Earlier this month, author Reza Aslan appeared on CNN to field some questions about his differences of opinion from Bill Maher, primarily on extremist Islam problems. The racist presenters asked questions like, “is this a problem of Islamic countries?” and he easily flips the script. No one does this with Christianity; no one asks if certain problems that plague lower European countries are “Christian problems,” as Vatican City and Argentina and Canada will not have the same problems with governance although they are primarily Christian countries. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are not and should not be conflated with Turkey, Malaysia, or Indonesia. However, Aslan doesn’t do this cleanly: in his effort to stop conflating extremely different Muslim countries, he mentions genital mutilation as an “African Problem,” which has the same effect. Overall, though, he made his point. To consider Muslim countries in the same boat or all extremist because of a few outliers is just ignorance.
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