Just How Free Are We?

A nation's power is usually divided into two categories: hard and soft. Hard power covers the military and economic capacities while soft power refers to the cultural, social and political appeals of a country.

For the US a substantial portion of our "soft" power is held in the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution. The freedoms seemingly guaranteed by it--those of religion, speech, the press, and peaceful assembly--have a high, universal appeal.

In one tension filled area covered by the Glorious First, we may be a lot less free than ought to be the case.

The area?

The open presence of faith based speech in the public square--all the public square, not just some segregated sections,

The reason?

If you're expecting the Geek to say something warm and fuzzy such as, "It's the right thing to do," you're both correct and wrong. It may be the right thing to do, but, far more importantly, it's the proper thing to do if the soft power of the First Amendment is going to have real utility in defeating the Islamists.

Defeating Islamists, you mean, like Osama bin Ladin? Geek, you've lost it for sure!

No. At least I don't think so. In fighting any form of irregular war whether a nice straight ahead guerrilla war or a mixed state insurgency with truck bombs, IEDs and the other aircraft used as cruise missiles, the most critical aspect of successful war fighting is to turn the uncommitted majority against the hard core militants.

Right now, despite all the "hard" and "soft" power at our disposal, the US is not succeeding fast enough nor completely enough to marginalize the Islamists, to make them isolated pariahs in traditional Muslim society, in short to deprive them of recruits, support, intelligence, assistance, and sanctuary.

A major reason for our relative failure to convince traditional Muslims to shun the Islamist demands for support, concealment, and recruits is the widespread belief in the Islamic world that the US is an atheistic nation.

Get a grip on that: The US is widely perceived by traditional, non-violent Muslims as an atheistic nation.

With that perception governing many, many minds in the vast crescent from Morocco to Indonesia, it is easy to understand why with every passing month the legend of bin Ladin grows and the appeal of the US shrinks.

If you want to view the question of atheism versus religion through the flinty eyes of a realpolitiker, what matters is not self-perception, but how others perceive us. The objective truth is not important. All that matters is the subjective truth in the minds of others--in this case the minds of traditional Muslims.

The Geek wants to be clear on a couple of dangerously misleading but commonly held beliefs in the US (and the EU for that matter) concerning why bin Ladin and his ilk not only want above all else to force the US to withdraw from the world (or at least a good sized chunk of it) and why bin Ladin and his fellow Islamists have such appeal for Muslims generally.

The first wrong belief is that Islamists are motivated in whole or major part by US support for Israel as well as the fate of the Palestinians. Reinforcing that motivator is the continued presence of US forces in the Persian Gulf where they "prop up" dictatorships such as those in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Get a grip!

While US foreign policy and its presence in the region (to say nothing of the invasion of Iraq) might have made it easier for the Islamists to sell their message of jihad, it is not the motivator nor is it the primary attractor of new recruits.

(If Palestine mattered a bit, then why is it that most of the jihadists are non-Palestinians and not from the packed refugee camps of the Mideast? Why are the majority younger members of the privileged class, such as bin Ladin himself or Mohamed Atta of 9/11 infamy or the physicians of the failed bombings in London and Glasgow?)

The other wrong belief is the "clash of cultures" hypothesis, particularly the form which argues that Islam is a lethal belief system combining the "will of God" with all features of political, social, and economic life, and the end goal of Islam is subjugation of the world.

While the Geek has no problem seeing Islam as a warriors' religion, he maintains that the typical Muslim is no more interested in world domination than is the person on the street in any other religo-cultural environment. Even the most submissively inclined authoritarian personality needs more than sermons, more than fatwas, more than examples to risk life in a quest for something so remote, so abstract as forcing the world to submit to Islam.

However, the subjective and pervasive image of the US as an atheistic nation gives Muslims a target that is not so abstract as well as a more powerful motivation than mere global conquest--it gives him a duty.

The duty to confront and destroy atheists and those apostates who dance to the atheistic Uncle Sam's band.

This brings us back to the United States and the First Amendment. It brings us back to the question of just how free are we?

The First Amendment states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances."

Seems simple, doesn't it? Congress shall make no law. Extended by the Fourteenth Amendment, the seemingly simple and straightforward wording of the First applies to the states and lesser governments as well.

Hooray! Freedom for everyone. Let the speech--faith derived and secular alike--flow! The pubic square should be a ringing cacophony of voices as God Squader takes on Secular Humanist.

