CNN to Air God’s Warriors, Equating Christians to Muslim Jihadists?

July 31, 2007 | Filed Under 00Publius Contributor, Democrats/Leftists, Media Bias, Religion, Security/Safety, Society/Culture, Uncategorized, War on Terror, Warner Todd Huston |

-By Warner Todd Huston

With great fanfare, CNN is announcing the broadcast over three nights in August of a “Worldwide TV event” hosted by Christiane Amanpour titled “God’s Warriors.” But some fear that these three nights, each night focusing on a particular religion, will equate Christian political activists in America (the so-called “Christian Right”) to Muslim suicide bombers and radical Jihasists the world over. And after reading the CNN press release announcing the “event,” it’s hard to doubt that those fears will be accurate.

In the press release, Amanpour claims that people all over the world are questioning her about the “rise of religious influence on political power in the US.”

“As I report around the world, people often ask me about the rise of religious influence on political power within the United States, but in fact this is true worldwide,” Amanpour said. “Wherever I go, what the believers do all have in common is that they want to bring the politics of faith into the very center of public life – we are seeing this now on almost every continent.”

I wonder what credentials Amanpour has to make these judgments, anyway? It also seems odd that people would ask such a thing because if religion is being felt “on almost every continent” why would it seem so odd to foreigners that it might be happening in the USA, too, so odd they would ask about it?

Naturally, the show will feature disgraced ex-president, Jimmy Carter (the man who renounced his association with the Baptists in 1980), assailing the “Christian Right.”

God’s Warriors includes interviews with former President Jimmy Carter about the political impact of the Christian Right in the United States

There’s an unbiased source, eh?

The three episodes will be as follows:

Aug 21 God’s Jewish Warriors
Aug 22 God’s Muslim Warriors
Aug 23 God’s Christian Warriors

Worries about how Christians are going to be treated are voiced in the American Family News Network that the show will present Christians in the US working to get things their way via political means with Jihadists who blow themselves and innocents up to get their way.

A media analyst fears an upcoming CNN special will attempt to create a moral equivalency between all religions. Bob Knight says it appears the network is trying to equate Muslim homicide bombers with evangelical Christians.

In fact, it is hard to see how they could avoid it. The very title of the show “God’s Christian Warriors,” when juxtaposed with the “Muslim Warriors” episode portends damning American Christian political activists with Muslim Jihadists’ actions.

Bob Knight goes on…

Knight, director of the Media Research Center’s Culture and Media Institute (CMI), says any series that equates “conscience-based resistance to liberal programs” with Islamic extremists is a blatant attempt to equate Christianity with Islam and to say “a pox on both their houses — they’re all bad.”

I am sure that Jewish religious activists wont be treated any better than their Christian fellows, either.

As Lynn Davidson says on Newsbusters.org:

The images posted on the “God’s Warriors” site further back up this unbalanced view. Several of the images of Muslims addressed suicide bombers (which the readers must identify through CNN’s use of the biased term) while injecting sympathy and victimhood by showing the grieving female relatives of the “martyrs” instead of, say, the deadly results of the “martyrs.” Even the examples of militant Jewish fundamentalists were portrayed as bombers, but the weirdly semi-ominous images of the Christian “warriors” were mostly of the youth group Battle Cry, whose “battle” is for raising awareness for traditional values. Compare that to plucking out eyeballs and beheadings. Eh, to-may-to, to-mah-to.

Yeah, this one seems sure to be a Christian bashfest that explains away and minimizes Muslim evil.
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Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, men’snewsdaily.com and americandaily.com among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a guest on several radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston

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