Thursday, August 05, 2004
Extremist Beliefs and Terrorism
Terrorism and extremism have always been regarded as two sides of the same coin. The rise of Islamic extremism is only the latest chapter in this story. But unfortunately the situation worldwide seems to be getting more serious as time passes. Conservative Christianity seems to be getting stronger rather than weaker as time passes in the United States. Its adherents seem more and more fascinated with questions of heaven and hell and the end of the world through a cataclysmic return of Christ. The lack of any public education for millions of children in Muslim and part-Muslim states has led to its replacement in many areas by schools teaching a barren and fanatical Islamic education. This tendency is echoed in a small way in America, for we learn that the primary reason for the rapid growth of "home schooling" in this country is a growing desire to give children a more Christian education than the public schools offer. The problem with all extremisms is that they feed on one another: in the fifties, the rabid anticommunist was confirmed in his beliefs by the rabid communist; today the rabid Christian by the rabid Muslim.
I do not know if it was by plan or coincidence, but in today's paper an Op-Ed discussion of fundamentalism as the greatest threat to democracy in Africa, particularly in Nigeria, was echoed in an accompanying Op-Ed by a discussion of the rise of fanatic Jewish groups, particularly on the frontier between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. To the fanatics, the Arabs across the border are just not another people, but are "Amalekites", the same "snakes" that attacked Moses during the exodus. Remember that to many conservative Christians, including a high ranking General who I believe is still in the Bush administration, Muslims represent Satan, and the Jews represent a people who will rightly reclaim Palestine before Armageddon (a blessed but messy event that will save all believing Christians). To this minority the justice and inevitability of an American crusade in the Middle East is as firmly believed as the idea that our forces in Iraq are crusaders that have come to extirpate Islam is believed by many extremist Muslims.
It may seem hard for an outsider to imagine, but it seems that there are groups of Jews, particularly among the settlers and their allies who believe that Ariel Sharon by even discussing the possibility of giving up some settlements or the Gaza Strip has forfeited his right to life. For this offense against God, hundreds are evidently talking of the need to assassinate him before it is too late. These are no idle threats: Rabin was similarly charged and was killed. The point of the Op-Ed is to plead for a more active and verbal stance by American Orthodox rabbis against such talk.
In Nigeria, Pakistan, and much of the Muslim world, the problem is the rise of fanatics who demand that Islamic law be given precedent over civil law, or, indeed, become the civil law. Since Islamic Law is by no means unitary (there are many schools even within Sunnism and the Shi'a-Sunni clash is bound to be exacerbated by such preaching), this demand is a recipe for disaster even within states that are uniformly "Muslim". In a state such as Nigeria where Muslims and Christians divide up the turf fairly evenly among themselves and many less significant groups, fanaticism of any kind makes the state less governable. It also interferes with international programs such as polio vaccination or the provision of food aid that have been severely set back by fundamentalist and quite irrelevant beliefs.
Terrorism and extremism have always been regarded as two sides of the same coin. The rise of Islamic extremism is only the latest chapter in this story. But unfortunately the situation worldwide seems to be getting more serious as time passes. Conservative Christianity seems to be getting stronger rather than weaker as time passes in the United States. Its adherents seem more and more fascinated with questions of heaven and hell and the end of the world through a cataclysmic return of Christ. The lack of any public education for millions of children in Muslim and part-Muslim states has led to its replacement in many areas by schools teaching a barren and fanatical Islamic education. This tendency is echoed in a small way in America, for we learn that the primary reason for the rapid growth of "home schooling" in this country is a growing desire to give children a more Christian education than the public schools offer. The problem with all extremisms is that they feed on one another: in the fifties, the rabid anticommunist was confirmed in his beliefs by the rabid communist; today the rabid Christian by the rabid Muslim.
I do not know if it was by plan or coincidence, but in today's paper an Op-Ed discussion of fundamentalism as the greatest threat to democracy in Africa, particularly in Nigeria, was echoed in an accompanying Op-Ed by a discussion of the rise of fanatic Jewish groups, particularly on the frontier between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. To the fanatics, the Arabs across the border are just not another people, but are "Amalekites", the same "snakes" that attacked Moses during the exodus. Remember that to many conservative Christians, including a high ranking General who I believe is still in the Bush administration, Muslims represent Satan, and the Jews represent a people who will rightly reclaim Palestine before Armageddon (a blessed but messy event that will save all believing Christians). To this minority the justice and inevitability of an American crusade in the Middle East is as firmly believed as the idea that our forces in Iraq are crusaders that have come to extirpate Islam is believed by many extremist Muslims.
It may seem hard for an outsider to imagine, but it seems that there are groups of Jews, particularly among the settlers and their allies who believe that Ariel Sharon by even discussing the possibility of giving up some settlements or the Gaza Strip has forfeited his right to life. For this offense against God, hundreds are evidently talking of the need to assassinate him before it is too late. These are no idle threats: Rabin was similarly charged and was killed. The point of the Op-Ed is to plead for a more active and verbal stance by American Orthodox rabbis against such talk.
In Nigeria, Pakistan, and much of the Muslim world, the problem is the rise of fanatics who demand that Islamic law be given precedent over civil law, or, indeed, become the civil law. Since Islamic Law is by no means unitary (there are many schools even within Sunnism and the Shi'a-Sunni clash is bound to be exacerbated by such preaching), this demand is a recipe for disaster even within states that are uniformly "Muslim". In a state such as Nigeria where Muslims and Christians divide up the turf fairly evenly among themselves and many less significant groups, fanaticism of any kind makes the state less governable. It also interferes with international programs such as polio vaccination or the provision of food aid that have been severely set back by fundamentalist and quite irrelevant beliefs.
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