Since 9/11, liberal talking heads have tried to convince people that radical Islam is just like any conservative and orthodox religious sect. By insisting on this false equivalence, the Left has whitewashed the crimes of radical Islam, the modern era’s most dangerous theological movement. Sorry, but Salt Lake City Mormons are not the same as woman-beating, gay-killing Saudi Wahhabis.
Unfortunately, self-described religious scholar Reza Aslan never got the memo. You may know Aslan as a fringe Muslim commentator on CNN known for his faux-outrage at even the slightest of so-called Islamophobia. Those were the good old days.
Today, Aslan has a new show on CNN called Believer, in which he fetishizes lesser-known religious sects for the sake of entertainment. The program’s debut generated enormous controversy and angered Hindus across the world. The first episode featured the narcissistic Aslan devouring human brains and implying that Hinduism encouraged such anomalous behavior. According to The Guardian, “the focus on such an extreme sect led to accusations the episode had mischaracterised Hinduism to viewers with little understanding of the religion, at a time when the Indian-American community is still reeling from attacks on two Hindus and a Sikh man in apparent hate crimes…”
Now Aslan appears to have deeply offended the Jewish community. In the latest episode of his likely soon-to-be canceled show, Aslan compared peaceful Orthodox Jews to violent Islamic terrorists.
In which Reza Aslan compares peaceful Orthodox Jews with violent Islamic terrorists https://t.co/L9loukp52v
— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) April 10, 2017
Earning himself a coveted spot in the hallowed university halls of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, the “PhD” didn’t even bother to take the time to understand the nuances of “ultra-Orthodox” or Haredi Judaism. Instead, he decided to Orientalize Jews writ-large, casting the religion’s followers as the “Other.”
The piece is dripping with abhorrent false moral equivalence tripe.
Note to Leftists: not all peoples, faiths, or nations are equal. https://t.co/Ql28MgvqYo
— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) April 10, 2017
Writing for the left-wing Israeli publication Haaretz, Asher Schechter incisively explains why Aslan’s depictions of Jews was so disturbing:
First, not all Haredim are the same. Throughout the episode, the ultra-Orthodox are treated as a singular, unified group. This characterization ignores the fact that under the umbrella of “Haredim” there are numerous groups and strands, all with their own unique characteristics and customs, all with their own complicated relationships with the State of Israel and the modern world.
To simply portray all these groups as “anti-modern,” as Aslan’s show does, is beyond superficial. Ultra-Orthodox Jews may have extreme views regarding some facets of modern life, but they are not Amish.
Second, Aslan completely misses, or omits deliberately, the broader political context. While Aslan presents his show as an in-depth exploration of societal and cultural tensions, his investigations never venture beyond the most superficial truisms (Haredi people don’t serve in the army, women are not treated as equals). The abject conditions in which many Haredim find themselves have as much to do with the intricacies of Israel’s deeply sectarian politics and the complex leadership structure within Israel’s Haredi population as their religious devotion, but Aslan prefers to gloss over all that to present a simple story about religious extremism gone haywire.
Which brings me to the biggest error Aslan makes: the silly binary narrative with which he frames the entire episode.
The narrative, as laid out by Aslan during the show and in a piece he published on CNN under the headline “Why I worry about Israel’s future,” is simple: A group of religious zealots called Haredim want to do away with Israel’s “modern, secular democracy” and instill religious law, in the same way that Islamic fanatics turned Iran into a theocracy in 1979. There is a “secular majority” in Israel, he says, whose will is threatened by a small sect of religious zealots: Haredim.
Blinded by a visceral hatred for the world’s only Jewish state, Aslan went out of his way to sensationalize the beliefs of a minority sect of “Haredi” Jews in order to frame the Zionist struggle for Jewish independence as an irrational and fanatic pursuit designed to create a theocratic Jewish state.
Contrary to Aslan’s contrived narrative, Israel is a secular democratic state with secular laws.
Now show me how this is governmentally mandated, idiots. https://t.co/hgl0bkQGdt
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) April 10, 2017
The only theocracies in the region are run by Muslim clerics and zealots.