Rep. King on hearing critics: ‘Why are they attacking me in such a rabid way?’

The House Homeland Security Committee chairman blasted the mainstream media on Tuesday, calling outlets “irresponsible” for criticizing the panel’s planned hearing on radicalization in the U.S. Muslim community.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) has been taking an enormous amount of political heat for the hearing scheduled for Thursday. But despite objections from the committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.), and several other lawmakers, King intends to forge ahead, as planned, with the proceedings.  

{mosads}In a Tuesday editorial, The New York Times said King’s hearing was “designed to stoke fear against American Muslims [and] his refusal to tone down the provocation despite widespread opposition suggests that he is far more interested in exploiting ethnic misunderstanding than in trying to heal it.”

King immediately shot back, saying he didn’t want to feel guilty for not holding the hearings in the event another attack, like that on Sept. 11, 2001, took place.

“What are they afraid of? What are they hiding from? Why are they attacking me in such a rabid way?” King told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I can take the hits, that doesn’t bother me at all.

“I don’t ever want it on my conscience that if another attack comes, I wake up the next morning and say, ‘I backed down to political correctness, I backed down to The Washington Post, or the left-wing New York Times, because I was afraid of political retribution.’ I’m going to do what I have to do, and I’m going to do it.”

The Post’s Eugene Robinson, who was also on the program, suggested that people are upset because they think their freedom of religion is being violated and many Muslim-Americans feel they are being targeted and don’t feel safe.

But King scoffed at those arguments, contending Muslim-Americans are grateful he is holding the hearing.

“That’s such a phony argument. That is a phony argument. That is absolute nonsense,” said King. “It’s that type of hysterical reaction and misstatement of the facts which has caused this reaction. I will have Muslims testifying on Thursday, and they will be thanking me for having the hearings because they’ve been saying this issue has not been allowed to report forward, it’s been covered up by political correctness.”

King pointed to recent congressional testimony from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder, and a speech by White House Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough, in which all expressed concerns over domestically recruited and radicalized terrorists.

“And you say I shouldn’t investigate that and I’m the one that’s irresponsible?” said King. “The irresponsible people are the mainstream media, the liberal press and the sycophants who follow the line of CAIR [the Council on American-Islamic Relations] and other radicalists in the Muslim community.”

The first Muslim member of Congress, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), is scheduled to testify at Thursday’s hearing, as is Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.).

Also scheduled to appear are Zuhdi Jasser, president of American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a group that argues for the separation of mosque and state; Abdirizak Bihi, director of the Somali Education and Social Advocacy Center, which focuses heavily on youth in Minneapolis, where some youths have reportedly been recruited overseas to the militant Islamist group Al-Shabab; L.A. County Sheriff Leroy Baca; and Melvin Bledsoe, the father of a man who claims to be a part of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and stands accused of killing a man at an Arkansas military recruiting center.

On Sunday, Ellison backed King’s call for a hearing on radicalization, but said the Republican should be wary of ostracizing or targeting Muslims.

“It’s absolutely the right thing to do for the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee to investigate radicalization,” Ellison told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But to say we’re going to investigate a religious minority, and a particular one, I think is the wrong course of action to take.”

CAIR is planning a press conference Wednesday at the National Press Club to discuss the “Muslim response to the hearing.”