CNN TALKBACK LIVE

Reverend Franklin Graham Calls Islam Wicked; Author Explains How to Safely Cheat on Spouse; Champion Internet Panhandler Speaks Out

Aired August 15, 2002 – 15:00 ET

This is a rush transcript.  This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

CAROL COSTELLO, GUEST HOST:  Hello out there Welcome to TALKBACK LIVE.  I’m Carol Costello.  Wow, we have a great audience today, and we sure appreciate it.  Arthel Neville, by the way, is on assignment to “American Morning.”

Evangelist Franklin Graham has really been stirring the pot lately, calling Islam a wicked and evil religion, and warning that the more radical elements of the faith are out to destroy America.  Here’s what he had to say in a recent interview in North Carolina.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REV. FRANKLIN GRAHAM, EVANGELIST:  There are elements within the teaching of Islam that I find disturbing and that bother me.  And I think that one of the big things that has gnawed at me since 9/11 is where have the clerics of Islam been?  If this was a radical group that had hijacked the Islamic religion, why hasn’t clerics come from all the Islamic world and said this is not true Islam?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO:  Is Islam an evil religion?  If you agree or disagree with the Reverend Graham, you can call me at 1-800-310-4CNN, or e-mail TALKBACK@CNN.com.  We want your opinions.

Right now I want you to meet our guests.  Al-Haaj Ghazi Khankan is executive director of the Council on American Islamic relations.  Actually he is stuck in traffic.  He’ll be in the seat in New York in just a few minutes, we understand.  Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of “How Good Do We Have to Be?” and “Living a Life That Matters.”  He too is stuck in traffic.  It must be bad in New York this afternoon.  And the Rev. Anis Shorrosh, a Christian theologian who has ministered in the Middle East.  He is the author of Islam Revealed.  And we’re sure glad you made it through traffic.

Welcome to the show.

REV. ANIS SHORROSH, AUTHOR, Islam Revealed”:  Thank you.

COSTELLO:  So let’s talk about Rev. Graham’s remarks.  Have Islamic clerics apologized sufficiently for the attacks on America?
 

SHORROSH:  Actually, I do not think so at all.  In fact, I have some points that I think would be worthwhile to share with you people in that connection.

And I feel that if you are honest with the book itself – I must say first of all that I commend the Muslims of America, who seem to have jettisoned the violence of Islam and have adopted our ways, and have accepted the democracy that they lack in every country of the Muslim world except Turkey, and therefore I should suggest that theologically a Muslim cannot be a true patriotic American citizen, because his allegiance is to Allah, the Moon (ph) God of Arabia.

Scripturally, because his allegiance. . .

COSTELLO:  Pretty strong words.  Let me interrupt for a second.

SHORROSH:  Yes, Ma’am.

COSTELLO:  Those are pretty strong words.

SHORROSH:  Of course they are.

COSTELLO:  a LOT OF Muslims living in this country would take great offense that you said that.

SHORROSH:  But they have been offending us for 1,400 years by attacking our people, by having a jihad for 1,400 years and the people of Osama ben Laden didn’t high-jack Islam.  It is the other way around.

Actually I believe that the closer you come to the Koran, the more you discover that you become angry, hateful and bitter.  Islam’s out to control the world.  Pleasantly enough the closer you come to the Gospel, one experiences more love and forgiveness.  Strange indeed is the fact that we haven’t heard any national Muslim voice apologizing for what happened to us on 9/11.

COSTELLO:  Well, who do you want to make this apology, sir?

SHORROSH:  We have numerous organizations in America that have reached the White House and the Congress and apologized individually.  But no national voice – they have such people who are on television, on your program, and other programs.  They can do that.

COSTELLO:  But should they apologize for the few who participated in the terrorist acts on this country?  Is it their fault that those few bad apples did a terrible thing?

