Pastor's Biblical Argument Expunged from CNN Feature on Intolerance
by Ed Thomas
January 9, 2007
(AgapePress) - - A south Florida pastor whose views on Islam were critiqued on a CNN program examining racism and intolerance in America says several crucial points were left out of the airing of interview segments with him for the program. Worldwide Christian Center pastor Dr. O'Neal Dozier was featured on a segment of Paula Zahn's nightly show last week because of his highly publicized grassroots efforts to keep a mosque out of a Northwest Pompano Beach neighborhood. A news story about him featured his opposition to the Islamic religion as a cult, and the city's approval of a mosque in an urban neighborhood that he says city leaders originally targeted for low-income housing. Included also was the pastor's concern that the mosque would be a potential recruiting location for possible future terrorists.
But according to Dr. Dozier, there was much left out of the interview. "I thought there were more crucial things that I said in [the interview] that were not aired," he says. For example, he explains, comments that specifically outlined biblical reasons for his opposition to Islam.
"I said that Jesus Christ is the only Way," says the pastor. "I quoted the verse there [John 14:6] ... Therefore one cannot be saved outside of Jesus Christ. I said that Islam cannot get one to heaven." And inclusion of that statement, he says, would have explained another unaired statement -- that President Bush and his administration need to stop referring to the "war with terrorists" and, instead, call it what it is: a war with Islamic fascism.
"[I said] that we need to name the enemy; that we need to call it what it is," says Dozier, "[If that was done] I think that the American people could better appreciate what we are up against. That [part of the interview] was not aired."
By not including those comments, Dozier says CNN made him appear more like an intolerant and fearful American rather than one who had theological and practical justification for his views.
According to the Florida pastor, members of the opinion panel on the show said Islam was not the real enemy -- and also described the pastor and other Americans like him as "fundamentalist extremists" and people who fear the multiracial diversity that is coming in America's future.
Ed Thomas, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
