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.

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.

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.

Warning! Stop the "God Gap"

The WaPo reported today on a study sent to the White House by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The Council is influential not by its reputation or size but rather by its close relationship with President Obama since the days he was an ambitious state senator.

The substance of the study is the pernicious influence of secularism on American foreign policy and relations. The thirty-two member committee which authored the report sees this as having resulted in a serious diminishment of our "capabilities." As a result the committee recommended the Obama administration make religion an "integral part of our foreign policy."

Whew!

This view is, to use a Buddhist notion, both good and bad. Religion is a very powerful motivator and consolidator of political action. The world has seen this reality more times than one cares to think about over the past several thousand years.

The world certainly sees the power and pertinacity of religion today. There is no way that an individual, let alone a responsible government, can say that any factor other than religious belief systems has been responsible for the vast majority of killing and dying the past decade.

The American political, academic, and chattering class elite has been flatly schizo about religion and its effects on human behavior--particularly since the potency of religiously predicated fear and loathing was demonstrated so vividly on 9/11. On the one hand the elite of this country (and most of the West generally) has sought to uphold the secular ideal of separation between the instruments of state and the communities of faith(s). On the other they have sought to hold Islam qua Islam harmless against the charge of any linkage between its beliefs and the consequences seen on and after that fateful September morning.

The attempt to remove Islam from the realm of political expression--including violence and terror--is both a disservice to our country and an insult to Islam. In short, insofar as there is a "God gap" in this area, it comes from our willful and repeated insistence that somehow Islam has no political dimension, and thus Muslims who engage in violence, terror, jihad, are somehow misunderstanding and misinterpreting Islam.

The reduction of the resulting "God gap" and its impact on US foreign policy consists simply of acknowledging the reality contained in the Koran and the other sacred writings of Islam. It means accepting the fact that Islam contains at its very heart the justification for suicide bombings, terror, and a constant screen of intentional prevarication meant to mislead and discommode the opposition: the infidels and apostates. It means taking Islam at its sacred word: of Islam's division of the human race into the house of peace (Islam) and the house of war (everybody else) as well as the need for constant warfare until the house of war is bought into complete subjugation.

This necessary adjustment of view does not imply a couple of important things.

The recognition of the role of Islam per se in the acts of Islamist jihadist warfare does not, for example, imply that all Muslims are ready, willing, and eager to strap on a suicide vest, or pick up an AK, or even provide money to those who are doing so. Most Muslims are not unlike the majority of adherents of other faiths. They are compartmentalized in their thinking. Some matters are for the mosque, for prayers, for the sacred days; others are secular, for this world and not the next, for today and for the individual or his family not for tomorrow and the entire Muslim "community."

Most Muslims are not willing to risk all in the hopes that by doing so they will find paradise or at least avoid hell. The same may be said of most Christians, most Jews, most Hindus and so on. But, at the same time, honesty requires that we all acknowledge that the sacred soul of Islam unlike the other major religions provides rich justification, even provocation for war and its nasty ancillaries. To do less is not only to create a "God gap" but to denature Islam, to diminish it and the power the faith has for its believers.

The second implication is simpler. The US would be ill-advised to say the least if it were to hawk its presumed Christian or (much as the Geek hates this circumlocution) the "Judeo-Christian" heritage and foundation. It does not matter how "godly" we Americans proclaim ourselves to be now or in our past, the fact remains that it is the "wrong" sort of "God" to whom we offer our thanks or our importunings. To the Muslim and even more to the political Muslim, the Islamist, Christians and, to a greater extent, the Jew is misguided at a minimum. The Christian, the Jew follow incomplete revelations, revelations polluted by man while Islam is pure and complete, the final revelation given to the "Perfect Man," the Prophet Mohammad.

In short, saying, "See, we Americans are godly," won't cut the mustard with the adversary. Our propensity for political "God talk" will be of no avail in the Manichean world of the Islamist, the political Muslim. It may play well in Peoria but it is a no-sale in those many areas of the world which give rise to Islamism and its armed twin, jihadism.

However the emphasis on the "God Gap" does require that we Americans and our European cousins both think about and talk about just what it is we believe in, just what moves us, just what our collective aspirations might be. Do our fundamental predicates transcend the purely material, the transitory fulfillment of today's needs and desires? What verities do we subscribe to, promote, stand for?

If nothing else the Chicago Council's paper may cause some thinking in and around the Oval as to what and whom we are fighting. More, some thinking as to just what we are fighting for beyond keeping our country safe from the jihadists.

At the very least the paper might cause the Nice Young Man From Chicago to go beyond the glittering generalities and distortions of history which marked his Cairo address last year and put forth a clear picture of what we Americans are for--and against. This is critical even if when all is said God is conspicuous by absence.

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.

Doing The Historian's Duty

The Geek has been severely (and correctly) chastised for having neglected to point out the grave and egregious historical errors in President Obama's Cairo Address. The purpose of this short post is to address in necessarily abbreviated form the substance of the Obama mis-conceptions of Islamic history. And, the blatant falsity of the president's contention that he was "a student of history."

With oodles and oodles of political correctness and an utter lack of historical understanding, President Obama credited Islam with having made major contributions to human knowledge in physics, math, navigation, medicine, astronomy, and chemistry. In so doing he gave credit to the followers of Mohammad which properly belonged to Europeans, Chinese, the Greeks of the Classical Period and the astrologers of the ancient societies of Mesopotamia.

