KILLING MY JESUS, WITH 50,000 WATTS OF POWER

Just listened to a caller on the Chris Daniel Show (KMJ 580) who was calling in to complain that, by golly, the Democrats had a Muslim lead a prayer early on in the first day of the convention, and so, you know, what a travesty that is (according to the caller) since "Muslims hate Israel."

Which of course is false: the majority of Muslims worldwide are not opposed to Israel's existence, or even have much invested emotionally in the question of Israel, because the majority of Muslims are (duh) NOT Arab nationalists. The host, Chris Daniel, lets that completely slide, as if it were a given that God and his battalions have lined up in favor of the Christian Right that determines the GOP's national platform, and that the caller is substantially correct.

Me? I call in to the show, to try to calmly counter the caller's uninformed bigotry (I kind of thought it was, ya know, the "Christian" thing to do). The call screener blithely informed me that they wasn't the topic they were interested in. So, it's OK to let a caller just say things that are hateful and untrue as long as it serves that evening's narrative? Good to know!   Or as they say on the game shows, "Thanks for playing."

All I can say is, if you're a Muslim, why would you ever give KMJ a single advertising dollar, when they use their revenue to openly promote this kind of foolishness?   And, for that matter, if you're a Christian and you know the truth about Islam, which is that most of its adherents are not our enemies or Israel's enemies, don't you owe it to the God you claim to believe in to stick up for the truth?   And, if you're a person of the Jewish faith, don't you want to marginalize the part of the world that uses anti-semitism to push an agenda that has less in common with the God of Abraham, and a lot more to do with the politics of foreign dictators who use the bogey man of Israel to maintain oppressive police states that deny basic human rights to their citizens?

Bottom line:  KMJ, you need to do a better job when it comes to discussing religion.   You don't have, as far as I can tell, anyone who really offers an informed view of what Muslims actually believe.   You do a disservice to all of us in the Fresno community when you allow one narrow segment of uninformed religious bigotry fulminate about the real nature and belief of nearly a billion people.  It is almost certain that any slur that can be fit in a single sentence is not merely inaccurate, but glaringly, mind-numbingly false.   You can do better.

Words: 458

Blood Pressure Raised:  10