Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) continued his pattern of inflammatory comments about Muslim Americans on Thursday, this time calling for greater “surveillance” of Muslim communities.
“We have to find out who the radicals are. We have to find out what’s going on in the mosques, which are often incubators of this type of terrorism,” King said on Newsmax TV’s “America’s Forum.”
The comments came after King responded to this week’s deadly shooting rampage at the Canadian Parliament. King said, “Anyone who thinks this is a coincidence is crazy. ... Right now you have ISIS telling their people in Canada and the United States to carry out these attacks.”
The congressman argued that the U.S. “can have all the technology in the world. The fact is we have to find out what’s happening on the ground in these Muslim communities, and we can only do that through increased surveillance.”
This is hardly the first time King has made controversial remarks about Muslim communities. In 2011, King, who then chaired the House Homeland Security Committee, claimed that "over 80 percent of the mosques in this country are controlled by radical imams." He began a series of investigative hearings to “examine radicalization within the Muslim-American community” in 2012. Critics deemed the controversial hearings "McCarthyism 2.0."
Watch the interview above.
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