After Terrorist Attack By Alleged Anti-Muslim Fanatic, Peter King Will Still Target Only Muslims In Terror Hearings

Over the past few days, it has come to light that the man presumed to be responsible for the terror attacks in Norway, Anders Breivik, held deeply anti-Muslim views and was motivated at least in part by a hatred of foreigners and multiculturalism. There is also evidence that he was a fan of far-right bloggers and political parties.

Despite these revelations of right-wing terrorism, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) — who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee — has announced that he will continue his series of investigations focusing exclusively on Islamic terrorism and will not widen them to include other forms of terror:

Despite the Norway killings, Representative Peter T. King, the New York Republican who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he had no plans to broaden contentious hearings about the radicalization of Muslim Americans and would hold the third one as planned on Wednesday. He said his committee focused on terrorist threats with foreign ties and suggested that the Judiciary Committee might be more appropriate for looking at non-Muslim threats.

As ThinkProgress noted at the time of his first hearing examining exclusively the radicalization in Muslim communities, there have been almost twice as many terror plots from non-Muslims than Muslims in the United States since 9/11. And in Europe, where the Norway attack happened, terror attacks by Muslims also made up only a minority of the terrorism on the continent. In fact, in 2009, only one in 294 terror attacks came from Muslims.

Democrats had urged Peter King to expand the scope of his hearings, writing in a March 2011 letter, “If you wish to examine violent extremism, we ask that you do so by examining violence motivated by extremist beliefs in all its forms.” It appears that King seems to be more infatuated with singling out Muslims than actually addressing real threats.