WASHINGTON — The wreckage of the World Trade Center still smoldered after the 2001 terrorist attacks when a voice rose above the pain and suspicion to demand that American Muslims not be blamed or mistreated. “Islam is peace,” declared George W. Bush, speaking from a mosque and sounding almost like an imam.

As a storm gathers over hearings this week on radical Muslims in the U.S., it seems of another time to recall that it was President Bush — the bullhorn-wielding avenger who wanted Osama bin Laden dead or alive, who warned the world “you’re either with us or against us” — who told Americans their Muslim neighbors were with us. Not just that, he said, but they WERE us.

Nearly 10 years and one president later, suspicions persist. The nation hasn’t figured out how to accommodate a sizable and long-established religious minority while pressing full throttle against growing extremist elements and an increase in allegations of homegrown terrorist plots.

Now comes New York Rep. Peter King, forcing the issue with congressional hearings about radical Islam in the U.S. The first is Thursday, and the protests have already started. Among his fiercest critics, comparisons to McCarthyism, the era of hunting communist sympathizers, are being heard.

“We see no productive outcome in singling out a particular community for examination in what appears to be little more than a political show trial,” a coalition of 50 liberal groups said in a letter to King on Tuesday.

With the number of suspected plots increasing and Republicans newly in charge of the House, King now has the power to call attention to the issue as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.

He told The Associated Press that radical Islam is a distinct threat that must be investigated regardless of whose sensibilities are offended. The congressman, a Republican, pointed to his support in the 1990s for hearings into right-wing militias, on grounds that they were the danger of that time.

He supported the Irish Republican Army’s political wing in the 1980s and 1990s, a time when the IRA was involved in violence in Northern Ireland. He says now that the IRA and al-Qaida are very different and that the IRA never attacked America.

Of the current situation, he said in an interview, “You have a violent enemy from overseas which threatens us and which is recruiting people from a community living in our country. That’s … what this hearing’s going to be.”

The Obama administration faces the same challenge as the Bush administration did in deciding whether to assign responsibility to religion as a motive for attacking the U.S., says Stewart Baker, a former senior Homeland Security official.

“If you don’t, then it’s a very abstract discussion of why terrorism is bad,” Baker said. “If you do, you raise the profile of religion in ways that make Americans uncomfortable. That concern hasn’t gone away in the new administration — if anything, it’s stronger.”

 

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