It is axiomatic in Washington that congressional hearings are more often than not the modern-day equivalent of a pillory. For they invariably amount to little more than a venue to hold private citizens up to public ridicule.
But not since Senator Joe McCarthy’s hearing on un-American activities by American Communists in 1954 has a hearing backfired quite like Representative Peter King’s (R-NY) hearing on un-American activities by American Muslims did yesterday. And here’s why:
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… Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a fellow American who gave his life for other Americans. His life should not be defined as a member of an ethnic group or a member of a religion, but as an American who gave everything for his fellow citizens.
(Rep. Keith Ellison, The Washington Post, March 10, 2011)
This, in part, was the tear-filled testimony Representative Keith Ellison (D-Minn), himself a Muslim, gave that ended up turning King’s hearing on its head. Ellison was referring here to a Muslim-American paramedic who was among the first responders after the al-Qaeda attacks on 9/11.
Yet for months this paramedic was accused of pulling a disappearing act after helping the terrorists pull off those infernal attacks … until reports confirmed that:
Mr. Hamdani’s remains had been found near the north tower, and he had gone there to help people he did not know.
(Portraits, New York Times, March 9, 2003)
Ellison’s testimony exposed in dramatic and riveting fashion the impact, perhaps even the intent, of this hearing, which was the willful stereotyping and scapegoating of American Muslims.
Many have accused King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, of rank hypocrisy given his unabashed support for the IRA – a terrorist group that targeted the UK the way al-Qaeda is now targeting the U.S.
But the more damning (and more accurate) accusation is that King unfairly singled out Muslims – as Ellison delineated in his testimony, which actually reads like a political indictment. Because neither King nor any other congressman has ever called for hearings to rout out the white radicals Timothy McVeigh represented, or the white radicals Unibomber Ted Kaczynski represented; never mind the white radicals the KKK represent.
That said, I think Ellison and others are engaging in the same kind of scaremongering they’re accusing him of by claiming that his hearing will just provide fodder for al-Qaeda propaganda and recruitment.
After all, the notion that al-Qaeda needs more fodder to fuel their hatred of Americans is every bit as fatuous as the notion that the KKK needs more fodder to fuel their hatred of blacks.
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