Tuesday night’s "God’s Jewish Warriors" focused on the cause of the "right-wing" Jewish settlers. The term "right wing" is used seven times to describe the settlers and/or their supporters in Israel and in the United States, and "fundamentalist/-ism" was used three times, once in reference to Christian supporters of the settlers in the U.S. On Wednesday night’s "God’s Muslim Warriors," "fundamentalist/-ism" was the more prevalent term, used 11 times. "Right wing" is used twice, only to describe Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch Parliament.
A partial transcript of the first occasion Amanpour used the term "right-wing" to describe Wilders:
AMANPOUR: Across Europe, Islam is the fastest growing religion, the number of Muslims tripling in the last 30 years. This increased Muslim presence, and violence like the Van Gogh murder, play into the hands of right-wing politicians, like Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament...
GEERT WILDERS, MEMBER OF DUTCH PARLIAMENT: Yes, here we have my seat.
AMANPOUR: ...who fears the Dutch are losing their country to an alien culture. The party he's founded has staked its political future in large part on an anti-Islam platform. He's proposed shutting down immigration from non-western countries and banning burkas and nikabs, the head-to-toe coverings worn by some Muslim women, even though few here wear them.
A few minutes later, after talking about the "culture clash" between the native European Dutch and the Muslims in the country, Amanpour continued her profile of Wilders.
AMANPOUR: Emerson Vermaat, a Dutch investigative journalist, has spent years studying the group [the so-called “Hofstad Group,” a terror cell in the Netherlands] and the murder of Van Gogh.
EMERSON VERMAAT, DUTCH JOURNALIST: There was a meeting of Hofstad (ph) in Amsterdam, and they said, "We must do something. We must maybe kill someone, but we must revenge. Allah has been offended. The Koran has been offended."
AYAAN HIRSI ALI, FORMER MEMBER OF DUTCH PARLIAMENT: They would sit together. They would watch videos with beheadings and read the Koran together and then plot jihadi activities.
AMANPOUR: It is a twisted version of Islam fueled by the culture clash here. But also by a steady stream of Internet websites which offer radical Islam as the antidote to Western culture. This extremism has generated an extreme response from far-right politicians like Geert Wilders.
Thursday night’s "God’s Christian Warriors," by contrast, took the use of "right-wing" or similar terms to a new high. "Religious right" is used ten times, "Christian right" is used twice (once by a left-wing protester in San Francisco), "right" is used once, and "right-wing" is used once, for a total of 14 uses of "right" terms.
Amanpour also spent much more time focusing on opponents and/or dissenters of the "Christian Right" in the United States during her look at "God’s Christian Warriors." She used three whole segments on profiles of Jimmy Carter, whose new cause is for Christians to "focus on issues like poverty rather than on divisive issues like abortion and gay marriage," and opposing "the growing influence of fundamentalism in many religions characterized by rigidity, male domination, and exclusion;" Greg Boyd, a Yale and Princeton-trained minister in Minnesota who wants calls for a "divorce" in the "marriage between "conservative" Christianity" and "right-wing politics;" and Richard Cizik, the vice president for the National Association of Evangelicals, who, in Amanpour’s words, preaches the "gospel of saving the planet." These segments take up over 20 minutes of time in the two-hour special, which probably has more than a half-hour of commercials in it.
These 20 minutes compares with about 14 minutes spent on former Muslims and/or former Islamic radicals in "God’s Muslims Warriors. - under 8 minutes of a full segment on Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who was a Muslim radical; and clips from interviews of Ed Husain, a Muslim in the UK who was once a member of the radical Hiz Ut-Tahrir organization, and wrote a book to "raise the alarm" about Islamism; and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali Muslim-turned-atheist who is a former member of the Dutch Parliament. Neither Husain, who was given about 5 minutes; nor Ali, who was given just under a minute and a half; were profiled in full segments.
Critics of the Jewish settlers in "God’s Jewish Warriors" - Theodor Meron, a Holocaust survivor and international lawyer who stood by his 40-year old opinion that the Jewish settlements on the West Bank violate the Fourth Geneva Convention; Jimmy Carter; John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, who wrote an article critical of the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S.; and Dror Etkes of the Israeli organization "Peace Now" received just over 3 minutes of air time in various segments.
