Nobody, and I repeat, nobody, is a bigger supporter of the current administration’s approach (Bush 43) to containing the criminal and military agenda that Islamic fundamentalism presents to the West than I. Say what you will, since 9/11/01 there have been inconveniences, costs and anxiety, but there has been no attack on U.S. soil. President Bush and the American military have successfully transferred the battlefield from these shores back to where it belongs, the Middle East and Afghanistan. For this victory, and it can be called nothing less, we should be grateful. That said, I think it begs the more important questions of how this agenda developed in the first place, why it appears to enjoy popular support in the Muslim world, and how it can be diffused in the future.
In what may be news to some, pan-Arab military expansion is nothing new. When offered a choice between the effete and overly intellectual Christianity of the 7th century and Mohammed, most residents of North Africa and the Levant chose the latter. While Christianity was arguing about the person of Christ and the nature of the Trinity, Mohammed offered a chance to fight, to win, and to have sensual, if delayed, rewards. Until the defeat of the Ottoman Turks in the First World War, a large, aggressive and ideologically unified Arab block was a real, if distant, threat to the West. The difference today is not that Islam has recently sprung to life, but that modern communication and transportation have reduced the distance between the West and it.
That brings us to the present day, and the misunderstanding and outright antagonism that separates the Muslim and “Christian” worlds. Nowhere is the incomprehension on our part greater than in the area of Arab perception. How is it, we ask, that Islamic fundamentalists seem to enjoy widespread support for their actions amongst their compatriots and coreligionists? After 9/11, it was reported that Osama was the new nom du jour for newborn baby boys across the Arab world. Polls also indicate that many Arabs believe in conspiracy theories that put the responsibility for the attacks on the U.S. government and military, not on Al Queda or Arabs at all. Coupled with this, the reluctance or inability of Iraqis to embrace the principles of democratic government and religious tolerance when freely offered is the source of profound consternation to all Americans hoping for an end to the civil disturbances in that country. How can we have so misjudged the expectations and abilities of a people we are, at great cost to ourselves, trying to help?
The fact is, the pious Muslim looks at all things through a religious lens. Because of this, Islam is a religion of strong behavioral strictures that makes Christian temperance seem lilly-livered by comparison. A classic example was the luncheon engagement offered to Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia by Winston Churchill as the latter passed through Cairo on his way back from brokering the conclusion to WWII. Churchill was told that the Saudi head of state would not tolerate the use of alcohol or tobacco in his presence. Winston recounts the following: “I…said to the interpreter that if it was the religion of His Majesty to deprive himself of smoking and alcohol I must point out that my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.” Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 397,8. Even we in the West can adopt the stereotype, a prime example being the film Robin Hood, where Robin’s Mohammedan companion is portrayed as possessing piety, self-control and scientific knowledge, while the Christian is likened to the dissipated Friar Tuck, whose passion is beer and the excessive consumption thereof.
Personally, I’m on Winston’s side on the debate about what God thinks about the desirability of having a drink, but you get the point. On more important moral issues, however, I tend to side with the Turk. Do Muslim nations practice abortion as we do, sacrificing 1.29 million humans a year as retroactive birth control? Guttmacher Institute, Year 2002. They are rough on their women, but do they have the same levels of sexual exploitation, rape and venereal disease as more “advanced” Western societies where women are “free?” Look at us; we swill alcohol, import illegal drugs in scandalous quantities, provide the world with pornography, watch gambling on television, abuse those in authority and blaspheme the God we claim to obey. Is it any wonder Muslims want no part of us as a culture? What we consider freedom, they deem license, and I’m not so sure they don’t have the more accurate view.
So as we lament the lives lost on September 11th and all those who continue to perish in the Iraqi civil war, let us try to see life through the eyes of those we’re trying to help. Why mourn the thousands, when we are careless with the millions? Why ridicule the backwards Bedouin who has not experienced a Renaissance or an Enlightenment, when we use those blessings to discount all that might be termed moral, just, and eternal? I don’t believe God deals with civilizations on a strict quid pro quo basis, but He might start, and who could blame Him? Is He speaking to us through the voice of the Muslim fanatic? He may well be. I’ve come to believe it’s easier to please God with good behavior and bad doctrine, than with good doctrine and bad behavior. The prophet Isaiah warned against trusting in horses and chariots and ignoring God almighty. We need to continue to be vigilant with our military and security response to the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, but we can’t ignore the valid critique that these same extremists offer of our culture as a whole. We would be right to heed Isaiah’s warning in our own day.
• The Rev. Robert McLeod
Father McLeod is an Episcopal priest, and is the author of Everything You Know is Wrong: The Case for a New Reformation.
