The evangelical giftwrapping of Islamophobia marches on

[cbayer]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2014/dec/12/evangelical-giftwrapping-islamophobia-marches-on

It’s depressing that a decade after I wrote about a Christian charity’s thinly disguised Islamophobia, they’re still at it

Giles Fraser
The Guardian, Friday 12 December 2014 17.02 GMT

Franklin Graham (second from right) leads his father Billy, flanked by former US presidents George HW Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, on the campus of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2007. Photograph: Chris Keane/Reuters

It’s a simple idea. Find an empty shoe box. Fill it with toys, toothpaste or school crayons. And allow Operation Christmas Child to fly it out to some of the neediest children in the world. It’s the sort of thing that you can do together as a family. And it’s a pretty good way to introduce our children to how fortunate they are in comparison to others – not a bad lesson at Christmas.

Given this, it is unsurprising that hundreds of UK schools have become involved. Schools like Childwall Church of England primary school in Liverpool, which has put together 124 shoe boxes, with two of the children donating £25 of their pocket money towards the cost of sending the boxes to their grateful recipients. Last week, one warehouse in Hull packed off nearly 6,000 boxes, with local students and firefighters helping out to pack the lorry. And they are all part of an overall global effort in which over 113m such boxes have been distributed since OCC began in 1990.

So far, so good. Except all is not quite what it seems with this charity. Yes, it is open about the fact that it is an evangelical Christian organisation, with a mission to share the love of Jesus with those who do not believe in him. It is slightly shifty about the fact that it distributes evangelical literature along with the boxes – though not actually in them – and that this literature promotes an exclusivist version of Christianity in the form of innocuous-looking comic book with the sinister message slipped in: “There is only one way to be friends with God.” In many places these boxes are distributed, this is thinly disguised code for: Islam is wrong.

And here we come to the heart of the purpose of OCC. For, according to the boss and guiding force of OCC, Franklin Graham – son of the evangelist Billy Graham – Islam is not just wrong, it is “a very wicked and evil religion”. And by that he does not mean that Islam has been taken over by dangerous radicals, but that Islam itself is intrinsically evil. He recently told the British journalist Ruth Gledhill that Islam has been the same for 1,500 years. It “has not been hijacked by radicals” but is essentially a “religion of war”. But this comes from someone who, when recently asked about Muslim fundamentalism, insisted that “they only respond to force… I think there is going to have to be much large US involvement militarily.”

more at link

[libodem]

1. Good reading

Interesting source, too. Lots of good stuff to look through. I found this:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2014/nov/07/scapegoating-immigrants-oldest-trick-in-book

[cbayer]

2. Thanks for that link. The immigration issues in Northern Europe have reached a boiling point.

The Guardian is the best UK source for good, honest journalism, imo.