QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:
—Michael Graham, the Washington Examiner, yesterday.
I thanked him for his candor, for admitting that he favors executing gays, wife-beating, stoning adulteresses, and chopping the hands off of thieves. I could tell, though, that my colleagues from the paper were shocked by what they had heard. American journalists simply aren’t used to hearing Islamic leaders in this country talk like that. And Islamic leaders in this country, I’d wager, are not used to being questioned sharply about their views. It’s also the case that Mr. Elmougy fits no Westerner’s idea of what a radical Muslim looks like. He is smart, well-dressed, professional, and to all appearances, Westernized. You simply don’t expect to be sitting in a fancy steakhouse and to hear a man who looks like the manager of a luxury hotel—which is what he was at the time—advocating medieval tortures. The cognitive dissonance can be overwhelming.
— “Islam, Homosexuality, & Capital Punishment — What do imams and other US Muslim leaders really believe?”, Rod Dreher, of the American Conservative, flashing back to his days with the Dallas Morning News in the post-9/11 period.
Related: Robert Spencer: “FBI ‘never guessed’ gay club would be target of jihad attack.”