Islamic supremacist stealth moderate Reza Aslan lies so many times in this interview that it is clear that lying is something he has practiced extensively and honed as a craft.
"Reza Aslan: Expert in Exile," by Aaron Ross in Mother Jones, September 23:
Mother Jones: You've argued that anti-Muslim sentiment in the US has gotten significantly worse of late, especially within the last few years. Why do you think that is?Reza Aslan: This is the great irony of course. Despite the previous administration's demonization of Islam, the truth is that in the United States during the early part of the Bush years, anti-Muslim sentiment was not nearly at the levels that it is today. Certainly there are a number of reasons for this, but as we now know, there has been a well-organized and deliberate attempt by a very small group of individuals, funded by a handful of foundations to the tune of 40 million dollars to convince Americans that Islam is the enemy.
There are indeed "a number of reasons for this," including Naser Abdo, the would-be second Fort Hood jihad mass murderer; and Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas; and Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore; and Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland; and Nidal Hasan, the successful Fort Hood jihad mass-murderer; and Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer; and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer; and Naveed Haq, the jihad mass murderer at the Jewish Community Center in Seattle; and Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber; and so many other Islamic jihad murderers and would-be murderers in America, all of whom (along with many others) were inspired and motivated, by their own admission, by Islamic texts and teachings.
And regarding the "very small group of individuals, funded by a handful of foundations to the tune of 40 million dollars to convince Americans that Islam is the enemy," Aslan doesn't bother to mention that the $40 million figure covers a period of nine years and several different organizations. He gets his figure from the Center for American Progress's "Islamophobia" report, about which Daniel Pipes notes: "It's pretty rich that CAP, on organization whose 2009 budget was $38,187,695, focuses on 8 organizations receiving about that sum over a period of 9 years."
MJ: You appeared on an ABC special in October called "Should Americans Fear Islam?" alongside Robert Spencer of the anti-Islam site Jihad Watch and Rev. Franklin Graham, who's called Islam "wicked." Why did you agree to do that?RA: When Christiane [Amanpour] asked me to be on the show I said I would be happy to do so. Then a couple of days before the show, when they told me that one of the panelists was going to be Robert Spencer, and that Pamela Geller was going to be invited to speak, I said, "I'm out." I have no interest in legitimizing these fringe individuals and organizations by pretending that they belong in a debate about Islam. As I said to Christiane, "If we were having a debate on race in America, would you invite members of the KKK?"
This is the Big Lie of the Left and the Islamic supremacists like Aslan: that any critical stance toward Islamic jihad and Islamic supremacism in the U.S. constitutes hatred and bigotry on par with the Ku Klux Klan. By this means they are trying to discredit and marginalize everyone who dares to stand up against the Islamic supremacist agenda. And certainly they've had great success, due to the cowardice and pusillanimity of many on the Right.
But in any case, the comparison of me to the KKK is just propaganda without substance; my work has always been in defense of human rights -- the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law -- and neither Reza Aslan nor anyone else cannot produce and never has produced any statement of mine that is genuinely hateful, racist, bigoted, or anything but accurate about Islam and the jihad threat. So since Aslan cannot answer me, he tries to destroy my reputation.
And she not only withdrew the invitation to Pamela Geller, but she assured me that I would get an opportunity to really call Spencer on the bullshit that he peddles in the guise of academic research.
Here Aslan is lying yet again. In fact, Pamela Geller was never invited on to this show. There was no invitation to withdraw.
Note also the "objectivity" of "journalist" Amanpour, who promised him he would have an opportunity to smear me. And he did: at one point Amanpour mentioned that I was co-founder of Stop Islamization of America, but instead of going to me for comment, or even to ask me some pointed question, she said that Aslan had background on the roots of the Stop Islamization movement in Europe, and went to him. Aslan then lied outright, claiming that the movement was neo-Nazi, and slinging charge after unsubstantiated charge that I was a bigot, a hatemonger, a racist, a pseudo-scholar, an eater of babies, etc. When I tried to respond, Amanpour put her finger to her lips and shushed me, although I went on anyway -- however, I later learned that my mic had been cut off and none of my responses made the broadcast version.
He's churning out these completely made-up statistics about how 80 percent of mosques in the US are preaching radicalism, whereas the fact-checkers and the producers and the reporters at ABC themselves on camera said that there are simply no research whatsoever that backs up that claim.
"No research whatsoever." Not "research that we don't trust," or "research we don't believe," but "no research whatsoever." Aslan lies all the time, even when he doesn't have to: he could have said he didn't trust these studies. But he is saying they don't exist. Here are the facts:
In 1998, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi leader, visited 114 mosques in the United States. Then he gave testimony before a State Department Open Forum in January 1999, and asserted that 80% of American mosques taught the "extremist ideology."
Then there was the Center for Religious Freedom's 2005 study, and the Mapping Sharia Project's 2008 study. Each independently showed that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule.
And in the summer of 2011, after the Amanpour show, came another study showing that only 19% of mosques in U.S. don't teach jihad violence and/or Islamic supremacism.
But, next thing you know, here's Peter King in his discussions about why the US Congress needs to have hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims, and his reasoning was that 80 percent of mosques in the US are breeding radicalism. That gives you an understanding of how this Islamophobia industry works. You find a pseudo-scholar to make pseudo-scholarship claims, those claims get picked up by politicians and by Fox News, and they become part of the American dialogue about Islam....
Indeed, because they were accurate, unlike anything Reza Aslan says. Aslan is one of the most unsavory and dishonest Islamic supremacist spokesmen on the scene today. Despite his pretentious puffery and literary mummery, he has revealed himself to be a arrogant gutter-minded buffoon who appears incapable of staking out or defending a coherent intellectual position, and instead retails tired and oft-retreaded Islamic supremacist talking points about Muslim victimhood.
His Islamic supremacist ties and proclivities are becoming more ill-concealed by the day; nonetheless, he remains a heralded and media-saturated "moderate" Muslim. In reality, Aslan is a Board member of the National Iranian American Council, a group that genuine Iranian pro-democracy forces regard as an apologetic vehicle for the Islamic Republic of Iran. He has tried to pass off Iran's genocidally-minded President Ahmadinejad as a liberal reformer. He has called on the U.S. Government to negotiate with Ahmadinejad himself, as well as with Hamas -- that is, with two of the most barbaric and murderous adherents of Sharia.
Aslan has even praised the jihad terror group Hizballah as "the most dynamic political and social organization in Lebanon," as well as the Jew-hating, women-hating, kuffar-hating Muslim Brotherhood, which is dedicated in its own words to "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within" -- including, presumably, the works of Andy Warhol. Aslan wrote: "The Muslim Brotherhood will have a significant role to play in post-Mubarak Egypt. And that is good thing." If, in 1932, someone had written that "the National Socialist Party will have a significant role to play in post-Weimar Germany, and that is a good thing," he would have rightly been called a Nazi sympathizer.
Aslan has also spoken at events sponsored by the Muslim Students Association, a Brotherhood group, and at an event co-sponsored by the Los Angeles chapter of Hamas-linked CAIR, and moderated by the notorious Edina Lekovic, the Muslim Public Affairs Council flack whom Steve Emerson caught lying on national television, denying she was editor of a Muslim student publication that praised Osama bin Laden as a great mujahid. Emerson produced copies of the rag showing Lekovic's name on the masthead as editor on the very same page on which the praise for Osama appeared.
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Amanpour, Amanpour. exPrez Clit'on's fave broad caster.