Peter King held more hearings on the "Muslim problem" this week. The New York congressman is continuing his pursuit of bigotry and racial profiling, this time focusing on islamic radicalization in our prisons.
According to Politico.com, "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.
