"Kill Muslims to Purify the Earth"

Keenan's picture

Christian Right's Emerging Deadly Worldview: Kill Muslims to Purify the Earth

The War Against Tolerance

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. February 11, 2008.

Christian extremists are preaching a war against tolerance to target and persecute all Muslims, including the 6 million who live in the U.S.

Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani are the three stooges of the Christian right. These self-described former Muslim terrorists are regularly trotted out at Christian colleges -- a few days ago they were at the Air Force Academy -- to spew racist filth about Islam on behalf of groups such as Focus on the Family. It is a clever tactic. Curly, Larry and Mo, who all say they are born-again Christians, engage in hate speech and assure us it comes from personal experience. They tell their audiences that the only way to deal with one-fifth of the world's population is by converting or eradicating all Muslims. Their cant is broadcast regularly on Fox News, including the Bill O'Reilly and Neil Cavuto shows, as well as on numerous Christian radio and television programs. Shoebat, who has written a book called Why We Want to Kill You, promises in his lectures to explain the numerous similarities between radical Muslims and the Nazis, how "Muslim terrorists" invaded America 30 years ago and how "perseverance, recruitment and hate" have fueled attacks by Muslims.

These men are frauds, but this is not the point. They are part of a dark and frightening war by the Christian right against tolerance that, in the moment of another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, would make it acceptable to target and persecute all Muslims, including the some 6 million Muslims who live in the United States. These men stoke these irrational fears. They defend the perpetual war unleashed by the Bush administration and championed by Sen. John McCain. McCain frequently reminds listeners that "the greatest danger facing the world is Islamic terrorism," as does Mike Huckabee, who says that "Islamofascism" is "the greatest threat this country [has] ever faced." George W. Bush has, in the same vein, assured Americans that terrorists hate us for our freedoms, not, of course, for anything we have done. Bush described the "war on terror" as a war against totalitarian Islamofascism while the Israeli air force was dropping tens of thousands of pounds of iron fragmentation bombs up and down Lebanon, an air campaign that killed 1,300 Lebanese civilians.

The three men tell lurid tales of being recruited as children into Palestinian terrorist organizations, murdering hundreds of civilians and blowing up a bank in Israel. Saleem says that as a child he infiltrated Israel to plant bombs via a network of tunnels underneath the Golan Heights, although no incident of this type was ever reported in Israel. He claims he is descended from the "grand wazir" of Islam, a title and a position that do not exist in the Arab world. They assure audiences that the Palestinians are interested not in a peaceful two-state solution but rather the destruction of Israel, the murder of all Jews and the death of America. Shoebat claims he first came to the United States as part of an extremist "sleeper cell."

"These three jokers are as much former Islamic terrorists as 'Star Trek's' Capt. James T. Kirk was a real Starship captain," said Mikey Weinstein, the head of the watchdog group The Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The group has challenged Christian proselytizing in the military and denounced the visit by the men to the Air Force Academy.

The speakers include in their talks the superior virtues of Christianity. Saleem, for example, says his world "turned upside down when he was seriously injured in an automobile accident."

"A Christian man tended to Kamal at the accident scene, making sure he got the medical treatment he needed," his Web site says. "Kamal's orthopedic surgeon and physical therapist were also Christian men whom over a period of several months ministered the unconditional love of Jesus Christ to him as he recovered. The love and sacrificial giving of these men caused Kamal to cry out to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob acknowledging his need for the Savior. Kamal has since become a man on a new mission, as an ambassador for the one true and living God, the great I Am, Jehovah God of the Bible."

This creeping Christian chauvinism has infected our political and social discourse. It was behind the rumor that Barack Obama was a Muslim. Obama reassured followers that he was a Christian. It apparently did not occur to him, or his questioners, that the proper answer is that there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, that persons of great moral probity and courage arise in all cultures and all religions, including Islam. Christians have no exclusive lock on virtue. But this kind of understanding often provokes indignant rage.

The public denigration of Islam, and by implication all religious belief systems outside Christianity, is part of the triumphalism that has distorted the country since the 9/11 attacks. It makes dialogue with those outside our "Christian" culture impossible. It implicitly condemns all who do not think as we think and believe as we believe as, at best, inferior and usually morally depraved. It blinds us to our own failings. It makes self-reflection and self-criticism a form of treason. It reduces the world to a cartoonish vision of us and them, good and evil. It turns us into children with bombs.

