Politics

Muslims in America school Ted Cruz on life in a ‘Muslim neighborhood’

Bob CollinsBob Collins Mar 23, 2016
32

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz stirred up the melting pot yesterday when he said that the U.S. should “patrol and secure” Muslim neighborhoods before “they become radicalized.”

“If you look at the attack in Brussels, it’s a direct result of the failed immigration policies in Europe that have allowed vast numbers of radical Islamic terrorists to come to Europe and they have been ghetto-ized in neighborhoods that have become isolated, that have become separate, and they have become incubators for radical Islamic terrorism,” he told CBS’ Norah O’Donnell this morning.

“That’s not a similar problem that we have here in the United States,” she responded.

“Of course, it is,” Cruz said. “There are communities in America…”

“Name one community, one city where we have a large group of radicalized Muslims,” O’Donnell interrupted.

Cruz was ready for it. “Minnesota,” he said, presumably meaning Minneapolis, from which Al Shabab persuaded more than two dozen young men to go to Somalia to fight, NPR reported.

The response wasn’t to lock down the neighborhoods of Minneapolis; it was to help young people find jobs, an effort that encountered its own criticism from those in the community who said it stigmatized it, MPR said.

Cruz’s comments prompted Muslims across America to take to Twitter under the hastag #MyMuslimNeighborhood.