Copyright AL.com
This is an opinion column. Zorhan Mamdani won the election in New York City, and Sen. Tommy Tuberville has some things to say about it. Speaking on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Tuberville said he believes that within one election cycle, everybody in America’s largest city will have converted or moved out. “We lost New York,” he said. “It will be completely Muslim in three or four years. That’s what they want. They are going to have everything free there for them, and they are going to spread throughout the country.” I know it might be silly to take Tuberville seriously, but let’s do something he rarely does — make sense with math. New York City is home to almost 8.5 million people. Islam is its third largest religion with estimates ranging between 3 and 9 percent of the city’s population. But it’s New York, so let’s be, ahem, liberal with our numbers. That would mean the city’s new mayor and friends have four years to convert or push out at least 7.5 million people, or about 36,000 per week. And that’s with the clock starting last week … Yeah, that ain’t happening. The leading religion in New York City is Christianity, by the way, with Judaism a distant second. But the fastest-growing group is the religiously unaffiliated. And with folks like Trump’s waterboy preaching the word, is it any wonder why? Tuberville has said dumb things like this before — so many things — but particularly about Muslims and immigrants in cities. Recently, Tuberville introduced legislation to require Uber drivers to be fluent in English, and he also introduced a “religious freedom” bill that would ban Sharia law because, apparently, it’s 2015 again. He wants to push foreign students out of American colleges, even though American universities use their tuition to subsidize American students. And earlier this year, on a talk show once funded by the Kremlin, Tuberville called immigrants “inner-city rats” that depend on government handouts. How dare these New Yorkers mooch off the federal government when they pay considerably more than … (checks notes) … they receive. The taker state isn’t New York. That would be Alabama. It’s also home to more than a few Muslim citizens, too. You might hope a Senator would know that, especially when he now wants to be governor. Tuberville could run for office on many things that might make Alabama better — ending tariffs that hurt Alabama farmers, supporting rural hospitals instead of building the world’s most expensive prison, or recruiting companies from overseas. But why do the hard stuff when old, reliable Alabama politics works so well? Tommy Tuberville still likes to call himself Coach, but his playbook is one everybody knows.
