After arriving in Afghanistan’s capitol Kabul to sign a strategic partnership agreement with President Hamid Karzai, President Obama took to the American airwaves to explain the agreement and his broader Afghanistan strategy to the U.S. A few critics on the right — prone to faulting Obama for his every move — sought to bash the president. “Clearly this trip is campaign-related,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), admonishing Obama for a supposed “attempt to shore up his national security credentials” in the 2012 campaign.

But Inhofe’s blatantly political shot is being undermined by members of his own party and their ideological allies, who have either praised Obama or stuck to criticizing the strategy. Asked by CNN’s Dana Bash before the speech if he viewed the trip as “spiking the football” for the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has been a critic of Obama’s Afghanistan strategy, said, “No, I don’t view it as that.” He also lauded the trip and the strategic agreement:

MCCAIN: I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s always good when the president goes to where young men and women are in harm’s way.

And I think that many of us who have been involved in Afghanistan are very supportive of the strategic partnership agreement, which I’m sure he’ll be talking about, and we think the agreement is good. We obviously would like to know the details.

BASH: …Do you think that this trip is also part of his political campaign?

MCCAIN: No, I can’t accuse the president of that.

Appearing separately on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, Homeland Security Committee chair Rep. Peter King (R-NY) also supported the trip, though he reserved judgement on the agreement until he could view it in detail. King said, “(H)is visit to Afghanistan is perfectly right. I applaud him for doing it.” The Congressman went on:

KING: Well, as president and commander-in-chief, I applaud him being in Afghanistan. I think it’s important for the troops to see the president and certainly after all of these years of fighting where the troops have done such heroic work and did such an outstanding job. I think it’s important for the president to be there and signing the agreement with President Karzai.

…I think it is always very good when the president of the United States can visit a war zone, especially on such a key moment as this.

Watch clips of the interviews with McCain and King:

McCain and King aren’t the only Republicans praising Obama’s trip. Romney foreign policy adviser Max Boot wrote that “substance of the speech” was “somber and serious and largely free of election-year politicking.” Romney himself released a statement that said: “I am pleased that President Obama has returned to Afghanistan. Our troops and the American people deserve to hear from our President about what is at stake in this war.”

The number of anti-Muslim groups in the U.S. tripled in 2011 according to a new report released last week by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The dramatic increase in anti-Muslim groups, according to SPLC Senior Fellow Mark Potok, occured as part of a rapid growth in “radical right” groups, “fueled by superheated fears generated by economic dislocation, a proliferation of demonizing conspiracy theories, the changing racial makeup of America, and the prospect of four more years under a black president who many on the far right view as an enemy to their country.”

Anti-Muslim groups, which jumped from 10 groups in 2010 to 30 in 2011, resulted from an growing political space for Islamophobia as politicians and anti-Muslim activists stirred up controversy over a planned Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan.

While the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy pushed fringe anti-Muslim activists like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer into the spotlight, the nationwide anti-Muslim movement gained more momentum with the “anti-Shariah” campaigns in various state legislatures. Anti-Shariah bills, which would forbid the use of Islamic Shariah law in state courts — “a completely unnecessary change, given that the U.S. constitution already rules that out,” writes Potok — have now been introduced in over twenty states.

Indeed, the SPLC is correct to point out the growth of anti-Muslim groups across the country. But, as discussed in the Center for American Progress’ report Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America, many of the anti-Shariah initiatives are styled on model legislation drafted by anti-Muslim attorney and right-wing activist David Yerushalmi.

Potok also credits Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) March 2011 hearings on the radicalization of U.S. Muslims and a “swelling of truly vicious propaganda” as demonizing American Muslims.

The SPLC also found sizable growth in anti-gay, black-separatist, Christian Identity, Klu Klux Klan, nativist extremist, neo-confederate, racist skinhead, and white nationalist groups.

Yesterday during a House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on “Iranian terror operations on American soil,” Rep. Peter King (R-NY) echoed Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s (R-FL) controversial call to — in violation of American law — expel Iran’s United Nations diplomats from the United States. “You dropped the bombshell today at your hearing,” CNN host Wolf Blizter told King later, asking, “Doesn’t the U.S. have…international legal responsibilities as the host country to the United Nations?”