It isn't. The public square is quiet. The God Squaders stand over in their carefully circumscribed areas preaching to the choir as the Secular Warriors turn their backs and get on with the real work of policy and politics.

What went wrong?

The First Amendment states that Congress shall make no law. It doesn't mention the Federal Courts.

And, get a grip on this, it was the Supreme Court that screwed the pooch. It was the Supreme Court which invoked the Law of Unintended Consequences. It was the Supreme Court which kicked the snowball down the slippery slope with the result that we are seen as an atheistic nation.

As a Turkish Army officer once asked me, "How could your court have banned God from your public life?'

The man had it part right. The Court has made religiously based speech illegitimate in most of the public square.

That implies only the Supreme Court can bring back legitimacy to religiously predicated speech. Only the Court can repeal this particular application of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Get a grip on this. The Supreme Court is now a vital part of America's soft power.

Scary thought, isn't it?

Time to Give Speech to Our Liberty of Conscience

Between them the "no establishment" and "free exercise" clauses constitute what the majority of Americans two hundred and more years ago called "the liberty of conscience. It was strongly and universally believed that the State had no right to interfere with the individual's personal beliefs either by compelling support of an official religion or by preventing religious practice.

At the same time Americans strongly and universally supported the contention that the State had no right to limit the right of the individual to speak and write freely. At least by implication the same right applied to people speaking and writing collectively. After all, collective entities are groups of individuals who operate in concert.

As a result of the second belief, that in free speech, Americans today have the most open public square in the history of the world. Our speech whether verbal or written is free, boisterous, rowdy, even over-the-top. That's just the way it should be. Here. And everywhere.

There is one glaring black spot in this glittering picture of a raucously, joyously open public square. Religiously based speech is absent to an alarming and totally unjustifiable degree.

Sure, religiously based speech occurs regularly and in uncensored form in print, on the airwaves and over the Internet. That's the way it should be.

However, that reality does not eliminate another. The other reality, the dark hole in the public square, is that religiously based speech (and ideas) are rigidly barred from those portions of the public square marked by the signs "education" and "public buildings."

It is ironic and hypocritical that American coins bear the legend, "In God We Trust," while symbols of a particular religion such as Christmas creches are barred from courthouse or city hall lawns. It is ironic and hypocritical that presidential candidates exchange "God talk" in debates while a survey of American history textbooks currently used in high schools and colleges gloss over an apparently unmentionable fact about the history of the United States.

The unmentionable?

From its colonial foundation up through the 1950s Protestant Christianity had a profound effect upon the development of American institutions, values and world view.

Don't like that?

Tough. Get a grip. It's true. True beyond the shadow of even the most unreasonable doubt. For over three hundred years the United States and its colonial precursors can be best described by a term that many people resent today: A Protestant Christian nation.

For most of our history the 'liberty of conscience" clauses lay dormant, alive but not controversial. On a few occasions, most notably during the First and Second World Wars, liberty of conscience leaped to public awareness under the force of hyper-patriotism, and the Supreme Court was forced to make decisions regarding the limits--if any--upon its exercise.

When the winds of exaggerated patriotism diminished, the liberty of conscience clauses returned to their usual place in the background of public consciousness. Prayers were said in public schools, the words "under God" were added to the Pledge of Allegiance, President Eisenhower famously said, "All Americans worship God--whatever God that might be," and every Christmas season traditional carols were heard even on rock and roll stations, and creches dotted the public landscape.

No one seemed upset.

The Geek knows he wasn't. He was willing to stand silently with a slightly bowed head when the school day started with a prayer. It wasn't a threatening, traumatic experience. Neither was he offended when Chuck Berry was bypassed for Bing Crosby or some equally boring guy singing Silent Night. And, his aesthetic sense was no more offended by Christmas creches than it was by plastic Santas or red nosed reindeer.

But that was all before the Age of Sensitivity.

The early 1960s was not simply the era of JFK and Camelot, the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement, it was also the dawn of the Age of Sensitivity. JFK and Camelot might have been a public relations triumph. The Civil Rights movement was both overdue and and a victory for what the Pledge of Allegiance termed,"Liberty and Justice for all." The Age of Sensitivity has been and continues to be a disaster area greater than a million Katrinas.

A tragic reality of the American justice system is that a plaintiff can always be found (or fabricated) for any class action or Constitutional litigation. Once the case is filed and not dismissed by a judge with a modicum of get-a-gripness, it takes on a life of its own. If the lawyers are sharp enough and the money plentiful enough, the case will land on the doorstep of the Supreme Court.