SHORROSH:  Why do you call terrorists bad apples?  The fact is, if you watch my Web site, www.islam-in-focus.com, you will see that we are trying to present the truth in love.  We believe Islam for us, acrostically means “I Love All Muslims.”  Furthermore, if you study the Quran, you will find over 100 verses in which Allah tells General Muhammad and his illiterate backward & savage followers to murder and kill others in Allah’s name!

COSTELLO:  Well, before you get to the verses. . .

SHORROSH:  Yes.

COSTELLO:  I want to bring in charlotte.  She’s on the phone right now, and Charlotte, you feel very strongly about the subject.  What do you have to say to Mr. Shorrosh?

CALLER:  Well, first of all, I thought that the Christian belief was that we weren’t supposed to judge others or they weren’t supposed to judge others.  Then on the second point, when we bomb other countries and kill innocent people, where is Graham and all of the others apologizing for killing those innocent people?

COSTELLO:  Good point.  Respond.

SHORROSH:  OK, let me respond to that please.  Carol, they bring the subject of the Crusades.  The Crusades were barely for 200 years.

COSTELLO:  She’s not talking about the Crusades, though.  She’s talking about Rev. Graham going over to apologize for alleged Christian crimes against other countries.

SHORROSH:  But see, the thing is, we have never found a single verse in the New Testament that encouraging Christians to attack and kill others.  In fact, we are told, it has been said of old, love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say unto you, love your enemies.  Bless them that curse you.  And pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.  There is no such verse in the Quran.  There are over 100 verses that encourage people, including Muhammad, to kill others for Allah.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO:  But you’re still avoiding the question, with due respect.  I want to go to a member of our audience now, who is a rabbi, who has something to say.  Michael (ph), go ahead.

MICHAEL:  Thank you.  I think it’s not a question of religions in isolation.  Religions don’t exist in isolation, they exist in history.  Religions have historical events which can bring out the tolerant or bring out the intolerant in them.  In the Western world, Judeo-Christian tradition has had a whole bunch of experiences that bring out the tolerant.

We have had wars of religions which didn’t get anywhere.  So voices of toleration came.  We’ve had an Enlightenment.  We’ve had the separation of Church and State.  Those events have not happened within the Muslim nations of the Middle East.  They are intellectually closer to where Christians were during the Crusades than to where Christian and Jews are in America today.

COSTELLO:  Mr. Shorrosh?

SHORROSH:  Yes, I agree with him, and I would like to add one more thought.  If you look at the Quran, you will find over 100 verses that encourage Muslims to kill and be killed for Allah.  It is the only religion that says you can be sure you go to paradise if you kill somebody in the name of Allah, where you have those hurriyahs (ph) waiting for you and rivers of wine, milk, honey and pure water.

COSTELLO:  So are you saying that all people who practice Islam are evil?

SHORROSH:  No, Ma’am.  I would say 10 to 15 percent of the 1 billion Muslims could be identified as terrorists or supporters of terrorism.  But I would like to hear form the other side, a voice that says we are sorry for what happened.  We will march to ground zero, we will put a flower and a postcard at the place, we will read a poem, we will sing “America the Beautiful” and “God bless America.”

COSTELLO:  All right.  On that note, we are happy to say that Al-Haaj Ghazi Khankan has joined us now.  He’s gotten through traffic, and he is seated in New York City.  I don’t know if you just heard what Mr. Shorrosh just said, Mr. Khankan, did you?

AL-HAAJ GHAZI KHANKAN, COUNCIL ON AMERICAN ISLAMIC RELATIONS:  A little bit.  What I can say very frankly that Al-Islam is a religion of peace, Al-Islam is against terrorism.  The people who did the ugly act, the terrorist act of September 11, are nuts and will never be representatives of the true religion of Al-Islam.

COSTELLO:  Mr. Khankan, we hear that all of the time, but why haven’t a group of Islamic clerics gone to ground zero to pray or put a flower on a place where so many Americans died?

