Antisemitism is the world's oldest discrimination against Jews but criminalizing Palestinians will not eradicate this evil

I Can’t Believe Anyone Thinks Trump Actually Cares About Antisemitism: "It seems clear to me that if your presuppositions about Israel lead you to sanctify Trump, they bear rethinking."

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Michelle Goldberg. 

Why Don’t More Non-Jews Stand Up Against Antisemitism?

About a decade ago, conservatives would often denounce Muslim immigration on the grounds that it threatened Western progress on gay rights. This posture, sometimes called homonationalism, got its start in Europe, then made its way into American politics with Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign.

In his acceptance speech at the 2016, Republican National Convention, Trump decried the murder of 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., by the Islamist Omar Mateen. “As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our L.G.B.T. citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology,” he said. A month later he unveiled his proposal for the “extreme vetting” of Muslim immigrants, which would exclude anyone who failed to “embrace a tolerant American society.”

It should have been clear at the time that Trump’s putative concern for the safety of sexual minorities was simply a convenient wedge to try to divide the Democratic coalition. During his first term, he stacked the courts with judges who had opposed the rights of gay and transgender people and rolled back some of their workplace protections. Last year he used a growing backlash to trans rights to propel himself back to power, where his administration has been on a crusade to strip federal funding from almost anything with “L.G.B.T.” in it.

Trump’s treatment of L.G.B.T. people should have been a lesson to anyone tempted to take his campaign against antisemitism seriously, when it is screamingly obvious that it’s just a pretext to attack liberal institutions. Trump and his allies, after all, have mainstreamed antisemitism to an astonishing degree. Elon Musk, to whom Trump has outsourced the remaking of the federal government, is perhaps the world’s largest purveyor of antisemitic propaganda, thanks to his website X. (My “for you” feed recently served me a post of a winsome young woman speaking adoringly of “the H man,” or Hitler.) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, once said the unvaccinated had it worse than Anne Frank. Just last month Leo Terrell, the head of Trump’s antisemitism task force, shared a social media post by a prominent neo-Nazi gloating that Trump had the power to take away Senator Chuck Schumer’s “Jew card.” Trump himself, of course, dined with the Hitler-loving rapper Kanye West and the white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
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Yet I’ve been astonished to learn that some people believe that when the administration attacks academia for its purported antisemitism, it’s acting in good faith. Speaking on CNBC last week, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, cheered Trump’s attempt to exercise political control over Harvard, saying, “It is a good thing that President Trump is leaning in.” 

In a shocking interview with The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, the Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, who served as a special envoy to combat antisemitism under Joe Biden, praised Trump’s assaults on academia and its attempts to deport some pro-Palestinian activists. While in some cases she thinks the administration has gone overboard, she suggested that those who don’t give the president credit for standing up for Jews suffer from “Trump derangement syndrome.”

It seems to me that there’s another sort of derangement at play here, rooted in the way Israel’s defenders conflate all but the mildest criticism of Israel with antisemitism. There have certainly been incidents of crude anti-Jewish bigotry in the protests that followed Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. But too many backers of Israel can’t seem to imagine a reason besides antisemitic animus for impassioned opposition to Israel’s merciless war on Gaza. 

(Read the horrific descriptive first person report, "Hospitals in Ruins: A doctor witnesses what remains of a ravaged health0care system", by Clayton Dalton, in the April 28, 2025, The New Yorker. 

This leads them to vastly overstate the scale of antisemitism on the left and, in turn, to rationalize away Trump’s authoritarianism as he attempts to crush progressive redoubts.

As I write this, Israel has been blocking food, medicine and fuel from entering Gaza for more than 50 days. The U.N. World Food Program has delivered its last stocks of food to Gaza’s soup kitchens, which will shortly run out of supplies. “As aid has dried up, the floodgates of horror have reopened,” Secretary General António Guterres said this month. “Gaza is a killing field — and civilians are in an endless death loop.”

There are a couple of ways to interpret his words. One is that they’re true. The other is that, as a spokesperson for Israel’s foreign minister said, Guterres is “spreading slander against Israel,” just like all the protesters, many of them Jewish, now being punished at the administration’s behest. 

