Philips is blowing smoke and Ezra Klein is either forgetting or is just purposely being gentle here, but the term "jihad" is not a radical or inaccurate one when used to describe the activities of the religious right and its corporate sponsors in America.
Philips may think he and his clan are just a bunch of sweet folks, but maybe Philips didn't see this call to religious war from one of Bush's judicial nominees.
And maybe Philips was too busy to go to this conference where self confessed religious believers talked about dispensing with judges that, Republican-appointed or not, didn' t rule as they liked.
And maybe Philips' neighborhood church wasn't showing this on its telescreens.
And maybe Philips didn't catch this comment by James Dobson comparing the independent judiciary to the KKK.
And maybe Philips doesn't remember this morsel from Ann Coulter and that this prominent evangelical minister invited Ann along on his latest bookstorming tour.
So, yeah, John Philips, we think the Jihad term fits, it works, and we'll keep using it.
1 comment:
A search of blogspot for my name turns up this, but this has no link explaining where and what I said about "jihad" and the American religious right. Well, I thought that "crusade" was the term for Christian holy wars (or striving) and "jihad" was reserved for a Muslim holy war or striving, but I admit there's a lot of similarity between them.
Or was this another John Philips?
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