I know Christiane Amanpour has been doing a CNN three-parter on the evils of religious fundamentalism, but don’t look for a review here. I no longer watch anything she does. She gives me hives.
As for the premise of her show that I didn’t watch, the imputation of equivalence between the Abrahamic religions when it comes to violence, I think it is such an absurd lie it borders on propaganda out of Leni Riefenstahl – and I am a near atheist with no personal need for any organized religion at all. I would agree with John Derbyshire in his Pajamas review of Robert Spencer that they are all “magical thinking,” stories made up to explain life and nature when people thought the world was flat. They don’t work so well now.
Still, anyone who says the three religions are the same when Judaism and Christianity have gone through numerous reformations and Islam has not is simply delusional or lying or a combination of the two. For that reason, fundamentalists are a minority in Judaism and Christianity, while everybody is in one sense a fundamentalist in Islam. The Koran is the verbatim word of God, therefore immutable. The Bible is only a report of the word of God. Out of this, we still have Islamic people beheading people, trying to blow up civilians in subways, destroying Buddhist monuments, institutionally oppressing women and all the rest in 2007, not 1007. Are the perpetrators the exceptions? Sure to some degree (though not in the oppression of women). And there are certainly more of these violent types by far, exponentially far, than there are in any other religion. Do we see the Islamic world rising up in opposition to their behavior? Not at all.
Now Amanpour knows all this. So why does she lie? Well, one part of it’s obvious. She’s making several million a year from CNN for shoveling what she shovels. But I don’t think it’s just money, though that always help. I don’t know enough of this woman personally (don’t want to) to give any serious psychoanalysis, but it’s clear there is a lot of rage, guilt, hatred and confusion beneath the cultured tones and expensive safari jacket of this Fake Fallaci.
TAKING ONE FOR THE TEAM: Phyllis Chesler has more patience than I do. She’s watching.
RELATED: Shrinkwrapped writes on the possibility of moderate Muslims.
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