Well, we're going to Congressman Keith Ellison right now. He's joining us from Minneapolis, his district.
Welcome to Democracy Now! , Congressman Ellison.
REP. KEITH ELLISON: Good morning, Amy. How are you doing?
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. I assume you weren't at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear on Saturday, but I wanted your comments on that little interaction, and then, most seriously, the kind of comments that are being made by this founder of the Tea Party Nation.
REP. KEITH ELLISON: Well, I was there in spirit, although my body was here in Minneapolis working hard to get the vote out. I thought it was a great rally, and I'm very proud of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for their efforts, and everybody who attended.
But, you know, I've gotten sort of thick-skinned about this stuff, Amy. I mean, you know, it seems like almost every day something comes up that sort of edges the Muslim community to the edge, to the outside. And in my view, this is an unwelcome development, because, as was made very clear in the clip that you played, you know, the over--I mean, the overwhelming--nearly all Muslims in this country and in this world basically want what everybody else wants: peace, take care of their kids, decent education, a meal, you know, things like that. And so, because that's what Americans want, there's ample room for common cause and cooperation. But unfortunately, you know, you take a tiny minority of extremists and try to make them emblematic of 1.3 billion people, and you expand the number of people who you fear and don't like and are potential enemies of yours, and you shrink the number of people who could be on your side.
I mean, one thing I'd like to say to this gentleman who's leading this Tea Party effort is that there are Muslims walking shoulder to shoulder in Iraq. There are Muslims who are working--we're working with in places like Jordan and in Afghanistan and Pakistan and all over this world--American Muslims. There are 6,000 of them in the United States armed forces and are serving their country, and many millions more who are seeing patients every day, representing people in court, looking after their kids right here in the good old USA. So, it's too bad, but I have gotten to the point where--just doesn't affect me emotionally anymore.
I was a little bit upset by Juan Williams' comment, not because I think he is a bigot--I don't think he is--but I was just disappointed because I thought if anyone would know better, certainly, you know, the producer and author of Eyes on the Prize would know better. But I just sort of now think that, you know, it would be great if maybe you or somebody else would interview Juan and say, "Look, let's unpack your fear, unpack your worry, so that we can get down to some real humanity here."
AMY GOODMAN: Did you think that NPR should have fired him?
REP. KEITH ELLISON: You know what? I have decided not to sort of weigh in on their personnel decisions. You know, if they would have kept him, would I have thought they made a mistake? No. That they fired him, did I think they made a mistake? No. It's their prerogative. But I do think that Juan's comment offers us an opportunity for a conversation. I would point out to Juan Williams and people who think like him that the people who boarded those planes on 9/11 did everything they could do to not look Muslim. They weren't wearing Muslim garb, whatever that may happen to be in Juan Williams' mind.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Juan Williams' comment that he's afraid when he sees people in Muslim garb on a plane.
REP. KEITH ELLISON: Right. So the people--well, but the people in Muslim garb are probably the last people you need to worry about, you know, because the attackers were people who were not wearing Muslim garb and were trying to look as mainstream as they could. And so, that's really not a rational thing. But that's OK. Human beings are not all rational. Part of us are emotional, and that's part of the human experience.
But I do hope that this spike in Islamophobic ideas can cause us to really kind of think about, you know, prejudice, acceptance, belonging, who's in, who's out, what is our national commitment to inclusion and generosity. You know, this is a country that underwent a civil war over who belonged and then went through momentous civil rights movement, again, over who belonged. Let's pull on our experience and just rediscover the fact that we shouldn't have any second-class citizens in America. And I think that if we don't really sort of get together, you know, we run certain risks.
I'll say this. I urge Muslim, Jewish, Christian congregations to get together to talk. I personally plan on writing a letter to Juan Williams and inviting him to have a conversation with me, because I don't think he has bad intention. I personally believe that, you know, we need to really promote the interfaith dialogue.
And we also--Muslims need to remind our fellow Americans that, you know, when Osama bin Laden and people that want to kill--like, that want to kill somebody, usually it's somebody who's Muslim. That's a fact. I mean, al-Shabaab in Somalia kills a lot of Muslims. So, I mean, in Iraq, all you got to do is listen to the news every night. All those hundreds of people being killed are Muslim, by these terrorist people. So, I mean, it's a--the fight against terrorism is also a fight that the Muslim community needs to be partnered with everybody else against these homicidal maniacs. So, I mean, this is the reality.
But it is--but being an American Muslim is like, on the one end, you've got, you know, this guy who's head of the Tea Party and, you know, Terry Jones and Franklin Graham, and on the other side, we got Anwar Awlaki and we got all these extremist people who claim Islam. So, you know, most folks and American Muslims are in the middle trying to, you know, survive and get their kids to school on time. But that's the reality.
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