For a minute there, MSNBC’s Joy Reid sounded a lot like the time-traveling hackers who uploaded anti-Muslim remarks to her now-defunct blog.
The cable news host and conspiracy theory enthusiast remarked this week, amid a larger discussion on President Trump and radicalization, that leaders in “the Muslim world” often “encourage their supporters” to commit acts of violence against their enemies.
“When leaders, let’s say in the Muslim world, talk a lot of violent talk and encourage their supporters to be willing to commit violence, including on their own bodies, in order to win against whoever they decide is the enemy,” Reid said Monday evening, “we in the U.S. media describe that as, ‘They are radicalizing those people,’ particularly when they’re radicalizing young people.”
She added, “That’s how we talk about the way Muslims act. When you see what Donald Trump is doing, is that any different from what we describe as radicalizing people?”
This is weirdly reminiscent of when Reid promoted what she called a “salient” blog post in 2006 that stated: “My feeling is that the only reason that a world war between civilizations has not already broken out is that the vast majority of Muslims living in the world today are so desperately poor that they have the time, energy and resources for only the occasional burst of AK-47 fire into the air from the garbage and sewage laden streets outside of their mud huts.”
The post added, “Give them resources and I fear that they will come after us everywhere that they can find us, which is to say everywhere.”
Reid herself said that same year, “I’m not sure what we’re learning here, except that the current iterations of Islam are largely incompatible with Western notions of free speech and expression, and thus, I’d say, with the Bushian dream of Western-style democracy for all.”
On Tuesday, the MSNBC host’s remarks about radicalization and Trump supporters went viral, inspiring no small amount of disgust from social media users, including those of the Islamic faith.
“Hi [Joy Reid], You’re perpetuating Islamophobia here,” said attorney Jo Kaur. “Your equating terrorism/radicalization with Muslims is not only bigoted & untrue but endangers actual or perceived Muslims, including Sikhs and South Asians. Please recant and apologize.”
Data analyst Ayesha Siddiqi said elsewhere, “Maybe Joy Ann Reid should ‘act like a muslim’ and self censor her political views on public platforms.”
“PSA for all the journalists and talk show hosts out there proposing that Muslims are inherently violent or that they encourage violence: STOP. This false and inaccurate narrative encourages #Islamophobia, which is life threatening for Muslims,” said activist Wardah Khalid.
HuffPost’s Rowaida Abdelaziz said, “What a terrible, dangerous, & completely inaccurate analogy to make.”
“This is appalling,” said AJ+’s Sana Saeed. “[Reid] first just throws out ‘Muslim leaders’ encouraging ‘their followers’ to ‘use their bodies to inflict violence’ (which leaders?). Then compares ‘how Muslims act’ to American white nationalist radicalization.”
The funniest thing about it is that if Reid is made to apologize for her comments this week about Muslims, it will not be because she compared Trump supporters to Islamic extremists but because she compared Islamic extremists to Trump supporters.
