Appearing on Friday's Morning Joe, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who as National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter was instrumental in turning Iran over to Muslim fundamentalists and helped create the Taliban as a tool to combat the USSR, criticized people who created "extraordinarily provocative" Muslim satire, and suggested it was important "to avoid becoming the number one enemy of Islam."
In the first exchange which was between Zbigniew and his daughter, Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, the former Carter adviser seemed to blame the victims, by warning about satire directed toward Muslims. Mika asked how the Paris terrorism may "change our way of life even here in the United States?"
Zbigniew Brzezinski: It obviously threatens its essential character, which is freedom, freedom of expression, sense of security and all of that. But we have to be patient and realize that this is going to be a long haul challenge to us. And we have to also be very measured in how we conduct ourselves. The most important thing we have to do, in my judgment, is to avoid becoming the enemy number one of Islam in the eyes of the believers in the world of Islam. I think we have to draw clear lines and be patient and also be responsible. We have to preserve our rights, that is to say freedom of expression and freedom to express our views, but at the same time we must avoid being provocative and unnecessarily nasty because some forms of humor directed at, for example, the prophet, in recent times in some publications in Europe were extraordinarily provocative.
Ayman Mohyeldin followed by asking if they make enough of an effort to avoid being provocative in Europe, and if Europeans do enough for the marginalized [Muslim] communities. Zbigniew Brzezinski responded:
Zbigniew Brzezinski: We were a multiethnic society and multireligious society. So perhaps it's a little easier for us. It's ingrained in us that our society is a world of diversity. The European countries by and large are ethnically and religiously more or less homogenous ... European leaders have more difficulty in dealing with these problems. I don't overestimate that's the problem because obviously we are democracies; we have the freedom of expression. But it doesn't harm to be measured in humor and to avoid in engaging in forms of humor and sardonic or whatever. That then becomes profoundly offensive to people who are insecure, who are confronting modernity for the first time, who easily interpret slights as offensive and intolerable acts and can then be struck up by a fanatical movement. That's point number one. Point number two in reaction against that we have to avoid what we do over there in the Middle East. One of the most important things in my mind is to avoid becoming the number one enemy of the fanatics. That will turn the sharp edge of fanaticism against us and make it difficult to resolve the problems of the Middle East in such a fashion that the authentic moderates in the Middle East are effectively in charge.
Brzezinski later blasted former President George W. Bush for using the term a "war on jihadist terror," which according to the former Carter adviser is another way to offend radicals.
