Religion and Politics

Danger In Conflation: Separating Islam From Acts Of Terror

Jacki Lyden of “All Things Considered” interviews Omid Safi, professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, on the Boston marathon bombings. On the rush to condemn the Muslim community after it emerged the bombing suspects were Muslims of Chechen background, Safi comments, “Muslim terrorists should be studied. But to depict them as somehow embodying the essence of Islam, which is exactly what Islamophobic websites are doing today, is actually to grant the Muslim terrorists the legitimacy they crave.” He continues, “And they don’t possesses this legitimacy, and they don’t deserve it, and we should not confer it upon them.” 

Read at NPR

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