Those in Pakistan who hate the U.S. are best described as “the religious right”? That's the political term MSNBC's Ashleigh Banfield applied in reporting on the strike called to protest Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit.
Just because they may have a more extreme interpretation of the Koran does not put them on the political “right,” and if the media consider dictators like Pakistan's Musharraf to be right-wing, how can those so fundamentally opposed to him also be right-wing?
At about 10:35pm EDT on Monday night, October 15, Banfield checked in:
Here in Islamabad, here in Pakistan, it was a national day of strike as called for by the religious right in this country. It was to mark Colin Powell's visit here, but it was also to protest this President, Pervez Musharraf's support of America's foreign policy, vis-a-vis the strikes in Afghanistan. The trouble is not everybody felt the same way as the religious right had hoped they would. Not everybody closed their shops. In some cities closer to the borders with Afghanistan, which have extremely fundamentalist populations, there were widespread strikes. But in other centers there were not, and where that happened, many took to the streets to try to bully those shop owners to close, and in some cases, in many cases, it worked.
Another example of how to the media anyone on the bad side is labeled as right-wing.
(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)
