Muslims in our Government: Andre Carson
IT’S WORTH CONSIDERING
This is the second post in a series informing you about some of the Muslims who now hold key positions in our government.
Andre Carson
Like Keith Ellison, Andre Carson is an American-born convert to Islam (in the 1990s). His conversion occurred after his exposure to the poetry of the Sufi mystic Rumi and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He earned a criminal-justice management degree from Concordia University in 2003, and a master’s degree in business management from Indiana Wesleyan University two years later. Prior to his career in national politics, Carson was an investigative officer with the Indiana State police alcohol-and-tobacco division and part of an anti-terrorism unit in the Indiana Department of Homeland Security.
Carson began his political career in August 2007, when he was elected to the city-county council of Indianapolis and Marion County. In March of 2008, he ran in a special election to succeed his grandmother, Rep. Julia Carson (D-Ind.), who died as a representative of Indiana’s 7th district. He won, becoming the second Muslim member of Congress (the other was Keith Ellison). Carson has retained that legislative seat ever since, continuing the progressive agenda of his late grandmother while becoming a radical supporter of the programs and beliefs of fellow Democrat Barack Obama. These include his fierce opposition to the Iraq War, his support for a government-run, universal healthcare system, and his support for “abortion rights.”
In the House of Representatives, Carson is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the Climate Change Caucus, the Human Rights Caucus, the Labor and Working Families Caucus, the LGBT Equality Caucus, and the Renewable/Efficient Energy Caucus, among others. He also serves as the CBC liaison to the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition. To understand what these organizations are really all about, check out my articles on Agenda 21/Sustainable Development.
AS I SEE IT
In case you’re not familiar with Mr. Carson, he’s the man who made headlines in March of 2010 when he and fellow CBC member John Lewis claimed that Tea Party protesters who opposed healthcare reform had hurled racial slurs at them as the congressmen headed toward the Capitol to vote on the PPACA. Specifically, Carson claimed that while “hundreds of people” were chanting “Kill the bill,” he had heard the “n – word” directed at him and Lewis “at least 15 times.” The late conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart subsequently offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who could provide audio or video proof to substantiate Carson’s accusations. No evidence ever surfaced, and the reward went unclaimed.
At an August 22, 2011 Congressional Black Caucus event in Miami, Carson told a gathering of supporters that the Tea Party was infested with white racism:
“This is the effort that we are seeing of Jim Crow. Some of these folks in Congress right now would love to see us [blacks] as second-class citizens. Some of them in Congress right now with this Tea Party movement would love to see you and me … hanging on a tree. Some of them right now in Congress right now are comfortable with where we were fifty or sixty years ago. But it’s a new day with a black president and a Congressional Black Caucus.”
On May 26, 2012, Carson was a guest speaker at the 37th annual convention of the Islamic Circle of North America/Muslim American Society, in Hartford, Connecticut. During his remarks, Carson claimed that U.S. schools should be modeled after madrassas-Islamic schools infamous for their tendency to promote sexist, anti-Semitic teachings. According to Carson:
“America will never tap into educational innovation and ingenuity without looking at the model that we have in our madrassas, in our schools, where innovation is encouraged, where the foundation is the Quran. And that model that we are pushing in some of our schools meets the multiple needs of students…. America must understand that she needs Muslims.”
This is the man the people of Indiana’s 7th District have elected to represent them. Click here to learn more about Andre Carson.
ON THE LIGHTER SIDE
I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me it would defeat the purpose.
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