THE CONSERVATIVE

BY RUSSELL TURNER

DOUBLE STANDARD

Several years ago I was listening to a speech and the speaker made the comment that people in other countries are astonished by how uninformed many Americans are when it comes to foreign affairs, but they were alarmed by the way the news media controls we Americans. A few weeks ago every news outlet was reporting on the burning of the Korans in Afghanistan. The media was good at showing all of the rioting in the streets and the violence directed at the American soldiers in that country. Most of the media outlets did not take the time to tell the whole story about why the Korans were destroyed in the first place. Taliban soldiers had defiled the books by writing messages in the books for other prisoners to read. The very act of writing in the Koran is considered a punishable offense in the Muslim religion, but that little bit of information didn’t seem important enough to report it. All they seemed to want to report was an apology from our president to the Afghanis.

On March 12, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is "necessary to destroy all the churches of the region”. While the media likes to portray we Americans as being intolerant of other religions, little or no mention is made about the head religious leader of Saudi Arabia in essence declaring open season on the Christian churches located on the Arabian Peninsula. Here in this country we have the right to observe any religion we desire with little or no fear of harm coming to us. In the Muslim world Christians are murdered, harassed, discriminated against, beaten, and killed. All across the mid east region Christian churches are being burned and bombed and little is said about it. As for the statement by the Grand Mufti, the State Department is silent as is the White House. Even Congress hasn't issued a resolution condemning this bigotry and hate.

A little over a year ago there was a preacher in Florida that scheduled a Koran burning and there was an immediate outcry against him doing it. In the end the Koran burning was called off and I feel that was the proper thing to have done. The event would have done nothing but stir up more controversy and more hatred. It seems that Christians in the Middle East are on their own. While I didn’t approve of the methods of the Koran burning preacher, his actions did not promote the destroying of mosques in the United States. I feel that our leaders and the media should be condemning the order to destroy churches in that region.