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  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Thursday, January 9, 2003
02:24 - "Missiled about Islam?"

(top) link
While I was down in Atlanta over the weekend, I saw that at the LaVista Road exit near where my brother lives, there's a huge billboard towering over the freeway interchange. Against a backdrop of a US flag, it said in enormous letters, "Misled about Islam?" (My brother's wife said she always sees that first word as "Missiled" for some reason.)

The billboard was an ad for the site WhyIslam.org, and purported to present the facts regarding Islam as a countermeasure against the ill-founded rumors and assumptions being spread in the post-9/11 world. This is the kind of thing I've been hoping to see for a long time: an "outreach" site with large, mainstream advertisement, presenting a clear message for average-Joe consumption.

And I checked out the site; as a matter of fact, it does seem to be what it claims to be. It's nice and friendly, speaking to an American non-Muslim audience, and seems to make a game attempt to be fair and balanced in the facts it presents. Certainly the face it puts on Islam is a very smiley one, but I suppose that's par for the course.

I found myself thinking, though: How far would I have to look through the site before I ran into the inevitable moral-equivalence rhetoric? How many clicks does it take to get to the center of an Islamic outreach website? One... two-hoo-hoo... thrrree...

Turns out the answer is one. Click on the "More>>>" link at the bottom of the main page, and you get an essay centered on the following charming sentiment:

The word terrorism came into wide usage only a few decades ago. One of the unfortunate results of this new terminology is that it limits the definition of terrorism to that perpetrated by small groups or individuals. Terrorism, in fact, spans the entire world, and manifests itself in various forms. Its perpetrators do not fit any stereotype. Those who hold human lives cheap, and have the power to expend human lives, appear at different levels in our societies. The frustrated employee who kills his colleagues in cold-blood or the oppressed citizen of an occupied land who vents his anger by blowing up a school bus are terrorists who provoke our anger and revulsion. Ironically however, the politician who uses age-old ethnic animosities between peoples to consolidate his position, the head of state who orders “carpet bombing” of entire cities, the exalted councils that choke millions of civilians to death by wielding the insidious weapon of sanctions, are rarely punished for their crimes against humanity.

Sigh.

But aside from that, the site is pretty even-handed, and in any case I'm glad to see that this kind of outreach is taking place, even though I had to go to Georgia to find it. I wonder why that is? I'm sure it isn't simply that huge billboards are more common down there...

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© Brian Tiemann