Racism in the American Muslim World

Interesting take on racism in the Muslim world, between Muslims.

Muslim Americans Are United by Trump—and Divided by Race

Facing increasing hostility from the administration, the religious community also has to cope with its own internal tensions.

When weary Muslims gathered in Toronto in December for an annual retreat, marking the end of a tumultuous U.S. election year, they probably didn’t expect the event to turn into a referendum on racial tensions within the American Muslim community. But it did.

One session was led by Hamza Yusuf, a well respected white scholar who co-founded Zaytuna College, which claims to be America’s first Muslim liberal-arts college. At the end, he was asked whether Muslims should work with groups like Black Lives Matter. “The United States is probably, in terms of its laws, one of the least racist societies in the world,” he replied. “We have between 15,000 and 18,000 homicides per year. Fifty percent are black-on-black crime, literally. … There are twice as many whites that have been shot by police, but nobody ever shows those videos.”

He went on. “It’s the assumption that the police are racist. It’s not always the case,” he said. “Any police now that shoots a black is immediately considered a racist.”

The backlash on social media was swift and immense. “For black Muslims, hearing this from somebody we’ve all come to love and trust—it was a cold slap in the face,” said Ubaydullah Evans, the executive director of the American Learning Institute for Muslims, who is black. He said he saw Yusuf’s comments as a way of perpetuating myths about “black pathology” and blaming African Americans for violence. Yusuf’s statements were indeed somewhat misleading: While a greater number of white people have been shot by the police compared to black people, that statistic doesn’t account for population size. When that adjustment is made, historical data shows that black people are more likely to be shot by police than white people.

Even though slightly less than one-third of American Muslims are black, according to Pew Research Center, American Muslims are most often represented in the media as Arab or South Asian immigrants. The distinction between the African-American Muslim experience and that of their immigrant co-religionists has long been a source of racial tension in the Muslim community, but since the election, things have gotten both better and worse. While some Muslims seem to be paying more attention to racism because of Donald Trump, others fear that any sign of internal division is dangerous for Muslims in a time of increased hostility.

While the Toronto conference was upsetting, Evans said, he doesn’t think it’s representative of the biggest racial problems in the American Muslim community. White racism toward black people is “not the kind of racism that circumscribes my life as an American Muslim,” he told me. “It’s the social racism I experience from people of Arab descent, of Southeast Asian descent. This is the racism no one is talking about.”

The wave of immigration that shaped today’s American Muslim population began in the 1960s, after Congress lifted previous race-based restrictions on immigration. In many ways, this surge was directly connected to the work of black Muslims and others involved in the civil-rights movement: The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 allowed far greater numbers of people from Asia and Africa to emigrate to the U.S. As of 2014, an estimated 61 percent of Muslims were immigrants, according to Pew, and another 17 percent were the children of immigrants. Many of the perceived racial tensions among Muslims come from conflicts between these immigrant communities and non-immigrants, who are often black.

“Immigrant Muslims had a convenient comfort zone,” said Omar Suleiman, an imam based in Dallas who serves as president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research. As each new immigrant community established its own mosques and community centers, portions of the Muslim American population became segregated by ethnicity and income. For non-black Muslims who grew up in the suburbs, attended private schools, and rarely encountered black Muslims in their mosques, it’s easy “to internalize many of the poisonous notions about the black community that … diminish the pain of those communities,” he said.

“I think a lot of African American Muslims see a hypocrisy sometimes with immigrant Muslims,” said Saba Maroof, a Muslim psychiatrist with a South Asian background who lives in Michigan. “We say that Muslims are all equal in the eyes of God, that racism doesn’t exist in Islam.” And yet, cases of overt racism aren’t uncommon, like when South Asian or Arab immigrant parents don’t want their kids to marry black Muslims. “That happened in my family,” she said.

These stereotypes are sometimes perpetuated by leaders like Yusuf. Toward the end of the Toronto conference, he apologized for the ambiguity of his previous comments, but clarified that he believes “the biggest crisis facing the African American community in the United States is not racism. It is the breakdown of the black family.” The line won huge applause in the presentation hall where Yusuf was speaking. But online, there was yet more backlash: Kameelah Rashad, a black Muslim chaplain at the University of Pennsylvania, started tweeting out pictures under the hashtag #blackMuslimfamily, for example, to protest Yusuf’s remarks. (Yusuf declined a request for an interview.)

