Andrew Sullivan, on his blog The Dish, ruminates about the distinction between Christianity and his self-coined word, “Christianism,” in order to defend Christianity from those who use faith for political purposes, as he claims about Anders Breivik:

The core message of  Christianism is, in stark contrast, the desperate need to control all the levers of political power to control or guide the lives of others. And so the notion that Breivik is a “Christian fundamentalist” seems unfair to those genuine Christian fundamentalists who seek no power over others (except proselytizing), but merely seek to live their own lives in accord with a literal belief in the words of the Bible.

… Both Islamism and Christianism, to my mind, do not spring from real religious faith; they spring from neurosis caused by lack of faith. They are the choices of those who are panicked by the complexity and choices of modernity into a fanatical embrace of a simplistic parody of religion in order to attack what they see as their cultural and social enemies. They are not about genuine faith; they are about the instrumentality of faith as a political bludgeon.

Of course, one can’t ignore the “real religious faith” of the 9/11 attackers, in that they believed they would be rewarded for their efforts in heaven (with a slew of virgins no less).

Read the rest of this entry »

Related to my last post, here is a chilling yet stunning piece by University of Minnesota, Morris associate professor, P.Z. Myers, who puts forward what he calls a “black and white” case against the loss of life in light of the recent killings in Afghanistan during riots over Koran burnings in Gainesville, Fla. The entire thing is more than worth a read. Myers writes:

I’m an extremist in this debate, I will freely confess. I hold an absolute view that no killing is ever justified, that individuals have the necessity to defend themselves against assailants, but that even that does not grant moral approval to snuffing out the life of another. Don’t even try to pull out a scale and toss a copy of the Koran on one side and the life of a single human being on the other — the comparison is obscene. Do not try to tell me that some people are ‘moderates’ when they tolerate or even support and applaud war and death and murder for any cause, whether it is oil, or getting even, or defending the honor of wood pulp and ink.

The bone is bleached white. The flesh is burnt black. The blood splashes scarlet. You can’t render it in grays and pastels without losing sight of the truth.

Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings. — Heinrich Heine

As ever, Hitchens brings his acid wit to bear in writing about recent violent protests in Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif and calls to burn humans in response to Pastor Terry Jones’ and Dove World Outreach Center’s decision to torch copies of the Koran:

How dispiriting to see, once again, the footage of theocratic rage in Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif. The same old dreary formula: self-righteous frenzy married to a neurotic need to take offense; the easy resort to indiscriminate violence and cruelty; the promulgation of makeshift fatwas by mullahs on the make; those writhing mustaches framing crude slogans of piety and hatred, and yelling for death as if on first-name terms with the Almighty. The spilling of blood and the spoliation of property—all for nothing, and ostensibly “provoked” by the corny, brainless antics of a devout American nonentity, notice of whose mere existence is beneath the dignity of any thinking person.

Credit: Reuters/Stringer

Dove World Outreach center apparently takes the name of its church very seriously, since it seems to have spread its influence, quite like a malignant tumor, from its tiny location in Gainesville, Fla., to the far reaches of the Middle East. Why Afghan President Hamid Karzai feels the need to even bother himself with such tripe coming from a congregation of about 70, one can only wonder, but bother himself he has. According to Hitchens:

Unlike some provincial mullahs, Karzai also knows perfectly well that the U.S. government is constitutionally prohibited from policing religious speech among its citizens. Yet, when faced with the doings of the aforementioned moronic cleric from Gainesville, he went out of his way to intensify mob feeling. This caps a long period where his behavior has come to seem like a conscious collusion with warlordism, organized crime, and even with elements of the Taliban. Already under constant pressure to make consistent comments about Syria and Libya, the Obama administration might want to express itself more directly about a man for whose fast-decomposing regime we are shedding our best blood.

Andrei Fedyashin provides a detailed look of the ugly situation, with the following to aptly sum up matters:

What Jones has is not a church, although it is often described as such. His congregation of 50 to 70 people qualifies it more accurately as a very small fundamentalist sect. Normal Muslims should, therefore, not take broader offense, but they, too, have their own such sects at the other end of the confessional spectrum.

Article first published as Terry Jones-Koran Saga Continues on Blogcritics.

***

Credit: Khalid Tanveer/Associated Press

Terry Jones has at least one sin for which he needs to be absolved.

According to a New York Times report today, one man is now dead following protests outside a NATO office in western Afghanistan over Jones’ “stunt,” as President Obama has called it, to burn copies of the Koran on 9/11 in his church’s own protest against Islam and, presumably, against the proposed mosque and community center near the Ground Zero site.

