Muslim Boy Scouts Get Out the Vote — For the Democrats

Regular readers know that Dymphna and I are big fans of the Boy Scouts. Our son is an Eagle Scout, and his local troop and its scoutmaster are doing a commendable job.

That’s why the story below is so dismaying. What those leaders had their scouts do is in violation of official BSA policy, and it ought to be against federal election laws, if it isn’t already.

But politics is all about what you can get away with, and these folks obviously got away with it. They helped unseat George Allen and elect Jim Webb, and that’s what’s important. The end justifies the means, right?

This is not a new story, but it just now came to my attention. These are excerpts from an article by The Investigative Project on Terrorism:

Seeking to flip a Republican Senate seat, the Muslim American Society used Boy and Girl Scout troops last year as part of a massive get-out-the-vote campaign targeting Muslim voters in Virginia and elsewhere.

National leaders at the Boy and Girl Scouts of America say they’ve never heard of using Scout troops in such political activity and it violates Scout policy. They promised to look into the MAS program.

MAS Executive Director Mahdi Bray isn’t keeping the fact that he tapped Scouts to run phone banks a secret. In fact, he’s bragging about it. And while he claims the calls were non-partisan, he also is comfortable saying “Democrats would be a better choice” for his constituency.

In Virginia, incumbent George Allen was struggling to hold onto his Senate seat against former Navy Secretary Jim Webb. “We delivered 80 percent of the eligible voting Muslims to the polls,” Bray said in July at an Islamic Circle of North America-Muslim American Society convention in Hartford, Conn. “48,000 Muslims voted in Virginia. 93 percent of them voted for Webb, seven percent voted for Allen. Webb won by a slim margin of 9,000 votes. Now I don’t care how you slice it, dice it and I don’t care whether you are a mathematician or not, you can figure this out, that if 48,000 Muslims voted and 90 percent of them voted for the successful candidate, then certainly, and he only won by a 9,000 vote margin — we made a difference.”

[…]

The Muslim American Society was founded in 1993 by the members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian-rooted organization that aims to reestablish the Caliphate, a global state governed by Islamic law.

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Bray, its leader, has called the war on terror “a war on Islam” and at a 2000 rally, gestured enthusiastically in support of Hizballah and Hamas. In addition, he has defended Hizballah on his Washington, D.C. area radio show.

Bray openly described the scouting program last November in a release posted on the MAS website. “MAS Dialing for Muslim Votes” described how the organization was using a Muslim Voters Database to target calls nationally and encouraged people to vote on November 7, 2006.

“The MAS CEE (MAS Center for Electoral Empowerment) phone banks are being operated by MAS Youth, chapter members and volunteers. Even MAS Boy and Girl Scout Troops are making calls,” the release said.

“Through our MAS Youth department, Boys and Girls Scout Troops, we are training an upcoming generation that will be spiritually grounded and political (sic) savvy.”

That last statement appeared to rankle Boy Scout of America Scout Executive Alan Lambert, who said he’s never heard of Scouts participating in phone banks before. Although he believes learning civic responsibility is an integral aspect of Scouting, he doesn’t like people taking advantage of children.

“We would expect that no organization would use children to play out their political desires,” Lambert said. “From my perspective…we would sever our relationship with anyone who uses children to advance political agendas.”

“If it’s going on and it’s inappropriate, we’ll stop it tomorrow,” he added.

These shenanigans took place right here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, my home state. But Northern Virginia is not like the rest of the Commonwealth. It is a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

To give our European readers an analogy: Northern Virginia is like Brussels, and my part of the state (Central and Southside) is like the rest of Flanders.


Hat tip: ACT for America.