Emotions Dominate Congressional Panel's Muslim Hearing

WASHINGTON -- Do radicalized Muslims in America pose a unique threat to the country's security? This was the central question argued today at an emotionally charged hearing on the Hill.

The hearing, headed by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, has been at the center of a political firestorm. Critics have painted it as a blatant attempt to justify ethnic profiling; supporters have argued for the need to address a real and growing threat.

King started the session warning against outbursts and placards. Then he defended the hearing as a needed counterweight against what he deemed to be political correctness. "I remain convinced these hearing must go forward and will," he said.

The chairman countered critics who said such a hearing should look at all forms of extremism, from neo-Nazis to environmental extremists. King said that there "was no equivalency," adding that radical Islam posed a unique "international threat to our nation."

But a number of other committee members, including the ranking minority party member, Rep. Bennie Thompson, disagreed, citing recent cases such as the arrest of a suspect with ties to a white supremacist movement in an attempted bomb attack targeting a Martin Luther King Jr. march. The hearings "should be a broad-based examination," Thompson argued.

"I urge you, Mr. Chairman, to hold a hearing examining the homeland security threat posed by anti-government and white supremacist groups," the Mississippi congressman added.

The hearing included emotional pleas from both sides. Rep. Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota, broke down sobbing in recalling the details of a young paramedic who died responding to the 9/11 attacks in New York, and was originally accused of being involved in the plot because he was a Muslim.

Some witnesses supporting the hearing, however, had their own emotionally charged stories describing what they see as a growing threat to the nation.

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Melvin Bledsoe described how his son, after converting to Islam, went from being a typical college student to an alleged killer accused of shooting two soldiers at a military recruiting center. "We must stop these extremist invaders from raping the minds of American citizens," Bledsoe said.

The question for many is whether the anecdotes about Muslim-American extremism really add up to an existential threat or are merely isolated cases of violence.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., called for a legislative effort to establish a "Team B" to look at the threat of radical Islam in America. Team B was a CIA-led effort during the Cold War that brought in a panel of outside experts to assess the Soviet threat.

Such an effort, said Wolf, would provide a "tremendous service."