Today at PJ Lifestyle I discuss the latest honor being awarded to media darling and Iran lobbying group Board member Reza Aslan.
How clueless and compromised are this country’s moneyed Leftist elites? This clueless and compromised. Intersections International, a group that styles itself as dedicated to promoting “peacemaking” and “interfaith outreach,” is honoring the Leftist media’s darling of the moment, Reza Aslan, “for his work at the intersection of religion, scholarship, and global peacemaking.”
It is hard to overstate how spectacularly bad a choice Reza Aslan is as someone to be honored for “global peacemaking,” unless Intersections International is using the word “peacemaking” as a synonym for “surrender to the enemies of the United States,” particularly Iran — which, in light of the fact that Intersections International is a Leftist group, may well be the case. For Reza Aslan in no way represents peacemaking, either professionally or personally. He is, for starters, a Board member of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which has been established in court as a lobbying group for the Islamic Republic of Iran.…
Aslan is publicly obnoxious, usually on Twitter, and gleefully unrepentant about it: when Buzzfeed published just a sampling of the foul-mouthed abuse he spews at those who cross him, Aslan shrugged it off, saying that his opponents were terrible people, and deserved everything he said to them. Similarly, when a Muslim woman in California, Shaima Alawadi, was murdered in what was widely and erroneously reported as a “hate crime,” Aslan tweeted: “If a 32 year old veiled mother is a terrorist than [sic] so am I you Islamophobic fucks Gellar [sic] Spencer et. al. [sic] Come find me.” When it became clear that the murder was actually an Islamic honor killing, not an “Islamophobic hate crime” at all, I asked Aslan for an apology for essentially accusing me of complicity in a murder. He tweeted: “You owe me an apology for that beard you sexy walrus.” Gandhiesque!
Despite all, this, the Intersections International award is not the first such honor Aslan has received; last May, the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding also celebrated Aslan, in terms similar to those of Intersections. Tanenbaum’s CEO, Joyce S. Dubensky, asserted that “all of Reza’s accomplishments — from his books, to his media efforts, to his activism and interfaith work — share a theme. All inform, build bridges of respect and enable greater understanding of Islam and religious extremism.” Respect? Yes. Dubensky added: “We are particularly excited about honoring Reza. He is tackling hard issues and does it in a way that allows people to listen and learn. And that’s both unusual and critical if we are to achieve mutual respect.”
It’s laughable to see this foul-mouthed terror apologist being touted for his abilities at “peacemaking” and fostering “mutual respect,” but of course neither Dubensky nor Intersections are laughing or even see the irony. They don’t have any illusions, mind you; they don’t think that Aslan fosters peace with those who disagree with him politically, or that he respects conservatives or foes of jihad terror. Nor do they expect him to. In their world, which is also Aslan’s world, people deemed “right-wing” are unworthy of respect, and unworthy even of basic courtesy. No matter how much Aslan engages in immature, ungrammatical and R-rated rants at the “Right,” he will still qualify in the Left’s mind as a “peacemaker” – indeed, as even more of one, for the “right-wingers” are the only ones really disrupting the possibilities for peace, now, aren’t they?
As far as Intersections, the Tanenbaum Center and Reza Aslan are concerned, we deserve all the abuse they can hurl at us. And as they grip their cocktails on awards night in hands smeared with mud and blood, they will congratulate each other on how wonderfully peaceful and respectful they all are.