Some Muslims believe “we shouldn’t talk about anti-blackness within the community, because we’re under siege by Islamophobes. This is not the right time to air internal laundry,” Rashad said. But “if I have to contend with anti-Muslim bigotry outside of the Muslim community, and within my own community, I’m having to push back on anti-black racism, I’m kind of fighting a war on two fronts.”

Racial dynamics have long shaped Muslims’ political identities. There’s a “tendency to regard issues that impact black people—and by extension, black Muslims—as not thoroughly Islamic,” said Evans. “If we’re talking about a social issue in Palestine or Chechnya or Kashmir or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else, those things can properly be engaged as ‘Islamic issues.’ [If] we’re talk about economic injustice, or gentrification, or ex-offender re-entry, or recidivism, those things aren’t really regarded as ‘legitimately Islamic.’ It’s like, ‘Why would a Muslim of conscience be talking about that stuff?’”…Read the rest here...

 

Trumpazoids Threaten to Murder Muslims

More white-wing idjits and nutcases…

North Carolina Tea Partiers prepare to ‘start killing the hell out of’ Muslims to stop Sharia law

A group of tea partiers and other conservatives riled up by Facebook conspiracy theories gathered last week at a North Carolina seafood restaurant to discuss their plans to violently oppose Sharia law.

Nearly two dozen participants, some of whom claimed membership in right-wing militia groups, expressed fears that the Muslim minority have already imposed their religious beliefs on other Americans, reported Triad City Beat.

Presenter Tom Jones sketched out a conspiracy theory involving the Muslim Brotherhood and the “progressive left” to build mosques and Islamic schools, which he warned will then be used to undermine democratic and Christian institutions.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is behind all that terrorism and violent acts, but they’re also here operating in America in a very stealthy mode,” Jones said, according to the newspaper. “They’ve infiltrated the judiciary. They have judges that are elected to the bench. These judges are expected to make rulings from the bench here in America according to Sharia law even though it’s not a Sharia court. If you’ve got a Muslim judge he’s required to try you under Sharia law. These people are in high positions of influence often behind the scenes in government, academia, medicine, the media.”

Conservative media frequently warn about Sharia law, which loosely describes both a personal moral code and the general religious law used in majority Muslim nations, and some states — including North Carolina — have moved to ban its influence on courts.

“Do you have any recommendations as to how we could stop this?” said Frank del Valle, of Winston-Salem. “Because my only recommendation is to start killing the hell out them.”

Del Valle, whose Facebook page shows he’s a Latin musician and former federal employee, said he’d watched his native Cuba fall to the communists and wasn’t willing to see the same thing happen in the U.S.

“The Muslims are doing the exact same thing, so I am very aware of that,” del Valle said. “I have been talking about that for a long time.”

Another participant, a former field director for the Koch-backed Americans For Prosperity and an activist with Faith and Freedom Coalition, told the gathering that one of the Women’s March organizers, Linda Sarsour, wanted to impose her Islamic beliefs on the U.S.

“All those women who showed up in D.C. who appear to be mainstream and supported her, raved about how she’s so great don’t realize that she’s the same one who agrees with Sharia law and will be person who stands beside them and also the same person who slices their neck,” said Robert Watkins, the conservative activist.

Jones, the presenter, warned that Muslim Brotherhood had been operating “training centers” in the U.S. since the early 1980s — which motivated a Tea Party activist from Tennessee to plot a violent attack on a New York village identified by conservative media as a terrorist training camp.

That conservative activist, 65-year-old Robert Doggart, was convicted last week on several federal charges in connection with that violent plot.

The crowd gathered at Captain Tom’s Seafood, in Kernersville, N.C., fretted about the growing number of mosques and foreign-looking doctors they’ve seen in recent years, and Jones urged them to start making preparations for what he saw as an inevitable conflict.

“I don’t know how you say ‘deep doo-doo’ in Arabic, but we’re in it,” Jones said. “We’re in deep doo-doo, ya’ll. This is serious stuff. This is not games. These people do not play. If I put a gun to your head and ask you what you believe, you may not be able to tell, but I guarantee you these people can tell you what they believe.”

Del Valle, who the newspaper pointed out was the only attendee to specifically endorse violence, took the bait.

“I’ll shoot them before they can ask me,” he said.

 

Chumph’s Muslim Travel Ban? Ninth Appellate Court…Nyet!

Smackdown! The first of the Chumph’s illegitimate Executive Orders just bit the dust!

