Christian(?) Terrorism and Cultural Relativism

Reading the manifesto of Anders Behring Brevik is a bit of a trudge, a long yomp uphill with wind and a cold rain in your face--and mud sucking at your boots.  But, it is worth it.  More than, say, the Unibomber's treatise on the ills of technology, the Norwegian's great effort, "2083: A European Declaration of Independence" provides real insight into a warped mind.  In this it is not unlike reading Osama bin Laden's "declaration of war" against the US some fifteen years ago.

This is an appropriate analogy as Mr Berserker Brevik is a mirror image of the assorted practitioners of violent political Islam.  Brevik, like bin Laden, made a list of quite valid objections to key aspects of contemporary life in the areas of the world in which each lived.  Bin Landen's negative views of US policy to (and presence in) the Mideast were neither lunatic nor trivial.  Brevik's critique of both multiculturalism and the impact of assimilation resistant Muslim immigrants upon Western Europe are also neither lunatic nor trivial.

The objective, intellectual predicates of bin Laden and Brevik were unobjectionable.  Neither was over the edge in their thinking in and of itself.  Where each went over the edge was in the manner by which they made their thoughts manifest.  It was in the reliance upon lethal violence as the only way of obtaining redress for unacceptable conditions that the two men--one a Muslim with Salifist roots and the other a "fundamentalist" Christian (whatever the word "fundamentalist" might mean in this specific case)--became brothers in spirit.

The spiritual kinship between Brevik and his Muslim opponents carries a risk for all of us in the West which needs both recognition and effective addressing.  The public opinion molding "elites" of Western academia, journalism, and politics, as well as many of us in the non-elite are damned currently with an overabundance of fairmindedness, openmindedness, tolerance, and a desire to accept the other which is evident only in its absence within the ranks of those who subscribe to political Islam.

This tendency, which is both a source of strength and weakness within the West, is already evident.  The NYT has set its sights on those who have written and spoken negatively regarding Islam--particularly those cited and quoted in "2083."  There can be little doubt but other individuals and organs will take the same censorious path.

This is as wrong as a soup sandwich--and as dangerous as tossing sweating dynamite against a stone wall.  Any effort to suppress open and critical assessment of negative aspects of Islam such as the myriad contained in political Islam, particularly the form which admires and employs violence in pursuit of its goals, simply because as one person quoted by the NYT put it, "words have consequences," is both anathema to the ideals of the US and other Western states but dangerously counterproductive.  Regardless of individuals such as the apparently delusional Brevik, there is a crying need to expose the dark underside of Islam.

Had Brevik been a Muslim, his actions would be applauded by many around the majority Muslim countries--and within the self-segregating Muslim enclaves dotting the European landscape from Norway to the UK to France, Germany, and beyond.  But, Brevik was purportedly a Christian, and thus his actions receive only the condemnation they deserve from Christians around the world.

In this there resides the most significant distinction between the two religions.  Islam celebrates violence undertaken in either the defense or the expansion of the faith.  Christianity denounces violence.  Regardless of the many, many times that Christians have violated their faith, the reality remains unchanged--Jesus was not the Man of the Sword (or the bomb or the semi-automatic rifle.)  There is no faith rooted excuse or reason for offensive violence.  There can be and is no greater difference between the two largest monotheistic religions than that.

Whether the people and opinion molders of the West like the idea or not, there is and will be for some while to come a struggle between the advocates of violent political Islam and the civilized states.  As part of this struggle there will be ongoing attempts to use the openmindedness, the tolerance, the desire to be fair which characterizes the West against it.  The only defenses against this are understanding of the nature and motives of the adversary and a willingness to reject the pernicious concept of cultural relativism.

Cultural relativism hides behind the bland and "fair" term of multiculturalism.  This doctrine holds that no society, no polity, no culture is inherently "better" or "superior" to any other.  Cultural relativism holds that it is impossible to have absolute standards regarding human behavior, that all standards can be applied only within specific cultural contexts, preferably only by individuals living within the context.

This idea is, of course, utter bilge.  The Christians who condemn the acts of their fellow, Brevik, show this.  So do the Norwegians who make no excuses for their fellow countryman.  In this affirmation of condemnation there is a recognition of a universal principle--murder most foul is just that, murder most foul.  It cannot be excused nor justified by even very legitimate concerns.  There is no excuse.

It is the willingness to condemn Brevik which gives the West the right to condemn the actions of his spirit brothers of al-Qaeda or Taliban.  Murder most foul is murder most foul.  No excuses.  No moral justification.  No resorting to theological spinning and weaving.

In sharp contrast, Muslims of the Mideast and Northwest Asia have been willing to pile vitrupitation upon vitriol in their consideration both of Brevik and the early speculation that a Muslim group might have been behind the atrocities.  At the same time, there is not and never has been the slightest rejection of the murder most foul committed by Muslims in the name of the Prophet and faith.

In this difference resides the justification for not censoring criticism of Islam.  In this difference resides the need to continue critiquing that which deserves it within Muslim ranks.  Brevik is an anomaly and has been cast out as such both in Norway and throughout the West.  In the lands of Islam, however, Brevik's spirit brother, Osama bin Laden, remains a hero, a model, a zenith to which all too many aspire.

Consider that difference and ask yourself, "Are all cultures really equal?"

Murder, Murder Most Foul

It continues to appear that the government of Afghanistan, a creation of the United States and its associates in the ISAF, is committed to perpetrating judicial homicide on a man named Said Musa.  The crime which will lead Mr Musa to meeting the public hangman is that of having converted to Christianity.

Said Musa is an amputee having lost a leg to a landmine while serving in the Afghan army some years ago.  More recently he has married, sired several children, worked with the Red Cross as an advisor to and facilitator of Afghans who had lost limbs--and become a Christian.  His conversion became a matter of record last May when  his image appeared on television as part of a program featuring private religious services conducted by and for Afghans only.  He was arrested on 31 May as he sought asylum in the German embassy in Kabul.

Since his arrest he has been confined in the most rigorous and debased conditions.  He has been threatened, assaulted, sexually abused, tormented, and tortured.  That was by the other prisoners.  The court operating under the provisions of a constitution which was approved by the US and in part written by American and other foreign experts, convicted Musa of the capital offense of conversion from Islam to Christianity.  It may be noted that Mr Musa received no defense as the lawyers both refused his case and spit in his face--literally.

The government of Hamid Karzai--our guy in Kabul--has justified its action by pointing to the constitution and laws of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.  They have, in essence, hoisted us by our own petard.  They have mocked our notion of the rule of law.

As Paul Marshall commented yesterday, Mr Musa's plight has received little attention in the Western media.  He also noted that Mr Musa has written to President Obama addressing him as "brother."  The salutation was undoubtedly meant in the same way the Apostle Paul wrote to his "brothers and sisters in Christ."  In his letter Said Musa begged for help.  None has been forthcoming beyond a mild chiding from Secretary Clinton.

It is not so much that Mr Musa begs for his life although it is clear that he in a manner akin to that of Jesus hopes very much that the bitter cup will be passed elsewhere.  Indeed, his major plea is for transfer to a less oppressive, less torment ridden prison.  He is willing to die for his faith and according to the dictate of his conscience.

Mr Musa is a martyr in the making.  He is not a martyr of the Muslim sort eager to die provided that in the process of dying he can kill.  Rather he is a most reluctant martyr, prodded to his death not by thoughts of paradise and waiting soulless virgins but by acceptance of the gift of redemption provided by the sacrifice of Jesus, defined in Christian doctrine as simultaneously the son of man and the Son of God, pure in nature in both aspects.  In this way Said Musa is identical to legions of earlier Christian martyrs from the time of the Roman arenas down to modern times in the former Soviet Bloc.

