October 7, 2001
By ANDREW SULLIVAN
Perhaps the most admirable part of the
response to the conflict that began on
Sept. 11 has been a general reluctance to
call it a religious war. Officials and
commentators have rightly stressed that this
is not a battle between the Muslim world
and the West, that the murderers are not
representative of Islam. President Bush went
to the Islamic Center in Washington to
reinforce the point. At prayer meetings
across the United States and throughout the
world, Muslim leaders have been included
alongside Christians, Jews and Buddhists.
The only problem with this otherwise
laudable effort is that it doesn't hold up
under inspection. The religious dimension of
this conflict is central to its meaning. The
words of Osama bin Laden are saturated
with religious argument and theological
language. Whatever else the Taliban regime
is in Afghanistan, it is fanatically religious.
Although some Muslim leaders have
criticized the terrorists, and even Saudi
Arabia's rulers have distanced themselves
from the militants, other Muslims in the
Middle East and elsewhere have not
denounced these acts, have been
conspicuously silent or have indeed
celebrated them. The terrorists' strain of
Islam is clearly not shared by most Muslims and is deeply unrepresentative
of
Islam's glorious, civilized and peaceful past. But it surely represents
a part of
Islam -- a radical, fundamentalist part -- that simply cannot be ignored
or
denied.
In that sense, this surely is a religious war -- but not of Islam versus
Christianity and Judaism. Rather, it is a war of fundamentalism against
faiths
of all kinds that are at peace with freedom and modernity. This war even
has
far gentler echoes in America's own religious conflicts -- between newer,
more virulent strands of Christian fundamentalism and mainstream
Protestantism and Catholicism. These conflicts have ancient roots, but
they
seem to be gaining new force as modernity spreads and deepens. They are
our new wars of religion -- and their victims are in all likelihood going
to
mount with each passing year.
Osama bin Laden himself couldn't be clearer about the religious
underpinnings of his campaign of terror. In 1998, he told his followers,
''The
call to wage war against America was made because America has
spearheaded the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of
thousands of its troops to the land of the two holy mosques over and above
its meddling in its affairs and its politics and its support of the oppressive,
corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control.'' Notice the use of the
word
''crusade,'' an explicitly religious term, and one that simply ignores
the fact
that the last few major American interventions abroad -- in Kuwait, Somalia
and the Balkans -- were all conducted in defense of Muslims.
Notice also that as bin Laden understands it, the ''crusade'' America is
alleged to be leading is not against Arabs but against the Islamic nation,
which spans many ethnicities. This nation knows no nation-states as they
actually exist in the region -- which is why this form of Islamic
fundamentalism is also so worrying to the rulers of many Middle Eastern
states. Notice also that bin Laden's beef is with American troops defiling
the
land of Saudi Arabia -- the land of the two holy mosques,'' in Mecca and
Medina. In 1998, he also told followers that his terrorism was ''of the
commendable kind, for it is directed at the tyrants and the aggressors
and the
enemies of Allah.'' He has a litany of grievances against Israel as well,
but his
concerns are not primarily territorial or procedural. ''Our religion is
under
attack,'' he said baldly. The attackers are Christians and Jews. When asked
to sum up his message to the people of the West, bin Laden couldn't have
been clearer: ''Our call is the call of Islam that was revealed to Muhammad.
It is a call to all mankind. We have been entrusted with good cause to
follow
in the footsteps of the messenger and to communicate his message to all
nations.''
This is a religious war against ''unbelief and unbelievers,'' in bin Laden's
words. Are these cynical words designed merely to use Islam for nefarious
ends? We cannot know the precise motives of bin Laden, but we can know
that he would not use these words if he did not think they had salience
among the people he wishes to inspire and provoke. This form of Islam is
not
restricted to bin Laden alone.
Its roots lie in an extreme and violent strain in Islam that emerged in
the 18th
century in opposition to what was seen by some Muslims as Ottoman
decadence but has gained greater strength in the 20th. For the past two
decades, this form of Islamic fundamentalism has racked the Middle East.