9th Circuit Court of Appeals refuses to reinstate Trump’s Muslim travel ban

On Tuesday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals conducted an hour-long phone hearing to determine the future of President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration. Namely, three federal judges determined whether a restraining order against Trump’s travel ban would remain in place. The court announced a decision on the ban on Thursday, Feb. 9 and ultimately ruled unanimously against reinstating the travel ban.

Trump’s executive order, signed on Friday Jan. 27, 2017, sought to temporarily ban U.S. entry to people traveling from seven majority-Muslim countries: Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria. The order would ban travel from those countries for 90 days and suspend the admission of refugees for 120 days. The day after signing his controversial order, thousands showed up to airports across the country in solidarity to protest what many referred to as an anti-Muslim ban.

Last week, the implementation of the travel ban was halted by a Seattle federal judge, which prompted a tweetstorm from the president. Trump tweeted on Feb. 4 in response to the restraining order, “The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!”

The legal battle continued this week as the Trump administration demanded an immediate reinstatement of the travel ban. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, upon hearing responses and counter-responses from both sides, decided against its reinstatement.

 

Van Jones Destroys Chumph’s “Muslim Profiling”

The truth of the matter of Domestic Terrorism…

The vast majority of mass murder, mass shooting, and serial murders committed in America are by young white men. Removing inner city Drug wars as the motivation, a shocking 90% of all mass shootings/murders are done by white males, frequently due to right wing political motivation, racial animosity, and family issues. So…If you are going to racially profile – you would have to look for a white male in their 20’s, typically with right wing leanings, and socialization issues.

Now we know, from Police experience in stopping innocent black folks in the cities, that stopping every white male under 30 wearing cammies would be pointless. At my home in the country, come fall there is nothing unusual about white folks running around in camouflage T-shits, coats or pants – especially in the fall and winter. The vast majority of these folks are not criminals (other than having a 6 times greater probability than a black person of having a little meth or heroin in their pocket), and pose no threat to run around shooting their neighbors at the local WalMart.

Which is why profiling, when used as a method of “Broken Windows” policing is such an abject failure.

 

Rep. Keith Ellison – “Like Chickens for Col Sanders”

Maybe Keith better come up with a new like… Like “Uncle Akmed”?

Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison: ‘Muslims who support Trump is like chickens for Colonel Sanders’

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) — the first Muslim elected to Congress — denounced the idea that Donald Trump would win many Muslim voters over on Tuesday, The Hill reported.

“Muslims who support Trump is like chickens for Colonel Sanders, you know what I mean?” Ellison said during an event hosted by the National Press Club.

The Hill had previously reported that Walid Phares, Trump’s head foreign policy advisor, had “quietly opened backchannels” with Muslim-American communities. Phares said many of those interactions were prompted by Muslim Republicans “seeking additional information” on the Republican candidate’s positions.

“These people know what they want – they’re concerned about the well-being of their communities and believe that Trump has the right economic and social agenda,” Phares said. “But they’re trying to get a handle on how he’ll deal with the Middle East.”

Trump had previously called for a ban on Muslim immigration into the US, but has more recently said it was just a “suggestion.”

 

Trump In Islamic Terrorist Recruitment Video

As Hillary Clinton predicted (as well as anyone else who had a clue). Trump in Terrorist recruitment videos.

 

White Supremacist Foiled In Ray Gun Mass Murder Attempt

An industrial X-Ray machine certainly has the power to kill through irradiating victims. This white supremacist decided to try loading one in a truck and use it to drive by victims. This, like most whit supremacist and right wing plots almost never hits the news – and is never covered in the right wing press.

 

This White Terrorist Plotted To Kill Innocent Americans, But You Probably Haven’t Heard Of Him

A 55-year-old man thought he had procured a working X-ray device that could focus lethal levels of radiation on residents of an upstate New York community.

It’s exactly the kind of horrific plot that might raise the alarm amid the heightened concern over terrorist attacks on the United States. But there’s something notably different about this case — Eric Feight is white, and his intended victims were Muslim-Americans.

Feight on Wednesday was sentenced to prison for 97 months — more than eight years — for providing material support to terrorists, according to the FBI. He would have gone through with the plot, but federal agents fooled him by posing as Ku Klux Klan members who promised to finance and obtain a “radiation device” that didn’t actually work, the FBI said.

In a world where the mere mention of a plot by a jihadist gets wall-to-wall news coverage, and where fear of terrorism leads presidential candidates to call for a full ban on Muslim immigration, the New York state death ray plot received relatively little notice.

In January 2014, Feight pleaded guilty to helping klansman Glendon Crawford modify the X-ray machine, as well as another device which — if it worked — would remotely activate the X-ray machine on a truck. That rig was supposed to irradiate their victims, killing them days later. The device was never actually operable, the FBI said.

