A fundy by any other name...

I am hoping the not totally insane citizens of America are paying attention to Moussaoui's testimony in his own defense (as to why he does not deserve the death penalty for his conviction of involvement in the September 11th attacks). If you've been following this story at all, you have to pretty much assume Moussaoui wants to die.

"Moussaoui said he didn't think his previous testimony on March 27, in which he said publicly for the first time that he was to have piloted a fifth plane on 9/11, would hurt him with the jury....Moussaoui said Allah will protect him as long as he tells the truth, no matter what the jury thinks of him."

"Pressed by defense lawyer Gerald Zerkin if he thought he was helping his case, Moussaoui responded: "I was putting my trust in God, so from an Islamic point of view, yes," acknowledging that non-Muslims might view his testimony as harmful...During his 2 1/2 hours on the stand, Moussaoui offered a lengthy explanation of why he hates Americans. Islam requires Muslims to be the world's superpower, he said as he paged through the Quran."

In a 1988 interview (long before he was running for public office), Randall Terry described how he justified breaking the law in his actions as founder and member of Operation Rescue: "When God's law and man's law conflict, Scripture clearly teaches that man is not to obey that law. Some examples are when the three Hebrew children were thrown into the fire, when the apostles were jailed for preaching the Gospel, and when the stone was rolled away from the Lord's tomb. That was in defiance of a man-made law. God never gave the government a blank check to do what it wants to do. It is a heresy to teach Christians to obey a law which runs counter to His law."

I am sincerely hoping the parallels are not completely lost on the general public. I don't have high expectations. I don't believe Moussaoui's Quran thumping coutroom proselytizing will result in explicit and wide spread recognition of the similarities it bears to US homegrown christian fundamentalist rhetoric. But I am hoping, at least, that it will make an impression in a more subtle way such that people will feel less comfortable with the spooky christian fundy zealotry that has made its way into the mainstream at every level of government and administration in the US over the last decade.