Omar Suleiman

You know, that wasn't an al-Qaeda guy or an ISIS guy.

It was one of our own, right?

And so it's become...

frankly ridiculous because the association of violence with Islam is one that is used to actually carry out acts of violence against Muslims worldwide.

It justifies bad policy towards Muslims worldwide and in the United States.

And it's just factually so lazy.

There was a study just about how the media gives more attention to acts of violence done by Muslims and immediately stamps it with Islam up to 300% more than it will with another act of violence carried out in the name of anything else.

So you don't hear about the acts of violence that are carried out by others.

You don't hear about the religion of the perpetrators.

You don't associate terrorism with actions, frankly, of state terrorism.

When governments launch chemical attacks or drone weddings and do so while explicitly dehumanizing the people, just because they do so with the government apparatus doesn't make it any less terroristic than if it's a lone person that goes out and commits an act of violence, trying to achieve a political goal.

So the association is lazy, historically speaking.

The Crusades, I grew up in Louisiana.

I saw Klan rallies, Ku Klux Klan rallies my whole life.

And people said, well, that's a thing of the past.

Well, guess what?

We see many semblances, many acts that are carried out with the same vitriol that was generated by the Ku Klux Klan.

We have people standing in front of our mosques that belong to right-wing hate militias carrying AR-15s, talking about wanting to inflict harm on Muslims.

I have been to Christchurch, New Zealand, and buried the victims of a white supremacist terrorist who was inspired by the political rhetoric here in the United States, in his own words, in his manifesto, to go and kill 50 innocent people in Christchurch, New Zealand, one of the most peaceful cities in the world.

And by the way, Lex, I mean, it's really interesting, like with Christchurch, you know, the man wanted, and I won't even say his name, but his next target after the two mosques, had he not been stopped, was to go to a Muslim daycare.