I have to admit that until his now infamous tweet on Friday evening in the wake of the death of Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg, the name Reza Aslan was not in the forefront of my mind.
It should have been because he is also the author of another infamous tweet (I think we have all heard these words): “Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?”referring to teenager Nick Sandmann.
Iranian ‘refugee’ Reza Aslan has now topped that with a tweet demonstrating that his Islam-is-peaceful shtick is just that—a pathetic performance.
Bruce Bawer writing at American Greatnesstells us all we need to know about a man America saved from possible death in Iran who now spews his hatefulness toward the President, indeed toward America because we presume he means what he says—burn it all down.
He might as well be saying ‘death to America.’ (I wonder if the FBI stopped by his home to ask him what exactly he means by that?)
No one who was familiar with Aslan’s writings should have been terribly surprised by his Friday night tweet, which some would justifiably describe as an explicit threat of physical violence.
Apparently, it was the author’s most attention-getting tweet since January 19, 2019, when—in the wake of the instantly famous encounter at the Lincoln Memorial involving a group of polite MAGA cap-wearing boys from Covington High School in Kentucky, a drum-banging Native American provocateur named Nathan Phillips, and a trash-talking gang of Black Hebrew Israelites—the selfsame author posted the now-iconic picture of one of the boys, Nick Sandmann, standing calmly in the face of Phillips’ provocation, and wrote:
“Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?”
The author in question was Reza Aslan, who, when he himself was a kid, fled the Iranian Revolution with his parents for the United States, where he grew up in the Bay Area. He went on to collect a B.A. in religious studies from Santa Clara University, an M.A. in theological studies from Harvard, an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. in sociology from UC Santa Barbara. His first book, No god but God (2005), whitewashed Islam and blamed Islamic terror on Western imperialism; the predictable plaudits in such left-wing organs as the New York Times, New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, and Financial Times made it a “worldwide success” (The Guardian) and launched his career as a “multimedia force” (L.A. Review of Books).
“We are one 911-style terror attack from the end of America!”
In addition to his books, Aslan has served as a consultant on Islam for various media projects. He hosted a short-lived CNN religion series, “Believer,” on which, in one memorable episode, he ate part of a human brain. He’s sat on the board of the National Iranian American Council, which lobbies for the Mullahs in Iran, and he’s given talks under the auspices of groups linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. In several articles over the years, the indispensable Robert Spencer has documented Aslan’s chronic dishonesty about a wide range of topics, from Islam and Christianity to his own academic credentials.
[….]
Presentable in appearance, measured in tone, he packaged himself at once as a standard-issue left-winger and as an authentic believer in an orthodox yet somehow “modern” Islam. Like the now-disgraced Tariq Ramadan, he was a “bridge-builder,” thoroughly assimilated into Western civilization, who sought nothing more than to educate Westerners about the beautiful beliefs and traditions of his faith—and thereby dispel the ugly suspicions that flow from ignorance.
What repeatedly has gotten in the way of Aslan’s own attempt to maintain this image of serenity and equanimity, however, is his own poisonous hatefulness, which frequently gets the better of him. This phenomenon is not unique to Aslan. It can be observed in the cases of many Muslim public figures in North America and Europe who try to project a calming, moderate profile but who, in certain circumstances—for example, when strongly contradicted—can let the mask slip and sound, suddenly, like nothing so much as a firebrand imam calling for someone’s head.
Continue readingbecause you all need to know about Reza Aslan and his fellow ‘new American’ travelers.