“Eric Feight aided Glendon Scott Crawford in altering a dispersal device to target unsuspecting Muslim Americans with lethal doses of radiation,” Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin said on Wednesday. “Feight and Crawford’s abominable plot to harm innocent Americans was thwarted thanks to the tireless efforts of law enforcement.”

The FBI called the device a “weapon of mass destruction” in August, though it appears to have softened its language since.

In June 2012, an undercover investigator brought Crawford X-ray tubes to examine for possible use in the weapon, and provided technical specifications a month later. At a meeting that November in an Albany coffee shop with undercover investigators, Crawford brought Feight. Both men committed to building the device and named the group “the guild,” according to the indictment against them.

Investigators gave Feight $1,000 to build the remote control device and showed the men pictures of industrial X-ray machines they said they could obtain. They planned to provide him access to an actual X-ray system to assemble with the remote control in June 2013. According to court documents, the sealed indictment was filed the same day and both men were arrested.

Crawford was convicted in August and awaits sentencing.

 

Neo -Nazis Endorse Trump

Any question the Tea Party is a bunch of bigots now? Trump wants to be America’s Fuhrer, complete with Storm Troopers. Some of Trumps major supporters…

• The Daily Stormer, a leading neo-Nazi news site, endorsed Trump on June 28. “Trump is willing to say what most Americans think: it’s time to deport these people,” the site said in its endorsement. It then urged white men to “vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents our interests.”
• Richard Spencer, director of the National Policy Institute, which promotes the “heritage, identity, and future of European people,” said that Trump was “refreshing.” “Trump, on a gut level, kind of senses that this is about demographics, ultimately. We’re moving into a new America,” Spencer said. “I don’t think Trump is a white nationalist,” Spencer added, but noted that Trump embodies “an unconscious vision that white people have — that their grandchildren might be a hated minority in their own country. I think that scares us. They probably aren’t able to articulate it. I think it’s there. I think that, to a great degree, explains the Trump phenomenon. I think he is the one person who can tap into it.” Spencer, Osnos notes, is not the stereotype of a prejudiced yokel: At 36, he is clean-cut, and boasts degrees from elite universities. The Southern Poverty Law Center, Osnos says, calls Spencer “a suit-and-tie version of the white supremacists of old.”
• Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, a Virginia-based white nationalist magazine, said: “I’m sure he would repudiate any association with people like me, but his support comes from people who are more like me than he might like to admit.” Taylor later told Osnos: “Why are whites supposed to be happy about being reduced to a minority? It’s clear why Hispanics celebrate diversity: ‘More of us! More Spanish! More cucaracha!’”
• Michael Hill, head of the League of the South, an Alabama-based white supremacist secessionist group, said Trump was “good” for the white racist cause. “I love to see somebody like Donald Trump come along,” Hill said. “Not that I believe anything that he says. But he is stirring up chaos in the GOP, and for us that is good.” Osnos attended a speech Hill gave to a crowd of cheering followers in which he railed against the “cultural genocide” of white Americans, which he said was “merely a prelude to physical genocide.”
• Brad Griffin, a member of Hill’s League of the South and author of the popular white supremacist blog Hunter Wallace, has written that his esteem for Trump is “soaring,” and has lauded the candidate for his “hostile takeover of the Republican Party.”

 

This Neo-Nazi Response To Donald Trump’s Anti-Muslim Plan Says It All

“Heil Donald Trump – THE ULTIMATE SAVIOR.”

That’s what Andrew Anglin, publisher of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, had to say in response to Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

“Finally: someone speaks sense,” Anglin wrote, pasting Trump’s new proposal under the headline “Glorious Leader Calls For Complete Ban on All Moslems.”

“Make America White Again!” his post concludes.

Anglin is not new to the white supremacy scene. In 2012, he launched a website called Total Fascism, where he also wrote about racist concepts, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog.

Earlier this year, The Daily Stormer endorsed Trump for president. A number of other white supremacist groups have also thrown their support behind the billionaire reality TV star’s candidacy.

On Monday, Trump released a proposal on his website calling for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. The idea was quickly condemned by Democratic presidential candidates and others.

The proposal, via Trump’s website:

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on. According to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population. Most recently, a poll from the Center for Security Policy released data showing “25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad” and 51% of those polled, “agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah.” Shariah authorizes such atrocities as murder against non-believers who won’t convert, beheadings and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women.