The compass goes back to China. The use of zero as a place holder was developed by businessmen in India. The foundations of modern physics may be dated accurately to Galileo. Copernicus laid the base of modern astronomy. Predating both and providing the basis for the work of Galileo was the pioneering efforts of Archimedes of "Eureka!" fame. For Copernicus, the data compiled by Ptolemy were central.

Many, if not most, of the presumed advances in medicine laid improperly at the feet of Muslims were actually the product of Jewish physicians exemplified by Maimonides who practiced their calling under the Banner of the Prophet because they and their coreligionists had been expelled by the Catholic Christians of Spain. This, at least, proves that Islam is not alone in ignorant intolerance.

It is true that Arabic translations of many ancient Greek works preserved the knowledge from the censors and reactionaries of the One True Church so that they were available for re-translation into Latin as the Dark Ages of Europe faded. This reality introduced some problems such as the persistence of Arabic terms (eg algebra, alchemy) and Arabic names for celestial objects (eg Aldebaran and Betelgeuse.)

There is no doubt but the desert dwelling Muslims observed the sky. But, we know from the archaeological record that all that was seen by the late coming Muslims had been systematically compiled by the astrologers of the Land Between The Rivers two thousand and more years earlier.

Muslims dabbled in chemistry or, to err on the side of accuracy, alchemy, as did the Europeans. But, their contributions to what emerged in the Seventeenth Century as chemistry was of no more consequence than the searches for the philosopher's stone by the alchemists of Europe.

The Muslims cannot take any credit for serving as a transmission belt between Asia and Europe or between the Classic Age of Rome and Greece and the beginnings of the Renaissance. Both were accidents. An accident of geography and trade routes. An accident of time, particularly the time of Catholic intellectual repression.

In short, the Muslims were no more critical in the development of modern science and technology than the Geek's Apache ancestors. As far as physics, math, chemistry, astronomy and medicine are concerned, the Muslims might just as well have never existed.

And, it could have been no other way. Islam ascribes all causation to the will of Allah. The positing of supernatural causation assures that science as we have come to understand both the term and the method behind it cannot exist, cannot even begin.

Science in Europe had to battle against the "Will of God" stricture. Ultimately, science won. But the battle was not short, was not low cost and continues in an important way yet today. One need not look behind the absurd claims of the "creationists" to see that reality.

In truth the battle never really got underway in the societies dominated by Islam. This is not to say or imply that Muslims are not personally, individually, capable of mastering the methods of the several scientific disciplines. Rather, it is to conclude from the historical and contemporary record that the doctrine and dogma of Islam fights against the development of true, wide-ranging, joyously inquiring, icon shattering science.

Unless and until the Muslim collective mind can come to some sort of consensus on the limits of the "If-Allah-Wills" stricture, there will not be any more science in the Islamic societies of tomorrow than there was in the past.

That's a tough truth. Tossing aside the culturally implanted dogma of religion and the personal identity features which come with it is not easy. But, unless and until it is done by Muslims generally and not simply a few here and there, who run the risk of being slaughtered as "apostates," people of Islamic adherence will never be full partners in the scientific quest to better understand the universe in which we live.

President Obama and his speech writers deserve an "A" in political correctness. They merit a flat out "F" for history. And, an "F" for doing real service to the best aspirations and potentials of Muslims everywhere.

Gott Mit Uns?

For decades the German Army, the army of World War I, the army of the Nazis a generation later, had the words Gott Mit Uns emblazoned on their belt buckles. While the Americans never went that far, the military chaplains down to the present day have had a propensity of assuring the troops that theirs was a war blessed from somewhere On High.

The world is all too terribly aware of the Islamist jihadist's call, "Allahu akbar" as the clicker is pushed or the airplane flown into the building. The Islamist emphasis on killing for Allah plays a deadly counterpoint to the fear of hell which is a major defining feature of all too many sermons and religious instruction.

Comes now incontrovertible evidence that at least some members of the Israeli Defense Forces have joined the ranks of the world's "Holy Warriors," with the expectable ill-effects upon any civilian so unfortunate as to encounter them. Under the stimulus of religiously reactionary members of the rabbinate, the IDF is no longer a purely secular force pursuing nationally defined goals using an ethical base of operations derived from the general Western notions of war.

While it is possible to accurately criticise the Western ethical schemata of war fighting, there are generally observed limits. The intentional targeting of civilians is prohibited by general usage to say nothing of international conventions. The employment of indiscriminate area weapons in built up areas is frowned upon even if not always possible to prevent.

During the early days of its history, the IDF, despite occasional lapses such as those committed during "counter terror" operations by Detachments 101 and 202, fought clean wars. Now those days seem to be long past.

Testimony by combat troops leaked last week concerning operations in Gaza Strip during the recent incursion demonstrates that IDF members went way over the edge in their treatment of unarmed people. It shows that the IDF's on board rabbis from the Chief Rabbi on down encouraged and used religious justification for outrageous behavior by some of the troops.

By experience as well as study the Geek is sensitive to the extreme difficulties found in fighting guerrillas who fight from the cover of civilian structures and bodies. He knows how easily mistakes can be made--and how lethal the mistakes are.

