Sandy Rios: ‘Perpetrating Violence and Death is Totally Islamic’

Sandy Rios mingles with fans at CPAC 2018. (Jared Holt for Right Wing Watch)

Sandy Rios, governmental affairs director at the anti-LGBT hate group American Family Association and a Religious Right radio host on American Family Radio, holds two separate standards for Christians and Muslims who commit violence.

During her radio program yesterday, Rios read a listener comment from someone claiming to be a history student, who had written to Rios that he believes Christianity has been responsible for “more violence and death” than Islam, and said that Rios and her colleagues at American Family Radio were “helping to promote Islamophobia.” It’s true; Christianity has been cited as justification for countless acts and calls for violence. For Rios, a double standard exists where violence in the name of Christianity is not actually Christian, but violence in the name of Islam is certainly Islamic.

“Even if what you said is true, that Christianity has been guilty of a lot more violence and death over the centuries than Islam, even if—let’s say that’s true. Let me just tell you that perpetrating violence and death is not Christian,” Rios said, responding to the history student. “Perpetrating violence and death is totally Islamic. It’s Islamic teaching to kill or convert. It includes beheadings. It’s all laid out in the Quran. Surely you must know that.”

She continued, “Nations, tribes and people who kill in the name of Jesus are not, as David Horowitz—our guest a few days ago—would say, ‘religious Christians.’ They’re not religious Christians. They don’t adhere to the Christian faith. They don’t kill in the name of Jesus.”