"This Is Coming Our Way"

One of the oldest friends (since high school) of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed sent her an email recently with this as its only content:

This is coming our way
http://downloads.cbn.com/cbnnewsplayer/cbnplayer.swf?aid=17933

So naturally Mister Tact (that's me) was forced into a little education project, to dissuade the BFF from buying into this shit with a little shot of the truth:

Of course the first suspicion that this was a less-than-candid look at "the problem" is that it was put out by the so-called Christian Broadcasting Network, the television arm of evangelist Pat Robertson, noted for his rightwing wacko craziness.

First of all we are given absolutely no context for the street praying. A little research shows that this event seldom actually happens, and only in the predominately Muslim sections of Paris, and those people who couldn't get to their homes? They didn't need to since they were in the street praying themselves. Clever shot of the cops "doing nothing", which I doubt because the French don't like disorder. I'm sure that they have reached an agreement with the local mullahs to allow this to happen. We never saw anything like this when we were in Paris for twelve days last month.

In short it's nothing more than Muslim-hating scare tactics designed to gin up more antipathy towards Muslims, the new hated minority in this country. Years ago it was the Irish, and before that Catholics, blacks, First Nations people (aka "Indians"), etc etc. The "enemies list" has always been with us, it's just the objects of its scorn and hatred that changes color as time goes by.

The Muslims that I know (yes, we do have a mosque in Olympia, and former Army Muslim chaplain James Yee is a personal friend of mine) are peaceful and freedom-loving individuals who are trying their best to assimilate as best they can within the confines of their religion into American culture.

In short, this video is nothing more than rabid anti-Muslim propaganda skillfully stitched together with interviews with some of the anti-Muslim politicians in France who are as bad as, if not worse, than the USA's "birthers" who are insistent, against all evidence and reason, that Obama is a Kenyan communist who wasn't even born here.

In short, the CBN is a fully funded propaganda arm of the Religious Right, a bunch of Fundos who, when you scratch the surface, are still awash in their hatred of "papists" and the Catholic Church, which in their minds is the very embodiment of The Great Whore of Babylon foretold in Revelations [Note: The BFF is a strong Catholic].

I'd stay as far away from that outfit as I possibly could, and when you forward their propaganda it makes them pee their pants in glee that they've got you as a "foot soldier" in the war against Islam, so my advice is just don't do it.

Watch the video with a critical eye and you'll see that it's all pretty much smoke and mirrors, all style and no substance, all hat and no cattle, all overlaid with some clever editing and context-scrubbing.

Snopes.com doesn't have this on their website yet, but you'll see something similar with the "disruptive" and Obama-led street prayers in New York.

Don't fall for it.