In a necessary and noble riposte to bigotry, the Republican Party of Texas rejected an effort to remove a county vice-chairman, simply for being Muslim.
As the American-Statesman reports, the executive committee of the Texas GOP voted 63-0 to affirm the party’s principles of support for individual freedom. The action was necessary in light of an effort by Dorrie O’Brien to remove Tarrant County’s vice-chairman, Dr. Shahid Shafi. Why did O’Brien want to remove Shafi, a surgeon?
Well, because he was a Muslim. According to the American-Statesman, since Shafi was appointed in July, O’Brien and her sympathizers have been spreading rumors that Shafi was linked to Islamist extremist groups. O’Brien wanted Shafi gone and as recently as Thursday had argued that her position was justified because Shafi is “has never left Islam. If you all were truly the conservatives and Christians you say you are, you’d witness him into the body of Christ.”
Let’s be clear, these are not the words of a good Christian, but of an ignorant fool who usurps the name of Christ in furtherance of bigotry. Recognizing as much, as American-Statesman notes, GOP figures including Travis County GOP chairman Matt Mackowiak joined his Tarrant County opposite number, Darl Easton, to confront O’Brien’s “bigoted effort.”
Still, it’s worth noting that O’Brien has a penchant for stupidity. In 2011, the Star Telegram’s Bud Kennedy noted that O’Brien had been warning that Christian socializing with Muslims was “heresy,” “repulsive and impossible.”
The rebuke O’Brien has now received makes me smile. The bigot has been educated to the fact that her vision of the GOP is a pathetic joke. But the chairman of Shafi’s county party, Darl Easton, put it best: “Today we removed all doubts as to what we are and what we believe in as conservatives and Republicans and I will take that message back to Tarrant County. This is and remains and should always be the party of Lincoln and Reagan.”
Well said.
