Jesus and Jihad

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Jesus and Jihad
33
Sat, 07-17-2004 - 11:06am
This article by Nicholos Kristof gives voice to an uncomfortable feeling of mine. I have posted about the "Clash of Civilizations" before, but this article places the question more exactly: "this portrayal of a bloody Second Coming reflects a shift in American portrayals of Jesus, from a gentle Mister Rogers figure to a martial messiah presiding over a sea of blood. Militant Christianity rises to confront Militant Islam." Is this an outcome that we would willingly advocate?

If the latest in the "Left Behind" series of evangelical thrillers is to be believed, Jesus will return to Earth, gather non-Christians to his left and toss them into everlasting fire:

"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again."

These are the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, and they have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. The latest is "Glorious Appearing," which has Jesus returning to Earth to wipe all non-Christians from the planet. It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety.

If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of "Glorious Appearing" and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and it's time to remove the motes from our own eyes.

In "Glorious Appearing," Jesus merely speaks and the bodies of the enemy are ripped open. Christians have to drive carefully to avoid "hitting splayed and filleted bodies of men and women and horses."

"The riders not thrown," the novel continues, "leaped from their horses and tried to control them with the reins, but even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted and their tongues disintegrated. . . . Seconds later the same plague afflicted the horses, their flesh and eyes and tongues melting away, leaving grotesque skeletons standing, before they, too, rattled to the pavement."

One might have thought that Jesus would be more of an animal lover.

These scenes also raise an eschatological problem: Could devout fundamentalists really enjoy paradise as their friends, relatives and neighbors were heaved into hell?

As my Times colleague David Kirkpatrick noted in an article, this portrayal of a bloody Second Coming reflects a shift in American portrayals of Jesus, from a gentle Mister Rogers figure to a martial messiah presiding over a sea of blood. Militant Christianity rises to confront Militant Islam.

This matters in the real world, in the same way that fundamentalist Islamic tracts in Saudi Arabia do. Each form of fundamentalism creates a stark moral division between decent, pious types like oneself — and infidels headed for hell.

No, I don't think the readers of "Glorious Appearing" will ram planes into buildings. But we did imprison thousands of Muslims here and abroad after 9/11, and ordinary Americans joined in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in part because of a lack of empathy for the prisoners. It's harder to feel empathy for such people if we regard them as infidels and expect Jesus to dissolve their tongues and eyes any day now.

I had reservations about writing this column because I don't want to mock anyone's religious beliefs, and millions of Americans think "Glorious Appearing" describes God's will. Yet ultimately I think it's a mistake to treat religion as a taboo, either in this country or in Saudi Arabia.

I often write about religion precisely because faith has a vast impact on society. Since I've praised the work that evangelicals do in the third world (Christian aid groups are being particularly helpful in Sudan, at a time when most of the world has done nothing about the genocide there), I also feel a responsibility to protest intolerance at home.

Should we really give intolerance a pass if it is rooted in religious faith?

Many American Christians once read the Bible to mean that African-Americans were cursed as descendants of Noah's son Ham, and were intended by God to be enslaved. In the 19th century, millions of Americans sincerely accepted this Biblical justification for slavery as God's word — but surely it would have been wrong to defer to such racist nonsense simply because speaking out could have been perceived as denigrating some people's religious faith.

People have the right to believe in a racist God, or a God who throws millions of nonevangelicals into hell. I don't think we should ban books that say that. But we should be embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate religious intolerance and violence against infidels.

That's not what America stands for, and I doubt that it's what God stands for.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/17/opinion/17KRIS.html

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
In reply to: hayashig
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 12:04pm
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Thanks Sonali, this clarifies my thinking.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
In reply to: hayashig
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 12:12pm
To All:

The following is pertinent with regard to getingahandle's article:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FG22Df01.html

At the time of his death, Nek {Mohammed, a tribal military leader] had become somewhat isolated, with tribes going their different ways and differing over the presence of the foreign militants in the area. However, his end brought all the tribes together again under his slogan, "No compromise on the question of foreigners." That is, no handing them over to the authorities.

