Oklahoma Republican asked Muslims if they beat their wives, group says

An Oklahoma lawmaker who once likened Islam to a cancer this week handed out a questionnaire to Muslims that included questions such as “Do you beat your wife?”, a local civil rights organisation said.

The Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) said the office of Republican state representative John Bennett distributed the questionnaire this week, as Cair organized its annual Muslim Day at the state capitol.

Bennett told Muslims who wanted to see him at the capitol to fill out the form, said Adam Soltani, executive director of Cair’s Oklahoma chapter.

In a video posted to Facebook, Soltani said he had been “informed by some of our members” about the questionnaire, which he read off partially.

The form came from a group called Act for America, which the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-leaning organization that monitors hate groups, has called “far and away the largest grass roots anti-Muslim group in America”.

The group’s name and logo are visible on the form held up by Soltani in the video.

“Nobody should be vetted with stupid, Islamophobic, hateful bigoted questions before they can meet with their representative,” Soltani said. “John Bennett has no right to do this to Muslims or any group of people.”

Among other things, the form asked Muslims whether they would denounce terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Another question read: “I have heard that, according to accepted Islamic sources, Mohammed, at age of 49, married a six-year-old girl, and that he had sex with her when he was 52 and she was only nine years old. Is that really true?”

It also asked respondents if they believed former Muslims should be punished for leaving Islam. In the Facebook video, an unidentified woman said that when she went to Bennett’s office, he was out and his secretary handed her the form.

“We could make an appointment with him once we answered all of those questions,” she said.

Bennett’s assistant told Buzzfeed News on Friday the representative was not available for comment.

A marine veteran who became a state lawmaker after tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bennett clashed with Cair in 2014 after remarks in a tense town hall meeting where he was called a fearmonger by some and supported by others.

He later said there was “no difference between moderate Islam and extreme Islam”.

At the time, Bennett insisted he did not want to infringe on the constitutionally protected freedom of religion. In the town hall meeting, he said he did “not condone any violence toward Muslims at all”, but added “I won’t back down” and “they need Jesus”.

“I will not tolerate something like Islam to come into the United States,” Bennett said, calling the religion “a cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out”.

Source: The Guardian