Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson on Sunday advocated close scrutiny of Muslims entering and living in America, pointing to a Muslim Brotherhood document that outlined a strategy to infiltrate and destroy Western civilization from within.
Defending his previous remarks that strict adherence to the Islamic faith is incompatible with the U.S. Constitution, Mr. Carson cited a strategic planning document from a Muslim Brotherhood in America meeting uncovered by federal investigators.
Among the goals outlined in the 1991 document was that members of the Muslim Brotherhood “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ’sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers.”
“People need to know this stuff,” Mr. Carson said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The documents were introduced during the 2008 terrorism-financing trial of the Holyland Foundation, a Texas-based Islamic charity whose leaders were found guilty of funneling $12 million to terrorists in the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Mr. Carson stopped short of endorsing front-runner Donald Trump’s controversial plan to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the United States, but he warned that America should find a better way to weed out extremist believers in Islam.
He said that imposing a religious test for entry into the country is impractical.
“Why don’t we go to the Israelis and ask them how they do it? Why do we have to reinvent the wheel?” he said.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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