A Muslim human rights lawyer said Monday on MSNBC that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) “might be trying to scrub some of the brown off his skin” with his comments on so-called “no-go zones.”
Arsalan Iftikhar told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner he wasn’t surprised that in Jindal’s speech on radical Islam in London, he “latched onto” the now-retracted Fox News claim that some areas in Europe are controlled by Muslims and do not allow non-Muslims to enter.
“I think Gov. Jindal is protesting a bit too much,” Iftikhar said. “He might be trying to scrub some of the brown off his skin as he runs to the right in a Republican presidential exploratory bid.”
Jindal is Indian-American and is Catholic.
“I think it’s the worst common denominator of American politics to marginalize any minority demographic group,” Iftikhar added. “I’m pretty sure that Gov. Jindal will come to his senses, hopefully, in the next couple of days.”
Iftikhar later told CNN that he’d “apologize to Bobby Jindal when he apologizes to seven million American Muslims for advancing the debunked ‘Muslim no-go zones’ myth.”
Iftikhar is the same lawyer whom CNN anchor Don Lemon recently asked about supporting the Islamic State. Iftikhar wrote an ironic public letter in response thanking Lemon for “making me famous with his patently offensive racist dumb-ass question.”
