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.
AP photo / Carlos Osorio