“A fringe Florida preacher may have suspended his Koran-burning, but word reached Afghanistan too late for 24-year-old Muhammed Daoud,” the report says.

And that death could have and indeed would have been avoided had Jones not gone on his hysterical, fire-branded campaign against Islam, and had the media simply ignored that which deserves no limelight. I and many other bloggers have given the story attention, but, at least in my case, I gave it attention only to condemn it and only after large media outfits had already begun courting the disastrous story.

But all this matters not for Daoud, of course, and I hope — but I highly doubt it will — prick like a stick on Jones’ conscience. Again, given what we know about this person, one willing to risk the security of his country and that of the men and women serving in Muslim-dominated countries — not to mention native Middle Easterners — to make his point, we can’t rightly pen a very positive account of the man’s ability to care for his fellow human beings.

Also late this week, in what appears to be a situation in which no one quite knows who said what, Jones is claiming that local imam Muhammad Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, had made a deal with him to move the location of Park 51, the official name of the center. Thus, Jones would not hold the Koran burning. But Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man heading up the project, has on multiple occasions said the plan was moving forward. Here is Rauf’s column published recently in the New York Times and a statement made in an interview with ABC News’ Christiane Amanpour.

“Let’s say we moved under this current circumstance with this dialogue,” Rauf told Amanpour. “What will be the headline tomorrow in the Muslim world? ’Islam under attack in America.’ That’s the theme of it. ‘Mosque forcibly removed by whatever.’ That will feed the radicals. So diffusing terrorism is a necessity for our national security.”

It will feed the radicals indeed. And as Rauf notes in his column, the mosque and community center will not be just for Muslims, and nowhere have I read that the center’s purpose was anything other than about bringing people of different faiths together and fostering an atmosphere of mutual existence. It is only the extremists like Jones and his counterparts in the Middle East who eschew such co-existence.

“Our name, Cordoba, was inspired by the city in Spain where Muslims, Christians and Jews co-existed in the Middle Ages,” Rauf said, later adding that the center would include separate places for prayer by which Muslims, Christians, Jews and others can approach their own respective deities.

Regarding Jones’ claim about the movement of the center’s location, Musri said Jones “stretched his words” in a news conference. My opinion: Musri may have conceded more than he was ready to concede in talks with Jones in order to avert the disaster that may have taken place had the book burning went as planned. I highly doubt that Musri overstepped his authority and said outright that the center’s location would be changed for sure. He may have simply implied something along those lines to appease Jones to curb the threat of protests or the loss of life. Or, Jones could be lying, or the truth could be somewhere in between.

Nevertheless the efforts are already too little too late for at least one person. Jones should return to the fire and brimstone pulpit from whence he came and get out of the public sphere, for outside his inflated world of angels and demons and eternal destinations — “one nice and one nasty experience,” as Christopher Hitchens puts it, — he’s a danger to civil society.

Article first published as Terry Jones: Wannabe Media Jewel? on Blogcritics.

***

And so, thankfully, we hear that Terry Jones, the much-condemned pastor of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., will not, at least in the immediate future, oversee a Koran book-burning party that would have, according to any person with a functioning brain, and also to senior officials in the U.S. Military, sparked widespread protest and possibly widespread harm to American soldiers and even other Americans.

As is The New York Times‘ typical style, the newspaper is out ahead of any other potential angles related to this story. Surrounding this foray is a sense that Dove World Outreach Center is attempting, in a quite macabre and dangerous way, to gain some notoriety for itself. As we have already seen (see my related post) the congregation numbers about 50 people. Most very active but humble congregations range from 100-1,000 members, some more. But in this case, we are talking about a 50-person congregation. That’s a small number.

As the Times notes, “Mr. Jones was able to put himself at the center of those issues by using the news lull of summer and the demands of a 24-hour news cycle to promote his anti-Islam cause. He said he consented to more than 150 interview requests in July and August … By the middle of this week, the planned Koran burning was the lead story on some network newscasts, and topic No. 1 on cable news – an extraordinary amount of attention for a marginal figure with a very small following.”

Thus, correctly, the Times notes that a very, very – and I would add another “very” – small congregation that matters not in any substantial way has, for some reason, garnered the attention of not only the leader of the free world, but of the international community.

Since Jones’ plan of Koran-burning is problematic on so many levels, to the extent that it could have put his congregation and many Americans in jeopardy, it leads me to believe that it was, at least on some level, a subversive and also a very dumb and selfish attempt to gain attention for his very small church as much as anything else.

