By Kevin Foley
When you run out of crosses to burn, the next best thing is books.
That's the plan at the Dove World Outreach Center near Gainesville, Fla., where congregants of the evangelical church plan to set fire to Korans to commemorate September 11.
While he admits he's never actually read the Koran, Dove's pistol-packing pastor Terry Jones thinks burning the sacred book of 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide is the best way to let the world know the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed are lies.
“I only know what the Bible says,” this man of God told the New York Times.
Muslim bashing is all the rage this summer, from the overheated streets of New York City to the steamy backwoods of Florida. You need only the thinnest excuse to call a peaceful Muslim holy man a terrorist or to desecrate the most important symbol of the Islamic faith.
Warnings from experts telling us the anti-Muslim rhetoric is sure to threaten American troops and interests are ignored by Jones and his ilk. He doesn't know or care that his Koran bonfire promises a bonanza for Al Qaeda recruiters who have only to tune in Al Jazeera to prove once and for all that America is at war with Islam.
You can almost hear thousands of would-be jihadists saying, “Where do I sign?”
To his everlasting credit, George W. Bush went out of his way to protect Muslims from this sort of backlash in the days immediately after 9-11. He visited a mosque and met with Muslim religious leaders to reassure a shocked America that it wasn't Islam that murdered 3,000 people, but 19 psychopaths who happened to be Muslims.
“That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace,” Bush told the nation. “…we should not hold one who is a Muslim responsible for an act of terror.”
Despite Bush's call for tolerance, intolerance has gained an ever-surer foothold in the 20 months since President Obama took office thanks to the prolific and endless hate chatter of right wing blowhards and bloggers. Absent any restraint or responsibility and cloaked in the First Amendment, they have become increasingly comfortable saying or writing anything that panders to their audiences' basest instincts, the truth be damned.
And, guess what? Audiences are listening.
It began with gun slingers showing up at Obama appearances and signs depicting the president as an evil African witch doctor. Rush Limbaugh repeatedly refers to Obama as a Muslim while comparing Muslims to Nazis. Dr. Laura told an African American caller she was hypersensitive about race baiting before dropping the “n” bomb eleven times.
These and other popular right wing media personalities lend their imprimatur to intolerance and then gleefully wink and nod at those in the audience who might take the obvious next step. Such talk is what gives license to people like Terry Jones (or Eric Rudolph or Scott Roeder or Timothy McVeigh) to act.
Each day, the “public discourse” in the media pushes the envelope, away from the civil and rational, toward the intolerant and violent. As we abandon our bedrock American principles of religious and racial tolerance we invite consequences too horrific to contemplate.
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Kevin
Foley is president of KEF
Media Associates, an Atlanta-based producer and distributor
of sponsored news content to television and radio media. |
