A variety of Web sites are reporting that U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison has called Congresswoman Michelle Bachman’s allegations of Muslim Brotherhood influence on the U.S. government “scare-mongering” and compared her efforts to those of Senator Joseph McCarthy. According to a reporton the ThinkProgress Web site:
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) When Rep. Keith Ellison (R-MN) asked his colleague Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to produce ‘credible, substantial evidence’ of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘deep penetration’ into the U.S. government, she responded with a 16-page letter. In her new letter — a follow-up on letters she wrote with colleagues to the Inspectors General of four government agencies demanding they look into her chargers — Bachmann denied she had suggested Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin is linked to the Brotherhood and gave 59 footnoted sources for her claim. On Anderson Cooper’s CNN show last night, Ellison responded to Bachmann’s latest salvo, saying her accusations were ‘simply scare-mongering’ and compared her quest to root out Muslim Brotherhood infiltrators to Sen. Joe McCarthy’s infamous witch-hunt for Communist agents. Ellison went on:
Read the rest here. A post from last week reported on the allegations by Bachman and three other Congressmen. A post from March 2010 detailed the background of some of the individuals named by the Congressional representatives.
In February 2011, local media reported that Rep. Ellison called fears of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Egypt a “scarecrow”:
Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison called the secular Egyptian revolution a “stunning rebuke to al-Qaidaism” and called fears of a takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood a “scarecrow.” Appearing on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Thursday night, Ellison, the first Muslim in Congress, said “This is a group of people who are rejecting al-Qaedaism, rejecting religious extremism and saying they want what we already have, which is democracy. We got to stand on the side of that.”
Ellison is the first Muslim-American to be elected to Congress. Previous posts have discussed the controversy over his trip to Mecca which was funded by the Muslim American Society, a well-known U.S. Muslim Brotherhood group close to the Egyptian organization.