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September 16, 2001
Homegrown Taliban
by David Vest
Imagine that a couple of Muslim clerics
go on TV a day or two after the September 11 attacks on America.
Imagine one of them says that
because America is so wicked, God has allowed its enemies to
finally give America exactly what she deserves.
And that the other says, "That's
my feeling." And that they continue to denounce America
as a land that has "insulted God" by tolerating paganists,
feminists, gay and lesbian people, abortionists and abominations
like the ACLU.
Do you think such a performance
would make the streets safer for American Muslims? (Not to mention
the clerics themselves. You wonder how they'd make it home from
the studio.)
Bulletin: It wasn't Muslim
clerics who said any such thing. It was Jerry Falwell and Pat
Robertson.
They blamed the attacks on
women. On gay people. On religious minorities. On the ACLU. On
People for the American Way.
They blamed it on Americans.
They blamed America. They even blamed God.
I ask myself what could be
worse than price-gouging, jacking up the price of gasoline and
flags to profit from disaster, or using it for cover to close
businesses and
lay people off just when they're feeling most vulnerable, and
the answer comes.
It is this.
It's not just the blame-the-victim
attitude. It's not just the bigotry. It isn't even the bald-ass
wide-open contempt for America it shows.
It's not just the ignorance.
It's the use of what is holy to support hatred and intolerance
that makes me think we need to worry about our own Taliban, right
here, right now.
And it's not just Falwell and
Robertson. I am getting reports of similar remarks made by other
ministers in different parts of the country.
Would anyone who understood
one word of scripture dare -- dare! -- to use it to justify fomenting
prejudice
and hatred?
Would anyone with the remotest
acquaintance with a Higher Power think that God did this to America?
What
part of JUDGE NOT don't these people understand?
If a "real American"
heard a minister say that God was responsible for the attack
on America, would he put money in the collection plate? Or get
up and leave right
then?
Like the one in Afghanistan,
our home-grown Taliban is always quick to issue denials and pro
forma denunciations. "Of course we oppose racial discrimination
and so-called hate crimes. Naturally we condemn the bombing of
abortion clinics. Murder is wrong."
The deeper you go into this,
the worse it gets.
Imagine that a terrorist bombs
a building in, say, Birmingham, Alabama. And that the bomb kills
a policeman and puts a woman who works in the building
in a wheelchair for life.
Imagine that the terrorist
hides, not in Afghanistan, but in, say, North Carolina. And that
the people who live
where he's hiding refuse to help the FBI find the terrorist.
And that years later he's still on the loose, a folk hero to
some.
As most readers will recall,
this story is not hypothetical. The terrorist in this case is
an American. People who call themselves Americans helped him
get away with it.
How would you feel toward Americans
who helped terrorists get away with bombing the Pentagon or the
World Trade Center, or any other location in this country?
Does it make any difference
whether the terrorist is foreign or native-born?
After Falwell and Robertson
spoke, I was glad when the
White House said that "the president does not share those
views."
When the president says we
won't just get the terrorists, we'll get the people who harbored
them, should we start the training in rural North Carolina, just
for practice?
I know we have to do something
about international terrorism right now. I know we have to do
what we can to protect our country and the world from attacks
orchestrated from elsewhere.
But a terrorist is a terrorist
is a terrorist. I don't care where he comes from.
And hatred is hatred, I don't
care who speaks it. And I've heard enough of it.
David Vest is a writer, poet and piano player
for the Cannonballs. A native of Alabama, he now lives in Portland,
Oregon. Visit his webpage for samples of the Cannonballs' music
and other Vest columns:
http://www.mindspring.com/~dcqv
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