In this view, escalating opposition to Israel can be understood only as the product of a kind of antisemitic conspiracy, one so vast and entrenched that extreme measures might be needed to thwart it. Many Jews, said Lipstadt, “disappointed by how universities have behaved since Oct. 7,” are relieved to see “a strong — to use Passover terminology — a strong hand being used.” In the Exodus narrative, the “strong hand” belongs to God. In Lipstadt’s analogy, then, Trump is an agent of the divine. (IDTS ❗ If Trump really cared about the Jews, he would not have allowed the autobiography of Adolf Hitler to remain in the U.S. Naval Academy library while he purged many other books.)

It seems clear to me that if your presuppositions about Israel lead you to sanctify Trump, they bear rethinking. But even Jews who continue to delight in Trump’s animosity toward the Palestinians should be aware of the bargain they’re making (with the devil 😈. 

In the right-wing nationalist movement that Trump leads, gutter antisemitism is often considered a cheeky transgression and a sign of in-group belonging. Holocaust denial has started cropping up on major podcasts like Tucker Carlson’s and Joe Rogan’s. 

A decade ago, it served Trump to align himself with gay rights; now his administration either bans or discourages the mere use of the word “gay” or the abbreviation “L.G.B.T.” I’m not sure why anyone, let alone a scholar of the Holocaust, thinks Jews will fare better.

Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment.

P.S. Maine Writer opinion:  Benjamin Netanyahu is the person  responsible for the rise in antisemitism.  He was sleeping on October 7 when the Hamas brutally attacked Isreal and now his inability to stop the torture of genertions of Palistinians has passed the point of no moral return, thereby creating a new Holocaust. 

Cruel Donald Trump immigration policies- a Biblical view

The stranger is Jesus in disguise

This opinion essay was published in The Conversation written by Mathew Schmalz* and dated January 2017, one year ago. This essay is even more timely in 2018 and the future ahead of us.

Donald Trump signed an executive order that placed a stay on refugees from seven Muslim majority countries. Entrance of refugees from Syria, however, will be banned for the next 120 days.

...look to the Bible for guidance when asking about how to best welcome the stranger. 

Two days prior to that, he committed the United States to building a wall on its border with Mexico. Soon after the order, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto canceled an upcoming trip to the United States.

President Trump has also proposed that Mexican goods be taxed at the rate of 20 percent to provide funds for building the wall. This would fulfill his campaign promise that Mexico would actually pay for the wall’s construction, in spite of America’s southern neighbor’s protests.

For Christians, the questions about building the border wall or permitting immigrants and refugees into the United States involve a host of associated considerations not just about the specifics of immigration law, the economics of cheap labor coming across the border or potential terrorist threats.

At issue are both broader and deeper questions about what it means to welcome the stranger.

As a Roman Catholic scholar who lived in South Asia for a total of four years, I know what it is like to be initially considered a “stranger” but be quickly welcomed with open arms. 

And I, like all Christians, look to the Bible for guidance when asking about how to best welcome the stranger.

So, what does the Bible actually say?

We will all be strangers, sometime The Bible affirms – strongly and unequivocally – the obligation to treat strangers with dignity and hospitality.

In “Love the Stranger,” an article written for the annual meeting of the College Theological Society in 1991, biblical scholar Alice Laffey stated that in the Hebrew Bible, the words “gûr” and “gēr” are the ones most often glossed as referring to the “stranger,” though they are also translated as “newcomer” and “alien” or “resident alien,” respectively.

In the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the word “gēr” appears almost 50 times, and the fifth book, Deuteronomy, delineates a number of specific provisions for treating “the stranger” not just with courtesy but also with active support and provision.

For example, the book of Deuteronomy sets out the requirement that a portion of produce be set aside by farmers every third year for strangers, widows and orphans. In the “temple sermon” attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, the Jewish people are exhorted to “not oppress the sojourner.”

Within the Hebrew Bible the requirements of hospitality are sometimes affirmed in very striking ways, as in the story from the book of Judges in which a host offers his own daughter to ruffians in order to safeguard his guest.

