By Mehdi Hasan

On Friday, Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager accused of killing two people during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, posted his $2 million bail.

My first reaction: Imagine if Rittenhouse was Muslim.

Imagine if the 17-year-old's name was not Kyle Rittenhouse but, say, Khalid Rehman. Would people be hailing him as a hero, a martyr or even "my president"? Would the MyPillow guy or the kid from "Silver Spoons" have helped crowdsource Khalid's $2 million bail? Would his mother be treated sympathetically as a guest on Fox News? Would conservative news anchors be praising him for maintaining "order"? Would a Republican lawmaker be urging him to run for office? Would President Donald Trump have defended him from a White House podium?

Don't be ridiculous; we all know the same conservatives celebrating Rittenhouse would be falling over one another to ask one provocative question after another.

Where was he radicalized?

Was he groomed by a preacher of hate?

How did his family or friends not know?

Why won't his community leaders speak out and denounce him?

Does his faith encourage violence?

There's no question that in today's America, a Khalid (or a Mohamed or an Ismail) would be demonized, not defended; pilloried, not praised. There would be no celebratory murals for a Khalid, only montages of grainy video of Middle Eastern men firing guns in the air.

But this is an opportunity to ask those very same questions of Rittenhouse. We should question how a 17-year-old ended up arming himself with an (illegally obtained) AR-15, drove across state lines to pick a fight with racial justice protesters and ended up accused of shooting three people in Wisconsin, killing two of them.

In 2018, attorneys representing far-right Kansas "militia" members convicted of plotting to bomb a mosque frequented by Somali Muslims made this very point when they asked the judge for a more lenient sentence on the basis that Trump's "inflammatory rhetoric should be taken into account as the 'backdrop' for the case."

Still, why did the police allow Rittenhouse to leave the scene of a crime and go home to sleep in his own bed 20 miles away in Antioch, Illinois? (He wasn't even arrested until the following morning.)

Similar questions could be asked not only of Rittenhouse but also of his enablers, defenders and promoters, which applies to the U.S. conservative movement as a whole.

After all, we know there are plenty of ways and places Rittenhouse could have been radicalized, including in the front row of a Trump rally in January, where he was spotted by some eagle-eyed BuzzFeed reporters. Where was the pipe bomber Cesar Sayoc radicalized? His attorneys say it was the "provocative language" on Fox News. How about the Comet Ping Pong gunman and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Edgar Welch? He says he listened to Alex Jones' Infowars, which has hosted everyone from Trump to Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Where did the right-wing "militia" members who are accused of having plotted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer draw inspiration from? Could it possibly have been the Twitter feed of the president?

Similar questions could be asked not only of Rittenhouse but also of his enablers, defenders and promoters, which applies to the U.S. conservative movement as a whole.

After all, we know there are plenty of ways and places Rittenhouse could have been radicalized, including in the front row of a Trump rally in January, where he was spotted by some eagle-eyed BuzzFeed reporters. Where was the pipe bomber Cesar Sayoc radicalized? His attorneys say it was the "provocative language" on Fox News. How about the Comet Ping Pong gunman and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Edgar Welch? He says he listened to Alex Jones' Infowars, which has hosted everyone from Trump to Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Where did the right-wing "militia" members who are accused of having plotted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer draw inspiration from? Could it possibly have been the Twitter feed of the president?

[msnbc]