A crowd of 500 gathered at the bottom of Times Square on Sunday to protest upcoming Congressional hearings on radicalization within the Muslim community, arguing that the hearings threaten to single out one religious group unfairly.
The demonstrators, enduring occasional rain on a soggy afternoon, heard a diverse roster of speakers, including at least two rabbis, two imams, and an Episcopal priest, argue that hearings by the House Homeland Security Committee, scheduled to begin Thursday, would stigmatize Muslims.
The hearings are to be led by Representative Peter T. King of Long Island and opponents are focusing their efforts on getting Mr. King to enlarge the scope of the hearings beyond Muslims.
“To single out Muslim-Americans as the source of homegrown terrorism and not examine all forms of violence motivated by extremist belief, that my friends is an injustice,” said Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the co-founder of a project to develop a Muslim center near ground zero, said American Muslims were loyal Americans “also concerned about radicalism.” He called on Mr. King to “to hold hearings into radicalism and not into Muslims.”
Several demonstrators held up signs sayings “Today I am a Muslim Too,” while one Nechesa Morgan, a 39-year-old T-shirt designer from Brooklyn, held up a sign with a sketch of Mr. King accusing him of bigotry.
Mr. King, in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” alongside Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a Muslim, defended his decision to limit his investigation. Mr. King said that Al Qaeda and its affiliates “have been radicalizing” members of the Muslim community and that effort is the leading domestic threat.
“There’s been self-radicalization going on within the Muslim community, within a very small minority, but it’s there,” said Mr. King. “To be having investigations into every type of violence will be suggesting an equivalency that’s not there.”
He added that other investigations of crime had also focused on specific ethnic groups.
“When we’ve gone after the mafias, we looked at the Italian community; the Westies, the Irish community,” he said. “In New York, when they went after the Russian mob, they go into the Russian community in Brighton Beach and Coney Island.”
Mr. Ellison argued that by focusing on only one discrete group that has been the victim of discrimination enemies of America will be able to “stand up and claim, you know, ‘See, we told you, America’s at war with Islam.’ ” By winning the cooperation of Muslims, Mr. Ellison said, more terrorist threats could be headed off.
Muslims from a wide variety of backgrounds were among those at the Times Square demonstration, which stretched for an entire block between 42d Street and 41st Street along Seventh Avenue.
Dina Suharno, 36, of Clifton, N.J., an immigrant from Indonesia, was there with two sisters and a half dozen friends, all wearing headscarves and sharing a fried banana dessert.
“Whenever something happens, they always blame Muslims,” she said. “You cannot say that because a Muslim did that, that all Muslims do this.”