Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich has refused to back down from a remark he made after learning of the San Bernardino terror attacks, asking if the killers were Muslim.
On Wednesday night, speaking at a West Ranch Town Council meeting after he had been alerted to the attack, Antonovich stated, “The first thing I asked about this incident, was the guy named Muhammad?”
Brandon Lowrey, a reporter for the local SCV Reader, tweeted the “Muhammad” comment, prompting Muslim leaders’ outrage, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Kamal al-Khatib, president and co-founder of American Islamic Institute of Antelope Valley, in Palmdale, retorted, “That is an insensitive statement coming from somebody in power like the supervisor. We are a victim too. Every time something happens, we are another victim.”
Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Los Angeles, asserted, “During these challenging times, our country needs real leaders, not self-serving, immoral politicians who exploit people’s anxiety and fear to fuel the phobia and paranoia. I’m sure he didn’t ask on the weekend when there was a shooting in Colorado Springs if the shooter’s name was Michael, because I know I didn’t ask that.”
Antonovich defiantly refused to capitulate, emailing the Times, “Radical Islamists have declared War on the United States.”
Recently, 130 people died in the radical Islamist assault in Paris last month; 39 people were killed in a radical Islamic terror attack on a Tunisian hotel in July; 17 were killed in the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket attacks in Paris, 27 were murdered in a Mali hotel the week after the Paris assault; 14 were slaughtered in San Bernardino, 13 soldiers were murdered at Fort Hood, and four Marines were killed in Chattanooga.