There is a vast gulf between the normal difficulties and concomitant killing errors which are associated with military operations in urban terrain against guerrillas and the notion apparently promulgated by the right wing rabbinate that in waging war against interlopers on "holy soil" restraint is somehow in violation of divine command and will. The former is a brute fact. The latter is the creation of religious zealotry.

The rabbis who argue for "holy" war against "evil" intruders on "God's" land and counsel that "to be merciful to the cruel is finally to be cruel to the merciful" are morally equivalent to those Islamist clerics who issue fatwas authorising the killing of civilians in the name of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate. Rabbi and mullah are brothers under the skin.

Brothers in enlisting a personal view of the deity in pursuit of a political goal. Brothers in perverting any reasonable understanding of divine compassion, mercy and justice. Brothers in hatred.

If the rabbis and the assorted mullahs, ayatollahs and sheiks really, really believe that JWH or Allah is willing war to the death, then let them fight it out directly. Cut out the middle men. Let the troops and civilians alike stand on the sidelines while the rival clerical gangs duke it out. Why are these assorted and diametrically opposed "Men of God" so willing and eager to see others die? Watch as the middle men slaughter one another? Invoke the blessings on those of their side who kill? Call on the deity to damn those who kill and die on the other side?

Time after time in the bloody history of humanity there is a propensity for the extremes to grow. To squeeze the middle, those who are not afflicted with True Belief, to the point of oblivion.

But, there is always a Thermidor. There is always a time when the long oppressed members of the middle strike back. Reclaim the field for something less than the ideological zeal of the True Believers.

In Iraq the middle struck back by withdrawing even tacit support from the apostles of sectarian violence. In one Islamic country after another, hesitant voices are being raised in opposition to the totalistic and lethal urgings of the Islamist jihadists. Observant Muslims are slowly recognising that not only can they be truly observant without being Islamists, being observant Muslims requires rejecting the exhortations of the death oriented Islamist jihadists.

Now in Israel the secular voices are being raised and heard. Israel will have to suffer one more round in the sporadic debate over the nature and character of the country and the people. If it is to survive as a viable state with international support and understanding, the Israelis will have to argue it out.

The men and women of Israel generally and the IDF in particular will have to determine which they are: A divine miracle. Or a state with national and strategic interests in which the deity does not have a stake.

Across the Mideast and far beyond, Muslims have to go through the same process. Are they a people destined by faith and those who interpret it to be the people of killing and death? Or, are they a people of a faith which celebrates life and all the potentials that go along with being alive?

As Abe Lincoln observed when both North and South claimed divine approval for their cause, both cannot be right but both can be wrong. As the Geek sees it, leave God to the ageless, the time beyond time. History is for people.

"Jews Infect Food With Cancer"

That's the view of a Muslim cleric preaching on al-Nas TV a little less than a month ago. The Egyptian cleric, Ahmad Abd Al-Salam, went on with similar antisemitic vitriol in order to prove his point.

His point?

"The Jews are never remiss – they invest their utmost efforts, day and night, in conspiring how to corrupt the Islamic nation, the nation led by the Prophet Muhammad. " He concluded by remarking, "This is why we hate them." ( http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2035.htm)

The Mideast Media Research Institute's Anti-Semitism Documentation Project archives are laden with similar clips from Muslim clerics and political figures from across the Mideast. Taken in total these outbursts of hatred constitute the richest, most frightening exhibition of hate-mongering and violence-promoting statements extant today.

These religiously based sermonettes and akin statements have the net effect--whether intended or not--of promoting violence against Jews generally. They are a blot upon the human race. And, they go by unchallenged and unremarked by the mainstream media of the world.

These hate filled incitements to violence certainly are not challenged by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Oh, no, no way! The OIC is too sensitive to the presumed existence of a phantom. A phantom the OIC wants to battle relentlessly.

Unlike the "Jewphobia" which is present somewhere on television or in print throughout the Muslim states every day of every month, the OIC chooses to fight the figment of its collective imagination--something it calls "Islamophobia."

The OIC has become so afrighted of the lurching golem, Islamophobia, that it is robustly promoting a UN effort to ban free speech. It seems that the OIC has defined its mythical beastie as consisting of any--even truthful--exposure of the links between the religion of Islam and acts of violence or terror. The OIC wants absolutely no criticism nor commentary (unless laudatory) of Islam.

No mention of "honor killings," no whisper of stoning women and other forms of gender specific torture, no allusions to suicide bombers yelling, "Allahu Akbar" as they push the clicker and exterminate men, women and children.

Certainly, the ever-so-sensitive men of the OIC want no quoting of the Quran or Hadith--or at least those parts which justify and approve of killing, enslaving or otherwise degrading the infidels which comprise the majority of the human race. And, no mentioning of jihad as the waging of holy war--lest some Muslim, somewhere, somehow be disquieted.

A bigger bunch of flat-out hypocrites is impossible to imagine.

Where is the OIC on the issue of religious defamation when it comes to the billingsgate of Muslim preachers? Where is this bloc of sensitive and concerned humanitarians when it comes to Muslim clerics and political leaders urging or inciting hatred, violence, murder directed against the Jews and other despised infidels?