These three con artists are not the problem. There is enough scum out there to take their place. Rather, they offer a window into a worldview that is destroying the United States. It has corrupted the Republican Party. It has colored the news media. It has entered into the everyday clichés we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. It is ignorant and racist, but it is also deadly. It grossly perverts the Christian religion. It asks us to kill to purify the Earth. It leaves us threatened not only by the terrorists who may come from abroad but the ones who are rising from within our midst.

[edit: Hmmm. That last sentence is a little questionable, but perhaps they needed to throw that in just to get it published, or maybe someone with Megaphone threw it in ;)]

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Annoymouse's picture

Who will speak out

There on someones payroll, I guarantee that . How do they get so much support,
for promoting hate. or is this a big book promo tour.
Where is the ADL, Southern Poverty Law?
What if they were to say this shit about about Illegal Immigrants, Spanish, Whites, Black, Jews etc.
If this is not Proof of how easily people of religious belief can be so easily manipulated I don't know what is.
The question is were the fuck are Moslem's the so called six million speaking out against this shit. Do they have to organize like the ADL?

gretavo's picture

where ARE the muslims?

honestly. I do know that many of them have been intimidated into a stupor but come on--at some point you have to say enough...

Lazlo Toth's picture

They are out there, G

They are out there, G
I talked to quite a few the other day, and have had a lot of good talks with Iranian families and Arab tourists visiting Canada. They know perfectly well what’s going on, and are always amazed to see us and talk to us out on the streets, and I will tell you that they really do appreciate what we are doing 100%. They have called us brave, but admitted that they are still too scared to speak out, but they are most definitely on our side, and it restores their faith in human decency to see that people in the West are standing up and speaking out against the Big Lie of “9/11 and the War on Terror.” It’s no longer just about the 3,000 who died on 9/11, because now it’s also about the 1.5 million victims of the global, Zionist-Neo-con fraud known as the “War on Terror” taking placing right now in the Middle East. I will tell you that 9/11 has only confirmed their worst fears and suspicions, but when an Arab speaks out about 9/11 truth and its aftermath and strategy, he or she is thinking in a practical way that they could very well end up in Bagram or Guantanamo, where you or I being sent there (at the moment) might raise the red flag a little higher than they would like to right now. But if you’re an Arab - in the present War on Terror climate - you can be considered a legit DHS target just for the hell of it. “The more Ayraabs we rounds up, the more realer it looks.” Some of these good people who have come here from the Middle East and have made wonderful contributions to our society and country, with regards to speaking out about 9/11 and its connections to the “War on Musl, er Terror,” kind of feel like Jews in Germany criticizing the Nazi regime – not an especially smart idea at the time – and they just would feel a whole lot better if some of us honest “Germans” would speak up on their behalf and in their defense. Well that’s what we’re doing, or at least trying to do. We are just doing the best we can, and if you feel like a little stick figure standing up on the shore and giving the finger to a large, oncoming tidal wave, you’re not alone. The Tao is with you. Surf’s up...

Annoymouse's picture

Well Said

Lazlo Toth, you have a good way of making sense to something that is unsensible. thanks

kate of the kiosk's picture

yeah, Laz, remember this one from Suheir Hammad?


gretavo's picture

affirm life

funny how bush and co like to call "al qaeda" a cult of death. i can think of so many more worthy of the title...

Lazlo Toth's picture

Hello Mrs. Kiosk, Yes I remember her well.

I voted this to be poem of the year. The first time I heard this poem, I just broke down crying. I kept hearing the Marlon Brando voice from “Apocalypse Now” – “ahh, the Horrrror.” Thanks for this reposting of Suheir Hammad’s great performance and reading of her super excellento poem. It is appropriate that her last name comes from the Arabic root h-m-d which forms the verb hamida – “to commend, to extol, to praise highly,” and from the same root h-m-d we get names such as Muhammad, Mahmud, Hamid, and Ahmad (“most commendable and praiseworthy”). Ms. Hammad’s praiseworthy spoken word performance video should be a part of the WTCD-TV thread. Thanks Kate, and for the CAIR links as well. And thanks also for standing up for the Muslim peoples. They are now, more than ever, the targets of anger and suspicion (and actual Genocide) simply because of a Big Operation that somebody else we know did. I.E. They wuz framed!

See: “Planet of the Arabs” for the effective Bernaysian media campaign waged against “these other ones.”

