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The ordained minister who represents the US Congress in Iowa wrote an opinion piece sharing that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 – carried out by radical Islamic terrorists – made him more “aware” of the “growing prejudice against Muslims and its harms.”
Sarah Trone Garriott is one of three Democratic candidates running for the battleground seat held by Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa.
Garriott, an Iowa state legislator and Lutheran minister, wrote an opinion piece for the Iowa Capital Dispatch in response to “hateful messages” he received after sharing a prayer with Arabic words written by a Muslim woman on the state floor in February 2021.
“They say the most outrageous things about my Muslim neighbors – Sharia law, a freedom-hating, violent religion,” Garriott wrote. “There are some who expressed the comment that the United States is a Judeo-Christian country and therefore the prayers of Muslims were not acceptable. There were attacks on me, as a Christian leader I was misleading people, which I did not know what I was doing.”
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Iowa State Senator Sarah Trone Garriott is pictured next to the September 11th Memorial in New York City. ((Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Cody Scanlan/The Register / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
He said the pushback “convinced” him that there is a greater need for “religious diversity.”
Garriott revealed that he began his master’s degree in religious studies at Harvard University the day after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“On that religiously segregated campus, I was acutely aware of growing anti-Muslim prejudice and its harms,” Garriott wrote. “I’m an avid Bible student, and when Jesus said blessed are the peaceful, I took that to heart. I worked with my Muslim students in the classroom to plan a meal that would bring the community together during Ramadan.”
Meanwhile, Nunn “had a different response” to the 9/11 terrorist attacks by joining the Air Force, according to Nunn’s spokesman, Mark Matava. During his service, he “flew more than 100 combat missions to protect America.”
“Sarah Trone Garriott called Christianity a ‘threat,’ mocked parents for protecting their daughters, and accused Christian schools of being ‘white slaves,'” Matava said. “Now we learn that his response to the deadliest attack on American soil was to educate the American people about racism without mentioning the nearly 3,000 people killed on 9/11. His contempt for Iowa and America is on full display.”
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About 3,000 people died and thousands were injured in the terrorist attacks on 9/11. (Photo12/Universal Images Group)
Iowa GOP spokeswoman Jade Cichy also criticized Garriott for not mentioning the thousands of American victims killed on 9/11.
“The biggest concern of superhero Sarah Trone Garriott after the terrorist attacks of September 11 was ‘discrimination against Muslims,’ and she didn’t talk about the thousands of innocent Americans who lost their lives that day,” Cichy said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “This stunning display of divisive politics is just the latest example of how Trone Garriott no longer works for Iowa’s values.”
Republican National Committee spokesman Zach Kraft said he is “insulting the values of Iowa” by aligning with “coastal Democratic Party officials.”
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Congressman-elect Zach Nunn (R-IA) attends an orientation for newly elected members of the 118th US Congress, following the 2022 midterm elections, at the Hyatt Hotel in Washington, US, November 13, 2022. (Michael A. McCoy/Reuters)
“Sarah Trone Garriott should be ashamed of herself for wagging the finger at America for not raising enough awareness on 9/11 and completely ignoring the more than 2,000 patriots who were tragically killed that day,” Kraft said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
Iowa GOP spokeswoman Jade Cichy called Garriott a “tone-deaf political bully.”
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Fox News Digital reported last month on a 2023 speech given by Garriott in which he criticized Christian demonstrations at political rallies, calling them “uncomfortable ways of conflicting faith and political power.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to Garriott for comment.
