GOP lawmaker: Draw Muhammad event wasn’t offensive

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said violence at a Texas “Draw Muhammad” contest is part of a push to bring “Sharia law into America by intimidation.”

The conservative shot down criticism that the event was provocative.

{mosads}“I don’t think that what they did down there was offensive. I think it was a robust demonstration of freedom of speech,” he said Monday of the violence in Texas in comments on CNN’s “New Day.”

Both shooters were killed after they opened fire near a building hosting a contest for people to draw the best picture of Muhammad, the Muslim prophet.

Drawings of Muhammad are widely seen as offensive by Muslims. Earlier this year, 11 people were killed in the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. The assailants attacked them because of a series of cartoons in the magazine depicting Mohammad.

“We knew this was coming in some fashion or another,” King said.

King also raised the idea of “no-go zones” in America, which would be areas where Muslim Sharia law reigns and where non-Muslims are not allowed to go. 

“We’ve probably got some no-go zones in America that we don’t talk about,” King said.

“I haven’t been to them and I need to do that, but if you go to Europe and see what’s happening in Europe it’s a predictor of what’s happening in America.”

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), used the term earlier this year to describe areas in Europe after Islamic terrorists launched attacks on the continent, but experts have cast doubt on whether they exist. 

King has held a slew of events in Washington, D.C., for Geert Wilders, a right-wing anti-Islam Dutch politician who was slated to speak at the Texas event before two gunmen opened fire. The men shot a school security officer in the ankle before they were killed by law enforcement.