Artifacts Of Faith

The continuing and escalating controversy over building mosques in the US from the "mega-mosque" in the immediate environs of Ground Zero to others, some much smaller, hundreds or thousands of miles away from the smoke, fire, and death of 9/11 highlights the central and all too often overlooked reality of the current struggle between the US and the rest of the West on one hand and the proponents of political Islam on the other.

That reality is that political Islam, like all Islam, like Christianity, like Judaism, like all other religions great and small, well known or obscure is, at root, a creation of the human mind. Further, all are creations which are reconfigured from time to time and place to place according to the needs of the social/political/economic context.

This statement may be unacceptable to those who for reasons of personal psychology or need find it essential to believe that religions (or at least the one to which they adhere) are the pure products of divine revelation and their sacred writings are unsullied by human intervention. Be that as it may, the weight of historical experience shows the dirty fingerprints of human interference on the core written materials: Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Koran, as well as their derivatives written, spoken, and acted out.

Context, the actualities of life in any given time and place, have dictated not only what exists in the core literature but, far more importantly, how that core has been interpreted and put into effect. The devil lives where it always has, in the details of society, polity, and economy, in the choices made by people as to what aspects of any particular religion should be invoked and acted upon in response to social, political, economic, or cultural stresses and threats--or to the converse, opportunities to advance one's social, political, economic, and cultural position.

The ambiguous or contradictory language which typifies any and all sacred writings in all religions provide rich veins to be mined for the ore of apparent truth. Which veins are mined and to what effect come not from a deity but from the understandable dynamics of a particular social, political, economic, or cultural condition in a particular location at a particular time.

Thus the Hebrew Bible alternates between bloody imperialism and demands for inter-ethnic tolerance and peace, mutual advantage and harmony. The needs of different Christians at different times and places allowed both the invocation of universality and genocidal persecution. The Koran is both a manual for cross-cultural amity and a handbook for successful wars of conquest.

Advocates and adherents of violent political Islam are good Muslims. So also are Muslims who reject the way of the suicide bomber, the Koran-waving imperialist seeking to establish a global caliphate where all bow to the dictates of sharia. Neither is a "misunderstander of Islam." Each selects the portions of his faith which best fit the requirements of the time and place where he lives in which he hopes he and his family will prosper in an atmosphere of peace and dignity.

The critical factor here is the need to understand that both perception and choice are involved here. Individuals perceive their needs, their wants, their relative power, status, dignity. On that basis they choose which vein of their religion they are going to mine, which ore of "revealed truth" they are going to smelt, and what product they are going to make from that smelted ore.

The mosque is merely a building. An structure empty of significance--until a significance is chosen for it. The mega-mosque proposed for the site inconveniently close to Ground Zero can be a center for inter-cultural, inter-faith harmony and understanding. Or it can be a symbol of the victory of political Islam over the oppressors of the "Christian" US.

The same applies to all other mosques no matter where built. They are either the expression in masonry of a faith, a home for the members of that community of faith, or a symbol of expansionist Islam.

In part, the significance, the meaning of the mosque, is determined by those who assemble there to worship. But, in part, perhaps major part, it is assigned by the perceptions and choices made by others, by those who do not share the faith, by those who wonder as to the aspirations and goals of those building and using the mosque.

Before violent political Islam leaped from its birthing place in Egypt to the Arabian Peninsula and beyond--to Kenya, to Tanzania, to Yemen, to New York, to London, to Madrid, to Bali, to hundreds of other places, the mosque was seen by those outside the community of Islam as totally unobjectionable, even a sign of cosmopolitanism, of multi-cultural acceptance. The spread of violent political Islam from the pens of Qutb and bin Laden to the bombs, the falling buildings, the violated bodies of civilians killed without either warning or compunction changed the view of many in this country and others. The context changed and with that so did the view of the mosque. Now it was possessed of an inherently sinister nature--whether deserved or not in any particular case.

The particular Muslim community proposing to use the mosque may well be one, most probably is one which rejects violent political Islam or even its non-violent kin. It is most probable that the specific community of faith is comprised of Muslims who mine the veins of Islam, of the Koran, of the Hadith which point to peace, harmony, and mutual respect between members of different faiths.

(In this context it is useful to remember that Islam has made compromises, accommodations with Zoroastrians, Nestorian Christians, Ebionites, even with polytheists in Africa during the comfortable, fat years of expansion following the death of Mohammad. So, there is a long record of Muslims mining the veins of peace, harmony, compromise which run through the Koran--as long as the context of their lives encouraged or allowed such.)

It is also useful to recall that the original proponents of violent political Islam whether in Egypt, Iran, or the Arabian Peninsula did so in a context of lost greatness, of current diminishment, of perceived humiliation and exploitation. The originators of modern violent political Islam saw the cause of the present sorry state of Muslims to be the result of the apostate local governments and the policies of faraway infidel states. Importantly, very importantly, these thinkers also saw that Muslims generally had "fallen away" from the pure, hard faith of the great days a thousand and more years earlier.

Qutb and others called upon their fellow Muslims to right the current wrongs by embracing not only a pure, austere form of Islam with the most restrictive form of Sharia at its core, but also to rediscover jihad as an offensive, aggressive concept. Abandon the defensive, Qutb counselled, and embrace aggression as the tool to overthrow the apostates and smite the infidels.

The invention of modern violent political Islam occurred as a response to the context of the Mideast in the post-WW II period. It was, at root, a repackaging of the perceptions underlying both Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. It was another case of a question--"we were once so great and now we are so small, why?" and providing an answer, "Because we have abandoned the pure ways of our ancestors."

The alternative ways of restoring the perceived loss of status, dignity, respect, potency were not considered by the advocates of violent political Islam. In a way not dissimilar from the willful overlooking of alternatives exhibited by the corporate statists of a few years earlier, Qutb and others rejected alternatives in favor of mining certain, select veins of their sacred literature and their faith.

Perceptions and choices.

The US and other Western countries also acted on perceptions when the choice was made not only to invade Afghanistan but to engage in the preposterous exercise of nation-building. The Taliban regime was perceived not only as evil on its face, but was cast beyond the pale. As a result of this arguable proposition, which did, whether we like it or not, facilitate the radicalization of Muslims, we are engaged in a labor guaranteed to result in an product which will never meet expectations.

Perceptions and choices.

So it is with the mosques. More than any other single consideration it will be the perceptions and choices made by Americans which will govern whether the mosques, including the one scheduled to replace the Burlington Coat Factory building, will be symbols of victory for violent political Islam or for the alternative, an Islam capable of coexisting peacefully with the larger population.

A Christian, a Jew can find in his own religion reasons and justifications for either opposing and demonizing the mosques or for accepting them as neighbors, and, perhaps, friends. A Christian certainly can find a reason to see the mosques as a test from his God as to the extent of his faith not only in Christianity but in America.

This is not easy. The Geek has wrestled with the mosque question since it first emerged. But, he understands that when all is said and done, we non-Muslims must exist on the same planet and in the same country with Muslims. That is, with Muslims who find the proper veins to mine are those of peace, harmony, and mutual accommodation.

In this way and this way alone, the only losers will be the advocates of political Islam. And, they deserve to lose. About that there can be and is no doubt, no equivocation, no hesitation.