After forcing 49 young Iraqi soldiers to lie face-down on the ground, and then pumping bullets into their heads in a ritualistic mass execution, the Islamic extremists responsible issued a short statement.
ﾓGod enabled the Mujahideen to kill all of them and seize two cars and money,ﾒ it said. There was no room for doubt. They believed it. God was their commander, their guide and their conscience.
A few weeks before, Abu Musab al-Zarqawiﾴs butchers said much the same thing as they hacked off the heads of their American hostages. ﾓItﾴs Godﾴs will,ﾒ they said, in effect, as they held the severed heads high for their Internet audience.
After September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden was filmed in his cave with one of his mullahs offering thanks and gratitude to Allah for granting their most fervent wishes.
That both the Twin Towers had fallen, claiming 3,000 infidel lives, was actually beyond their most outrageous dreams. ﾓThanks be to Allah!ﾒ Osama intoned, ﾓHe offers us many, many blessings,ﾒ and the pair of them embraced in congratulatory euphoria.
Ever since I witnessed, via television, Iranian Muslims marching through Teheran banging their own heads with stones, causing blood to spill over their shoulders and down to their waists, I have been disturbed by the dreadful implications of religious extremism.
Western man has become accustomed, over many generations, to witnessing, if not understanding, the excesses of the Middle East and some of its people. Their more grotesque practices have been viewed from afar with understandable distaste, a certain disdain and cool, measured detachment.
Alas, a detached view is no longer possible as rogue elements of Islam seek to undermine civilisation as we know it.
Now that militant Muslims are the enemy of the west in a brutal war, it is desirable – indeed crucial – that we get to grips with fundamentalist thinking and try to plumb the depths of the Muslim psyche if there is to be any long-term hope of neutralising the threat they pose.
However, in assessing President George W Bushﾴs capacity to undertake such a task, we have to confront an even more disturbing truth: That the current US government is fuelled by its own brand of religious fundamentalism, with an extremely powerful evangelical movement offering vocal and spiritual support from behind.
A documentary on American television last week served as a troubling reminder that ﾓborn againﾒ American evangelicals – who see Bush as an heroic soulmate – are as blindly certain of the righteousness of their cause as the Muslim head-loppers are of theirs.
True, they do not resort to decapitation of hostages and the horror of suicide bombings, but their utterances are no less disturbing in that they make no allowance for dissent and are utterly convinced that they are Godﾴs chosen people. There is something medieval about their obstinate rejection of contrary views. And they regard themselves as so much part of the political process in America that they have been using their churches for voter registration, disseminating their worryingly simplistic view of the world in the process.
Hence, as the 21st century gets into its stride, we have a growing conflict between rigid Christian and Muslim thinking that is reminiscent of that which sent the crusaders to the Holy Land some 900 years ago. Jesus Christ and the Prophet Muhammad, both proponents of peaceful solutions to lifeﾴs travails, are once more invoked as justification for the insane impulses of humankind.
While Osama bin Laden cites Allah as his mentor and motivator, George W Bush seeks guidance ﾓfrom a higher fatherﾒ, using his faith to drive a foreign policy which has already squandered thousands of lives in Iraq and made the West a target for growing armies of driven Islamic militants.
During the TV profile of evangelicals, it was stated more than once by the movementﾴs most fervent adherents that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation, and that those who fall foul of that belief are doomed to hellfire and damnation.
There was not a blink of doubt or disbelief as they recited this wicked doctrine of retribution. A little girl brainwashed into such thinking said categorically: ﾓThose who do not believe in Jesus go to Hell.ﾒ She had been ﾓborn againﾒ at the age of three and was happy to believe that all Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, humanists and agnostics were destined for Satanﾴs furnace in a kind of king-sized holocaust when judgement day came.
If these people were a small fringe group of religious fruitcakes and headbangers, we could safely dismiss them as of no account. But they are a large and enormously influential lobby in American politics, accounting for a high percentage of the Republican vote. And American politics, with all its oddities and complexities, affects us all.
Whoever finds his way into the White House in this weekﾴs presidential election will have a direct impact on the Bahamas, the entire Caribbean region and, indeed, the whole world. If that person happens to be George W Bush, he will have been propelled back to power in large part by a religious movement whose mindset is so fixed, so myopic, that it allows no room for rational discourse.
Thus, an increasingly secular western world (outside the United States, that is) will find its future significantly influenced by people on both sides of a holy war whose entire lives are dictated by religious intransigence – an unwillingness, maybe even an inability, to acknowledge beliefs different from their own.
This will, almost certainly, further alienate from the US cause all those relatively sophisticated thinkers, especially in Europe, who regard religious fundamentalism of all kinds as a delusional state akin to an acute psychiatric disorder. They already pity America for saddling itself with a dangerously misguided and appallingly inept regime, but will not be so understanding if it makes the same mistake again.
The prospect of Bush the born again crusader spending four more years inciting yet more hatred among people he has no wish to understand, and who his evangelical brothers regard as hellbound heretics, is viewed by many intelligent people with considerable dismay. And with good reason.
For the Bahamas, the intrusion of religion into the political process is nothing new. The ﾓGod supports the Republicansﾒ line in the United States is a direct parallel of the ﾓGod backs the PLPﾒ sentiment expressed more than once by some Bahamian pastors. In Nassau, we have even witnessed some churchmen ordering their flocks how to vote and threatening banishment if they failed to conform.
But there is a reassuring belief among Bahamians that, whatever rants are heard from the pulpit demagogues, the people themselves go their own sweet way on polling day, without the benefits or otherwise of divine intervention. In the United States, one can never be sure that this is the case.
In the 20th century, secularism and humanism were blamed for the worldﾴs troubles. Hitlerﾴs persecution of the Jews was seen more as an economic expedient than having any religious base, and Russian communism was always viewed by the west as a malevolent anti-religious ideology which feared, and therefore neutralised, the power of the church.
In the 21st century, we face a throwback to the religious intolerance and bigotry of former times, with echoes of the Spanish Inquisition, the burning of heretics and the demonisation of non-believers. In Bush, the United States has a leader whose thinking is not far removed from that of King Charles the First, who we all know lost his head in 1649 because he claimed to be Godﾴs chosen monarch.
More worryingly, the Christian-Muslim conflict implied by the utterances of Bush and bin Laden would certainly be familiar to the European and Middle East peoples of the 11th and 12th centuries when Saracens and Crusaders were locked in deadly combat. Iraq is not the first Middle East territory in which followers of Christ and the Prophet have been at war.
To see George W Bush and Osama bin Laden – both religious zealots who imagine themselves to be in possession of Godﾴs mandate – ranged against each other in what they evidently view as a holy war is a deeply depressing prospect for rational thinkers.
It means there is no chance of sanity being allowed to intrude. It also means that mature people of sound mind will have to look on impotently from the sidelines while faith-driven bigots fight it out to the finish if Bush is given a second term.
History has shown, repeatedly, that politics and religion together are a highly toxic, combustible and destructive mixture. Worse still, it has no antidote, for reason and logic have no place in the heads of those who go to war utterly convinced that God is on their side.
It is just one more reason why John Kerry must win this weekﾴs election. Whatever his limitations as a candidate, he brings intelligence, reason and, one hopes, a measure of understanding to the table. And thatﾴs what we need right now, in abundance.
By John Marquis
Insight, The Tribune
Nassau, Bahamas
November 1st, 2004
