At Salon today, Steve Neumann maintains that, with Rev. Billy Graham's son and heir to the throne Rev. Franklin Graham, the religious right is having a "Donald Trump moment." As he notes, in response to the recent shooting in Chattanooga, Franklin Graham chose to use his powerful position as a leader of U.S. evangelicals to engage in a vicious attack on Muslims.
On his Facebook page, Graham wrote,
We are under attack by Muslims at home and abroad. We should stop all immigration of Muslims to the U.S. until this threat with Islam has been settled. Every Muslim that comes into this country has the potential to be radicalized — and they do their killing to honor their religion and Muhammad. During World War 2, we didn’t allow Japanese to immigrate to America, nor did we allow Germans. Why are we allowing Muslims now? Do you agree? Let your Congressman know that we’ve got to put a stop to this and close the flood gates.
Neumann's response:
This post is troubling not only for its racism and xenophobia, but because it’s willfully ignorant of reality. Yes, ISIS and Al-Qaeda have declared war on us, but they kill far more Arabs and Muslims than they do Americans and Christians. More Americans have been killed by white supremacists than Muslim terrorists since 9/11 — and that’s not including the three young Muslim-Americans killed by an atheist in Chapel Hill or the mass murder of 24 movie-goers in Aurora in 2012. Americans are far more likely to be killed by a white male American than any Muslim. Yet Graham doesn’t recommend deporting them or putting them in internment camps. Graham’s claim that all Muslims are potential terrorists is akin to Trump’s claim that all illegal immigrants are potential rapists.
And he's correct about all of that.
The cartoon is by Nick Anderson at Truthdig.
