Hunting for terrorists, not witches

In Times Square last Sunday, an estimated 1,000 people gathered to protest today's hearings before Rep. Peter King's Committee on Homeland Security titled "The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response." The protesters called the hearings a "witch hunt."

Since there are no "witches" of the type portrayed in Macbeth or The Wizard of Oz, the term is used to disparage people who believe there are terrorists and potential terrorists hiding among us. Events dating back long before September 11, 2001, prove there are.

The witness list isn't bad, per se, but it is incomplete. It includes Abdirizak Bihi, a Somali immigrant living in Minneapolis who, as director of the Somali Education and Social Advocacy Center, works with Somali youth to dissuade them from turning radical. Bihi told Richard Meryhew and Allie Shah of the Star Tribune that he committed himself to working with young people after his 18-year-old nephew, Burhan Hassan, was recruited to fight in Somalia and then was "shot in the head after refusing an order." Burhan was killed, NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reported in 2009, the very week his family had hoped to "celebrate his graduation."

Another witness is Melvin Bledsoe, father of Carlos Bledsoe (aka Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad). In 2009, Muhammad, a Muslim convert, gunned down two soldiers outside a military recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark. One soldier died. Bledsoe/Muhammad had spent 16 months in Yemen, where he apparently was radicalized before returning to the United States to conduct his personal jihad. In a handwritten letter to the presiding judge in his case, Muhammad, claiming ties to al-Qaeda, said he carried out the attack "because he was mad at the U.S. military because of what they had done to Muslims in the past."

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., and one of two Muslim members of Congress, is also a scheduled witness, as is Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va. Ellison will no doubt warn us against stereotyping all Muslims because of the actions of "a few." But what if those "few" (and it doesn't take many to kill, as we have seen) are hiding among peaceful Muslims? Can authorities locate them? What will they do if they find them? Will they continue with "sensitivity training," hoping that if we are nice to them, they'll be nicer to us?

In these hearings, and in dealing with the radicalization problem in general, do we fully understand that radical Muslims believe their religion allows them to lie to "infidels" and to advance their cause of creating a world Islamic caliphate? Shouldn't that make us wary of their testimony?

People more knowledgeable than those on King's witness list will not be testifying, though some have been invited to submit written statements. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum would be one useful expert. So would Steve Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Ditto historian and Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis, who knows as much about the beliefs and political agenda of radical Islamists as anyone alive.

Pipes opposed the hearings because he thinks they won't go far enough. In an email exchange, he says he is "particularly disturbed by [King's] privileging of Muslims over non-Muslims, an unexpected act of dhimmitude."

Noting the title of the hearings, Pipes says, "The hearings are on two quite specific topics, . . ." which, he says, "are not topics for generalists and amateurs but for witnesses who have either studied them or who have first-hand experience with them."

Even if Pipes, Emerson, and Lewis had been invited to testify, what difference would it have made? With the White House bending over backward to deny the undeniable-that radicals are among us and new ones are being recruited to kill Americans and harm our economy-what action would government authorities take to root them out, arrest, or deport them? Could politicians stand against cries of "Islamophobia" and "Nazi tactics" that would predictably be hurled at them?

In a nation obsessed with Charlie Sheen and celebrity, the media are unlikely to practice the kind of serious investigative journalism necessary to warn the public of another 9/11.

Given these undeniable truths, witches don't look so bad.

© 2011 Tribune Media Services Inc.