The media line, which has nothing to do with reality, goes like this: some Know-Nothings — Texans and Republicans (need we say more?), the kind of people whom the Southern Poverty Law Center will denounce in a New York minute — are at it again, calling into question a fine fellow and all-round nice guy, one Shahid Shafi, who was appointed as vice-chairman of the local GOP in Tarrant County this summer. Now — just because he’s a Muslim — some of those bigoted Know-Nothings are now calling for a recall vote, in a “secret ballot” yet (what are they trying to hide?), on his appointment. Naturally all decent people will deplore this call, as an embarrassment to the party that “has no place for religious discrimination.”
Here’s the morality tale, supposedly pitting Decency (those who don’t have any problem with good guy Shahid Shafi) Against Bigotry (those who do): “Muslim GOP Leader Targeted by Party Activists in Texas,” by Dan Frosch, Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2018:
Shahid Shafi was drawn to the Republican tenets of small government and secure borders after growing up under a military dictatorship in Pakistan. Now he is under fire from conservative activists who say he isn’t fit for a leadership position in the party because he is Muslim.
Five months after he was named vice chairman of the Republican Party in Texas’ Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, a faction including local precinct chairs are seeking to recall him at a vote in January. One described the conflict as a “civil war” within the party.
They argue that Dr. Shafi, who came to the U.S. in 1990 before becoming a surgeon, is unfit because Islam is entwined with political ideology they believe is incompatible with Republican Party positions and American values—a charge Dr. Shafi, party leaders and religious experts reject as prejudice.
Top Texas Republicans including Sen. Ted Cruz and land commissioner George P. Bush have defended Dr. Shafi. And local GOP officials worry the controversy threatens efforts to expand the appeal of their party in Texas’ third most-populous county, part of a rapidly diversifying region that is important to Republicans maintaining statewide power.
“There are some people in our party here who are just plain anti-Muslim,” said Tarrant County GOP chairman Darl Easton, who appointed Dr. Shafi to his post. “There are more than I expected there to be.”
Mr. Easton said he felt optimistic the recall vote, which is set to take place at a party meeting, would fail, but worried the damage had already been done.
“The vote will be a lot closer than I would like it to be,” he said. “It’s embarrassing this is even coming up.”…
An earlier report, “Some Tarrant Republicans renew push to oust Muslim from top party post,” by Anna M. Tinsley, Star-Telegram, September 13, 2018, had this:
FORT WORTH, Texas — A controversial plan to oust a top Tarrant County, Texas, Republican official because he’s Muslim was revived late Thursday [September 13].
Republican Dorrie O’Brien proposed that the appointment of Shahid Shafi — who was named vice chairman of the local GOP this summer — be reconsidered in a secret ballot vote at the next party meeting after the Nov. 6 midterm election.
One Republican booed after O’Brien voiced her request during a meeting of local Republican party precinct chairs.
Tarrant County Chair Darl Easton, whose appointment of Shafi was approved by Republicans earlier this year, acknowledged O’Brien’s request.
Shafi declined to comment on the motion, but when he later stood to introduce himself, dozens of Republicans gave him a standing ovation.
Of course they did. He’s a nice guy — how could he not be? A “standing ovation” is not enough — give that man the keys to the city. Or at least another standing ovation — yes, they did that. How many of those standing and ovating do you think knew anything at all about Islam, beyond the fact that Shahi Shafi was well-liked, so what else did anyone need to know? Wasn’t that enough? Only a bigot would bring up the actual contents of Islam.
He told the crowd he was born in India and became a U.S. citizen in 2009.
“Since then, all I have tried to do was serve our country,” said Shafi, a Southlake city councilman. “When Chairman Easton asked me to serve as vice chair, I was honored.
“I’m proud to be an American and I’m proud to be a Republican,” he said, prompting another small standing ovation.
This moment came less than a month after a small group of local Republicans began calling for Shafi’s removal from party leadership.
Dorrie O’Brien says this: “We believe that Dr. Shafi is unsuitable to be the face and voice representative for all Republicans in Tarrant county. There are too many questions surrounding him on too many issues. We should have a vice chair with a spotless conservative record.” She could also say that as a “practicing Muslim Shahid Shafi can reasonably be held to believe the Qur’an is the word of God and to consider Muhammad to be ‘the Perfect Man’ and ‘Model of Conduct,’ and I have some questions about those beliefs that I think deserve an answer.”
“If it wasn’t so dangerous to Texas and to our republic, I could let it go,” she wrote. “But it IS that dangerous and I can’t just sit by and watch it happen. I have to speak out regardless of threats of lawsuits to silence me or threats that I’ll be personally responsible for turning Tarrant County blue, or attempts at public disdain to shame me into shutting up.”
