Juan Williams... yes, you have to read about him again

There seemed to be a national hub-bub about the firing of Juan Williams from NPR. If you haven't heard about him, he was fired from NPR for controversial statments he made while on air on the Bill O'Reilly show. These comments had to do with Muslims and how he "gets nervous" when he sees them in their "Muslim garb" when he is traveling on a airplane.

Vivian Schiller, CEO of NPR, later apologized of the way the situation was handled, and that the severing of Williams' contract should have been after they had a face-to-face chat and also after she had notified the other employees at NPR. She has since written a public statement of apology.

But at the core of the issue here is whether there were grounds to fire Williams. Wasn't he just stating his opinion? Maybe the statement he made does not fit in with the culture of listeners of NPR but in any event, it is his opinion. He also has the freedom of speech given to him by the First Amendment. And, unfortunately, I'm sure if these statements were uttered on September 12, 2001 there would have been no media storm concerned enough about the loss of his job.

And Williams is not the only pundit to contribute to the "Islamophobia" (or the fear of Muslims in America) movement. Here are a few.

• Bill O'Reilly while on ABC's The View, said that "Muslim's killed us on 9/11." This statement caused hostesses Joy Behar and Whoppi Goldberg to walk off of the set right in the middle of the interview.
• Sarah Palin defended Billy Graham's son when she said that the god of Islam is part of a "very evil and wicked religion" that was said back in 2001.
• Pamela Geller, the conservative blogger that runs Atlas Shrugs, had her blog ignite the fire that was the Ground Zero mosque planned at the site of the WTC bombings.

None of the above people have been disciplined. O'Reilly has his own show, Palin is a "celebrity" and Geller got as much attention as the planned Mosque got. Also, at the time of this posting, Williams has accepted a multi-year, $2 million job at FOX (surprised?)

I'm not saying that I agree with Williams (or O'Reilly or Palin or Geller), I think the whole idea that Muslim people are continuously subjected to the hate that some Americans dole out is plain ridiculous. Think of it this way... should all Christians be labeled as "extremists" because of Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh?