Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) during a hearing on Friday said that he believes that Islam as a whole is a threat to the United States, labeling it as a religion that will “motivate people to murder children.”

During a hearing he chaired on “Islamist Extremism in Chechnya: A Threat to the U.S. Homeland?” Rohrabacher continually referred to the 2004 Beslan hostage situation — in which Chechen extremists took control of a school in Russia resulting in the death of more than 180 children — as an example of the threat that Islam poses.

At one point, the California Republican sought to clarify that he wasn’t opposed to any religious group gaining power within a region — only Islam. “What we need to worry about is if it happens to be a religion that convinces people that part of their faith is to go off and murder other people’s children,” he said, referring to Islam broadly. Later in the hearing, Rohrabacher was more clear:

ROHRABACHER: At the end of the Cold War, I was the Soviet Union’s worst enemy, nemesis, because I believe that free people need to determine who their number one enemies are and work to try to defeat them. And that doesn’t mean that the people you work with are perfect, et cetera. We did bring down the Soviet Union and we worked with a lot of people who had a lot of faults. Today radical Islam and China appear to be the main adversaries, the main threat to the free world. I hope we all work together against a religion that will motivate people to murder children and other threats to us as a civilization.

Watch his statements here:

Islamophobia has seen a resurgence in the aftermath of the Boston attacks, with Fox News leading the charge in promoting a new wave of fear towards Muslims. Rohrabacher is no stranger himself to controversy surrounding Islam. In 2012, he accused President Obama of “pandering to radical Islamic forces” in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack.

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has been all over the map on Afghanistan. He’s gone from wanting to withdraw U.S. troops as quickly as possible to preferring to wait until he gets elected to come down on a position. Despite Romney’s consistent inconsistency on Afghanistan, his campaign website states that “[w]ithdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan under a Romney administration will be based on conditions on the ground as assessed by our military commanders” — what is essentially an open-ended commitment.

Last night on CNN, Republican congressman Dana Rohrbacher (CA) — who’s been in a tete-a-tete lately with Afghan President Hamid Karzai — criticized Romney’s position. “I totally disagree with the governor,” Rohrbacher said:

ROHRABACHER: We should be looking for ways to get our troops out of Afghanistan at a quicker pace, not at a slower pace. We shouldn’t be committing ourselves to another 10 years of military involvement in Afghanistan and we can do that if we worked with all of the Afghan leaders rather than just trying to put all of our eggs in the Karzai basket and trying to force everybody to accept his power.

BLITZER: What Governor Romney says there should be an open-ended U.S. military and financial commitment to Afghanistan. He doesn’t like the timelines, if you will, but he’s even more aggressive in making sure that U.S. troops stay there to bolster that Afghan government and make sure that there’s security there. … What I hear you saying is you disagree not only with President Obama, but with Governor Romney, as well.

ROHRABACHER: I totally — yes, I totally disagree with the governor. If that is indeed his position I would like to talk to him about it.

Watch the clip:

Republicans in Congress have long been at odds on Afghanistan and a poll out last month found that a majority of Republicans say the war there hasn’t been worth fighting. Perhaps that’s why Romney won’t take a firm position and instead wants to kick the can down the road.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) was refused a visa and prevented from boarding a flight in Dubai to Afghanistan on Friday, Afghan officials said. Rohrabacher has been critical of corruption in President Hamid Karzai’s government and has openly called for a more decentralized government in Afghanistan, which, according to the BBC, led Karzai to request that Rohrabacher be denied entry into the country:

Afghan officials told the BBC that in addition to his criticisms of the president, Mr Rohrabacher was being shunned because of meetings he had held in Berlin with Afghan politicians about the creation of a decentralised form of government.

According to our correspondent, Afghan officials view that as tantamount to interference in the country’s internal affairs.

“Anyone who speaks against the good of Afghanistan and tries to interfere in our internal affairs is ineligible for an Afghan visa,” one official told our correspondent.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton relayed Karzai’s message to Rohrabacher who, according to his spokesperson, obliged “out of respect.”

According to the Guardian, Rohrabacher “has been in discussion with Afghan leaders for several months about a less centralised form of government” and Afghan government officials in January criticized Rohrabacher for meeting with Afghan opposition leaders in Berlin.

According to a State Department cable released by Wikileaks, Rohrabacher as early as 2003 pushed Karzai to incorporate more warlords into his government, telling the Afghan president that he preferred “a federalist decentralization of power.” The Guardian reports that Rohrabacher “became personal friends with many of the commanders” fighting the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Last June, Iraqi government officials kicked Rohrabacher out of Iraq after the Californian Republican said Iraq should repay the United States for the war President Bush started there in 2003. While members of his own party criticized him for the remarks, Rohrabacher remained unapologetic. “There’s nothing wrong with suggesting that the people who have benefited from our benevolence should consider repaying us for what we have given them,” he said.

With the NATO summit coming up next month in Chicago largely focusing on Afghanistan, one senior diplomat in Kabul said of the newest Rohrabacher incident: “This doesn’t look great.”

On HBO’s Real Time Friday night, host Bill Maher said the Republicans “were such sour pusses” during President Obama’s State of the Union speech last week. “Just in your own self interest, wouldn’t it be good to fake it when he’s talking about American succeses?” Maher wondered. Panelist Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) told Maher why the Republicans were in such a foul mood:

ROHRABACHER: Here we have a president of the United States who is just profusely saying how wonderful he thinks of the military and we know, all of us who are sitting in the audience, he’s trying to gut the military!

Maher, co-panelists Kennedy from Reason TV, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir and even the audience joined in to collectively chastise the California Republican for his blatantly false claim. “That’s absolutely not true,” Kennedy said, later adding, “I love the military. I like my SEALs groomed and ready to go but you have to tell the truth.”

“Can I give you the facts?” Maher asked Rohrabacher. “So far every budget Obama has had has increased military spending,” he said. “This year they’re asking a reduction from $531 billion to $525 billion, 1.6 percent. You mean our freedom is in trouble because of that 1.6 percent?” Maher later added, “How paranoid do you have to be to say that this guy is gutting our military?” Watch the clip:

Of course, Maher, Kennedy, Bashir (and the audience) are right, Obama is not gutting the military, not even close. And while the Obama administration has outlined a plan to reduce military spending by nearly $500 billion over the next 10 years, that figure is taken from levels of projected spending. As the New York Times noted this week, “over the next four years, the Pentagon budget would rise each year, reaching $567 billion by 2017.” The Times adds that “adjusted for inflation, the increases are small enough that they will amount to a slight cut of 1.6 percent of the Pentagon’s base budget over the next five years.”