Dylan Ratigan appeared on the Morning Joe show today, and they started out their discussion with Bill O'Reilly's rant on "The View" about how "Muslims killed us on 9/11"!
They covered the whole story about the segment on "The View", and then moved to a discussion with MSNBC's center right show host, Dylan Ratigan.
Later in that segment, Dylan Ratigan said
"We are not at war with Islam"
More below the fold.
Ratigan said
...there's a core issue here, which is, there is a small group of well-funded Wahabi extremists, funded (in part) by the Saudi Arabian government.... the only ones who have ever killed us - them.... We are not at war with Islam, we are not at war with Muslims.
The only people who have ever funded a terrorist attack out of that part of the world on us... was this Wahabi sect! And it is an extraordinary failure of our politicians and our media and anybody else who has an opportunity to communicate information to fail to make that distinction because to fail to make that distinction is to risk a scale of conflict and a scale of disenfranchisement and alienation on this planet that may be convenient for TV ratings and votes but is an abomination for the human beings who will populate this planet and it's a lie.
Ratigan said
The failure to differentiate between the Wahabi sect ...and all other Islam, period...
The failure to differentiate between the radical Muslim people and all other sects of Islam has caused the United States and Western Europe all kinds of problems.
Joy Behar accurately described what O'Reilly said last week, and what many people have been saying for the last decade, as "hate speech".
"Today on 'The View,' Bill O'Reilly had a real pinhead moment," she said. "First he said a mosque should not be be built close to Ground Zero here in New York, and then he said this."
A clip rolled of O'Reilly from that afternoon: "Muslims killed us on 9/11."
"Well I was really angry," Behar said explaining her walk-off. "I thought he was saying something that I construe as hate speech, frankly."
We've seen the misunderstanding about the Islamic Community Center (not the "Ground Zero Mosque" as it's often called) in lower Manhattan. We've seen the demonization of peaceful Muslims right after 9/11. We've seen the vandalism of Islamic mosques around our nation. We've seen Muslims being mocked and unfairly critiqued by many people.
There's been an "exploitation of religious fear and racial fear", as Ratigan said, to make us blame Islam instead of the radical behavior. "It's not because they're Muslims, it's because they've been radicalized".
and
"It's not the fact that they are Muslims that makes them terrorists, it is the fact that they are terrorists that makes them terrorists. And that is a massive distinction that I think has uniformly not made in this country because I think it strikes to the cognitive dissonance of these huge wars. If we're not at war with Islam, well then, would somebody please tell me why it is we're a few trillion dollars (in debt) and we've got a few thousand dead soldiers to fight all these wars in all these Middle Eastern countries, 'cause I thought we WERE at war with Islam, which is why we've got all these tanks and predator drones flying everywhere. If we're just at war with a narrow group of well-funded, well-organized extremists out of Saudi Arabia and in that region, well, then, can somebody please explain - it's tough to explain the policies in that context! If we're at war with Islam, if we're at war with the Muslims, well then, my goodness, there's gotta be ten more countries we've got to go to war with, right? It is an obscene concept and it's shameful to me that anybody, from the President down, doesn't make an extraordinarily strong distinction between those two things.
I hate how ignorant many on the right seem to be on this topic - that they don't get that it's NOT their religion, it's not Islam, that has caused this behavior!
At the end of last week, Brian Kilmeade said
It wasn’t just one person, it was one religion. Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim.
and
Not every Muslim is an extremist, a terrorist, but every terrorist is a Muslim. You can’t avoid that fact.
He called it
"ridiculous" that people "equate Timothy McVeigh with the Al Qaeda terrorist organization, which is growing and a threat that exists."
Back on his radio show Monday, Mr. Kilmeade said, "What I should have said, and I’d like to clarify, is all terrorists who killed us on 9/11; with the Cole; and the Khobar; and the ‘98 embassies; that’s what I should have said."
Today he (Kilmeade) apologized, in the way we so often see rightwingers apologize - he said
"I misspoke. I don't believe all terrorists are Muslims. I'm sorry about that, if I offended or hurt anybody's feelings. But that's it."