Of course, the Israelites themselves were “strangers” during their enslavement in Egypt and captivity in Babylon. The Hebrew Bible recognizes that every one of us can be a stranger and, for that very reason, we need to overcome our fear of those who live among us whom we do not know.

The stranger is Jesus in disguise

Within the New Testament, which Christians read in continuity with the Hebrew Bible or “The Old Testament,” the most often cited passage dealing with welcoming the stranger is from Matthew 25: 31-40.

This section speaks of the Final Judgment, when the righteous will be granted paradise and unrepentant sinners will be consigned to eternal fire. Christ says to those at his right hand that they are “blessed” because “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

The righteous then ask,

“When did we see you, a stranger, and welcome you?”

Christ replies,

“‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’”

As Matthew 25 makes clear, the Christians should see everyone as “Christ” in the flesh. Indeed, scholars argue that in the New Testament, “stranger” and “neighbor” are in fact synonymous. Thus the Golden Rule, “love your neighbor as yourself,” refers not just to people whom you know – your “neighbors” in a conventional sense – but also to people whom you do not know.

Beyond this, in the letters written by Paul of Tarsus (one of the most notable of early Christian missionaries), often known as the Pauline “Epistles,” it is made clear that in Christ,

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave[g] nor free, there is no male and female.”

From this perspective, being “one in Christ” should be taken literally as acknowledging no fundamental differences in kind among human beings.

Bible is unambiguous in its message

Of course, in Christianity the strong admonitions toward treating the stranger with dignity have coexisted with actions that would seem to indicate an opposite attitude: pogroms against Jews, slavery, imperialism and colonialism have been sanctioned by Christians who nonetheless would have affirmed biblical principles regarding caring for those who seem “other” or “alien.”

The stranger is Jesus in disguise

Within the New Testament, which Christians read in continuity with the Hebrew Bible or “The Old Testament,” the most often cited passage dealing with welcoming the stranger is from Matthew 25: 31-40.

This section speaks of the Final Judgment, when the righteous will be granted paradise and unrepentant sinners will be consigned to eternal fire. Christ says to those at his right hand that they are “blessed” because

“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

The righteous then ask,

“When did we see you, a stranger, and welcome you?”

Christ replies, “‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me'.”

As Matthew 25 makes clear, the Christians should see everyone as “Christ” in the flesh. Indeed, scholars argue that in the New Testament, “stranger” and “neighbor” are in fact synonymous. Thus the Golden Rule, “love your neighbor as yourself,” refers not just to people whom you know – your “neighbors” in a conventional sense – but also to people whom you do not know.

Beyond this, in the letters written by Paul of Tarsus (one of the most notable of early Christian missionaries), often known as the Pauline “Epistles,” it is made clear that in Christ,

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave[g] nor free, there is no male and female.”

From this perspective, being “one in Christ” should be taken literally as acknowledging no fundamental differences in kind among human beings.

Bible is unambiguous in its message

Of course, in Christianity the strong admonitions toward treating the stranger with dignity have coexisted with actions that would seem to indicate an opposite attitude: pogroms against Jews, slavery, imperialism and colonialism have been sanctioned by Christians who nonetheless would have affirmed biblical principles regarding caring for those who seem “other” or “alien.”

Indeed, when it comes to the specific questions concerning building a wall on America’s border with Mexico or welcoming immigrants and refugees, some Christians would argue that doing so does not violate any biblical precepts concerning hospitality to the stranger, since the issue is one of legality and, of course, a good number of Christians did indeed support Donald Trump’s candidacy for the presidency. Other Christians have taken a diametrically different position, and have called for cities and educational institutions to be set apart as “safe zones” for undocumented immigrants.

It is true that the application of biblical principles to contemporary matters of policy is less than clear to the many Christians who have taken opposing sides regarding how the United States should deal with immigrants, undocumented workers and refugees.

However, in my reading of the Bible, the principles regarding welcoming the stranger are broad-reaching and unambiguous.

*Mathew Schmalz wrote this essay, he is Associate Professor of Religion, College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA.

