Dear Mr. Weinstein:
The Pentagon displayed great wisdom in cancelling the “Rev.” Graham’s invitation to be a keynote speaker at this year’s National Prayer Day in Washington, D.C.
If you were to substitute the word “Jew” for the word “Islam” in some of the good reverend’s past speeches and sermons he would sound ever so much like a strutting Nazi.
Hate speech is always inappropriate but all the more so when coming from a so-called ‘man of the cloth’. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 for the cause of Freedom, not intolerance and bigotry, which we see enough of in our Red States these days. For someone like Franklin, the heir apparent to the Billy Graham Ministries, to tell the world that Islam is ‘evil’ is simply beyond the pale. In Iraq there are those extremist Muslims who indeed hate Christians and would kill in the name of Allah. The United States should never never ever stoop to such thinking in word or deed. The U.S. Constitution is all about religious FREEDOM, not a rightwing Christian centered theocracy run by evangelicals like the not so reverend Franklin Graham.
Wake up America. Freedom is a fragile blessing. Ask the German people if you don’t believe me. The fell for extremist rhetoric in the 1930′s and their nation was destroyed.
I’m a Buddhist. Would Graham condemn me for my beliefs? In Thailand and Tibet the tradition of Buddhism teaches compassion for all living things, even hotheaded rightwing Christian fanatics. The Dalai Lama would NEVER suggest to the world that Islam was an evil, nor Christianity for that matter.
Thank you again for telling the Rev. Graham to stay home and reflect on his past inflammatory words of bias and intolerance. Maybe Rev. Graham would be further enlightened it he visited the Museum of Tolerance and Holocaust Remembrance in Los Angeles. How quickly we forget history and sometimes are doomed to repeat it.
Sincerely,
(name and location withheld)
