HEIL ELLISON
By MICHAEL D. EVANS
When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regularly denies the Holocaust, curses Israel, and threatens it with nuclear annihilation, the world yawns. What can you expect from an extremist, fundamentalist Muslim anyway?
But when the extremist Muslim is a Democratic congressman who compares the president of the United States to Hitler in an ignorant attempt to score some political points, maybe it's time to stop yawning and wake up.
Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who is always proudly introduced as the first Muslim elected to the House of Representatives, displayed his ignorance of history and general lack of good sense some two weeks ago by saying that President George W. Bush's actions following 9/11 reminded him of how Adolf Hitler expanded his power after the burning of Berlin’s Reichstag in 1933.
This is what Ellison told a meeting of Atheists for Human Rights, according to numerous press reports: "9/11 is the juggernaut in American history and it allows... it's almost like, you know, the Reichstag fire. After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader of that country [Hitler] in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted."
So, Ellison would have us believe, just as Hitler burned the Reichstag to seize more power, Bush, not Bin Laden, was responsible for 9/11 for the same motive. And the result, according to Ellison, was equally reprehensible as the crimes of Nazi Germany: "We may need years to shake off the taint of Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, FISA violations, Patriot Act encroachments, and other Bush administration failures," he said.
One would think this kind of mindless ranting belonged to the Middle East, the home of Islamist fanaticism. How on earth did it pop up in Minnesota, of all places? Perhaps the link is to be found in Keith Ellison’s own history.
Raised as a Roman Catholic, Ellison converted to Islam at age 19. It appears that his longstanding association with the Nation of Islam and its notoriously anti-Semitic leader Louis Farakhan is the link between Islamist anti-Semitism and Ellison’s trivializing the horrors of Nazi Germany while trashing America and its president.
During Ellison’s involvement with Farakhan, he used three aliases over a period of 10 years: Keith Hakim, Keith X Ellison, and Keith Ellison-Muhammad. He regularly employed these aliases when writing articles in Minnesota papers in support of the Nation of Islam.
Starting when he was a law student in 1989, Ellison wrote several columns as Keith E. Hakim in the student newspaper, The Minnesota Daily, defending Farrakhan against accusations of anti-Semitism and defending Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Abdul Muhammad. In 1995, Ellison wrote an editorial as Keith X. Ellison stating that Farrakhan was not an anti-Semite. The same year, Ellison was identified by the Minneapolis Star Tribune as a full-fledged member of the Nation of Islam.
But apparently the urge to secretly become the Nation of Islam’s first Muslim congressman overcame Ellison’s willingness to tell the truth. When running for Congress last year, he untruthfully assured the Minnesota Jewish Community Relations Council that he had been associated with the Nation of Islam for only 18 months, that he had been unaware of the Nation of Islam's anti-Semitism, and that he had ended his involvement with it when he did become aware of it. He also baldly denied he had ever been an actual member of the Nation of Islam:
"I wrongly dismissed concerns that they [Farrakhan's remarks] were anti-Semitic. They were and are anti-Semitic and I should have come to that conclusion earlier than I did." ("Candidate finds past ties a real bind," Chicago Tribune, June 30, 2006.) He explained that he "did not adequately scrutinize the positions and statements of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and Khalid Muhammed."
Perhaps Keith Ellison never bothered to adequately scrutinize the positions and statements of Adolf Hitler, either.
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