Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith has continued to escalate his anti-Islamic rhetoric online and in podcast appearances in recent weeks.
Beckwith appeared on the Conservative Review with Daniel Horowitz and criticized what he saw as the encroachment of Islam into Indiana and the United States.
“We should ban the call to prayer, public calls to prayer,” Beckwith told Horowitz. “If you have a Mosque and you want to have a loudspeaker and want to be pumping these out five times a day, the state can say you’re not going to do that.”
Beckwith clarified those comments in a post on social media, saying “I 100% want to ban Mosques in America from blaring the Muslim call to prayer.”
Beckwith has previously called Islam a “demonic death cult," comments that brought lawmakers and religious leaders from across the state together to call for “faith over fear.”
That event also brought several Republicans to the statehouse in opposition to Beckwith, including State Treasurer Daniel Elliott, who worried that the Lt. Gov.’s comments were a slippery slope to targeting people practicing different kinds of Christianity. Elliot identifies as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon Church.
Beckwith repeatedly called out Elliott on Horowitz’s podcast, saying he disagreed with the idea that religious liberty needed to be respected.
“When this religion is a religion that is hell-bent on destroying American values, he [Daniel Elliott] is derelict in his duty, and he's not doing his job defending what God has called him to defend, which is the American way of life,” Beckwith said.
Elliot did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WFYI.
Beckwith’s latest remarks have again drawn the attention of Muslim advocacy groups, raising concerns about his statements.
Hafsa Haider with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, said in a statement Beckwith is using his office to spread misinformation. “The adhan is a peaceful call to prayer recited by Muslims around the world for more than fourteen centuries. To portray it as a call to 'death and destruction' is not only offensive—it is a malicious falsehood that demonizes an entire faith and the millions of Americans who practice it.”
Haider also took issue with Beckwith’s assertion that the United States was a Christian nation.
“The Constitution guarantees religious liberty for every American, not government preference for one faith over another,” he said. “No Supreme Court decision has declared the United States a 'Christian nation'.”
The Indiana Muslim Advocacy Network also released a statement raising concerns about Beckwith’s latest comments and his scheduled appearance at a mass deportation rally in Fishers in August.
That event is an invitation-only rally that will feature former U.S. Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino.
Bovino was the face of Trump’s immigration crackdown and has since made appearances at white nationalist events in Europe.
The Indiana Muslim Advocacy Network noted that Fishers has one of Indiana’s largest Muslim communities.
Contact Government Reporter Benjamin Thorp at bthorp@wfyi.org
