religious leadership that is dominated by radicals, who in turn dupe the gullible masses.

Zaid Jilani, left-wing blogger for Think Progress, appearing on Russia Today also gave a searing indictment against Jasser and his claims. You can see his take on the hearings in the video below.