Senator Marco Rubio condemned a recreational gun range that banned Muslims from their facility, during a presidential forum with Fox News host Megyn Kelly.
One member of the audience asked Rubio about the incident, where a Muslim-American army reservist was denied access to the facility in Oklahoma, and asked for his reaction to the incident.
“The story you just told me is wrong. It’s immoral. We should not be doing that to people,” Rubio said. “The bottom line is there are millions of patriotic Muslim Americans.”
A lawsuit against the gun range was filed by 29-year-old Raja’ee Fatihah, a board member of the Oklahoma chapter of the Muslim Council on American-Islamic Relations. The gun range owner argues that Fatihah was denied service because he was “belligerent” and that the “Muslim free” signage in his business was protected by free speech.
Rubio told the audience that patriotic Muslims had died defending the country in the Armed forces, separating them from the dangerous radical Islamists that were threatening America.
“Our issue is not with patriotic Muslim Americans. It’s not even with Islam. It is with radical jihadis. It with radical Islam, which is a politicization and a radical ideology that threatens Islam,” he said.
Rubio cited ISIS as a threat to not only Americans, but to Muslims who refused to practice their radical form of the religion.
“I think we are capable of recognizing the threat of radical Islam without having to demonize an entire religion, especially those Americans here that are so loyal to America.”