King said it’s legal because the Iranian diplomats are plotting terror attacks inside the U.S. But when asked for evidence, King offered random and confusing examples and conveniently said he can’t discuss the evidence but he’s seen it and “it’s buttressed to all sides.” Blitzer then pressed King again for “hard evidence,” and the New York Republican dodged, citing “common sense and observation”:

BLITZER: Just to be precise, these Iranian diplomats are in New York and Washington. Do you have hard evidence they were actually plotting to undertake terrorist operations inside the United States?

KING: I’m saying they clearly have ties to those in Iran who do those things. We know this from common sense and observation, from talking to people in the community that these people, whether it’s actual terrorist activities or dealing with other countries or just facilitating activities with them or with Hezbollah, the fact is they are over here for an ulterior purpose, not diplomacy. It’s to advance Iran’s interest and, as I said, there have been instances in the past where we’ve actually caught them doing it, but from people I’ve spoken to, in the intelligence and law enforcement community.

Watch the clip:

So King has no evidence. He essentially thinks that the Iranian diplomats in the U.S. are plotting terror attacks here because they’re here to “advance Iran’s interest” and have ties to Iranians (of course they do, they’re Iranians too). Based on those parameters, King should start working on the deportation papers for every foreign diplomat residing in the United States.

With news yesterday of a foiled bomb plot that allegedly ties the Iranian government to an attempt to assassinate foreign diplomats in the U.S., Republicans are now calling for escalated actions against the Iranian regime. Many have focused their talking points on describing the alleged Iranian-backed plot as a declaration of war on the U.S. Here’s a quick rundown:

FORMER REP. PETE HOEKSTRA (R-MI)

Pete Hoekstra told the right-wing magazine Newsmax that the plot allegedly coordinated by Iran constituted “acts of war”:

The plot will “heighten the tensions throughout the Middle East… These are acts of war, and they need to be viewed and treated as such,” said Hoekstra, the former ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told Newsmax in an exclusive interview.

REP. PETER KING (R-NY)

House Homeland Security Committee Chairperson King told CNN that he considered the plot an “act of war” and said “the Iranians have crossed a red line”:

KING: This is such — again, this violates all international norms, violates international law. Basically, you’re talking about an act of war. I think we have to — the United States has to really consider taking very significant action. [...]

[W]e should not be, I don’t think, automatically saying we’re not going to have a military action. I think everything should be kept on the table when you’re talking about a potential attack against the United States, an act of war.

SEN. MARK KIRK (R-IL)

Appearing on a Chicago talk radio show, Kirk boosted his recent legislative attempt to collapse the Iranian currency by going after the Iranian central bank. Though Kirk didn’t endorse “military action” by the U.S., he justified a new push to move his legislation forward by saying that the Iranian government has already declared war on the U.S.:

KIRK: I think the declaration of war has already happened by Iran on us. If their intelligence service, called the MOIS, is seeking to blow up American targets, we are already in a state of conflict with them, but for the good work of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Justice Department.

RADIO HOST: …You believe this to be true? This is an act of war?…

KIRK: …This is pretty in-your-face by the government of Iran, to be trying to put together bomb plots inside Washington, D.C. And it’ll be now time for the Obama administration to take action.

Watch King and listen to Kirk here:

The plot itself remains merely in indictment form, and, as many commentators have pointed out, we don’t know exactly what was going in this situation, and we do know that a bold move like this would be well out-of-character for Iran’s normally very professional intelligence agencies. Considering the high stakes of possible regional conflagration, perhaps it’s best to save all the “declaration of war” talk until the facts of the case and Iranian complicity are more clear.

Today, despite his prior advocacy for terrorism and his smears of Muslims, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) testified before a British parliamentary inquiry into the root causes of domestic Muslim radicalization. At one point, MP Keith Vaz asked King if he supports “better controls on the internet,” on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, in the context of extremist elements using the internet to get their message out. King replied that he did, but he also lamented the “First Amendment issue” with doing so and said that he’s trying to find a way to do it without violating freedom of speech:

VAZ: Would you like to see better controls on the internet? On these social media sites like Facebook and Twitter?

