Tapinto yesterday reported that Raritan Township Committeeman Lou Reiner shared a post on

Facebook calling Islam a “cancer” that “must be treated with radiation,” and then made follow up comments to a reporter stating that the “religion itself is absolutely evil”. He also said, “I’m an infidel, and I’m proud of it.”

Evidently not proud of it, U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-7) responded this morning with a statement of condemnation.

“I call on Committeeman Reiner to apologize for his comments or resign immediately,” said the freshman congressman. “This hate filled rhetoric has no place in our country. In every part of New Jersey and across the United States, Muslim-Americans are part of our American family. They are teachers, doctors, nurses, and small business owners, public officials, police officers, and members of our military. Our country’s success in giving people of all faiths the chance to live the American dream so long as they embrace American ideals makes us stronger and is the most powerful rebuke to our enemies in the world.

“Such language from a public official is particularly dangerous at a time when hate crimes and acts of domestic terrorism are on the rise,” said Malinowski, who last year drove a Republican incumbent out of his congressional seat by seizing hold of anti-Trump sentiment on the ground. “Threats of violence against Muslim-Americans are coming from the same people who commit violence against Jewish, Hispanic, and African Americans. No leader should be normalizing the hateful ideas that inspire such violence.”

Pressed about his comments, Committeeman Reiner said that that they “won’t upset Republicans.”

Malinowski disagreed.

“I trust he will be proven wrong,” he said. “There cannot be a partisan divide in America about whether we should hate people based on their faith.”

Reiner subsequently apologized here.