Don't look now, MTG, somebody's gaining on you
Illinois Rep. Mary Miller's ignorant post about a Sikh prayer in the House is pure MAGA
By Sam Bellamy
In the clown-footrace for the dubious honor of the dumbest member of Congress, MAGA favorite Marjorie Taylor Greene is way, way out front. But this week a new contender broke ahead of the distant pack of lawmakers vying for second place.
Meet Mary Miller, a Republican who serves in the House from Illinois. She posted this Friday on X from her official congressional account:
Students of comparative religion might recognize this fellow is actually a member of the Sikh faith, not a Muslim. But either way, Miller’s complaint was an astoundingly nitwitted and bigoted, even by MAGA standards.
The opening prayer (clip below) was offered by Giani Singh, who is a granthi, or ceremonial reader of the Sikh holy book. He was invited to speak by Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a Republican from Singh’s home state of New Jersey.
Van Drew told Axios that he was proud to invite Singh and that “as a Catholic, I take my faith seriously and I also believe part of being American is respecting other people's faiths too.”
When the prayer was over, Van Drew praised his guest. “Day after day, year after year, he leads not just with words, but with example, with peace, with humility, with service towards all,” he said. “These are not just Sikh values. They are American values.”
Well, some people’s idea of American values.
Christian Nationalists like Miller will likely never be convinced that the United States wasn’t founded as a Christian nation – an idea Thomas Jefferson and James Madison argued vigorously against.
Article VI of the Constitution prohibits requiring a religious test for lawmakers – and, by extension, I would think – visitors who speak on the House floor. There’s also the matter of the First Amendment, which bars the government from establishing a state religion.
Miller, who was enthusiastically endorsed by Trump as “ultra-MAGA” and “a name to remember” in 2022, isn’t as prolific with witless remarks as MTG, but she certainly has a knack for it.
To express the thought that it’s important to win over young people, she once chose a quote from Hitler. When the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, she called it a “historic victory for white life” – which her aides explained as an unfortunate garbling of “right to life” as she read from a prepared speech.
Miller really hit her stride when an interviewer suggested that clean energy initiatives are against God’s design for nature. “The whole ‘climate change’ is a sham,” she replied. “First of all, God controls the climate, because he controls the sun, and the sun controls the weather, primarily.”
On Friday, when Miller was informed a second time that the guest chaplain in the House was not Muslim – Van Drew had introduced him as follower of the Sikh faith – she revised her post.
Then, amid continuing furor from both sides of the aisle, she deleted it. At this writing, she has not apologized. Don’t hold your breath. (Miller says the “communist environmental movement” has “demonized” CO2, by the way.)
Miller’s post about the guest chaplain cannot be taken lightly or treated as a reasonable contribution to public discourse. Intolerance leads people to not just hurl insults like this but to discriminate and to commit heinous deeds.
Some of you may recall in the dark days immediately after the 9/11 attacks, a Sikh American – again, mistaken for Muslim – was murdered outside the gas station he owned and operated in Mesa, Arizona.
The problem, of course, isn’t simply mistaken identity. A person of the Muslim faith or the Sikh faith or the Jewish faith or the Hindu faith going about his or her business isn’t a cause for outrage, any more than the presence of Southern Baptists or Methodists or Lutherans is.
Ignorant, malicious and self-righteous comments like Miller’s have no place in America or in the U.S. Capitol. Sadly, they’re what energizes MAGA.