Peter King painted the threat of Muslim-American radicalization in U.S. prisons as serious. | AP Photo Circus skips Muslim radicals hearing

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) opened his second in a series of controversial hearings on “Muslim-American radicalization” Wednesday by attacking radical groups and their “allies in the liberal media” for over-hyping the congressional inquiries and painting the panel’s activities as bigoted.

“I have repeatedly said the overwhelming majority of Muslim Americans are outstanding Americans,” said the House Homeland Security Committee chairman said. “Yet, the first radicalization hearing which this committee held in March of this year was met with much mindless hysteria — led by radical groups such as the Council of Islamic Relations and their allies in the liberal media personified by the New York Times.”


Indeed, the tenor in the House committee room Wednesday felt more cookie-cutter congressional hearing — with the polite exchange of testimony from members and witnesses — than the media zoo the panel’s first gathering on the issue was expected to be.

The focus of Wednesday’s inquiry was on the “threat of Muslim-American radicalization in U.S. prisons,” and though King painted the threat as serious, the evidence to support that claim provided by witnesses was mixed.

“Dozens of ex-cons who became radicalized Muslims inside U.S. prisons have gone to Yemen to join an al-Queda group run by a fellow America, Anwar al-Awlaki, whose terrorists have attacked the U.S. homeland several times since 2008 and are generally acknowledged to be al-Queda’s most dangerous affiliate,” King said in his opening statements.

While many witnesses acknowledged that there have been incidents where U.S. prisoners have been radicalized, they all seemed to emphasize the low occurrence of such cases, especially given that America has the largest incarceration rate and prison population of any country in the world. They emphasized measures taken to keep prisoners cut off from the outside world and their limited access to technology to disseminate dangerous information.

Michael Downing, the commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations bureau, cited a fear of “convergent threats” in prison: Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the prison system and prisons, especially in L.A. he said, are hotbeds for drug and human traffickers and other organized crime. He added that gang members are expert recruiters and that in L.A. prisons, prisoners divide themselves physically into “the Crips side, the Blood side” and the “growing Muslim side,” which is an area of concern.

“Prisons are, in fact, communities at risk,” Downing said.

But almost all witnesses conceded that sample size of American-grown terrorists bred in prisons is small, despite the need to be vigilant of the growing community and its effect on national security. The greatest threat is the prisoner about whom the least is known, witnesses said, and the fact that King’s two hearings on the threats of Muslim radicalization are certainly not Congress’s first — at least 22 hearings on similar matters have been conducted in the past 5 years — reflect that.

The top Democrat on the Homeland Security panel, Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) challenged the scope of the hearing, however, questioning why the panel’s inquiry focused only on radicalization of one group and not others, like those of other religions or even the at-risk slices of the prison community cited later by witnesses.

“I think it is safe to conclude that the risk of terrorism originating from Muslim converts in U.S. prisons is small. Limiting this committee’s oversight of radicalization to one religion ignores threats posed by extremists of all stripes,” Thompson said, adding that his staff consulted representatives from the Bureau of Prisons and state prison representatives across the country.

Thompson said those officials indicated they “routinely” require religious staffs, including priests, rabbis and imams, to undergo “rigorous vetting,” that prisoners do not have internet access and that all non-legal mail is opened, read and “sometimes censored.”

“If prison were a major cause of terrorism, we’d see a large proportion of jihad-terrorists linked to prison. That is not the case,” Purdue University professor Burt Useem said in his prepared remarks. “As long as law enforcement continues to be alert and work collaboratively with each other, the threat of terrorists in and from prisons will continue to be diminished.”