Rep. Keith Ellison's tearful testimony at Rep. Peter King's hearing on domestic radicalization yesterday was a compelling rebuke to the entire premise of the hearings. So it's only natural that conservatives would seek to smear him.
Ellison grew emotional over the case of Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a NYPD officer who died responding to the 9/11 attacks but nevertheless faced some scurrilous rumors that he had been part of them. Matthew Shaffer at National Review says the story is "pretty close to the opposite of the truth."
Shaffer then proceeds to actually quote the New York Post article that suggested Hamdani might be a terrorist, before concluding that Ellison is a liar and a bigot. He calls Ellison a liar not because the Post didn't smear Hamdani, or because Ellison was factually wrong when he said, "Some people spread false rumors and speculated that he was in league with the attackers only because he was Muslim." Shaffer calls Ellison a "liar," because the praise Hamdani received from other sources somehow means the smear didn't happen. In case that doesn't satisfy you, Media Matters has collected a series of other contemporaneous media accounts confirming what Ellison said was true.
To understand the "bigot" charge, you really have to go deep into the psychological weeds of conservative anti-anti-racism, where an accusation of bigotry -- in this case the baseless smear that Hamdani was "up to some tricks," instead of dead underneath the rubble of the World Trade Center -- is tantamount to bigotry, substantiated or otherwise. Shaffer concludes:
The belief that Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a victim of anti-Muslim bigotry was never based in reality. It was manufactured by the Left as a rhetorical prop, exploited as a bludgeon against people who want to talk seriously about terrorism. If Hamdani was singled out for his faith, it would appear he was singled out for especially high honors. Most 9/11 victims were not half so celebrated as he was. Rather than suffering from apocryphal American anti-Muslim bigotry, Salman Hamdani appears to have benefited from America's eager inclusiveness.
So it's perfectly fine for a publication like National Review to oppose an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan on the grounds that Muslims are on some level collectively responsible for 9/11, but it's wrong for someone like Ellison to point out the patriotism and sacrifice of a Muslim who died serving his country on that day in response. Also, the dead guy should really be more appreciative of the "affirmative action" he received.
Jennifer Rubin settles for straight-up lying about Ellison's opening statement:
And Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), drawing sympathy from the same liberals and pundits who had taunted the speaker of the House for his tears, broke down talking about a Muslim first responder killed on 9-11 by the jihadists whose ideological views Ellison ignored. In fact, he would only refer to them as "violent extemists," in essence refusing to acknowledge their motivation or the existence of Muslim radicalization.
Ellison literally referred to the problem in his testimony that day:
It is true that specific individuals, including some who are Muslims, are violent extremists. However, these are individuals – but not entire communities. Individuals like Anwar Al-Aulaqi, Faisel Shazad, and Nidal Hasan do not represent the Muslim American community. When their violent actions are associated with an entire community, then blame is assigned to a whole group. This is the very heart of stereotyping and scapegoating, which is counter-productive.
Now perhaps Rubin thinks that Muslims should be held responsible "as a community" for terrorism, or that these three men do "represent the Muslim American community," and that wouldn't surprise me. But there's no way to argue that Ellison was ignoring the "motivation or the existence of Muslim radicalization." Ellison was making the same argument as most counterterrorism experts -- that holding all Muslims responsible for terrorism is counterproductive.
Moreover, last August, Ellison delivered a speech at the Center for American Progress specifically on the issue of domestic radicalization in the Muslim community where he declared, "As American Muslims, we have to tackle the moral logic that some Muslims use to justify violence in the name of religion. ... To say glibly Islam is a religion of peace ignores the reality that there are some Muslims, to our horror, who distort Islam and advocate violence. We have to be at the forefront of correcting the record."
Ellison has certainly done his part, and his leadership in Congress is a direct rebuke to the extremist narrative that being an American and being a Muslim are in conflict. It's a shame conservatives are constantly smearing him anyway.
