Speaking the truth on the House floor

Submitted by KAOSKTRL (United States), Sep 23, 2004 at 09:52

Excerpt from speech by Rep. Tom Tancredo
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How can we exist on a planet if there are hundreds of millions of people who believe that if one does not believe in their God, if one does not accept their principles of religious ideology, that they do not deserve to exist and that they are, in fact, some sort of threat to them?

We need to do other things that encourage Islam to look internally and to reform itself. There are many people, I read comments by leaders in the Islamic faith, Muslim leaders, that suggested that they too had come to the conclusion that something was very, very wrong inside their religion. Some even called it a corrupted religion. They lamented the fact that in recent history, although terrorists had different kinds of nationalities and ethnicities, they had one thing in common: they were Muslims. And they lamented that fact, and they said there is something wrong with this religion. There is something wrong with a religion that, in fact, promotes a cult of death. So there is hope that reform can come to Islam.

I agree with some of the comments made earlier by some of the folks over here that said that terror is not the thing with which we are at war. It is simply a tactic. I have said this on this floor many times and now for several years, and I am glad to hear it being repeated by others because, of course, it is important for us to understand who the enemy really is.

[Time: 23:10]

I think our friends on the other side did not go as far as they needed to go to actually describe them. It is fundamentalist Islam with which we are at war, make no mistake about it. And whether that fervor, that Islamic fervor leads you to do things like press for a separation from Russia because you want to create an Islamic republic, it is still fundamentalist Islam with which the world is at war. Or whether it manifests itself as it did here by planes crashing into buildings and into the Pentagon and into fields in Pennsylvania, it is fundamentalist Islam with which we are at war. Around the world, incidents occur. There are motivating factors that combine to create them, but when you sort of get to the bottom line, what is the common element? It is fundamentalist Islam.

http://www.house.gov/tancredo/newsroom/2004_09_13.html

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