Holy Jihad!

Arab clerics do fire and brimstone.
National Review, July 24, 2002 (Opinion)
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-freund072402.asp
By Michael Freund

I don’t know what the weekly sermon sounds like in your local house of worship, but here is a sampling of what the Arab world was being told last Friday, July 19, from pulpits throughout the Middle East:

In a sermon carried live on official Syrian radio from the Anas Ibn-Malik mosque in Damascus, Sheikh Dr. Ziad al-Ayubi told his listeners, “O God, help our people in Palestine and the Golan. O God, annihilate the Zionists and make them destroy themselves.”

A preacher appearing on Saudi Arabia’s official TV1 network displayed broader ambitions, seeking to invoke Divine wrath not just against “the Zionists,” but against all “infidels,” i.e. Christians and Jews. “O God,” he said, “support our brother holy warriors for your sake everywhere. O God, grant them victory in Palestine, Kashmir, and Chechnya. O God, deal with the aggressor Jews and all aggressive infidels. O God, deal with them for they are within your power.”
(…)

It would be easy to dismiss these frightful orations as the rantings of frustrated clergymen. But bear in mind that these weekly prayer sermons are broadcast on official, government-run stations in countries that are neither democratic nor free. The messages they convey are part and parcel of their government’s overall propaganda strategy, and they are designed to shape and mold Arab public opinion.

The fact that Arab preachers, throughout the Arab world, are circulating such hatred so openly, is a sign not only of the antipathy they bear for both Christians and Jews, but also of the utter lack of concern they have over their messages being heard abroad.

Indeed, the quotations above all come from FBIS, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service[...more...]
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