Bad Night for Congress’ Anti-Islam Caucus
Good riddance to the haters.
Bad Night for Congress’ Anti-Islam Caucus
A congressman who routinely accused American Muslims of being enemies of the United States looks likely to go down in defeat. Another, a former presidential candidate who warned of a wide-ranging Islamic conspiracy to undermine the government, barely won reelection. A third, who espoused the same conspiracy, opted not to run. It’s not been the greatest night for Congress’ anti-Islam caucus.
That caucus was a legislative bastion of support for a group of self-anointed counterterrorism analysts that tried to convince the FBI and the military that the Islamic religion was to blame for terrorism. That group is already beleaguered: President Obama has ordered its teachings removed from counterterrorism training across the government, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff declares it “totally objectionable.” Now it’s got fewer allies in Congress to fall back upon.
Allen West isn’t conceding defeat in Florida’s 18th district, but challenger Patrick Murphy appears to have beaten the Tea Party favorite. According to Politico, Murphy’s narrow vote total is larger than the margin that would trigger a recount. If West has lost his race — perhaps the most lavishly funded among House candidates — the House will have lost one of its most prominent exponents of a global Islamic threat.
West, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, professes that Islamist terrorism is merely authentic Islam. “This is not a perversion, [the terrorists] are doing exactly what this book [the Quran] says,” West told a 2010 audience, following a disquisition on Charles Martel’s fight against a Muslim army at the Battle of Tours in 732. When New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the 2010 construction of an Islamic cultural center a few blocks from Ground Zero, West dismissed Bloomberg as ignorant of “the history of Islamic conquest against western civilization.” West has been unapologetic about the act that ended his Army career: firing a gun near the head of a Iraqi detainee in 2003; Glenn Beck dubbed West “a modern-day ronin.”