Never Argue Religion and Politics?

Way back in the mythical "good old days" when Ike was in the White House the Geek was repeatedly and strictly told never to argue religion and politics as to do such was to commit a grave social faux pas. By crossing this line of good conduct, the Geek would be assured of becoming a social outcast, shunned by polite people.

The Geek ignored the well-intended guidance, going ahead and arguing in the forbidden zones. He found quickly that his interlocutors rapidly became both frustrated and aggravated. The Geek spent some his adolescent years wondering why. Differences in view, he naively believed, should be welcomed. They provided diversion, the pleasure of give-and-take, allowed time to pass enjoyably and (sometimes) profitably.

After awhile the big fist of realisation hit him.

The real reason it is difficult--even impossible--to argue about religion and politics is that both subjects tend to be rooted deeply in pure emotion. And, arguing emotion is a working definition of futility.

It is probably equally futile to argue the one of the most important issues of the present time.

That issue?

Simple.

Religion in politics. To state the proposition less inaccurately: religion is politics.

No. The Geek doesn't simply mean the incessant "god talk" that blathered ad nauseum during the presidential primary campaign.

(That phenomenon bothered the Geek. Like Thomas Jefferson, the Geek holds the view that a person's religions convictions (if any) are a matter even more private than that person's sexual preferences and peccadilloes.)

The monotheistic religions are political in nature. The jefes within each, regardless of their job titles or the precise organisation of the hierarchy (if any), seek to exercise power over the perceptions, beliefs and actions of the membership.

Regulations--laws--concerning the most intimate of behaviors such as sex, eating and cleanliness provide a powerful means of controlling a population. Particularly if the laws are backed by the force of deity. The hope of everlasting pleasurable reward for obeying the authority of the faith. The fear of eternal punishment if that authority is flouted.

It is not surprising that at least two of the monotheistic faiths have spent much time, effort and blood acquiring, maintaining and expanding authority over, not simply the personal morality of people, but full-fledged power over all aspects of life and land.

For a thousand years and more the Catholic Church sought total, unchallenged temporal power in Europe. Using the supposed power of the Bishop of Rome to "bind and loose" souls as a potent adjunct to more conventional forms of diplomacy, the Church exercised powerful sway over the European continent and its inhabitants.

The Church and ambitious emergent secular rulers attempted to extend control over the Mideast--the Crusades--and the New World. The success of the enterprise was, at best, mixed. Ultimately it failed. Foundering under the gales of change that came in the wake of both the Crusades and the invasion of the Western Hemisphere.

Protestant churches were no better in avoiding the temptation to combine spiritual and temporal power. The Church of England was a major prop of the centralising British monarchy. Lutheranism allowed princes of the German states to define themselves and their territories. Calvin went for a theocracy in Geneva. In all cases success was, at best, mixed and transient.

Throughout all these attempts at unchallenged political dominance by one church or another, one factor remains constant. Blood flowed. A lot of blood. On the battlefield. From the assassin's knife. In the torture chambers. Blood ran long and deep.

The authors of the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution were well aware of this history. They were close to much of it in time. The potential harm of religion as politics compelled them to reject an identifiably religious, an identifiably Christian base to the new American Republic.

At the time, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and the others were excoriated for not including a specific reference to Jesus Christ or Christianity in either of the two documents which founded the United States of America. In recent years members of the Christian right wing in this country have done the same.

(Actually, they've gone miles beyond mere criticism. They have distorted history and belief, tried to mug Jefferson into agreement with their view that the US is and always has been a Christian nation.)

While there is no doubt that the values, belief systems and morality of several Protestant Christian denominations comprise a critical substrate of the American Experiment, it is as wrong as a cat barking to aver that the US and its government are or ever have been a Christian edifice.

The US faced a wave of hijackings and hostage-taking in the Mideast. Hoping to avoid expensive, prolonged and unpredictable war with the Muslim ruler whose personnel executed these acts of terrorism, the administration negotiated a treaty.

The treaty between the US and the Bey of Tripoli contained a very explicit statement, "(T)he government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion." This ringingly secular declaration was not included simply because it was true. It was incorporated in the treaty because the Bey maintained that he and his subjects had a religious duty to keep the infidels away.

Of course, that was a crock. The Bey and his pirates were in a money making enterprise. Not unlike the airlines a century and a half later who paid tribute to Fatah to assure that their planes wouldn't be hijacked or bombed, the Muslims of Tripoli were after the payoff. When the US didn't pay its ships were victimized. It's sailors enslaved.

The treaty didn't work for long either. Finally, the US had to use force. At first we did it poorly. We lost one of our best and newest warships to the pirates. Took heavy losses. Some congressmen bemoaned the administration's inept handling of affairs. Its unwillingness to talk more--even pay more.

Finally, we got the war right. We won. The Marines' Hymn got a line. The Bey backed down. Our ships sailed in peace. Without having to pay for the right.

Nearly two hundred years ago our Muslim enemies attempted to shield the nature of their actions behind the dictates of religious obligation. We didn't play that game. We specifically denied that our government was Christian (or to use today's terminology so loved by the jihadists, "Crusader.")

We tried to talk. We tried to pay. When those didn't work, we tried fighting as a last resort. We fought poorly. Lost at first. Learned as we went. Won. End of story.

As the Geek has contended in previous posts, Islam is not a religion. It is what it always has been. An expansionist political vision cloaked in visions of religion. Politics and religion are inseparable in the Quran, the hidith, in all other Muslim writings.

A Muslim can take the expansionist trajectory of Islamic political doctrine or leave it. That choice is his. (The Geek uses the male pronoun intentionally. As one of the hidith makes clear, "Paradise for a woman is under a man's boot," only men matter.)

The US and other western, secular, liberal democracies must make it clear that in the conflict--no--the war between it and the Islamists/jihadists, we understand the nature and character of our enemy. The enemy is the stark, harsh, primitive political movement from the badlands of the Arabian Peninsula.

Sensitivity in pursuit of victory in this war is only legitimate as a tactic. Political correctness that prohibits accurately describing our opponent is not justified.

Arguably, the well-intended but hopelessly misguided effort to refrain from giving our enemy "legitimacy" by using terms such as "jihadist" or "Islamist" or "Islamic terrorist" is defeating its own goal. By being so, so sensitive we are giving the enemy the very legitimacy we hope not to.

By retracting from rhetorical honesty we are giving the enemy the same hope we did when we cut and ran from Somalia following the death of a handful of Rangers and Special Forces in an ineptly planned and executed raid.

Our enemy in the current war(s) is not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is not the poverty of so many people in the Muslim countries. It is not even the 1.5 giga-Muslims per se.

(It must be recalled that each Muslim has the right, even the duty, to interpret the religion for himself. He need not listen and heed thoughtlessly the urgings of some cleric or another.)

Our enemy is the most death oriented, most harshly primitive versions of Islam incorporated in Salifism and Wahhibism. It is those Muslims who listen to the call of blood, death and unforgiving, indiscriminate acts of murder. It is those Muslims who act as apologists for the killers or who seek to subvert the will and ability of those who oppose the perpetrators of homicide.

Our enemy is those Muslims who, like the Bey of Tripoli and his ilk, harmed us and those like us while wrapped in the pages of the Quran.

It is not Islamophobia to know your enemy and to let him know that you know him. It's called being honest.