In this context, the comments of a former US Central Intelligence Agency official are pertinent. Writing under the name Anonymous, his book Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror dismisses two of the most frequent boasts of the Bush administration: that bin Laden and al-Qaeda are "on the run" and that the Iraq invasion has made the United States safer.

In a recent interview with a British newspaper, the official described al-Qaeda as a much more proficient and focused organization than it was in 2001, and predicted that it would "inevitably" acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use them. He said bin Laden was probably "comfortable" commanding his organization from the mountainous tribal lands along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army claimed a big success in the "war against terror" with the killing of Nek, who was one of al-Qaeda's protectors in Waziristan. But Anonymous, who had been centrally involved in the hunt for bin Laden, said: "Nek Mohammed is one guy in one small area. We sometimes forget how big the tribal areas are." He believes that Musharraf "cannot advance much further into the tribal areas without endangering his rule by provoking a Pashtun revolt".

Yet this is exactly what the US is forcing Pakistan to do, with a major attack expected any time soon. Anonymous believes that President George W Bush is taking the US in exactly the direction bin Laden wants, toward all-out confrontation with Islam under the banner of spreading democracy.

The first steps down this deadly path could well have been taken already in Pakistan's tribal areas.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2003
In reply to: hayashig
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 11:12am
Hayashig,

I heard the interview of author on NPR. But I have not read about administrations comments on Imperial Hubris. One thing that stands out in my mind is the fact that OBL is not after American freedom which CLinton and Bush keeps harping about. He and Alqaeda at against the foreign policy of US in Middle east. This is not new. But what will it take for the officials to admit that and then find a way to save Americans?

Any way I am just venting...

Sonali

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
In reply to: hayashig
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 11:17am
Vent away, I agree it is frustrating. I was venting myself yesterday to my son, he told me to stop preaching to the choir.

<>

I wish I knew, they're not listening. Maybe a cleaning of the ears would help. Ha



iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2003
In reply to: hayashig
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 12:19pm
Hi Hayashig,

Tell me something about yourself...Where do you live etc. I know you have a son but don't know much else..

I love reading your post and find them very informative. I remember you saying your son was Hindu... can you add more?

Sonali

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
In reply to: hayashig
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 1:01pm
<>

Sonali,

I really don't like talking about myself, even in person I'd rather remain in the background. I am retired and have two grown sons. One is single, an unemployed engineer, and lives with me in Colorado. The other is an entreprenuer who is married to a Balinese and lives in Bali. He is a practicing Hindu. They own an export business run through the internet art-export.com. I have gone to visit them twice, and they work hard and are very happy.

I am happy you enjoy reading my posts. You are in the minority. Although my focus in the news is somewhat limited, I do try to post anything I consider important or just plain interesting.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2003
In reply to: hayashig
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 1:47pm
Thanks for the info. Sorry I didn't want to intrude, but curious just the same. I wish your son goodluck in finding a good job. I have hope after the elections...


Sonali

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
In reply to: hayashig
Mon, 08-02-2004 - 11:42am
<>

Maybe the war won't be religious. Maybe it will be a struggle for power! Here's another interpretation of the middle east mess. Another thread in the growing web.

Careful what you Bush for

By Spengler

Two predictions:

1) George W Bush will win a second term as president of the United States.

2) He will be sorry he did.

The dog that did not bark at the Democratic Party's convention was opposition to the Iraq war. To the chagrin of the Europeans, who oppose the war by vast margins, the Democratic

leadership all but muzzled opponents of a war. The battle will be fought on Bush's ground.

Senator John Kerry set himself up for defeat by making an issue of the conduct of the Iraq war, rather than the war itself. Bush will pull a rabbit out of his hat or, to be more precise, a bear, as I reported last week (When Grozny comes to Fallujah, July 27).

Replacing the commander-in-chief in the midst of war is something Americans never have done, although Abraham Lincoln had some sleepless nights before the 1864 elections. Americans want a war, and will choose the war party in the end, however they may chastise the president for his numerous errors. As in war, in politics as well, the threat is mightier than the execution. Poor results in the opinion polls are a warning to the president, not repudiation.