Echo from the Indianapolis Star- Donald Trump's wrong Jerusalem action

It's stunning to find these opinion articles in randomly selected national newspapers. I'm amazed by the insightful levels of thought put into letters to the editor by well meaning people, who are challenging the Republican points of view on nearly every issue.

In this "Echo" series, I re-blog letters of particular interest.  

Indianapolis point of view- Jerusalem

Following is an intelligent response published in the Indianapolis Star, the hometown newspaper to Vice President Mike Pence. 

In the letter, an academic contributor named "Atlas" responds to the irresponsible action Donald Trump took in overriding the international community to declare he is moving the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv, to Jerusalem. Not only is this action abrasive to everybody in the Middle East except for Israel, but Pope Francis spoke out against this unwarranted action. Moreover, nobody seems to be concerned about the cost of this action but surely it will be expensive, because land in Jerusalem is scarce (maybe Donald Trump intends to attach the embassy to a Trump Tower - ugh!)


With a brief (slurred*) speech and the stroke (scribble**) of a pen, Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and his promise to relocate the U.S. embassy radically altered 70 years of bipartisan policy in the Middle East. 

Despite the naïve optimism he expressed on Wednesday, no one will be the better for this move, not the United States and not even Israel.

Let’s be clear: the functional capital of Israel — the seat of its parliament (the Knesset), the prime minister’s residence and government ministries — is Jerusalem. 

But like most things in the Middle East, reality is not so simple. Perhaps no city in the world carries more symbolic weight than the City of Peace, where any change to the status quo can cause an international incident.

The 1947 United Nations resolution that partitioned British Mandate Palestine into Jewish and Arab states (which the United States endorsed) defined Jerusalem as an international city to be under United Nations, not Jewish or Arab control. 

Moreover, the Jews accepted partition and the Arabs rejected it, and when the ensuing war ended in 1949, Jerusalem was divided for the first time in its 3,000 year history. Like Berlin in 1945, Jerusalem’s boundaries were defined by where the fighting stopped. 

Jordan captured and annexed the eastern half, which included the Old City’s Abrahamic holy sites (Western Wall, Al-Aksa Mosque and Church of the Holy Sepulcher). The new Jewish state included the city’s modern, western half, and Israel established its capital there. The United States set up its embassy in Tel Aviv. 

Jerusalem remained divided until the Six Day War of June 1967, when Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan and declared the reunified city to be Israel’s eternal capital. Israel kept its parliament and other administrative functions in pre-1967 West Jerusalem, and the U.S. and other countries kept their embassies in Tel Aviv. No country today has its embassy in Jerusalem. 

At any time since Israel’s founding in 1948, an American president could have recognized Jerusalem as its capital and relocated the U.S. embassy to the western half. None did. Jerusalem may be the millennia-old spiritual center of the Jewish people and the functional capital of Israel, but not granting that city official U.S. recognition as such has been the political decision of every Democratic and Republican administration since Truman’s. 

Following the 1993 Oslo peace accords, Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama all declared that Jerusalem’s final status must be determined via Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. 

This was the official U.S. policy, until Wednesday. Trump’s policy shift will likely diminish, not enhance, Israel’s physical security. It will undermine U.S. relations with key Arab and Muslim allies, many of whom are fighting ISIS, and also threaten our own security by enhancing terrorist recruitment. Trump is dispatching Vice President Mike Pence to work with Arab allies “to defeat radicalism.” But coming in the wake of Trump’s unapologetic retweeting of anti-Muslim videos and his renewed Muslim travel ban, the timing of the Jerusalem announcement could not be worse. 

(By the way- Mike Pence will not be welcomed for this purpose as already announced by various spokespersons in the region.)

