This week I wrote about politicians’ pandering to voters over possible fears of Islam — opposing mosques and Islamic community centers in Tennessee and New York City. It is a hot topic and the controversies continue even though the primary elections talked about in the column are over.
Today on CNN’s show “Fareed Zakaria: GPS” the host talked about demonizing Islam and the negative implications in working with moderate Muslims in the world. Zakaria talked about the fearmongering among political figures and also took to task the Anti Defamation League which rationalized the opposition to the Manhattan Islamic center despite its charter to champion anti-bigotry. He said he was personally troubled by the ADL’s position and, consequently, was returning an award — the Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize — that the organization had given him in 2005.
This is the video of Mr. Zakaria’s opening monologue from “GPS.”
Political Pandering Column Postscript
This week I wrote about politicians’ pandering to voters over possible fears of Islam — opposing mosques and Islamic community centers in Tennessee and New York City. It is a hot topic and the controversies continue even though the primary elections talked about in the column are over.
Today on CNN’s show “Fareed Zakaria: GPS” the host talked about demonizing Islam and the negative implications in working with moderate Muslims in the world. Zakaria talked about the fearmongering among political figures and also took to task the Anti Defamation League which rationalized the opposition to the Manhattan Islamic center despite its charter to champion anti-bigotry. He said he was personally troubled by the ADL’s position and, consequently, was returning an award — the Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize — that the organization had given him in 2005.
This is the video of Mr. Zakaria’s opening monologue from “GPS.”