Failed CNN host and cannibal Reza Aslan is one of the many media talking heads who would have us believe that the primary result of the 9/11 jihad attacks has been that Muslims have faced large-scale discrimination and harassment in the United States. This isn’t really true: FBI hate crime statistics show that anti-Semitic hate crimes are far more common than attacks on Muslims, which actually dropped 42% in the last year. No hate crime is justified, but the idea that Muslims are living in fear of MAGA-hat-wearing redneck vigilantes in America is paranoid Leftist fantasy. Aslan, however, has a fantasy solution to his fantasy problem: put Afghan refugees in sitcoms.
In a Los Angeles Times column published Monday, Aslan wrote: “I’ve spent my entire career trying to help non-Muslims in the West understand Islam as a religion, a culture and an ideology. For years I was the friendly face of Islam on cable TV, the guy making jokes on Jon Stewart and getting into arguments on Fox News, trying to reframe Americans’ perceptions about my faith and culture. My first book, ‘No God But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam,’ became an international bestseller. I really thought I was making a difference.”
Reza Aslan, a notoriously hateful and unhinged far-Left ideologue, was never the friendly face of anything. As arrogant as he is hate-filled, Aslan cannot understand why Americans after 9/11 remained wary regarding jihad attacks and chose to believe their lying eyes rather than his assurances that Islam was peaceful: “But at some point, I realized I wasn’t. Five years after 9/11, in 2006, negative perceptions of Islam were far higher than they were in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Ten more years later, in 2016, the U.S. set a record for anti-Muslim hate crimes.”
Aslan ultimately concluded that “no amount of lectures or essays or bloviation on cable news will make someone stop fearing another person.” Indeed. When there are five jihad attacks a day every day for twenty years, all committed by people who believe that a book telling them to “kill them wherever you find them” (Qur’an 2:191, 4:89, cf. 9:5) was written by the one and only god, people might get suspicious of those who hold the same belief system. There is no justification for any actions against innocent people, but Aslan’s bafflement over why so many Americans viewed negatively is silly: Americans would have no problem at all with Islam or Muslims were it not for jihad violence.