If the Honorable Court (or at least four members of it) are out to lunch that day, the case will be accepted. If the national interest is unlucky enough, the Court (or at least five members) will be afflicted with cerebral flatulence and a pathetic decision will be rendered.

Should that happen, the horrid inertia of "let that decision stand" will take over and the Court will be forced not only to keep on a bad path, but perhaps expand it.

So it was with religiously derived speech in the schools and other critical areas of the public square. In the interest of protecting sensitivities, particularly of children, (an unusually elastic term extending apparently from little people in diapers to twenty somethings in jeans) the Court has held in essence that liberty of conscience is a private affair, not to be displayed, talked about or even implied in various portions of the public square lest someone, somewhere, somehow be offended, slighted, diminished, or otherwise impaired by being made to feel excluded from the mainstream of American life.

Parenthetical note: Having recently reread a number of the cases and opinions, the Geek has come to the firm conclusion that judges and justices should stick to the law and not wander off into the linguistic swamps of psychobabble and thera-speak. Likewise, they should stay out of the green pastures of history without employing a competent guide.

Suffice it to say that the liberty of conscience still exists. But, to a significant degree its mouth is gagged.

Why should this matter? So what if religion is not mentioned in schools from Head Start to the University? Who cares if religion as a force is deleted from US history?

The Geek is convinced there are two very good reasons why it matters, why we should care, and why it is important if our history is stripped of the truth.

The first reason is simple. Without full freedom of speech, the liberty of conscience doesn't really matter. Think about it. Even in the most repressive dictatorship, the most totally authoritarian regime one can imagine, an individual can believe whatever he or she wants without fear--as long as the mouth is kept shut, the fingers off the keyboard and away from a pen.

Silent liberty is no liberty at all. Liberty of conscience without a mouth to shout it is no liberty whatsoever.

That's the first reason. It is equal parts ideal and pragmatic.

The second reason is pure pragmatism. Open voiced religiously derived ideas as a full partner in all aspects of the public square is necessary over the long haul--if we are not to lose in the conflict with Islamists.

Kind of boggles the mind, doesn't it? Not when you get a grip.

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.

Who (Or Where) Is the Enemy?

Sometimes it seems that Islamists are Islam's worse enemies. This is particularly true at times like right now when a crew of unoppressed, non-poor, apparently unalientated young men, including three physicians, is implicated in three failed attempts to use fuel-air explosives on civilian targets in the United Kingdom.

The Geek could enjoy getting his emotional gonads up and running over these escapades in London and Glasgow. Dang! It would be just so much pure fun to go on a rant that would hope to match those on Gathering Storm or Jihad Watch. It would feel mighty fine to let go with some good, down home, insult spouting.

But, it wouldn't be honest. Worse. It wouldn't be right. Even worse, it wouldn't be productive. It wouldn't lead to the twin goals of defeating Islamist terrorism and not losing in Iraq.

With a tinge of regret, the Geek proposes to put aside the joys of virtual character assassination in order to look beyond the near horizon of another terror attempt fortuitously averted in order to seek the farther horizon of what must be done if we, the Americans, are going to ever have a hope of living without security alerts, photographs of New York cops carrying CAR 16's, journalists and other talking heads fretting about dirty bombs or bioweapons, and the other paraphernalia of recent times. Even to avoid losing in Iraq, it is necessary to consider topics far beyond the usual, beyond improvised explosive devices, mine resistant vehicles, Baghdad body counts, "surges," "milestones," and the other favorites of the chattering classes.

The farther horizon, the necessary horizon for navigating the coast of our collective future contains some definite but quite unexpected landmarks. Among them are such features as religion in the American public square, the content of American made films and television shows, the nature of American society and--most importantly--how these are perceived by members of traditional societies with an emphasis on the 1.5 giga-Muslims.

It is hard to look at ourselves as an outsider would. Worse. Doing so can be downright unpleasant. The view from the outside is never quite as flattering as that from within. (The Geek is reminded of this whenever he sees a photo of himself. Where's the studly hunkboy with the suave presentation? Just who is that skinny nerd?)

Now, before he starts, the Geek feels an obligation to say a bit about his own political and social views. It's a necessary part of the context.

