Excerpt:
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim elected to Congress, issued a word of caution on Monday about rushing to judgment about the Boston Marathon bombing suspects' religion, saying the Muslim community should not be tied to the Tsarnaev brothers.
"This individual came to the attention of the FBI because of things he said and things he did. That's appropriate. What should not be cause for alarm is somebody's status as a member of a particular religious faith or how devout they may happen to be," Ellison said in an interview with Tamron Hall on MSNBC. "In all these cases, where you see acts of radicalized individuals using violence, they may have a religious affiliation, but oftentimes, when they give reasons for why they did what they did, it is politics."
Ellison pointed to the case of Faisal Shahzad, who was arrested for the 2010 Times Square car bombing. Ellison noted that while Shahzad was Muslim, he was reportedly motivated by his disagreement with U.S. policy in Pakistan and Afghanistan.