Jim Shella Still Shilling For The Carsons

As sure as the sun is going to rise in the east each day you can count on WISH-TV political reporter Jim Shella to use his reporting to diminish, scuttle, smear or otherwise discredit any candidate who dares to challenge a Carson, no matter how little serious threat the candidate poses to the Carson family's hold on Indiana's 7th congressional district. Perennial candidate Marvin Scott has been in Shella's sight since he defeated the party-backed candidate, Carlos May, in this year's primary election for the right to challenge U.S. Rep. Andre Carson. Shella jumped all over comments supporters of Scott made about radical Islam a few weeks back, and now he's going after him again for statements Scott has posted on his campaign website in support of fighting Muslim extremism and his support for freedom of religion. Shella reports on the latest tempest in a teapot:

Supporters of Democratic 7th District Congressman André Carson today accused his Republican opponent, Marvin Scott, of using anti-Muslim bigotry in his campaign.


The charges are similar to charges made more than a month ago, but they are also different because Scott can no longer attribute the anti-Muslim messages to supporters outside his campaign organization.

The new charges deal with a new website from the Scott campaign, drmarvinscottforcongress.com . It went online Monday.

The website lists the principles on which Marvin Scott bases his campaign; number 8 is "Fight Muslim extremism and protect freedom of religion." Click on it and you will find an image from 9/11 and ten reasons why radical Islam is a threat. They include "Islam commands homosexuals must be executed." "Islam allows husbands to hit their wives." And "Islam commands that drinkers and gamblers should be whipped."

24-Hour News 8's Jim Shella asked Carson campaign manager Matt Hammond if the Congressman believes any of the things that are listed on that website. "Oh, absolutely not," said Hammond who went on to call the website sad and disappointing.

André Carson is one of just two Muslims in Congress. During the primary a Scott supporter used anti-Muslim rhetoric in an invitation to a fundraiser. Another made an offensive posting regarding Allah on Scott's Facebook page. When we asked about it, Scott said he can't control what his supporters say. "And they come with many ideological notions about this," he said on May 17th. "If I had seen this I would have advised against it."

But Scott is longer distancing himself the Muslim bashing. Now he puts his name on it.

"It definitely seems like it's a wedge issue," says Hammond, "and he's trying to sort of color all of this campaign with fear."

So is Shella and Carson saying that you are an anti-Muslim bigot if you support the fight against Muslim extremism? Shella might want to explain to his viewers why our government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the past nine years fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, sacrificed the lives of thousands of American soldiers and caused tens of thousands of soldiers to suffer permanent injuries from those wars, only to be told you're an anti-Muslim bigot if you support that costly effort. He also may want to more fully disclose what Scott's website actually said on the subject. Fighting Muslim extremism is one of fourteen principles Scott lists on his website, and it reads:

“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” This is how the Bill of Rights begins. Every American has, and should have, the right to worship in the way they personally see fit. America stands for honoring and protecting that God given right. No such thought or law exists in any Muslim country on the face of the earth. If Muslim law were to be imposed in our country, freedom of religion would disappear here as it has in Muslim countries around the globe. Islam advocates the eventual elimination of all Christians and Jews. We are threatened by past and current deadly acts committed in the name of Islam. We are threatened by those who want Shariah or Muslim law to be honored and to eventually replace our law. Women are cruelly and regularly subjugated to second class status by many practicing Muslims. Honor killings of women are widespread in the Muslim world and happen in our country too. Omar M. Ahmad, founder of CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations) said: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant”. Many Muslims are respectful and model citizens, but many are not. Radical elements of Islam are funding and building mosques across America and they use our laws to protect themselves while advocating the overthrow of our laws and our way of life in their mosques and online. Attacks against America and Americans here and in other parts of the world can not and should not be ignored or explained away. We are forced to be, based on their acts and statements, at war with radical Islam and we could lose if we do not fully understand and fully confront the Muslim menace. I will not be intimidated and I will not be fooled. I will stand against the immediate and real threat of radical Islam to all Americans and to our country.

Scott's website goes on to list a number of positions held by the Muslim faith, including death sentences for homosexuals, allowing husbands to beat their wives and commanding the whipping of gamblers and drinkers. In actuality, those statements are all correct in nations where the Muslim faith is practiced to the exclusion of all other religions and where religious law trumps the civil laws. It is only in countries where people of the Islamic faith are constrained by constitutions and laws like our own country's constitutional protection separating church from state and ensuring religion freedom that those practices are not carried out.

