The American Taliban
An early nomination for the most frightening news story of the year, this piece from the Washington Post about how the American conservative christian movement is allying itself with the Islamic movement against international recognition of gay, womens and children's rights.
Look at who their friends are:
But it has been largely galvanized by conservative Christians who have set aside their doctrinal differences, cemented ties with the Vatican and cultivated fresh links with a powerful bloc of more than 50 moderate and hard-line Islamic governments, including Sudan, Libya, Iraq and Iran.
This is an interesting opportunity to clarify just who the real enemy of freedom and democracy is. The US initially took a great deal of flak for being 'anti-Islam' at the beginning of the 'war on terror.' In truth, we'd have been against militant Unitarians if they'd cooked up 9/11. We're against your actions, not your beliefs. We're against murderous psychopaths of whatever creed....
But this new alliance is troubling because it points up that the real threat is from conservative, fundamentalist religious groups of all persuasions. Just as the Vatican is much more interested in it's own preservation than in doing the 'right thing' regarding the more than 1% of it's US clergy who have resigned in the wake of the pedophilia scandal, and conservative Christian group's in the US flock to support Israel not because they love the Jews but because their prophecies say that the end of the world -- and the beginning of the rapture -- can only come when the Jews are in Palestine.
And we've got a president who belives in all this. Yippee!
3:44:35 PM
|