Michael Graham Fired

The hammer finally fell today on WMAL morning talk radio host Michael Graham, as reported by the Washington Post. However, one searches the WMAL website in vain for reference to the firing. Graham has been cast down the proverbial "memory hole" by the Washington area's most prominent talk radio station, AM 630, which also boasts former Congressman Fred Grandy, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity on its line-up.

Graham was fired for his description of Islam as "a terrorist organization" on the air last month. The comments prompted complaints and an organized letter-writing campaign against WMAL and its advertisers by a Muslim group, the Council on American-Islam Relations (CAIR) of Washington.

Were Graham's comments over the top? Without a doubt. But there also seems to be an organized effort to diminish the bloody history of Islam, whose "prophet" was one of history's great conquerors. To be sure, much conquest was perpetrated in the name of Christianity. And certainly, at least among the so-called "main stream media," attacking and stereotyping Christians and their leaders in the most negative terms possible is all too frequent, and perhaps perfectly acceptable.

But there are few, if any, Christians today who justify violence in the name of Christ. Those who do -- abortion clinic bombers come to mind -- are promptly and loudly condemned by Christian leaders.

Can the same be said of those who are, regrettably, the world's most prominent practitioners of Islam? Alone among the world's great faiths, Islam's evangelism went hand in hand with political conquest from its very roots. It is a history and tradition that today's Islamic terrorists invoke as justification for their vile acts, actions too infrequently or quietly denounced by Islamic leaders.

Those are facts worth remembering, and repeating, whenever politicians want to soft-pedal Islam as a "religion of peace." 'Fact is, it certainly didn't start that way, and the fact is, the only "peace" enjoyed by most of those who became subject to Islamic rules in the faith's early days, but rejected its tenets, was the peace of the grave.

Whether it is now, or will be in the future, a "religion of peace" is dependent upon leaders and practitioners who act swiftly and decisively against those who have declared war in the name of Islam upon the West. That one of its most prominent American iterations, CAIR, expends its precious time, energy, and resources to seek the firing of a radio talk show host is disturbing.