Bill O’Reilly seemed to mean well when he offered his unsolicited advice to Harris Zafar, a Muslim who is trying to combat Islamophobia. But just like O’Reilly’s praise of black customers' behavior at Sylvia’s restaurant in Harlem, his condescending attitude spoke volumes.
Zafar, who has been on Fox many times, appeared on The O’Reilly Factor to discuss demonstrators who showed up outside a mosque shouting at worshippers, “You’re a pawn of Satan,” “God hates Muslims,” etc.
Zafar said it’s time for people to understand “what true Islam is really all about” instead of misconceptions.
To his credit, O’Reilly did not try to ambush Zafar with any gotcha questions or try to hold him responsible for Islamophobia, as Sean Hannity or Megyn Kelly might well have done. But while O’Reilly all but patted himself on the back for his magnanimity, he also suggested that any bigotry toward Muslims is really their fault and not, say, that of any right-wingers who beat the drum of ethnic hatred 24/7.
BILL O’REILLY: You have to understand, and I’m sure you do, that in this world there are so many radical Muslims, so many that it becomes difficult for unsophisticated thinkers to separate the good from the bad. It’s almost like Germany in - during the Nazi regime. Not all Germans were Nazis, but we had to kill them all and bomb the hell out of their cities to break that movement. Now you don’t have to do that with Muslims all over the world because it’s not a central problem. However, I gotta tell you there’s a lot of people that are getting a little fed up with this and I think they are getting fed up because they don’t see a mobilization of the good Muslims. Yes, you make statements. Your group is one of the best to do that. Harris, over the years, has been a very, very solid American and very outspoken against this. But we don’t see the Million Muslim March in Washington. I wish we would, to condemn ISIS… You need that.
…I would tell you and every other Muslim leader, you need a Million Muslims March in Washington with national coverage to speak out against ISIS so the whole world can see it. That’s. What. You. Need.
Do it fast. …Get the march goin’ on, Harris. Get the march goin’ on. That’s what is needed.
Watch it below, from the November 17 The O’Reilly Factor.
Muslims are not alone in causing problems.
Don’t believe me? Look at the atheist cult of Bill Maher et al. Just as goofy as the “religious” cranks.