Loving Muslims

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="055d05a3.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>Blithe Spirit</B></FONT><B>    </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Blithe Spirit"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Blithe Spirit"><U>Blithe Spirit</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id63.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="6/5 to 10/30, 2005"><U>6/5 to 10/30, 2005</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id65.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="7/23/06"><U>7/23/06</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id66.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="11/21/06"><U>11/21/06</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id64.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Quiet, please"><U>Quiet, please</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id62.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Wed. Journal columns"><U>Wed. 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Whom he picks in the World Series is what I'd like to know. </FONT></div> <div> He also quoted NY Times four or five times in his 45-minute sermon. It's his newspaper of record, if not yours or mine, so why not? </div> <div> But the really interesting part was what he had to say about "Nine-Eleven," as he referred to this generation's Pearl Harbor. It was exclusively about how we suffered, how our lives changed, how we found God, how we discovered ourselves to be vulnerable. Ah that favorite word of the 9-11 moralizers, religious or otherwise, as if wow! we're victims too, even us white people! </div> <div> He said nothing about anger, not even about controlling it, or determination to stop the guys who did it before they do more of the same, and nothing about the overwhelming support for our Republican oil-man president for articulating that anger and determination and success so far in fighting the bad guys. </div> <bR> <div> <B>APOLOGETIC . . . </B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >Such selective commentary is typical of mainline church reps. It's guys like him -- he's Donald Shriver, Union's president 1975-96 -- at places like Union who have done so much to denude us of our self-respect and willingness to call spades spades, giving Christianity a bad name in the process. </FONT></div> <div> As a speaker he worked to make us feel very bad about ourselves and our country and its being strong and powerful -- tired old mainline Protestant and increasingly mainline RC stuff. Egad, and it's supposed to be bad not to feel good about yourself! I don't get it. </div> <div> Radical Islamists (and he never used THAT term, be assured) are mad at us (and he certainly showed respect for to the Old Standby, why don't they like us?) not because we are rich and prosperous and freedom-loving (we allow women to be air traffic controllers etc., and be assured he did not call attention to that difference) but because they feel humiliated. Him and the Pope on that one. </div> <div> That's the apologist-for-militant-Islamism line. It's not the militant Islamism line, which is honest and forthright on their own TV stations: Kill the Jews and everyone who sides with them. Not a word from our sneaky Shriver about that part of the current equation. </div> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>