Or to put it bluntly: How many members of the OIC were among the forty nations whose representatives composed the London Declaration Against Antisemitism? This document is new, so new that only one national leader, Gordon Brown, has signed it. Perhaps it is so new that the OIC's you-infidels-must-stop-talking-about-us noise machine hasn't been silent long enough to hear of it.

The London Declaration calls upon signatory states to confront and challenge antisemitic statements. Further, it calls upon them to live up to previously agreed obligations to combat antisemitism. That's all. No denial of the right of haters to spew poison against Jews. Just the duty to confront, challenge and combat with more speech--better speech, true speech.

How many OIC member states are willing to both sign and abide by the provisions of the London Declaration? How many of the OIC governments are willing to confront or challenge, let alone combat, antisemitic outbursts?

To zero in on one recent cry for holy war against the Jews, let's go to the videotape. Again it's from MEMRI. (http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2033.htm) The preacher is one more Egyptian cleric, Zaghloul Al-Naggar. He's on al-Rahma TV. His message last January 6th was simple and blunt.

"Let me be clear. Jihad is the only way to resolve this issue. With the Jews, one cannot achieve anything by means of peace, or a settlement, or open borders, or diplomatic and commercial ties. They are devils in human form."

The one way to deal with the Jews to which the cleric refers?

The interviewer asked, "So, are you calling to wage jihad?"

The cleric answers, "Absolutely."

When the OIC can find the moral and intellectual courage to challenge this sort of blatant appeal to violence, to war, to jihad, then and only then will it deserve any polite hearing before the UN or the UN's Human Rights Commission (or Council, whatever they are calling that groups of fools, hypocrites and Islamist apologists today.)

Only when the member states of the OIC step up and both sign and abide by the London Declaration will the group and its constituents have the ethical and political foundation to make demands (or even mildly worded requests) of the civilized states of the world. Until such day as the Islamic states can behave with civility toward those states and peoples of differing religious views can they make any claim of their own.

The Obama Administration has the opportunity to draw a bright and shining line with the OIC as well as any and all who wring their hands over the phantom of "Islamophobia." Not only must the US sign the London Declaration without delay. It must go further.

The Obama Adminstration must use both the planning process for Durban II and it must use Durban II itself as the forum to challenge, confront and combat the OIC and its partners in crime not only on blatant, violence provoking and justifying antisemitism but on the move to ban criticism or comment on Islam itself.

Not only does the truth set one free. The truth is an absolute defense. It is the leakproof defense against the Islamist assault on the rest of the world.

It is the sovereign remedy to the hate and bile of the Islamists and their armed expression, jihadism.

It is the first, best weapon to assure that our values and core beliefs are not sacrificed to the idols of hyper-sensitivity, political correctness and fear of Islamist violence.

The Obama Administration must use it or there is no hope--only change, for the worse.

Factional Strife--It's All The Rage

Although the body count may reach astronomical proportions and an all-too-high percentage of that may be comprised of bystanders of varying degrees of innocence having the bad luck to be caught in the crossfire, there is nothing quite so gratifying as seeing forces hostile to US interests turn their guns and mouths against each other. Wherever this happens it is in US tactical and even strategic interests to facilitate and encourage the process.

The technical term for this is organisational disruption. It is not nice. It is not tidy. It sure as hell ain't bloodless. But organisational disruption has one prime attraction--it works.

An outside entity such as the US cannot create intra-organisational conflict. Rarely can an outsider even foster rivalry between more or less aligned enemy entities. The disruptive rhetoric and inevitable violence must arise from reasons organic to the organisation(s).

The outsider can do something when internecine conflict emerges from the shadows of men's minds. The outsider can assure the messages of rivalry and conflict are disseminated and magnified. The outsider can do all in its power to assure that none intervene to stop the violence, end the hatred and restore good feelings among the survivors.

In Somalia there is violent conflict between two forms of Islamist ideology. The "moderates" of Sunni and Sufi orientation have or are aligning behind one time "extremist" Sheik Ahmed who is the geographic expression's new president. Opposing Ahmed and the others is the al-Shabab "extremist" militia.

Al-Shabab has made it clear that it will not stop shooting unless and until the African Union "peacekeepers" are withdrawn and a pure Sharia government installed. Al-Shabab, while not having done so with the issuing of a fatwa, apparently now considers its onetime chieftain, Sheik Ahmed, to have turned apostate.

Regrettably most of those killed in the recent recrudescence of violence have been bystanders. Even though this is the case--and will continue to be such--the uptick in intra-Islamist violence is an encouraging sign.

If no well-intentioned High Minded outsider interferes the internecine killing spells the last best hope for the Somalis to finally re-establish peace and some form of consensually accepted government after eighteen years of chaos. It is not without significance that the Sufis of Somalia, a not inconsiderable group, have stated a willingness to support Ahmed against al-Shabab. It is not without significance that Somali Sunni clans which have so far been less involved in actual fighting are now willing and ready to support Ahmed as having both a measure of existential legitimacy and the potential to restore peace without the use of outside "occupation" forces.

The significance of these switches from neutrality to active involvement lies in the reality that al-Shabab and its ilk will be opposed, gun for gun and bomb for bomb. Inevitably the body count will climb. Inevitably the High Minded will cry, "Humanitarian crisis!" and demand that the AU or the UN or even the US, "Do something!"