It
has targeted almost every regime in the region and, as it failed to make
progress, has extended its hostility into the West. From the assassination
of
Anwar Sadat to the fatwa against Salman Rushdie to the decadelong
campaign of bin Laden to the destruction of ancient Buddhist statues and
the
hideous persecution of women and homosexuals by the Taliban to the World
Trade Center massacre, there is a single line. That line is a fundamentalist,
religious one. And it is an Islamic one.
Most interpreters of the Koran find no arguments in it for the murder of
innocents. But it would be naive to ignore in Islam a deep thread of
intolerance toward unbelievers, especially if those unbelievers are believed
to
be a threat to the Islamic world. There are many passages in the Koran
urging mercy toward others, tolerance, respect for life and so on. But
there
are also passages as violent as this: ''And when the sacred months are
passed, kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find
them;
and seize them, besiege them, and lay wait for them with every kind of
ambush.'' And this: ''Believers! Wage war against such of the infidels
as are
your neighbors, and let them find you rigorous.'' Bernard Lewis, the great
scholar of Islam, writes of the dissonance within Islam: ''There is something
in
the religious culture of Islam which inspired, in even the humblest peasant
or
peddler, a dignity and a courtesy toward others never exceeded and rarely
equaled in other civilizations. And yet, in moments of upheaval and
disruption, when the deeper passions are stirred, this dignity and courtesy
toward others can give way to an explosive mixture of rage and hatred which
impels even the government of an ancient and civilized country -- even
the
spokesman of a great spiritual and ethical religion -- to espouse kidnapping
and assassination, and try to find, in the life of their prophet, approval
and
indeed precedent for such actions.'' Since Muhammad was, unlike many
other religious leaders, not simply a sage or a prophet but a ruler in
his own
right, this exploitation of his politics is not as great a stretch as some
would
argue.
This use of religion for extreme repression, and even terror, is not of
course
restricted to Islam. For most of its history, Christianity has had a worse
record. From the Crusades to the Inquisition to the bloody religious wars
of
the 16th and 17th centuries, Europe saw far more blood spilled for religion's
sake than the Muslim world did. And given how expressly nonviolent the
teachings of the Gospels are, the perversion of Christianity in this respect
was arguably greater than bin Laden's selective use of Islam. But it is
there
nonetheless. It seems almost as if there is something inherent in religious
monotheism that lends itself to this kind of terrorist temptation. And
our
bland attempts to ignore this -- to speak of this violence as if it did
not have
religious roots -- is some kind of denial. We don't want to denigrate religion
as such, and so we deny that religion is at the heart of this. But we would
understand this conflict better, perhaps, if we first acknowledged that
religion
is responsible in some way, and then figured out how and why.
The first mistake is surely to condescend to fundamentalism. We may
disagree with it, but it has attracted millions of adherents for centuries,
and
for a good reason. It elevates and comforts. It provides a sense of meaning
and direction to those lost in a disorienting world. The blind recourse
to texts
embraced as literal truth, the injunction to follow the commandments of
God
before anything else, the subjugation of reason and judgment and even
conscience to the dictates of dogma: these can be exhilarating and
transformative. They have led human beings to perform extraordinary acts
of
both good and evil. And they have an internal logic to them. If you believe
that there is an eternal afterlife and that endless indescribable torture
awaits
those who disobey God's law, then it requires no huge stretch of imagination
to make sure that you not only conform to each diktat but that you also
encourage and, if necessary, coerce others to do the same. The logic behind
this is impeccable. Sin begets sin. The sin of others can corrupt you as
well.
The only solution is to construct a world in which such sin is outlawed
and
punished and constantly purged -- by force if necessary. It is not crazy
to act
this way if you believe these things strongly enough. In some ways, it's
crazier
to believe these things and not act this way.
In a world of absolute truth, in matters graver than life and death, there
is no
room for dissent and no room for theological doubt. Hence the reliance
on
literal interpretations of texts -- because interpretation can lead to
error, and
error can lead to damnation. Hence also the ancient Catholic insistence
on
absolute church authority. Without infallibility, there can be no guarantee
of
truth. Without such a guarantee, confusion can lead to hell.
Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor makes the case perhaps as well as anyone.
