WE in northern ireland have become used to evangelical hate preachers over the years. However, Pastor McConnell has chosen a time to rant and rave against Muslims when minorities are regularly under attack in East Belfast and other areas.
He has given the green light for any racist to attack Muslims and will, of course, step back and deny that any attack had anything to do with his hate preaching. How often have we heard this before?
Pastor McConnell uses the appalling story about the 26-year-old woman, Meriam Ibrahim, who is due to be executed for apostasy - which is converting to Christianity - to prove that Muslims are untrustworthy. This is of course shocking and nobody in their right mind would support such behaviour.
However, every religion has its skeletons in the cupboard.
Seven thousand Muslims were murdered by Christians and buried in mass graves during the Bosnian war and their women raped.
Six million Jews were slaughtered in the gas chambers by a Christian country - Germany - and we have our very own Shankill butchers who murdered in the name of their
Protestant religion.
The good pastor supported the right-wing racist views of Enoch Powell which led to attacks of black people in the UK in the 1960s and 70s and these views were subsequently disowned by just about everybody. This is an opportunity for the established Churches and political parties to unite against racism and hate crime. They all claim to be against attacks on minorities, therefore it should be reasonable to expect them to stand shoulder to shoulder against the ranting of Pastor McConnell, whose behaviour is no different to Muslim hate preachers like hook-handed Abu Hamza and Anjem Choudary, who represent a small proportion of Muslims. Looking back through the long telescope of history we ignore these views at our peril. Don't think it will just blow over because we should all be aware of how prejudice of this nature gets out of hand and minorities are blamed for all our ills. The football association tackled racism head on and in a short time it was eliminated from the Premier League. We need to do the same.
Andy BARR
Bangor, Co Down
