April 24 – The Backlash Against American Muslims; Other Religions and Terrorism; Sweatshop Deaths and Designer-Label Profits

Written by

Full Program	LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM
Part 1	We begin with a reaction to the outbursts of Islamophobia on Fox News and elsewhere in response to the Boston bombings. Amjad Mahmood Khan, the National Director of Public Affairs for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community joins us. He has testified three times before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission at the U.S. House of Representatives about persecution of religious minorities in the Islamic world and we discuss the backlash America’s Muslims are experiencing to the bombings.
Part 2	Then we speak with Middle East expert Juan Cole who writes the popular blog Informed Comment at JuanCole.com where he has an article “Terrorism and Other Religions” in which he compares the casualties of political violence in the 20^th Century wars where Muslims killed 2 million people compared to Christian Europeans who killed 100 million. We discuss further the backlash of Islamophobia against America’s Muslims who live in a country where murder rates are sky high compared to those in the Muslim world.
Part 3	Then finally we examine the collapse of an eight story building in Bangladesh that killed up to 250 low-wage garment workers making clothes for European and U.S. high-end brands. Charles Kernaghan, the Executive Director of the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights joins us to discuss this latest in a series of fatal accidents in the world’s second-biggest garment exporter and the anti-sweat-shop movement in the U.S. that he has launched.