Frank Scaturro: “Witch Hunt” Charges Fall Flat at Homeland Security Hearing

The weeks leading up to the recent House Homeland Security Committee hearing to probe Muslim radicalization in the U.S. brought debate and protest that were about as intense here in Nassau County, committee chairman Peter King’s home turf, as anywhere.  Opponents denounced a supposed “witch hunt” targeting an entire community while supporters trumpeted the need for vigilance in a region that acutely felt the attacks of 9/11.  Then the hearing occurred, and almost as soon as it had ended, it was eclipsed in our collective attention—understandably—by news of the devastating Japanese earthquake and tsunami that struck a day later.  Still, a political event that had had such a dramatic buildup deserves a post-hearing assessment.

Those expecting a high level of finger-wagging and inflammatory rhetoric at the hearing were in for a partial surprise—it was largely confined to one side.  Several Democratic members of Congress waged emotional or heated denunciations of the very act of holding the hearing, starting with a panel of congressmen who gave statements to the committee.  Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim member of Congress, put the hearing in line with past examples of “[s]toking fears about an entire group for a political agenda” such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and anti-Catholic opposition to John F. Kennedy’s candidacy for the presidency.  [His anger turned to sadness as he told the story of Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a Muslim-American paramedic who was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11 while coming to the aid of victims.  Crying openly, Rep. Ellison recounted, “Some people spread false rumors and speculated that he was in league with the attackers because he was a Muslim.  But it was only when his remains were identified that these lies were exposed.”

The poignancy of that emotional moment aside, the account was misleading, omitting as it did the overwhelming and official recognition of Hamdani as a hero at the time.  This was confirmed by a thorough internet search of contemporaneous articles conducted by Matthew Shaffer of the National Review, suggesting that if any false rumors (painful as they would have been to his family) existed, they were at the margins and never made it far.  In fact, Hamdani was singled out by name in the very language of the PATRIOT Act noting that “[m]any Arab Americans and Muslim Americans have acted heroically during the attacks on the United States.”  That statute was passed before his remains were found.  Afterwards, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly attended his funeral, where they went barefoot in observance of Muslim practice.]

Those who anticipated a Republican strategy of demonization at the hearing were disappointed.  On the second panel that testified, which gave the public the chance to hear from people other than members of Congress, two of the three witnesses selected by the Republican majority were Muslim.  In fact, none of the Republican congressmen spoke more strongly than M. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, who testified that “the U.S. has a significant problem with Muslim radicalization.”  While he had “never known a Muslim that wouldn’t report somebody about to blow something up or commit an act of violence,” he did identify “small . . . but significant elements of ideology within our community that is radicalizing” and succumbing to “a culture of a lack of cooperation.”  Abdirizak Bihi, a self-identifying member of the Muslim Somali-American community, testified about his nephew’s radicalization in Minneapolis and disappearance into Somalia, where he was killed, and the family’s intimidation by Muslim leaders in the Minneapolis area who did not want them to notify authorities.  A third witness, Melvin Bledsoe, testified about his son’s conversion to Islam and radicalization prior to shooting a soldier to death outside an Arkansas recruiting center.  He appealed for help to counter radicalization even while contrasting his son with Muslim family members who were never radicalized.

Committee Republicans for their part went out of their way to shun generalizations about an entire community—from “the overwhelming majority of Muslim Americans are outstanding Americans” (Chairman King) to “The moderate Muslim is our greatest ally in fighting recruitment of Muslim youth” (Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX)).  Otherwise, they seemed understated as they devoted most of their questioning to getting the panelists to elaborate on their respective experiences.  The bluster was largely reserved for their Democratic colleagues, nearly all of whom voiced objections to the hearing’s focus on radical Islam without including other domestic terror threats.  Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) lamented that the Constitution “is in pain,” and Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA), in an apparent reference to film footage of the McCarthy hearings, asserted that the only difference between those days and “today is that those shows were in black and white and this one now is in color.”  The sight of Muslims sitting before them taking a stand against radicalization apparently did little to soften the rhetoric—not that the questioning of committee Democrats reflected much interest in what those panelists had to say.

The demagoguery fell flat, and Republicans did not attempt to counter with a similar level of vitriol.  It was a strange scene, given the absence of any major disagreement between the parties about the underlying facts.  The threat of homegrown terror fueled by radical Islam is real, and over the last two years alone, it has included the murder of 13 at the Ft. Hood army base, plots to bomb the New York City Subway and Times Square, and the previously noted Arkansas shooting.  This is not to mention the 9/11 attacks themselves, the very reason that a Committee on Homeland Security was formed in the first place.  Of course, facts are one thing, and ideology is another.  It does not discount other terrorist threats to recognize the distinctive threat of radical Islamic extremism, but House Democrats allowed their ideological rigidity to override a broader sense of perspective.  The Senate counterpart to the House committee has held 11 hearings on this issue since 2006—10 during the chairmanship of Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman—without the acrimony surrounding this one hearing on the House side.

Frank Scaturro is a former Counsel for the Constitution on the Senate Judiciary Committee and Republican candidate for the United States House of Representatives in New York’s 4^thCongressional District in 2010.