SHORROSH:  And on top of that. . .

KHANKAN:  Many, many, many, many Muslims did, but the media did not show it, unfortunately.  The Council on American Islamic Relations, the American Muslim Alliance, the American Muslim Council, the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, Al-Azhar University, the Muslim World League—all of them have condemned this act, but the media does not carry.

I am glad that you, CNN, finally are giving a chance for a Muslim to tell you that we condemn this act of terrorism.  Furthermore, we don’t have to apologize for terrorists, because we are not responsible for them.

(CROSSTALK)

Excuse me, I’m talking.

What they have done is an un-Islamic act.  If you want to really find out what is the truth about Islamic way of life, the only authentic source is Al-Quran.  It states “don’t you dare take the life that God has made sacred.”  Therefore, anyone who commits suicide or kills innocent people will be judged on the Day of Judgment and will be in hellfire.

SHORROSH:  Carol. . .Khankan:  Al-Islam says those who save one life will save humanity.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO:  All right, Mr. Khankan, let Mr. Shorrosh get his word in—Mr. Shorrosh.

SHORROSH:  Let me tell you what the Quran says.  Chapter 4, verse 84, “So fight, oh Muhammad, in the way of Allah, you are not responsible for anyone except for thyself and urge on the believers to fight.  The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and his messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off.”

(UNINTELLIGIBLE) with 100 verses in the Koran that teach Muhammad and his people—we as Arab Christians, 16 million of us around the world—can tell you that Islam without a sword would have never been heard of.  Muhammad would never have been heard of.

KHANKAN:  You are wrong, Sir, because. . . .

SHORROSH:  That is the truth.

COSTELLO:  Let Mr. Khankan respond, please.

KHANKAN:  You are wrong because, if you really remember, the Muslims ruled Spain for 800 years.  They never forced Islam on anyone. . . .

SHORROSH:  How did they get there?

KHANKAN:  You think if after 800 years Muslim-ruled Spain, and Christianity flourished and Judaism flourished, you think that is because of the sword?

SHORROSH:  Of course.  Not a single nation became Muslim without the sword except Indonesia.

COSTELLO:  OK, gentlemen, I’m going to have to stop your argument for just a second.  There’s so much more to talk about on this sutject, but unfortunately, we have to take a break.  TALKBACK LIVE will be right back.  You stay right there.

APPLAUSE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(APPLAUSE)

COSTELLO:  Welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE.  Oh, we’ve got a mighty spirited debate going on, don’t we?  We are talking about Dr. Franklin Graham’s comments on Islam.  He called it an evil religion.  He also says, and I want to read form my paper, because I want to get his quotes exactly right—Franklin Graham also says, “Political correctness has run amok in this country”—so he’s not being politically correct anymore, he says.  He says, “Islam, unlike Christianity, has among its basic teachings a deep intolerance for those who follow other faiths.”

We understand that Rabbi Harold Kushner is not in the building in New York.  We welcome you to the program.  Could you respond to Franklin Graham’s comments? 

RABBI HAROLD KUSHNER, AUTHOR, “How Good Do We Have to Be”  Thank you, Carol.  First of all, I’m in Boston, not in New York.  But I will do my best to try to be an objective outsider in this fight.

I think Graham’s comment was overstated.  Muslim representative shave denounced the tragic events of last September 11.  They have done it forcefully, along the lines of what we just heard a few moments ago, and they did it promptly.

Part of the difficulty is there is no central authority who speaks for al Muslims, so you have Muslim representatives, most of them, by the way, living in America, denouncing the attack.  But you have equally prestigious Muslim representatives praising it.

It was like the Salman Rushdie affair, where every Muslim I know in this country was embarrassed, deeply embarrassed, by the fatwa to kill Rushdie because there was an anti-Islamic passage in one of his novels, and yet people who spoke in thename of Islam defended it.

I think part of the problem is that there is nobody to speak on behalf of all Muslims.

