Muslim lawmaker: Herman Cain is a "bigot"

BY JUSTIN ELLIOTT | Salon.com

"Over the past few months, former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain has carved out a place as the most prominent anti-Muslim figure in the GOP presidential field, and, arguably, the country.

First, earlier this year, he promised he would not hire any Muslims to be in his future cabinet, subsequently repeating various versions of that pledge. Then, on a trip to Tennessee last week, Cain came out against the construction of a mosque project there. On Fox News Sunday, he expanded that stance, endorsing the idea that any American community could bar construction of mosques.

To get a response to Cain's new comments, I spoke to Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., who is one of two Muslim members of Congress and who has emerged in recent years as a loud anti-anti-Muslim voice....

...Even though we're coming up on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, these comments from Cain and Gingrich, and the whole Park51 controversy last year seem to mark something new. Do you have any theories as to why all of this happening now?

There is an anti-Islam industry in the United States, and it's also active in Europe. The individuals who are associated with those movement are people like Pam Geller, and Robert Spencer. Stop the Islamization of America is a website/organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a hate group. There's a cast of characters. There's Frank Gaffney -- he is so outrageous he tried to expel [former Bush aide] Suhail Khan from the Conservative Political Action Conference for no reason other than he's a Muslim. So you have Muslim Republicans that are being attacked for their religion alone. So you have an organized hate group that is actively trying to manipulate fears, they go into local communities and whip up hatred. They have a whole movement around the country to ban Shariah law. They often market themselves as counterterrorism experts. They have been receiving honoraria from police departments and various law enforcement agencies, some from the federal government ...

America has a history of free expression, so I don't really mind that these people exist -- they should be allowed to exist. The thing that bothers me is that, they keep this up for a few years, and then -- catastrophic things have been known to happen. This country interned Japanese people. It's impossible to believe it could have happened, but it happened...." [Read Full Article]