Author Reza Aslan and "Daily Show" correspondent Hasan Minhaj believe Muslim Americans should embrace marriage equality, and their reasoning makes a lot of sense.
Both Aslan and Minhaj joined HuffPost Live on Wednesday to discuss the open letter they penned to their fellow American Muslims, and they suggested that approaching LGBT rights differently from their Christian counterparts.
"Christians can always give the Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush stance, which is, 'Well, I really disagree with this and I think [gay marriage is] awful and a sin, but it's the law so we have to go with it,'" Aslan told host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani. "Muslims who ... represent a heavily marginalized 1 percent -- [a] very negatively viewed 1 percent -- have to approach these issues in a completely different light because if they go against what is an overwhelming sentiment ... for LGBT rights, then they can be tagged with being un-American, in way that Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or Rick Santorum or Mike Huckabee could never be tagged."
As part of a minority group in the United States, Minhaj said Muslims have the responsibility to advocate for the rights of all other marginalized people -- particularly because Muslims have needed support against discrimination, just like the LGBT community.
"[The legalization of gay marriage] is an amazing win for all civil liberties that allow us to practice our faith as practicing Muslims in America and others to practice their faith as practicing Jews, Christians or whatever they choose to practice," Minhaj said. "There are certain issues that are very important to us as Muslims that we oftentimes ask for empathy and support on, and what we just tried to express in the letter is, hey, you can't ask for those things unless you also are willing to be empathetic and supportive to other communities."
Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation about the religious perspective on gay marriage here.
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