Iowa jail official: Muslims are ‘pawns of the devil’ aiming to kill Christians

The top administrator at one of Iowa’s largest jails says Muslims are “pawns of the devil” and will soon be hunting down and killing Christians.

Muscatine County Jail Administrator Dean Naylor has placed online a lengthy treatise on the subject, as well as seven videos, all of which were produced five to six years ago but remain publicly accessible online.

In his written treatise, Naylor describes “the gay lifestyle” as an abomination and denounces court rulings that have led to the removal of the Ten Commandments from courthouses and government buildings.

Naylor’s YouTube channel includes three hours of video lectures on the scriptures and the coming “tribulations and rapture” that he says will take place sometime before 2023.

For the past 10 years, Naylor has run the Muscatine County Jail, which has roughly 250 beds and houses inmates for other eastern Iowa counties and the federal government. The jail frequently houses Muslim inmates, some of whom have complained of discrimination.

In a federal lawsuit filed in 2013, seven months before Naylor posted his written condemnation of Muslims, a Muslim inmate sued Naylor in federal court, claiming the jail administrator had ignored his request for a copy of the Quran, the central religious text of Islam. The case was tossed out of court after the inmate failed to respond to the county’s motion to dismiss.

In the 11,500-word treatise entitled “End Times — We Are Here!!,” Naylor characterizes Muslims as “the beast” that will set out to kill all Christians and Jews just before the rapture occurs.

He writes:

• “The people following the Muslim faith are nothing more than pawns to the devil … Allah is Satan, no doubt. Christians need to wake up and understand this. The Muslim world is bowing five times a day to the devil and they don’t know it … Islam has 2 billion followers, they hate Jews and Christians (and) they can have a 200-million-man army … Our fellow servants will turn on us and rat us out to the Satanically led Muslims who will be hunting us.”
• “Muslims also do not have any use for Christians. They will attack and kill any ‘infidel’. An ‘infidel’ is anyone who does not believe in Islam or in other words worship ‘Satan.’ This includes both Christians and Jews … Muslims that are currently worshiping Satan and do not realize that they are actually worshiping Satan but they are being influenced now to kill and eradicate all Christians and Jews.”
• “The next thing on the horizon is a world war. This war will kill a third of mankind. That is about 2 billion people … It wouldn’t take long to kill 2 billion people with nuclear weapons. So the war could only take a few days or a year or two. So it could start anytime and probably already has.”
• “Very soon Christians will be faced with a world that is hunting them worldwide and they will not be able to participate in the economy.”
• “The public and governmental acceptance of the gay lifestyle which is an abomination that according to scripture even defiles the land has caused great harm on our nation. Schools not allowing prayer and teaching atheistic views to our children has also caused great harm not to mention removing truths like the Ten Commandments from our courthouses and government offices.”

Rita Bettis Austen, legal director for the ACLU of Iowa, said that while the organization doesn’t know whether Naylor’s views have resulted in discrimination at the jail, “religious discrimination by officials has no place in America, which prizes religious freedom and pluralism among all our people. Regardless of the comments, we would encourage any Muslim who has experienced religious discrimination while held in the Muscatine County Jail in the last two years to contact the ACLU of Iowa, or another attorney, promptly. Federal law, and the U.S. and Iowa Constitutions, protect against discrimination based on religion in jails and prisons, and officials may be sued when they do so.”

In one of his videos, Naylor vehemently urges viewers to “buckle up” and prepare for a war that will take place between 2016 and 2023 and will kill one-third of mankind.

“The beast is coming, all right? Whether you want to wake up to it or not, he’s coming. Our time is nearing the end,” Naylor says in the video. “The clock on the end time is ticking … Wake up. We need to start preparing for war — spiritual war and physical war.”

Asked whether his videos and written statements reflect his current way of thinking, Naylor declined to comment.

Naylor’s boss, Muscatine County Sheriff C.J. Ryan, said that as sheriff his “concern is the actions of my employees, not their personal beliefs. I have no comment on the personal beliefs of Mr. Naylor or any of my other employees.”

Ryan said “it is departmental policy that all employees are required to treat individuals with whom they interact without regard to their personal characteristics such as race, sex, national origin, religion, sexual orientation or other factors protected by law.”

Muscatine County Supervisor Scott Sauer said he knows Naylor, but doesn’t know anything about his public statements or online postings.

“I know nothing of what you’re speaking of, nothing at all,” he said. “I don’t get online looking for whatever. I’m just not a person who does that, that gets online and searches for whatever you can search for. I’ve got way too much work to do to be doing that.”

Supervisor Doug Holliday said he, too, was unaware of any online postings by the jail administrator. He said he’s not sure it would be an issue for the board to consider, as they have been busy dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said he has some initial thoughts on Naylor’s views, but added that he’s reluctant to share them until he can find out more about the situation.