Baptising
In Troubled Waters
By Andrew
Gumbel
Independent
UK
22 April 2003
Evangelical
charities with an overt hostility to Islam are preparing to distribute
food, water, medicine and building materials in Iraq, all in the name
of Jesus.
One of the charities,
Samaritan's Purse, is run by Franklin Graham, the son of the evangelist
Billy Graham, who declared after the 11 September attacks that Islam
was "a very evil and wicked religion". Another is the Southern
Baptist Convention, whose former president once described the Prophet
Mohamed as "a demon-possessed paedophile". About 800 of SBC's
volunteers are reported to be on their way to Iraq to deliver food packages
labelled with a verse from St John's Gospel, in Arabic, saying that
"grace and truth were realised through Jesus Christ".
Such insensitivity
is viewed by some as playing into the hands of those to whom the "war
on terrorism" is a religious crusade. But what really riles Muslim
groups all over the world is that these activities are overtly supported
by the Bush administration. Franklin Graham, a long-standing friend
of the President, was invited to participate in this year's Good Friday
prayer service at the Pentagon, angering many in the Defence Department.
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations,
said the invitation "sends entirely the wrong message to the Muslim
and Arab world ... This kind of incident can undo any kind of bridges
built by a hundred public affairs officers at the Pentagon."
Franklin Graham
has a record of hostility to Islam and unabashed proselytising, even
where it is illegal. After the 1991 Gulf War, he infuriated Norman Schwarzkopf,
the commander of Operation Desert Storm, by shipping tens of thousands
of Arabic-language New Testaments to Saudi Arabia in defiance of Saudi
law and the US-Saudi military alliance.
In his most
recent book, he says that Christianity and Islam are "as different
as lightness and darkness" and that the two religions are destined
to fight each other until the second coming of Christ, which he says
is imminent. During a book tour last year, he said Islam posed "a
greater threat than anyone's willing to speak". He has toned down
the rhetoric recently to pacify his critics but few believe him when
he says "we don't have to preach to be a Christian relief organisation".
Samaritan's
Purse has worked in many countries, including Rwanda, Somalia, southern
Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Mr Graham flies in his relief
planes, especially when they are in danger. Such gusto has won him many
friends in the Republican Party, including Bill Frist, the Senate majority
leader, who has joined him on missions in Sudan. And he is a popular
figure on the fundamentalist right - an important Bush constituency
that loves the idea of good versus evil and a president ordained by
God to lead America in tough times.
That is also
why the Iraqis are likely to oppose his presence. As Michelle Cottle
writes in this week's New Republic magazine: "At this point, Graham's
ugly disquisitions on the nature of Islam have made him so radioactive
that, even if he doesn't utter one word about Jesus while in Iraq, his
mere presence in the region could be considered a provocation."