The following article by Bill Donohue was published by Newsmax on October 3:
On September 29, Kansas City Chiefs safety Husain Abdullah, who is a Muslim, incurred a penalty in his game against the New England Patriots for sliding in the end zone after he scored a touchdown; he then bowed in prayer. He is man enough to admit that he was properly penalized not for praying, but for sliding. He has learned his lesson: It’s okay to pray on the field after doing something heroic, as long as you, “Stop before you drop.”
The problem is not Abdullah, it is his Muslim-fawning defenders. Dozens of commentators have rushed to anoint him a “devout Muslim,” and quite unlike the reaction afforded Tim Tebow, a Christian who dropped to his knees after scoring, they invoked the adjective as a compliment, not as a statement of derision.
When Tebow was playing, reporters were typically snide, or much worse:
• “Sunday, as expected, a national TV audience could see pious Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow taking a silent devotion.” (Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA Today, 10/30/11)
• “We don’t know when, or if, he [Tebow] will start multiplying his loaves and fishes.” (Bill Dwyre, Los Angeles Times, 11/27/11)
• “Most of us have learned to live with boundaries—to avoid thrusting our religion into arenas where it is unexpected or unwelcome.” “Should Tebow be so flamboyant about his faith?” (Joel Mathis, Scripps Howard News Service, 12/10/11)
• “There are a lot of LGBT people in New York City who are also football fans,” and that “the new, possibly, starting quarterback for the New York Jets wants them to move backwards 30 or 40 years.” (Dave Zirin, quoted by the Media Research Center, 3/26/12)
• “If Tebow wins the Super Bowl, against all odds, it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants.” (Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, quoted by the Media Research Center, 3/26/12)
Now contrast this reaction to the fawning over Abdullah:
• “This kid [Abdullah] playing against New England gave a brief and private, dignified prayer and he was penalized for it. Tim Tebow became an icon of prayer in the end zone. Two sets of rules.” (Jesse Jackson, politics.blog.ajc.com, 10/2/14)
• “Abdullah” is “a godsend.” “We should be cheering and applauding special men like Abdullah who are a phenomenal credit to their faith and inspire Americans to give gratitude to God.” (New York Observer, 9/30/14)
• “The penalty is another example of America’s religious bias.” “Freedom of expression and religion are important tenets of American life. But in an age when corporations have the right to impose what they call Christian values on their secular work force, we should wonder if a Muslim boss would be granted the same permission. Considering the move of some states to ‘ban’ shariah law, we can probably guess the answer to that.” (Erika Stutzman, Daily Camera, 10/1/14)
• “It [the penalty Abdullah incurred] propels us to war. You have to rally the country in order to bomb a country that did nothing to you and you need to rally them and so that’s what I think that was.” (Rosie O’Donnell, “The View,” 9/30/14)
• “For anyone wondering why angry Muslims join ISIL, this whole saga could easily make the list.” (Ahmed Tharwat, Star Tribune, 10/1/14)
We live in a country that is approximately 80 percent Christian and 1 percent Muslim. Why, then, is Tebow bashed and Abdullah admired?
Our cultural elites have decided that Christianity, which is the font of freedom, is repressive, and Islam, which is the font of repression, is unfairly stereotyped. The furniture of the mind is fixed: Christians are victimizers and Muslims are victims. Don’t look for either logic or intellectual honesty—it’s all about political correctness.
