Pentagon Disinvites Graham Franklin
Posted by Nabil Echchaibi on Friday, April 23, 2010
I
find it hard to believe that anyone would be upset after the Pentagon
decided to rescind its invitation to evangelist Franklin Graham to
speak at an official prayer service. Apparently, and according to
yesterday's NYT's article, the Pentagon didn't even invite Graham for this service. A Colorado-based National
Day of Prayer Task Force, which is helping the Pentagon chaplain's
office with the prayer event, did. Two quick things to say about this:
Graham preached at a 2003 Pentagon Good Friday service and this was
after he had made disparaging remarks against Islam. Second, how can
any religious figure who dismisses another religion as "evil" and
"wicked"and attacks its prophet as a charlatan hope to preach for the
military at the Pentagon while thousands of soldiers are in a war zone
in two Muslim countries? Graham keeps saying
that he has nothing against Muslims-- just that their religion is
"evil" and that their God is not the Judeo-Christian God-- What a great
disclaimer! Ultimately, Graham and his followers, have no respect for
the constitution of this country and all they labor for is to make this
country a Christian nation. The biggest worry, however, is that this
kind of inflamed rhetoric on both sides including Muslim radicals who
get lots of media attention, only foments tensions. A couple of days
ago, Jon Stewart, whom I respect a lot, had a long segment against the
radical Muslim group in New York who recently sent a death threat to
the writers of South Park for portraying Prophet Muhammad in a bear
suit. I can take criticism and I think Muslims should get used to it
and respond to it with responsible words, but the problem is that those
who want to do that are not listened to. Anderson Cooper did a segment
on the South Park death threat and he had only one source, Ayaan Hirsi
Ali. You can imagine what she said. This is what makes satire a bit too
much to take. It's not that Muslims can't take criticism, but it's just
that it's the only thing they see and hear in public discourse.
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