MINNEAPOLIS — Zuhur Ahmed wiped away a tear as U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison spoke Thursday about a Muslim paramedic who perished in the 2001 terror attacks, only to be falsely accused of being a terrorist himself.

Ahmed, a U.S. citizen, said Ellison’s emotional testimony before a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on homegrown terrorism reminded her that there are people who might not see her as a true American because she is Muslim.

“I don’t see what about me is less of an American. My faith? My scarf? My ethnicity?,” she said. “Why cannot people understand the simple fact that there is the good and the evil in every community and every society?”

Ahmed, the host of a local Somali radio show, joined a handful of Somali and Muslim community leaders in Minneapolis Thursday to watch the hearing via live feed. While she said a hearing on the topic of homegrown terrorism is fair — because anyone who threatens America threatens her, too — she and others said it was wrong of the Republican-led committee to focus the hearing solely on Muslims.

New York Republican Rep. Peter King, the new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he called the hearing because he believes Muslim community leaders need to speak out more loudly against terrorism and work more closely with police and the FBI. Democrats wanted the hearing to focus on terror threats more broadly, including from white supremacists.

The subject is especially sensitive in Minnesota, where Somalis feel they have been scrutinized after it became public in 2008 that roughly 20 young Somali men traveled to Somalia to possibly fight for the terror group al-Shabab.

“It’s really an emotional time,” said Hashi Shafi, head of the Somali Action Alliance. “It’s just too much. … We cannot be on the hot spot all the time, every year. Just as we had in 2008, and 2009 and ‘10 and now 2011, Somalis are still in another hot spot.

“It’s unfortunate,” he said.

Ellison, who criticized the nature of the hearing for singling out Muslims because of the violent acts of a few people, said the best defense against extremism is “social inclusion and civic engagement.” He credited the FBI in Minneapolis for reaching out to local Somalis during the investigation into the travelers.

That investigation is ongoing. Several people have pleaded guilty and some prosecutions are pending. Minneapolis FBI Special Agent in Charge Ralph Boelter recently told The Associated Press that there’s no strong indication that young Somali men still are traveling to support al-Shabab, but he doesn’t discount that it could happen again.

An uncle of a Minnesota teen who went to Somalia also spoke at Thursday’s hearing. Abdirizak Bihi, the uncle of Burhan Hassan, said an Islamic group and the mosque his nephew attended did not do enough to help find the men after they left. He said the mosque, Abubakar As-Saddique, denied the men and teens were missing and called the teens’ families liars.

And he accused the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Minnesota of telling people not to talk to the FBI.

Many of those watching the hearing from Minneapolis shook their heads disapprovingly when Bihi spoke.