In an interview with CNN's Don Lemon, human rights lawyer and editor of The Islamic Monthly website, Arslan Iftikhar, refused to call those in France who support ISIS "Islamic extremists."
In their conversation, Lemon pointed to a statistic that showed that 16% of French citizens support the ISIS terror group. When Lemon asked whether those supporters of ISIS could be defined as "Islamic extremists," Iftikhar claimed that it was unfair to label them all using that term.
“They obviously have sympathies for that ideology,” Iftikhar replied. “I don’t think that would mean they would justify the killing of innocent civilians or murdering people in the streets.”
When pressed with the same question a second time, Iftikhar gave a similar response.
“You can have sympathy for an ideology and not support the mass murdering of people.”
Throughout the interview when asked questions as to the role that Islam played in the recent killings of 12 cartoonists in Paris, Iftikhar repeatedly made efforts to draw moral equivalence between the actions of the terrorists and the actions of Christians in the past.
"There's been no religion in the history of the world, Don, that has been immune from acts of religious terrorism. I mean we had nine crusades. We had the 30-years war. We have the Ku-Klux-Klan in America a Christianist organization."
Iftikhar has been a contributor to multiple American newspapers and television and radio programs and was once a regular contributor for NPR.
Hat Tip: Mediaite