It will feed into jihadist claims that the new president is waging a war on Islam.  Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital without giving anything to the Palestinians will not jumpstart the stalled peace process, as Trump seems to suggest. It will inflame tensions between Israel and the Palestinians and alienate Arab states at a time when, ironically, a de facto anti-Iran alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia was beginning to flourish. Trump’s Jerusalem policy is also a propaganda coup for Sunni jihadists like Al-Qaeda and ISIS as well as Shiite Hezbollah, all of whom oppose our Arab allies as well as Israel. For someone who claims to be a great deal-maker, Trump blew an opportunity. Instead of handing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a gift of historic magnitude with no strings attached, he could have held back the embassy move to incentivize Israeli concessions toward peace. And if he really wanted to energize negotiations between the two parties, he could have announced that the United States is willing to locate a second embassy in Jerusalem -- for a future state of Palestine. Instead, we will now face the global blowback of Trump’s ill-timed and reckless policy shift. Atlas is professor of political science and director of The Richard G. Lugar Franciscan Center for Global Studies at Marian University. Follow him @PierreAtlas       

*MaineWriter insert

** MaineWriter insert

World at war - terrorism attacks France and civilization as we know it

Our civilized world has tried and failed to destroy the root causes of terrorism.  We've tried military, humanitarian and diplomatic strategies. Additionally, civilized nations have tried to build coalitions with the Muslims whose civilizations are also at risk for being cosnumed by terrorism.

It's beyond ironic to realize how the French have been the victims of wars for centuries. In the 20th century, the French were the victims of World Wars I and II.  Now in the 21st century, the French were the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack on the free press.  On January 7, 2015, two Islamist gunmen forced their way into the Paris headquarters of Charlie Hebdo and opened fire, killing twelve: staff cartoonists Charb, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous and Wolinski, economist Bernard Maris, editors Elsa Cayat and Mustapha Ourrad, guest Michel Renaud, maintenance worker Frédéric Boisseau and police officers Brinsolaro and Merabet, and wounding eleven, four of them seriously.  

On Friday, November 13, 2015, in the same year as the Charlie Hebdo attack, the terrorists struck again with even more vengence than the January 7th, assault.  

Early reports out of Paris being reported on international news sources are claiming over 100 and perpahs as many as 150 innocent people killed on Friday, by a band of terrorists who somehow had access to AK47 murderous guns.  (One question I have is how the band of murderous terrorists obtained the AK47s and the ammunition needed to kill so many innocent people in Paris. Witnesses have said during interviews that it seemed as though the murderers even reloaded their weapons.)

AK 47 weapons used in the assault on Paris oon November 7, 2015

This diabolic attack must bring the civilized world together for the purpose of eliminating international terrorism.  

Terrorism is clearly becoming immune to the failed strategies being used to fight the growing number of senseless attacks on innocent people. The purpose of these serial attacks is to continue to generate fear.  It's obviously working.

The world must work together to eliminate terrorist groups and this effort must include a Muslim response. Terrorism is threatening all civilization as we know it today. Therefore, Muslim nations must support an international response to end the root cause, and the networks where terrorists are recruited and trained.

A state of war  can no longer be ignored and is now evident. Ironically, the French victims of the Parisian attacks are again, as in the past, bringing urgency to fight the murderers who have evil intentions to change the world as we know it.  

France is an American ally. It's essential for Americans to support the French people by collaborating to destroy those who purpetrated violence against innocents. Otherwise, it's just a matter of time, the terrorism attacks will find their way to the US.

Sheik Muhammad al-Yaqoubi could be the Islam leader to transcend the extremists

Public Broadcasting Network (PBN) journalist Margaret Warner introduced Sheik Muhammad al-Yaquobi. In an interview, the well spoken religious leader spoke with Warner as the completely positive alternative to the horrific images of Islamic extremists, who are dressed in black, while heinously terrorizing innocent people, with evil random.
 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/syrian-cleric-led-funeral-prayers-peter-kassig-speaks-islamic-state-assad/
Americans rarely, if ever, see Islamic clerics who are well spoken and speaking about humanitarian issues. Instead, Islamic extremists on the media are men in black, bent on destruction of civilization as we know it. 

On the other hand, in a PBS interview with Warner, al-Yaquobi said the evil ISIS leader Baghdadi is going to to to hell. In other words, Muhammad al-Yaquobi condemned the ISIS extremist leader Baghdadi to eternal damnation. Moreover, al-Yaquobi called on other Muslims to rise against terrorism and Islamic extremism's murderous tactics.
 
