TOURE, MSNBC: To think that we have a problem with global Islam and that it’s okay to be afraid when we encounter one of the 2 million American Muslims, well that’s just mental laziness. Demanding Muslims prove they’re not supportive of murderers is bizarre. We can deplore homophobia and gender violence and repression in Muslim-majority nations without making it an attack on Islam, because those things exist in some Christian-majority nations as well.
The politics of repression in the Middle East give hateful ministers room to bastardize Islam and advance a twisted view of it as a recruiting tool, and as Salman Rushdie said, used the language of ‘jihadi-cool’ to seduce. We know that some of those joining ISIS don’t even know Islam. Some have bought “Islam for Dummies” from Amazon just before embarking on their trip to join ISIS. Liberals owe it to their legacy to not conflate the worst of Islam with all of Islam; to not participate in the fearmongering and the generalizing and the Islamophobia that turns our battle with radical jihadists into a battle with 1.6 [billion] global Muslims. I see Islamophobia becoming an acceptable racism even among some liberals and I say that liberals have fought to extend rights to women, blacks, gays, immigrants, and we owe it to our legacy to be better than Islamophobia.
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