Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Avraham Burg: Time to attack – Haaretz, August 28, 2007

There is no theological difference between certain rabbis from Hebron, the former Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and the evangelical preacher hoping for Armageddon at the site of our Megiddo. Those who say that “God’s law is first” are no different from one another, whether they wear a rabbi’s skullcap, Hezbollah’s turban or the cloak of a North American spiritual leader. They are all engaged in a cruel battle against me. They are the enemies of freedom and democracy, and are hostile to liberty, equality and the status of women.

In a world like this, we must form new coalitions. The division between “us” and “our enemies” cannot be based merely along national or familial lines, or in beliefs and genetics. The world is divided into a coalition of some Jews, some Christians and some Muslims, versus other members of their nations and religions. Democracy versus theology.

This is not a “gentle” argument, but rather war – the rabbi against the sovereign, the “Jewish” against the “democratic,” halakha and sharia against civil law, the church against the state. They cannot live under the same roof, and they are currently fighting the most ancient and most modern war – religion versus state.

And in war, like in war: The legal standing of the inciting rabbi is the same as that of the inciting sheikh, because both are equally hostile. One wants to see me dead physically, and the other wants to see me dead democratically and morally. Since I oppose the death sentence in all cases, I cannot thus condemn my domestic enemies. But the army of the democratic state, as well as its systems of governance, must purify itself from all the enemies planted by theocracy. The “army of God” must not be permitted to gain control of the institutions of state power.

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Thou Shalt Find It Impossible to Live Like the Bible Tells You to, November 16, 2007

He didn’t want to stone adulterers. But that was part of the deal. That’s what A.J. Jacobs was being paid for.

“The Hebrew scriptures prescribe a tremendous amount of capital punishment,” Jacobs writes in The Year of Living Biblically (Simon & Schuster, 2007), his account of an experiment in which the lifelong agnostic spent 12 months obeying the Old Testament as literally as possible — while living in an Upper West Side apartment and working for Esquire.

“Think Saudi Arabia, multiply by Texas, then triple that. It wasn’t just for murder. You could also be executed for adultery, blasphemy, breaking the Sabbath, perjury, incest, bestiality, and witchcraft, among others. A rebellious son could be sentenced to death. As could a son who is a persistent drunkard and glutton.

“The most commonly mentioned punishment method in the Hebrew Bible is stoning. So I figure, at the very least, I should try to stone. But how?”

At the time, Jacobs was in month two of his venture, still throbbing with a neophyte’s enthusiasm: “I want to smash idols,” he surprised himself by musing. Gathering a pocketful of tiny white pebbles in Central Park, he strolled until he met an irascible old man who mocked Jacobs’ walking stick. When this man — having been asked — declared himself an adulterer, Jacobs lobbed a pebble at his chest. It bounced off.

He had grown up in a resolutely secular Jewish home — sans bar mitzvah, sans Sabbath candles; he was even named after his still-living father, such an Ashkenazic rarity that an El Al security officer, eyeing the “Jr.” on his passport six months into the experiment, doubted that Jacobs was even Jewish at all. “I’m Jewish,” he writes, “in the same way that Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant.”

Munson, Fundamentalism — Britannica Online Encyclopedia

Although the terms fundamentalism and fundamentalist have entered common parlance and are now broadly applied, it should not be forgotten that the myriad movements so designated vary greatly in their origins, character, and outlook.

Munson, Fundamentalism Around the World–What’s Really Behind It? -Britannica Blog, Nov. 17, 2006

Fundamentalism reflects moral outrage at the violation of traditional religious values, but can it also articulate nationalistic and social grievances as well?

Fundamentalism, as I discuss in my new entry on the subject for Encyclopaedia Britannica, is a type of militantly conservative religious movement characterized by the advocacy of strict conformity to sacred texts and a moral code ostensibly based on them. It existed long before the word did. One could speak of the Maccabean revolt of the second century B.C.E. as having a fundamentalist impulse insofar as it insisted on strict conformity to the Torah and Jewish religious law. Similarly, Calvin’s 16th-century Genevan polity and 17-century Puritanism could be called fundamentalist insofar as they insisted on strict conformity to the Bible and a moral code based on it.

“CNN Comes Under Unprecedented Attack – Forward.com, September 6, 2007

The three-episode special, “God’s Warriors,” by CNN’s chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, is being characterized by Jewish groups as equating Jewish extremists in West Bank settlements with Muslim jihadists.

Maryland state legislator declares: ‘No law created by man that is not in concert with God’s law can be any law at all.” Church and State, September 2007

On the Maryland conference’s final day, July 3, attendees at the Severn church were treated to a defiant rant from a Maryland state legislator. Del. Don Dwyer Jr. R-Anne Arundel kicked off his speech by alerting the gathering that he would not “speak in politically correct terms.”

He wasn’t kidding. The state lawmaker seemed to relish trashing secularists and progressive politicians, and he depicted an America awash in sin, while promoting his religious beliefs as superior to all others. Dwyer seemed to be really, really angry and, indeed, toward the end of his over-the-top lecture, he acknowledged that anger.

Dwyer groused about not being permitted to open House sessions with prayers in the name of Jesus Christ. He vowed that if he were ever allowed to give an invocation, he would do so his way, which means acknowledging Jesus….

“The law is what God says it is, first and foremost,” continued Dwyer, “The foundation of law. No law created by man that is not in concert with God’s law can be any law at all.”

Liberaland and Haredistan – Haaretz – Israel News
The burning of the Alei Shalechet crematorium probably doesn’t surprise anyone who has been following Israel’s ongoing culture war. However, Shas Minister Yitzhak Cohen’s statements have raised the stakes. He said he would push a bill criminalizing cremation, a bill that would “put an end to those who are implementing a Final Solution once again.”

Gods Warriors – Special Reports from CNN.com

Mark Lilla, Politics of God, New York Times, August 19, 2007
Today, we have progressed to the point where our problems again resemble those of the 16th century, as we find ourselves entangled in conflicts over competing revelations, dogmatic purity and divine duty. We in the West are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin. We had assumed this was no longer possible, that human beings had learned to separate religious questions from political ones, that fanaticism was dead. We were wrong.

McCalla, Creationism, Religion Compass, OnlineEarly Articles (Full Text), August 2007

Burg, Those who say that “God’s law is first” are no different from one another, whether they wear a rabbi’s skullcap, Hezbollah’s turban or the cloak of a North American spiritual leader, Ha’aretz, August 15, 2007

Munson Fundamentalism, ancient and modern 2003