House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is set to appoint a Muslim lawmaker to the Intelligence Committee, congressional aides said Tuesday, giving him access to some of America's most closely held secrets in the war on terror. The move will come as the world is still grappling with an al-Qaeda death squad's massacre last week of journalists at the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo, executed because they had published a cartoon of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Rep. André Carson has attracted suspicion for his public statements, including a 2012 Islamic Circle of North America convention where he said America's schools should be modelled after Qur'anic madrassas.
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Indiana Democratic Rep. André Carson will soon sit on a legislative committee where some of America's most precious secrets are examined
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The former policeman converted to Islam as an adult and is one of only two Muslim members of Congress
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He attracted scorn with a 2012 speech in which he said American schools would be more innovative if they were more like Islamic madrassas
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Carson claimed he was misunderstood but never addressed another line in the speech that seemed to taunt undercover agents who were present
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'Allah will not allow you to stop us,' he said
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Carson also claimed that 'xenophobia has become exacerbated because of extremist elements [within @placeholder], but I still say that Muslims have to take control of our own destiny and to reclaim our destiny we have to engage in a political process.'