As anyone who has lived or taught in the Middle East, or studied Islamic history, thought, and culture already knows, the Muslims of the Arab, Turkic, and Persian worlds are a morally good, highly intelligent, and noble people. How come you never hear on the History Channel historical narrations which tell the story of circumstances such as the decree issued by the great and noble Kurdish warrior-poet-king Yusef Salah al-Din (Saladin) in the late 12th century, a decree which offered the shelter and protection of Jerusalem and Palestine to the Khazarian Jews of Eastern Europe who were then being subjected to Christian Crusader pogroms? During the Second and Third Crusades it became almost a Crusader tradition to burn down Jewish villages and kill Jews along the route as they journeyed to the Near East to kill the Saracens (the Muslims) for Jesus, Rome, and Byzantium. There are Crusader diaries in which are written things such as “why should we go all the way to a far off place to kill Saracens who we don’t even know, when right here in our own lands live the enemies of our Lord.” See: Karen Armstrong’s “Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today’s World” (2001).

So do the Muslims ever get mentioned in history class as people who saved the Jews from crazed Christian crusaders such as Reynauld of Chatillon? Absolutely not. And why are the Palestinians in this movie we are all in always portrayed as the bad guys? Is it because they are men enough to stand up and fight for their lands and their country when it is stolen out from under them in jackboot, Euro-1930s, forced evacuation-style? – given by one European group to another European group, neither group having any actual genetic or ancient blood ties with the land exchanged in a parlour room deal in London. The whole deal from day one was just a big real-estate con-job launched by a cartel of atheists who had hijacked their forefathers’ religion for cover. The very sad horror story in all of this, unfortunately, is that millions had to unnecessarily die and suffer for the myth-inspired, totalitarian socialist agenda of this pagan cult. I think that the old rabbis were right when they said that the adherents of Zionist ideology were the worshippers of the Golden Calf who had returned to destroy the soul of the Jewish people. The Jewish people need to wake up and recognize that the Great Satan, so to speak, has moved into their very House, and he is Their Leadership. “Hey, why the hell are those rabbis out there across the street burning that Israeli flag? WTF?!?” At this point I am just praying and working and writing. If all you have is two wings, just keep flapping, because you never know, you just might all cause a storm. It’s a physics thang.

And did I catch this correctly? Arun Gandhi was kicked out of the non-violence institute that HE founded by the Zio-powers that funded it after he said that the Palestinian exiles in Jordan (who were evicted at gunpoint from their homes by Zionist paramilitary groups) should march, en masse, back to their homes in Palestine? That’s f*#g it! Grandpa Mohandas is coming back with Jesus, and this time they are bringin’ the heavy artillery. “piece of gum?” But seriously, I did read the article, and as I read it, began lamenting that before he had written it, if he would have only had the time to stop by the old WTCD here or other such sites to consider the real differences between Jews and Zionists. Rabbi Weiss – Ariel Sharon: Super Big Difference. The “All Jews are Zionists” concept is a very important device in the toolbag, and is a consciously crafted Zionist myth. It is the myth of inclusive, totalitarian (i.e. minority-driven) ideological unity. The Zionist, AIPAC-Likud-Kadima, MIC leadership knows that the constant drumbeat of “irrational, crazed Goyim going on a world-wide, anti-Semitic Christian jihad hooked up with the Islamo-fascist armies of darkness is the Key of Fear to keep the Jewish masses in-line with the program. Abe Foxman, head of the ADL (Arab Defamation League), always says that if you don’t support Israel, you’re a Jew-hater. How does that make moral, real Jews feel? How does that make any moral person feel in this age of open information? Word out to Abe the Fox: this is not 1950s Soviet Union times anymore. We have this thing called the internet tubeswhere we can see videos (or moving pictures) of IDF snipers shooting down, in the streets of Rafah, 15 year old Muslim schoolgirls on their way home from school. These IDF snuff films, as you can probably guess, are really, really bad for the old “Poor us, ‘why does everybody hate us?’, eternal, #1 victims of world history” PR campaign that you guys now practically run on auto-pilot on all media, at all times. Here’s my suggestion – “The Anne Frank Channel” [don’t touch it, I’m trademarking it as we speak.] where you have a game show with girls dressed up as Anne Frank engaged in an archery contest, shooting arrows on a target range, and all the targets have the image of David Cole. On Tuesday nights, this is followed by “Debunking Holocaust Debunking Holocaust Debunking.”

kate of the kiosk's picture

thanks LT! 2nd try here to post a reply

having a rough go with the "go-backs and refreshers".