The looming judicial murder of Said Musa underscores in a particularly tragic way the underlying reasons why the effort to build a modern nation-state in Afghanistan has been doomed to fail but also why the US and other civilized states must abandon any notions of peaceful coexistence with states dominated by advocates of political Islam.  It points to the most fundamental reason that relations with Muslim majority states will be asymmetrical at best.

The root cause of failure in Afghanistan is the nature and character of Islam itself.  The same applies to our attempts to modify Iranian behavior or to broker a peace in the Mideast.  Islam in and of itself can provide an absolute barrier.

In ways which are terrifyingly evident, Islam is a religion of insecurity, fear, and hatred.  The theology of Islam is based on fear, fear of hell, fear of somehow, in some way, failing to do what the deity wills.  Islam's endemic insecurity is obvious in its intolerance, its refusal to compete in the marketplace of ideas, theological or otherwise.  Its insecurity is blindingly evident in the sentence of death imposed on Mr Musa for the crime of following his own conscience.

The antidote to both insecurity and fear prescribed by Islam is hatred.  Not only the Iranian government with its "Day of Hate" demonstrations yesterday in Tehran and elsewhere, but Muslim clerics beyond counting have demanded hate, hate of Christians, hate of Jews, hate of idolaters, hate of infidels, hate of apostates, hate of whomsoever we point our bony fingers of blame at.

No religion other than Islam demands its adherents hate.  No Christian pastor, no Jewish rabbi, no Buddhist bonze, no Hindu guru would urge hatred upon his fellows, would demand hate be directed at all who were beyond the pale of narrowly defined community.  Only Islam prescribes death as the necessary punishment for conversion.

That, bucko, is insecurity, fear, and hatred in one small package.  And, the label on the package is "Islam."

Looking at the case of Said Musa and the context surrounding it, one can only wonder at what sort of drugs the Bush/Cheney decision makers were taking when they shifted the American mission in Afghanistan from a purely punitive one to one of "nation-building."  One must also wonder at the good sense of the Obama administration in having failed to understand that while we are arguably winning the military engagements in Afghanistan, we are losing the overall war.

Had we stopped with a purely punitive objective in Afghanistan, we would have seen the last of that benighted place years ago.  Also we would have fired a cautionary shot across the bows of the Pakistanis who favor political Islam.  And, we would not have the blood of Mr Musa on our hands.

The lessons for the future are clear.

If we ever must consider an armed intervention in a Muslim majority venue, the intervention must be sharply focused on punishing the bad guys.  There must be no thought of nation-building or otherwise uplifting the great unwashed.

The other lesson is broader.  Islam is the problem.  The US and other civilized states must not only understand this bitter truth, they must start firm and ongoing programs with the goal of undercutting the ideological appeal of Islam, particularly those forms most given to political expression.  The US and other civilized states as an urgent matter of self-interest and self-defense must put an increasing emphasis on the values and norms of the West most directly responsible for the overall success of the West over the past centuries.  In short, we must blow our horn--loudly.

Full disclosure:  The Geek is not a member or adherent of any faith community.

Not Much Of A Merry Christmas In Muslim Majority Countries

There can be little doubt but the advocates of violent political Islam have determined that no Christian shall remain above ground anywhere in Muslim majority countries.  From Morocco to the Philippines, from Egypt to Nigeria, it is a very risky business to be a practicing Christian.  It is nearly as lethal to be a practicing Christian in the Muslim dominated states today as it was to have been a Jew in Nazi Germany.

Having purged Jews from their midst to a degree which would have warmed the hearts of Hitler, Himmler and Co., the Muslims now have set their very deadly sights on the Christian communities.  As events of recent vintage in Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, and other, nearby locations have made plain, there is a slow motion sort of holocaust underway.

And, the reactions of Christians generally?  The response of major American denominations?  The US government?

With the notable exception of a few articles of protest and a handful of Congressional Resolutions, the word best characterizing the push back by Christians in the US as well as the US government is "none."

Nor is the lack of outrage, of protest, of sharp rebuttal limited to American denominations and officials.  The Pope in his Christmas address to the faithful made a low key reference to the plight of Iraqi Christians while reserving his big rhetorical guns to support the Catholics in China who resist the official, government approved pseudo-hierarchy   The Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the head of the world wide Anglican communion, took his Christmas opportunity to demand that the rich share in the sacrifices of governmental austerity.

Perhaps so few religious and political leaders care much because the Christians under attack generally are not members of well established, well-known denominations either in the US or Western Europe.  Copts and Syriac Christians are not long standing communities of faith in the US or Western Europe.  Few who occupy the pews of American churches are aware of the long history of these groups, how they trace their roots back to the days shortly after Paul and the other Apostles shook the dust of so many towns across the Middle East, leaving behind the seeds of a potent view of life and God which would give rise ultimately to these denominations now under terminal threat.

In dogma and doctrine, the Christians of Iraq, Syria, Egypt and elsewhere may differ markedly from Western denominations, but in their basic confession of faith they share identity with all the myriad Protestant churches as well as both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communities.  They are Christians as have been their ancestors in the region for the past two thousand years.  Only Jews have been constantly present in the Mideast for longer than these Christian confessions.

And, like the Jews, these Christians have been the target of Muslim hostility since the all conquering scimitar first cut through the clear air of the region spreading the words of the Prophet not by force of reason but by sheer force of arms.  In recent times, resurgent political Islam has taken up the scimitar with even deadlier intent and consequence.

The ancient approach of "convert or die" has been replaced by the simpler, "die, Christian."  And as the blood flows and fear grows, the West watches in silence.  The Christians of the West as well as the governments of the purportedly Christian majority Western states watch, wring their hands, and neither do nor even say anything in protest, in opposition, or in support of their badly beleaguered Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

What a far and shameful distance this behavior is from the days of the Cold War when all Christian denominations as well as the governments took sharp issue with the treatment of Christians meted out by the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe.  Those of a certain age can remember well the days of prayer, the petitions of protest, the resolutions of condemnation focusing on the Christian martyrs to their faith and the persecution they suffered from the atheistic governments of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact states.

The American Congress was so motivated by the atheistic nature of Communism and the concomitant persecution of Christians that it inserted the words, "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.  Public schools, not simply those of a parochial nature, invited speakers whose subject was the relentless oppression of Christianity and Judaism by the Communists.

All together the subject of Christian persecution by Communists was a constant theme of American culture through the Fifties and most of the Sixties.  It was a very big deal, a sort of social and political definer, a way of expressing the superiority of Western (particularly American) ideals and values.

None of that exists today.  Nor, given the triumph of faux-sensitivity and its operational handmaiden, political correctness, can it be expected to exist.  Not without intense, focused effort on the part of Christians of genuine commitment to their faith.

The simple fact that President Obama condemned violence in Iraq following the savage attack on the Baghdad church without once using the words "Christian" or "church" is telling.  It bespeaks the utter failure of commitment or even sensitivity to the rights and dignity of a group--Christians--which is subject to lethal attack simply because it is Christian.

Once before American leaders and Christian congregations were silent in the face of evil predicated upon religious belief.  That time was the Thirties when the first intimations of the foul antisemitism which would produce the extermination camps of the Holocaust were printed in American papers.  In the face of mounting evidence that the Jews of Germany and Europe generally were at risk of being wiped out, most American denominations kept silent.  The same was true of the US government.

It was because of the silence in the run up to the Nazi slaughter that American churches and government alike became so vocal in the denunciation of Communist persecution of Christians and, later, Jews.  We had learned the dangers of silence, of business as usual, of fearing to make a bad situation even worse.

