Another one of those mornings that starts with a horror in my news stream – the Southern Poverty Law Center branding Maajid Nawaz an “anti-Muslim extremist” in a new report/field guide. They also include Ayaan Hirsi Ali under that hateful umbrella, but it’s the inclusion of Maajid that dumbfounds me the most, seeing as how he is in fact a Muslim and is most explicitly and centrally anti-extremist.
In short, this pisses me off, big time. It pisses me off because it’s grossly inaccurate, and unfair to Maajid. It pisses me off because as he points out it puts a target on him. It pisses me off because the SPLC has done heroic, brave work in the past. It … Read the rest