Lulua
25-08-2002, 09:11
Islam's unlikely allies (20 Aug 2002)
Published on Monday, August 19, 2002 in the Chicago Tribune
The Islamists and Their Unlikely Allies
by Salim Muwakkil
President Bush repeatedly has declared that Islam is not the enemy in the war
on terrorism, but some of his staunchest supporters have failed to get the
point.
In the last few months alone, a number of conservative Christians and their
right-wing allies have made it clear that they consider the entire religion
of Islam (not just radical Islamists) to be an enemy and they are working
overtime to demonize it.
The latest attack has been focused on the University of North Carolina for
assigning incoming freshmen to read a book called "Approaching the Qur'an:
The Early Revelations." The Virginia-based Family Policy Network, a
conservative Christian group, sued the university, charging the assignment
violated the separation of church and state.
Other groups have joined in denouncing the assignment. Fox News Channel's
Bill O'Reilly compared the assignment to teaching Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf"
during World War II and called Islam "our enemy's religion."
This display of flagrant bigotry follows by about two months the comments of
the Rev. Jerry Vines, former leader of the Southern Baptist Convention (the
largest Protestant denomination in the country), who described Islam's
founding prophet as a "demon-possessed pedophile."
Addressing the June annual meeting of the group he once headed, Vines said
the Muslim deity is not the same as the God worshiped by Christians. "And I
will tell you Allah is not Jehovah, either. Jehovah's not going to turn you
into a terrorist."
He blamed many of America's problems on people promoting religious pluralism.
Instead of denouncing Vines' outrageous bigotry, many of his colleagues
rushed to defend him. The newly elected president of the Southern Baptists,
the Rev. Jack Graham, said Vines' speech was accurate. The Rev Jerry Falwell
also has spoken up in Vines' defense.
The day following Vines' comments, President Bush addressed the Southern
Baptist Convention and praised the group for its "religious tolerance."
A member of another famous Graham family, Franklin Graham, son of popular
evangelist Billy, also was in the headlines recently for describing Islam as
a "wicked, violent religion." He later apologized for any pain his remarks
may have caused but refused to recant them.
In Graham's new book, "The Name," he writes "Islam--unlike Christianity--has
among its basic teachings a deep intolerance for those who follow other
faiths."
The notion that Islam is an "illegitimate" religion has deep roots among
evangelical Christians--some of those roots stretch back to the end of the
Crusades in the 13th Century. But hostility toward Islam is seeping into
mainstream culture.
In a June interview on NBC's "Today" show, author/columnist Ann Coulter said
"I think it might be a good idea to get them on some sort of hobby other than
slaughtering infidels."
And in July, a Secret Service agent was charged with scrawling "Islam is
evil" and "Christ is king" on a Muslim prayer calendar while searching the
home of a Michigan Muslim. These anti-Islam sentiments have been given
intellectual credibility by an amen corner of neoconservative commentators.
According to Deborah Caldwell, a columnist for Beliefnet.com and a longtime
observer of religious trends, Islam bashing is now cool.
There is great irony in this development.
One of the professed goals of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 was to
provoke a clash of civilizations between the West and Islam. Some evangelical
Christian groups and other right-wingers have taken up that task and have
become "fifth-column" allies for Al Qaeda and its fellow Islamists.
Affinities between Christian and Islamic fundamentalists should have been
clear from the very first reactions to the kamikaze hijackings of Sept. 11,
when influential evangelicals like Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed the
attack on America's lack of Christian piety.
On Robertson's "The 700 Club," two days following the attacks, Falwell said,
"What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in
fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to
give us probably what we deserve."
He said "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the ***s and
the lesbians ... the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union], People for the
American Way, all of them who try to secularize America" were making God
angry at the country.
"I totally concur," said Robertson.
The initial reactions of those two leaders of the Christian right revealed
extraordinary similarities between their gripes and those of Islamist cults
like Al Qaeda.
And now we see that those similarities extend to the desire for a clash of
civilizations.
Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor at In These Times
Chicago Tribune
Please visit the following islamic websites:
http://www.al-aqsa.org ( English, Arabic )
http://www.explizit-islam.de ( Deutsch )
http://www.hilafet.com ( Turkish )
http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.org ( English, Turkish, Arabic, Urdu, Russian,
German )
http://www.ramadhan.org ( English, Turkish, Arabic )
http://www.al-islam.or.id ( Indonesian )
http://www.expliciet.nl ( Dutch )
http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.dk ( Danish )
http://www.khilafah.com ( English, Urdu )
http://www.khilafah.net ( Arabic )
http://www.khilafah.org ( English )
Published on Monday, August 19, 2002 in the Chicago Tribune
The Islamists and Their Unlikely Allies
by Salim Muwakkil
President Bush repeatedly has declared that Islam is not the enemy in the war
on terrorism, but some of his staunchest supporters have failed to get the
point.