It is to be hoped that none of these, not the AU, not the UN, not the EU and certainly not the US (pace Susan Rice) will do anything more robust than the issuing of ritual statements deploring the violence and calling on all parties to stop the killing.

"Wait one, Geek! You are just too cold a dude. Think of all the innocent lives!"

But that is exactly what the Geek is doing.

It is difficult, not to say next to impossible, to impose peace from outside on a society which has degenerated into an ideologically driven bloodbath. Peace can only come from within the society. It can only raise its fragile head when and if the people of that society want it to.

Consider Iraq.

So far the body count in Iraq this year has run below that of Mexico. That's nineteen per day in the Republic to our south vice half that in "war torn" Iraq. The low level of killing in Iraq has occured despite the provincial elections and the annual Shia pilgrimage, which has attracted suicide bombers every year like a honey tree does bears.

Various experts attribute the outbreak of relative tranquility to various factors. There's the effect of the much maligned "surge" of the Bush Administration. Or, for those who prefer, the decision in Iran to limit support for its factions in Iraq. Others give the credit to the great improvement of the Iraqi national forces both military and police.

All of these played a role as did the growing political maturity of Maliki and others. There is a little noted but far more basic force at work in producing a peace-friendly environment in Iraq.

Increasingly over the past eighteen months, Iraqis, particularly young Iraqis, turned against both the endless round of killings, bombings, executions and the sectarian ideologues who drove them. Iraqis got sick, sore and tired of being afraid every minute of every day. They were not willing to continue to attempt to exist in an ocean of apprehension.

Young Iraqis wanted a life. They wanted a future. They wanted hope. Love. Peace.

Attendance at violence preaching mosques plummeted. Preachers of jihad, of extreme Islamism found only empty courtyards in front of them. Recruitment stalled. Jihadist groups factionated. Fell apart. Losses went unreplaced.

As the jihad lovers grew more desperate, resorting to such despicable and base recruitment efforts as rape to force the unwilling to don suicide vests, the Iraqi public turned increasingly to Maliki and his Peace and State Party as the recent elections demonstrated. The intolerant killers of Islamism were rejected last Valentine's day as young Iraqis openly flaunted the dictates of extreme Sharia.

Without people willing, ready, even eager to fight and die, the ideologues of sectarianism became powerless. Recent events in Iraq demonstrated that old Billy Sherman had a profound insight when he argued that people, any people, can be made so sick of war they repent of it.

Absent well-meant outside intervention the same road may--no, will--be traveled in Somalia. A generation of fear, of passion, of killing should be enough to assure that after one more exsanguinary effusion, the Somalis will recoil from war, from death, from fear. Even the Islamic fear inducing emphasis on hellfire can be outweighed by fatigue with fear in the here and now.

A lesser noticed development, a so far bloodless one, has received far less public notice, at least in the US, but has a far greater potential for facilitating US policy goals in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. A battle of polemics which started last year has escalated.

In case you've missed it, in November 2007 Sayyid Imam, an Egyptian cleric deeply involved in the creation of the organisations which ultimately gave rise to al-Qaeda, retracted from his earlier position. He is still an Islamist of the starkest sort. He still believes wholeheartedly in defensive jihad. But, he opposes al-Qaeda's theology of offensive jihad, particularly offensive jihad against the "far enemy" meaning the United States.

Sayyid Imam's first fusillade, Document of Right Guidance for Jihad Activity in Egypt and the World excoriated in general terms the way in which al-Qaeda (which was not specified in the document) had both undertaken and theologically justified offensive jihad. Aymin Al-Zawahiri returned fire with an elaborate justification for al-Qaeda's action which explicitly and forcefully rejected Imam's call for a jihadist ceasefire. The Egyptian medico also attacked Sayyid Imam as an agent of the US and Israel who had written his Document under Egyptian duress.

Now Sayyid Imam has fired a devastating counter-counterattack with a new book having the title Exposing the Exoneration. The word "exoneration" is in reference to the title of Zawahiri's polemic.

Imam tears into Zawahiri, bin Ladin, al-Qaeda and all others who seek to pursue and justify theologically offensive jihad in all its many forms. Imam uses two prongs of attack.

One is theological as is to be expected. He is an Islamist scholar and his rivals are Islamists and he is waging war for the hearts and minds of Islamists.

The second line of attack is surprising. It is not theological. It is pragmatic. Imam states categorically and repeatedly that al-Qaeda and its facsimiles do not have the "ability" to wage offensive jihad. More, he states, again categorically and repeatedly, that the pursuit of offensive jihad have been counterproductive, harmful to Muslims throughout the world. In short, bin Ladin and al-Qaeda destroyed two buildings and in response the US destroyed two Muslim countries.

Sayyid Imam compares bin Ladin to the antichrist as such is presented in the Quran. He also notes with a degree of sarcastic bitterness which beggars description that al-Qaeda and others like it have killed far more Muslims than have either the US or the "Zionist entity" over the course of sixty years.

The Obama Administration would be very well advised to do everything it can to very quietly promote the distribution of Sayyid Imam's message. It is a powerful tool for aiding the undercutting of both jihadist recruitment and jihadist organisational integrity.

