- Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, condemned America's
Christian right yesterday for propagating hatred against Muslims, in what
appeared to be a coordinated White House campaign to confront anti-Islamic
rhetoric from a constituency that includes some of the Bush administration's
staunchest supporters.
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- Days after the televangelist Pat Robertson said on his
Christian Broadcasting Network that "what the Muslims want to do to
the Jews is worse" than the Holocaust, Mr Powell told a gathering
in Washington: "This kind of hatred must be rejected."
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- The escalation in anti-Muslim comments from conservative
Christians includes a recent claim by Jerry Falwell, the country's leading
rightwing Baptist, that the prophet Mohammed was "a terrorist".
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- Veteran evangelist Jimmy Swaggart followed that this
week by calling Mohammed a "sex deviant" and a pervert and demanding
that Muslim students in the US be expelled. "We ought to tell every
other Muslim living in this nation that if you say one word, you're gone,"
he said.
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- As the likelihood grows of a war in Iraq there are strategic
benefits for the White House in convincing Muslims that it would not be
a war against their religion.
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- The administration's increased willingness to confront
the Christian right reflects the Republicans' sweeping victories in last
week's mid-term elections, reducing Mr Bush's reliance on the extreme fringes
of his supporter base.
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,840568,00.html
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