On Thursday, Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, will hold hearings on the Muslim community and terrorism. "The main goal is to show the extent of radicalization within the Muslim-American community, how dangerous that is, how serious that is," he said on Fox television Sunday. "It's a real threat. It's a growing threat, and it's not just me saying this."

This is dangerous -- not only because the Muslim community is being singled out. And not just because King has refused to widen the scope of his inquiry to scrutinize right-wing domestic terrorism, despite a 2009 report by the Department of Homeland Security (Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment) that warned, "The economic downturn and the election of the first African-American president present unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment."

No. It is the word "radicalization" that causes worry. It's a slippery term when used by government officials. King and other Republican Party leaders objected to the 2009 report, calling it "offensive" because of its charge of right-wing "radicalization." There are parts of the world in which I have been as a reporter where the accusation -- just the accusation -- of being "radical" translates into "subversive" and gets you killed. This charge can be directed at an individual or a group, but it is always dangerous when leveled by government.

Consider these inflammatory words from Republican Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a Tea Party favorite who is African American. He had this to say while campaigning: "We ... have a fifth column that is already infiltrating into our colleges, into our universities, into our high schools, into our religious aspect, our cultural aspect, our financial, our political systems in this country. And that enemy represents something called Islam, and Islam is a totalitarian theocratic political ideology; it is not a religion." I live in Florida. Listening to these words, I felt I was listening to Sen. Joseph McCarthy in blackface.

I can't help assuming that the way Allen thinks about Islam is the way King is thinking, too. And we have seen this political card played over and over again throughout U.S. history, trumping civil and human rights -- or "freedom rights," as the young scholar Hasan Kwame Jeffries perceptively describes them in his book Bloody Lowndes, Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama's Black Belt.

An investigation like the one King is conducting always fails to get to the bottom of what might be real danger. And who, at this point, can doubt that the United States is a target of terrorists claiming to be on a jihad in the name of Allah? But this hardly characterizes the Muslim community in the United States -- or anywhere else in the world, for that matter.