Even though he underwent withering criticism for the first two, Long Island Congressman Peter King announced today that his Homeland Security Committee is planning to hold a third hearing on Muslim radicalization later this month.

The hearing is called, “Al Shabaab: Recruitment and Radicalization within the Muslim American Community and the Threat to the Homeland.”

“At this hearing, the third in a series, we will examine Somalia-based terrorist organization al-Shabaab’s ongoing recruitment, radicalization, and training of young Muslim-Americans and al-Shabaab’s linking up with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” King said in statement.

The first two hearings examined radicalization of Muslim-Americans generally and focused on the problem of radicalization in U.S. prisons, according to the committee’s statement.

The announcement of the hearing comes as a Minnesota man plead guilty to recruiting Somali-Americans there to join an effort to overthrow the government there.

Continues King:

In Minnesota, Ohio, and other states, dozens of young Muslim males have been recruited, radicalized, and then taken from their communities for overseas terrorist training by al-Shabaab.  In a number of cases, the men – including both Somali-Americans and other converts — have ended up carrying out suicide bombings or have otherwise been killed, often without their families even knowing where their sons have gone.  There has not been sufficient cooperation from mosque leaders.  In at least one instance, a Minnesota imam told the desperate family of a missing young man not to cooperate with the FBI.

There are growing concerns that al-Shabaab in Somalia is linking up with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen to better train these radicalized young men in order to attack Americans around the world, or potentially shift their focus to attacking our homeland.

This coordinated and ongoing recruitment and radicalization of young Muslim men in the U.S. is a serious and growing threat to our homeland security and simply cannot be ignored.

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