A RELIGION OF PEACE?
Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, 12/30/02
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol.html
One good aspect of the holiday season was that veteran Arab-hater James
Taranto, whose column "Best of the Web" runs on the Wall Street Journal's
website, went on vacation, and the world was spared his unsparing hatred
for all things Arab for a few blessed days. Not for long, however: he's
back at the same old stand, picking up little items from Memri about the
innate evil of Muslims and always appending the same hateful headline: "A
Religion of Peace?" But two can play that game?
The Washington Post reports that there's "tension at [the] Holy Land's
tombs," and the source of it is ? well, let them report. You decide:
"In Bethlehem, Rachel's Tomb - which is also venerated by Muslims and
Christians - has been sealed inside a heavily fortified building. The tomb
is no longer visible from the outside, and Palestinians are not allowed
access. Foreign tourists can visit, but only Jews are allowed to pray."
Imagine if the Post had titled its story "A Religion of Peace?" The yelps
of outrage would have been deafening. Yet Taranto gets away with precisely
this kind of hate-mongering five days a week?
As religious fundamentalism rises in Israel, threatening the last vestiges
of moderation in the government, the U.S. has grown closer to Ariel Sharon?
So let's cut out the cheap shots at Islam, and Christianity, for that
matter, while leaving the rest of the world's superstitions immune from
criticism. The rise of religious intolerance in Israel, and among that
country's vociferous supporters in the West, isn't the only clue to the
dangers posed by a misguided sensitivity. Hindu-fascism in India is the
latest fundamentalist threat to the peace of the world, as I have warned in
this column before: does the world really need another nuclear-armed
fanatic who looks to God (or the gods, in the case of the Hindus) as
justification for repression and mass murder?
The emerging Israel-India alliance is all too logical, given the
fundamentalist trajectory of both countries. That the U.S. is funding and
sponsoring this sinister convergence will reap us the kind of "blowback" we
have rightly come to dread.
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