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 Battling Rising Religious Totalitarianism? Essayists See Cultural Struggle Following the Afghanistan War Revolution within Religion? - or a Revolution against Religion? |
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By Jack Nichols
 New York, New York-Thomas L. Friedman, the 'Foreign Affairs' essayist whose Op-Ed
views of the world appear with regularity in the New York Times, has provided his views about what he calls "The Real War." (NYT-November 27,2001).
Friedman dismisses "terrorism" as a mere tool. The battle, which he calls World War III, is one against religious totalitarianism. He defines his terms. Such totalitarianism, he says, preaches "a view of the world that my faith must reign supreme and can be affirmed and held passionately only if all others are negated." "The Real War," can't be conducted on the battle field alone, Friedman notes, because this greater war on totalitarian religious attitudes needs the help of imams, rabbis and priests. "God speaks multiple languages," writes Friedman, and adherents of the Jewish, Christian or Islamic traditions must discover, in their unique ways, that "God…is not exhausted by just one faith." American Founding Father Thomas Paine's final work, The Age of Reason, argues that the birth of the United States afforded a needed political revolution. He insisted on the need for a second revolution, however, one opposing religious tyranny: "a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion." Thomas Paine's Common Sense, provoked those passions reputed to have inspired the American Revolution. While both Friedman in 2001 and Paine in 1794 advocate an assault on religious thought, they differ in one particular respect. Paine boldly critiqued blind allegiance to any reputedly "holy" scripture. His argument in The Age of Reason, while that of a Deist, rejected, as did Jefferson and Franklin, the concept of a divinely revealed message delivered through intermediaries claiming to be God's close associates. Friedman apparently credits Christianity's Reformation for igniting the concept of the individual's interpretive authority in all matters pertaining to religion. The existence of reform movements in the Jewish tradition, proves that Christianity and Judaism share a capacity for tolerance that Islam does not, he argues. Some reply that ultra-orthodox branches of Islam have lived side by side with heretical expressions like Sufism, for example, while many Muslims proudly refer to the fun-loving and spirited insights of great poets like Rumi. The Quran embraces Jews and Christians as "People of the Book" and finds a safe place for both in many Muslim communities. Cultural pluralism has proven it can thrive in Muslim-dominated areas. Asserting that religious reformations in Islam have not enjoyed any Muslim state's support, Friedman seems to ignore secular Turkey, America's NATO ally, as well as the swelling anti-clerical moods evidenced today among a high percentage of voters struggling against a hardcore theocracy in Iran. Both Thomas L. Friedman and openly-gay pundit Andrew Sullivan see the present day's hostilities as forms of religious conflict. Both men seem to be saying that Islam is inherently more dangerous than Christianity or Judaism. ("This is a Religious War", New York Times Magazine, October 7, 2001) A practicing Roman Catholic, Andrew Sullivan ignores how his own church makes temporary concessions to the secular state only while it promotes a strategy of church and state oneness.
Focusing by both of these political pundits on the accursed "religious war" alone, draws attention away from other important but unsettled issues, say some critics. Repeated U.S. foreign policy mistakes have been made, including 1953's U.S.-initiated assault on Iran's legitimate premier and the U.S.' consequent re-installation of a fleeing monarch, the Shah, a tyrant puppet, Big Brother magnified. If this long ago and unfortunate interference in the affairs of another country can be forgotten in the hysteria of a religious war, no true healing between cultures will be possible. National sins must be confessed.
Thomas Paine, writing about what he himself strongly believed, also promised: "I shall in the progress of this work declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them. "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish (Muslim) Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish (Muslim), appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. |
