Will Minnesota Send the First CAIR Muslim to Congress?

UPDATE: One of our commenters, Emerson Twain, has given much more information on Ellsion, the CAIR Muslim candidate for Congress:

The 5th district Minnesota congressional race is a hot one and has garnered blogospherean ink all across the political spectrum. The race for this long-time Democratic, but now open seat, pits newcomers Alan Fine (Republican endorsed, and a Jew coincidently), and Tammy Lee (Independence Party endorsed) against the endorsed favorite, Democrat Keith Ellison, to succeed retiring Democrat Martin Olaf Sabo. Ellison, 43, raised Roman Catholic in Michigan, is a Muslim “revert” since his undergraduate college days in Indiana, and a former Nation of Islam adherent. He is currently fasting his way through the campaign which happens to coincide with Ramadan.

The local inclusion crowd (the majority of the electorate) of progressive puritans, anti-war lefties and universal health carichondriacs can hardly wait to ram this election home, thus proving to the world they are the most diverse people on earth and will do just about anything to prove to George Bush just how much they hate him.

Few, however, have crossed the mental threshold of the election itself beyond the swearing-in ceremony. It is a strange and troubling thought experiment worth probing in this most unique situation.

If Keith Ellison is indeed elected as 5th Minnesota district representative to the Congress of the United States he will become quite suddenly I expect, the defacto spokeman for U.S. Muslims, by virtue of being an elected representative to the U.S. government. He will certainly join the Black Caucus. On questions of Islam, at least initially, all eyes will be on him, both nationally and internationally. Should he win, look for CNN, the BBC, the NY Times, Al Jazeera and others of the international media to come knocking at his door. One wonders what the electorate of the 5th District, which includes the city of Minneapolis, will think of this. Osama bin Laden, deep in his cave will know the name of Keith Ellison and where he lives. What will be his views on jihad? On Sergeant Hasan Akbar? What about the the honor killings of women that are sweeping the infidel lands being colonized by Muslims? Where does he stand on the imposition of Shari’a law in infidel lands, the U.S., for example? What about the veiling controversy in the UK, in Jack Straw’s District? And that’s just for starters.

How will he reconcile the concepts of American liberty with the inshallah fatalism of the mosque? Will he have the inclination or strength to stand against the bullies and killers in the camp of Islam who seek to stifle free speech? Or will he censor himself and expect us to do likewise (as John Sobieski has suggested)? And what if his answers thrust him into the camp of apostates? He almost certainly would not consider himself as such, but its the shahids with the butcher knives and guns who decide these matters. Is he ready for this? Is Minneapolis ready for this?

I would also expect to see even more Muslims flocking to Minneapolis (tens of thousands of Somalis now), and with them the attendant conflicts over Shari’a in our institutions.

And if this happens, I would then expect to see Islamic issues eventually begin to crowd out the other issues of Minneapolis ward politics. I think Minneapolis will be stunned.

Furthermore, after the election, will the Ummah then consider the 5th Minnesota Congressional District to be Islamic land, and all that entails?

Minnesota, weep for your children.


According to Joel Mowbray at Real Clear Politics, the House of Representatives may have its first Muslim member come November. This guy has quite a history, too. First, he was a member of the Nation of Islam, our own home-grown pre-9/11 “Muslims.”

Remember back then, when we didn’t take this group seriously? Sure, the Nation of Islam was anti-Semitic and vaguely sinister, but hey, they seemed to be redeeming a few of the lost human beings that the Democrats’ welfare scam had created. Those guys — many of them former felons and druggie gang members — were living reformed, disciplined lives. If they wanted to believe in Allah, well…America is a large tent, is it not? What harm could it do? Right?

That was then...a "then" so long ago that the world which existed in the summer of 2001 seems to belong to another century.
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Now comes Keith Ellison, former member of the Nation of Islam, running for Minnesota’s Fifth District. This candidate is a piece of work. Here are a few of the jewels in his crown:

• He apologized to the local Jewish community, claiming that (a) he was never a member of the NOI, and besides he didn’t know they were anti-Semitic (in other words, he must need the local Jewish vote to win?). What he fails to mention is his words at a hearing in 1997 in which he claimed that to be quoting a government official’s comment that “Jews are the most racist white people.” (and here I thought that was a designation reserved for rednecks. The Joos must be playing catch-up here. Or maybe Ellison was referring to Southern Jews? That must be it.— Dymphna)
  
  
• Ellison is a good buddies with Nihad Awad. Who is he, you ask? Why Awad is the co-founder of CAIR, and these two folks go way back: all the way to the University of Minnesota in the 1980’s.
  
  
• Out of the goodness of his heart, Awad (CAIR, in other words) is pouring riches into the coffers of Ellison’s campaign, to the tune of at least $45,000.00 since July. Of course, in true CAIR tradition (lie, lie, lie), all of this is denied. “Money? What money?”

So the Democrats are stuck. How do they defend this guy? Easy: locally, they use the usual Democratic tactic of attempting to maim the messenger. Any mention of this questionable candidacy is immediately ruled off the table as “racist, partisan, bigoted…blah, blah, blah” This disinformation campaign isn’t difficult when the media is already in your pocket. Thus, Mowbray reports on the Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist who claimed that Elllison is being attacked simply because he’s a Muslim.The Dem-controlled media has excelled (if that is the word for such lame rhetoric) for so long in reductio ad absurdum attacks that it has left the field of reality to the rest of us. It’s embarrassing to watch, really.

Meanwhile, the larger party is caught between a rock and a hard place. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Charles Schumer of New York both see CAIR as suspect. Schumer flatly states that it has “ties to terrorism.” Mowbray notes:

Sen. Schumer has special disdain for Awad and CAIR’s other co-founder, Omar Ahmad, saying in a 2003 hearing that both men have “intimate connections with Hamas.”

The words most damning to CAIR, though, have been uttered by its co-founders. At Barry University in Florida in 1994, Awad declared, “I’m in support of the Hamas movement.” Addressing a youth session at the 1999 Islamic Association of Palestine convention in Chicago, Ahmad glorified suicide bombers who “kill themselves for Islam”: “Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam, that is not suicide. They kill themselves for Islam.”

But even if the national party doesn’t call Ellison on the carpet for his ties to CAIR, and even if they don’t support him, this mole may well win a seat in Congress. Don't forget, Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District voted 71% for Kerry. They're likely to find Ellison much to their liking. So then it will be up to the Democrats in Washington to keep him in line, and to try to convince the rest of us that they are not really the party of treason and that their candidates really will make America a safer place.

One thing’s for sure: Democrats ceased being the Party of Reason generations ago. Somewhere along the front lines of the War on Poverty they morphed into outright socialists and haven't looked backwards since. That's because they've been too busy moving sideways -- always left, always a bit loonier than they were the year before.


Hat tip: Chas’ Compilation