Cooper: Paint in narrower strokes, sheriff

Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond warned the Hamilton County Pachyderm Club about the infringement of radical Islam.
Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond warned the Hamilton County Pachyderm Club about the infringement of radical Islam.

When Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond suggests other Tennessee sheriffs keep an eye on Islamic activity, most sheriffs - and even most Tennesseans - understand him to mean radical Islam that might suggest a threat to their particular county.

Most of his counterparts are probably doing that anyway.

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Hammond clarified as much in an address Monday at the Hamilton County Pachyderm Club. He said when he talks about a group that has "built a structure to take over the country," he is referring to a sect of Islam he called jihadists.

"Islam is communism with a god," he said. "[It] is a state, wrapped in a religion so they can get the tax breaks, so they cannot have government intrusion into their mosques. They are able to use our own system against us."

Several European countries and cities already have adopted some aspects of Muslim law - or sharia - within their legal system.

In the United States, a handful of cities have adopted sharia-related adaptations to their laws. In Seattle, for instance, a committee appointed by the mayor has recommended "sharia-compliant" mortgage loans because Muslim religious law forbids them from paying interest on loans. In Muslim-heavy Dearborn, Mich., halal options (food prepared in adherence to Islamic law) are available in school cafeterias.

However, those are hardly sweeping changes, and neither are the 2,000 mosques Hammond said have opened in the U.S. in the last 24 years. That's an average of 1.67 mosques opening in each state every year. By contrast, 4,000 churches open in the U.S. annually, according to a 2010 article in the Christian Post.

By all rights, the Islamic Center of Greater Chattanooga that opened on Gunbarrel Road in 2012 has been community friendly and a center of peace.

Hammond, who studied Islam as a chaplain's yeoman in the U.S. Navy and later trained local police in Amman, Jordan, is no neophyte to other cultures. He is unafraid to speak his mind. If he has specific information that, as he told the Pachyderms, a sect of dangerous Muslims is moving into the state, securing jobs within government, and is planning to slowly take over, he should indeed identify those individuals, enumerate their presence in government and alert authorities.

But minus such information, he might be better served - even in tailoring remarks to a specific audience - to avoid broad brush strokes in making remarks as the sheriff of all Hamilton County residents, including those Muslims who are only too happy to live in such a free country and practice the religion of their choice.

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