Imam has presented an alternative to offensive jihad which will, if widely read by those of an Islamist orientation, provide a basis for argument against the preachings of bin Ladin and Al-Zawahiri and other proclaimers of offensive jihad. It is an opposing view offered by a man who not only has the necessary theological credibility but a background as an resolute Islamist who stands against the "apostate" regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

At the very least, young men sitting in a mosque arguing the views of Imam against those of Zawahiri are not planning suicide attacks. At the most, promoting the perspective of Imam might lay the foundation for severe organisational disruption within al-Qaeda and Taliban.

That prospect--even if it leads to internal killings--should make the world smile with pleasure.

One Nation? Under God

Back when the Geek was a professor he put what he thought was a properly high emphasis on the role of religion, specifically Protestant Christianity, in American history. His co-workers in the history department were scandalized by this effrontery. In the unforgettable (to the Geek at least) words of one, "Of course you're right, but do you really have to make a point of it?"

The Geek realised long before that memorable encounter at the department mail boxes that he was out of step with the elite of his generation. They had almost without exception replaced the long standing American zeal for religious belief with one which celebrated secularism and the absolute separation of the communities of faith from the dialogue(s) in the public square. While being one with the famed aphorism of Laplace two hundred years ago and being a strong advocate of the "liberty of conscience" enshrined in the "no establishment" and "free exercise" clauses, the Geek was (and is) unwilling to distort history, least of all the history of his own country.

America was founded on religious passion. It must be recalled that the Puritans came to the wilderness of New England not in search of religious tolerance but in order to freely practice religious intolerance. As the legal history of the Massachusetts Colony shows clearly the theocrats of the Bay cheerfully instituted a regime based on religious precepts which was so narrow minded, intolerant, coercive and rigid that the most intense Taliban adherent could not improve upon it in the slightest.

Throughout the colonies religion was the kingdom and Christ was King. Laws looked both to the English common law and the bible for their justification. Community solidarity depended upon conformity of behaviour based on conformity of belief. The dissenters were neither welcomed or tolerated. Even Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, the (semi-mythic) icons of religious tolerance and inclusion were actually thin-skinned, insecure strongholds of fanatics.

The need for a "liberty of conscience"clause in the basic laws of the several colonies was recognised even before the first shots of the War of Independence were fired. The Virginia Statute on Religious Liberties authored by Thomas Jefferson was a firm sign pointing in the required direction.

Unless carefully constrained the religious enthusiasm and zeal of competing sects would rip the political and social fabric of the new republic apart. Unless citizens felt themselves both protected in their individual rights of conscience, the tyranny of a religious majority would crack a sharp whip on the backs of nonconformists. Thus the "no establishment" and "free exercise" clauses were at the top of the post-Constitution "must do" list along with liberty of speech and the press.

Religion was not bared from the public square. That was not the intent of those who wrote and approved the clauses in question. The purpose was one of civilizing and controlling the passions so easily stirred by matters of faith. A republic, the founding generation correctly saw, demanded restraint, control and civility in the public square, and they realized that these were readily destroyed by the passions of religious belief. They also correctly saw that the minorities, the dissenters, the nonconformists, were at risk in their individual holdings and persons once the genie of belief driven zeal was released from the bottle.

Religion stayed alive, well, potent and pervasive throughout the Nineteenth Century. It, or to err on the side of accuracy, one Protestant sect, became the virtual "state religion" in the states of the Confederacy both before and after the War Between the States. Ironically, this "state religion" was a sub-set of the Baptists. The irony springs from the fact that the Baptists of the late Seventeenth Century had been the strongest proponents of a wall of separation between state and church.

Religion featured heavily not simply in the internal crisis of the War Between the States, in the fight between abolitionist and slaveowner, it was just as important in the American identity crisis which developed with increasing speed between the late 1840s and the end of the century.

Identity crisis?

You bettcha! The American people have undergone several bouts of intense anxiety over just who-are-we? and how-do-we-know-we're-us? over the past two hundred years. This is completely understandable. The US is an artificial nation. It grew around a set of ideas. These ideals coupled with the very real possibility of material betterment in a vast and underdeveloped country served as a people magnet without equal.

People from different lands, cultures, languages and--ta-da! religions came in ever increasing numbers to the US. The most critical problem through much of the Nineteenth Century was the arrival of Roman Catholics. To put it bluntly, Catholics, particularly those from Ireland and later southern Europe, were not easily or warmly accepted by the Protestant majority.

Absent the "no establishment" and "free exercise" clauses, the conflicts between native Protestant and new arrival Catholic would have been more violent and extensive then they were. At the national level the "civilizing" effect of the twin clauses showed itself by repeated Congressional rejection of anti-Catholic measures. Ultimately the clauses provided the breathing space and time necessary for the multiple American nations to sign a series of separate peaces over differences of religious belief and agree that we could all be Americans--what ever that might mean.

It is true that the public square seems to have become ever more secular during the first three quarters of the Twentieth Century, but that is more a matter of appearance than reality. It is more that obvious passions faded along with the identity crisis during the opening years of the century. Sure, there were moments of conflict such as the Biblical Literalists opening shots in the anti-Darwin campaign eighty and more years ago.

But, in the main, Americans were content to put the fires of belief on hold and concentrate on matters at hand. Matters like the Great Depression, World War II and ultimately the Cold War. Indeed, the American people reinforced their sense of national self by reducing the apparent differences between religions. It was Americans who invented the unhistorical notion of the "Judeo-Christian tradition," and sought to meld the differing--even conflicting--theologies of Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism into a sort of bland, one-size-fits-all civic religion which defined America and its ideals vis a vis Communism.

