Video:
Suhail Khan joins leftist Rachel Maddow of MSNBC to defend CAIR and slur the authors of Muslim Mafia as “professional bigots.”
Transcript:
RACHEL MADDOW:
Last Wednesday, four Republican members of Congress held a press conference demanding that the House Sergeant at Arms investigate CAIR, the Council on American/Islamic Relations. They said they wanted an investigation because they said CAIR had hatched a secret plot to try to place interns on Capitol Hill. Muslim interns. [ROLLS CLIP]
SUE MYRICK:
Author Paul Sperry and his co-authors investigating team have unearthed a 2007 memo written by CAIR which documents their stated intentions and goals to place interns in Congressional offices.
JOHN SHADEGG:
The book which Sue referred to, Muslim Mafia, is one in a series of books that I would encourage Americans to read.
SUE MYRICK:
I did write the forward to the book.
RACHEL MADDOW:
did write the forward to the book. The being an intern while being Muslim accusations come from a new book that is published by World Net Daily. World Net Daily is the website best known for conspiracy theories about things like health care reform and like the Obama administration’s secretly planning to round up conservatives to put them in concentration camps. If this were just about World Net Daily pushing another cooky conspiracy theory—this one that Muslims were trying to take over Washington starting with the intern jobs, that would be a dog bites man story about the conservative movement and its fringes in the age of Obama. But this is four sitting members of Congress pushing this idea. Joining us now is Suhail Khan, he’s the fellow for Christian-Muslim understanding at the Institute for Global Engagement. He’s a former senior political appointee in the administration of President George W. Bush. Mr. Khan, it’s nice to meet you. Thank you for being here.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Thanks for having me, Rachel.
RACHEL MADDOW:
As I said, if this were just World Net Daily we wouldn’t be covering this story. But it’s four serving members of Congress. And I understand that you think these allegations are not only concerning, but that you’ve seen this before.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Unfortunately, we have. It’s disgusting, it’s sad. And we have, particularly after 9-11, the same professional bigots—is what I call them—have gone after other Muslim-Americans serving their government. In the past, it was in the Bush Administration when I was serving and now they’re going after Muslim staffers starting with interns. I guess if you know how to make coffee and answer the phone, next thing you do, you’ll be taking over the world, so–
RACHEL MADDOW:
Who were the professional bigots that you met?
SUHAIL KHAN:
Well, there’s the authors of this book. They’ve been joined by others on the internet and it’s really invidious because not only do they go after these innocent Americans who just want to serve their country, they’re really—they’re making money off of it. And that’s what this is all about. Really. They’ve duped these members of Congress, pushed them out in traffic on these charges that are completely baseless, really to sell books. And that’s what it is. It’s about fear-mongering and about money. It was interesting that they actually had their press conference a couple of days before the book release. I mean, if this is really about national security, you’d go to the authorities and say, you’ve got to stop something. And stop it now. No, this is about going to the media and trying to sell books. It’s really sad.
RACHEL MADDOW:
That was one of the important details today followed up by talking points memo—reported that these four members of Congress, after they made the demand that the sergeant-at-arms investigate CAIR for these interns, these four members of Congress didn’t actually make the request of the sergeant-at-arms to investigate.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Right.
RACHEL MADDOW:
Which implies that they’re more motivated by the PR effect of scare-mongering about this than they are about any real perceived harm.
SUHAIL KHAN:
That’s right.
RACHEL MADDOW:
Yeah.
SUHAIL KHAN:
And it’s sad and it has a real effect. Not only does it scare members of Congress and their chief of staffs to hire Muslim-Americans who otherwise would be great and loyal Americans serving in their office and serving their country, but even those that are working there now are being called in sometimes by their chief of staff. I know one instance where this has happened. And they’re being questioned and saying, hey, is any of this true? Is there any truth to it? And worse, if you’re a kid out in Peoria or in California, my home state, and you’re thinking about going into public service, you might say, hey, maybe I’ll just, you know, stay home and stay here and work locally in the private sector. Because maybe serving my country isn’t what I should be doing right now. Because who needs this kind of scrutiny? It’s just really disgusting. The good news is, it’s only four members of Congress. You haven’t seen our—the Republican leader out there. You haven’t seen Mr. McConnell in the Senate out there and joining these guys. So it’s really—they’ve been duped by these professional racists out there and I think if we can work with them, I plan to talk to them and try to educate them about the realities.
RACHEL MADDOW:
That’s a generous take towards these four members of Congress. I mean, Sue Myrick wrote the forward to this book. And it seems to me that it is important for Republican politics and conservative politics—and American politics, broadly speaking—that there be someone in leadership who is willing to call out stuff like this and who’d be willing either to discipline or bring back onto the reservation these four members of Congress who have gone this way. Do they not bear some responsibility, though, for having followed this path thus far and for having given this scare-mongering press conference?
SUHAIL KHAN:
They do. They bear responsibility and we’ve seen this before. I mean, you know, whether it was Jewish-Americans at the turn of the century, Italian-American Catholics, we saw the hate during the 1960 election of President Kennedy. Unfortunately, at different times in our histories, some—a very select few—have fear-mongered and tried to raise a specter of fear about different Americans, whether they be Mormons, Catholics, Jewish-Americans. And now, after 9-11, it’s Muslim-Americans. And so, I think—and you saw even in this last election, there were issues raised about Mitt Romney, about Barack Obama and his faith–
RACHEL MADDOW:
Right.
SUHAIL KHAN:
It took a hero like Colin Powell, if you recall, to get up and say, stand up and say, this has got to stop. We’re all Americans here and we need to stand together as Americans.
RACHEL MADDOW:
Suhail Khan, fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement, a former senior political appointee in the George W. Bush Administration—I don’t have anything to do with this, but as an American, I’m sorry.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Well, thank you.
RACHEL MADDOW:
Thanks.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Thanks for having me.