In the last few months alone, a number of conservative Christians and their
right-wing allies have made it clear that they consider the entire religion
of Islam (not just radical Islamists) to be an enemy and they are working
overtime to demonize it.
The latest attack has been focused on the University of North Carolina for
assigning incoming freshmen to read a book called "Approaching the Qur'an:
The Early Revelations." The Virginia-based Family Policy Network, a
conservative Christian group, sued the university, charging the assignment
violated the separation of church and state.
Other groups have joined in denouncing the assignment. Fox News Channel's
Bill O'Reilly compared the assignment to teaching Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf"
during World War II and called Islam "our enemy's religion."
This display of flagrant bigotry follows by about two months the comments of
the Rev. Jerry Vines, former leader of the Southern Baptist Convention (the
largest Protestant denomination in the country), who described Islam's
founding prophet as a "demon-possessed pedophile."
Addressing the June annual meeting of the group he once headed, Vines said
the Muslim deity is not the same as the God worshiped by Christians. "And I
will tell you Allah is not Jehovah, either. Jehovah's not going to turn you
into a terrorist."
He blamed many of America's problems on people promoting religious pluralism.
Instead of denouncing Vines' outrageous bigotry, many of his colleagues
rushed to defend him. The newly elected president of the Southern Baptists,
the Rev. Jack Graham, said Vines' speech was accurate. The Rev Jerry Falwell
also has spoken up in Vines' defense.
The day following Vines' comments, President Bush addressed the Southern
Baptist Convention and praised the group for its "religious tolerance."
A member of another famous Graham family, Franklin Graham, son of popular
evangelist Billy, also was in the headlines recently for describing Islam as
a "wicked, violent religion." He later apologized for any pain his remarks
may have caused but refused to recant them.
In Graham's new book, "The Name," he writes "Islam--unlike Christianity--has
among its basic teachings a deep intolerance for those who follow other
faiths."
The notion that Islam is an "illegitimate" religion has deep roots among
evangelical Christians--some of those roots stretch back to the end of the
Crusades in the 13th Century. But hostility toward Islam is seeping into
mainstream culture.
In a June interview on NBC's "Today" show, author/columnist Ann Coulter said
"I think it might be a good idea to get them on some sort of hobby other than
slaughtering infidels."
And in July, a Secret Service agent was charged with scrawling "Islam is
evil" and "Christ is king" on a Muslim prayer calendar while searching the
home of a Michigan Muslim. These anti-Islam sentiments have been given
intellectual credibility by an amen corner of neoconservative commentators.
According to Deborah Caldwell, a columnist for Beliefnet.com and a longtime
observer of religious trends, Islam bashing is now cool.
There is great irony in this development.
One of the professed goals of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 was to
provoke a clash of civilizations between the West and Islam. Some evangelical
Christian groups and other right-wingers have taken up that task and have
become "fifth-column" allies for Al Qaeda and its fellow Islamists.
Affinities between Christian and Islamic fundamentalists should have been
clear from the very first reactions to the kamikaze hijackings of Sept. 11,
when influential evangelicals like Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed the
attack on America's lack of Christian piety.
On Robertson's "The 700 Club," two days following the attacks, Falwell said,
"What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in
fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to
give us probably what we deserve."
He said "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the ***s and
the lesbians ... the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union], People for the
American Way, all of them who try to secularize America" were making God
angry at the country.
"I totally concur," said Robertson.
The initial reactions of those two leaders of the Christian right revealed
extraordinary similarities between their gripes and those of Islamist cults
like Al Qaeda.
And now we see that those similarities extend to the desire for a clash of
civilizations.
Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor at In These Times
Chicago Tribune
Please visit the following islamic websites:
http://www.al-aqsa.org ( English, Arabic )
http://www.explizit-islam.de ( Deutsch )
http://www.hilafet.com ( Turkish )
http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.org ( English, Turkish, Arabic, Urdu, Russian,
German )
http://www.ramadhan.org ( English, Turkish, Arabic )
http://www.al-islam.or.id ( Indonesian )
http://www.expliciet.nl ( Dutch )
http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.dk ( Danish )
http://www.khilafah.com ( English, Urdu )
http://www.khilafah.net ( Arabic )
http://www.khilafah.org ( English )