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"It's too early in the investigation to speculate" on the motive behind the killing, Candace Putnam, the U.S. Embassy's public affairs officer, told the Associated Press today. But that doesn't stop The New York Times from literally blaming the victim and other Christians. After all, the paper suggests, she should have known that "proselytizing" would have inflamed the local Muslims. "Senior members of Muslim and Christian sects in Sidon, ever sensitive to potential sources of rift between the communities, said they had met with the organization's members to ask them to limit their activity to charity work but were rebuffed," Times reporter Neil MacFarquhar writes.

'We told her she might be vulnerable to insults or even being hit and she answered that she would consider it an honor," said Bishop George Kwaiter, the archbishop of the Roman Catholic diocese. "We don't accept this kind of preaching [her evangelism]," he said. "We reject it totally."

"One pastor who knew Mrs. Witherall said that derogatory remarks about Islam and Muhammad made by leading evangelists like the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson had added to the ill feeling toward Christian evangelists working in Sidon," the Times reported, quoting the pastor of Mieh Mieh Baptist Church, where the couple was a member. "I would not think that this is our calling to say bad things about this religion," Pierre Francis said. "They just jeopardize our safety."

There's little in the Times story to suggest that maybe Sidon's Muslims, not Christians, might be the real problem. Amazingly, that reporting falls to Reuters, which strictly prohibits the use of the word terrorist in its reporting.

"A day after the shooting … a leading Sunni Muslim cleric in south Lebanon said he did not condemn her killing," the news service reports today. Sheikh Maher Hammoud said, "We do not condemn, but we want a different method than this one to show that our whole society is against the American policy and not only a small group or individual carrying out killing. We want our society to become a resistance and work against the Great Satan; the oppressive and criminal America … Actions of killing and bombings that target Americans in any place … are an expression of Muslim condemnation of U.S. policy."

Speaking of the "religion of peace," Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is clarifying remarks that suggest comments by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart and Franklin Graham are equivalent to those made by Osama bin Laden.

He's clarifying it by saying unequivocally that in fact this is what he believes. They "have the same mentality as bin Laden" in trying to incite an "unending civilizational conflict," Hooper told WABC radio's Steve Malzberg. "It's the incitement we're talking about. It's not Jerry Falwell throwing a hand grenade into a mosque. … Given the right circumstance, these guys would do the same in the opposite direction."

None of the religious leaders cited by Hooper demanded an apology from CAIR when contacted this week, reports The Washington Times. Nor did they launch a jihad against the organization. That's something that might surprise someone who holds extremist views like the one Hooper is propounding.

Muslim-Christian riots in Nigeria:

• Religious riots spread in Nigeria | The rioting spread Friday 225 miles southwest to the capital, Abuja, where the Miss World beauty pageant is still planned to take place Dec. 7 (Associated Press)
  
  

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November (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46