MSNBC host Joy Reid is taking flak after comparing supporters of Donald Trump to Muslims.
“The leaders, let’s say, in the Muslim world, talk a lot of violent talk and encourage their supporters to be willing to commit violence, including on their own bodies, in order to win against whoever they decide is the enemy,” she said.
“We in the U.S. media describe it as they’re radicalizing those people, particularly when they’re radicalizing young people. That’s how we talk about the way Muslims act. When you see what Trump is doing, is it any different from what we describe as radicalizing people?”
This is appalling.
@JoyAnnReid first just throws out “Muslim leaders” encouraging “their followers” to ‘use their bodies to inflict violence’ (which leaders?). Then compares “how Muslims act” to American white nationalist radicalization. pic.twitter.com/4MwYlRbuBj
— Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) September 1, 2020
Many took to social media to criticize Reid’s comments and her apparent conflation of Muslims with Islamic terrorists.
. @JoyAnnReid your comments on Muslims were unacceptable and you should apologize.
— Mo Weeks (@mo87mo87) September 1, 2020
https://twitter.com/ewilkinson517/status/1300891491200626690
https://twitter.com/JinniHTX/status/1300883755196919810
Author Sana Saeed noted in a Twitter thread that Reid did not define what she meant by “leader,” which Saeed described as someone with power and authority in their communities. The author suggested that Reid was talking about individuals like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — the former head of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) — and pushed back against the notion that he is a Muslim leader.
“Someone like Baghdadi is a political and spiritual leader of a non-state militant group,” she tweeted.
Saeed accused Reid of racism against Muslims and urged her and others to stop using Muslims and Islam as the default comparisons to white nationalist terrorism.
As reported by The Daily Beast , Reid also faced criticism from Zakir Khan, board chair of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oregon. Khan said the host’s remarks were Islamophobic and asked her if she would apologize for stereotyping all Muslims.
Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders’ former campaign press secretary, also noted Reid’s generalization of the Muslim community, which comprises almost 25 percent of the world’s population.
Jacobin staff writer Luke Savage called Reid’s comments racist and claimed that she was suggesting that Trump is engaging in radicalization similar to Islamic terrorists.
Reid has been criticized for making inflammatory comments about Muslims before. In 2018, her old blog posts were criticized for their purported Islamophobic stereotypes and homophobia. In one post dated to 2006, the MSNBC host argued that Western democracy and the faith of Islam are incompatible. Notably, she claimed that the Western values of free speech and expression conflict with the teachings of Islam.
Reid also found herself accused of anti-Semitism after she hosted a segment with a body language expert that analyzed Sanders’ physical movements and concluded that the Vermont Sen. was being untruthful.