Jane Mayer Quotes
And to me, it was interesting, some of the people I had interviewed who knew the insides to this program said that they also, to create anxiety and upset in the soldiers, they take Bibles and they trash them.
Mayer, Jane. Interview by Terry Gross. Fresh Air, NPR, 14 July 2005.
If they … attack your religion with disapproval and criticism, then fight the leaders of disbelief …
This quotation is used by some Islamic fundamentalists to justify attacks on people who criticize or disapprove of Islam. They see this as an instruction from the Prophet. The same quotation is used by critics of fundamentalist interpretations to show that literal interpretations eliminate any kind of criticism and provides no freedom of speech.
This Sura of the Koran warns the faithful that the non-Muslims of the world have as a major objective the Conversion of Muslims. While this was and has been the case in times past starting even before the Crusades, many Christians felt it as an obligation to either convert the Muslims or to kill them. In modern times there have been Christian missionaries who have had an objective of converting Muslims, but no Christian government has had that as a policy for a long time now. But most Muslims are told this is so today and the Koran warned of this. The result is that many Muslims—particularly those who have not had much contact with other religions—believe that because of this, they will be forever fighting heretics like Christians. For this reason, Islam’s future is under attack.
This was one of the strongest statements of religious freedom in America prior to the Bill of Rights which came over a decade later.
Martin Luther King and his SCLC were demonstrating in St. Augustine, Florida against the segregation in that community. The local law enforcement officers had conspired with the local KKK groups to allow the group to beat the demonstrators and then arrest the demonstrators for disturbing the peace and demonstrating in the face of a local injunction against the demonstrations. Then the local authorities placed huge bail on the arrestees that they could not easily meet. While they were in custody, they were tortured in various ways. Judge Simpson, vacated the injunction and ordered that the demonstrators not be arrested, and if they were for any other crime reasonable bail be required. He also recommended prosecution of the wrong-doers. Remarkably, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered his agents not to protect the civil rights demonstrators on the grounds that the FBI should not provide protective services. Hoover had a personal hatred of King who he claimed was a Communist, a sex pervert, and a law breaker. The President then threatened the Florida Governor to send Federal Marshalls into St. Augustine if the state could not maintain law and order. The Governor and the Georgia Senators pleaded to stop the demonstrations which were being intensified because King and the Civil Rights Demonstrators were gaining huge sympathy with the general public as a result of the journalists’ reports and Judge Simpson’s findings. The Civil Rights Bill of 1964 was being filibustered by the Southern senators at that time and this was a tactical victory, but some of the civil rights demonstrators were paying a fearful physical price. Judge Simpson died 4 year later, hated by the KKK and other segregationists in Florida. However in time, even the local Floridians came to appreciate the Judge’s role. The graphic shows the Federal Courthouse named in Judge Simpson’s honor.
Jane Meredith Mayer (born 1955) is an American investigative journalist who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1995. She has written for the publication about money in politics; government prosecution of whistleblowers; the United States Predator drone program; Donald Trump's ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz; and Trump's financial backer, Robert Mercer. In 2016, Mayer's book Dark Money—in which she investigated the history of the right-wing billionaire network centered on the Koch brothers—was published to critical acclaim.
