This is sick.

Hatemongering against Muslims has reached the airwaves big time with the Right despicably promoting the view that Muslims exercising their constitutional right to religious freedom is tantamount to military conquest by terrorists.

The Atlantic reports:

The American Future Fund, an Iowa-based free-market conservative group, is airing a TV ad that goes a step beyond most of the criticism leveled at the Cordoba Initiative’s Park 51 community center, warning that Muslims build mosques after military conquests and repeating Newt Gingrich’s Pearl Harbor parallel.

The ad targets Democratic Congressman Bruce Braley for defending clear-cut First Amendment rights of the Muslims who are engaged in the project.

Watch it:

Think Progress revealed that the producer of this ad also produced the infamously racist Willie Horton ads that helped sink Michael Dukakis’s presidential bid in 1988.

The response from Rep. Braley’s campaign appropriately calls this effort out for the diversionary tactic it is:

Bruce Braley has been a leading voice for America’s middle class families and holding greedy corporations like BP, Toyota and Wall Street executives accountable, so it’s no surprise that shadowy special interests are going to resort to smear campaigns against him. Ultimately, voters need to look at the facts themselves and see that Bruce Braley has been listening, working hard and getting things done for Iowa’s First District.