Rep. Allen West Opposes the Founding Fathers

Broward Palm Beach New Times: CAIR Officials on NDAA, Indefinite Detention, and Allen West Calling Them an "Un-Indicted Co-Conspirator

See the article here.

Believe it or not, the Council on American-Islamic Relations might actually have something in common with tea party members. It's about last year's National Defense Authorization Act, which a federal judge ruled last week is vague enough to potentially allow for the indefinite detention of American citizens.

Tea partiers (and libertarians of other stripes) waving around copies of the Constitution say it's a gross abuse of government power to allow the military to pluck people out of their American homes and call them enemy combatants. CAIR agrees.

Congressman Allen West does not.

Despite his chest-thumping defense of the Constitution at every fundraiser and motorcycle rally he can rumble into, West rose in opposition last week to an amendment that would specifically guarantee constitutional rights to anyone arrested on terrorism charges on United States soil. It basically says that if you're arrested in America, you're guaranteed the due process afforded you by that book West is waving around all the time.

West said the military should be allowed to do what it wants, including to American citizens, because "we cannot look to guarantee to those who would seek to harm us the constitutional rights that are granted to Americans."

"We're all on this battlefield," he said in his defense of letting the Army subvert the Constitution on American soil. This was after he opened with an anecdote about Nazis.

West added, "I find it very interesting that a sponsor of this amendment is the Council for American-Islamic Relations [sic] that is a co-conspirator, unindicted co-conspirator, for the largest terrorist financing --" and then he was cut off.

Washington Rep. Adam Smith was the one doing the cutting of, responding with, "I point out that only members of Congress are allowed to sponsor amendments."

He's right, but I figured it was best to check in with CAIR, as their alleged support of the amendment was being used to somehow prove its insidious intent.

"We're against the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens," said CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper. "Why is he even bring us up in reference to the NDAA other than that he's fixated on Muslims?"

CAIR national legislative director Corey Saylor said sponsor wasn't an accurate word for the group's support of the amendment, but he did say that the group "did go around and tell offices that we were in support of it."

"[It's not new] to target organizations representing a disliked minority. [Saylor note: Such as the NAACP and Martin Luther King.] I stand on our arguments, though. What we're arguing for is our government does not have a way to indefinitely detain anyone in our country," Saylor said, pointing out that the Constitution refers to "all persons," even if West says terror suspects don't count.

"If he's offended by that, [his problem is] not with CAIR. His problem is with the founding fathers," Saylor said. "The Constitution guarantees due process, and we believe that the sections 1021 and 1022 remove that."

In any case, the point is moot -- the amendment was voted down the next day. But both Saylor and Hooper said it was a simple constitutional argument the group was espousing, nothing more.

"Allen West seems to have a personal vendetta against the American Muslim community and will push that vendetta forward at each and every opportunity. Why he chose this one, I don't know, but that's Allen West," Hooper said. "At least he's not calling us communists."

National Journal: Muslim Vote will Matter in 2012 Election

See the story here.

American Muslims will be an important voting bloc in the 2012 presidential election, but some politicians have been hesitant to reach out to the community for fear of a backlash, said Corey Saylor, spokesman for the Council of Islamic-American Relations.

“People want us to be a part of their movements but sort of toward the edge of stage,” Saylor said. “Often times what we see is that if someone is getting close to the Muslim community, they get attacked for being weak on national security.”

Muslims want to participate in the political process, and they’re paying attention to domestic and foreign events, according to a report released last month by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington.

The report recommends that politicians engage Muslim Americans because they could play key roles in the upcoming election, especially in key swing states like Florida and Michigan.

The U.S. census didn't ask about religious affiliation, so estimates regarding the size of Muslim communities living in Michigan and Florida are imprecise. But as minority voters become increasingly important in elections, Muslim political importance increases too, the report says.

“Because of numbers in Ohio, Florida, Northern Virginia, that’s going to make it a community whose concerns are a little more important to pay attention to this election cycle,” Saylor said.

In 2010, the Pew Research Center estimated that nearly 2.6 million Muslims lived in the United States, representing less than 1 percent of the population. By 2030, the number of Muslims living in the U.S. is expected to more than double, according to the Pew Research Center.

