Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson argued that those who refuse to say “radical Islam” are “not really being very consistent” since the I in ISIS stands for “Islamic” on Monday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel.
Carson said, “I find it interesting that, you know, they’re willing to use the term ‘ISIS’ because the I in ISIS is Islamic. And so, they’re not really being very consistent. But obviously, the terrorism that’s growing, and spreading around the world, is coming from that base, and you really have to understand the history of it. You know, Mohammed, who lived in Mecca, he wasn’t a very popular fellow, by the way. His uncle kind of shielded him. When his uncle died, they drove him out, and he went up to Medina, and that’s where he put together his army, and they went around, and they killed people, who didn’t believe as they did. Anybody who didn’t accept all of their tenets belonged to something they called the kafir, and you could do anything to them, you could kill them, behead them, you could lie to them, and that underlying belief is still there with the radical element of the Islamic movement Now, what we need to do, I think, is encourage the imams and the clerics, to come out, and condemn the radical elements of that faith.”
He continued, “I’ve always known a lot of people in the Muslim community, and many of them are patriotic, you know, wonderful people who don’t believe that radical stuff., but somebody needs to come out and make that distinction, because we need to have a way of being able to tell who our friends and who our friends are not.”
When asked about the criticism over his not naming any countries that would partner with the US to fight ISIS, Carson responded, “I can name all the countries down there consecutively where they are. That’s not the point. The point is we need to have a plan that attracts them, and lets them know that we will be with them, that we’re not going to abandon them, you know, like we abandoned Israel, like we abandoned Ukraine, like we’d abandoned people around the world.”
Carson concluded by discussing the Syrian refugee crisis, he argued that “it would be malpractice” on behalf of ISIS not to infiltrate the refugees, and “of course they will.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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