Now, we Americans apparently have forgotten the truth of the Thirties and are somehow embarrassed by our collective behavior of the anti-Communist days of the Fifties and Sixties.  It is telling that today's leaders both in pulpit and politics were young in the worst days of the Cold War, were exposed unceasingly to the rhetorical overkill of those days.  We learned, falsely it seems, that speaking out is somehow ill-mannered and insensitive, somehow boorish and unsophisticated, in some mysterious way damaging to the self-esteem of the haters, the persecutors, the killers.

In the instant case, the Muslims, or at least those who are either exponents of political Islam or by their silence tacit supporters of those who preach hate, demand "death to Christians."  The situation today is far closer to that which prevailed in Germany during the Thirties and that makes silence by us in the West either personally or through leaders who fear to take a stand complicit in the crimes committed in Muslim majority states.

It is long past time for American denominations to stand up and demand an end to the butchery being done in the name of Islam.  At the very least American churches should insist that our government take a principled position against the slow motion holocaust underway in so much of the Muslim world.  American Christians should be insisting that our government use all the instruments at its disposal to stop the persecution, end the killings, succor the hurt, give refuge to those who must flee literally for their lives.

Anything less is not only anti-Christian it is most assuredly un-American.

(Full disclosure: The Geek is not a member of any denomination or community of faith.)

Obama The "Muslim"

A very great deal of ink both real and virtual has been spilled in the wake of the Pew poll showing a spike in the percentage of Americans who either think President Obama is a Muslim or simply throw up their hands and answer "don't know." Through all the fog over the president's religious beliefs or lack thereof, a single point demands acknowledgement.

Mr Obama is seen as fundamentally lacking in (a) honesty, (b) candor, (c) understanding of the American predicaments and (d) commitment to the well-being of We the People both domestically and as a player in international affairs. The president's often noted style of cerebral detachment has been widely perceived as utter indifference to the decline of American fortunes both at home and around the world.

In short, The Nice Young Smiley Man From Chicago has been increasingly viewed as not being like the rest of us, not a member in good standing of We the People. His evident hauteur, arrogance, willingness to view so many Americans and their very real worries about the present and future in both domestic and foreign contexts as unworthy of his concern.

Americans have long expected that their politicians, particularly their president, evidently subscribe to what can best termed the American civic religion. This religion, as President Eisenhower indicted through the fog of intentionally warped syntax, is a loose fusion of Judaic and Christian values and imperatives, the product of that World War II era American invention, "the Judeo-Christian heritage."

Subscription to this civic religion requires some specifically liturgical components: going to church at least now and then, invoking the name of the deity on appropriate occasions, and making appropriate genuflections to the power of prayer.

Beyond that it requires acting in ways which are commensual with fundamentally Judeo-Christian values and beliefs. These include an eschewing of unnecessary secrecy, an emphasis upon the better aspects of human behavior, a support for American values politically and socially.

Overall, the requirements of adhering to and expressing the American civic religion are neither onerous nor difficult. Presidents from FDR to Bill Clinton have done so effortlessly and without any questions arising about the nature and character of their beliefs.

Americans are not comfortable with politicians, again particularly presidents, who are too religious, too given to invoking the deity as justification for their policies. George W. Bush was culpable of this--particularly in foreign policy. He was given to averring that God had called him to be president; that God had placed certain tasks before him. His references to the deity, to missions imposed upon him by that deity served to denature his protestations that the US was waging war on adherents of violent political Islam and not Islam per se.

President Obama has gone too far, way too far, in the opposite direction. His policies have seemed to have been predicated upon both an undue concern for the high opinion of Muslims and a complete disregard for the imperatives of the American civic religion.

It is easy to see how many Americans could come to view the president's constant "outreach" to Muslim states and governments as a sign that he is truckling to the perceived dictates of the Muslim faith. When coupled with the administration's cavalier treatment of Israel--which in and of itself violates the "Judeo-Christian heritage"--the view is that Mr Obama is tilting toward Islam as Islam rather than pursuing a clear, rational foreign policy.

Mr Obama's scoffing at "American exceptionalism" as well as his deprecation of the moral right of the US to operate on the global stage without the full, consensual approval of the "international community" also violates the foundation of the American civic religion.

For generations now the American public has viewed the efforts of its government to inculcate stability, deter war, uplift democracy, protect and foster the rights of individual humans not simply as foreign policies but as virtual mandates from the vague deity of the American civic religion. Mr Obama's words and actions have called this long treasured belief into serious question. At the same time he has advanced no real world based justification for having undercut these values and policies.

Even without the purely domestic considerations which may serve to show how Mr Obama has spurned the American civic religion, the foreign policy aspects alone demonstrate how simple it can be to conclude that the president may be either a Muslim of a person whose religious center cannot be seen nor understood.

Whether Mr Obama and others of the multi-cultural, blame-America-first, nationalism-is-dead school like it or not, the US, or, to err on the side of accuracy, We the People, have been and are informed predominately by the religions of Europe--Christianity and Judaism. We have denatured the core of both faiths significantly as we developed our unique, non-compulsory civic religion of the past seventy-five or so years. A politician, particularly a president, ignores this ground truth at peril.

Barack Obama may be a Christian. He might be an animist. It doesn't matter. What matters is that the president's words, actions, policies, even his body language, has conveyed both dismissal and distaste directed at the American civic religion, the "Judeo-Christian heritage." As long as he does so there is no surprise that a greater and greater percentage of We the People will view him as an adherent of a hostile religion or as a person for whom religion in any and all its myriad forms is a stranger passing in the night.

Turkey Must Be Christian Again!

And, while we're at it so should Egypt, Syria and Iraq. Similarly Iran (nee Persia) should be reclaimed by Zoroastrians.

These sectarian alterations are only in line with the oft repeated trope by various and sundry exponents of Islam to the effect that Jews are recent interlopers on "historic Muslim territory." This superficial plaint overlooks a basic reality of history which applies not only in the disputed territories but throughout the Mideast.

Christianity, for the benefit of those who are historically challenged, emerged in the land now known as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and, most importantly, Turkey. The great traveling salesman of Christianity, the Apostle Paul, worked with effective assiduousness to plant the new faith in gentile communities throughout the region. He did so with words, spoken and written, and not the sword.

The history of early Christianity is the history of the area which became the Eastern Roman Empire with its capital in the new city of Constantinople. For centuries before as well as after the moment when Constantine pronounced Christianity to be the state religion, the cities of the East, the bishops of the East, the Emperor of the Eastern Empire (and the Empresses ) created Christianity. The creation of the Church conferences--which occurred without major exception in cities now in Turkey--included the Great Schism which resulted in the split between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic confessions.

The Eastern Roman Empire was Christian. So also was the North African littoral during the period of Visigoth domination. Constantinople outranked Rome as the center of Christianity. For centuries the same can be said of Alexandria, the center of the ancient Coptic church. Other cities of the (now) Arab Mideast were rivals of both Rome and Constantinople. While there was fighting between the Christians of differing perspectives on such key issues as the nature of the Trinity, the nature of the Christ, it is important to note that expansion of Christianity did not rely exclusively or even primarily on the use of armed force.

The most critical result of the internecine warfare which blotted so much of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh centuries was the weakening of the vibrant Christian communities of the Mideast so that no organized resistance could be mounted when the sword waving Muslims exploded out of the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. So demoralized were the Christians of the region following the generations of internal fighting that the Muslims were initially welcomed as the bearers of peace and tranquility. (That view would change.)

Constantinople, however, held out. The wars between the Byzantines and the Muslims saw Christian fortunes wax and wane. Still, the ancient capital of the Eastern Empire held out--even after it was sacked by Crusaders of Catholic adherence. Not until 1453 and then only because two renegade Christians, one British and the other Hungarian, built and operated the giant artillery pieces capable of demolishing the city's walls were the Muslims--Seljuk Turks--successful in militarily obliterating Christianity there, replacing it with an Islam of forced conversion.