“It’s clear that they’re going to continue to grow and become a bigger piece of the electoral puzzle,” said Aimee Chiu of the American Islamic Congress. “It would be great to start looking at understanding the constituency.”

Policy decisions like the USA Patriot Act and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed the 9/11 attacks that caused American Muslims to abandon the Republican Party after supporting George W. Bush in the 2000 election, the report said.

Between 2001 and 2004, the percentage of American Muslims dissatisfied with the country’s direction increased from less than 40 percent to more than 60, according to the report. In 2008, 89 percent of Muslims who voted supported Barack Obama. In 2011, more than three quarters of Muslims approved of Obama’s performance, the report said.

But Muslim support for Democrats isn’t a sure thing. Forty percent of Muslims identified as independent in 2004, according to the report.

The Muslim population in the U.S. is very diverse, said Aimee Chiu of the American Islamic Congress. Muslims care about what’s going on abroad, but they also care about a wide variety of issues, she said.

Muslims are interested in domestic issues like the economy, health care, and civil liberties, Saylor said. Either party could cultivate support among Muslims if they engage with the community and address issues that they’re concerned about, the report said.

Meanwhile, American Muslims can work to show campaigns that engaging with the community is vital to winning elections, Saylor said.

“The people who organize the best and deliver, they’re more likely to get their issues listened to,” he said.

Fox News: "Group blasts Gingrich for limiting hires to Muslims who renounce Shariah law"

The largest Muslim civil liberties group in the United States on Wednesday condemned Newt Gingrich for saying he would only hire Muslims to his administration if they renounced the use of Islam's Shariah law as a tool for U.S. government.

Calling Gingrich "one of the nation's worst promoters of anti-Muslim bigotry," the Council of American Islamic Relations suggested the Republican presidential candidate is a segregationist.

“Newt Gingrich's vision of America segregates our citizens by faith. His outdated political ideas look backward to a time when Catholics and Jews were vilified and their faiths called a threat," said CAIR Legislative Director Corey Saylor in a statement.

"The time for bias in American politics has passed and Newt Gingrich looks like a relic of an ugly era," Saylor said.

CAIR said the release was prompted by the candidate's remarks Tuesday in Columbia when, asked if he would ever endorse a Muslim running for president.

"It would depend entirely on whether they would commit in public to give up Shariah," Gingrich said.

"A truly modern person who happened to worship Allah would not be a threat, a person who belonged to any kind of belief in Shariah, any effort to impose it on the rest of us, would be a mortal threat," Gingrich told the crowd, adding that he's "totally opposed" to Shariah law being applied in American courts and favors a federal law that "preempts" its use.

This month, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an Oklahoma ban on the application of "Sharia law" and "international law" in courts.

Pointing to the religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, CAIR defends Shariah law as a set of beliefs that "teaches marital fidelity, generous charity and a thirst for knowledge," and mandates that Muslims respect the law of the land in which they live.

Gingrich had a different interpretation of Shariah law, pointing to the, "rising Islamization of Turkey has been accompanied by a 1,400 percent increase in women being killed."

"When you look at the application of Shariah in places like Iran, when you look at churches being burned in Nigeria and Egypt, and that the decline of Christians in Iraq from a million, 200 thousand when the Americans arrived to about 500,000 today, I think it depends entirely on the person," he said.

"If they are a modern person integrated in the modern world and they are prepared to recognize all religions, that's one thing. On the other hand, if they're Saudis, who demand that we respect them while they refuse to allow Christians to worship in Saudi Arabia, that's something different," he continued.

Later in the day during a question and answer session in Aiken, S.C., Gingrich also called the Ground Zero mosque "a deliberate and willful insult to the people of the United States who suffered an attack by people who are motivated by the same thing."

"I think the time has come for us to have an honest conversation about Islamic radicalism. I don't think we should be intimidated by our political elites, and I don't think we should be intimidated by universities who have been accepting money from the Saudis and who, therefore, now have people who are apologists for the very people who want to kill us," he said.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/18/group-blasts-gingrich-for-limiting-hires-to-muslims-who-renounce-shariah-law/#content

Video: Fla. Plot Suspect Arrested with Help of Muslim Community (CAIR)

Video: CAIR-FL Rep Says Plot Suspect 'Had No Understanding of Muslim Faith'