Christiane Amanpour "God's Warriors"

On Monday's MSNBC Live with Dan Abrams, host and MSNBC General 
Manager Abrams attacked CNN's God's Warriors series for "a defense of 
Islamic fundamentalism and the worst type of moral relativism," and as 
"shameful advocacy masked as journalism," quipping that series host 
Christiane Amanpour "avoided getting bogged down in objectivity." Abrams 
further took exception with Amanpour for comparing those who support 
Israel's defense strategy to Muslim terrorists: "Christians and Jews, for 
example, who support Israel's strategy for self-defense are just as much 
God's warriors, according to Amanpour, as the Islamic radicals who blow 
themselves and others up in an effort to destroy the world as we know it." 

    After contending that Amanpour attempted to "understand" violent 
Muslim fundamentalists without trying to "understand" evangelical 
Christians and Israelis, Abrams played a clip of Amanpour in which she 
"blames the warrior Jews" for the anger of radical Muslims. Amanpour: 
"Muslims, like people everywhere, abhor terrorism. The small minority who 
resorts to violence is symptomatic of something many of us have failed to 
understand: the impact of God's Jewish warriors goes far beyond these 
rocky hills. The Jewish settlements have inflamed much of the Muslim world."

    [This item, by Brad Wilmouth, was posted Tuesday morning on the MRC's 
blog, NewsBusters.org: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-
wilmouth/2007/08/28/msnbcs-abrams-hits-cnns-amanpour-defending-islamic-
fundamentalism ]

    Abrams soon brought aboard Muslim author Asma Hasan, Air America host 
Reverend Wilton Gaddy, and terrorism analyst Steve Emerson for a 
discussion of the topic, during which Emerson labeled the CNN series as 
"the most unfair series" and "the most dishonest series on television that 
I've seen in my 20 years of reporting or covering terrorism." Emerson 
further criticized Amanpour for not showing examples of violent Muslim 
extremists in Europe such as the Madrid and London bombings, and for 
portraying Jews and Christians as "demons." Emerson: "I thought that, in 
part, the actual dogma of this series actually focused mainly on Jews and 
Christians as being the demons, and in fact, one could accuse her of 
actually engaging in anti-Christian and anti-Semitic behavior by the 
selection of facts she chose to choose."

    Abrams showed a clip of Amanpour speaking to Christian youth leader 
Ron Luce of Teen Mania Ministries during which she contended that campus 
rules prohibiting female students from wearing short skirts and 
prohibiting male students from using the Internet without supervision 
reminded her of "totalitarian regimes," and compared the female dress code 
to what the Taliban did. Amanpour: "But that's what the Taliban said. They 
kept women in their house because men couldn't be trusted around them."

    (For more on the six-hour series aired last week and again over the 
weekend, see the August 27 CyberAlert item, "CNN's 'God's Warriors' 
Reflects MSM's Bias Against 'Big 3' Faiths," online at: 
http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2007/cyb20070827.asp#5 )

    Below is a transcript of relevant portions of the Monday, August 27 
MSNBC Live with Dan Abrams:

    DAN ABRAMS: For the past week, CNN has been proudly promoting and then 
celebrating its series called God's Warriors, presumably a look at 
radicals of different religions willing to fight for their cause. My take: 
I think it's fair to say it was not what it claimed or promised to be.
    CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, ON CNN: So we're not here lobbying for or 
advocating for or drawing conclusions, either political, religious or 
ideological-
    ABRAMS: Oh, yes they did. CNN should have called it what it was: a 
defense of Islamic fundamentalism and the worst type of moral relativism. 
For each of three nights, CNN devoted two hours to the, quote, "warriors" 
of each religion: Jewish, Christian and Muslim. But rather than 
distinguish between Islamic terrorists who utilize fierce violence to 
achieve warped goals, and the merely fiercely religious or even just those 
who fiercely believe in the state of Israel, Christiane Amanpour avoided 
getting bogged down in objectivity. Christians and Jews, for example, who 
support Israel's strategy for self-defense are just as much God's 
warriors, according to Amanpour, as the Islamic radicals who blow 
themselves and others up in an effort to destroy the world as we know it. 
A handful of the most radical of the Jews and Christians who can almost 
all be identified by name are highlighted. The violent Islamic 
fundamentalists are, quote, "understood," with no comparable effort to 
"understand" the evangelical Christians or Israelis. Amanpour even offers 
an explanation for the angry radical Islamists. She blames the warrior Jews.
    AMANPOUR, ON CNN: Muslims, like people everywhere, abhor terrorism. 
The small minority who resorts to violence is symptomatic of something 
many of us have failed to understand: the impact of God's Jewish warriors 
goes far beyond these rocky hills. The Jewish settlements have inflamed 
much of the Muslim world.
    ABRAMS: She takes Jewish and Christian political movements, even 
Jewish lobbyists in Congress, and lumps them in with God's warriors, 
thereby equating them with the radical Muslim warriors, the quote, "much 
feared and little understood." Maybe most troubling, much of the warrior 
Muslim program highlights not the warriors themselves, but claims of 
discrimination against Muslims.
    AMANPOUR, ON CNN: Geneive Abdo is the author of Mecca and Main Street. 
She says that since 9/11, the majority of American Muslims feel they're 
singled out for suspicion and surveillance by the government and by 
ordinary people. Imam Fawaz Jneid, leader of a mosque in the Hague, 
believes Muslims are under attack, victims of religious discrimination.
    ABRAMS: What does that have to do with the warriors? She portrays 
Muslims as victims, while accusing evangelical Christians of playing the victim.
    AMANPOUR, ON CNN: The religious right would have you believe that 
there's no mention of God anywhere in our public sphere. It's on the currency.
    JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN Legal Analyst: It's on the currency, and they say 
because it's on the currency, there's nothing wrong with it being in the 
schools, or in the courthouses, or in the Capitol.
    AMANPOUR: But they also play the victim somewhat.
    ABRAMS: This series was well-produced and successful, but also 
shameful advocacy masked as journalism. We have opinionated hosts here on 
MSNBC who offer opinions on a wide range of topics, including me, but I 
admit it when I'm advocating. In the end, this was exactly what she said 
it wasn't: lobbying, advocacy, and an effort, intentional or not, to have 
people draw particular conclusions.