It was the need for a Cold War appropriate way to differentiate the US from the Soviet Union which gave rise to the sudden insertion of the words, "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance where it sits to this day as an indigestible lump to those of us who first learned the Pledge in grade school in the dark days before God was invoked. This brings up another delicious piece of irony.

Ironically, in view of the past few years, the US was the only non-Islamic country which differentiated itself from the Soviets on the basis of the latter being "godless" and the former "godly." The notion of godliness took such firm root in the US during the Cold War period that for a while at least it was open season on any person who was not a full, seemingly eager participant in one or another of the several flavors resident within the "Judeo-Christian tradition."

During the last decades of the past century, faith driven political ideologies re-emerged from the shadows. With the same sort of Wahhibist dedication and zeal that had typified the Puritans, the resurgent Christian "Conservatives" sought to enlist the political process in their particular (and often peculiar) view of biblically based morality. The flames of True Belief flared high, bright and hot, particularly among those who drew their nourishment from the the "state religion" of the Old Confederacy--the Southern Baptist Convention--and others from the same theological (not to say theocratic) model.

Not surprisingly the opposition reacted by elevating the "no establishment" and "free exercise" clauses to a level never before seen. The intelligentsia, particularly those born in the Forties, Fifties and Sixties, demanded a total removal of religion not only from the public square but from American history as well.

The result has been that the elite, the opinion molders, the academics, the journalists and even many of the political class, are dedicated True Believers in the secular agenda.

The other result has been that many, even most, of the rest of the American public remains faithful to the several communities of faith which co-exist in more or less harmony throughout the US.

The purpose and intent of the twin clauses barring establishment and assuring free exercise was to civilize and restrain passions. Without this moderating influence the fires of belief--whether religious or secularist--would imperil the still very delicate balance of the republic.

Get a grip on it. The American republic has charted a narrow and twisting course through the rocks, shoals and reefs of religious zeal. We still are. Even with more than two centuries experience we don't have it right yet.

But, we do have a tradition of separating the political sphere to a substantial extent from that of religious practice and belief. This is all that separates us from the countries of Islam.

The challenge is for us to understand not only how intertwined religion and state are in the Islamic countries and what that implies. We must also understand just how delicately we are balanced on the razor's edge of too much religion and too little. Both the Christian "Conservatives" and the secular intelligentsia must curb their passions.

Both must recognise that the Founders were right--passion destroys and civility creates. Otherwise God (or something) help us all.

Are Muslims The Vipers In Our Nest?

Religious beliefs formed the foundation of the United States nearly two centuries before the country came into existence. We (sort of) acknowledge that fact with our continued celebration of Thanksgiving. The original celebrants of Thanksgiving were a group of religiously intolerant fugitives from the "blasphemous" air of Anglican polluted England.

Make no mistake about it. The Puritans saw themselves as the only "real" Christians. In their estimate the Church of England was as un-Christian as the hated Roman Catholic Church. Nor were they any more willing to accept any other "dissenting" groups such as the Quakers or the motley bunch assembled around Roger Williams in the Rhode Island Colony.

The Puritans came to New England to hold themselves "pure" and prepare for a return to the "world" in order to redeem it when God so directed.

So, they drank, fornicated, repented every Sunday and went back to drinking and fornicating with the occasional time out to hunt "witches." A nice Godly crew, right?

Religious intolerance continued well into our collective national history as shown by the anti-Catholic bias that continued through (and beyond) the Nineteenth Century. The Democratic Party was branded as the party of "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion" after the Civil War, and the distrust of Catholics continued into the Twentieth Century as seen in the campaigns of Al Smith in 1928 and John Kennedy thirty-two years later.

In recent years the Christian Right has brought back the fires of the Puritan witch hunts in at least metaphorical form with judicial and political litmus tests which subordinate economic and other considerations to an amorphous mass dubbed "values." These "values" whether a position on women's rights to control their reproductive lives, the relations between people of the same (or opposite) sex, or stem cell research have taken pride of place over such matters as the ways in which our tax money might be spent or even the issue of war and peace.

H. Rap Brown once said that violence was as American as apple pie. He might have more accurately averred that religious bigotry and myopia were as American as cherry pie.

Now we have to face the bedrock of religious belief and its perversion in a more concrete and potentially threatening way. We have to take a hard and long look at the position of Muslims in American society.

Muslims currently make up only a small percentage of the American population. However that percentage is bound to grow, perhaps significantly given immigration and the increased number of conversions, particularly among Americans of African ancestry.

Europe has already been faced with the difficulties of an increasing number of Muslims. We must not only observe--and learn, we must also examine how Islamic jurists define the responsibilities of a Muslim living in a non-Muslim country.

For a start, take a look at http://www.meforum.org/article/1761. The author gives a well-balanced synopsis of the state of play regarding the determinations offered by various Islamic clerics/jurists on the relationship between the Muslim and the non-Islamic society in which he lives.

Douglas Farah offers a less-than-positive stance on this article in his post (which is reposted on the Counterterrorism Blog) http://www.douglasfarah.com/article/278/in-some-ways-the-crux-of-the-matter.com. He emphasizes the duty laid upon Muslims to consolidate their position and seek the creation of a global Islamic state.