KING: I do, now we have a First Amendment issue which does not really confront you or really pertain in Great Britain. So we’re trying to find ways, how can it be done without violating the First Amendment, involving freedom of speech or communication.

Watch it:

Explaining his prior statements in support of the then-terrorist Irish Republican Army (IRA), King said that he stands by these statements “in the context that they were said.”

The U.S. Federal Court for the Eastern District of New York unsealed some of the documents related to the arrest of Agron Hasbajrami, an Albanian citizen and legal permanent resident of the U.S. Hasbajrami was charged with providing material support for terror because he sent money to a group he knew was engaging in terror and planned a trip to join the group’s fight in Pakistan. According an FBI press release about the unsealed documents, Hasbajrami tried to raise funds among Muslims in New York, but was rebuffed:

According to the government’s court filings, Hasbajrami sent over $1,000 to Pakistan to support his contact’s terrorist efforts. When asked to collect money from fellow Muslims for the terrorist cause, Hasbajrami reported that fundraising was difficult in New York because his fellow Muslims became apprehensive “when they hear it is for jihad.”

Hasbajrami’s failure to raise funds underscores what polling has long demonstrated: that Muslim Americans overwhelmingly reject violence.

Despite this evidence, Islamophobic terrorism “experts” — such as those profiled in CAP’s report “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network In America” — and politicians like Rep. Peter King (R-NY) tend to view the presence of Islam, writ large, as a terrorism problem in the U.S. The Islamophobic “experts” fail to distinguish between radical Islamic extremists and the broader Muslim population, and King’s hearings on domestic radicalization focused only on Islamic extremists.

The reality is that ordinary American Muslims have been helpful in the U.S. effort to combat terror at home. Sociologist Charles Kurzman, who talked to ThinkProgress last week, found so far in a study that about one third of the tips that led to foiled terror plots came from the Muslim American community itself. Kurzman noted that the threat from Muslim terrorism was actually quite small compared with other threats to public safety.

Tomorrow, the British Parliament will hold a hearing on the “roots of violent radicalisation” in the Muslim community in that country. The first witness before the committee will be Rep. Peter King (R-NY). King will reportedly be the first member of Congress to ever address a committee of Parliament.

While there is nothing wrong with hosting a hearing examining violent radicalization among British Muslims — just as the British government is probing radicalization among the far-right in Britain — it is a serious error in judgment to invite King. The congressman has been both a vocal supporter of anti-British terrorism in the past and conducted one-sided terror hearings in the U.S. more intended to paint all Muslims with a broad brush than delve into the roots of radicalization.

As Salon’s Justin Elliott documented earlier this year, King was a vocal supporter of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) while it was committing terrorism against British civilians. In 1982, speaking at a pro-IRA rally, King said the United States should pledge “support” for the “brave men and women” using terrorism to resist the British presence in Northern Ireland:

“We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry.”

King, who has said Muslims are “an enemy living among us” and that there are “too many mosques in this country,” is not an appropriate “expert” to testify about radicalization in the United States. Additionally, multiple witnesses that King had wanted to call during his own investigation had to withdraw or be dis-invited due to their anti-Muslim bias. One witness withdrew because he was involved with a militia that tortured and killed Muslims, and another was rejected because of her stridently anti-Muslim views targeting not just extremism but the religion itself.

Despite the fact that almost twice as many terror plots since 9/11 came from non-Muslim groups, King refused to widen his hearings to examine radicalization in other areas. He even questioned the patriotism of Muslims in the United States, accusing the community of not cooperating with law enforcement authorities — despite the fact that around a third of terror plots that have been broken up since the 9/11 attacks were broken up with the help and assistance of Muslim American communities.

It hardly seems fitting to invite a man who has been involved in advocating for anti-British terror groups and whose own investigation into Muslim terror was incompetent and politicized to be the first Member of Congress to ever testify before Parliament on an issue as important to address as homegrown Muslim radicalization.