COSTELLO:  Sort of like the Pope could speak on the behalf of all Catholics.

KUSHNER:  That’s right, and you do have religious leaders in the name of Islam praising the suicide bombers in ground zero, in Israeli pizzerias and nightclubs, and in other places all over the world.  And I think those who speak out for the decent good name of Islam have to speak all the louder and have to say that even a prominent clergyman in Pakistan or in the Palestinian territories or in Egypt or anywhere else, who praise this sort of activities, is being a bad Muslim.

Now on the point. . . .

COSTELLO:  OK, pause for just a moment, Rabbi.  We want to go to Toni (ph) from Massachusetts, who’s on the phone right now, and who has a comment.  Toni, what do you have to say?

CALLER:  Hi, I have a comment.  I don’t think it’s so much a religious problem as it is a social-economic problem.  The leaders of these Muslim countries have repressed their people for hundreds, probably thousands of years, and you know, they just don’t know any better, and the great quote—Devil quotes scripture to his own device, is pretty much what we are dealing with.  We have a group of people who just follow what the clerics are telling them. . . .

  Thank you, thank you.  CALLER:. . .and they just don’t know any different.

COSTELLO:  Mr. Shorrosh, comment on that.

SHORROSH:  Let me mention to you the glaring truth that you’re not willing to accept, which is pluralism is demanding that we sacrifice truth for tolerance.  The truth is the country of Saudi Arabia does not allow a single church to be built in their country, whereas they have built 1,500 centers and mosques in this country.

Secondly, when you look at what they have done—they sent Prince Abdullah from the royal family to New York who presented $10 million to Major Giuliani.  Then, few months later Saudi Arabia had a national telethon where they collect $180 million dollars to give to Palestinian terrorist families in the name of charity, thus encouraging that sort of thing.

Muhammad said, “Know that paradise is under the shades (ph) of the sword.”  Chapter 4, verse 73.  One more thing, please.  Whoever changes his Islamic religion, “kill him.”  9:57.  What kind of a religion is this?

They need to change their attitude, take these verses out of the Quran, discard the mantle of violence, and then we can believe they are a peaceful people.  Otherwise the history of Islam will remain an ocean of blood.

COSTELLO:  Wait.  Hold on a minute right there.  Mr. Khankan, do you think passages should be taken out of the Quran?  I mean many religious books aren’t taken in a literal sense anyway.

KHANKAN:  Of course not.  Nobody—see, the holy book of Al-Quran is a continuation. . . .

(CROSSTALK)

. . .of the revelation of God to humanity.  God spoke to Moses, to Abraham, and to Jesus, “Peace be upon him and to Muhammad.”  As a Muslim. . .

SHORROSH:  No, He did not speak to Muhammad.

. . .I must bear witness.  Will you please keep quiet until I finish?  We as Muslims bear witness that there is only one God.  That prophet is Muhammad, his last messenger. . .

COSTELLO:  I’m sorry to interrupt, gentlemen.  Mr. Khankan, but we do have to take a break.  I apologize for that.  We will be back with TALKBACK LIVE right after this. Stick around. 

(APPLAUSE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO:  And welcome back to    TALKBACK LIVE.  We’re talking about whether Islam is, as the Reverend Franklin Graham says, a wicked and evil religion.

And I just want to pose this question to Mr. Khankan.

Christians are starting to be targeted more and more in places like Europe, especially in Pakistan, where we have had several recent tragedies there.  There seems to be so many converts to the Islamic extremist viewpoint.  Why if that?

KHANKAN:  No. 1, anyone who does harm to any human being is not acting according to Islamic way of life.  The only Islamic source of knowledge is the commandment in the holy book of Al-Quran.  If it is not Quranic, it is not Islamic.  We condemn any Muslim, Christian, Jew or Buddhist who harms someone else.

COSTELLO:  But the conservative clerics that are in countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, why is not more being said to them to teach a more moderate viewpoint?