The creation of a new, presumably global, caliphate is the end goal of Islamism. Various Islamist writers from Qutb to bin Laden have made this clear. Further, whether Islamist or not, the assorted Islamic jurists and clerics have asserted that the corrupt, decadent West will and must accept Islam.

In a similar way, Islamic clerics and jurists of all stripes agree that the first loyalty of a Muslim is to Islam, not the state. This is not a restatement in updated terminology of the old canard held to be true for so long in the US that the first loyalty of a Catholic is to the Pope and not the State. The Islamic community is held to be an alternative to the nation-state, a superior option which can and will be brought into existence thus replacing the Western invention.

Politically articulate and aware Americans would be well-advised to study Islamic formulations regarding the relation of Muslim and state. Each of us must reach a well-founded position on this critical matter. Unless we do so we face two dangers. Each is as bad as the other.

The first is that Muslims who reject our view of separation of religious community and secular state will be able to use the liberties of our Constitution and political system to our ultimate disadvantage.

The other is that we Americans will dip deep into our well of religious bigotry and intolerance to make judgments and take actions which will do us long term harm.

It is a long, hard, and winding road between the idiocy of mindless, uncritical multiculturalism on one side and base bigotry on the other. Finding the road requires judgement based on knowledge. Keeping on it requires a clear awareness of who we are and what we are all about.

Religion (and Politics) Frustrates the Geek

To be honest, the Geek would much rather do a post on the current stupidity and pandering of American politicians. It's all too obvious that the dismal field of front runners for the Democratic Party presidential nomination as well as leaders in the Republican Party have not learned that Clemenceau, the World War I French Prime Minister, was wrong when he said, "War is too important to be left to the generals."

The truth is that war, particularly the nasty, brutal, hard-to-see-an-end-to kind we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq are too important to be left to the politicians. Not losing in Iraq, not losing in Afghanistan, achieving a better state of peace not only for these two unfortunate countries but for the region, the US, and ultimately the world in general, is far, far too critical to be left to politicians who are obviously all too willing to follow the shifting gusts of public opinion than do what is best for this country and others--lead. Lead and educate. Lead, educate and press on.

There is a difference between merely getting elected, governing and leading. Any bozo with enough money, the discipline to stay on message, the underhandedness necessary to exploit the freak show of the alternative media, and the iron stomach to swallow his or her own hypocrisy can get elected. Governing simply requires the capacity for compromise, the ability to make deals, and the willingness not to stray from the message of the day.

Leadership requires more. Like the wars in which we are currently involved, it requires persistence and patience. More, it demands the ability to be an educator, an inspiring educator who can make clear unpleasant truths and gain at least tacit support from the politically articulate portion of our population. Beyond these, leadership requires both intellectual and moral courage--the ability to see things the way they really are and the will to act upon that knowledge regardless of personal consequences.

Finally, leadership requires a toughness of will. Leadership requires the willingness to be unpopular, to be unliked, unloved, rejected, even abandoned by former "friends" and allies. Leadership demands so much and that is why it has been in such short supply through so much of this nation's history.

Right now, facing a war that this nation cannot afford to lose, the US needs a leader as much as it did at such well known critical times as the burning of Washington, D.C., the cannonade in the Charleston harbor that started the Civil War, or the air raids on Pearl Harbor. But, it doesn't seem as if we will get what we need so much as we will get what we think we want.

Enough of that rant. The Geek really intends to do a post on religion, Well, to err on the side of accuracy, religion, American history and the Supreme Court.

No. That wasn't quite right either.

What the Geek would like to consider is the tough job of deciding the correct relationship between two pairs. Free speech and freedom of religion is one. The other is the "Establishment" clause and the "Free exercise" clause of that tricky amendment to the US Constitution dealing with religion, or, more properly, "liberty of conscious."

"Wait one, Geek!" You challenge. "What the diddly does this have to do with foreign policy? With war, like the ones you're always blathering about?"

"Well, bucko," I reply, "absolutely everything. Religion and how it works in the US as well as how our view of religion is seen from outside is one of the under appreciated keys to not losing. Not losing in our current wars and--get a grip on this--not losing the chance to prevent future terror wars."

"Come on, Geeko, you're not going to hand out some of that multicultural foo-foo, are you?"

You ought to know me better than that by now. It's time to get a grip. Get a grip on some very unpleasant realities down home here in the old USA.

Unpleasant reality number one: The Supreme Court has screwed the pooch on the tensions between the"no establishment" and the "free exercise" clauses for forty-five years now. That has to stop. Stop and be reversed.

Unpleasant reality number two: The secular warriors who have sought (successfully) to push religiously derived ideas out of the public square have not only undervalued the liberty of conscious clauses but have gutted one of their favorite Constitutional landmarks--free speech.

Unpleasant reality number three: You can find (or manufacture)a plaintiff for any anti-religion in the public square cause, no matter how ridiculous.

Unpleasant reality number four: Americans in their love affair with "sensitivity" have become the bipedal equivalents of those WW I ocean mines--big round balls of explosives with little glass spikes sticking out just waiting for something or someone to touch them and make the big bang.

A lot to get a grip on, but the Geek is going to go for it starting with the next post. That's assuming something else doesn't hack him off first.