February 23 - A Progressive Muslim's Open Letter to the New Saudi King; The Double Jeopardy of Corporate and Government Spying on Americans

We begin with the recent White House Summit to Counter Violent Extremism and Obama’s efforts to bridge the growing divide between the West and Islam that has been met with derision from the Republican Right who are demanding that Obama hold the Muslim religion itself responsible for the actions of terrorists rather than as the president tried to made clear, quoting Obama, “we are not at war with Islam but at war with those who pervert Islam”. Following an outburst from former New York City Mayor Giuliani who seems to think the president is so soft on terrorists that he does not love America, we look into the bizarre symbiosis between the forces that are radicalizing Islam and the reactionaries in the West who want to declare a religious war. Joining us is Ani Zonneveld, the Founder and President of Muslims for Progressive Values, whose group was among the Muslim reformists who were not invited to the White House summit that was dominated by conservative American Muslim groups. She discuss her open letter to the new king of Saudi Arabia at Al Jazeera, “Open Letter to Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz: Saudi Arabia should curb Wahhabi ideology to alleviate human suffering in the Muslim world”, and her efforts to reform a religion that has been captured by Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi ideology which Ani Zonneveld argues is at the root of all the ills in the Muslim world.

Part 2

Then we speak with Robert Scheer, a journalist, author and Editor-in-Chief of Truthdig about his new book, just out, “They Know Everything About You: How Data Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies are Destroying Democracy”. We discuss this double jeopardy facing American citizens of corporate and government spying, and the recent White House summit in Silicon Valley which called for a private and public sector partnership to combat cyber-crime and cyber-terrorism which was boycotted by the heads of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Facebook whose overseas business has been severely impacted by Edward Snowden’s revelations that the NSA was intercepting and collecting data stored by giant American tech companies.