Brit Hume: Fox News Know-Nothing Home

Brit Hume: Fox News Know-Nothing Major network news anchors are busy people, but we still expect them to know simple things like the stuff in primary source books that relate to long-running stories that deeply impact the nation. Can you imagine a news anchor who wasn't sure if George Washington was the first president? Incredibly, 9 months after the 9/11 attack by Muslim terrorists, while we in the military are at war with those same terrorists, neither Hume nor his staff have a clue about what the Koran actually says. On 13 June, Hume reported on programs run on Saudi TV (which those of us who have actually served in the Middle East know never use the word "Jew" or "Israeli" without connecting it to the word "enemy") in which ordinary Saudis are shown demonstrating their knowledge of Koran's teaching on Jews and willingness to die in Jihad. The programs show a three-year old girl who says that Koran teaches that Jews are apes and swine. But Brit Hume, rather than reporting that this is exactly what Koran says, had a Muslim academic on to deny that Koran says anything like this. Here's the actual verse from the translation of Koran we link you to at amazon.com. We report, you can decide for yourself whether Hume can buy a clue: Say: 'People of the Book (Jews & Christians), is it not that you hate us only because we believe in God and in what has been revealed to us and to others before, and because most of you are evil-doers?' Say: 'Shall I tell you who will receive a worse reward from God? Those whom God has cursed and with whom he has been angry, transforming them into apes and swine, and those who serve the devil. Worse is the plight of these, and they have strayed farther from the right path.' This occurs between verses 55 and 61 of Surah 5 in Koran. Hume would not have had to read Koran to get this information - NPR now MSNBC journalist Steve Emerson has documented it in the PBS documentary "Jihad in America", and others have reported that Muslim clerics even call Jews apes and swine on American radio and TV programs. But Hume's ignorance does not end there. In a panel discussion on how these programs could have been produced in Saudi, Hume opined that even Wahhab Islam does not hold this view. Wrong again. Wahhab Islam is simply fundamentalist Islam - Islam that believes what Koran says. The modern state of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1792 by the Wahhab Brotherhood, a version of Al Queda in colonial times. The Wahhab Brotherhood revolted against the Ottoman Sultan - a Muslim - because the Ottoman Empire did not follow Koran. In particular, the Wahhabs wanted to live under Sharia, the legal system based on the teachings of Koran, which makes non-Muslims subject to death or slavery. Hume's ignorance is America's problem. Not two miles from our headquarters in Alexandria, VA, Saudi Arabia operates a madrassa to educate young American Muslims. And what do they teach? You guessed it, fundamentalist Wahhab Islam. Check out our special report on that madrassa that draws on our own photos and interviews as well as material from a similar report by The Washington Post.