OPINION: The Third Rail

By Roger Madon

If Social Security and Medicare are the third rail of domestic affairs, home grown militant Islam seems to be the third rail of foreign affairs.

This week the House Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Congressman Peter King will be looking into the radicalization of young followers by al-Qaeda right here in America.  This will not be the first time that extremists have infiltrated the American homeland.  

In March 1936, the German American Bund, an organization which supported a radicalized Nazi Germany was established in Buffalo, New York.  The Bund held rallies throughout the country with Nazi insignia and procedures such as the Hitler salute, and attacked the Roosevelt administration, Jewish influences, and alleged Moscow-directed trade unions. The FBI was all over this organization and at the beginning of the war with Germany in December 1941 the FBI knew enough about its various chapters throughout the country that within a very short time it arrested its leaders and shut them all down.  Americans breathed a lot easier.

The Jewish Defense League or JDL is a Jewish nationalist organization founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York City in 1968. JDL’s self-described purpose was to protect Jews from local manifestations of Anti-Semitism.  The group has bombed Arab and Soviet properties in the United States.  The FBI therefore characterized it as right-wing terrorist group holding it responsible for the killing of at least one American and a plot to kill U.S. Congressman Darrell Issa in 2001.  Even today the JDL is alive and well.

And during the Civil War America had a crop of southern radicals, spies and downright assassins, John Wilkes Booth being the most famous.

My point is that America throughout its history has had an abundant share of very nasty, dangerous, ideological, radicalized, unrepentant murderers.  If Congressman King wants to investigate Muslim communities and whether al-Qaeda, America being its sworn enemy, is attempting to radicalize young, vulnerable Muslims, Muslims should take no offense.  In fact they should assist in the process for no other reason than for the protection of their own children.  Instead of Congressman King’s investigation being a third rail for America, let it be third rail for al-Qaeda.