Mr. Trump stated, “Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life. If I win the election for President, we are going to Make America Great Again.” – Donald J. Trump

 

Republican Lindsey Graham – “Trump Is A Race Baiting Xenophobic Religious Bigot”

Wow!

One of the last 2 actually qualified candidates on the Clown Bus just took a major dump on Trump. Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina is a long term politician from the state, and is one of the most respected Republicans in the Senate. His expertise being foreign affairs, and he sits the Committee on Armed Services, which has oversight over the Military and DoD. He has been hammered by the extremist right for compromising to keep important functions in the government working, and called RINO (Republican in name only) for not toeing the increasingly fascist and racist line of the extremists.

Lindsey Graham: Trump Is A Race Baiting Xenophobic Religious Bigot, “He Doesn’t Represent My Party”

 

Shia Muslims Hold Anti-Terrorism Rally in DC

Expressions of peace…

Shia Muslims hold antiterrorism rally in Washington

Hundreds of Shia Muslims turned a major annual spiritual ritual into an antiterrorism rally Sunday, marching, singing and praying for hours from trendy Dupont Circle to the White House as tourists and brunch-goers rubbernecked.

Connecticut Avenue was a sea of black as Shia mostly from the D.C. region waved banners with the name of their spiritual forefather, Imam Husain, and pounded their chests with their fists simultaneously as an expression of mourning. His martyrdom 1,400 years ago is a major part of Shia narrative and a defining event in the break between Shia and Sunni Muslims, and is marked annually. A few days ago, more than 22 million Shia and others visited the Iraqi city of Karbala in a pilgrimage to the place where Husain died.

But this year the event twinned as a peace march. Muslims — including head-covered women, young children and hipsters with man buns on hoverboards — held signs condemning terrorism and ISIS and handed out hot chocolate and doughnuts in an effort to open conversations with passersby.

Some American Muslim groups and prominent U.S. Muslims have been making extra public efforts since the recent terrorism-related killings in San Bernardino, Calif., to speak against the Islamic State terrorist group and radical Islam.

“What’s happening now is we feel even more compelled to come out of our homes,” said Zehra Raza, 27, an electrical engineer from Alexandria, Va., who was there with her husband.

The crowd was smaller than in past years, she and others said, because many Muslims were afraid of being harassed or targeted with violence. Such incidents have been on the rise. Many police officers were on hand, and no obvious protests. When the crowd arrived at Lafayette Park across from the White House, tourists pulled out their cellphones. One group from Poland attempted in broken English to explain to a pair from Colombia what was going on.

“Some [Muslims] were afraid but I think this is the perfect time to come out and stand with people who are oppressed. ISIS is the same as what Husain was fighting 1,400 years ago,” Raza said.

ISIS has persecuted Shia – among other religious minorities – in Syria and Iraq, called them infidels and killed them.

As Raza spoke, and offered strangers Krispy Kreme doughnuts, a stranger from outside the group approached her to offer support. The woman hugged her. “God bless. Or whomever bless – the universe bless,” the woman said as she walked away.

Many of the signs echoed the views of marchers – that Shia are victims of ISIS, and in particular of the Wahhabi branch of Islam that dominates Saudi Arabia. The front row of the marchers was a phalanx of young boys holding posterboards with words such as “Americans unite against Wahhabi terrorism,” “Muslims against ISIS” and “American Shia Muslims stand with the victims of San Bernardino.”

 

Paris Imams Offer Prayer and Sing La Marseillaise at Site of Terrorist Attack

 

The Clowning Turns Off Republicans

The world is full of complexities, which cannot be either solved or explained away by one liner appeals to bigotry. Once upon a time the Republican Party had real leaders, and even if you disagreed with them on issues, these were honestly held opinions on making our country better,

That time is past.

The bozo brigade in the Clown Bus are pissing off  lot more than blacks, HIspanics, and Muslims.

What on Earth Is Wrong With the Republican Leadership?

Recent comments, or lack of comments in one case, among the set of candidates for the presidency from the Republican Party — my party — with respect to Muslims, have been disgusting, damaging and dangerous. And it is not enough to toss off these candidates with a few words of derision like the Financial Times op-ed page did recently, calling their first debate a “freak show.” Though an accurate enough description, more substance is required.

Some of that substance has just manifested itself in the form of calls, emails and letters to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), for which I am an advisory board member, having taken the place of Glen Doherty, a former Navy SEAL who was killed, sadly enough, in the same attack that took Ambassador Chris Stevens’s life near Benghazi, Libya in 2012.

