Muslim groups are protesting the comments of a Republican candidate for Congress who contends terrorist acts are not “aberrational behavior” by a few extremists but part of the expansionist aims of fundamentalist Islam.
 GOP candidate Kurt Eckhardt |
Kurt Eckhardt, who is challenging three-term Rep. Jan Schakowsky, told WorldNetDaily he won’t retract statements to the Daily Herald newspaper of suburban Chicago.
“There’s not a chance I will do that,” he said in an interview with WND.
Eckhardt told the editorial board of the Daily Herald Monday he has distrusted Islam “for years” and supports the monitoring of mosques by the federal government.
Muslim groups responded immediately, calling Eckhardt’s characterization of Islam inaccurate and dangerous, the paper reported.
“This feeds the cycle of misunderstanding, feeds the cycle of prejudice, feeds the cycle of hate crimes,” said Yaser Tabbara, executive director of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Tabbara’s group, which touts itself as the leading Islamic civil rights group on the continent, is a spin-off of the Islamic Association For Palestine, labeled a “front group” for Hamas by two former heads of the FBI’s counterterrorism section.
But Tabbara told the Daily Herald, “We are unequivocally opposed to terrorism. Our religion does not condone it in any way.”
Eckhardt asserts secular democracies must be prepared to take pre-emptive action against the threat of fundamentalist Islamic expansion.
“No other issue matters if we’re dead,” he told the newspaper’s editorial board.
Eckhardt, who was persuaded by Republicans to challenge Schakowsky for the 9th District seat in suburban Chicago, insisted terrorist acts by Muslims are not an aberration.
“Where is the voice of reason in the Islamic community?” he said.
His Democratic opponent believes, however, that terrorism and calls for violence are “not at all” inherent in Islam.
“Going in with the suspicion that every mosque is somehow a breeding ground for terrorism defies all the information,” Schakowsky said.
Counterterrorism analysts say Islamic mosques, schools, associations, chaplains and clergy in the U.S. have been disproportionately funded by the radical Wahhabi stream of Islam promoted worldwide by Saudi Arabia.
Rapid expansion
Explaining his remarks, Eckhardt told WND he was not referring to every Islamic nation or Muslim in the world but responding to the accusation from the left that America’s foreign policy is the lightning rod for terrorism.
“The Muslim community and the press are hestitant to acknowledge that this has become a global issue,” he said. “We are seeing the rapid expansion of globalist Islam in Russia, Africa, Southeast Asia and even in parts of Europe, and that has nothing to do with a free Palestine or American troops in Afghanistan or Iraq.”
Eckhardt said his intent was to emphasize that the insurgency is widespread outside the Middle East, and “I am mindful we have to be on guard militarily.”
He also acknowledged he’s mindful of the fact that the Bush administration is careful to speak of a “war on terror” and brand Islam as a “religion of peace.”
“I don’t want to tell the administration how to run their war,” he said. “I think at the end of the day they are going to get the job done.”
But he said he was “surprised that they weren’t more strident politically in naming the enemy.”
“President Bush’s polls were highest when he said, ‘Either you are with us or against us,'” Eckhardt argued. “I think Americans respond well to that kind of bluntness.”
Eckhardt is a sizeable underdog in the congressional race, but he says, if anything, his remarks about Islam will help his chances, noting he has received only positive feedback from voters in a district he describes as “very Jewish.”
On his campaign website, Eckhardt describes himself as a “follower of the principles of Ronald Reagan,” believing “in a less obtrusive government at home coupled with a strong national defense against both terror and rogue nuclear nations.”
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