Presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-2nd District) penned another op-ed over the weekend affirming the importance of religious liberty and denouncing bigotry. The Jan. 26 editorial for Religion News Service, titled “Religious bigotry is un-American,” echoes the call of her previous opinion piece in The Hill, “Elected leaders who weaponize religion are playing a dangerous game.”
Whereas Gabbard’s piece in The Hill was interpreted as a response to Sen. Mazie Hirono’s (D-HI) questions regarding a Trump judicial nominee’s Catholic background in relation to his stance on abortion, the latest piece includes veiled references to a Jan. 5 article in The Intercept, “Tulsi Gabbard Is a Rising Progressive Star, Despite Her Support for Hindu Nationalists.”
“While the headlines covering my announcement could have celebrated this historic first [of a Hindu presidential candidate], and maybe even informed Americans about the world’s third largest religion,” Gabbard wrote for RNS, “some have instead fomented suspicion, fear and religious bigotry about not only me but also my supporters.”
“That Hindus – alongside countless Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, agnostics and atheists – support me should not be newsworthy,” Gabbard continued. “But some media outlets have chosen to craft a false narrative of intrigue by profiling and targeting all of my donors who have names of Hindu origin and accusing them of being ‘Hindu nationalists.’”
Her comment points to a sentence that was retracted by The Intercept on Jan. 25 with a note from the editor: “A previous version of this article included a parenthetical sentence about donations to Tulsi Gabbard from individuals with names of Hindu origin, as identified by an expert. The sentence was intended to show Gabbard’s broad base of support in the Hindu-American community, given her standing as the first Hindu in Congress. We did not intend to question the motives of those political donors. We apologize for any such implication, and we have removed the sentence.”
The fact remains, however, that Gabbard is misrepresenting the Intercept article and its methodology.
As author Soumya Shankar wrote for The Intercept, “We cross-checked the names of Gabbard’s donors against open-source materials linked to Sangh organizations [a network of groups subscribing to a Hindu-supremacist ideology], such as event announcements and the groups’ websites. According to our analysis, at least 105 current and former officers and members of U.S. Sangh affiliates, and their families, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Gabbard’s campaigns since 2011.”
Gabbard does not address this data, and misses Shankar’s broader point that “Her progressive domestic politics are at odds with her support for authoritarians abroad, including Modi, Sisi, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. As right-wing nationalism rises across the globe, it is beginning to be recognized as an existential threat to a world order rooted in liberal democratic values, and Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, is now being pushed to choose sides.”
Rather than discuss these points in her op-ed, Gabbard waxed further about religious liberty, including this urgent statement: “At what point do we as a society see the connection between [violent hate crimes] and the religious bigotry being fomented in our society? We must all stand for religious freedom and call out this bigotry whenever it raises its ugly head.”
Look, I’m all for religious freedom. Frankly, it’s policy and leadership that matters most to me in any politician. But when a candidate comes fresh out the gate, misrepresenting a valid critique rather than debating ideas, that shows neither of those qualities. I say we must stand for critical thinking, and call out BS whenever we smell it. [As of press time, Rep. Gabbard and Soumya Shankar did not respond to a request for comment.]
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