"We will name our enemy," Cruz promised, in the event that he becomes President, specifying, "Radical Islamic terrorism. And we will defeat it."
Joe Bradford suggests that Cruz's comments are remarkable, in light of a meeting Cruz held with a diverse group of Muslims, including lawyers, local Republican Party representatives, educators, physicians and business people.
According to Bradford, who was at the meeting, participants, including Cruz, spent a long time "discussing Islam, Muslim community demographics, sharia law and what it means to Muslims, and how the Cruz campaign can approach the Muslim community while also dispel some of the incendiary accusations made against the community."
During that conversation, Bradford suggested that it would be best if Cruz would pursue a strict reading of the US Constitution, guaranteeing religious liberty for all. He said that Muslims in the United States do not seek to be tolerated, they seek to be accepted. Bradford also stressed that American Muslims, like any other American citizen, defer to the laws of the United States.
Cruz inculcated hope for tolerance in the meeting's participants. "On day one of his presidency," Bradford recalls, "he [Cruz] will instruct the Department of Justice, the IRS, and every other federal agency that the persecution of religious liberty ends today."
Remembering those remarks, Bradford was distressed by Cruz's rearing rhetoric regarding Islam. As he writes in an essay at alternet.org, "Senator Cruz's statements are not just dangerous, in that they seek to ostracize Muslims or alienate them among their neighbors; the real danger is that they also contribute to the hysteria and vigilantism that bring about real attacks on Americans of all faiths."
Cruz's about-face is easily explained. Bradford said that it has been noted that "incendiary" accusations on Islam, although false, are "so prevalent among the evangelical base Cruz is targeting that [the campaign] must pander to them, finessing their way past them into the primary and the nomination."
Bradford suggested that the real danger in Cruz's inflammatory statements is not only that he says those things, but that he probably does not believe what he is saying. "He may be just craven enough in his desire to become the Republican nominee that he'll sideline the liberties he's sworn to protect to get the position he thinks he deserves."
