Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Glenn Beck spoke of ‘good Muslims’ with Imam Rauf in ’06 (The Upshot)

Update: Beck addressed the 2006 interview on his radio show Monday.

Lately, conservative host Glenn Beck has sounded off against the proposed Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero and made allegations against one of its organizers: Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. On Fox News and the radio, Beck has tried to link Rauf to radical Islamic organizations, including Hamas.

But Beck didn’t always speak so harshly about Rauf, who’s been a prayer leader at a mosque 12 blocks from the World Trade Center site for decades and is widely considered a moderate Muslim. In fact, Rauf worked with the FBI on counterterrorism during the Bush years and is currently on a State Department-sponsored trip speaking out against extremism in the Muslim world.

Beck and Rauf aren’t strangers. In 2006, they sat down for an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer on “Good Morning America.” Liberal watchdog group Media Matters — which frequently targets Beck and other conservative hosts — unearthed the 7-plus-minute sit-down and blasted it out on Monday.

At the time, Beck spoke out strongly against Islamic terrorism while also praising “good Muslims.” It appears that he gestures toward Rauf when making that comment...

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Glenn Beck re-writes his 2006 conversation with Imam Rauf

Tonight, Glenn Beck continued to dishonestly respond to the unearthing of a 2006 roundtable discussion in which Beck appeared to call Imam Rauf a "good Muslim."

In tonight's segment, Beck purports to show (and then dismisses) the "damning, gotcha evidence" from the 2006 interview, but he actually excises a key moment from the video.

As we noted, during the 2006 discussion, when Diane Sawyer mentioned that Imam Rauf says the Islamic radicals are just a "group of people" and "not him," Beck seemed to agree, saying "sure, sure." He added, "I believe it's a small portion of Islam that is acting in these ways." Today, Beck dismissed that portion of the exchange:

After playing the "sure, sure" comment, Beck responds in exasperated fashion by saying "that's it?!" But as we noted earlier, that was not, in fact, "it." In addition to appearing to endorse Sawyer's characterization of the distinction between Rauf and extremists, Beck later appeared to gesture to Rauf when Beck invoked the idea of "good Muslims." Beck left this part of the exchange out of the video he aired tonight and didn't mention it during his televised response...

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