On October 24, The Blaze published Glenn Beck’s segment on a death sentence he says an Iranian revolutionary court gave an unnamed accounting student. Its headline names “Sharia law”, not Iran; the page names no woman, date or source. The headline holds a faith’s law and a gavel, and no country. The page’s second paragraph puts the student ‘in Iran’, after a first paragraph about Muslims practicing their religion in the United States. The court it describes is a revolutionary court, and the one charge it credits to that court is ‘acting against national security’. ‘She insulted the prophet’ is Beck’s line. A plain sentence, from the page’s own facts: an Iranian court sentenced an unnamed student to death, Beck says, citing rights groups he does not name. One government’s court becomes ‘Sharia law’, and a faith becomes the one holding power. The habit underneath is us and them: their one member stands for all of them, ours would be the exception. The device is one case quoted as the whole: a woman with no name, date or city, and one host’s line, copied by Conservative Review and The Liberty Daily. The tell to keep: a faith’s name standing where a state acted. Beck’s own rule, the state enforcing a religious rule, would fit any faith. The words reach two of the six stages: Essentialization, a faith’s law as one hand on one gavel, and Threat Assessment, a law that ‘cannot exist in the Western world’. The picture brings the case home: an Iranian flag behind a gavel cracking a First Amendment page. The exit is a vote. Beck has urged Americans to ask candidates about ‘a nationwide ban on Sharia Law’, and Trump said on his show he would ‘absolutely’ support one. In August Beck told Piers Morgan, ‘I don’t have a problem with Muslims.’