Turkey has been Muslim for only 557 years. Before that it had been Christian for more than ten centuries. By the reasoning employed Muslims as regards Israel and Palestine, the followers of Islam are recent interlopers not entitled to a right of peaceful enjoyment of the conquered Christian land.

The same analogy applies to other one time Christian centers of the Mideast. Sure, the Muslims have been squatting in these historically Christian areas for longer, but they established their presence by force of arms, by conquest, by subjugation of the indigenous population and culture--including religion. From Iraq to the Atlantic coast of Morocco, Christians whether Arian or Orthodox, Coptic or Roman Catholic were suppressed, robustly.

Following the Muslim line of logic--that "recent" arrival and the use of force equals illegitimacy, it is only right that Egypt be returned to the Copts, Morocco to the Arians (if any have survived their repression by Rome for "heresy.") Turkey must be given back to the Eastern Orthodox Church (and the great church of Hagia Sophia be restored to its pre-Muslim grandeur.) The bloody success of the Shia of Iran must be rectified by a bringing back of Zoroastrian beliefs.

Of course these reversions are as realistic as Obama's vision of a world free of the nuclear djinn. However, as a thought experiment the exercise does underscore the absurdity of the Muslim argument that Israel is a foreign implant in the authentic eternal body of Islam. It also shows the intellectual bankruptcy of the Muslim notion holding that the Iberian Peninsula having once been conquered and subjugated by force now belongs forevermore to the Sons of the Prophet.

Listen up, Muslims and apologists, history has no independent existence. It is not some sort of force standing apart from the actions of humanity. Rather it is a record, a record of, in part, winners and losers. The Christians lost in their own historic heartland--and they got over it. Muslims "lost" in Israel. They can't get over it.

The choice for the Muslims is simple: Accept the fact that your wars and terrorism have failed; or, accept more misery and death in the years to come. In either event your choices will not be an invocation of "history" but rather making more entries on the record of human actions, both the wise and the stupid.

A Follow On To Yesterday's Post

Once upon a time the Geek's mother sat him down and said, "Geek don't ever discuss either religion or politics--and above all else don't talk about them together." Mom was right. People tend to see or hear what they want to see or hear and not what is actually said or written.

So it was with yesterday's essay on "Christianism" as the first cousin of "Islamism."

The Geek has been contacted by some good, sincere Christians who took his essay to mean that he was under the impression that all Christians wanted to roll back the calender to pre-Enlightenment times and wanted to install some sort of Christian theocracy.

Of course the Geek wrote nothing of the sort. The fault must, of course, reside with him and not the readers who missed his point, leaping to the erroneous conclusion that the Geekster had turned anti-Christian in his dotage. To make the record clear: The Geek is not against any particular religion or even religion in general.

The Geek is, however, very much in opposition to groups or individuals who attempt to enforce or impose their belief system through either the power of the state or the even more potent force of fear.

Islamism is a subset of Islam in which the goal of the proponents is the eradication of the "House of War" as all non-Muslims are dubbed by the sacred writings of the faith. Similarly "Christianism" is a subset of Christianity in which the political goal of the adherents is the creation of the mythic days of long ago when the Great Chain of Being was the official paradigm for a secure, orderly, harmonious, and just social and political order.

To both the Islamist and the Christianist the accomplishment of the goal reigns supreme. The presumed benefits, it is believed by members of both groups, would be so beneficial to the entire human race that all methods might be used with ethical justification.

The Islamists, particularly those who have embraced jihad have made it abundantly clear that even the most violent and fear producing tactics are acceptable, even laudable, in pursuit of the goal of defeating the "House of War" and those Muslims deemed to be apostates.

Given the nature of the majority of Muslim majority states in which the instruments of democracy are either weak or absent, the rush to violence can be understood even if not applauded. Also quite easy to understand is the frustration and anger bred within the Islamist community by the existence of major disparities in political power, social status, and economic security which exist in so many Muslim majority states. The perceived failure of either society or polity to solve the many problems along with the palpable lack of judicial, economic, and political independence, transparency, and incorruptibility provide a sound basis to advocate a return to the putatively"pure" faith of the early years of Islam as illustrated by the Koran and the life of the Perfect Man, Mohammad, and his Companions.

The motivations of the Christianists in the US are also easy to both see and understand. When the Christianists critique contemporary America, they emphasize their perception of moral decay on a massive scale along with rampant materialism, a degenerate focus on the rights, privileges and worth of the individual, the corruption of business and politics. In these criticisms the Christianists take a position identical to that of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood after his short stay in the US immediately after World War II.

In their criticisms the Christianists are no different from a large number of Christians, Jews, and secular humanists. One need not be a Christianist or even a Christian to view with dismay the end effect of the multitudinous changes which have manifested themselves in the US during the post World War II period.

There is nothing unique, nothing new, nothing noteworthy in the Christianist indictment or its bill of particulars. It has all been said before. Many, many times.

The difference between Christianists and all other Christians--and non-Christians as well--is their view of the necessary solution and the means which might be justified in securing that solution. The Christianist is identified not by religion per se or the nature of the complaints but simply by the nature of the solution and acceptable methods.

This is precisely the same mechanism by which the distinction between Islamist and all other Muslims might be parsed. Or, to err on the side of accuracy, parse themselves.

Now for the hard part. Take a deep breath, we are going to enter some deep historical, anthropological, and psychological water.

The first, most important task for a community of faith to undertake is one of decision. A decision must be made between several options. The community may remain silent, detached from social, economic, and political matters, focusing instead upon the religious development of every member of the community. Or, the community may choose to actively join the political process with a view toward becoming an integral part of the governing elite. Finally, the community may decide to stand back, apart from the political class, and engage in the prophetic activity of criticism and exhortation.

At different times in the history of the US and Europe, the assorted communities of faith have chosen each of these options. The distillation of historical experience demonstrates that a community of faith has the greatest, most positive impact upon the larger society when it uses the third option--the prophetic option.

The avenue of avoidance, of ignoring the problems, turbulence and disorder of the larger society so that maximum efforts can be made on the individual's development in the faith by definition assures a smaller impact on society generally. Still, a close reading of the historical record for both Europe and the US shows clearly that leaders in all fields of endeavor have been guided and motivated by the principals and beliefs of their faith. Sometimes the outcomes have been bad. At other times the result has been good, even very good. On balance, the latter has been more common than the former.

The lure of power is more seductive than any aspect of sex. Indeed it has been observed that power is the greatest aphrodisiac known. Thus it is not at all surprising that communities of faith have joined not only the political process but the governing elite as well. Historically, right on down to the years of the Bush/Cheney administration, this option has been the worst choice.

OK. That is one set of basics. Take another breath. Time for the second round.

In the US a community of faith has three avenues available to it in seeking to address the problems it believes demand solution. These are the same three alternatives available to all groups seeking to solve problems, change the status quo in any manner.

The three avenues are these: persuasion, litigation, coercion.

It must be understood that communities of faith--including those of the Christianists-- deserve access to the Public Square on an equal footing with all comers. Unfortunately, perhaps tragically, communities of faith have been denied their rights to the Public Square increasingly over the past fifty years. This wrong-headed denial of access has been incorrectly predicated upon the requirements of separating church from state.

As a result faith predicated speech in the Public Square has been denatured to the more-or-less formula sort of "God talk" which typifies election campaigns. Far from being a triumph for the secularists amongst us, the suppression of faith derived speech in the Public Square has been a defeat for all of us.

Arguably the blockage of communities of faith from the Public Square has been a major contributor to the sense of alienation and victimization which has characterized much of the rhetoric coming from Christianist groups.