This correspondence to the MRFF left no doubt in anyone’s mind who read or listened to it that many if not all of the Muslim soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in the U.S. Armed Forces found the Republican candidates’ pandering utterly despicable. Moreover, they found it extremely harmful in light of the fight against terrorists like ISIS/ISIL in which the military is intimately involved, operations in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as in Africa and elsewhere, and in terms of damage to the pride and respect afforded Muslims in the ranks. In short, such remarks — or the lack of a countering remark by one particular candidate, Donald Trump, when Muslim integrity and citizenship were questioned in his presence — left most of these warriors questioning the Republican Party’s credentials, indeed its character, for leading this country from the White House or the Congress.

That there is a well-financed campaign in America to discredit Muslims in general is shocking, to be sure, but at least historically understandable: America has always had such racial hatred, religious bigots, and otherwise mentally-impaired people. But for the highest ranks of one of the nation’s principle political parties to appear publicly to condone such tactics is something quite new. Senator Joseph McCarthy might have gotten Eisenhower’s attention sufficiently to shake his hand in Milwaukee when Ike was campaigning there in 1952, but that was as far as it went. Ike reviled McCarthy and everything for which he stood.

And Senator John McCain, at a campaign event in 2008, demonstrated quite superbly how such hateful remarks should be treated, swiftly and powerfully, when he answered a woman who questioned President Obama’s religion and ethnicity and said: “No ma’am, no ma’am, he’s a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

Not so with some of the current crop of Republican candidates.

Donald Trump, the front-runner, failed to challenge a questioner last Friday who wanted to know when the U.S. could get rid of its Muslims. Trump also failed to rebut an assertion — once again — that president Obama is a Muslim.

Dr. Ben Carson seems to be trying to crawl out from under his statement that a Muslim should not be president (and the innuendo that accompanied such a remark in the minds of the Americans who still believe Obama to be a Muslim). But he is not making a great deal of progress.

Indeed, as the wolves circle around these candidates, each seems to be rethinking the extremes they have visited to create a following, to excite “the Base,” and to raise their and the media’s ratings. But none of them seems to have a clue as to what his remarks mean to the men and women in the military. This is particularly unconscionable for Dr. Ben Carson. He might not have been in the combat arms in the Army but he did wear the uniform and should know better.

As a Republican, I am utterly ashamed of my party. As a soldier for 31 years, I am disgusted with these “courageous” candidates, none of whom has served a day in the Infantry in their lives. As a citizen, I am deeply concerned for my country.

I can only take solace from the clear reality that none of them will ever win the White House.

Lawrence Wilkerson is a Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary. He was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell in the first George W. Bush administration. He served 31 years in the US Army.

 

Republican Rep – “Middle Easterners Are All Liars”

In the next round of “Lets piss off everybody in the world except old white guys who watch Faux News”. This time Rep Duncan Hunter (R-Cal) takes a shot at those “A-rabs”, accusing everyone in the Middle East of being liars…

 

GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter: ‘It Is Part Of The Middle Eastern Culture’ To Lie

During a Monday interview on CSPAN, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) said “it is part of the Middle Eastern culture” to lie.

“In the Middle Eastern culture it is looked upon with very high regard to get the best deal possible, no matter what it takes, and that includes lying,” Hunter said.

When asked if he meant that “all Middle Eastern countries are this way,” Hunter reiterated his point.

“Yeah, that’s part of Middle Eastern culture. They like to barter there,” Hunter said.

Hunter did finally acknowledge he was making a generalization after calling the Iranian government “liars.”

In an email to TPM, Joe Kasper, Hunter’s director of communications, said the congressman’s comments were only in reference to Middle Eastern leadership and not the Middle East as a whole.

“I recall when asked to specify on one of the issues, he said the goal is to get the best deal in general terms,” Kasper told TPM. “But to be specific, he was talking about the political culture.”

This isn’t Hunter’s first questionable statement. In June 2010, Hunter said he would support deporting U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, saying “it takes more than walking across the border to be an American citizen,” and he alsocriticized the fight to repeal “don’t ask don’t tell,” saying it would open the “military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites to gays and lesbians.”

Hunter also told CSPAN this week that he believes the United States should use nuclear weapons against Iran if necessary.

“I don’t think it’s inevitable but I think if you have to hit Iran, you don’t put boots on the ground, you do it with tactical nuclear devices and you set them back a decade or two or three,” he said. “I think that’s the way to do it with a massive aerial bombardment campaign.”