Muslims for Tancredo?  I Think Not!

by Sheila Musaji

Rep. Tom Tancredo just won’t quit.  He is a Colorado Republican congressman and presidential candidate, and he seems determined to bomb Mecca and Medina.  On a recent trip to Iowa he said:

“If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina. Because that is the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they would otherwise do. But as I say, if I am wrong, fine. … I would be happy to do something else. But you had better find a deterrent or you will find an attack. There is no other way around it. There have got to be negative consequences for the actions they take. That’s the most negative I can think of.”

He is further reported to have said:

“The president and this country better figure out exactly what it can do to deter, I underline deter, the next attack,” Tancredo said. “Deter, not just respond, deter, or else I assure you we are going to suffer. The extent of which of course I do not know. I know what they are planning and I know what they want. I do not know if they are going to be capable of doing this tomorrow, the next day or a month from now. I know right now at this moment there is nothing that deters them.”

Nothing surprising here, he made the same statement in 2005.  At least he didn’t try to sing this like John McCain with his “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” ditty.  Representative Tancredo has also opposed the design of the Flight 93 National Memorial’s shape (a crescent of embrace) “because of the crescent’s prominent use as a symbol in Islam.”  And, in 2006 when Pope Benedict XVI sparked riots by condemning Islam as “evil,” Tancredo urged him not to apologize.  These sorts of statements earned him spot number 6  and the title “Mr. Bigotry” on Rolling Stone’s list of our 10 worst congressmen.

He also said in a a recent interview with John Hawkins on the Right Wing News:

The Clash of Civilizations. I happen to be a devotee of Mr. Huntington and believe it’s true, it is a clash of civilizations. I believe that what we are fighting here is not just a small group of people who have hijacked a religion, but it is a civilization bent on destroying ours. Radical Islam has been the foe of Christiandom for centuries. The most serious foe of Christiandom. The battle ebbs and flows, peaks and becomes less intense, but it has been going on for centuries. We have never really been bothered by it, because the world was a place in which you could not really attack the United States physically. There were oceans separating us and if you did come, what were you going to come with? A gun, a rock, an arrow? But today it has all changed, it has taken on a different dimension.

People ask me, “Well of the Islamic Community, how many would you say are really terrorists?” I say, “There are relatively few, less than 10% of the Muslim population that you could categorize as (supporters of) terrorists.” Now how many people in their heart of hearts in that community want to see the demise of this country? How many would cheer, not out loud maybe, but in their heart when things like 9/11 occur and I’ll tell you; it’s a majority among them. Now this becomes a little more complicated, so hang with me. Remember that I said the threat to the United States comes from two things; the act of immigration combined with the cult of multiculturalism? We strain to tell Americans and aliens in this country that there’s nothing unique about America, nothing unique about American civilization, nothing that requires their allegiance, nothing of great value that they should sacrifice for. Then of course people come here in big numbers, from other countries, in other cultures, in other political and religious ideologies, and they come ready to do battle and we encourage it. We don’t try to integrate them, we actually encourage their separateness. We encourage them to stay separate, to retain political allegiance to other countries, to other ideologies. This combination, massive immigration & radical multiculturalism, is a prescription for our own demise.

We will never be able to win in the clash of civilizations, if we don’t know who we are. If Western civilization succumbs to the siren song of multiculturalism, I believe we’re finished.  (emphasis added)

During the French riots Tancredo in an interview with WND, said he believes “the chickens are coming home to roost in France because, for years, the country with the largest Islamic population in Europe has ignored rising Muslim tensions within its own borders.” The real issue the French “are now dealing with,” he said, “is [that] you cannot integrate some people into your society.”

In 2006, the South Carolina chapter of the League of the South (LOS), a neo-Confederate hate group, hosted a barbeque in honor of Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, head of the House Immigration Reform Caucus. Proceeds from the $15 per-plate fundraiser went to Americans Have Had Enough!, a South Carolina-based non-profit coalition for which Tancredo serves as honorary chairman.  Dressed casually in a yellow t-shirt, Tancredo addressed the standing-room audience of 200-250 from behind a podium draped in a Confederate battle flag.

I wonder if Rep. Tancredo would have suggested blowing up the Vatican during WWII since both the Fascists and Nazis were primarily Christian and Roman Catholic.  Actually, when the genocide took place in Rwanda, that was also a “Christian problem”, and what about Cuba, or Venezuela, or Russia.  Lots of reasons to bomb the vatican, or the headquarters of the Russian orthodox church, or ...  There is no way to treat this with respect.  It is lunacy.  We are at war with al Qaeda, not with Islam, but Rep. Tancredo doesn’t seem to understand the difference.

I also wonder if Rep. Tancredo understands the difference between just war, revenge, deterrence, pre-emption, and terrorism.  My guess is that he doesn’t understand these concepts any better than al Qaeda understands the difference between jihad and hirabah.

Although Tancredo may think he is frightening Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda with such statements, the truth is that they will use such statements to their advantage in their attempts to find more recruits.