Rosh Hashana And Ramadan

Two warrior religions commence High Holidays at sunset next Friday. Two warrior religions whose adherents stand with rockets drawn, glaring across borders and security fences, locked in the symmetry of the lunar calendar.

Both religions are monotheistic. Both proclaim peace as a high--even the highest--value. Both formed in the desert, a place of soul emptying space and awe inspiring solitude. Both came into existence in the historical context of nomadic pastoralists who saw shining cities in all their artificial splendor only rarely and then always from a distance.

Both corporate faiths had moments of imperial greatness. Both fell from the highest peaks to low valleys. One fell to a place more desolate and forsaken than the other.

Judaism and Islam, warriors' faiths, tidally locked by history from the time of the younger's birth to the present. Locked in a relation of mutual exclusion. Locked in struggle, struggle for dominance.

Dominance and submission. Under the periodic calls for "tolerance" or "mutual respect" or some other term from the soft, fuzzy language of fantasy is the cold, hard bedrock of reality.

Get a grip on this: Judaism and Islam are exclusionist religions. They define themselves by excluding all who are not adherents to the faith and its creed.

Judaism is honest about this. Circumcision was a clear and unmistakable, quite irremediable physical confession of adherence. It is still that today despite the mid-Twentieth Century use of the practice on a wide scale for "hygienic" reasons. Further demonstration of the existential honesty of Jewish exclusionary practice is seen in the simple facts that converts are not sought and the process of conversion is both lengthy and difficult.

Islam is bluntly honest about its exclusionary nature--to a point. Islam divides humanity into two "houses." The Islamic community is the "House of Peace." Everyone else lives in the "House of War." Fogging the matter is the simplicity of the conversion process. And, the willingness of Muslims to seek converts.

Without getting into the murky waters of the Higher Criticism within Christian historical and theological circles, the message of Jesus, the Wandering Sage and Healer of Nazareth, was inherently inclusive. It made no distinction between Jew and gentile.

That came later. Later Christianity, the religion founded after the death of Jesus, became exclusionary. Only later were creeds developed. Only later were membership requirements established. Only later did Christianity become a warrior religion. Only much later did blood flow in the name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

War is the ultimate form of exclusion. By its very nature and requirements, war defines the enemy as the Other, the fiend in human guise. Wars based on either religion or an ideology defined as arising from the faith are particularly nasty.

Killing the enemy of one's faith is tantamount to killing Evil. Killing the enemy of one's faith is reaffirming the truth of one's creed, one's own beliefs, even one's own validity as a person.

Jewish warriors facing the Romans twenty centuries ago fought with the preternatural courage that only individuals possessed by true belief exhibit. Sixty years ago the fighters of Israel showed the same bloom and blood of faith. Two thousand years ago or six decades past, people fought not simply for personal existence but for the truth of the belief that defined them as a community.

Belief is powerful. It is a force multiplier of almost incalculable strength.

The same power of belief can be seen in the swath of conquest cut by Muslim swords across the Mideast, through Spain and into France in the first century after Mohammad's troops took Mecca. It can be seen as the Turkish tide swept to the walls of Vienna.

Judaism is exclusionist but not expansionist. The power of belief is enlisted for defense not for conquest.

Can the same be said about Islam?

The short answer is: Yes and no.

By a careful selection of Quranic text focusing on the verses of the Medina period, a strong case can be made to support the contention that Islam is a religion, even the religion of peace. While the intellectual excercise of textual selection is possible, it is historically dishonest. Taken as a totality, the Quran and the Sayings of the Prophet reflect the imperatives of a warrior, exclusionist religion.

Taken as a whole, the Quran, the Sayings, and most of the later commentaries, demand that the House of Peace, that is, Islam, dominate the House of War, the rest of the world. Inherently Islam is both exclusionist and expansionist.

Sit back, bucko. Think about that. Get a grip on it.

Islam is both exclusionist and expansionist. It demands not only defensive war against the threat of the Satanic Other. It demands the Satanic Other be conquered. Made to submit.

Islam is a warrior religion. That's its history.

The Geek hastens to point out that not all Muslims are fired up, eager volunteers for the new wars. Many--even most--Muslims are like the Good Soldier Schwienk, willing to pay lip service, willing to go through a few pro forma motions of noncommittal seeming support, but not at all willing to strap on a bomb, grab a box cutter, or take an AK in hand to further the cause. It's a feel good exercise to chant a few "Death to America" phrases and wave a fist for the camera or cheer another martyr. That's as far as most Muslims are ready to go.

We shouldn't go out of way to infuriate this vast mass. But, neither should we get a panic attack if we find that the guy next to us, the one with a beard, speaks Arabic or reads the Quran.

Islamism--the ideology represented by Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and others including the mullahocracy in Tehran--is another matter. Islamism and Islamists are the enemy today. By careful selection from the Quran, the Sayings of the Prophet, and the later commentaries, the Islamists from Qtub through to bin Ladin and assorted Saudi "clerics" have constructed an ideology justifying, no, demanding holy war against Israel, the West generally, and the US in particular.

Islamism and Islamists are the enemy of the unreluctant warriors of Israel. Islamism and Islamists are the enemy of We the People--the reluctant warriors of the United States. Islamism and Islamists are the enemy in the new Cold War in which the West generally has been forced.

Get a grip on it.

Regardless of our personal religious beliefs (or absence of such) we are in a Cold War which has turned hot. The Islamists with their ideology have given us no choice except surrender. Submission to the will of Allah as they interpret it is the only alternative.

Not much of a selection, is it?

Withdrawing from the messes our poorly thought out policies have created in Afghanistan and Iraq will not improve our condition. It will only make matters worse.

Whether we like the idea or not (and, personally, the Geek does not) we are in it for the long haul. Just as we could not afford to lose the First Cold War, we cannot lose the Second.

The warriors of Islamism are waiting. Bomb in hand.