It’s people like Ellison who refuse to admit Islam has a problem that fuels American’s skepticism towards Muslims.
Via Politico:
Rep. Keith Ellison on Monday slammed as “wrong” and “ridiculous” Rep. Peter King’s rationale for wanting more surveillance of Muslim communities in the wake of the Boston bombings.
“It’s true that well over 99 percent of the Muslim community is [composed of] absolutely loyal, law-abiding Americans who are as offended by what happened in Boston as any other American,” Ellison (D-Minn.) said on MSNBC’s “News Nation with Tamron Hall,” echoing King. “That’s true. But after that, my friend Representative King is wrong again.”
King (R-N.Y.), who has said that the vast majority of American Muslims are good people, is also calling for greater law enforcement focus on that community.
“When you’re going after the Mafia you go to Italian communities… If you’re looking for Islamic terrorism, you focus on Muslim communities,” he told POLITICO over the weekend, also arguing that “We’re at war with Islamic terrorism. It’s coming from people within the Muslim community by the terrorists coming from that community, just like the Mafia comes from Italian communities.”
Ellison said such surveillance is unprecedented.
“The FBI did not go after all Italians or all Irish people,” said Ellison, who was introduced on the show as “the first Muslim elected to Congress.” “No one ever said, let’s surveil a whole ethnic community. They went after people who were criminals and who were exhibiting criminal behavior. Now the fact that those people happen to be of a particular ethnic origin was not really the causal effect. The issue was what they were doing.
“And so again, it is just ridiculous, I mean to say that because of the Westies, that every Irish person was under suspect, everyone in America knows that’s ridiculous,” he said. “But still he wants to cast a wide net with regard to Muslims.”