    ...

    Before we talk about some of this other stuff, Asma, what do you think 
about the comments that I just made?
    [ASMA HASAN, Author of Why I Am a Muslim]
    ABRAMS: A little history lesson for you. I covered the Oklahoma City 
bombing trial, and you talk to any of the prosecutors who prosecuted the 
case. In the end, they don't believe that it was part of some militia 
effort. So that's just fiction, and that's the problem here. The facts are 
so important.
    HASAN: But didn't Timothy McVeigh say in writings from prison that he 
didn't like how the government was treating Christians, how they were 
restricting Christians?
    ABRAMS: Yeah, he didn't. He didn't. That's right. That's right. That's 
the beauty of this. Steve Emerson, the beauty of this is they highlight 
throughout the CNN piece, they highlight identifiable people, Christians 
and Jews, who've been arrested and convicted of various crimes. And they 
lump it in, and they claim this is all one big religious fundamentalism.
    STEVE EMERSON, Terrorism Analyst: Right. It's so contrived, I thought 
that I was watching Al-Jazeera. The treatment of radical Islamic 
fundamentalists were given kid-glove treatment. They explain the Muslim 
Brotherhood as a peaceful movement. They explain jihad as a peaceful 
internal struggle. I mean, this was inverting reality on its head. And 
when they described terrorism, they could only explain it in terms of 
Muslims being the victims, not being the perpetrators. I felt that, I was 
really, I felt that the viewer here was really dishonestly treated here. 
And as far as the treatment of Jews and Christians, when Christian lawyers 
went to law school, they were called, demonized as "God's warriors." And 
when Jewish supporters of Israel lobbied for Israel, they were demonized 
as somehow causing riots throughout the Middle East. This was the most 
unfair series and, I think, the most dishonest series on television that 
I've seen in my 20 years of reporting or covering terrorism.

    ...

    ABRAMS: Reverend Gaddy, let me ask you this. Let me play this piece of 
sound for you where, again, Christiane Amanpour compares some of the 
fundamentalist Christians to the Taliban. And I want to ask you if you 
think this is a fair comparison.
    AMANPOUR: On campus, students must follow a strict set of rules. When 
I, you know, read that women have to wear skirts of a certain length and 
guys aren't allowed to, you know, go on the Internet unsupervised, I mean, 
I think, you know, totalitarian regimes.
    RON LUCE, Christian youth leader: No, it's about learning to have 
disciplines that communicate purity, you know. The skirts' length are to 
keep guys from, you know, any man on the planet could be distracted, and 
we don't want to unintentionally create distraction.
    AMANPOUR: But, Ron, that's what the Taliban said. They kept women in 
their house because men couldn't be trusted around them.
    ABRAMS: Fair comparison, Reverend Gaddy, between a dress code and the 
Taliban?
    [Reverend WILTON GADDY, The Interfaith Counsel]
    ABRAMS: And they back it up, again, we're not just talking about 
individuals who we can name, but there is a large and significant movement 
of fundamentalist Islam, which I think ends up being minimized by equating 
this all. I'm sorry, Asma, I interrupted you before.
    [HASAN talks about international criticism of Jewish settlement expansion]
    ABRAMS: Okay, but that's fine. That's fine. But that doesn't address, 
look, I'm not going to have debates about the settlements here. I'm 
debating the bias, the overt bias of this CNN series.

