Written by James L. Lambert
Research assistance by Allyson Smith
January 21, 2002

Not long after the attacks of September 11, Lynn Harper, a radio talk-show host on a Southern California radio station, appeared on Night Lights, a San Diego cable TV talk show, making what may have been one of the first on-air comparisons of religious conservatives to the Taliban. At the time, Harper’s declaration was thought to be isolated -- but this appears not to be the case.

In early October, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin flew from her office in Sacramento to San Diego to oppose the re-election of county Board of Education member Susen Fay, a religious conservative. Her Board of Education seat opponent, Susan Hartly, has made it clear that Fay’s ideology is a major problem to her. Eastin, in reference to Fay, is quoted as saying, "I know what happens when extremists wrap themselves in the flag -- yes, and in the Bible -- and try to tell us that God’s on their side. So did those people that flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." (U/T 10-9-01) Other liberals, including State Senator Dede Alpert, have joined Eastin in her effort to oust Fay.

Bob Knight of Concerned Women for America recounts a speech by Democratic Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who said the "Taliban would agree with the proponents of a measure aimed at protecting marriage in the District of Columbia." (EWTN News) Those proponents were primarily Christians.

In December, Father T. Euteneur of the organization Human Life International demanded an immediate apology from the sponsors of an ad (Nov. 14 and 15, 2001) from the Washington, D.C., publication Hill and Roll Call, entitled "Bombs, Bullets and Anthrax." The ad, sponsored by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, alleges that pro-abortionists have been "the victims of a relentless campaign of terror" and that pro-lifers act "in terms eerily like those of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden." (A call to the Hill and Roll Call was not returned.) Most pro-life advocates are usually characterized as conservative Christians.

Phillip Paulson, a liberal activist and plaintiff in a lawsuit to remove a memorial cross from Mt. Soledad in La Jolla, California, recently said that "the illusory theistic concept practiced by the Boy Scouts of America is the same one that has been the cause of wars and bloodshed. The Taliban approach to American politics will only cause more humiliation, disrespect, and mistreatment of certain American minorities." [Paulson was commenting on the Boy Scouts as a religious-based organization and their policy concerning openly homosexual scout masters.]

Mainstream Media
The mainstream media has also joined in the attack against evangelicals. Writer Kimberly Blake from The San Francisco Examiner is quoted as saying, "The irony is that the Islamic terrorists responsible for the September 11 fatalities are merely clones of America’s own Christian right extremists, sheathed in a different religion."

Columnist Anthony Lewis remarked in a recent column for The New York Times, saying "The phenomenon of religious fundamentalism is not to be found in Islam alone .... Fundamentalist Christians in America [believe] that the Bible’s story is the literal truth ... " -- but warning that "religion and extreme nationalism have formed deadly combinations in these decades, impervious to reason."

After hearing Franklin Graham’s comments in an NBC interview on Islamic religion, BBC news reporter Gavin Esler declared "America’s very own version of the Taliban [are] at it again .... " Gavin went on to name Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as "two of the other top names in America’s evangelical Taliban."

In December, the White House released the Osama bin Laden tapes where the terrorist leader first confessed to master-minding the attacks on the World Trade Center. Interspersed in the tapes, bin Laden and his cleric friend could be heard praising Allah repeatedly. When MSNBC's Chris Matthews played these tapes for his nationally televised TV show Hardball, he commented by saying that it "sounds like the Islamic version of the 700 Club."

The 700 Club was founded by Pat Robertson and is shown on the ABC-Family Channel. While Robertson’s Christian beliefs and ideology are generally despised by many in the liberal media establishment, he has carried some political clout with religious conservatives, due in part to his involvement with the Christian Coalition and his television media organization which centers around the weekday, hour-long television show. But to objective journalists, the mere comparison of the 700 Club to the bin Laden tape was unfair, unprofessional, and inaccurate.

More Attacks
Donald Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association, says that many liberal pundits "really believe that conservative evangelical Christians and Islamic extremists [like the Taliban] are similar. They want to destroy the religious right because conservative Christians are an obstacle to what they want to achieve," he says.

Wildmon’s organization was attacked this month by the website infoshop.org, which describes itself as an "online anarchist community." AFA was listed on that website as a religious hate group that "is closest to the Taliban in mindset, agenda and actions."

In a peculiar story from Washington, D.C. (Jan. 1, 2002), National Public Radio reporter David Kestenbaum contacted Traditional Values Coalition, a conservative Christian organization, asking them, "Have you been contacted by the FBI yet?" Kestenbaum thought that by TVC opposing the Senate Democratic leadership's efforts to drop the phrase "so help me God" from judicial oath witnesses, TVC would react by planting anthrax in the U.S. mail. In response, Andrea Lafferty, Director for TVC said, "I truly believe that there are people in the media [who] believe that evangelical Christians would send anthrax in the mail."

Rev. Jerry Falwell adds that "conservative people of faith continue to be the only group that can be rigorously denounced and persecuted without the American Civil Liberties Union stepping in to defend them." Falwell’s image -- with the phrase "Taliban West" -- is posted next to bin Laden’s on the same website that named Wildmon’s American Family Association as purveyors of hate. Like Lafferty and others that have been assaulted by media pundits and liberal activists, Falwell knows it is absurd to compare the Taliban to evangelical Christians.

Comparison, Contrast
The Taliban regime in Afghanistan routinely beat women who did not conform to strict 7th-century Islamic cultural rules. Women were denied access to education and medical care and were humiliated in public if they were not accompanied by a male. The Koran itself says in Sura 4:34, "Men are the managers of the affairs of women ... Those you fear may be rebellious -- admonish; banish them to their couches and beat them."

In his book Islamic Invasion, Robert Morey, Ph.D., says that "even today, Muslim women can be kept prisoners in their own home. They can be denied the right to go outside the house if their husband so orders." Not included among these facts are the Taliban’s strict legal code, such as chopping off the hand of those found guilty of robbery and capital punishment for those convicted of adultery.

All this is in sharp contrast to the teachings of Jesus Christ, who called upon His followers to love their neighbors. Judeo-Christian beliefs have the Ten Commandments at their heart. Jesus' teachings of servitude hardly emulates the religiously sanctioned holy war of the Taliban.

Liberal media pundits and activists appear to be walking a political tight rope by going after Christians in this way. Only time will tell the results of just another battle for the hearts and minds of the American public.