Skip to main content

A professor at a calif university said this? And, a muzzie to boot? Color me shocked-not. What's an embarrassment is how the US is allowing so called "hosts" to push their agendas on outlets masquerading as "news" outlets.

-----------------------------------------------------------

CNN host Reza Aslan faced backlash on Saturday after calling President Donald Trump a "piece of s---" because of Trump's response to the terrorist attack in London that left seven dead and dozens wounded Saturday night.

In a tweet Saturday that was later deleted, the University of California at Riverside professor who hosts "Believer" on CNN quoted Trump's use of several terrorist incidents in the UK to justify his executive action banning entry to the US by people from several majority-Muslim nations.

"This piece of s--- is a not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency. He's an embarrassment to humankind," Aslan wrote.

The tweet immediately sparked outrage on the right. Aslan deleted the tweet and apologized Sunday afternoon, saying he lost control after what he saw as Trump's "derogatory" response to the London attack.

CNN distanced itself from Aslan in a statement Sunday but applauded the host for apologizing.

"Reza Aslan is not a CNN employee, but does host a series on the network," a CNN representative said. "We are pleased that he has apologized for his tweets. That kind of discourse is never appropriate."

Aslan, who is Muslim, has been highly critical of Trump's travel ban, which was halted by a federal appeals court because it was seen as unconstitutionally singling out Muslims.

The professor went viral for his clash with Trump supporter Kayleigh McEnany last year over the proposed ban as well as Trump's claims that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, an unfounded assertion.

"Anti-Muslim bigotry has been the hallmark of Donald Trump's campaign throughout," Aslan said.

Trump's response to the incident on Twitter was criticized by many in the UK and on the left who have frequently blasted his occasionally misinformed attempts to blame violent incidents on Islamic extremists.

CNN has become a frequent target for Trump and the right as the network has ramped up its reporting on the Trump administration.

This was the second time this week a CNN-affiliated personality enraged the right.

CNN severed ties with comedian Kathy Griffin after she posed with a bloodied prop Trump head.

Though Griffin has a decades-long career in comedy and maintains minimal ties to the network — she has hosted its New Year's Eve special — some on the right labeled her a "CNN star."

 

CNN host Reza Asian calls @realDonaldTrump POS-same guy who ate human brain on TV. Must have been his own brain!

Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

Reza Aslan, host of CNN’s ‘Believer,’ catches grief for showcasing religious cannibals in India

Religion scholar Reza Aslan ate cooked human brain tissue with a group of cannibals in India during Sunday’s premiere of the new CNN show “Believer,” a documentary series about spirituality around the globe.

The outcry was immediate. Aslan, a Muslim who teaches creative writing at the University of California at Riverside, was accused of “Hinduphobia” and of mischaracterizing Hindus.

“With multiple reports of hate-fueled attacks against people of Indian origin from across the U.S., the show characterizes Hinduism as cannibalistic, which is a bizarre way of looking at the third largest religion in the world,” lobbyist group U.S. India Political Action Committees said in a statement, according to the Times of India.

In the episode, Aslan meets up with a sect of Indian religious nomads outside the city of Varanasi in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. The Aghori, as they are known, reject the Hindu caste system and the notion of untouchables, and espouse that the distinction between purity and pollution is essentially meaningless. In the Aghori view, nothing can taint the human body, Aslan said.

“Kind of a profound thought. Also: A little bit gross,” said Aslan, whose bestselling books on religion include “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.”

The Aghori persuade Aslan to bathe in the Ganges, a river that Hindus considers sacred. An Aghori guru smears the ashes of cremated humans on his face. And, at the Aghori’s invitation, Aslan drinks alcohol from a human skull and eats what was purported to be a bit of human brain.

“Want to know what a dead guy’s brain tastes like? Charcoal,” Aslan wrote on Facebook. “It was burnt to a crisp!”

At one point, the interview soured and one cannibal threatened Aslan: “I will cut off your head if you keep talking so much.” Aslan, in turn, said to his director, “I feel like this may have been a mistake.”

And when the guru began to eat his own waste and hurl it at Aslan and his camera crew, the CNN host scurried away.

“Pretty sure that was not the Aghori I was looking for,” he said.

Aslan also interviewed several non-cannibal Aghori practitioners, including those who ran an orphanage and a group of volunteers who cared for people with leprosy. Still, some critics thought the focus on the flesh-eating Aghori was inappropriate and done for the shock value.

“It is unbelievably callous and reckless of CNN to be pushing sensational and grotesque images of bearded brown men and their morbid and deathly religion at a time when the United States is living through a period of unprecedented concern and fear,” Vamsee Juluri, a media studies professor at the University of San Francisco, wrote in the Huffington Post.

(Cannibalism, while not formally outlawed in the United States, may lead to charges related to the desecration of corpses. Eating human brains has been linked to prion disease.)

Some viewers turned to Twitter to express their anger about the program. One of the loudest voices on the social media platform belonged to wealthy Indian American industrialist Shalabh Kumar, who made significant contributions to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and has angled to become a U.S. ambassador to India. Kumar seemed to perceive the episode as an attack on Hindu Americans who voted for Trump, although Aslan didn’t mention Trump.

Add Reply

Post

Untitled Document
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×