    ...

    ABRAMS: Steve Emerson, I want to play you this piece of sound. It's a 
final one. ... And this is again suggesting, let's listen, and then we'll 
talk about it.
    AMANPOUR: Across Europe, Islam is the fastest growing religion, the 
number of Muslims tripling in the last 30 years. This increased Muslim 
presence and violence like the Van Gogh murder play into the hands of 
right-wing politicians, like Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament.
    ABRAMS: All right, Steve Emerson, again, "play into the hands," the 
Muslims as the victims, again, throughout this whole piece.
    EMERSON: Exactly. She didn't mention the Madrid bombings, she didn't 
mention the two London series of bombings, she didn't mention the number 
of attacks in Europe, throughout Europe. She didn't mention the vast 
amount of Wahabist radical Islamic influence and supporters in the United 
States. She omitted all of that in an attempt to bring the perpetrators 
who she claimed were right-wingers or Christians or Jews. I thought that, 
in part, the actual dogma of this series actually focused mainly on Jews 
and Christians as being the demons, and in fact, one could accuse her of 
actually engaging in anti-Christian and anti-Semitic behavior by the 
selection of facts she chose to choose.
    ABRAMS: Reverend Gaddy, go ahead.
    [GADDY]
    ABRAMS: Well, I can tell you this, CNN is listening to this segment, 
so maybe they will hear you loud and clear on that and make up for what I 
think was really well done but ultimately shoddy journalism.

Comments

[Muslims Against Sharia]

Emerson, a Jew who gets it'
A perspective of a moderate Muslim.

At the risk of sounding anti-Semitic, I want to say this: either American Jews are completely clueless about the internal struggle inside Islam or they are so cowardly, that they are even afraid to voice their opinion. Or maybe it's a combination of both.

Every time there is a development that involves radical Islam, be it a Mayor of New York attending an Islamist parade, DOJ's officials attending an Islamist conference, or a protester being sued for having the balls to expose an Islamist-sponsored event at an amusement park, the American Jewish community is as quiet as a church mouse. It's like it is not even there.

The effect of this silence is devastating. Not for the Jewish community, not yet. That time is still to come. The silence affects the American Muslim community. Every time moderate Muslims are ignored and Islamists are legitimized (by either direct support from government representatives or silent support of the ADL), radicals gain ground. In the current PC climate, moderate Muslims have pretty much no choice but to keep their mouths shut.

Luckily for us, not everyone in the Jewish community is like that. There are some Jews that are speaking out. One of them is Steven Emerson, who has been warning the West about the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism since before PanAm 103. Most of his current work is focused on exposing the radicals masquerading as the moderates – those radicals who are embraced by the DOJ and the Pentagon, by the mayor of New York Bloomberg (Rudy would never get into bed with terrorist supporters) and the Treasury Department, by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, by the Congress and the White House.

There is a war of ideas within Islam, and moderate Muslims are losing. Most of Muslim clergy and Muslim establishment are paid for by the Wahhabis. Moderate Muslims are being run out of Mosques and community centers, and in many cases are physically threatened. Moderate Muslims have no place in the media or public debate, because the place reserved for Muslims is filled by Islamic radicals, who attempt to make criticizing anything Islamic a taboo. According to the Islamists, a Muslim can do no wrong.
1. When a non-Muslim criticizes Islam or Muslims, he/she is an Islamophobe.
2. When a Muslim criticizes Islam or Muslim, he/she is not a real Muslim, therefore see #1.

This is a tactic used by "moderate" Muslims, the darlings of the government and the media. But how can you call someone who praises bin Laden, or has ties to Hamas, or calls for the elimination of Israel, or wants to replace the Constitution with the Koran a moderate? They are anything but moderates, however nobody except for a few people like Steven Emerson seems to notice that. But even when the Emersons of America appeal to the public, they are often being dismissed as alarmists and racists. Well, they are anything, but. You don't have to be a clairvoyant to predict the future when it comes to expansion of radical Islam and extinction of moderate Muslims. All you need to do is get your heads out of the sand.

Why our government is so forgiving and forgetful when it comes to individuals or organizations with known terrorist ties and anti-American views is beyond me. Why the Jewish leaders are so timid when it comes to the subject of radical Islam is incomprehensible.

I thank God every day for people like Steven Emerson, because they are the last glimmer of hope for moderate Muslims.

K.M.

http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2007/11/emerson-jew-who-gets-it-perspective-of.html - Original post