Is it fair for Republicans to go after Keith Ellison for being a Muslim?

[RZM]

59. Actually he didn't do that

Constantine accepted Christianity himself (though he wasn't baptized until right before he died) and did turn more towards persecution of pagans later in his reign. But he never made Christianity the sole state religion. That didn't happen until the Edict of Thessalonica, which was proclaimed over 40 years after his death.

It's also argued that Thessalonica was less about ending paganism and more about forcing Arian Christians to accept the Nicene version of the faith.

Nevertheless, it is true that many people in the modern Middle East were Christian at the time of Mohammed's birth. Though I think they were much more common in North Africa and the Levant than in places like the Arabian peninsula (though there were some there too). As Ellison pointed out, Arabia was not a formal part of the Roman empire. In any case, Mohammed himself was of course much more hostile to pagans than 'people of the book.'