Ellison talks family, religion on Al Jazeera

Rep. Keith Ellison was recently interviewed by Al Jazeera about his conversion to Islam, being a Muslim legislator, how his experiences growing up influenced his politics and what motivated him to run for Congress.

Video after the jump.

On anti-Muslim sentiment:

There are occasions where things pop up and they come up at unusual times.
From time to time the blogosphere is busy dwelling on this issue of my religion, and quite frankly there does seem to be a budding industry who work night and day to try to pick at religious tension that might be latent in the country or around the world. Sometimes use me as the point of attack.

On the controversy over his writings about Louis Farrakhan in the 1980s:

Regret? For the time I was in, that was where I was. As I got a little older into my professional life, I came to some new realizations. So I don’t have any regrets. I will say that people develop, people grow, people emerge, and who I was at 18, 19, 20 is not who I was at 40 or 41, and it’s a little ridiculous to assume people don’t change.