as i think i may have related to you (and others!) way back upon first meeting over at Apt911B...living in Beirut as a youth was a fabulous experience. my parents' best friends were Samir and Adla AbuHammad (son of)...wonderful Palestinian folk who had been kicked out of their homeland and were making a go of it in Liban. they were so kind and generous, as were all the Lebanese and Palestinian folk we met.  btw,  thank you for the etymology on that name!!! and Saladin's (Salahuddin also?). i remember watching Lawrence of Arabia in a cinema in Beirut and around the same time becoming obsessed with the desert, arabia, the history, the bedouins, the language, the food. my 6th grade class put on a play about Queen Zenobia in the ruins of an ancient amphitheatre in Palmyra, Syria...bedouins came from miles around demanding that we reenact the play, they wanted to see these crazy american kids dressed up in our garb performing a play about their history and legends.  I attended The Royal Ballet of London with R. Nuyriev and Margo Fontaine dancing in the ruins of the temple of Bacchus in Baalbek. have you been there? you have been there. we are so lucky. my brother studied history at the AUB! fabulous place.

yes, the romance and mystique of the Near East remains with me always. 

we continue to be further informed and enlightened by your research and writings.  blessings, Laz. k

 

 

 

 

gretavo's picture

actually i think it's "Debunking...

... holocaust-debunking debunking." The hyphen is optional, btw. :)

kate of the kiosk's picture

i like the hyphen AND MY NEW PICTURE FRAME!

 the combined modifier (holocaust-debunking) modifies the noun (debunking).Wink

 

gretavo's picture

yay!

glad you like it! I was thinking that frames make the blog look a bit like a wacky art gallery, and are a way of promoting visual cohesiveness that doesn't affect what one can use as an avatar...

as for the you know what debunking debunking I recommend Roger Garaudy's The Founding Myths of Modern Israel as a great place for people to start

http://www.amazon.com/Founding-Myths-Modern-Israel/dp/0939484757

gretavo's picture

back cover of TFMOMI

gretavo's picture

text of garaudy's book

Big_D's picture

Same sickening shit, different century.

The perfect crowd, never questioning the man at the pew just might be (usually are) a con man.

"Are you a Christian?" - An affirmative answer, more so than your integrity (or lack of), are all these people need to believe some of the most factually inane bullshit ever thought up.

I abhor racism, though I can't say I have any tolerance for religious fundies regardless of ethnicity.

kate of the kiosk's picture

this blatant hate-mongering is pervasive and condoned

yet one such as Arun Gandhi, after being critical of israel and jews who support israel's use of violence ON A FREAKIN BLOG NO LESS, is maligned and forced to resign from his institute for nonviolence at an american university!!!!!!

SPEAK OUT MUSLIM AMERICANS!!!!

HYPOCRISY RULES

gretavo's picture

well, the truth is that...

the zionist lobby is much better organized than the terrorist--i mean, muslim lobby. the muslim lobby does not have volunteers using Megaphoneâ„¢ software "manning" crucial public electronic fora where normal everyday citizens unwittingly discuss current events. they don't release new anti-jew themed movies every year and saturate the airwaves with gossip about the stars of these. yo, arab muslim nonterrorist lobby!! where the fuck are you?!

kate of the kiosk's picture

just google CAIR

and notice all the hate-mongering "anti-cair" sites.

they do have organizations and do speak, but just like us, gretavo, they are almost invisible...

will keep you posted on a possible interview with a CAIR lady upcoming...

gretavo's picture

let's not play right into the trap...

remember what obama said? that the people responsible for 9/11 were the same people who wanted to make the new century one of conflict between christinaity and islam. now, because it was attributed to the bogeyman himself, you can be sure it is not necessarily wrong but most definitely something the real bad guys (RBGâ„¢) want you to think is false.

now, i'm no fan of madrasses OR megachurches, but I do think that we can act in ways that lessen the potential for members of each to come to blows. when we talk about the "christian right" what do we mean? A lot of people who consider themselves conservative and christian would understandably take some umbrage at being lumped in with rapture-addled folk praying for god to make them rich.

Most problematic christians, like most problematic muslims, have probably been so misinformed about the world their whole lives that they can hardly be held to be acting out of malicious intent. This is no better than people who turn problematic jews into representatives of a secretive would be master race colluding to rule the world and drink the blood of lesser races' children.

Pat Robertson, Larry Silverstein, and thugs like Saddam Hussein--in a word, sociopaths--are the problem. Not the people who these soulless men manipulate.

I wish the earth was a survivor-type game so that we could vote the following off the planet: Zionism, militant Islamism, white christian supremacism, blind nationalism, crony capitalism, etc.