Persuasion is not guaranteed to work. Certainly history demonstrates that efforts to persuade a large and diverse population of the necessity of a given action do not bring quick results. Nor do they bring results which are necessarily satisfactory to the initial proponents.

Everything connected with politics whether local or national is inherently messy, slow, untidy in outcome and the result of necessary compromise. This is guaranteed to dissatisfy many people, particularly those for whom the compromised "cause" constitutes a matter of core belief, basic principle, or, most importantly, personal identity.

It is the slow, messy, and uncertain nature of persuasion in the Public Square which leads groups to seek a quicker, more certain, and more complete solution through litigation. While never predictable in outcome, litigation does have more rules and less ambiguity than the Public Square. It is easier to convince a single judge or a majority of the justices than it is to win an outright victory free of any taint of compromise in the Public Square.

The problem comes with the nature of the final decision. It is imposed from on high, from a remote and unaccountable authority backed by the full weight of the state. Thus the outcome of litigation can (and sometimes does) run counter to the views held by the majority of the public.

In and of itself this is not a fatal difficulty. The courts exist in large measure simply to protect the minority against the power of the majority. Without this factor in play the vox populi could easily become the voice of tyranny.

Over the centuries communities of faith have both initiated litigation or, in the role of defendant, been the cause of major changes in law and social or political attitudes. Resorting to (or even welcoming) litigation is a valid approach for any community of faith including Christianists.

Coercion is the third option. It is a valid approach simply because it works. After all how long could the state exist without the mechanisms of coercion at its disposal? Communities of faith have a long and distinguished record of employing non-violent means of coercion to achieve their goals. The American civil rights movement of the Sixties is an outstanding example of the potency of non-violent yet coercive means to achieve a goal against very significant opposition.

There is no reason that Christianists (or Islamists for that matter) cannot or should not use the methods of non-violent coercion which have been employed often and well by other communities of faith. Used in conjunction with persuasion coercion of this sort has been proven highly effective in altering deeply rooted behaviors in a majority population.

Violent coercion can be justified only on the basis of the pragmatic consideration. It works. The anti-choice movement in the US which is in large measure manned by Christianists has shown the effectiveness of sub-lethal coercion, sub-lethal terror, particularly when punctuated by high profile episodes of lethal coercion, genuine terrorism by anyone's understanding. Violent protests, facility destruction, and the occasional homicide have proven far more effective in preventing women from exercising this particular aspect of reproductive choice than have either litigation or access to the Public Square.

With the possible exception of the use of sub-lethal but still violent coercion there is nothing in the use of methods which distinguishes the Christianist from all other communities of faith or any pressure or special interest group of a purely secular nature for that matter.

So, how come there is any utility to the use of the term, "Christianist" in describing a particular sub-set of Christianity generally? It isn't as if they resemble the Islamists let alone the jihadi.

Well, bucko, the distinction gains its utility from the issue of goals far more than it does methods even if methods employed finally does play a part, even a major one in distinguishing the Christianist from others of the Christian faith.

Whether a single issue entity such as Operation Rescue, a more-or-less moderate group such as the Discovery Institute, or a totalistic (and so far very fringe) bunch such as the Christian Dominionists, all Christianists seek the end to all perceived contemporary problems, turbulence and injustices by turning back the calender to a presumed historical Utopia.

Of the assorted Christianist organizations, Operation Rescue and others of similar nature have the most limited retrogressive goal. They will be satisfied, at least in major part, by going back in time to the years before various court decisions including but not limited to Roe v. Wade provided women with a wider selection of legal mechanisms to control their reproductive destinies.

As the "Wedge Document" as well as various writings make abundantly clear the Discovery Institute as well as other entities in the Creationist camp want to roll the calender back to the centuries preceding the Enlightenment in both its Scottish and French forms. In the estimate of leaders within this segment of the Christianist movement the sins attendant upon the Enlightenment far outweigh its benefits. The campaign against Darwin (to use the incorrectly and grossly oversimplified icon of the totality of evolutionary biology) is intended simply to be the nose of the camel in the post-Enlightenment tent.

The Creationists have used the Public Square in a sort of stealth jihad to gain control of school systems on both the local and state level in order to ban the teaching of evolution unless accompanied with a Creationist or Intelligent Design slant on the comings and development of life on Earth. The expansion beyond Darwin is explicit in such intellectual castrations as eliminating the Big Bang and continental drift from curricula. Even when ultimately rejected by voters or the courts, the effort is to deny the Enlightenment and bring back the supposed halcyon days of stability, harmony, and justice presumed to have existed during the static days of the Great Chain of Being.

The extremists of the Christian Dominion have the most expansive goal. Their intent is to establish a theocracy in the US. In this vision a Godly, harmonious and just society would be brought into existence by the application of the plethora of laws in the Old Testament and complete obedience to the laws of the deity as interpreted and applied by the clergy. (Sound familiar? Thought so, just insert Koran and Shariah in the appropriate spots.)

While there is no realistic probability that the most extreme goals such as those of Christian Dominionism will come to pass, this is no reason to ignore the potency of the Christianists. Nor is it any reason to overlook the similarities in motive and method between the Christianists and the Islamists.

Most importantly the existence of Christianists just like the obvious presence of Islamists in the world today provides the most robust justification for fully understanding not only religious doctrine and belief systems per se, but for appreciating the close, even intimate relationship between religion and politics.

And, this, mom, is why the Geek put your well meant advice aside.

Tis The Season To Be---

Thinking about religion. Not theology or doctrine or liturgy or even the favorite of skeptics, plausibility but rather the ways in which religions become the foundation of political acts.

The Geek has posted often about the nature of Islamism, his shorthand term for politically oriented Islamic groups and individual Muslims. He has also posted frequently on jihadism which is the armed and violent progeny of Islamism.

Overall, in so far as a single goal unites all the Islamist and Islamist jihadist groups it is that portion of the Islamic belief system as expressed not only it Islam's sacred writings but in the vast and ancient corpus of Islamic jurisprudence which calls for constant struggle to both protect the Muslim community of faith and expand that community until it incorporates the entirety of the human race. The "House of War" as non-Muslims are characterized must be confronted and ultimately defeated if the age of perfect peace, harmony and justice for all people everywhere is to be achieved.

The longing for social, economic and political harmony, an absence of turbulence and a presence of community solidarity is deeply rooted in the human mind. It is a longing that is addressed by religions generally--as well as by assorted ideologies which are purely, even militantly secular.

Advocates of a religiously based harmonious and just community, whether it be one which is limited in size or global in nature often point to some allegedly Utopian time and place far in the distant past. The mythic Garden of Eden is such a time and place. So also is the Arabian Peninsula of the Eighth Century for at least a goodly portion of Muslims. And, for some Christians the halcyon time and place was Europe in the centuries between the fall of the Roman Western Empire and the coming of the Enlightenment.

Anti-modernity is the thread which connects Islamists and their Christian counterparts. (Hmm, what to call them? Kierkegaard has already used the term "Christendom" to cover the institutional Church so that one is out. How about "Christianists?" At least that term is equivalent in derivation to the use of the word "Islamist.")

Christianists view the Enlightenment and its aftermath as having destroyed the presumably stable, allegedly communitarian, and putatively harmonious later Middle Ages. In the estimate of Christianists such as those who founded and operate the Discovery Institute and its many ancillaries, the Enlightenment brought in its wake a dissolution of morals, a rampant materialism and a degenerate focus on the individual. In the estimate of these folks and others of like mind the consequences of the Enlightenment regardless of any progress in technological and scientific matters has been destructive overall of both the human community and the human spirit.

It seems that Christianists take as their paradigm for a more perfect society the Medieval Chain of Being. The well-ordered and of necessity harmonious human social, economic and political structures explicit in the Chain of Being with its hierarchical placement of all people, creatures and things from the deity down to the rocks and hills constitutes the ultimate touchstone. In a way which is nearly identical the Islamist sees the life of Mohammad, the Perfect Man, and the society which surrounded him over a millennium ago as being the infallible guide to how life should be lived.

