The San Diego County Human Relations Commission has come face-to-face with the inherent contradictions of the leftist worldview, and it isn’t pretty. Ordinarily a placid platform for leftist platitudes and a sleepy mechanism for virtue-signaling, the Commission is now in an uproar and may not even survive. Three commissioners have resigned, and there is talk of junking the whole thing and starting over. This is the sort of thing that happens when leftism meets reality.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Friday that “A commissioner’s recent antisemitic comments have prompted a rash of resignations from the San Diego County Human Relations Commission, along with growing calls for overhauling the body.” The antisemitic commissioner was Khaliq Raufi, a Muslim migrant from Afghanistan. After his antisemitic remarks caused a furor, he resigned, but the brouhaha continues, and now District Attorney Summer Stephan and County Sheriff Kelly Martinez have resigned from the commission as well.
Raufi, who arrived in the U.S. from Afghanistan in 1992 and later aided U.S. Marines in Afghanistan, touched off the controversy back on July 18. During a meeting of the Commission, he asserted, according to the Times of San Diego, that he read “a few verses” of “the book of Jews,” and found that lo and behold, “it states go kill Palestinians.” He also “claimed this is currently taught in synagogues.”
The assembled gaggle of unthinking, knee-jerk Leftists were appalled. One exclaimed, “Are you serious?,” although anyone who knew anything about what Islam teaches about Jews would have known that Raufi may never have been more serious in his life. Raufi’s words were duly reported, this being the California SSR, as a “hate incident,” via the state’s new CA vs. Hate hotline. And now he has resigned.
It is unclear why Stephan and Martinez resigned as well. Stephan said that Raufi’s remarks were “disparaging and dehumanizing” and added, “It has turned out that my role as a commissioner places me in a position that is contradictory with the oath I swore to carry out. For me, my duty as District Attorney to protect everyone from hate and crime is paramount.” That’s great, but what was the point of doing this after Raufi resigned? Stephan was behaving as if his statements had been made official commission policy.
Martinez likewise oddly stated, “I cannot continue to be a part of a commission that does not uphold the high ideals of which it was enacted. The direction of this commission has shed light on hostilities that are being displayed in a way that I do not find appropriate and therefore, [I] find it best to remain neutral until the commission can mitigate their personal beliefs in a way that can allow space for acceptance of each other’s differences while elevating positive contributions to the community.” Yet with Raufi gone, why did she still see a problem on the commission?
San Diego County Supervisor Joel Anderson, who appointed Raufi to the commission in the first place, was not as indignant and ran interference for his fallen comrade: “Commissioner Raufi’s ignorant comments were hurtful and in no way reflect my personal views, but they do highlight the urgent need to focus on education, bridge building, and to advocate for tolerance.” Of course, Joel! For smarmy leftists, what doesn’t highlight that urgent need?
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Anderson’s refusal to join the pile-on on Raufi, however, reflects the leftist dilemma that this whole incident reveals. Anderson said that it was “deeply offensive to quote the religious texts from other’s faiths to support any political or intolerant narrative” (which of course means that he would reject honest analysis of the root causes of jihad violence as “Islamophobic”) and claimed Raufi’s remarks “came from a place of ignorance but without malice.”
In reality, however, it was Anderson who is coming from a place of ignorance. Raufi’s Jew hatred comes from a deep foundation. The Islamic holy book, the Qur’an, says that the Jews are the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82). They fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); they claim that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); they love to listen to lies (5:41); they disobey Allah and never observe his commands (5:13). They are disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); and giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87). And there is a great deal more in this vein.
Consequently, it is no surprise that Raufi thinks that the Jewish scriptures teach that Jews should kill Palestinians; it’s what his own holy book says about Jews, and he likely assumes that this is just a response to the evil Jews’ teachings. The Palestinians weren’t even invented until the 1960s, but he is not likely to know that.
And Anderson almost certainly knows even less than Raufi does about all of this. He was likely quite proud to be able to name an Afghan Muslim migrant to the commission in the first place. It is extremely unlikely that it ever entered his mind that Raufi might hold beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions that are at odds with the prevailing leftist way of looking at the world. If it did enter his mind, he is the sort of person who would have dismissed it as “Islamophobic.”
Even now, do Joel Anderson and others like him realize that they have flooded the country with people who have a radically different set of values, priorities, and assumptions from those most Americans hold, and that this will inevitably cause conflict? Almost certainly not. The Khaliq Raufi incident is now over, and its lessons are still unlearned.
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