Scott's statement touches on issues that are increasingly creeping into our own country as the number of people who practice Islam grows and gains in influence here, including an insistence of imposing their religious views on the rest of us. This fear is not unfounded. In Minneapolis, a charter school founded by two imams was named after a Muslim general who helped conquer Spain. The school is funded with taxpayer dollars and mixes the teaching of Islam with the school's required curriculum, including prayer time and fasting in accordance with the religion, prompting a lawsuit to be filed against the school by the ACLU. In New York, Muslims are demanding that public schools make Muslim holy days official school holidays. In Chicago, business owners in areas populated with Muslims are being pressured to stop selling lottery tickets, alcohol, pork and other food and non-food items proscribed by the religion. Right here in Indianapolis the Muslim community demanded and got restrooms with foot baths at our new airport terminal so a small number of taxi cab drivers who practice Islam can wash their feet before their daily prayers. Last year, a local police officer complained to me that a Muslim state trooper had unfairly targeted gay police officers. Allegedly, the trooper lay in wait outside a downtown gay bar and pulled the police officers over and cited them for drunk driving after they emerged and drove away. Three gay police officers were cited for DUIs over a short period of time by the same police officer patrolling an area not typically patrolled by state troopers. Coincidence? I doubt it.

It hasn't happened here yet, but in western European countries, the growing influence has been seen with the establishment of Sharia courts that assume jurisdiction over disputes between Muslims in those countries and that resolve those disputes in accordance with Muslim law. England is reported to have more than 80 such courts. Although these courts are supposed to have the consent of all parties to exercise jurisdiction, there are reports that coercion is often applied to gain a party's consent. These courts operate in secret with no public scrutiny. In family matters, the decisions are extremely biased against women. Child custody disputes are not decided on the basis of the best interest of the child and often give the father sole custody of the children. Marital estates are not divided evenly, favoring the husband over the wife. In probate matters, the sons are often awarded at least twice as much as the daughters. These courts insist on exercising jurisdiction in cases involving domestic violence, which typically involve allegations that the husband beat the wife or children. Again, these courts often find justification for the husband's actions in religious law. To say that this movement is a step backwards for womens' rights is an understatement.

I'm not a fan of Marvin Scott. I supported his opponent in the primary. But there is absolutely nothing on his website that can be deemed anti-Muslim bigotry. It is entirely consistent with the principles over which our founding fathers fought the American Revolution, a noble cause that gave us the greatest compact between a government and the governed--the U.S. Constitution. People on the Left attack people of the Christian and Jewish faiths on an almost daily basis with impunity. Rep. Carson himself while speaking to a group of national reporters called tea party demonstrators in the nation's capital racists who posed as great of an internal national security threat as extremist Muslims. Of course, Shella had nothing to say about that. Just like he had nothing to say when Carson arranged for the anti-Semitic, Nation of Islam leader Rev. Louis Farrakhan to speak at his grandmother's funeral. He was silent when CAIR, an unindicted co-conpirator in federal anti-terrorism prosecutions, hosted a fundraiser in our nation's capital for Carson. And he said nothing when Carson accepted contributions from persons linked to Muslim terrorists and then quietly returned them without comment after a Jewish member of his campaign staff insisted he do so. Like I said, Shella is just a shill for the Carsons.

I highly recommend you watch this interview with Dr. Wafa Sultan, a Syrian physician raised in a Muslim family who later rejected the teachings of Islam after getting her medical degree and immigrating to the U.S. She is scheduled to testify in the trial of Geert Wilders, a Dutch member of parliament who is being tried on hate crime charges for speaking out against Muslim extremism. She says she began to question the religion after her cousin was forced to marry a man over the age of 40 when she was only 11 years old. Her cousin was subjected to years of domestic violence at the hands of her abusive husband until she could no longer take it and committed suicide, leaving behind four children. Dr. Sultan says she receives death threats continually for being an outspoken opponent of Muslim extremism. Hat tip to Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs for drawing attention to Dr. Sultan's powerful message about the true nature of Islam of which all freedom-loving westerners should become aware.