Both the Islamist and the Christianist would agree that individuals and societies which exist in perfect keeping with the divinely appointed strictures would be pleasing to the deity. Each would argue to his listeners that the way to end the unpleasant, discomfiting, disconcerting complexities of life in the present would be by way of invoking the power of the past, the potency resident in either the Great Chain of Being or the life of the Prophet, the Perfect Man and his society.

Both Christianist and Islamist would agree that the evils of the world today have been and are the work of stiff necked people who refuse to submit to the strictures and requirements ordained by the deity. If only these stiff necked and evil doing people would either come to their senses and submit or, in the alternative, be removed, the Utopian past would be restored.

The Geek agrees that life can be very confusing, quite messy, often frustrating, and that it might be nice to call, "Time Out!" every now and then so that changes might be chewed, swallowed, and effectively digested. There is no doubt but that people at all times and places have felt exactly the same.

There is no doubt but that generation after generation, "Those were the good old days." Yep, the Good Old Days when life was simple, orderly; when people were nice to one another, children always polite and respectful; a bygone era when an honest day's work brought an honest day's pay, the customer was always right, the trains (or stagecoach) ran on time; when devout folks met every Sunday at the little church in the valley; a golden hued time when politicians were public servants; an eternal Spring when the ice cream was always made from whole milk and real chocolate. You get the point. The myth of the good old days is as old as the human race.

You also see the corollary, right, bucko? The corollary which reads, "The Good Old Days never were." That one. The one the Christianists and Islamists alike overlook. The corollary upon which their movements will, of necessity, founder.

The Great Chain of Being never really existed. Kings did not bow to Popes--particularly after the nation-state started its long emergence accompanied with such features as armies. Peasants never sweated happily for their "betters" as the numerous pre-Enlightenment revolts demonstrate in all their bloody colors. (Even animals did not walk cheerfully to slaughter back then or now, if the proliferation of wild cows, the escapees from nearby ranches indicates to the Geek whenever he hies himself into the forest seeking firewood.)

Nor is Eighth Century Arabia a halcyon place, a perfect model for life today. In all probability the people of the time periodically bewailed the changes wrought by the Perfect Man--particularly when the inevitable power struggles for succession reared their bloody heads.

A Utiopianized historical period is a pathetic guide for a dynamic life. And, make no mistake about it--human life is dynamic in nature. It must be. The alternative is stultification, decay and ultimately, death.

The underlying dilemma facing all of us is the tension between the need for a dynamic of constant change less we stultify and die and the need for a secure, harmonious social, economic, and political life along with the appearance of security those features provide. With the coming of the myriad events lumped under the names, "Renaissance," "Reformation" and "Enlightenment," the people and states of Europe and North America took one direction--the road sign reading "dynamic." Other peoples, other states, which for whatsoever reason did not partake of the type of events subsumed under these three terms took another direction, the direction of stasis, decay and ultimately a form of national death.

The people at the Discovery Institute who seek to put the genie of the Enlightenment back into the bottle from which it sprang by denying Darwin, denouncing Wallace, pretending contemporary geology and cosmology do not exist are engaging in a labor of Sisyphus. Like that mythic figure, the rock will always roll back upon them. The most extreme Christianists, the men of Christian Dominionism (this merry bunch is Taliban with a Bible, al-Shabaab with a Cross) are doomed to even more ignominious failure.

Ultimately, so also are the Islamists, particularly those of the jihad. As events in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and even Somalia have shown, people may find the back-to-the-past-as-the-future attractive in the abstract but they find it most distasteful in practice. Christians found the limits of theocratic rule centuries ago in Calvin's Geneva experiment or the pale imitation in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Christianism, Islamism, like Facism and even Marxism-Leninism can exist only if all features of human creativity are well and truly suppressed. Such repression, totally effective repression, can only exist for short periods and then only at the cost of all innovation, all invention, all discovery, all genuine progress. Progress can come in any field only by a dynamic of creativity. And, all creativity in any field comes only with concomitant destruction of the old.

We are divided in our own minds as to which is more important: security or freedom. We are internally torn over whether dynamic change should have priority or should pride of place go to stability, harmony and consequently lowered risk, increased predictability and certainty.

While the chasm may exist in the psyches of each of us, the answers have already been entered on the pages of history. You can read them by comparing the past five hundred years history of Europe and of the Muslim societies.

Any questions?

DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!

In yet one more totally predictable reaction to the protests against the mullahocracy and its hijacked election, a high ranking cleric, a member of the Expediency Council, the Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami, has called for the execution of "leaders" of the protest movement. What else is new, Ayatollah?

From its start right on to the present day, the mullahs of Iran and their followers have called for, chanted en masse, practiced, and seemed to have orgasms over the very idea of killing. No group, not even the Islamist jihadists who state quite believably that they "love death" more than their opponents "love life," have made such a fetish of death.

The Geek has little use for religion other than the manifold ways in which institutionalised expressions of internal beliefs in some deity or another have been employed to political ends. That is, the ways in which religions have sought to obtain, retain, expand, and exploit their creeds, their dogma, in order to directly and substantially exercise power over the perceptions, beliefs, and actions of people generally.

As part of his checkered and all-too-lengthy educational career, the Geek has compiled credits in comparative religion, the sociology of religion, the anthropology of religion, and the history (often bloody) of religion. This study has included not only the three largest monotheistic religions but those with many deities as well as none at all. Looking at Iran and the actions of the Islamist jihadist groups has only reinforced a conclusion reached tentatively many years ago. Of all the religions, great and small, past or present, Islam holds the record as the faith most given to death, most preoccupied with hell, most willing and able to capitalise on the pervasive human fear of death.

While the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, contains more than a little blood drenched prose, the portions dealing with purported genocide so often pointed to by apologists for Islam constitute only a very small portion of the faith history of the ancient Hebrews--and modern Jews. Beyond that, as archeology demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt, the destruction of cities and slaughter of peoples which blemish the Hebrew Bible simply did not happen.

While faith per se did not require the addition of mass killings which did not happen, the existence of the Hebrew religion as an instrument of state did. The state, its kings and priests, needed belief in the power and ruthlessness of the Hebrew deity in order to preserve and expand their power over a people which, the Hebrew Bible shows, had a powerful tendency to factionalisation. The myth of deity-inspired genocide was a propaganda tool of the rulership.

The message of Jesus, the Wandering Sage and Healer of Galilee, made no mention of death, of hell, of a killer deity. His message was one of the inclusiveness of the deity, of the ever-present nature of the Kingdom of Heaven, of the reality that God existed lovingly within each and every human, that the love of God was expressed by the will and ability to love one's neighbor.

As such, the message of Jesus, which resided comfortably within an emerging strain of Jewish theological thought, was a danger to the state. It banished the need for intermediaries between the individual and the deity. It eliminated the requirement for the Temple, for sacrifices, for the surrendering of the individual to authority. Worse, it dispensed with the notion of a specific Chosen People, replacing that concept with one in which all humanity was equally chosen.

Without meaning to be such, Jesus was a clear and present danger to all authority both sacred and secular at a time when there was no meaningful separation between the two. From the rational perspective of those in authority, particularly religious authority, Jesus deserved to die. And, so he did.

Only later, only after Paul and his successors took the simple to state but hard to live message of the Wandering Sage and transformed it into an institutionalised church did death, hell, fear, and authority creep into and eventually transform the message beyond all recognition. As a Church, the Christians needed both a hierarchy and a creed by which an identifiable, controllable structured community could be created.

