Appearing as a guest on Monday's New Day on CNN for a discussion of GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson's reluctance to elect a Muslim President, as well as Donald Trump's response to an anti-Muslim question, Haroon Moghul of Religion Dispatches seemed to make a tortured comparison between Muslim extremists inflaming anti-Muslim sentiment through committing terrorism and Israel inflaming anti-Jew sentiment by undertaking legitimate acts of self-defense.
The Religion Dispatches senior correspondent asserted that "there's nasty stuff that happens in every religion," and that "That's the exact same thing Islamic extremists say, for example, about Jewish communities, that they say, 'Oh, Israel is doing this, so we're justifying an attack on Jews in Paris,'" before adding that "It's the same kind of bigotry."
Amid the discussion of Dr. Carson's views on Islam, CNN co-host Alisyn Camerota brought up some of Trump's comments from the weekend. Camerota:
Donald Trump -- we haven't even touched on this yet -- he also talked about Muslims, as you know, this weekend. And what he said was, "It wasn't people from Sweden who blew up the World Trade Center." What do you have to say to that?
Moghul began his response:
Yeah, it's true, but there's nasty stuff that happens in every religion in every part of the world. That's a reality. Bigotry is when you confuse all people for what some people do, right? So, even if every single crime in the world was committed by a Muslim, that doesn't mean that every single Muslim is responsible.
He then brought up Israel and anti-Jew terrorism as he added:
That's the problem we have, is that, fine, we should point to Islamic extremism. Obviously it's a threat. But what does that have to do with me? Why is it that, just because I have the same religion, I'm doing the same thing. That's the exact same thing Islamic extremists say, for example, about Jewish communities. That they say, "Oh, Israel is doing this, so we're justifying an attack on Jews in Paris." It's the same kind of bigotry.
