**Posted by Phineas
Congressman Peter King (R-NY), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee [1], is opening hearings today on the threat of radicalization of American Muslims by jihadist groups. Naturally, the usual coalition of Islamist front groups and their tools on the Left have denounced these hearings as “un-American [2],” “McCarthyist [3],” and Islamophobic [4].
Yet, when one goes past the screams of outrageous outrage and looks at facts, one fact stands out: most terror convictions [5] involve defendants waging jihad fi sabil Allah — “jihad for the sake of Allah:”
More than 80 percent of all convictions tied to international terrorist groups and homegrown terrorism since 9/11 involve defendants driven by a radical Islamist agenda, a review of Department of Justice statistics shows.
Though Muslims represent about 1 percent of the American population, they constitute defendants in 186 of the 228 cases DOJ lists.
On Thursday, the House Homeland Security Committee holds its first hearing into radicalization among Muslim Americans. Critics have taken issue with the focus on one religious minority, but the DOJ list shows that radical Islamists are disproportionately involved in terror-related crimes.
Al-Qaida is involved in the largest number of prosecutions, representing 30 percent of the 228 terror cases involving an identified group. Hizballah-affiliated defendants are involved in 10.5 percent of the cases and Hamas is part of 9 percent. Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Tayyiba was involved in 6.5 percent of the cases.
The remainder involved the South Asian Tamil Tigers and Colombia’s FARC. The article’s author, the Investigative Project on Terrorism [6], goes on to break down the statistics by international versus domestic terror plots, and it covers significant cases not included in the Justice report. All in all, it’s an enlightening and a disturbing survey.
My own opinion is that these hearings can serve a useful purpose, because there is no doubt that Islamic-supremacist groups have targeted the United States and want to radicalize the Muslim population here. As former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy details in his excellent “The Grand Jihad [7],” the Muslim Brotherhood operates here through fronts such as the Muslim Students Association, the Islamic Circle of North America, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and others to spread a Salafist [8] interpretation of Islam with the goal of replacing our constitutional government based on individual liberties with sharia law. Leading Brotherhood intellectual Sheikh Yusef al Qaradawi [9] has called this “jihad by da’wa [10].” (Islamic proselytism. See also [11].)
The fact is that there is a continuing strong effort to radicalize Muslims in the United States to support jihad, whether that means traveling overseas to fight (as in Somalia [12]), fighting here in America (as in Times Square [13]), or through non-violent [14] support. The Department of Justice statistics bear that out. While I’m disappointed Congressman King has left out important, knowledgeable witnesses such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, and IPT’s Steve Emerson (especially since they could effectively challenge blatant apologists such as Congressman Keith Ellison), I do think these hearings can serve a valuable purpose by shedding light on efforts to radicalize Muslims in the United States. They will certainly be worth keeping an eye on.
LINKS: My blog-buddy Sister Toldjah launched a spirited defense [15] of the hearings a couple of days ago. IPT’s Steve Emerson says the real hysteria-mongers [16] are the Muslim-American groups attacking Congressman King. Oh, and by the way, the usual death threats [17] from the Religion of Peace have made their appearance. An essay on “jihad fi sabil Allah [18].”
(Crossposted at Public Secrets [19])