KHANKAN:  We do.  We do.  But you guys in the media do not cover us.  Come to our press conferences and you will hear how we condemn such acts.  Come to our mosques.  I urge all Americans, knock on the door of your Muslim neighbor and get to know them.  Go to a mosque.  Meet people.

That is where you will find the right people.  The Quran is the source.  And since our friend, Mr. Shorrosh, was quoting, you should also quote—No. 1, when you quote a text out of context, you are having a pretext to misrepresentation.

(CROSSTALK)

KHANKAN:  The Quran says, “there can be no compulsion in religion.”  The Quran says, “you have your religion and I have mind.  The Quran says we believe in God and the revelation sent to us to Abraham, to Ishmael, To Isaac, to Jacob.

(CROSSTALK)

KHANKAN:  Carol, Carol, pardon me.  Pardon me.

SHORROSH:  Here is the Question. You see, he is showing you what is wrong with the Quran.  OK?  The Quran is never called holy.  They made the word “holy” to make it accepted in the West.  Here is the Quran and here is the Bible.  How can one true God give us two books which contradict each other?  The Quran is a plagiarized Bible.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO:  Wait a minute, a plagiarized Bible?

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO:  Let’s have Rabbi Kushner comment on this.  He seems to be the moderate voice.  Go ahead, Rabbi.

KUSHNER:  Well, I try to be objective on this.

What we were talking about a moment ago, about objectionable verses from the Quran, I would never ask a Muslim to remove verses form his sacred scripture any more than I would ask. . .

(CROSSTALK)

KUSHNER:  Excuse me—anymore than I would ask a Jew to remove that part about “his blood be upon us and our children” (which I suspect has caused more suffering than anything in the Koran.) any more than I would permit someone to ask me to take the verses about homosexuals out of the book of Leviticus.

What I would ask Jewish and Christian and Muslim clergy is to tell their congregations and their followers how to understand in context and how to transcend those verses of hatred.  The Bible and the Quran may be the word of God, but I don’t believe it is God’s last word.  I believe that we have to continue to learn what to do with these verses.

COSTELLO:  Gentlemen, let me interrupt for a moment.  We want to go to Jacqueline on the phone.  Jacqueline, what do you have to say?

CALLER:  I would like to ask, if Islam is such a peaceful and tolerant religion, then why is it again the law and punishable by death to preach Christianity in Islamic countries?

SHORROSH:  And that is not all.

(CROSSTALK)

KHANKAN:  What you are talking about is in a small society of—these are part of a cultural way of life, not the Islamic way of life.  

(CROSSTALK)

KHANKAN:  Islamic way of life speaks of defense only.  Fight only those who fight you.  Fight only those who fight you.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO:  Mr. Shorrosh, you don’t agree?

KUSHNER:  Carol, I wonder if I can come in with an observation here.

Islam is not quite 1,400 years old.  When Christianity was 1,400 years old, they were getting into the Inquisition, a worldwide religion terrified by the prospect of a dozen people practicing a different religion in their basement.  Maybe there is a kind of a developmental stage that a monotheistic religion has to go through, where they san, “Ours is the only way,” and then they get used to it.

They become a little bit more comfortable and confident.  And then they can tolerate other religions.  Maybe what we need to do is see the religion of Islam mature the way Judaism and Christianity matured.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO:  I understand.

Mr. Shorrosh, I want to put this by you before you say anything else:  1.2 billion people in the world are Islamic; 18 percent, only 18 percent live in the Arab world.  It is the fastest-growing religion in the world.  There has to be something good about it.  What is it that is attracting people to this religion if it indeed is evil?

(CROSSTALK)

SHORROSH:  No. 1, it is growing biologically, because they have the privilege of marrying four wives, plus as many concubines as they afford.

No. 2, it is a fact of life that Muslims are multiplying because of biological reasons in their countries, not by conversion.