Muslim writer rebuts Weyler’s Islamophobic claims, challenges lawmaker to public debate
Exeter writer and photojournalist Robert Azzi has responded to a personal attack from state Rep. Ken Weyler by challenging the 14-term lawmaker to a public debate.
In a September 29 letter to the editor, Weyler complained that he had been “attacked publicly by two men named Azzi” following House testimony in which Weyler argued that giving public assistance to Muslims amounts to treason.
(Weyler may have thought he was been criticized by two men after reading a Concord Monitor op-ed and a separate letter to the editor in Foster’s, but both were written by the same Robert Azzi. “There’s only one of me,” Azzi explained dryly.)
In his letter, Weyler asserted that he was being criticized for “publicizing what I read in the Koran and warning my fellow citizens of why we are under attack, and suggesting that we stop giving money to terrorist sponsors.”
The one-time deputy speaker and former chair of the powerful House Finance Committee went on to describe the so-called revelations he had gleaned from the Koran and to dismiss Azzi, saying the Muslim writer is motivated by a “rule in Islam that deceit of non-believers is acceptable and encouraged as long as it advances Islam.”
In his response, a letter to the editor published in the Exeter News-Letter, Azzi debunked Weyler’s assertions point by point and concluded by noting Weyler “is being as bigoted, deplorable, and as incontestably ignorant as were southern segregationists who stood before schoolhouse doorways denying entrance to students whose color they didn’t like, who stood before polling places denying the franchise to those unlike themselves.”
Azzi, who has been traveling around New England leading a series of “Ask a Muslim Anything” educational forums, then challenged Weyler to a debate in front of his Kingston constituents before the November election. “No notes. No papers. No electronics: Just Weyler’s MIT educated brain — and mine,” Azzi wrote.