First: The Geek is not a part of the "blame America first" crowd that is so prevalent on American university campuses. While he is unwilling to take second place to anyone in his capacity to identify undesirable aspects of the American social, cultural, economic or political landscapes, he is unwilling to compromise truth by laying blame for everything that has gone wrong in the past two hundred years on the back of Uncle Sam.

Next: The Geek is pleased to associate himself with the comment made by the great French mathematician and theoretical physicist, Laplace, who answered Napoleon's question regarding the role of the deity in the origin of the solar system, "I had no need of that hypothesis, your Majesty." This association does not mean that the Geek in anyway disparages the importance of faith in the lives and activities of others. As a historian he took great pride in doing something which made him highly politically suspect in the eyes of fellow professors. The Geek continuously pointed out that Protestant Christianity in particular was an ideological driving force throughout the majority of American history. In short, he demonstrated from the historical record that the characterization of the US as a "Christian nation," was accurate.

Finally: The Geek is an anti-authoritarian personality by nature. Politically, he is a Nineteenth Century Liberal, a follower of J.S. Mills' view of limited government and maximum individual liberty without regard to race, sex, creed or anything else. His political mantra is, "Act as if you deserve anarchy."

Now the decks are cleared. It's time to run out the guns. Search the sea for targets of opportunity. Shading his eyes against the glare of historical ignorance, the Geek spots---

Time to Get a Grip on Religion and History

Quite a few apologists for Islam, not all of them Muslims by a long, long way, enjoy pointing out that it was the followers of Islam who "invented" zero as an arithmetical place holder, preserved what little classical literature survived the long ordeal of the Dark Ages, and had a vibrant, productive period of scientific and medical research and discovery. Two of these three points are true--but not in a way that reflects any particular credit on Muslims.

First, the untruth: Muslims did not "discover" nor "invent" the use of zero as a place holder in math. That honor belongs to folks in India who were, then as now, Hindu. The convenience of zero in making basic business math type calculations was appreciated by the Arab merchants trading across the Indian Ocean, and they quickly adopted the Indian innovation. It then spread via trading routes into Europe where, along with the admittedly far less cumbersome Arabic numerals, rapidly sent the clumsy Roman system of notation to the scrapheap--and cornerstone dates for pretentious buildings.

The only credit due Islam per se is that it didn't inhibit all international trade with its giant appetite for war and conquest. The real kudos belong to Indian merchants and their Arab colleagues.

What about the other two? They are true assertions, no doubt about that. However, the truth rests less with the peaceful and scholarly nature of Muslims than with the deficiencies of Europeans.

It wasn't that the Europeans had suffered a terminal attack of stupidity when the Roman Empire in the West collapsed some 250 years before Islam erupted from the sands of Arabia. Nor did the Germanic tribes in the course of their folk migrations and displacement of Romans, Gauls and the other residents of the decaying empire have a single digit IQ level.

No. The ultimate responsibility for both the role played by Muslim scholars in preserving the remnants of classical learning from Greece and Rome and the splendid but short lived period of Muslim scientific and medical research rests with two facts on the blasted wastes of European society a thousand years and more ago.

Take a hold on the two facts.

Fear was one. Fear was pervasive in the aftermath of the collapse of Roman order, Roman protected trade and commerce, Roman peace. Decades, centuries of war, famine, death produced a very long lasting legacy of fear in all levels of the European population. Completely encapsulating fear produces a driving need for anything which will seem to take charge, direct perceptions, beliefs and behaviors. In short it produces a high number of authoritarian personalities eager to follow a leader, an institution, an ideology which offers to reduce fear.

The second fact was the existence in Europe at and after the implosion of the Western Roman Empire of an institution with an ideology and socially dominant authoritarians which was ready, willing, able and eager to take charge of the wreckage and move out.

That institution was the Catholic Church. The ideology was Pauline and post-Pauline Christianity. The socially dominant authoritarian personalities went by various job titles ranging from priest to pope. Ideology, institution and members combined as a total package which offered to reduce fear, reduce risk.

Intentionally or not, the Church considered as a religio-political system reduced something else, something even more important for a society, a culture, as a whole. The actions of the Church as it sought to provide a complete, integrated political and spiritual existence for its European adherents suppressed curiosity, repressed inventiveness, reduced almost to the point of elimination any individual questioning, thinking, acting.

For an authoritarian institution, as for the authoritarian personality, stasis is the desired state. The lack of exploration, the absence of change, innovation, creativity outside of narrowly defined boundaries are all considered good. Learning became a rote exercise in memorizing certain selected texts. Science and medicine--where and when either existed at all--consisted of repeating the work done a millennium or more earlier.