In the story told by Ivan Karamazov in ''The Brothers Karamazov,'' Jesus
returns to earth during the Spanish Inquisition. On a day when hundreds
have
been burned at the stake for heresy, Jesus performs miracles. Alarmed,
the
Inquisitor arrests Jesus and imprisons him with the intent of burning him
at the
stake as well. What follows is a conversation between the Inquisitor and
Jesus. Except it isn't a conversation because Jesus says nothing. It is
really a
dialogue between two modes of religion, an exploration of the tension
between the extraordinary, transcendent claims of religion and human beings'
inability to live up to them, or even fully believe them.
According to the Inquisitor, Jesus' crime was revealing that salvation
was
possible but still allowing humans the freedom to refuse it. And this,
to the
Inquisitor, was a form of cruelty. When the truth involves the most important
things imaginable -- the meaning of life, the fate of one's eternal soul,
the
difference between good and evil -- it is not enough to premise it on the
capacity of human choice. That is too great a burden. Choice leads to
unbelief or distraction or negligence or despair. What human beings really
need is the certainty of truth, and they need to see it reflected in everything
around them -- in the cultures in which they live, enveloping them in a
seamless fabric of faith that helps them resist the terror of choice and
the
abyss of unbelief. This need is what the Inquisitor calls the ''fundamental
secret of human nature.'' He explains: ''These pitiful creatures are concerned
not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find something
that
all would believe in and worship; what is essential is that all may be
together
in it. This craving for community of worship is the chief misery of every
man
individually and of all humanity since the beginning of time.''
This is the voice of fundamentalism. Faith cannot exist alone in a single
person. Indeed, faith needs others for it to survive -- and the more complete
the culture of faith, the wider it is, and the more total its infiltration
of the
world, the better. It is hard for us to wrap our minds around this today,
but it
is quite clear from the accounts of the Inquisition and, indeed, of the
religious
wars that continued to rage in Europe for nearly three centuries, that
many of
the fanatics who burned human beings at the stake were acting out of what
they genuinely thought were the best interests of the victims. With the
power
of the state, they used fire, as opposed to simple execution, because it
was
thought to be spiritually cleansing. A few minutes of hideous torture on
earth
were deemed a small price to pay for helping such souls avoid eternal torture
in the afterlife. Moreover, the example of such government-sponsored
executions helped create a culture in which certain truths were reinforced
and
in which it was easier for more weak people to find faith. The burden of
this
duty to uphold the faith lay on the men required to torture, persecute
and
murder the unfaithful. And many of them believed, as no doubt some Islamic
fundamentalists believe, that they were acting out of mercy and godliness.
This is the authentic voice of the Taliban. It also finds itself replicated
in
secular form. What, after all, were the totalitarian societies of Nazi
Germany
or Soviet Russia if not an exact replica of this kind of fusion of politics
and
ultimate meaning? Under Lenin's and Stalin's rules, the imminence of
salvation through revolutionary consciousness was in perpetual danger of
being undermined by those too weak to have faith -- the bourgeois or the
kulaks or the intellectuals. So they had to be liquidated or purged. Similarly,
it is easy for us to dismiss the Nazis as evil, as they surely were. It
is harder
for us to understand that in some twisted fashion, they truly believed
that they
were creating a new dawn for humanity, a place where all the doubts that
freedom brings could be dispelled in a rapture of racial purity and destiny.
Hence the destruction of all dissidents and the Jews -- carried out by
fire as
the Inquisitors had before, an act of purification different merely in
its scale,
efficiency and Godlessness.
Perhaps the most important thing for us to realize today is that the defeat
of
each of these fundamentalisms required a long and arduous effort. The
conflict with Islamic fundamentalism is likely to take as long. For unlike
Europe's religious wars, which taught Christians the futility of fighting
to the
death over something beyond human understanding and so immune to any
definitive resolution, there has been no such educative conflict in the
Muslim
world. Only Iran and Afghanistan have experienced the full horror of
revolutionary fundamentalism, and only Iran has so far seen reason to
moderate to some extent. From everything we see, the lessons Europe
learned in its bloody history have yet to be absorbed within the Muslim
world. There, as in 16th-century Europe, the promise of purity and salvation
seems far more enticing than the mundane allure of mere peace. That means
that we are not at the end of this conflict but in its very early stages.
