Friday, August 11, 2006

Neal Boortz, hate speech of the week

Winning hearts and minds:

Boortz continued smearing Muslims on the August 10 broadcast of Cox Radio Syndication's The Neal Boortz Show, during which he stated, "It is perfectly safe to say all terrorists are Muslims. All of them. If it was not for the religion of Islam, this world would be a much, much, much more peaceful place today. If it were not for the religion of Islam, there would be many thousands, maybe tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people alive today living peaceful, happy, and fulfilled lives than there are. Agony, misery, death is occurring all over this world, brought to us by the wonderful, peaceful religion of Islam."

Although Media Matters for America has not documented Boortz using the specific term "raghead," on the July 19 edition of his radio program, he called the prophet Muhammad "a phony rag-picker" and stated that Islam is "a religion of vicious, violent, bloodthirsty cretins."

On the August 4, 2004, edition of his radio program, Boortz mocked Shahada (the Islamic creed), which reads, "There is no true God but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God." Boortz then stated, "Say that with conviction, folks, and the next thing you know, you're strapping on a suicide bomb." During the same broadcast, Boortz read from a book titled A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam. Boortz read a list of topic headings -- "It goes into things like the universe, and the cosmos, and how wind moves clouds" -- before making his point: "I'm looking for the part in here where it tells them to go out and kill people who aren't Muslims. And then I don't see it." Boortz then dismissed Muhammad as "a guy who got bored selling secondhand clothes," and then started a religion.

Apparently, Neal didn't get the White House memo.