For centuries Europe froze under the heavy hand of an authoritarian institution and ideology. Nothing really changed intellectually, culturally, socially, politically, economically as one dreary year succeeded another. None of this occurred without good reason.

In the short hand of military intelligence manuals dealing with interrogation of prisoners of war, the reason is known as, "fear up; fear down." Authority over the perceptions, beliefs and behaviors of an individual (or an entire society with its many levels, ranks and functions) is established and maintained by manipulating fear up and down, of playing the most primal emotion of people like a musical instrument, running the scale up and down, higher and lower.

The Church painted horrifying visions of eternal damnation for those who did not follow all the many "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots" purportedly found in the one and only Official Bible as interpreted by those institutional functionaries licensed by the Church to do so. At the same time the Church offered the comforting images of a perfect place beyond space and time where the virtuous would dwell forever. Of course, "virtue" was defined by the Church.

While Europe droned on in a semi-coma, Islam was in its most rambunctious phase. It was a young, energetic, highly motivated and successful ideology. It might have had an ideology susceptible to authoritarian abuse, but the time was not yet right for the contradictory components of the Quran to be put to that purpose.

Islam was quick with the sword, not only against external enemies but against its own membership. There was internal violence, inner fractionation, palace intrigue, all the things that make life exciting, vibrant. Along with conquest, in tandem with killing and looting, in companionship with backstabbing and seizing one gold ring of power or another while standing on the bodies of yesterday's friends, came a thirst for learning that quickly drained the sparse oases of Arabia and seized eagerly upon the new lakes of knowledge in Alexandria and elsewhere.

Learning, scholarship had been celebrated by Mohammad so the Muslims who cherished the knowledge of antiquity and pushed forward the boundaries of understanding in chemistry, physics and medicine properly saw themselves as doing the will of Allah. Every now and then, according to the Geek's reading of history, authoritarianism and untrammeled creativity and invention can coexist. The first two hundred, three hundred years of Islam was such a time.

From the contrast briefly outlined here, it is easy to see why Islam cruised by Europe in so many fields of learning. But, let's get an honest grip on the truth behind this. If the Europeans had not fallen under the sway of a fossilizing authoritarian institution with the goal of totally controlling all aspects of human life, is it not likely--likely to the point of certainty--that Europeans, not Muslims, would have made the advances whether in science, medicine, government, trade and business or even war?

The answer to this question is found a couple of centuries later as the High Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance and Reformation. The hallmark of the Ren and Ref is a new celebration of the individual. In close second place is an increased willingness and ability to cast off the shackles of fear and authoritarianism.

As the Enlightenment replaced the earlier Renaissance and Reformation and as the failures of the Church's repressive efforts known as the Counter-reformation became increasingly evident, the day of the Individual fully dawned in Europe. To be sure this new emphasis upon the individual and his or her efforts came with increased risk and even new fears as well as the usual accomplices: war, famine, death--and creativity, innovation, invention, discovery, all the little things we have thought of for so long as "progress."

It is ironic to say the least that Islamists and Islamic fundamentalists want to stop the clock in its tracks or even turn it back to some supposed earlier and better time. It is ironic that Islamists and Islamic fundamentalists want to play the "fear up-fear down" racket to gain and maintain authority over fearful people. It is ironic that so many Muslims have given way to fears without basis.

It is ironic to see Islamists and their ilk try to kill their way to a social-political order frozen in a past which never existed in the way they believe it did. It is bitterly amusing to see Islamists and their accomplices try to bring a religiopolitical system into existence identical in all essential respects to that which so paralysed Europe that Islam could have had its great and brief moment in the sun.

There is something pathetic in the misuse of Western history by Western apologists for Islam. However, the Geek supposes it's inevitable that they do so. What else can be expected when they have so desperately misread the realities of today.

Islam--Prejudice or Honesty?

Getting a grip on Islam and Muslims is worse than trying to take a firm hold on a flopping fish. Every time you think you've got a hold on the critter, it slips, slides and flips out of your hands.

The problem has two sources: The nature of Islam; the nature of tolerance and understanding in the US and throughout the Western world.

Islam is a deeply divided system of beliefs due to its origin as a political ideology with religious coloration as discussed in earlier posts. A major inconsistency exists between the earlier revelations when Mohammad was developing his movement and the later verses written after the violent conquest of the major cities of the Arabian Peninsula such as Mecca.

