Politics

Reason Writers on the Tube: Nick Gillespie on News Hour Talking Islamophobia

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Reason's Nick Gillespie appeared on PBS' News Hour last night to discuss whether Islamophobia is on the rise (short answer, no).

Click above to watch the 15-minute segment. Below is a snippet and link to the transcript below.

JEFFREY BROWN: And, Nick Gillespie, bring you into this. Do you see a rising Islamophobia…

NICK GILLESPIE, editor in chief, Reason.com: No.

JEFFREY BROWN: or a vocal minority?

NICK GILLESPIE: Yes, I mean, it's clear. It is not even a minority. I mean, when you look at somebody like Terry Jones, he is a nutcase who has a constituency of essentially zero people. What has he got, maybe 50 people in his flock. There are people—I think people—the reaction over the 9/11 mosque, as it is called, or Ground Zero mosque, is more complicated. But even that has more to do with the proximity to Ground Zero.

And I would offer this up. When you look at the number of hate crimes that are attributed to anti-Islamic sentiment, it's way down from where it was in 2001. And there's no sign that there is going to be an uptick of that. I think that Americans have actually processed 9/11 pretty well, in the same way that they have processed—processed a lot of other natural and manmade disasters.

More here.