Conservative commentator Cal Thomas compared Islam to a “slow-spreading cancer” in a Monday radio commentary about recent terror attacks in Scotland and London.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations termed Thomas’ remarks “incitement” and urged supporters to complain to Washington FM station WTOP about “Islamophobic attitudes” expressed in the commentary.
“How many more of these incidents will free people take,” Thomas said in a live commentary linked on the CAIR Web site. “Are we resigned to them because we fear doing what is necessary more than we fear what the killers wish to do to us?”
“How much longer should we allow people from certain lands with certain beliefs to come to Britain and America and build their mosques, teach hate and plot to kill us?” Thomas asked. “Not all Muslims from the Middle East and South Asia want to kill us, but those who do blend in with those who don’t.”
“Would anyone tolerate a slow-spreading cancer because it wasn’t fast-spreading?” he asked. “Probably not. You’d want it removed.”
Thomas criticized President Bush for efforts to reach out to Muslims. Last Wednesday the president visited a mosque on Washington’s Embassy Row to announce he will appoint for the first time a U.S. representative to a major international Muslim organization. It was Bush’s second visit to the Islamic Center of Washington. He went there six days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to denounce incidents of prejudice against Muslim Americans.
“Each time something like this happens, President Bush apparently feels the need to take off his shoes and go to the Islamic Center, where he frankly grovels,” Thomas said. “If I were plotting America’s destruction I would see this as weakness. Does the administration really think it will convert killers to non-killers simply by saying nice things? If so, they are dangerously naïve.”
On Tuesday, July 17, CAIR will hold a panel discussion at the National Press Club in Washington to “address the increasing anti-Muslim rhetoric within the conservative movement in the United States” and “the negative impact of such views on religious tolerance in America and on relations with the Muslim world.”
Thomas’ radio comments echo thoughts he expressed in a column following the arrest of the Beltway sniper suspects in October 2002.
“It is past time to stop worrying about political correctness and the names we might be called–such as intolerant bigoted Islamophobes–and start telling the truth,” Thomas wrote. “America’s enemies are among us. They are here to kill us. The two men arrested in Maryland are the first wave following the 9/11 airplane hijackings. Surely others will follow, because their religion and history commission them to kill all infidels. Anyone who is a Christian or a Jew, or insufficiently fundamentalist, is fair game. They intend to hunt us down like deer in their scope sights.”
“In America, some politically active Muslim groups again decry murderous acts done in the name of their religion,” Thomas opined in 2002. “How many more of these acts will be tolerated before we wake up and realize our enemies are playing us for fools and that their sole allegiance is to a violent, vengeful deity who demands his followers to kill everyone who disagrees with their interpretation of him? I do not doubt there are peaceful Muslims, but they aren’t the ones with the guns and the explosives. How does one tell the difference?”
Bob Allen is managing editor of EthicsDaily.com.
Managing editor at EthicsDaily.com from 2003-2009, Allen wrote more than 1,500 news stories during his tenure.
