Speaking at her first press event since being roundly criticized by activists last week, Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Orange, on Monday defended earlier comments that between “5 and 20 percent” of Muslims support terrorism. She added that the problem of terrorism has to be accurately acknowledged before it can be addressed.
Muslim and immigrant-rights groups attacked the initial statement as inaccurate and promoting a false stereotype. Sanchez, a candidate for U.S. Senate and a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee, responded Monday she is a friend of the mainstream Muslim community and understood the negative reaction.
“I think they ranted because, honestly, they’re under attack,” Sanchez said. “They’ve seen the burning of a mosque or they’re afraid right now because of people who are in politics who have gone after them as the scapegoat for all of the wrong things that are going on.
“That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, ‘Let’s have the conversation and figure out how we pull together to stop this extremism that is coming at America.’ They have to help us understand this and they have to help us.”
Speaking at a Buena Park event to announce the endorsement of her Senate bid by the 44,000-member Southwest Regional Council of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, Sanchez said she’d been a longstanding supporter and defender of mainstream Muslims.
Indeed, two of the groups attacking her last week acknowledged that Sanchez, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, had a positive record on ethnic issues.
While describing Sanchez’s earlier comments last week as inflammatory, Haroon Manjlai of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations also noted her record on “civil rights, especially with the American Muslim community, is praiseworthy.”
Sanchez is running second in the U.S. Senate race to Attorney General Kamala Harris. Among key advantages touted by Sanchez supporters is her congressional experience, particularly her lengthy stints on the Armed Services and Homeland Security committees.
Sanchez reminded the Buena Park gathering of union members and reporters of that background.
“I’m the one who has met with leaders of Muslim countries,” she said. “I’m the one who for 19 years has been on the military committee. I’m the one, since the inception of the Homeland Security Committee, who has sat on that committee. So I look at this, I talk to people, I talk to experts, I read about it and I think about it.”
One of her cited sources for her estimate is the Pew Research Center, which this year polled countries with significant Muslim populations on their view of ISIS. In the Palestinian territory, 6 percent had a favorable view, while in Turkey it was 8 percent, 9 percent in Pakistan and 11 percent in Malaysia.
“Of course I believe and I know it to be a fact that U.S. Muslims are significantly less supportive or sympathetic of terrorism in the cause like ISIS and others,” Sanchez said Monday. “I believe that most Muslim Americans are committed to peace and democracy.”
In her original statement to Larry King on Wednesday airing of the internet show “PoliticKING,” Sanchez did not specify that her estimate was referring to Muslims worldwide – but she did make that clear Monday.
On Monday, she also said her estimate was for Muslims who “support the use of terrorism by ISIS and others. I didn’t say that up to 20 percent of Muslims are willing to engage in terrorist acts personally.”
But in speaking to King, she said the estimate referred to those who would institute a caliphate “in any way possible. ... They are willing to use and they do use terrorism.”
While several activist groups attacked Sanchez’s statement last week, some Orange County Republican and independent voters spoke in her defense.
“I do not think by her comments she is fomenting hatred, but rather taking a rational approach that, yes, some percentage of Muslims are radicalized,” said Huntington Beach independent Judith Lewis. “Liberals often go too far in the other direction.”
Westminster Republican Marvin Tuomala, complained that Sanchez was being attacked for simply stating the facts. He also noted that with California Democrats’ overwhelming advantage in voter registration, the choice for U.S. Senate came down to Democrats Sanchez and Harris.
“While I would like a conservative, that isn’t a possibility,” Tuomala said. “So I will support Loretta Sanchez.”