Rep. Ken Weyler: Islam is the enemy
Five years ago, the Concord Monitor asked voters in Kingston and surrounding towns to “consider what their representative’s bizarre and mean-spirited statements say about the people who elected him.” That advice is even more pertinent today.
The representative in question is state Rep. Ken Weyler, a 14-term lawmaker, one-time deputy speaker and former chair of the powerful House Finance Committee. On the day Pres. Obama made his first visit to a U.S.mosque and denounced “inexcusable political rhetoric against Muslim-Americans,” Weyler made national headlines with a virulent, Islamophobic attack.
The Kingston Republican was testifying in support of his legislation that would prohibit members and supporters of foreign terrorist organizations from receiving public assistance. In his written testimony, distributed by House Democrats and first reported by Talking Points Memo, Weyler demonized Muslims as “the enemy.”
“All of the terrorist attacks of the last twenty years have been by Muslim fanatics. Islam has by its religious leaders declared us as the enemy,” Weyler wrote. “[Islam] is an ideology posing as a religion. Islam is intolerant and deceitful, and its adherents are ordered to overthrow our way of life and to replace it with ‘sharia’ law. … Giving public benefits to any person or family that practices Islam is aiding and abetting the enemy. That is treason.”
House Democratic Leader Steve Shurtleff denounced Weyler’s remarks. “The outrageous claims … could be the most outrageous, intolerant, hateful rhetoric that I have heard in over 12 years as a legislator,” Shurtleff said. “Rather than making hateful, false claims about the third-largest religion in America, Representative Weyler should focus on educating himself about both the true values of Islam and the proud tradition of religious freedom in our country.”
In his speech at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, President Obama echoed Shurtleff’s remarks. “And so if we’re serious about freedom of religion – and I’m speaking now to my fellow Christians who remain the majority in this country – we have to understand an attack on one faith is an attack on all our faiths,” the president declared. “And when any religious group is targeted, we all have a responsibility to speak up. And we have to reject a politics that seeks to manipulate prejudice or bias, and targets people because of religion.”