Delaware Top Blogs

Saturday, June 11, 2005

Does religious sensitivity work both ways?

Islamic countries apply a double standard when it comes to the treatment of "holy books" and people who differ in faith and practice from Islamic dogma. While Islamic groups in the United States are engaged in "sensitivity training" sessions for non-Muslims that have included federal workers, the Ohio National Guard and U.S. Air Force Academy, there are no such training sessions directed at Muslims to teach them tolerance for non-Islamic faiths. Quite the contrary.

While the slightest verbal or physical slight of any Muslim in America is immediately condemned by activist groups and sometimes the U.S. government, the denigration of Jews and Christians throughout much of the Islamic world is theological and political business as usual. Jews are regularly referred to as "apes and pigs," mostly because that is what the Koran calls them.

According to the MEMRI-TV Monitor Project, which observes the way Jews, especially, are portrayed throughout the Middle East, a Jordanian produced program titled "Stories From Before the Verses Came Down" was aired in February on Saudi Iqra TV. The soap opera contained familiar anti-Semitic stuff, including blaming ancient Jews for distorting their own Torah to make it seem like Mohammad could not be the "true prophet" and portraying a Jewish character saying, "We are the slayers of prophets, and we live off their blood! We live for destroying them"

According to a report authored by former CIA Director James Woolsey for Freedom House, the government of Saudi Arabia has made it a practice to disseminate propaganda about Jews, Christians and America through mosques in the U.S. and through schools, many of which are funded by the extremist Wahhabi Islamic sect.

The 89-page report titled, "Saudi publications on hate ideology fill American mosques," concludes that propaganda collected from U.S. mosques shows a "totalitarian ideology of hatred that can incite to violence." The report also says such mosques are in the minority, but how many are needed to train terrorists who might attack the U.S. with biological, chemical or nuclear weapons?


I guess not.

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