America is not a neophyte in this struggle. the United States has seen
several
waves of religious fervor since its founding. But American evangelicalism
has
always kept its distance from governmental power. The Christian separation
between what is God's and what is Caesar's -- drawn from the Gospels --
helped restrain the fundamentalist temptation. The last few decades have
proved an exception, however. As modernity advanced, and the certitudes
of fundamentalist faith seemed mocked by an increasingly liberal society,
evangelicals mobilized and entered politics. Their faith sharpened, their
zeal
intensified, the temptation to fuse political and religious authority beckoned
more insistently.
Mercifully, violence has not been a significant feature of this trend --
but it
has not been absent. The murders of abortion providers show what such zeal
can lead to. And indeed, if people truly believe that abortion is the same
as
mass murder, then you can see the awful logic of the terrorism it has
spawned. This is the same logic as bin Laden's. If faith is that strong,
and it
dictates a choice between action or eternal damnation, then violence can
easily be justified. In retrospect, we should be amazed not that violence
has
occurred -- but that it hasn't occurred more often.
The critical link between Western and Middle Eastern fundamentalism is
surely the pace of social change. If you take your beliefs from books written
more than a thousand years ago, and you believe in these texts literally,
then
the appearance of the modern world must truly terrify. If you believe that
women should be consigned to polygamous, concealed servitude, then
Manhattan must appear like Gomorrah. If you believe that homosexuality
is a
crime punishable by death, as both fundamentalist Islam and the Bible
dictate, then a world of same-sex marriage is surely Sodom. It is not a
big
step to argue that such centers of evil should be destroyed or undermined,
as
bin Laden does, or to believe that their destruction is somehow a
consequence of their sin, as Jerry Falwell argued. Look again at Falwell's
now infamous words in the wake of Sept. 11: ''I really believe that the
pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians
who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the A.C.L.U.,
People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize
America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'''
And why wouldn't he believe that? He has subsequently apologized for the
insensitivity of the remark but not for its theological underpinning. He
cannot
repudiate the theology -- because it is the essence of what he believes
in and
must believe in for his faith to remain alive.
The other critical aspect of this kind of faith is insecurity. American
fundamentalists know they are losing the culture war. They are terrified
of
failure and of the Godless world they believe is about to engulf or crush
them. They speak and think defensively. They talk about renewal, but in
their
private discourse they expect damnation for an America that has lost sight
of
the fundamentalist notion of God.
Similarly, Muslims know that the era of Islam's imperial triumph has long
since gone. For many centuries, the civilization of Islam was the center
of the
world. It eclipsed Europe in the Dark Ages, fostered great learning and
expanded territorially well into Europe and Asia. But it has all been downhill
from there. From the collapse of the Ottoman Empire onward, it has been
on
the losing side of history. The response to this has been an intermittent
flirtation with Westernization but far more emphatically a reaffirmation
of the
most irredentist and extreme forms of the culture under threat. Hence the
odd phenomenon of Islamic extremism beginning in earnest only in the last
200 years.
With Islam, this has worse implications than for other cultures that have
had
rises and falls. For Islam's religious tolerance has always been premised
on
its own power. It was tolerant when it controlled the territory and called
the
shots. When it lost territory and saw itself eclipsed by the West in power
and
civilization, tolerance evaporated. To cite Lewis again on Islam: ''What
is
truly evil and unacceptable is the domination of infidels over true believers.
For true believers to rule misbelievers is proper and natural, since this
provides for the maintenance of the holy law and gives the misbelievers
both
the opportunity and the incentive to embrace the true faith. But for
misbelievers to rule over true believers is blasphemous and unnatural,
since it
leads to the corruption of religion and morality in society and to the
flouting
or even the abrogation of God's law.''
Thus the horror at the establishment of the State of Israel, an infidel
country
in Muslim lands, a bitter reminder of the eclipse of Islam in the modern
world. Thus also the revulsion at American bases in Saudi Arabia. While
colonialism of different degrees is merely political oppression for some
cultures, for Islam it was far worse. It was blasphemy that had to be avenged
and countered.
