Commentary: Jerry Falwell Again Struck By Hoof-In-Mouth

There's a bumper sticker that's been appearing on automobiles recently that reads, “The Spirit of the Taliban Lives in all Fundamentalists.” One has to look no further than the Lynchburg, Virginia based Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell to see the truth of this sentiment.

Falwell, many will remember, made news right after the World Trade Center attack when he suggested that the incident happened because our nation had lost God's protection. God, it seems, had grown dissatisfied because we'd allowed Pagans, abortionists, feminists, homosexuals and civil liberties groups to secularize our nation (which meant that the terrorists had been right all along when they claimed to be doing God's work by punishing the infidels). After a public outcry, Falwell apologized for the remark.

Last month, Falwell was forced to wear his apology shoes again, this time for a remark he made on the CBS program 60 Minutes. During the course of an interview, he spoke about Mohammad, the founder of the Islamic faith. “I think Muhammad was a terrorist," he said. "I read enough of the history of his life written by both Muslims and non-Muslims, (to know) that he was a – a violent man, a man of war.”

It probably will come as no surprise to most that this didn't set well with the Islamic community. Even before the program aired, when CBS released transcripts of the interview, the remark sparked protests that triggered Hindu-Muslim clashes in western India that left at least nine people dead. The comment also put British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in a tough position, since he was in Iran at the time to gain Tehran's support for a U.N. resolution on Iraq, and Falwell's remark only added fuel to the fears that the war on terrorism was actually a war on Islam. Straw said the comments were “as much an insult to me as a Christian as they are to Muslims.”

That Falwell knew better becomes crystal clear with very little thought. As much as he feigned surprise at the uproar, he knew that Muslims wouldn't like their founder being likened to Osama's gang of thugs any more than Christians would like Jesus being compared to Vladimir Lennon (remember, many Christians don't even like to be reminded that their savior was a Jew). Falwell knew exactly what he was doing; he clearly understood the furor his remarks would bring. He also understood that the incident would elevate his position among the bigoted fundamentalist right-wingers that support him; a following that would applaud him for standing-up to the evil Muslims and their “false god” to “tell it like it is.”

And this wasn't the first time since September 11 that the leaders of the religious right have attacked Islam, nor the first time that the religion has been equated with evil. Other conservative Protestant clergymen who've made critical remarks about Islam and Muhammad in the past year include Franklin Graham (Billy Graham's son and successor), TV evangelist Pat Robertson and leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Except for India, which has it's own sectarian difficulties, the Islamic community reacted in a manner that showed much more restraint and tolerance than that exhibited by Falwell, Robertson and their ilk. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, a moderate, predominantly Muslim nation, urged citizens to not take Falwell seriously, saying that people who make such remarks are ignorant about the religion and its founder. “They don't understand anything,” he was quoted as saying by the national news agency, Bernama. “They don't understand Islam.” He also said that as a religious leader Falwell had no right to make such a statement, but added: “I'm not going to accuse all Christians. Only one person made such (a) statement.”

In this country, Ibrahim Hooper with the Council on American-Islamic Relation in Washington said, “Anybody is free to be a bigot if they want to. What really concerns us is the lack of reaction by mainstream religious and political leaders, who say nothing when these bigots voice these attacks.”

He pointed-out that Falwell and Pat Robertson would be speaking at the Christian Coalition convention in Washington only a week after Falwell’s comment, alongside House Majority Whip Tom DeLay and other politicians. “How can these elected representatives legitimize this kind of hate speech by appearing on the same platform with Islamophobes and Muslim-bashers?” he asked.

Although he later apologized for the remark, Falwell seemed to lay most of the blame on the 60 Minutes interviewer, saying that his main error was in answering a “controversial and loaded question” at the end of an hour-long interview.

The Islamic community seems to have gracefully accepted his apology, however. “Because he said he did not want to deliberately offend Muslims and he apologized, that is a positive statement and we hope he won't repeat that mistake again,” Hamid Reza Asefi, a spokesperson for the Iranian foreign affairs ministry, told Reuters news service. “At this time, nobody should encourage hatred between different civilizations and different religious groups.”

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