NC Conservative Activists Accused of Threatening to Kill Muslims
By Joe Marusak
The nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group is calling for the FBI to look into death threats made against the Muslim community at a meeting of conservative activists in Kernersville on Thursday.
“My only recommendation is to start killing the hell out of them,” one participant said, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, based in Washington, DC. “I’m ready to start taking people out.”
The meeting at a restaurant included a presentation on “a supposed Muslim plot to conquer the United States,” the council said, citing local media reports of the meeting.
“Shed some blood, too,” the same participant said in response to the presenter’s call to “shed some light” on the issue, according to the council.
Kernersville is in Forsyth County, about 90 miles northeast of Charlotte.
In response to the reported call to kill Muslims, according to CAIR, a member of the hate group ACT for America said, “I can understand that. But we’re not there yet.”
In reaction to the threats made at the meeting, CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said: “Calls to violence against members of any minority group warrant a criminal investigation by state law enforcement authorities and the FBI. We call on President Trump to repudiate the growing bigotry in our nation targeting Muslims, Hispanics, immigrants, refugees and other minority groups.”
He said the council has noted an “unprecedented spike” in hate rhetoric and bias-motivated incidents targeting American Muslims and other minorities since the presidential election.
Last month, the council condemned a terror attack on a mosque in Quebec City, Canada, by a suspect who had expressed anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments on social media. Six worshipers were killed in the attack and 17 others were wounded.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Hooper said, the number of anti-Muslim groups in the United States tripled between 2015 and 2016. - The Charlotte Observer
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