Turkey: Protests against US Muslim hearings

PJ: A black eye for the US in Muslim relations.

Hurriyet Daily News

Crowd in NYC rallies against hearing on US Muslims

Some 300 people gathered in Times Square on Sunday to speak out against a planned congressional hearing on Muslim terrorism, criticizing it as xenophobic and saying that singling out Muslims, rather than extremists, is unfair.

Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and the imam who had led an effort to build an Islamic center near the World Trade Center site were among those who addressed the crowd. "Our real enemy is not Islam or Muslims," said the imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf. "The enemy is extremism and radicalism and radical ideology."

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Peter King, has said that affiliates of al-Qaeda are radicalizing some American Muslims. He's planned hearings starting Thursday on the threat he says they pose.

King, a Republican from New York's Long Island, told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday that he sees an international movement with elements in the United States of Muslims becoming more radical and identifying with terrorists.

Speakers at the cold and drizzly Times Square rally said King was targeting Muslims unfairly. "American Muslims are as fully American as any other faith community," said Rabbi Marc Schneier, founder of The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding. Singling out Muslim Americans "as the source of homegrown terrorism" is an injustice, he said.

President Barack Obama sent his deputy national security adviser, Denis McDonough, on Sunday, four days before a controversial congressional hearing, to a Washington-area mosque known for its cooperation with the FBI and its rejection of the al-Qaeda brand of Islam.

Speaking to an interfaith forum of Muslims, Christians, Jews and other faiths, the president's point-man on countering violent extremism was clear: "We're all Americans."

The majority of the recent terror plots and attempts against the U.S. have involved people espousing a radical and violent view of Islam, making it difficult to ignore the role religion plays in this particular threat. But focusing too closely on Islam and the religious motives of these attempted terror attacks also threatens to alienate an entire community that has nothing to do with these violent beliefs.

Two of the witnesses scheduled to testify Thursday are relatives of men who were radicalized and turned to terrorism. One is the uncle of a Somali man from Minneapolis - Burhan Hassan - who left the country in December 2008 to join a terror group in Somalia. The family believes Hassan was killed and buried in Somalia.

Another witness is the father of Carlos Bledsoe, who prosecutors say shot and killed a soldier at a military recruiting center in Arkansas in 2009. Bledsoe grew up in the Memphis, Tennessee, area, converted to Muslim and changed his name to Abdulhakim Muhammad.

McDonough said Muslim Americans are not the problem, but part of the solution. "No community can be expected to meet a challenge as complex as this alone," McDonough said. "No one community can be expected to become experts in terrorist organizations, how they are evolving, how they are using new tools and technology to reach our young people."

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