So Reza Aslan might as well be ISIS
by digby
… or at the very least he’s promoting violence. How? By having the temerity to get annoyed by the morons on CNN:
On Thursday, CNN’s Chris Cuomo said Aslan’s “tone” was an example of why people are scared of Muslims in the first place.
“He wound up kind of demonstrating what people are fearful about when they think of the faith in the first place, which is the hostility of it,” he said, as though responding verbally to attacks on your religion is some sort of wild-eyed practice.
“The Muslim world is responsible for a really big part of religious extremism right now,” Cuomo continued. “And they are unusually violent. They’re unusually barbaric in the places where it is happening. And it’s happening there more there than it is in other places. Do you therefore want to generalize? Of course not. But you do want to call a situation what it is.”
Jesus H. Christ. I watched the Aslan interview in real time and (and wrote about it here)was literally screaming at the TV. I don’t know how he kept from screaming, “read my lips, you ignoramuses! There’s no such thing as “Muslim countries” doing anything! They’re all different! Like Christian countries are all different. Don’t you get it!?” And I’m not Muslim! But hey, I guess my impatience with intellectual rot makes me a terrorist anyway.
Aslan was much, much more reserved than I was here at home. And yet, according to Chris Cuomo his mild annoyance at CNN’s version of Beavis and Butthead is what gives Islam a reputation for violence.
You know, I really am starting to get a little bit freaked out by the level of sheer inanity in the press right now. There is some serious stuff going on and they are all behaving like a bunch of hysterical children in a haunted house. It must be the bubble … Whatever it is they seem determined to create a panic.