Sohn: Sheriff should put prejudice back in its holster

Sheriff Jim Hammond is the gift that just keeps giving to bigotry here, and he needs to apologize to the entire county immediately.

He told the Hamilton County Pachyderm Club on Monday he plans to talk with other Tennessee sheriffs about keeping a close eye on Islamic activity in their jurisdictions. Federal officials, he said, are turning blind eyes to "the strongest infringement that we've had in our country as a constitutional government since Communism" and a sect of dangerous Muslims is moving into Tennessee, securing jobs within government and planning to slowly take over. He went on:

"Islam is communism with a god. [Islam 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. Islam is very good at what they do. They have built a structure to take over this country and many of the pieces are in place."

Not only is the sheriff's one-size-fits-all rhetoric inflammatory, it's based in misrepresented facts.

Hammond's resume would indicate he knows what he's talking about: He says he studied Islam as a chaplain's yeoman in the U.S. Navy, and later trained local police in Amman, Jordan.

But his history shows that his narrow-minded, stereotyping McCarthyism trumps his education and understanding. This is the same man, who, in January 2012 talked to the Brainerd Kiwanis Club about youths caught up in gangs:

' "We need to run them out of town, put them in jail, or send them to the funeral home."

And a year later in February 2013 told the Times Free Press he believed people had a heightened fear of crime and were buying guns in droves because of President Barack Obama's ethnicity:

' "Part of it is [the] first black president. I mean we all see that. We may dance around it, but a lot of people are fearful of 'ah, this is going to ruin our country.' "

Unfortunately, Hammond and his statements Monday - made a month after five servicemen were killed in attacks here on military facilities by a Kuwait-born, Chattanooga-raised, naturalized U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent - fit right in with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Donald Trump. All would seem to be purveyors of stubborn prejudice and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from their own.

Their mottos would seem to be: Don't give us any facts - we wouldn't want truth, humility or golden rule to get in the way of our perceptions.

Hammond's evidence for his absurd Muslim comments is a church count: He told Pachyderms that more than 2,000 mosques or Islamic centers have opened in the U.S. in the last 24 years.

Actually, according to the 2012 Association of Religion Data Archives, a 74 percent increase in mosques and Islamic Centers in the preceding decade was a fluke of counting. The group had counted 1,209 in 2000, but for the 2012 report, church census takers compiled online lists in the 2000 Masjid Study, the Muslim Guide, the Islamic Finder and Salatomatic. With that effort, they identified 1,900 more - then cross-checked those with local Muslims around the country. The result was a final number of 2,106 mosques. The association, in data online, noted that most of the growth was due to improved web sites and data collection. The group said real Muslim population growth accounted for only about 26 percent of the increase in mosques between 2000 and 2011.

But what about Southern Baptists? Now those were some swelling numbers, according to the association. The number of those churches increased by a whopping 9,302 between 2000 to 2010. And that wasn't even counting all the other kinds of Baptists! But here's the kicker: That increase of more than 9,000 churches only ticked up the percent of change in the total number of Southern Baptist Churches by less than 1 percent. Talk about taking over and controlling things

Thus a few mishandled facts and unfortunate convictions among people with a microphone, like our sheriff, or Limbaugh or Trump, seem to hold a lot of sway with the segment of our population that shelters itself with only extreme right-wing conservative echo-chambers like talk radio and reality show hosts.

A new Public Policy Polling of Republican voters (the same new poll that shows Donald Trump and Ben Carson have solidified their leads at the top of the GOP primary pack) elicited from those poll respondents some other very revealing answers:

Only 14 percent believe President Barack Obama is a Christian (which he is), while 54 percent believe he is a Muslim and 32 percent are not sure. Really? Obama has been president for seven years and 86 percent of the GOP voters responding to this either don't know or aren't sure?

Then there was the "birther" question: Only 29 percent said they think Obama was born in the United States, while 44 percent said he was not and 26 percent said they were not sure.

Clearly this is a segment of the population listening to too much talk radio and reading too many wing-nut chain emails.

You would hope our sheriff would be smarter.