WorldNetDaily: U.S. founded to destroy Islam?

WorldNetDaily has made a mistake for once. That is an over-hyped description of a new book by an American pastor--a book that calls people to stop the hand-wringing and take deliberate, concerted action.

In Silent No More, The Rev. Rod Parsley, pastor of World Harvest Church of Columbus, OH, lays it on the line about how dangerous Islam is. That's all very well, and I will personally vouch that the Koran exhorts its followers to lie and kill for their faith.

But I cannot believe that Mr. Parsley, or anyone else, would actually say that the purpose of the founding of America was to see Islam destroyed. That's the sort of wacky conspiracy theory that Al-Jazeera dishes out, along with other Arabs who have reprinted The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and are retelling the infamous Blood Libel against the Jews. (FYI, that last is the theory that Passover matzah is made with Gentile blood, and that Jews have traditionally killed Arabs in order to obtain their supply of this blood.) America was founded in a war of liberation, which still holds the record for the longest war in which America has ever been involved (1775-82, if you cite the Battle of Yorktown as the end of the war, or 1775-83 if you insist on waiting for the Treaty of Paris and the subsequent withdrawal of British forces from New York City). The Declaration of Independence nowhere in its statement of principles says that Islam is a deserving adversary. Nor does the Declaration lay to King George's charge any instance of alleged collaboration with Muslims against Americans.

To call Americans to realize just how threatening Islam really is, is a good thing. But one does not need to distort American history in order to achieve that result. At this point--not having read the book, nor seen any reliable reviews of it--I am more inclined to believe that some overzealous reviewer at WorldNetDaily read it wrong than that a pastor, concerned as he is with American history and distinctiveness, would get that history so horribly wrong.