Friday evening I was in Baltimore, Maryland, speaking before a packed house at the Institute On The Constitution -- the largest crowd they had had in nine years of featuring weekly speakers. At the beginning of the evening they surprised me with the plaque above, an honor as great as it was unexpected.
And while I do get death threats regularly, the favored device of Islamic supremacists in the West to silence their opponents is not assassination, but character assassination. The clownish Islamic supremacist Reza Aslan was on the road last weekend as well, peddling his "Islamophobia" snake oil to the hapless students at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. And in the course of his talk, he returned, as always, to the chief object of his obsession.
One of the most ridiculous aspects of our silly age is that utter mediocrities and intellectual flotsam and jetsam like Reza Aslan, who aren't capable of independent thought or of defending their own positions except with lies and scorn, are lauded and lionized by the clueless and compromised elites, solely because they mouth the proper politically correct opinions.
"Hope College speaker says bias against Islam prompted by ignorance, fear," by Greg Chandler for The Grand Rapids Press, October 8 (thanks to James):
HOLLAND — Ten years after the Sept. 11 attacks, anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States is at an all-time high.What’s particularly disconcerting, says Reza Aslan, is that such beliefs have become increasingly part of the American mainstream, showing up in comments by members of Congress and commentators on Fox News.
“It’s become a receptacle in which Americans are throwing their fears and anxieties about the economy, their fears about the changing political landscape, their fears about the changing racial landscape in this country,” said Aslan, a contributing editor at The Daily Beast and author of the bestselling book “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam,” who spoke this week at Hope College’s Critical Issues Symposium.
“Whatever is fearful, whatever is frightening, whatever is uncomfortable, is being tagged as Islam.”...
This is so absurd it beggars belief. if Americans have "fears and anxieties" about Islam, it isn't because of the economy, or the "changing political landscape" (whatever that means, but Aslan probably doesn't mean Obama's imploding approval numbers), or the "changing racial landscape" in this country. Americans are concerned about Islam because of 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 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; Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh, who hatched a jihad plot to blow up a Manhattan synagogue; and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber; and many others like them who have plotted and/or committed mass murder in the name of Islam and motivated by its texts and teachings.
But for Aslan, of course, this is all my fault:
Aslan, an associate professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside, has been involved in numerous efforts to build bridges between Americans and the Muslim world. A native of Iran whose family escaped to the U.S. during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he says a well-financed campaign involving such organizations as Jihad Watch, headed by Robert Spencer, has fueled anti-Muslim sentiment.
Aslan was probably here referring to the Center for American Progress "Islamophobia" report, which made much of $40 million donated over a period of nine years to several different organizations. Daniel Pipes notes: "It's pretty rich that CAP, an organization whose 2009 budget was $38,187,695, focuses on 8 organizations receiving about that sum over a period of 9 years."
Aslan also debunks efforts in more than 20 states to pass laws that would ban the establishment of courts based on Muslim law, or Sharia. He says such courts, which would deal primarily with family matters such as marriage and divorce, should not be seen as a threat on America.“It is literally impossible for Sharia, as penal code, to creep its way into America,” Aslan said. “You’re not going to get to stone people in America tomorrow.”
How about the next day? Seriously, Aslan probably didn't tell his luckless marks at Hope that Sharia has already been used as a determining factor in court cases in 23 states.
The answer to change people’s minds toward Islam is not education, despite Aslan’s role as an educator. He says the answer is building relationships with individual Muslims.“If you know one Muslim, it cuts in half the negativity rating you have toward Islam,” Aslan said. “If you get to know (a Muslim) as a person, as a human being … it’s hard to maintain that idea of otherness.”
I don't know. I expect that knowing Reza Aslan personally would double a person's "negativity rating" toward Islam.
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I don't know. I expect that knowing Reza Aslan personally would double a person's "negativity rating" toward Islam.
I second that !!