House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee chairman Peter King (R-Long Island), held a trial March 10 to discuss the factors that drive American Muslims toward terrorism.

According to a March 23 article from Globalia Magazine, King held the trials because he believed that the Muslim-American community was not cooperating with law enforcement officials and that the preaching in some U.S. mosques was leading to radicalization. King has been criticized for singling out Muslims in his trials.

“I feel like every religion would have its radicals,” sophomore Mahsan Khailizadeh said. “It’s not just Muslims.”

Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota), the first Muslim to serve in the House, was called to testify, as well as two men whose family members were recruited by Islamic radicals. The largest Muslim civil rights organization in America, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was not invited to testify because according to a March 10 article on Christian Science Monitor, a news website, King considers the organization to be “discredited.”

According to a March 10 written testimony released by CAIR, 47American Muslims committed or were arrested for terrorist crimes in 2009, while in 2010, only 20 American Muslims were arrested.

King has been criticized because of his outspoken support for the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a political group that used violence to defend Irish Roman Catholics in the late 1960s and is widely considered a terrorist organization.

“You shouldn’t put people on trial without evidence,” freshman Mashal Hashem said. “And it’s hypocritical to put someone on trial for being a terrorist while supporting a terrorist group.”

 In response to all the hysteria surrounding King’s trials, democratic senator Dick Durbin held the first ever congressional hearing on the civil rights of American Muslims March 29. Muslim civil rights leader Farhana Khera, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, assistant attorney general Thomas Perez and former assistant attorney general Alex Acosta were called to testify.

According to a March 22 press release from Durbin, he held the hearing in response to infringements on Muslim civil rights in the past year that included burnings of the Quran, restrictions on mosque construction, hate crimes and hate speech.

The hearing was held March 29 at 10:00 am Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C.