CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, which had 658 employees murdered on 9/11, says ‘we must crush jihad’

Peloni:  The title of Matt Margolis’ review of Trump’s rally says it all:  Worst. Nazi. Rally. Ever.  Facts are stubborn things, even as rhetoric is being leveraged to manufacture false impressions based on fake news and false narratives.

By Robert Spencer | October 28, 2024

Howard Lutnick said this at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, which the establishment media has been cravenly smearing as a fascist or Nazi rally since there was a Nazi rally there in 1939 — as if no one has held a rally at Madison Square Garden since then.

Lutnick’s call to “crush jihad” is perfectly understandable, not just in light of the devastation of Cantor Fitzgerald on 9/11, but in light of ongoing jihad activity in the U.S. and worldwide. In response, however, the far-left New Republic gave space to a Muslim writer who claims that his statement was “bigoted,” because jihad is an “internal or external struggle to do good deeds.”

It’s remarkable that Hafiz Rashid and the New Republic still think they can fool people with this nonsense. Do the events reported on here look like the acts of people who are struggling to do good deeds? The answer is yes from an Islamic standpoint, as violence against unbelievers is sanctified under certain circumstances in the Qur’an (see 2:191, 4:89, 9:5, 47:4), but these are not what non-Muslims in the West would think of as “good deeds.”

“Trump’s Fascist NYC Rally Includes Terrifying Threat to All Muslims,” by Hafiz Rashid, New Republic, October 28, 2024:

At Donald Trump’s rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden Sunday, one speaker took a bigoted swipe at Muslims—and he holds an important position in the Trump campaign.

Howard Lutnick, the CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald and a co-chair of the Trump campaign’s transition team, told the crowd why they should vote for the former president and, raising a fist, invoked Islamophobia.

“So, the first thing: We must elect Donald J. Trump president because we must crush jihad,” Lutnick shouted to cheers.

Lutnick’s use of the word “jihad” in this context is an allusion to bigoted views about Islam. The term is widely mistranslated as “holy war,” when the literal Arabic translation is “to strive” or “to struggle.” In a religious context, the word is used to describe a person’s internal or external struggle to do good deeds….