It is a nightmare for an entire religious tradition to be put on the stand as a collective for the actions of an extreme few. It is worse still when the extreme few are such a miniscule fraction of the population.
In spite of mounting evidence that Muslim Americans are excelling at collaboration with American law enforcement and widely condemning terrorism, United States Congressman Peter King, a Republican from New York who chairs the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, seeks to hold hearings about why Muslim Americans are undergoing supposed “radicalization.”
If they move forward, as King has repeatedly stated they will, these hearings will allow political grandstanding to become a precedent for fighting terrorism. Internationally, they may create tension in strategic diplomatic relationships between the United States and majority-Muslim countries and lend credence to the heretofore-inaccurate voices that claim the American government is Islamophobic. Even more troublingly, these hearings may spawn the very sort of suspicion between individual Muslim-Americans and government officials that they nominally seek to investigate. In short, the hearings are ill-advised, morally debasing and damaging to the United States, both domestically and overseas. READ MORE
Tags: king radicalization hearings, muslim americans, muslim discrimination, religious freedom usa, rep. peter king
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