The early verses give rise to the oft-repeated portrayal of Islam as a religion of peace, harmony and human unity. In this Islam is no different from more recent ideologies, most notably communism.

Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro all spilled much ink and expended much wind on the proposition that desirable human virtues such as equality, individual development, the abolishment of poverty, disease and famine would accompany the success of the ideology. Ideologues, whether they cloak their wares in the will of God, or Historical Inevitability, all have the goal of attracting, retaining and mobilizing followers in order to achieve one goal.

The goal?

Power. Political power. The capacity to directly and significantly affect in a desired way the perceptions, beliefs and actions of a target population. The target population might be that of Russia. It might be the people of Cuba, or China. A long time ago it was the inhabitants of the desert wastes and the cities of Arabia.

Or the target population might be that of the world. The goal might be the enrolling of the entire human race under a single banner.

Of course history shows beyond even the most unreasonable doubt that sweetness and light, warm, fuzzy words might not do the job. The pen might not be as mighty as the cliche holds.

But, a pen backed by a sword is far more convincing. Unpleasant, but true. Take a grip on it.

The sword. It was the sword that won the Arabian peninsula for Mohammad and his Companions, his hard-core cadre. It was the sword which won so much more for Islam over the next century or so. It was the swinging of the red-edged sword which lurks behind the later verses of the Quran.

The later portions are the mother lode for fatwas, jihads, suicide bombings as well as the bodyguard of lies which can and does surround these overt hostile actions. It is the later verses which are the red meat for the fearful, the vengeful, and the authoritarians in the souk and the mosque.

Get a grip on this. Islam is a religion (or a politco-religious system, if you prefer) that is inherently authoritarian. It demands complete submission to the will of the deity as well as those qualified to instruct the mass as to the what the deity's will might be.

It is in the act of submission, the process of turning the course of a person's life over to the deity and the interpreters, that gives Islam (and, the Geek must point out if he's honest about it, other religious beliefs) it's appeal and power.

History and psychology agree on a few points. One of the most important is that most humans, most of the time, do not want to take responsibility for their own lives. Particularly they don't want to take responsibility for failure, bad decision making, or other negatives.

An authoritarian religion, any authoritarian social-political system or ideology for that matter, can relieve the individual of the unwanted burden of personal responsibility. It also can and does provide a suitable candidate, an Other, as the evil doer perpetrating all of life's miscarriages upon an individual. (For Nazis it was the Jews, for Communists it was the capitalists, and for Islamists it is the West and the apostates within.)

An authoritarian ideology whether religious or secular can, must, provide targets for frustration, failure, humiliation, for all the icky-poo components of life. To be really successful an authoritarian ideology must provide a vision of both paradise lost and paradise regained. It must blame the present situation on past failures of ideological purity and cohesiveness. It must promise that paradise will be regained if ideological purity and cohesiveness are practiced fully and completely.

An authoritarian ideology must play to fear, must harness fear, must insist that only through complete and absolute submission to the requirements of the ideology in belief, in speech and in action will the individual's fears be lessened.

Get a firm grip on this: Islam is an authoritarian religion, an authoritarian ideology, even a total institution as Goffman defined such nearly fifty years ago for many of its adherents. It plays to fear, encourages fear, stokes fear. At the same time it provides a message of hope, redemption and ultimate victory in both this world and the next. All that is required is total, utter submission.

A well known paradox of the human condition is that submission truly liberates. Surrender does make one free.

Another paradox is that enough fear makes an individual fearless. Fear God and dread nought is found in the Bible. An equivalent expression is in the Quran--repeatedly.

In Europe and the United States total wars of religious ideology are thankfully in the past. Westerners can afford to believe in the virtues of tolerance, open-mindedness, appreciation of cultural differences. We are quite used to the clamor of competing voices in the public square. We are by and large unbothered if churches, temples, synagogues and mosques border the public square.

Many of us who grew up in America during the worst days of the Cold War nonetheless believed that the attempts to limit speech, limit political action, limit the presence even of Communists and those close to Communism was wrong as grilled watermelon. We asked ourselves and each other, "If capitalism and democracy are so strong, so good, what are they afraid of? Why the censorship, the outlawing, the paranoia?"

There was never a good answer. There was never any real answer. None was possible. Now, more than ever, the generation of the Cold War's most frosty depths which now runs so much of the institutions in the US and the West doesn't want to be guilty of the same paranoiac closed mindedness as our parents and grandparents.

