Muslim-Baiting Sen. Kyl Joins Anti-Mosque Movement

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) is the latest politician to join an increasingly hostile movement against a proposed Islamic community center and mosque in lower Manhattan, two blocks from Ground Zero.  In an op-ed, Kyl writes:

While it will ultimately be up to city and state officials to determine whether the project can proceed, those officials should recognize that this project is different than other proposals that come before them.  They must understand that our country is still at war with radical Islamists and that victims of the 9/11 attacks have a stake in their decision too.

The substance of the column is the same right-wing talking points that many are familiar with by now, including the fraudulent claim that the man leading the effort is an extremist and that financing for the project (which hasn't been raised yet) is coming from terrorist-loving havens.  None of that is true, as the New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg explains:

Like many New Yorkers, the people in charge of Park51, a married couple, are from somewhere else-he from Kuwait, she from Kashmir. Feisal Abdul Rauf is a Columbia grad. He has been the imam of a mosque in Tribeca for close to thirty years. He is the author of a book called "What's Right with Islam Is What's Right with America." He is a vice-chair of the Interfaith Center of New York. "My colleagues and I are the anti-terrorists," he wrote recently-in the Daily News, no less. He denounces terrorism in general and the 9/11 attacks in particular, often and at length. The F.B.I. tapped him to conduct "sensitivity training" for agents and cops. His wife, Daisy Khan, runs the American Society for Muslim Advancement, which she co-founded with him. It promotes "cultural and religious harmony through interfaith collaboration, youth and women's empowerment, and arts and cultural exchange."

The only real question the editorial raises concerns Kyl.  Chiefly, what took him so long?

Jon Kyl is to the Senate what Peter King (R-NY) is to the House of Representatives.  Both men seem perfectly comfortable repeating concocted statistics and promoting crude generalizations in order to advance the narrative that American Muslims are a dangerous fifth-column.  For instance, in 2003, Kyl wrote in the National Review that Wahhabi ideology "dominates, finances, and animates many groups here in the United States."  For his part, King has on several occasions claimed that 80 to 85 percent of American mosques are led by extremists.  Of course, neither of those statements are even remotely true.

But it doesn't end there.  Last September, Kyl invited Geert Wilders — a notorious Muslim-baiting Dutch politician — to screen a controversial movie he'd put together in which verses from the Quran are juxtaposed with acts of terrorism.  A spokesman for Kyl defended his boss, saying, "All too often, people who have the courage to point out the dangers of militant Islamists find themselves vilified and endangered."