Reza Aslan Quotes
Islamophobia has become so mainstream in this country that Americans have been trained to expect violence against Muslims - not excuse it, but expect it. And that's happened because you have an Islamophobia industry in this country devoted to making Americans think there's an enemy within.
Aslan, Reza. Interview with Don Lemon. CNN Tonight, CNN, 29 Sept. 2014.
This quotation is used by many to illustrate the discrimination that Muslims face in America. The President and almost all other national leaders rejected ideas like this.
At the time, General Flynn was campaigning as a part of the Donald Trump Campaign Team. There was a great deal of Islamaphobia and Flynn and Trump thoght that given the history of Radical Islamic Brutality and Gross Violence, the rear was reasonable. Critics however pointed out that while some Southernors were still violent White Supremicists leaders should not encoruage a fear of Southerners. They argue that the fear should be of extreme radical Muslims, and not Muslims in general. The generalization of fear to all people of any group for the actions of a small subset of the group is actually dangerous and leads to prejudice, feal, hate and often violence such as when many American Blacks feared all pol;ice in the beginning of the 21st century becasue dozens of police officers short and killed unarmed black men,, or the West Cast American fear of the Japanese in WWII, or the terrible result--the Holocaust-- of many Germans' fear and hate of Jews for the "trangressions" of some. All human groups have some bad souls within the greater body of good people--including Muslims.
The Prime Minister was stating a widely held, but erroneous view of the West, history and geopolitics. The Crusades were traumatic for Muslims as the Europeans were not only military threats to the Muslim holy places, but the Christians were particularly brutal even to Richard the Lionhearted butchering unarmed prisoners of war who had surrendered. This aggression by some countries in Europe under the Christian “banner” is associated, to this day with Christianity and any primarily Christian nation is therefore just poised to attack and expel Islam from the Middle East. Mahathir therefore saw the American attack on Afghanistan and later Iraq as just an extension of the Crusader zeal whose object is to destroy Islam. Malaysia has a large population of Muslims—much larger than any of the Middle Eastern Islamic states. Yet, religiously oriented Islamic political leaders make common cause with other Muslim nations which have almost no other interest in common other than their religion.
In the middle of 2010, this organization was running public utility bus ads in major American cities.
Reza Aslan is an Iranian-American scholar of religious studies, writer, and television host. A convert to evangelical Christianity from Shia Islam as a youth, Aslan eventually reverted to Islam but continued to write about Christianity. He has written four books on religion: No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth and God: A Human History.
