From the people who want to bring you Armageddon:

There are always those who think it better or easier to make a living by destruction and looting than by honest means. This was the main impetus behind the Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials, if you doubt me, look into who got the property of deceased witches, Templars and other targets of "religious" persecution.

Domestically - if there is a Muslim family being targeted, it's a not unreasonable thing to ask yourself, what do they have or control that someone connected to the loud idiots might covet?

Media Matters - Falwell: Media ignored "radical Islamic terrorists ... because they are trying to keep Islam in a good light"

On the March 8 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, Rev. Jerry Falwell baselessly suggested that 18-year-old Sulejman Talovic, who shot nine people at a Salt Lake City mall in February, was a "radical Islamic terrorist," before adding, "[b]ut the press never mentions that -- most of the press -- because they are trying to keep Islam in a good light here in this country." In fact, media outlets have reported that Talovic is a Muslim while also reporting that authorities say there is no evidence that his faith played a part in his actions.

Talovic, a Bosnian immigrant, killed five people at Salt Lake City's Trolley Square shopping center before he was shot and killed by police. As Media Matters for America noted when right-wing radio host Michael Savage made a claim similar to Falwell's, a February 14 Associated Press article did, in fact, address the possibility that Talovic's actions were motivated by religion, terrorism, or both. The article reported that "authorities tried to figure out why a teenage Bosnian immigrant committed the rampage and how he got his hands on a gun. FBI agent Patrick Kiernan in Salt Lake City said the bureau had no reason to believe Sulejman Talovic, who was killed by police, was motivated by religious extremism or an act of terrorism." The article also quoted Ajka Omerovic, Talovic's aunt, as saying, "We are Muslims, but we are not terrorists."

Now the rest of the article gives more than enough reasons to suggest that the boy might not have been wrapped too tightly. I doubt being a Bosnian Muslim in a Salt Lake school added to his stability. But Falwell and the other empty-headed idiologes of the Right are eager to confuse correlation with causation. The non-empty-headed may be spinning opportunity from tragedy.

Indeed, all this effort to fan the terror, to exploit the terror makes me wonder aloud who the real terrorists are. There seems less and less potential benefit for Islam - or even the terrorists of Islam. And while the terrorists of Islam are, indeed not wrapped too tightly themselves, Falwell and his ilk have abandoned all restraint - and are connected so tightly to the wealthy and white classes you can't slip a sheet of bible paper between them.

Aside from the opportunities that pogroms creat for scavengers; it's always been good business to tell the ignorant and bigoted that Gawd Is On Their Side. It's obscenely profitable for Falwell, Savage, Dobson and Coulter; not only that, there's hardly any heavy lifting required; not even to the degree required of ordinary ideologues.

All you have to do is point out the witch and say she caused the plague.

tag: Islam, Christianists, Falwell, Witch Hunts, Inquisition, Bigotry, Pogrom, Sulejman Talovic, religious persecution, terrorism,