Over the course of the last few months, Glenn has sat down with several individuals who could only be described as "strange bedfellows." On Thursday's Glenn Beck Program, the trend continued with self-described "New York liberal" and author Joy Brighton joining the program to discuss her new book Sharia-ism Is Here: The Battle to Control Women and Everyone Else. In the book, Brighton seeks to distinguish the religion of Islam from the politics of what she has termed “Sharia-ism.”
“I’m sitting with you because I wasn’t invited by CNN or MSNBC, because something about what I’m saying today, they don’t want said,” Brighton said. “Which is symptomatic [of] the problem.”
Brighton defines Sharia-ism as a “political movement to control," and she compared it to communism or fascism. While communism and fascism never took real hold in the United States, Brighton argues that Sharia-ism has because it operates under the “cover of religion” and an enormous number of “petrodollars.”
"What I do is pull it apart and say, okay, let’s put the religion over here… Islam is a religion… And let’s look at the politics over here," Brighton explained. "And when you start looking at the politics over here, you get a sense of what’s going on because there’s this new bully on the street. And this bully is walking around stepping on women’s rights and free speech. But every once in a while he mentions religion, and everybody backs away. So he’s getting a free pass to do all this because, well, you know, we don’t want to go there. And this is what’s going on."
According to estimates, hundreds of thousands of women in the U.S. have suffered female genital mutilation and forced marriages. Brighton said young women are being sent to countries like Pakistan and Sudan where they are forced to marry "some strange relative" and bring him back to the United States.
“Now she’s under the thumb of a Sharia-ist," Brighton said. "She doesn’t even experience Islam, the religion! She experiences control.”
While Glenn and Brighton might not see eye-to-eye on many things, he greatly admires her resolve and bravery.
"I will tell you, I think you’re an amazingly brave woman… I mean, good for you, good for you. Shame on CNN, shame on MSNBC, shame on anybody. This is honestly… the book that you have been looking for," Glenn concluded. "Strange bedfellows indeed. But yet, not so much."