(Left) U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama, addresses the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce on Feb. 14, 2024; (right) Secretary of State Wes Allen rises to be sworn in on Jan. 16, 2023 at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, Alabama. Tuberville and Allen have both attacked Muslim Alabamians in their political campaigns. (Tuberville: Alander Rocha/Alabama Reflector; Allen: Stew Milne for Alabama Reflector)
We’re not making the 2026 election another referendum on some Alabamians’ right to exist.
Uh-uh. No damn way.
We’re not letting our Muslim neighbors become content for Republican politicians. Not stepping stones for Fox News hits. Not fodder for white nationalists.
If Tommy Tuberville and Wes Allen want to proclaim their faith in Jesus Christ, or Donald Trump, or if they wish to keep confusing the two, they can do so.
But if they want to attack Alabamians for how they worship God, patriotic Americans should draw a line.
Tuberville’s despicable attacks on a school for Muslim children in Hoover should have been disqualifying. His grossly offensive attempt to pair the 9/11 attacks with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim, would have finished him in a state that values basic decency.
It did not. Instead, Allen, seeking the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, jumped into the sewer with Tuberville on Tuesday. The Alabama Secretary of State attacked John Wahl, his main rival for the nomination, for attending an interfaith program at an Islamic center in Anniston.
Interfaith assemblies aren’t remotely controversial. But Allen said Wahl had gone to a place “that indoctrinates children into Islam.” In the same manner as my Catholic school indoctrinated me into Catholicism, I suppose.
“You will never find me in an Islamic center or a mosque,” Allen’s statement said. “I am a committed Christian. I want no part in Islam and the vast majority of Republicans in this state and across this country agree with me.”
Now this is an actual problem. Allen considers mosques illegitimate and, by implication, does not consider Muslim Alabamians worthy of political representation. At a minimum, it’s a profound abdication of public responsibility.
But really, it’s something worse. The white ghosts of the South’s Jim Crow past are nodding at Allen and applauding his actions. They, too, held some Americans in contempt for who they were.
Here’s the Mobile Register in 1901, declaring that Theodore Roosevelt dining with Booker T. Washington meant the president “cannot have any weight with white men, North, South, East or West.”
Over here is Mississippi Gov. Theodore Bilbo in 1928, claiming that Herbert Hoover had visited a Black woman during flooding in that state and even danced with her, the former clearly being enough to disqualify anyone from public office.
And a little closer to us is KKK Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton, screaming at a rally in Ashville in 1970 that Gov. Albert Brewer had not done enough to stop the purchase of a local farm by Black Muslims.
“We find coming into these southeastern states money from Red China, going into the pockets of these Muslims,” Shelton said. “I don’t see how any white man could sell property to a cult.”
That tirade took place 56 years ago. Yet somehow, Alabama hasn’t moved on from it.
Religious tolerance is not a matter for debate. Reasonable people settled that a long time ago. But Alabama elects a large number of unreasonable people to office. And they seem to exist to make headlines for bigots.
It’s a shameful tradition. Find a small group of people. Convince the worst Alabamians to be angry at their existence. Scare those who object into silence.
We saw it with transgender Alabamians in 2022, when Republican gubernatorial candidates viciously targeted a school that caters to LGBTQ+ youth, forcing administrators to hire security. And we’ve seen it in years and years of attacks on immigrants in the state.
Some may say that we can’t condemn this. Or that we must reserve judgment before we understand where hatred like this comes from. Spare me. I will not pity public servants who despise the public they serve.
Nor will I allow intolerance to be shrugged off as political positioning. This is non-negotiable. No one’s belief or non-belief in the divine should be a matter of debate. No politician should put an American in danger for their religion. And no law-abiding American should be associated with the extremists of their faith. (This is not a path we Christians want to go down.)
I’m almost certain we’ll see more of this garbage in the coming weeks. The conservative media establishment spits acid and cares little about the damage left behind. Nor do the politicians it serves.
But religious acceptance is foundational to American government. Tuberville and Allen are running to represent all Alabamians. If they think they only serve those who answer the altar call, they don’t believe in democracy.
That’s the issue here: whether our leaders want to govern a diverse state, or whether they see that diversity as a target. We are better with a myriad of perspectives and experiences. We are stronger for having people of all faiths – Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, many others — in Alabama.
And ambitious men who see that as a problem make us weaker.
From Alabama Reflector Post Url: Visit
Author: Brian Lyman