We don't want to think that 1.5 billion or so Muslims are all fear-ridden authoritarians ready to answer the call of jihad. We don't want to be seen as the moral and intellectual cripples that years ago we saw the older generation, "the establishment" to have been. We want ever so much to think as does Peter W. Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in an article out in today's Salon www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/06/26/war_of_ideas/index.html? source=newsletter that Muslims are not uniformly wearing black hats. We want to believe that most Muslims reject the fatwas, the bombings, the jihad as much as we do.

The Geek is personally eager to accept the proposition that the vast majority of Muslims are peace loving and peaceful; that those who live among us share our basic values, orientations, hopes and fears. But, his cynical historian's mind wonders, "Is desire enough?"

After all, the Geek recalls, it was Lenin who observed, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them."

Are we selling rope today?

Islamophobia or Islamoaccuracy? Part 3

A little while ago, a guy accosted me down in front of a local bar. He wasn't drunk. He made a demand. "Geek. What I care about is Iran. I don't want to see us in another war. Know what I mean?"

The Geek nodded, he hoped sagaciously with a hint of total agreement. He was wondering where the dude was going with this.

"See, I think things will get out of hand. Know what I mean?"

The Geek wasn't sure. He had suspicions. But, unlike the current Administration, he has never been given to acting on suspicions. He nodded again, hoping the gesture showed a bit of doubt.

"See, Geek, it's like this. It's not like I want those idiots to get the bomb. But, bidda-bing, bidda-bang, we go in with an air strike and Lord only knows what those zany morons might do. Know what I mean?"

The Geek nodded. It was back to sagacious.

"And, then, we might nuke the hell out of 'em."

"Sure might at that," the Geek agreed.

"But, man, I mean, governments--even the Tehran bunch--know that. They don't want to see their country get the schnitzel. Right?"

It was hot. The Geek had an hour and half drive off the road to get back home. He was not ready for a street corner debate. He copped out.

"I'll have to think about it."

Here's the answer the Geek would have given, if he hadn't been hot, tired and eager to get home.

In short form the answer is, "Not necessarily."

The long form response requires taking a firm grip on history. Pol Pot and his minions were not bothered by the killing fields of Cambodia.

Saddam Hussein didn't appear disturbed by using heavy artillery and poison gas on his own people. Next door, Assad lost no sleep over rolling the tanks over the bodies of fellow Syrians.

Going back a bit further, Mao stayed calm as his Great Leap Forward greased the slide to death for millions from starvation, disease and cannibalism. The Japanese High Command was untroubled by the reality that an American invasion would lead to millions of civilian deaths.

On the other side of the world, Adolph Hitler stated that the German people deserved to be destroyed because they had let him down.

Then there was Joe Stalin who famously quipped, "The death of one person may be a tragedy but the death of millions is a statistic." He ought to know. At least about the second part of his comment. No leader in the bloody history of the human race died with so much blood on his hands.

What this dreary historical record tells us is simply that it is never wise, never prudent, never even rational to depend upon the enlightened self-interest of another government-particularly when that government operates from a set of values vastly different from one's own.

Perhaps, particularly when the government in question believes that it has God on its side--or at least talks and acts as though it believes so. (Of course, the Geek notes with the typical historian's cynical smile on his face, that the German soldier went to war in 1914 and again in 1939 with the slogan "Got Mit Uns" on his belt buckle. We know how that belief worked out.)

Consider for a moment the war between Iran and Iraq in the early and mid-1980s. The Iranian government was both willing and able to send untrained masses of very young volunteers into combat. Most were unarmed. Many were used as human mine clearing forces. The body count was impressive, even if the military results were not.

In short, the government in Tehran has shown itself quite immune to considerations of casualties. It has even shown a bizarre ability to use body counts and funerals for domestic propaganda, to whip up continued war fever.

It is possible, even probable, that the Iranian mullahocracy views the prospect of war with Israel or the United States not only with equanimity, but a tinge of eagerness. Why not? They expect to win. One way or another. No matter how many Iranians are killed, the chance still remains that the attacker will be destroyed or at least so badly damaged that Teheran's Islamist goals would nonetheless be achieved.

What are the implications if this analysis is fundamentally correct?

There are two: Letting Iran achieve a nuclear capability is not prudent, to say the least; using force is an option that has to be considered like porcupines make love--very, very carefully.

After all, in war no one has God on its side.