By Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
September 4, 2003
Does anyone remember, after 9-11, the news stories complaining about Muslims, whose faith is supposed to be based on a message of peace, who were not speaking up in condemnation of Osama bin Laden and his fellow Muslim terrorists? That was an issue that was rather self-righteously pounded on from not a few political and religious pulpits from around the country.
Yesterday there were a couple of stories in newspapers about religion based terrorism. One was a front page story in the Washington Post entitled, “I expect a great reward,” a quote from Paul Hill, a former Presbyterian minister who was executed yesterday for assassinating abortion doctor John B. Britton and his security escort James H. Barrett in 1994.
The Post quoted Britton as saying in a well-publicized (at least by the Washington Post) pre-execution press-conference in Florida,“I expect a great reward in heaven. I am looking forward to glory. I don't feel remorse. . . . People have asked me if I would do it again; if I was put in a similar circumstance, I believe I would act similarly." And you thought that only Muslim terrorists believe they will get a heavenly reward for their killings?
The Washington Post also quoted “The Rev. Don Spitz, who is organizing a vigil for Hill outside the prison Wednesday, drove to Pensacola in 1994 after hearing about the abortion clinic shooting to meet Hill and has been his spiritual adviser since. In the days after the shooting, Spitz said, Hill was contented, at peace.
"‘He had joy because he obeyed God,’ Spitz said.” Right. I gather that Hill can expect to be able to party, wherever he is going, with those nineteen 9-11 Muslim terrorists who think they will be awarded by God with76 virgins killing all those wicked Americans?
Then, of course, you have people like the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, saying things like, “This nation has been attacked, we've been attacked by men who claim to worship Allah. We have been attacked by a people, a group, in the name of Islam, and the clerics, the religious leaders of Islam have not denounced it.” Since there are over one billion Muslims, that’s a lot of people for us to be attacked by. They believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, supposedly the same God worshipped by Jews and Christians.
The story yesterday, totally unreported so far as I can determine in the western media reported on a meeting of the Supreme World Council of Mosques in Mecca (or Makkah), Saudi Arabia. It would seem to me that a statement released in Mecca from a meeting of a World Council of Mosques just might be considered news even by western news outlets who tell us almost daily about what the “Muslims” or the “Arab Street” is thinking and how much they all hate George W. Bush. So far no Western news outlet has carried the story, not even the Washington Post.
According to the Arab News, the statement from the meeting in Mecca warned against possible communal violence in Iraq as a result of assassination of Shi’ia cleric Mohammad Baqer Al-Hakim and 85 other people in Najaf, Iraq, and urged Arab and Islamic countries to help protect the war-torn country from sectarian infighting.
“The killings in Iraq were a bid to incite strife and fuel conflict and division among its people. The council calls on the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference to try to help Iraq ... establish security, shun sectarian and ethnic conflict, and preserve its unity.”
Actually, the Muslim clerics seem to have done a better job of denouncing terrorism committed by Muslims than Christian ministers like Franklin Graham have done in denouncing terrorism committed by Christians. When was the last time, for example, you ever read of Franklin Graham or any other well-known evangelical minister warning other Christians against the long years of terrorism by the Irish Republican Army? Or, how about yesterday’s support of Paul Hill’s terrorism by Christian ministers? How many pro-life ministers have called Paul Hill a terrorist from the pulpit? Terrorism is terrorism, whatever the excuse used.
Shortly after 9-11, on October 10, 2001, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), a 56 nation Islamic organization, issued a statement that said: "The Conference reaffirmed that these terror acts ran counter to the teachings of the divine religions as well as ethical and human values, stressed the necessity of tracking down the perpetrators of these acts in the light of the results of investigations and bringing them to justice to inflict on them the penalty they deserve, and underscored its support of this effort.” Unfortunately, few Western news outlets reported it, so maybe Franklin Graham hadn’t heard about it. According to Arab News’ report of the meeting in Mecca Tuesday of the Supreme World Council of Mosques some very blunt language was used on so-called “Muslim” terrorism. The Mosque leaders said: “The participation of some deviant Muslims in terrorist acts has tarnished the image of Islam and Muslims. Enemies of Islam have taken these activities as a pretext to launch smear campaigns against Islam and Muslims.”
Deviant Muslims? This would be like a world Christian leader, say the Evangelicals’ Billy Graham, Catholicism’s Pope John Paul or LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley calling the Irish Republican Army terrorists, or Paul Hill “deviant Christians.” Accurate, but probably not politically correct, I would think.
The Supreme World Council of Mosques’ conference ended with a statement that sounded just like President Bush. They said, “Sheltering terrorists means participation in their crimes.” On October 6, 2001 Bush said, “Our enemy is the terrorists themselves, and the regimes that shelter and sustain them.”
All religions have their crackpots. The way you know who is the “real” follower of God, according to Jesus, was “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” The fruits of terror are pretty much the same regardless of which religion any particular terrorist says he belongs to.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com