Al-Yaquobi is a Syrian Muslim scholar. He was born May 7, 1963 in Damascus, Syria.  In 1991, he joined the PhD program of linguistics in the Oriental Studies Department of the University of Gothenburg. In Sweden, he worked as a researcher and teacher of Arabic literature. In 1999, the Swedish Islamic Society appointed him mufti of Sweden.

In 1992, he moved to England and completed the FCE, CAE, CCS, and CPE Cambridge courses in English within a year, before returning to Sweden where he continued his studies in Swedish.
Al-Yaqoubi has studied seven languages.

 In April 2011, he was one of the first Islamic scholars to support the Syrians in an uprising against the Assad government. Al-Yaqoubi demanded the resignation of the evil Syrian leader, President Bashar al-Assad.
 
Since the start of the Syrian uprising, al-Yaqoubi has campaigned internationally to provide humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees. In December 2012, he led a convoy for the delivery of vast quantities of food, baby food and blankets to displaced Syrians in Turkey.

After being exiled from Syria, he took part in a sustained international effort to provide aid for Syrian people. He has publicly urged the international community to “implement help immediately” and to “lift the siege” on Syria.

Al-Yaquobi has a sad personal story.  His father, who was his role model and mentor, died in 1985.  Both of his wives died within one year of each other.  He is the father of three children by his first wife, who died in an automobile accident in 2006, when she was five months pregnant.





Muhummad al-Yaqoubi led prayers at the memorial of assassinated humanitarian Peter Kessig, who was murdered by ISIS executioners.

Sheikh Muhammad al-Yaqoubi, a prominent Syrian Sunni cleric and vocal critic of the Islamic State (ISIS), led prayers at the funeral of American beheading victim Peter Kassig. 

Chief foreign correspondent Margaret Warner interviewed al-Yaqoubi, who as been exiled from Syria. 

Warner asked al_Yaqoubi about atrocities committed by the Islamic State, and asked him why the militant ISIS group is able to gain followers and the fight against the Assad regime.

Two months ago, al-Yaqoubi released an open letter to the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, telling him: “You have misinterpreted Islam into a religion of harshness, brutality, torture and murder,” which he called a great wrong and an offense to Islam.  Sheik Muhammad al_Yaqoubi said ISIS carries hatred to the world, to both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

About Assad, al-Yaqoubi said the Sryian president opted for violence and extreme use of power from the very early days of the Srian uprising. Moreover, Assad released from prison the most extremist Islamists, knowing that they would opt for carrying guns and fighting and revenge. So that's how the shape of the Syrian uprising changed from the beginning. It's how ISIS was able to recruit from among these extremists.  

MARGARET WARNER asked al-Yaqoubi about his declaration that al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed ruler of this Islamic State caliphate, was going to hell. "What do you mean," she asked?

SHEIK MUHAMMAD AL-YAQOUBI: al Baghdadi is against Islam. He’s non-Muslim, according to the Muslim standards, because he’s allowing people to kill Muslims, referring to the Book of Allah, wrongly using religious texts.

This is anti-Islamic. He’s going against God. He’s going against the message of Islam, Mohammed, peace be upon him. If he repents and come in a court and defend himself, he won’t have any one single verse of the Koran to defend his opinion in killing innocent people.

MARGARET WARNER: What will this hell look like?

SHEIK MUHAMMAD AL-YAQOUBI: For him?

MARGARET WARNER: Yes.

SHEIK MUHAMMAD AL-YAQOUBI: Hell will — for him, God knows what type of punishment he’s going to receive for this savagery which has never been witnessed in modern history.You know, in Islam, we have never seen any group as extremist as this group. 

Warner's insightful interview with al-Yaqoubi was the most interesting I've ever watched with any Muslim cleric, especially when being questioned by a woman.  Al-Yaqoubi was engaging and seemed to be making eye contact with Warner. He didn't appear to be scripted or reticent about answering any of Warner's questions.

Al-Yaqoubi might be able to transcend the black robed Islamic terrorist images Americans have grown accustomed to seeing on television. Hopefully, we'll hear more inspiring interviews from this well spoken Islamic religious leader, especially if he motivates Muslims to fight against, rather than with, the evil ISIS.