Here are some very interesting comments from Reza Aslan on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Reza has correctly identified one of the key points about the forces behind the recent rise of anti-Muslim sentiment: the fact that Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s “Stop Islamization of America” is a US franchise of a disturbingly popular far right European group that skillfully skates around the edges of Europe’s hate crime laws.

I’ve been writing for quite a while about the Geller-Spencer crowd’s determined effort to import European-style ethnic and religious hatreds into the United States, by making alliances with groups such as the “Stop Islamisation” hate franchise, the English Defense League, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, Sweden Democrats, and even the British National Party.

For a long time, nobody cared, but now we’re seeing the first fruits of this noxious harvest.