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