Jail administrator’s anti-Muslim views could cost Muscatine County taxpayers

Johnson County officials are threatening to terminate their contract with the Muscatine County Jail due to concerns over the jail administrator calling Muslims “pawns of the devil” who intend to hunt down and kill Christians.

The cancellation of the contract could have a significant impact on Muscatine County, which last year collected $657,415 as payment from Johnson County for housing some of its inmates.

Muscatine County’s jail administrator, Capt. Dean Naylor, is the author of a lengthy online treatise about Muslims, and the creator of seven related YouTube videos. All of the content was produced five to six years ago but it remains 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.

He also predicts a global conflict that will pit Muslims, led by Satan, against Christians and result in the death of 2 billion people.

After Iowa Capital Dispatch reported Naylor’s comments, officials in Johnson County — which uses the Muscatine County Jail to house some of its inmates — expressed concern about the situation.

The Johnson County Board of Supervisors sent a letter this week to the Muscatine County supervisors, saying they found Naylor’s comments to be “hateful.”

The letter states that “Captain Naylor’s reprehensible comments about Muslims and members of the LGBTQ+ community have caused us to fear for the civil liberties of the inmates housed at your jail. We find Captain Naylor’s hateful speech to be unacceptable, particularly considering the high standard we hold for sworn law enforcement officers. We denounce his comments and actions.”

The letter goes on to suggest that if Muscatine County takes no steps to address the matter and “concerns remain, we may have no choice but to terminate our contract with Muscatine County and seek housing for our county’s overflow inmates elsewhere.”

Muscatine County expanded its jail years ago with the intent of having it generate revenue through fees paid other Iowa counties, including Johnson and Clinton, and by the federal government for housing some of their inmates.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, has publicly urged Muscatine County to fire Naylor. The organization’s director of government affairs, Robert McCaw, said “Naylor’s hostility and twisted apocalyptic end-times beliefs directly impacts his ability to impartially ensure the safety, security and religious rights of Muslim inmates.”

While the Johnson County supervisors have publicly condemned Naylor’s comments, Muscatine County supervisors haven’t publicly voiced any concerns.

Some county residents have, however, expressed outrage.

In a letter to the Muscatine County supervisors, human rights activist John Dabeet said Naylor’s behavior should not be tolerated.

“Imagine for a second that he spoke about a different religion (in the) same way,” Dabeet wrote. “We believe Mr. Naylor should not be working for our county, not in any position of authority, and we look forward to hearing from you on steps that will be taken to investigate this shameful act by Mr. Naylor.”

Another individual, Ryan Meyer, wrote to Naylor’s boss, Muscatine County Sheriff C.J. Ryan, about the Capital Dispatch article, expressing his “deep concerns upon reading what I can only describe as the ravings of a lunatic posted online by a high-level county employee, Dean Naylor.”

Meyer asked the sheriff to read Naylor’s writings and “consider whether this person has the mental capacity and stability required for his position.” He suggested that if the county were to be sued by a group of current or former Muslim inmates, the cost to taxpayers would be “astronomical.”

Sheriff Ryan has said that 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.”

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 that “people following the Muslim faith are nothing more than pawns to the devil … 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.”

Naylor also warns that “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.”

In one of his videos, Naylor 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 by the Capital Dispatch whether his videos and written statements reflect his current way of thinking, Naylor declined to comment.