CLARION SENDS ANTI-MUSLIM DVD TO 325,000 CLERGY AND 10-MILLION LAY LEADERS
Oct 20th, 2008 by Richard Silverstein | Comments on this post: 0
Just when you catch your breath and think the Clarion Fund has done about all it can to promote anti-Muslim hate during the election season, they surprise you by coming up with an even more outrageous act of incitement. Marketwatch reveals that Clarion is funding a mailing of Obsession and other anti-Muslim material by a right-wing evangelical publication, the Judeo-Christian View, to 325,000 rabbis and ministers and 10-million congregational leaders and laity. This means that virtually every church and synagogue in the U.S. will be inundated by this propaganda.
Marketing experts have already estimated a previous mailing of 28 million DVDs to swing state voters cost anywhere from $15-50-million. The new mailing is easily a multi-million dollar job. Unfortunately, Clarion is flying under the radar as a non-profit which doesn’t have to reveal its donors. It also refuses to reveal its funding sources despite repeated questions from various reporters.
There have been at least two complaints to the IRS about potential violations of 501c3 regulations prohibiting partisan intervention in electoral contests. The complaints related to the massive mailing to swing state voters in a clear attempt to deter voters from choosing Barack Obama.
The most recent mailing, while continuing the anti-Obama message, also emphasizes the religious objections that Christians and Jews might have to purported Muslim beliefs (as defined by the film):
…An “interfaith video sermon” on DVD and online…discusses Obama’s support for repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, which shields states from forced recognition of same-sex marriages…
The mailing is accompanied by a letter signed by endorsing evangelical and Orthodox Jewish clery which contends in part:
…Obama’s policy to liberalize abortion, “combined with his effort to kill a bill that would protect babies who survive abortions, tends to gut the USA’s moral standing to condemn jihadic use of Muslim children as suicide bombers; both are horrific cases of child sacrifice that support a Culture of Death and demonstrate utter contempt for the Judeo-Christian Culture of Life.”
…”Full embrace of homosexual unions by our nation and the next administration would tell violent Islamists that the infidel USA has expressly rejected once-shared Abrahamic, Mosaic and Christian teaching regarding ’sodomy’. So too would flagrant ‘gay integration’ of our overseas military forces [a policy Obama supports]. We advocate “love the sinner, hate the sin”; militant Islamists would murder our fellow Americans for sexual error, as well as us for offering them hope and forgiveness!” The online edition graphically condemns Islamist executions of gays, young girls and women domestically and abroad.
An irony of this enterprise is that Obsession and much of the Islamophobic right decries Islam’s discriminatory attitude toward homosexuality and women’s rights comparing it unfavorably with the west’s tolerant attitude in these matters. In truth, the signers of this letter have more in common with fundamentalist Islam on these two issues than they do with liberal western democracy. The irony has naturally been lost on those who’ve organized this mailing.
I call on all tolerant, progressive churches and synagogues to raise a hue and cry about this matter. No religious organization has any right to send such an insulting, racist mailing to every single religious institution in the United States. The mailing should offend anyone of faith who values tolerance and inter-faith dialogue. I also call on the Jewish press to cover this story and interview rabbis seeking their opinion about this chutzpadik infringement on their relations with the Muslim community. I also call on the IRS to expedite their investigation of Clarion and put a stop to these egregious violations of its non-profit status.
While it is clear that Obama will win the presidential election, the intent of the mailing seems to be to poison the well against him in the religious community after he assumes office. |
