We’ve learned not to expect a whole lot out of Oklahoma, one of the reddest states in the Union. But even by those standards, one Republican state lawmaker may have really outdone himself. He apparently thinks that Islam is so inherently dangerous that the only way forward is a “final solution.”
Pat Ownbey represents the 48th district, comprising Ardmore and the surrounding area, in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. On Father’s Day, he found a blog post from Paul Hollrah, a retired government relations executive and two-time Republican presidential elector, arguing that Islam does not deserve First Amendment protection. Ownbey liked it so much that he copy-pasted the whole thing to his Facebook wall.
Hollrah claims Islam isn’t a religion at all, but a self-contained cultural system “with a religious component”–one that is “totally foreign to and incompatible with 21st century values and cultures.” To see Islam as anything else is a “cruel fiction” that turns the First Amendment into “a suicide pact.” We’ve heard this before. It’s the same “logic” that a number of right-wing tailenders have used to claim that a Muslim should not be eligible to serve as a lawmaker or any other elected official because a Muslim cannot honestly take the oath of office.
But Hollrah goes further than that. He claims that because radical Islamists engage in “atrocities that are unique to the Muslim world” and more moderate Muslims “appear unwilling” to rein them in, Islam doesn’t deserve the same level of protection as other religions. For that reason, he gives full-throated support to Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration. He argues that Trump has every right to do this under the McCarran-Walter Act, which bars any alien who supports or teaches overthrowing the government from entering this country.
As if that wasn’t outrageous enough, Hollrah calls for the United States and the rest of the Western world to “quarantine” all Muslims and bar them from “residing anywhere within the civilized nations of the Earth.” I hope I’m misreading what Hollrah is saying here. I really do. What he is proposing is a carbon copy of one of the blackest slurs on our country’s history–the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II solely on the basis that they might be more loyal to Japan than the United States.
And I don’t think it’s an accident that Hollrah calls this a “final solution.” After all, it’s the exact term Adolf Hitler used for the Holocaust. It doesn’t seem that Hollrah is calling for Muslims to be murdered while under “quarantine.” However, it doesn’t sound like he would shed any tears if they did die, since he doesn’t want them in any “civilized nations.”
According to Ownbey’s official biography, he has a degree from the University of Oklahoma, which is a fairly decent school; it touts more National Merit Scholars than any public university in this country. Unless Ownbey slept through his history classes in high school and at OU, he is almost certainly aware of the Japanese internment travesty, as well as what the term “final solution” meant in history. Thus, his decision to repost this disgusting article in its entirety is grossly ignorant at best and un-American at worst.
Like most of Oklahoma, Ownbey’s district has turned redder than OU’s jerseys. According to Daily Kos’ excellent database of presidential results in state legislative districts, Mitt Romney carried the 48th by a punishing 68-32 margin. In other words–this district would vote for a comatose Republican. But you really have to wonder–is this acceptable behavior for a lawmaker, even in a district this congested red?
Maybe we should ask Ownbey ourselves–politely, of course. He hasn’t said anything on the matter since this post, but this lawmaker can’t remain silent forever. Email him at pat.ownbey at okhouse dot gov.
