Inter-faith group to apologize on Arab TV for torture

Articles: Inter-faith group to apologize on Arab TV for torture

Posted by admin on Monday, June 14, 2004 - 12:29 AM

A new arm of the National Council of Churches plans to launch a TV ad on Arabic television Tuesday to apologize for the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by Americans.
"We condemn the sinful and systemic abuses committed in our name," says the TV spot, set to air on the Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya networks. The message is delivered in English, with Arabic subtitles, by representatives from Protestant, Roman Catholic, Muslim and Jewish denominations. The TV campaign is sponsored by FaithfulAmerica.org, set up earlier this year under the umbrella of the National Council of Churches USA. Also supporting the project is a liberal Internet group, TrueMajority.org, formed by Ben Cohen, a founder of the Vermont ice cream company Ben & Jerry's Homemade. Sparked by opposition to the Bush administration's Iraq policy, FaithfulAmerica.org is the latest sign of a resurgence of political activism within the religious left, which in recent years has been in overshadowed by the religious right movement. "We are a group... who (is) concerned about how we are relating, as people, to our sisters and brothers in the Arab world," said United Methodist Bishop Melvin G. Talbert, spokesman for the activist interfaith group. The Methodist church counts President Bush among its communicants. Talbert, who traveled to Iraq before the war in an attempt to stop it, said in an interview late last week that the president violated the church's official position, which he said requires "that war must be only a last alternative." "That was not the case" when Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, the bishop said. Moreover, Talbert said that after the revelation of torture and abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, the president's official apology was not sufficient. "As the faith communities in the nation, we think we need to speak out of our concern for the human family," he said. The ad campaign is being financed chiefly by donations from the public, which the group said exceeded 13,000 individuals giving a total of $40,000. The project came under sharp criticism from Joseph Loconte, a scholar of religion and politics at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "What are they trying to accomplish that the administration has not already accomplished by conducting a thorough investigation of the abuses at Abu Ghraib and for stating plainly, forcefully and repeatedly that this is not U.S. policy?" he said. He added that it is "common knowledge" that abuses occur routinely against women and prisoners in Arab countries and that brutality is widespread in nations such as Sudan. "How is it that every fault of America is magnified, but the truly tyrannical and brutal regimes around the world seem to get a wink and a nod from the religious left in this country?" Loconte said.

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