If it weren’t for the diligent monitoring of Muslim clerics by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Americans would be in the dark about the outpourings of dangerous drivel fed to devout Muslims gathered in mosques for Friday prayers.
- Arnaud de Borchgrave
One of the reasons I love (“love” being a relative term) the Washington Times is that, while the Fox News Channel at least pretends to be “Fair and Balanced”, the Times feels no such obligation. Journalistic impartiality is for losers. It’s a neo-Conservative mouthpiece, and the editorial staff likes it that way. If you don’t like it, you can go read the Washington Post.
I especially enjoy the Times’ stable of columnists, most of whom are born-again, frothing-at-the-mouth, McCarthyite neo-Conservatives. You want “fair and balanced”? Heh…you ain’t gonna find it at the Times, Pilgrim. Perhaps my favorite is Arnaud de Borchgrave, whose specialty seems to be waxing indignant about what should be blindingly obvious to the rest of us.
What? Radical Muslim clerics preaching that the Southeast Asia tsunami was Allah’s punishment of Christians? Gee, whodathunkit? And where have I heard something similar before? Oh, right…it was Jerry Falwell advising Faithful Christians that 9.11 was a direct result of our tacit approval of the sinful, licentious homosexual lifestyle. And it was Fred Phelps continually preaching that 9.11 was another victorious battle in God’s war against Fags.
The killer wave that swallowed tens of thousands of Muslims was an act of Allah designed to punish the Christians. So went the convoluted logic of some Muslim imams in recent sermons from Saudi Arabia to the Palestinian territories….
Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajiid explained God’s tsunami punishment of Christians stemmed from “the Christian holidays [that] are accompanied by forbidden things, by immorality, abomination, adultery, alcohol, drunken dancing and revelry. A belly dancer costs 2,500 pounds a minute and a singer costs 50,000 pounds an hour, and they hop from one hotel to another from night to dawn.
“Then they spend the entire night defying Allah. … At the height of immorality, Allah took revenge on these criminals. … Allah struck them with an earthquake. He finished off the Richter scale. All nine levels gone.”
In the same vein, Sheikh Mudeiris, at a Palestinian Friday sermon in Gaza, said, “When oppression and corruption increase, the law of equilibrium applies. I can see in your eyes you are wondering what is the ‘universal law of equilibrium.’ This law is a divine law. If people are remiss in implementing God’s law and in being zealous and vengeful for His sake, Allah unleashes his soldiers in action to take revenge.”
Ignorance and hatred in the service of religious doctrine is still ignorance and hatred. Why de Borchgrave finds this such a deplorable new development is almost beyond comprehension. The fact that radical Muslims are out there preaching against Christians is hardly news. Any time a tragic natural event occurs, some radical Wahabbist nutcase somewhere uses the event to fill the heads of his followers with hatred and ignorance. The same thing happens in too many fundamentalist Christian churches in this country. Radical Islam hardly holds a patent on blind hatred and misinterpreted doctrine. It is hardly the only school of thought capable of spewing hatred and divisiveness from the pulpit. Why, then, is de Borchgrave having conniptions over what is being preached by radical Muslim clerics with their own hate-filled agenda?
De Borchgrave’s final paragraph is indicative of his too-obviously selective righteous indignation:
Saudi Sheikh Fawzan Fawzan said God’s unlisted number informed him the tsunami was punishment for homosexual behavior and fornication over Christmas, even if the victims are Muslims. “All that’s left for us to do,” he said, “is to ask for forgiveness. We must atone for our sins, and for the acts of the stupid people among us. … We must fight fornication, homosexuality, usury, fight the corruption on the face of the Earth, and the disregard of the lives of protected people.”
Interesting that de Borchgrave casts the spotlight on the cockroaches preaching radical Islam, and yet has nothing at all to say about Fred Phelps, Pat Roberston, and Jerry Falwell…or is Christian hatred and fear preferable to radical Muslim hatred and fear? Or, better yet, is it that Phelps, Robertson, and Falwell are all committed Right-Wingers?
Memo to Arnaud de Borchgrave: if you’re going to bemoan the spewing of hatred and ignorance from the pulpit, you might have a bit more credibility if you remember to point out the hatred and ignorance being preached in far too many Christian churches.
Of course, you right write for the Washington Times, and therefore likely feel no need to pretend to be an impartial journalist. How silly of me….