I make no apologies about placing this news item firmly in the loony bin, and I’ve written about the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida before.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it “disrespectful and disgraceful.”

U.S. Attorney General rightly condemned it “idiotic and dangerous.”

Dangerous indeed. But, heck, for crazies who equally care little about this life or human solidarity, it isn’t terribly surprising, just maddening that we have word today from the BBC that the Dove World Outreach Center (I wonder who in the world they hope to reach) that the church plans to burn copies of the Koran to commemorate (I would say, shame) the upcoming anniversary of 9/11.

According to the BBC story:

Gen David Petraeus, the top US commander in Afghanistan, said on Monday that the action could cause problems “not just in Kabul, but everywhere in the world”.

“It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems,” he said in a statement.

The only bright side to all this is that the church numbers only 50, but we well know that it takes no more than 5 or 10 or even 1 to pose a serious threat to us all. The BBC article also said:

Pastor Jones – author of a book entitled Islam is of the Devil – has said he understands the general’s concerns but that it was “time for America to quit apologizing for our actions and bowing to kings”.

Another pastor at the church told the BBC that members intended to burn several hundred copies of the holy book on Saturday evening, the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, in defiance of an order by the city not to hold an open air bonfire.

I think “pastor” is too dignified a title for Terry Jones. Nevertheless, I wonder what happened to the edict from Romans 13:1-7 that says believers should obey the laws of the land? I guess that flies out the window when there’s some good hate to spread. But of course, proponents say, God’s law is higher than man’s law, especially when we are actively campaigning against another religion.

Since I’ve written quite a bit about the proposed mosque or community center near Ground Zero (here and here), I felt compelled to mention this insightful column by literary critic Stanley Fish, in which Fish compares the actions of “21-year-old knife-wielding Michael Enright,” who allegedly and recently attacked a New York City Muslim cab driver, to that of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. On McVeigh, Fish begins thusly:

In the brief period between the bombing and the emergence of McVeigh, speculation had centered on Arab terrorists and the culture of violence that was said to be woven into the fabric of the religion of Islam.

But when it turned out that a white guy (with the help of a few of his friends) had done it, talk of “culture” suddenly ceased and was replaced by the vocabulary and mantras of individualism: each of us is a single, free agent; blaming something called “culture” was just a way of off-loading responsibility for the deeds we commit; in America, individuals, not groups, act; and individuals, not groups, should be held accountable. McVeigh may have looked like a whole lot of other guys who dressed up in camouflage and carried guns and marched in the woods, but, we were told by the same people who had been mouthing off about Islam earlier, he was just a lone nut, a kook, and generalizations about some “militia” culture alive and flourishing in the heartland were entirely unwarranted.

This switch from “malign culture” talk to “individual choice” talk was instantaneous and no one felt obliged to explain it. Now, in 2010, it’s happening again around the intersection of what the right wing calls the “Ground Zero mosque” (a geographical exaggeration if there ever is one) and the attack last week on a Muslim cab driver by (it is alleged) 21-year-old knife-wielding Michael Enright.

Like McVeigh, Enright is regarded as a lone (alleged) perpetrator and is not, as Fish said,

the product of what Time magazine calls a growing “American strain of Islamophobia.” Instead, The New York Post declares, the stabbing is “the act of a disturbed individual who is now in custody,” and across the fold of the page columnist Jonah Goldberg says that “one assault doesn’t a national trend make” and insists that “we shouldn’t let anyone suggest that this criminal reflects anybody but himself.”

The formula is simple and foolproof (although those who deploy it so facilely seem to think we are all fools): If the bad act is committed by a member of a group you wish to demonize, attribute it to a community or a religion and not to the individual. But if the bad act is committed by someone whose profile, interests and agendas are uncomfortably close to your own, detach the malefactor from everything that is going on or is in the air (he came from nowhere) and characterize him as a one-off, non-generalizable, sui generis phenomenon.

The only thing more breathtaking than the effrontery of the move is the ease with which so many fall in with it. I guess it’s because both those who perform it and those who eagerly consume it save themselves the trouble of serious thought.

Both American believer and nonbeliever alike can be very thankful that we live in the land of the free.

