In what seems to to be an attempt to affirm the wisdom of the Pentagon’s decision to rescind his invitation to speak at National Prayer Day observances, conservative American cleric Rev. Franklin Graham tells the Washington Post’s Sally Quinn that “I don’t speak against the Muslims” but that he does not back down from calling Islam an “evil” and “wicked religion”:
GRAHAM: I do not fight the Muslims, I don’t speak against the Muslims. But the religion — I don’t agree with the teachings of Muhammad. I do not agree with the teachings of this religion.
QUINN: You stirred up some controversy when you talked about Islam being an evil religion, a wicked religion.
GRAHAM: Mm-hmm.
QUINN: Tell me about that, because you later made statements where you sort of said ‘No, I didn’t really mean this’ —
GRAHAM: No, no, no, I never backed down from that. I never retracted that.
QUINN: Tell me what you said.
GRAHAM: Just take women, and what Islam does to women. True Islam cannot be practiced in this country. Okay? It cannot. If you were my wife, I can’t beat you because you didn’t want to have sex with me or whatever. I can’t just get tired of you and say ‘I divorce you’ and kick you out of the house. We have laws that protect you, okay? Just look only at how they treat women. It is shameful. It is wicked. It is evil.
Watch it:
My first response to this is that America deserves smarter clerics. Graham’s impressively ignorant rant about what “true Islam” says about women seems to have been gleaned from a Chick tract. Given that the definition of “true Islam” is sort of a live discussion among many Muslim populations these days (just as is the definition of “true Christianity” among Christians) the idea that a defiantly closed-minded rube like Graham should presume to speak for it is just comical.
Remarkably, having just generalized negatively about Islam, Graham then complains about the tendency of “the media” and “Hollywood” to generalize negatively about Christianity:
QUINN: How would you react if the people you were dealing with said Christianity is an evil religion and a wicked religion?
GRAHAM: I hear that every day from the media. I hear it in Hollywood. Every time they put a minister on TV they always make him out to be some wacko crazy guy who runs off with the church secretary or who steals money, or whatever. And that’s — Hollywood does this.
QUINN: Why do you think so?
GRAHAM: Why? Because I think many of them just hate God.
Because he hates generalizations so much, Graham goes on to insist that, whereas Hollywood is only interested in sex and degrading women, “Jesus lifted women up! Hollywood wants to make women just a sex object for man’s pleasure.”
“This is just how corrupt we have become,” Graham says. “We are a morally bankrupt society.”
Leaving aside whether Jesus himself did, in fact, “lift women up,” there’s simply no denying that Jesus’ followers have, for hundreds of years, found in Jesus’ teachings a justification for keeping women down. Franklin’s own father, the Rev. Billy Graham, wrote in 1969 that “The Word of God teaches that the primary duty of a woman is to be a homemaker,” and “the appointed destiny of real womanhood” is to be “wife, mother, homemaker.” And now the son wants to claim the struggle for womens’ equality for Christianity? Please.
As for Franklin Graham’s condemnation of America as a “corrupt” and “morally bankrupt society,” one should note that this is a point on which he is in strong agreement with a number of famous Muslims.
Full transcript below Transcript:
GRAHAM: I do not fight the Muslims, I don’t speak against the Muslims. But the religion — I don’t agree with the teachings of Muhammad. I do not agree with the teachings of this religion.
QUINN: You stirred up some controversy when you talked about Islam being an evil religion, a wicked religion.
GRAHAM: Mm-hmm.
QUINN: Tell me about that, because you later made statements where you sort of said ‘No, I didn’t really mean this’ —
GRAHAM: No, no, no, I never backed down from that. I never retracted that.
QUINN: Tell me what you said.
GRAHAM: Just take women, and what Islam does to women. True Islam cannot be practiced in this country. Okay? It cannot. If you were my wife, I can’t beat you because you didn’t want to have sex with me or whatever. I can’t just get tired of you and say ‘I divorce you’ and kick you out of the house. We have laws that protect you, okay? Just look only at how they treat women. It is shameful. It is wicked. It is evil.
QUINN: What was the response when you talked about Islam being a wicked religion?
GRAHAM: First of all, I love Muslim people, I want people to understand this. I am not on a crusade against Muslims. Christ died for Muslims. Jesus Christ gave his life and shed his blood for all may come. And that includes the people of Islam, or the people of Hinduism, or whatever.
QUINN: How would you react if the people you were dealing with said Christianity is an evil religion and a wicked religion?
GRAHAM: I hear that every day from the media. I hear it in Hollywood. Every time they put a minister on TV they always make him out to be some wacko crazy guy who runs off with the church secretary or who steals money, or whatever. And that’s — Hollywood does this.
QUINN: Why do you think so?
GRAHAM: Why? Because I think many of them just hate God.
QUINN: Do you think it’s anti-God, or it’s just not interested in God?
GRAHAM: Oh, I think it’s anti-God, and of course there — anybody who’s anti-God of course isn’t interested. They’re interested in sex, ‘let’s degrade women.’ Jesus lifted women up! Hollywood wants to make women just a sex object for man’s pleasure. This is just how corrupt we have become. We are a morally bankrupt society.