The Christian Church required the use of fear to promote its power among people. Not surprisingly, the leaders of the emerging Church in the first few centuries of its existence seized upon the human fear of death and its aftermath as the tool. The Church promised that by strict observance of its creedal requirements and obedience to its officials, a pleasant eternal life could be achieved. At the same time, the Church promised eternal punishment of the worst imaginable sort to those who existed outside its ambit or who violated its instructions.

To the present day there are Christian denominations who play the same cards of fear. There are Churches which promise reward to those who hear and obey and eternal hellfire for all others. Since human nature and its basic fears have not altered appreciably since the days of eating cold meat at the mouth of a cave, the "fear-up, fear-down" technique is still effective.

That having been said, let the record show that over the centuries the Christian communities have backed away from the fear soaked messages regarding death and hell. Over the years the Christians have increasingly rediscovered the life oriented, the here-and-now based nature of Jesus' original message.

Similarly, since the fall of the Temple in the wars against the Roman occupiers, the Jewish tradition, the rabbinical tradition, has placed the emphasis where it was in much of the Hebrew Bible. On life. On duty. On service. On the here-and-now. On making the most of the one opportunity we all know we have to live.

Islam is in many, if not all respects, a pastiche of previously extant religions within the Arabian Peninsula. Read in conjunction with the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament as well as what is known about the nature and character of the religions indigenous to the area beyond these two, it is clear that the Koran and accompanying works and sayings of Mohammad are a compilation of that which already existed.

For whatsoever series of reasons, much of that which was stitched together from the fragments of earlier traditions placed an undue focus on death, on hell, on the need to escape the latter when the first inevitably occurs through complete, unquestioning, and absolute submission to the words of the Prophet, the final prophet, the designated ultimate agency of the deity.

The resulting less than edifying pastiche depends upon fear over all else to compel belief, force obedience, assure unanimity of action. The sacred literature of Islam exults death, visions of hell, thoughts of paradise to an extent that surpasses the aggregate of all other religions.

The practice of Islam shows that blood, killing, and dying in the name of the faith persists to a greater degree and a greater longevity than the equivalents in other faiths. A (very) brief review of history shows this.

The crude Christian land grab covered with the vestments of "saving the Holyland" called the Crusades represents a brief period of Christian history. The so-called "religious wars" of Europe in the early Seventeenth Century owed nothing to the doctrinal differences between Catholic and Protestant and everything to the temporal ambitions of princes, kings, and popes.

The exploitation of the New World by the ever-so-Catholic Spanish might have been conducted under the sign of the Cross but it was carried out by the sword for the reward of gold--not God. The British and to a lesser extent, the French were honest enough not to involve theology in their conquest of what Kipling would eventually term, "the lesser breeds without the law."

And, as the record shows, even these colonialists got over it. Ultimately British reformers, for example, employed Christian theology and terms to squash slavery and eventually abandon colonialism. It may have been rather late in the day, but the message of Jesus broke through the conscience of the colonisers whether French or British or even Spanish.

The same cannot be said of Islam. Particularly the expression of Islam in Islamist jihadism. As has been shown again and again over centuries--and certainly in recent years, the Islamist interpretation of the Koran and other sacred writings expresses itself in an orientation toward killing and dying which boggles the civilized mind.

As if the death orientation were not sufficient to churn the stomach of the observer, regardless of that observer's religious affiliations, then there is the barbaric actions of Islamist jihadists ranging from the stonings and other summary executions in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Somalia to the mere maimings purportedly demanded by Sharia law.

The Islamist understanding of Islam deserves--no--demands the condemnation of all civilized people everywhere. Most of all it demands the most severe condemnation and rejection by people who are practicing, observant Muslims.

Islam's sacred writings do contain positive, life-affirming portions which are the equal of any such found in the literature of other religions. The responsibility of observant Muslims is to seize upon these and reject those parts which celebrate death and killing, worship hell with an almost pornographic focus, and capitalise on fear for the purposes of political power.

Unless and until observant Muslims, those for whom the Five Pillars are the centrality of faith, unite in rejection of the Islamist jihadists whether clerics or not, they must stand indicted as co-conspirators in the hijacking of Islam by the worst in their midst.

A religion in order to be a real benefit to those who follow it must focus on life, not death, must serve to promote an openness to other communities rather than to separate, build walls, and foster fear and distrust. A worthy religion is one which recognises in its practices the dignity of human life, the creativity of people, the genus of people for good.

Islamism, whether in Iran or elsewhere, does not serve life, does not celebrate love, does not portray a deity worthy of worship. Islamism is simply the tool of the seekers after power who are willing to climb to the summit on slippery mounds of bloody bodies.

Unless and until observant Muslims unite against those Islamists, those jihadists who worship death and hell, they have absolutely no complaints to make against those who express their revulsion at the evils committed in the name of Allah.

Still Looking For A (Mythical) Moderate Muslim?

If you are looking for the elusive Muslim moderate, bubba, you're in for a long, long search. It's kind of like watching for flying whales or stalking unicorns.

As there are cultural Christians, cultural Jews there are also cultural Muslims. Like Christians or Jews, Muslims may be non-observant, or merely nominal. There may be Muslims who, like many professed Christians, are pro forma in their religious practice. Muslims who do the equivalent of Christians whose butts are in the pews for Christmas and Easter and who otherwise honor their religion far more in the breech than in the observance.

The Geek's nearest neighbor is a Christian. (Truth in blogging requires the Geek to state that the neighbor lives a half mile away over a steep ridge, but out here that's downright next door.)

The neighbor was born and raised a hardshell Baptist and is given to quoting impressively long segments of the King James Bible at the slightest provocation. While he didn't let his daughter go out on dates until after she was married, he smokes, drinks, and cusses like a Marine on steroids. His rear end has not shined a pew for decades. Last Easter Sunday found him out grubbing a new line to his septic tank.

Someday, however, the faith of his childhood may again bloom forth in full flourish of belief. He may become a genuine, authentic full-bore Christian.

That possibility does not worry the Geek at all. What's the worst that can happen if the neighbor lives by the precepts of the New Testament?

Well, he'll turn the other cheek. Go the extra mile. Give his wealth to the poor. Seek social justice. Strive (or at least pray) for peace. Walk meekly and humbly with his Lord.

OK. Absolute worst case, the Geek's neighbor might try to bring the Geek to Jesus. That might be tedious, but it won't be life threatening.

Now what if the Geek's neighbor were to be a Muslim? And what if the neighbor were to return to the faith of his childhood?

The Geek would be damn glad that there was a half mile of bad terrain and no road connecting his land with that of the neighbor. He would also be glad that he had clear fields of fire in the event of the neighbor walking up wearing a bulky overcoat in August.

A genuine Muslim, an authentic Muslim following the Quran, following the life of Mohammad as his guide, must, of absolute necessity and pervasive deep rooted fear of hell, be a jihadist. He must seek to confront the infidel--to pose the infidel with the stark choice of conversion or death.

Death. The ever present theme of Islam, true Islam, the creed of Mohammad. The creed of conquest, of "killing and being killed" to advance the banner of Islam over the world.

Death. The constant, repetitive message of Islamic dominated societies and groups today. The Iranian parliament seeks death as the penalty for "harming mental security in society" on the Internet or any other form of communication. (Whatever that wording might mean. The Geek admists mystification.) See, http://www.khaleejtimes.com/darticlen.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2008/July/middleeast_July44.xml&section=middleeast&col=

Death. The icon of so many sociopaths. The definition of a sociopathic entity.

Death. The anodyne for fear. The fear that permeates so much of Islam. The fear of the hell so graphically, sensuously, even lovingly described in Quran, hadith and so many Islamic sermons over so many centuries.

