Preacher Franklin Graham won’t be speaking at the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer event next month. The son of famous evangelist Billy Graham had was disinvited after the Military Religious Freedom Foundation complained about his past statements about Islam. (Graham remains, however, the honorary chairman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force.)
“True Islam cannot be practiced in this country,” he told CNN’s Campbell Brown last December. “You can’t beat your wife. You cannot murder your children if you think they’ve committed adultery or something like that, which they do practice in these other countries.”
Graham later tried to temper his remarks by saying that he had Muslim friends. However, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham has a history of comments that bothered the Pentagon. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 2001, for instance, Graham called Islam a “very evil and wicked religion.”
Graham said he regretted the Army’s decision, but continued to defend his position on Islam:
Graham said he loves the Muslim people, just not their religion — which he called “horrid” for its restrictions on women.
“I love the people of Islam but their religion, I do not agree with their religion at all. And if you look at what the religion does just to women, women alone, it is just horrid. And so yes, I speak out for women. I speak out for people that live under Islam, that are enslaved by Islam and I want them to know that they can be free,” he said.
Which begs the question about how Christians treat women. While it’s true Christian women are not expected to wear burkhas they still are treated horribly by many Christians. Many Christian denominations continue to ban women from ordination or to any leadership position where they may be in a position to “teach a man.” Conservative Christians still expect women to be subservient to their husband — deferring to him for all decisions and revering him as “head of the household.” Conservative Christian factions are at the head of the pack when it comes to trying to restrict women’s reproductive rights through laws and legislative actions that control women’s bodies.
Certainly, men would not stand for laws that would require them to endure a waiting period or a review of their mental state before they could undergo a perfectly legal medical procedure. Yet, the misogynistic society we live in, led by the Christian moralists, would have us believe that women are just not competent enough to make decision about their own bodies.
The argument could be made that women are enslaved by Christianity just as much as they are enslaved by Islam. What enslaves is not the religion itself, but the fundamentalist mindset within each of those religions. Instead of using religion to free us to connect with God, Graham and his fundamentalist Muslim counterparts, use religion to control others and strike fear in the hearts others who they believe are not following the right path to God.
