Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.) announced Tuesday that he will hold Congress’ first-ever hearing on the civil rights of American Muslims next week. The hearing comes a little more than two weeks after a Republican in Congress made headlines by holding a controversial hearing on the radicalization of Muslim Americans.
The release announcing the hearing said it is in response to the “spike in anti-Muslim bigotry in the last year including Quran burnings, restrictions on mosque construction, hate crimes, hate speech, and other forms of discrimination.”
“Our Constitution protects the free exercise of religion for all Americans,” Durbin said. “During the course of our history, many religions have faced intolerance. It is important for our generation to renew our founding charter’s commitment to religious diversity and to protect the liberties guaranteed by our Bill of Rights.”
The panel of witnesses scheduled to testify at the hearing include Muslim civil rights leader Farhana Khera; Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick; Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, the Obama Administration’s top civil rights official; and former Assistant Attorney General Alex Acosta, the Bush Administration’s top civil rights official.
Durbin will lead the hearing next Tuesday in the subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, which is part of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
See also “Muslims welcome Senate hearings on civil liberties”, USA Today, 23 March 2011
Durbin does have his critics. Robert Spencer weighs in at FrontPage Magazine (“Durbin is preparing to hold hearings about an ‘anti-Muslim bigotry’ that is almost completely nonexistent”) and at Jihad Watch (“Watch for this to be an orgy of Muslim claims of victimhood and demonization of freedom fighters trying to defend Constitutional freedoms against Islamic supremacism”), while Pamela Geller has a piece at the The Daily Caller (“I might agree with a hearing on ‘Muslim rights’ if it addressed the increasing surrender of secular law to Islamic law, and the assertion of Islamic supremacy over the rights of all others”).