Death. The ultimate act of submission to divine will. Islam means and is all about submission. Submission to the deity. Submission to the will and example of Mohammad. Submission to the call of the cleric. Submission, finally to the fears implanted in childhood--the fears of judgement and punishment.

The genuine Muslim must go on jihad or, at the very, very least, support it actively and enthusiastically. His fears give him no choice. They allow him no moderation. They provide no means of compromise. No forestalling.

The genuine Muslim sees in martyrdom the end to fear. By following the injunction to "kill the unbelievers wherever you find them" (Sura 9:5), the genuine Muslim knows he will avoid punishment and gain reward. He will end his fears by dying in order to live forever without torment.

Death. This word separates the genuine Muslim from all those others who are nominal, cultural or non-observant fringe elements of Islam. The true Islam, the back-to-basics Islam is the Islam of those who call for death. Those who seek to inflict death. Those who seek self-death.

There is simply no room for "moderates."

Genuine Islam does not, cannot, seek accommodation, compromise or even peaceful coexistence with the infidel. The sociopath is blind to those options as he is to the act of creativity. Sociopaths can only destroy. They cannot create.

Looking back over the sweep of Islam's thirteen hundred years, one is struck by the paucity of creativity. And the plethora of death, destruction.

The so-called "golden age" of Islamic medicine and science was, upon close scrutiny, often based either on an idea from elsewhere such as the concept of zero as a placeholder taken from Hindu India or actually the product of a non-Muslim. The "golden age" saw little science, less literature and a complete distortion of the craft of history.

In the last thousand years or the last hundred or even the last ten, ask yourself how much science, art, literature, new creative ideas has the aggregate Muslim society brought to the human storehouse. And, of that pitifully small amount, how much was done by nominal Muslims living in totally non-Muslim countries or societies?

Fear driven sociopaths cannot, do not create. They can only destroy. They can only wreak death.

Freedom brings creativity in its wake. Freedom of inquiry and freedom of dissent bring new ideas. Freedom from the fear of hell brings a love of life. Loving life results in new ideas, new discoveries, new technologies, new systems, new every thing.

Look not for the moderate Muslim. He does not exist. Rather look for the ways in which we who have enjoyed and profited so much from freedom can liberate those in the chains of a long dead sociopath, Mohammad, the artificer of a political dogma called Islam.

Muhammad: The Lenin of Religion

Both Christianity and Islam are political institutions.

The Geek wants to make that clear. Both Christianity (irrespective of denomination) and Islam (regardless of sect) have sought and continue to seek the ability to directly, materially and substantially manipulate the perceptions, beliefs, and, therefore, the actions of people.

That's what politics is all about. Power.

Both Christianity and Islam use the same tool to gain, retain and expand power over people.

It's a great tool. A sovereign tool. An almost never fail tool. It's used by all who pant after power. All who in one way or another slaver over the thought of controlling others.

The tool?

Fear.

That's right. Fear. The increase of fear. The reduction of fear. Fear.

Fear, chum, yeah, it's wonderful. We all have it as the ready lever for others to yank.

There is one very big, very fundamental and very important difference between Christianity and Islam.

Jesus, the Itinerant Sage and Healer of Galilee whose kerygma was the foundation stone for the towering edifice called Christianity, did not exploit fear to gain either an audience or followers. Indeed, Jesus seemed to be of the view that fear was irrelevant to a full human life.

(Trouble accepting this? The Geek suggests the publications of the Jesus Seminar as a good starting point. On the web, http://jesusseminar.org/Jesus_Seminar/jesus_seminar.html.)

In the message of Jesus there is no mention of hell. No words of God's Wrath. No intimations of judgement. He does not embrace suffering. Neither does he argue that humans must tremble before the deity or kneel in submission to either God or messenger.

Later, even much, much later, as the words of the Wandering Sage and Healer were transmogrified into an institution, a Church seeking authority. Power was the lever of fear pulled. Pulled long and hard.

Jesus didn't seek power. He sought only to deliver a message. A simple, profound message that was easy to hear, easy to understand but hard to live.

Churches, Catholic and protestant alike were and are institutions. They exist to exercise power. Whether the power is used for good or ill is less relevant than the fact that churches are political institutions trafficking in the power business. They must have dogma and creed, liturgy and rituals, rules and standards of membership. They must define themselves by exclusion even as they seek to convert. In all that they do the basic tool is fear. Raise fear. Lower fear.

In this respect churches are just like governments. The difference resides in the ability of governments to use coercion in the here-and-now while churches must rely upon an eschatological system of rewards and punishment.

In short: follow the rules, follow the creed, follow the liturgy, follow Authority and you will be rewarded postmortem. Otherwise--that's right, the eternal cooker for you, pal.

Muhammad was to Jesus as Lenin was to Robert Owen, the gentle Nineteenth Century Utopian socialist.

Muhammad sought to create a political movement, a movement which would successfully unite under a single banner the fractionated society of the Arabian Peninsula. Without commenting on its theological attributes, suffice it to say that the Koran is a political document exploiting fear.

The content of the Koran is well rooted in the Arabian Peninsula's cultural context and is largely derivative in its theology. These aspects are not to be held against either the Koran or the collected sayings of Muhammad. Quite the contrary they are part of the core strength of Islam as a religio-political movement.

The consistency of the creedal statement with a recurrent emphasis upon the unity of religion with social and political life, the need for submission to the deity and the visions of rewards and, more importantly, punishments postmortem have given Islam its ideological power. In this department Islam trumps Christianity.

The pornography of hellfire and brimstone winds through Christianity like a river in the desert, occasionally disappearing for a stretch only to reemerge in full flow.

But, in Islam, hell is right there. In your face. Up close and personal. It even outranks paradise as a subject of lovingly detailed description. Even the Geek feels little shakes and shudders run up his back as he reads the travelogue of perdition.

Like the old theatrical saying has it: The villain gets the best lines.

Lenin said the purpose of terror is to terrorise.

Muhammad must have believed that the purpose of hell is to terrorise.

Of course he was right. Fear of death is a biggie on the chart of human apprehensions. Fear of what happens after death is right up there too--particularly if gruesome visions of hell have come along with mother's milk.

(Perhaps that is why Muslims so often address Allah as the Merciful and Compassionate, even in a declaration of intent to kill infidel women and children. They are hoping against hope that they will receive a little of that mercy, that compassion.)

From a practical perspective it is impossible to argue with Muhammad's approach. It gave him the organizing methodology for a highly successful political movement. The same approach is still at work today.

It is just as effective today. Fear of death and dread of hell are the tools of choice for assorted mullahs and ayatollahs today. It gives the ambitious a clear avenue to power. It gives individuals a reason to die in the hopes of paradise rather than to live under the threat of damnation.

The power of hell to stimulate political action including violent jihad is alive and well as we all know all too well. Quite possibly the suicide bombers and their ilk seek death not because they are enchanted by the possibilities of paradise with cool water and waiting soulless virgins but because living with the nagging image of the fire-filled pit becomes impossible.

Lenin terrorised his way to power. Stalin terrorised his way to expanded power. But terror has its limits. Humans become inured to it. It loses its black magic. It fades away into the background noise of life and the risks of life.

At some point fear reaches its limits as well. This is the ultimate weakness of a religion which relies too much upon it. Life is for living--not obsessing on eternity either with or without burning sulfur.

For awhile relief from fear may be found in hatred or joining with others to chant, "Death to (fill in the blank.)" For a while fear can be defeated by jihad, either violent or not. For a bit the fear might be limited by tossing acid in the face of an unveiled woman.

But not for ever.

The Soviets ultimately found that Lenin's dictum had very real limits. The Islamists who exploit the hellfire of the Koran to their political advantage will find limits as well.

Life is for living and as Jesus reputedly said, "Let the dead bury their dead."