Professor Bennoune Comments on 'Middle East Misperceptions' for Fox Business News

Professor Karima Bennoune was interviewed by John Stossel on Fox Business News for a report exploring "Middle East Misperceptions" among Americans of different political persuasions.

In the United States, some on the left are too "politically correct" to recognize the dangers of Muslim fundamentalism or to support people in Muslim majority countries who are standing up to fundamentalists, Professor Bennoune said.  Meanwhile, some on the right have condoned the use of torture and other abuses in the fight against terrorism and used discriminatory language in referring to Muslims and Islam, practices which are both morally wrong and can fuel fundamentalism by creating a sense of victimization among Muslims, she continued. In each and every Muslim majority context where there are fundamentalist movements, there are also people challenging those movements, sometimes running great risks to do so.  Both prejudice against Muslims, and silence about the issue of fundamentalism, do a great disservice to those on the frontlines who are simultaneously proud of their Muslim heritage and speaking out against extremism.

Karima Bennoune is an author, lecturer, teacher, and international law scholar as well as the first Arab-American to be honored with the Derrick A. Bell Award from the Section on Minority Groups of the Association of American Law Schools. She joined the King Hall faculty from Rutgers School of Law-Newark in 2012. She is the author of Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight against Muslim Fundamentalism, recently published by W.W. Norton & Company.

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