The host of a radio show that has become a regular stop for Republican presidential candidates is calling for restrictions on Muslim immigration to the U.S.

Bryan Fischer, who is the American Family Association’s Director of Issues Analysis, also called Islam a “toxic cancer” on his show today. This is not new rhetoric for Fischer, but what makes it interesting is that several potential GOP candidates have recently accepted invitiations to be on his show. That includes Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Haley Barbour, and Newt Gingrich.

“We really need to restrict immigration from Islamic countries,” Fischer said today.

Here, via Right Wing Watch, are his latest comments:

We allow unrestricted Muslim immigration into the United States, we are welcoming to our shores, welcoming to our borders, men who are determined to destroy us. They’ve said it themselves, it’s in their own writings, it’s in their own words; they’re out to eliminate and destroy western civilization. It’s just absolute folly to invite that kind of toxic cancer into our culture, but that’s what we’re doing every single day.

Justin Elliott at Salon, 6 April 2011

State Senate Democrats are out with a release today blasting Republican lawmaker Greg Ball for holding a hearing which they claim is designed to “isolate and villify Muslims.”

The hearing, called “Reviewing our Preparedness: An Examination of New York’s Public Protection Ten Years After September 11” will be held Friday at 250 Broadway in Manhattan and will feature Nonie Darwish, a human rights activist who has attracted a good deal of controversy for her views on Islam, particularly the idea that the religion teaches its adherents to hate non-believers and to subjugate women.

The Democrats also blasted Senator Ball for inviting Frank Gaffney, a columnist who has questioned if Barack Obama was born in the United States. Ball said that Gaffney, in fact, will not attend.

“They are not people who are experts in security,” said Senator Kevin Parker of Brooklyn [pictured]. “They are folks who have developed their name by spending their time criticizing and attacking Islam, which is not where we think we ought to be as a legislature.”

New York Observer, 5 April 2011

See Senator Kevin Parker press release, 5 April 2011

Read the letter by Senator Parker and other Democrats to Greg Ball here.

A national group that wants to advertise its anti-Muslim messages on Metro Detroit buses has won the right to display their ads on the sides of local buses.

The ads, which will soon be ready to go on the side of some local public buses, read “Fatwa on your head? Leaving Islam? Refuge from Islam.com. Got questions? Get answers!” The controversial ads from the New York City-based American Freedom Defense Initiative group are aimed at people who want to leave the Islamic faith.

Metro Detroit has one of the highest concentrations of Muslims in the nation.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Denise Hood granted a preliminary injunction against the Southeastern Michigan Transportation Authority’s rejection of the ads, ruling SMART violated the group’s First and 14th Amendment rights. Both sides are due back in court April 11.

“This is a huge win, not just for us, but for the First Amendment,” Pamela Geller wrote on the American Freedom Defense Initiative’s website. “This is a direct refutation to all those who claim I am a hater or that my lawyers are ‘haters’ for representing me,” added Geller. “I love, not hate.”

Local Muslim activist Dawud Walid sees it differently. “The organization … is simply fomenting Islamophobia,” said Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Michigan). “(Geller) is simply engaging in fear mongering.”

Victor Begg, also a Muslim advocate, said the case is “is another example of a hate group taking advantage of our First Amendment.”

Detroit News, 2 April 2011

Press TV talks with author Max Blumenthal who illuminates a hate campaign against Barack Obama by the Republic Party that targets Obama’s religious identity as a Muslim and how this campaign is having real life consequences on the entire Muslim community inside America.

Over at the Center for American Progress Wajahat Ali and Matthew Duss have prepared a briefing on sharia law and how the issue has been misrepresented by the US Right – specifically in the September 2010 report Sharia: The Threat to America, published by the Center for Security Policy.

Download the briefing here.

See also Tim Murphy, “The great sharia freakout”, Mother Jones, 31 March 2011

And Greg Sargent, “Debunking the right’s crackpot sharia panic”, The Plum Line, 31 March 2011