I was heartened recently to read the story of a Saudi Arabia native who was attempting to maintain a position of disbelief in a nation in which said disbelief just may well get one killed. Here in the United States, we are lucky to be able to believe, or not, without the threat of any sort of consequences from the establishment. Unfortunately, many, or most, portions of the Middle East are still shrouded by dark intolerance. Thus, this particular Saudi bravely has stepped forward, at least in one forum, to announce his disbelief, although, in his native land, he’s forced, with his life at stake, to keep his lack of belief on the down-low. Here is part of his story:

Since I was kid I’ve been asking “inappropriate questions” about the all-mighty Allah. I was very curious about this invisible god who everyone fears, and the answer was always the same: “You shouldn’t ask these questions, you don’t question his judgment.. you just do as he says and you’ll be rewarded”. Fair enough, can I at least see him? BTW that wasn’t me asking these questions.. it was Satan trying to shake my believe and turn me to his side.. And I should never ask anyone else these questions (so I don’t embarrass my parents), I should just come to them and get the exact same answer every fucking time

For some reason I wasn’t convinced that god existed, but I’m only a child and my parents know better. If everyone believes in him then I’m sure they’re right and there’s something wrong with me, I kept telling myself that until I actually believed it

I was a very devout Muslim in my early teens.. Never dared to even look at a girl even though all my friends had girlfriends, hated infidels (but loved Newcastle United ) and was brainwashed by my religion teacher to love and even look up to Osama bin-Laden! I was on my way to become a world-class terrorist until my father saved me.. Even though the geezer’s a very traditional guy he was quite open minded (for a Saudi). He studied abroad and still is in contact with some of his foreign friends, loathes bin-Laden and the religious police, he was the one pushing me to learn about the world and force-fed me books about, well.. everything, he insisted that I go to English schools in the summer so I can improve my language (money will wasted obviously)

He kept saying to me “Think for yourself, think for yourself, think for yourself.. Take the knowledge anywhere you can get it from, but never take opinions, form your own. You have a brain so use it.. and for god’s sake eat a damn orange! you’re so skinny you can pass from under the damn door!”. He was a master in pointing out my faults in the harshest way possible, but I still love that frightening bastard

The utter oppression in those lands nearly have led this person to attempt suicide because of the intolerance to those who might dare shun the idea of Allah.

Thus, the writer has appealed to a forum for support, and here is his conclusion:

… I tried telling myself that it’s Satan messing with my head again, but the voice of reason kept getting stronger and stronger. The struggle was hard, and the fact that I will get KILLED if people knew didn’t help either

I got so depressed I lost 20 pounds in 3 months and became my old walking skeleton self again.. cut all my friends off because I was worried about what might happen if the (they) found out.

I went to the UK for a couple of months to study English and LIVE, and I have to say that those few months were the best times of my life. But unfortunately the good times had to stop and I came back to a place where I’ll be killed just for having a different opinion.

Depression hit me harder that time, and I started to loose weight again. Now after a year and half I realized something: I’m alone
at first it was because the fear for my life like I mentioned, after that and when I finally got over it I realized I forgot how to be around people! After all it’s not easy living between doors for half a year all by yourself

I have seriously considered suicide and tried to attempt it 3 times, but every time I do I hear a voice in my head telling me tomorrow will be better.. But no matter how I tried it all seems hopeless.

For former believers who have found enlightenment values far more satisfying than the alternative, the reaction of others to this news can, indeed, can seem oppressively hopeless and renders one susceptible to the thought that one isn’t really free to think for oneself within their social strata. And if one isn’t really free to think for oneself, then life itself can seem equally hopeless. Such is the power of religion to dull the mind and blunt individuality, but, of course, for the faithful, this life is quite like the preface to a book, isn’t it? I don’t know if this Saudi fellow ever will be able to get out of his native land of intolerance, but I advised him that, if he has the means, hop the nearest plane out of there.

Frightening, just frightening what some folks are cooking up …

Pastor Terry Jones plans to burn multiple copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Credit: Chip Litherland for The New York Times

Pastor Terry Jones of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., whose plan to memorialize 9/11 by burning copies of the Koran, represents everything that is wrong with evangelical America and with our collective response to the debate about the proposed mosque near Ground Zero: intolerant, filled with animosity toward those who don’t believe as he does and as fanatical as the rest. Jones forgets that it wasn’t Muslims in general that performed the heinous acts in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, but religious fanatics like himself, willing to do whatever it takes to assure that their particular savior’s message is heard. In short, no better or worse than those who are willing to live or die for their faith. For believers, of course, it makes no difference.

Religion, if left unchecked and nonsequestered, will tear our existence as human beings apart and that fills me with despair. And as much contempt as Pastor Jones might feel toward the Koran, I feel toward this type of dogged and demonizing intolerance toward other faiths. I don’t care what another human being believes, but if that belief oversteps its bounds and meanders into the public sphere, then there’s a problem. And this egging on of other religions, especially those known to be the harborers of terrorists is, there is no other way to put it, dumb to the Nth degree. But I don’t hold much faith that Pastor Jones has caught on to that nuance.