I cannot help thinking of this defensiveness when I read stories of the
suicide
bombers sitting poolside in Florida or racking up a $48 vodka tab in an
American restaurant. We tend to think that this assimilation into the West
might bring Islamic fundamentalists around somewhat, temper their zeal.
But
in fact, the opposite is the case. The temptation of American and Western
culture -- indeed, the very allure of such culture -- may well require
a
repression all the more brutal if it is to be overcome. The transmission
of
American culture into the heart of what bin Laden calls the Islamic nation
requires only two responses -- capitulation to unbelief or a radical strike
against it. There is little room in the fundamentalist psyche for a moderate
accommodation. The very psychological dynamics that lead repressed
homosexuals to be viciously homophobic or that entice sexually tempted
preachers to inveigh against immorality are the very dynamics that lead
vodka-drinking fundamentalists to steer planes into buildings. It is not
designed to achieve anything, construct anything, argue anything. It is
a
violent acting out of internal conflict.
And America is the perfect arena for such acting out. For the question
of
religious fundamentalism was not only familiar to the founding fathers.
In
many ways, it was the central question that led to America's existence.
The
first American immigrants, after all, were refugees from the religious
wars that
engulfed England and that intensified under England's Taliban, Oliver
Cromwell. One central influence on the founders' political thought was
John
Locke, the English liberal who wrote the now famous ''Letter on Toleration.''
In it, Locke argued that true salvation could not be a result of coercion,
that
faith had to be freely chosen to be genuine and that any other interpretation
was counter to the Gospels. Following Locke, the founders established as
a
central element of the new American order a stark separation of church
and
state, ensuring that no single religion could use political means to enforce
its
own orthodoxies.
We cite this as a platitude today without absorbing or even realizing its
radical nature in human history -- and the deep human predicament it was
designed to solve. It was an attempt to answer the eternal human question
of
how to pursue the goal of religious salvation for ourselves and others
and yet
also maintain civil peace. What the founders and Locke were saying was
that
the ultimate claims of religion should simply not be allowed to interfere
with
political and religious freedom. They did this to preserve peace above
all --
but also to preserve true religion itself.
The security against an American Taliban is therefore relatively simple:
it's the
Constitution. And the surprising consequence of this separation is not
that it
led to a collapse of religious faith in America -- as weak human beings
found
themselves unable to believe without social and political reinforcement
-- but
that it led to one of the most vibrantly religious civil societies on earth.
No
other country has achieved this. And it is this achievement that the Taliban
and bin Laden have now decided to challenge. It is a living, tangible rebuke
to everything they believe in.
That is why this coming conflict is indeed as momentous and as grave as
the
last major conflicts, against Nazism and Communism, and why it is not
hyperbole to see it in these epic terms. What is at stake is yet another
battle
against a religion that is succumbing to the temptation Jesus refused in
the
desert -- to rule by force. The difference is that this conflict is against
a more
formidable enemy than Nazism or Communism. The secular totalitarianisms
of the 20th century were, in President Bush's memorable words, ''discarded
lies.'' They were fundamentalisms built on the very weak intellectual conceits
of a master race and a Communist revolution.
But Islamic fundamentalism is based on a glorious civilization and a great
faith. It can harness and co-opt and corrupt true and good believers if
it has
a propitious and toxic enough environment. It has a more powerful logic
than
either Stalin's or Hitler's Godless ideology, and it can serve as a focal
point
for all the other societies in the world, whose resentment of Western success
and civilization comes more easily than the arduous task of accommodation
to modernity. We have to somehow defeat this without defeating or even
opposing a great religion that is nonetheless extremely inexperienced in
the
toleration of other ascendant and more powerful faiths. It is hard to
underestimate the extreme delicacy and difficulty of this task.
In this sense, the symbol of this conflict should not be Old Glory, however
stirring it is. What is really at issue here is the simple but immensely
difficult
principle of the separation of politics and religion. We are fighting not
for our
country as such or for our flag. We are fighting for the universal principles
of
our Constitution -- and the possibility of free religious faith it guarantees.
We
are fighting for religion against one of the deepest strains in religion
there is.
And not only our lives but our souls are at stake.
Andrew Sullivan is a contributing writer for the magazine.
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