I was 13 years old when I first heard of the Sultan of Brunei. The absolute ruler of a tiny, oil-rich kingdom in Southeast Asia, Hassanal Bolkiah was the subject of a much-discussed TV documentary by the British filmmaker Alan Whicker in 1992. As a young teenager, sitting in front of the television, I was in awe of this Muslim king.
— Mehdi Hasan
The inconvenient truth that our lazy media elites do so much to ignore is that Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and Warren are much closer in their views to the vast majority of ordinary Americans than the Bloombergs or the Bidens. They are the true centrists, the real moderates; they represent the actual political middle.
There is very little chance of the modern Republican Party putting the national interest above their own partisan interests.
The terrorists may want to try and legitimize their violence by cynically appealing to Islamic motifs or doctrines, but there is no reason the rest of us should help them do it.
To be clear, no one is saying there weren't any legitimate economic grievances in Trumpland, nor is anyone claiming that the economy played no role whatsoever. The point, however, is that it wasn't the major motivating factor for most Trump voters - or, at least, that's what we learn when we bother to study those voters. Race trumped economics.
The French elites' strategy of trying to defeat the Le Pens by aping their rhetoric, stealing their policies, and pandering to their voters has been a political and moral failure.
How many Americans, for example, are aware of the fact that U.S. planes dropped on the Korean peninsula more bombs - 635,000 tons - and napalm - 32,557 tons - than during the entire Pacific campaign against the Japanese during World War II?
To speak of the Muslim world is not to endorse a totalitarian project, nor to bolster an Islamist narrative, nor to suggest that variety, plurality, and diversity are lacking in what Muslims think, believe, speak, and do as Muslims.
The reality is that religion, across the board, and in and of itself, neither provokes war nor promotes peace - and it is childish and naive, not to mention utopian, to believe otherwise.
Are we willing and able to stand up to Islamophobia on days when there are not brutal terrorist attacks on Muslims in mosques?
Republicans don't give a damn about anti-Semitism. They just don't care.
You underestimate John Bolton at your peril.
The common stereotype of the Middle Eastern, Muslim-born terrorist is not just lazy and inaccurate but easy fodder for the anti-immigrant, anti-Islam far right.
It isn't only Republicans, it seems, who traffic in alternative facts. Since Donald Trump's shock election victory, leading Democrats have worked hard to convince themselves, and the rest of us, that his triumph had less to do with racism and much more to do with economic anxiety - despite almost all of the available evidence suggesting otherwise.
Perhaps the biggest boost to the LePenization of French politics came from Nicolas Sarkozy. As president of France between 2007 and 2012, he actively courted FN voters and helped dismantle the 'Republican pact,' under which the two main parties had pledged to work together to defeat the FN at a national and local level.
Let's be clear: There is no doubt that the citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea both fear and loathe the United States. Paranoia, resentment, and a crude anti-Americanism have been nurtured inside the Hermit Kingdom for decades.
To pretend that there is no such thing as the Muslim world is specious, self-deluding, and - frankly - plain silly.
Religion is simply one of a multitude of factors - economic political, cultural, social, tribal, racial - which shape and drive human action and reaction and often is the least important of those factors.
How is it that labels like 'centrist' and 'moderate,' which common sense tells us should reflect the views of a majority of Americans, have come to be applied to those who represent minority interests and opinions?
It is worth noting that Steve King of Iowa is far from the only Republican member of Congress to offer cover to white nationalists.
Like Obama before him, Trump will escalate in Afghanistan. Like Obama before him, Trump will lose in Afghanistan. And the rest of us, shamefully, will continue to look the other way.
Always remember: You have to identify the disease before you can begin work on a cure. In the case of support for Donald Trump, the results are in: It isn't the economy. It's the racism, stupid.
You cannot appease fascism by meeting it in the middle; you cannot beat racism by indulging or excusing it.
Millions of ordinary Americans may suffer from a toxic combination of ignorance and amnesia, but the victims of U.S. coups, invasions, and bombing campaigns across the globe tend not to. Ask the Iraqis or the Iranians, ask the Cubans or the Chileans. And, yes, ask the North Koreans.
The reality is that far-right extremism is no longer dominated by loners.
It is man - whether believer or non-believer - who is responsible for global unrest. And it is human beings who have to learn to co-exist in the 21st century, outside of divisive social constructs, religious or otherwise.