Her post echoed similar controversial posts made this summer that also asked for the removal of Shafi from party leadership.
“Dr. Shafi is a practicing, Mosque-attending muslim who claims not to follow sharia law or know what it is,” Republican Sara Legvold wrote on the Protect Texas Facebook page in calling for his removal. “As a practicing Muslim that is an overt falsehood. Sharia law is anathema to our Constitution because Islam recognizes no other law but shariah.
Did Shafi declare that he has no idea what Sharia law is? If he did, his claim of complete ignorance ought to arouse suspicion.
“As the most conservative county in the nation, this is a demoralizing blow to the conservative rank and file of the Republican Party across the nation and in Texas.”
She [Legvold] also wrote that “it is past time we took our Party back with no apologies to anyone.”
Many local Republicans have condemned the move.
“Dr. Shafi is a good man and this is inappropriate,” District Clerk Tom Wilder said Thursday night.
He’s a “good man,” genial as all get-out, but his personal affect toward the non-Muslims among whom he lives, and from whom he obtains his livelihood, and who have helped him rise in the Republican Party, tells us nothing about what, as a Muslim, he believes. The only thing we have been told is that he claims not to know what the Sharia is, and that ought to raise a skeptical eyebrow or two.
Easton has spoken against this effort, calling it disgusting and embarrassing.
That’s much too strong. But the impulse to distance oneself from any conceivable charge of “Islamophobia” is — let’s face it — abroad in the land. He might have called it “misguided,” but “disgusting and embarrassing” are quite unnecessary.
“The leadership of the Tarrant County Republican Party unequivocally rejects the religious discrimination being demonstrated by a few members of our Party,” Easton said in a statement last month. “Intolerance, based on one’s faith, has no place in the construct of Tarrant County GOP policy, and violates the very principles and moral values upon which our Nation and the Republican Party were founded.”
Does the much-exercised Mr. Easton know anything at all about Islam? Before getting onto his high horse and riding off into the sunset while yelling about “religious discrimination,” he might have taken note of the more than 33,000 separate terror attacks by Muslims since 9/11/2001, instead of dismissing those with qualms about Muslims as “disgusting and embarrassing.” Does he need to be reminded of those attacks by Muslim terrorists in Boston, Orlando, Fort Hood, San Bernardino, New York, Minneapolis, Washington, Chattanooga, among other American cities? Or about Madrid, Barcelona, Nice, Paris, Toulouse, Magnanville, Rouvray, London, Manchester, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Malmo, Moscow, Beslan?
And what exactly does he know about Dr. Shafi’s views? It sounds as if Dr. Shafi is personable, a swell fellow, given to crowd-pleasing statements about his identity as an American and a Republican, and getting ovations for it (if Muslims are just exactly like the rest of us, why should such a statement about being “proud” to be “an American and a Republican” provoke not one but two standing ovations?) but not someone who has been eager to explain in any detail what he believes in? Why shouldn’t people have their doubts, given those 33,000 terror attacks, and at the very least, have a right to expect him to come forward to set their doubts at rest by answering a handful of questions? Is that unreasonable?
O’Brien, a Republican precinct chair from Grand Prairie, made her motion soon after the meeting at the Faith Creek Church in Richland Hills began.
She gave notice that she plans to bring forward a motion at the party’s November meeting to “amend the motion to ratify the appointment of Shafi” by secret ballot.
Another member called a point of order, a parliamentary move, saying O’Brien’s request shouldn’t include how such a reconsideration take place.
This issue began flaring up again recently on social media, particularly when local Republican James Trimm posted an article he wrote — Has Tarrant County GOP turned its back on Israel? — on Facebook.
He noted that Tarrant County is the largest red area across the state and nation and “If Tarrant County goes, so will go the state of Texas and the nation.”
“If Dr. Shafi himself will publicly state that he will support Israel with Jerusalem as its undivided capital and oppose creation of a Palestinian State within the historic borders of Israel, I will not only support him, I will spread the message of his support worldwide,” Trimm wrote. “Yet, to date, he has failed to do so.”
What is needed, in addition to Trimm’s important question about Shafi’s views on Israel, are answers to certain questions about Islam that any non-Muslim has a perfect right to ask. The people in Tarrant County have asked Dr. Shafi many questions; he always manages to duck them or refer the questioners to unnamed Islamic scholars. Nonetheless, just for the record, I’ll suggest some additional apposite questions tomorrow.