Don Lemon to Muslim Human Rights Lawyer: "Do You Support ISIS?"
During his broadcast last night, everyone's favorite CNN anchor Don Lemon asked Arsalan Iftikhar, a human rights lawyer and the founder of The Muslim Guy, if he supported ISIS. "Wait," a stunned Iftikhar replied. "Did you just ask me if I supported ISIS?"
Iftikhar had spent much of the past four minutes clearly and painstakingly explaining why Muslims shouldn't have to defend their religion after terror attacks.
"It's important not to conflate the actions of a very few to a population of 1.7 billion people, which represents 20 percent of the world's population," Iftikhar said. "You know, if people want to blame Islam for things, you know, they can blame us for inventing algebra or modern medical anesthesia or having five out of the last 12 Nobel Peace Prize winners."
"When Christians commit acts of terror, we don't asks priests and pastors to go on national television to condemn these acts, but sadly Muslim public intellectuals, thinkers, leaders, and Islamic scholars have that double standard that we have to deal with. I think it's important to keep in mind that bringing religion into it at all is actually serving the purposes of the terrorists."
That, of course, was not enough for Lemon.
"Again in August, 16 percent of French citizens support ISIS," Lemon asked "Would you describe those who support ISIS as Islamic extremists? Do you support ISIS?"
"Wait," Iftikhar replied. "Did you just ask me if I support ISIS? I just answered your question. I said that obviously these 16 percent of people support the ideology, but again, I don't think that would necessarily extrapolate to supporting of killing of innocent people."
The full segment is below.