Apparently, Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, would have us think so. 
Actually, she’s part of a much larger movement to whitewash the differences between the Judeo-Christian faith and Islam. This week CNN will air God’s Warriors, an exposé on religious extremism among Jews, Muslims and Christians. The three-part program is preempting Larry King, so it must be huge.
Rarely do the mainstream news outlets “get it.” Ever since 9/11, the secular media has pressed hard to either
- Make Muslims look better
- Make Christians look worse
- Make them morally and ideologically equivalent
Which is exactly what God’s Warriors attempts to do.
Lumping Jews, Christians and Muslims under the same heading is potentially misleading. Why? Because of the God they serve and the weapons they use. “Muslim warriors” and “Christian warriors” are two very, very different things. While the Christian “extremist” arms himself with a Bible, the Muslim straps on explosives. To equate a Christian picketing an abortion clinic with a Muslim blowing himself up in a crowded restaurant, is not only absurd, it’s flat out fallacious.
According to God’s Warriors, the intolerant fringe of Christianity looks like Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority and Liberty University. Their counterpart (at least, according to Amanpour), is the Taliban and suicide bombers. But the comparison is idiotic. I mean, who’s killed more over the last ten years: the Moral Majority or the Taliban, James Dobson or Osama Bin Laden? When was the last time Christians rioted because a comic strip disparaged their Messiah? Has Jerry Falwell ever beheaded an infidel?
I’m afraid its devotion to “tolerance” has blinded the secular media to the obvious. Take for instance, Mark Lilla’s NY Times Magazine piece, “The Politics of God.
We in the West are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin. We had assumed this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that fanaticism was dead. We were wrong.
“[W]e have our own fundamentalists,” Lilla writes. Gee, I wonder who they are? Answer: They’re those who push “theological ideas” that leave societies “in ruin.” The last I checked, Judeo-Christian ideology has not “ruined” Western society. In fact, if Lilla lived in Saudi Arabia, could he even conjecture that about Islam? Didn’t think so.
In a recent interview about the series, Amanpour said
The number of people in this country who tell me how really terrified they are about everything now in this big bad world, it sort of worries me. . . Yes, we are living in an incredibly difficult, fraught and violent time. But I really feel that if people understood more and had more context, they wouldn’t be as afraid of the unknown. They would be able to make judgments based on a much fuller and rounder picture.
It’s pretty obvious that the “fuller and rounder” picture programs like God’s Warriors want us to have, is incomplete. The type of war Jesus spoke about and Muhammad spoke about are two very different things; and the types of warriors they recruited are polar opposites. The inability — or unwillingness — of the secular media to acknowledge this, is indicative of a much bigger, more dangerous divide.
Mike, please stop beating me to the punch on all these things. Because of you, I have nothing to blog about. You know, I have a friend who’s a judge. I think an injunction on your site is in order.
They always bring up the abortion clinic fanatics. 1 or 2 incidents does not = Christian Holy War.
It amazes me that Amanpour and her ilk don’t understand the tolerance inherent in Christianity. Just because I warn a homosexual about God’s view of his behavior does not mean I want to suicide bomb him. In the end, I sin,too. And he is free to make his choices.
Sharing with someone God’s view of a particular behavior is not judgement. Killing them because of it is.
Huge difference.
I listened to a podcast of yesterday’s Dennis Prager show last night that was very much related to this issue. It was an inteview with Lee Harris, author of a new book titled The Suicide of Reason. The book talks about how many of our Western values, namely tolerance, have and will continue to block our ability to confront the extreme forms of Islam. Prager asked Harris about the show God’s Warriors. Both Harris and Prager echoed what you’ve said above. Or, maybe you echoed what they said. Either way, if you’re interested you could find the podcast on the iTunes store or here: http://dennisprager.townhall.com/TalkRadio/Show.aspx?RadioShowID=3&ContentGuid=d277a6f9-712d-4703-bcb1-2571beb64e9b
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Chris, I haven’t heard Prager in the last few days, though I’m not surprised it’s a topic he addressed. The suggestion that “tolerance” is the possible basis for our demise — at least, the ideology that allows for the erosion of Western values — would make the good liberal cringe. After all, isn’t the antithesis of tolerance, intolerance? And, as we all know, intolerance is intolerable. Mark Steyn offers a similar idea in his new book, America Alone — that democracy is the very framework radical Islamists will use to overthrow our democracy.
The really frustrating part is that Joe-average-American will buy everything that’s said on this program hook, line, and sinker…
And Jane-average-American, too.
What’s especially frustrating for me is when Christians associate tolerance with grace. Not even close to the same thing.
It could be that the media feels that if they bad mounth the muslims then they might get bombed.