Not only does religion, more or less, have to answer for 3,000 dead on 9/11 (and slavery, the Salem witch trials, the Crusades and many other blights on mankind), but it has to answer for the crazies who are currently protesting the addition of the Cordoba House near Ground Zero. The proposed mosque and community center is two blocks away from the former World Trade Center site and not within view of the hallowed ground. Yet, Sean Hannity and others continue to refer to it as the Ground Zero Mosque.

Credit: Handschuh/News

Interestingly, and I found out about this from Sarah Palin’s Twitter feed, oddly enough, The Associated Press has ordered its reporters to cease referring to the proposed center as the GZM and simply call it, as I have, the proposed mosque near Ground Zero. For, that’s what it is or will be once it’s built. According to the story referencing the news organization,

The AP suggests that it might “useful in some stories to note that Muslim prayer services have been held since 2009 in the building that the new project will replace.”⁽⁽¹⁾⁾

Folks have been holding services at that location since 2009, you say? So what’s the big deal about the current fiasco, then? I’m not sure. And neither is Rachel Maddow, who has refused until Monday to even mention the story, dubbing it fabricated and non-news:

“I’d rather not cover it,” she tells me [Lloyd Grove], never mind that President Obama has entered the fray. “It’s just one of those fake, non-controversial things that has been ginned up into a controversy for a political purpose. Participating in the discussion of this, as a political matter, is playing right into the hands of the people who ginned this up.” (By “the people who ginned this up,” she means Fox News and its allies—about which more in a moment.) “Adding to the volume—in both senses of the word—of the coverage, um, grosses me out a little bit,” she says.⁽⁽²⁾⁾

To that point, Hannity has been one of the most outspoken rabble rousers in this regard, ginning up all kinds of hysteria on his radio show today, and I’m sure, on his FOX News program tonight, although I haven’t watched. I got my fill of Hannity on the radio earlier. He actually said today that he believed with all his heart that we were headed down the road toward some 1930s-era final solution in which it will be the Muslims who will this time seek to destroy us all. I guess this would be in addition to the gloomy trail we are plodding toward Nazi-style socialism? But I digress.

Shew, hold on folks. If you believe these guys, it’s going to be a tough road to hoe going forward!

Actually, Hannity’s partly right but generally wrong. Some Muslims, a select few, say, Osama and his followers, are probably whittling away whatever brain power they have to conjure some sort of end game. This would be in the form of a modern day caliphate, in which us infidels will be conquered, subdued and/or killed, and radical Islam would become the rule of the land, not the exception. This vale of woe will be similar to that which existed prior to 1924 when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president of Turkish Republic, abolished the caliphate institution. Radicals today want to see this reinstalled in the Middle East, and eventually, one can only imagine, everywhere, since Islam officials through history, including Ayatollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden, have stated the goal clearly:

• “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god by Allah.’ – Muhammad’s farewell address, March 632
• “I shall cross this sea to their islands to pursue them until there remains no one on the face of the earth who does not acknowledge Allah.” – Saladin, January 1189
• “We will export our revolution throughout the world … until the calls ‘there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah’ are echoed all over the world.” – Ayatollah Khomeini, 1979
• “I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is not god but Allah, and his prophet Muhammad.” – Osama bin Laden, November 2001⁽⁽³⁾⁾

All that notwithstanding, we are talking about the radicals among the believers of Islam. We are not talking about the millions of peaceful Muslims. And here is where Hannity’s rhetoric hits dangerous territory regarding Islam. We want to, and should be, very clear that our beef as a nation is not with Islam itself. For Hannity, as he did today, saying he doesn’t care what religion a person follows, and then in the same show saying we are heading toward some kind of wild, 1930s-style takeover plan, this time with Islam as the potential threat, no doubt is offensive to the millions of well-meaning and quietly faithful believers around the world. Hannity seems to suggest that we are on the cusp of a gigantic wave of Islamic fervor. There are, indeed, a few crazies running around this planet, Sean, but few people of any religion, believe enough in the voices in their heads to board a plane and launch it into a building or strap themselves with a bomb. And we can be very thankful that their numbers are small.

1. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/alana-goodman/2010/08/19/ap-orders-staff-stop-using-phrase-ground-zero-mosque [↩]
2. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-24/rachel-maddow-on-the-mosque-and-fox-news/?cid=hp:mainpromo6 [↩]
3. “Islamic Imperialism,” Efraim Karsh [↩]