Bush opened Pandora's box a year ago, and not even Kerry proposes to shut it. In this case Pandora's box better resembles a nested set of Russian dolls. Open one, and a bevy of demons flies out, forcing you to open the next one, and so forth. Dubya will be the president who led the US into a world civilizational war, although it is more precise to say that civilizational war led the US into it. Many will be the night during his second term that Bush will wish he were still in Texas, and still drunk.

In his own unassuming fashion, Bush is a world-historical figure in Georg Hegel's sense of the term - never mind that he does not know who Hegel was. A more thoughtful man would recoil in horror at the choices before him and fade into paralysis, like the unfortunate president James Buchanan in 1859. World War I was declared by elderly statesmen who had spent their entire careers (since the 1878 Treaty of Berlin) avoiding a European war. By delaying until the Central and Allied powers had sorted themselves out into two equally matched entities, they ensured that the outcome of war would be the mutual destruction of all the combatants.

World War I could not be forever delayed, though. With its declining population, France stood one generation away from helplessness at the hands of the German Empire; with its rapid industrialization, Russia stood one generation away from military parity with Germany. By analogy, if Washington were to sit on its hands until Iran, Pakistan and other Islamic states developed nuclear weapons, the inevitable future conflict would be ruinous beyond imagination. Europe's demographic collapse and the replacement of European Christians by Middle Eastern and North African Muslims present an even deadlier long-term threat.

Washington will choose preemptive war. Narrow-minded but principled, trusting no one's judgment but his own, petty and ruthless, George W Bush is the man of the hour. The Weltgeist will give him a second term.

Among Pandora's nested boxes, the next one to be opened will extend the conflict into Central Asia. Turkey's status as the "sick man of Europe" drew the European powers into World War I, and it is Turkey's present role as the sick man of Central Asia that will draw in the Russians. Last week I predicted that Russian President Vladimir Putin would ride to Bush's rescue by introducing Russian forces into Iraq's Sunni triangle. On July 27, the pro-government Russian daily Izvestia editorialized on behalf of such an action:

Washington, to be sure, would like Russian peacekeepers in the Sunni belt in Iraq: they have a great deal of experience operating in such Muslim hot spots as Bosnia and Kosovo ... One should take note that in all these areas, the Russian peacekeepers enjoyed a very good relationship with the locals, without incidents and terrorist acts. Truthfully, the Russian leadership should consider this option quite carefully.

Bush thinks he needs Putin to prove his strategy right before the American electorate, but Putin will do so precisely because US strategy in the region is dead wrong. Washington believes that stabilizing Iraq will stabilize the entire region: Moscow knows that the Iraq war already has destabilized the region. In the 21st century version of the Great Game, Russia's winning chess move is to replace Turkey as the dominant power in Central Asia.

Russia's most important strategic interest lies in the Black Sea oilfields, and its greatest worry is pan-Turkish agitation along its southern border. Sergei Blagov in Asia Times Online (Tug-of-war over Uzbekistan, July 31) reported Russia's alarm over Islamic drift in Central Asia. On July 28, K Gajendra Singh detailed the weakening of Turkey's traditional alliances (Turkey, Israel aim to forgive and forget).

It is more probable that Turkey will revert to an Islamic model under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan than it is that Iraq will emerge as a secular democracy on the old Turkish model. Erdogan wants involvement in regional conflict less than anything in the world, except for one thing, which is the humiliation of Turkic populations in adjacent countries. He no more can remain indifferent to the plight of ethnic Turks in the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union than could Nicholas II of Russia abandon the Serbs to Austria in 1914. By the same token, Russia does not want to engage its weakened and demoralized army in a foreign venture. But it no more can remain indifferent to Turkish agitation in the Caucasus and Black Sea than could Austria tolerate Russian subsidies to Serbian terrorists in 1914.

Those are the characters in the next act of the tragedy, and their motivations. The role of tragic lead falls to George W Bush, who will be re-elected and regret it.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FH03Aa02.html

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
In reply to: hayashig
Mon, 08-02-2004 - 12:26pm

An interesting perceptive.


"Senator John Kerry set himself up for defeat by making an issue of the conduct of the Iraq war, rather than the war itself."


There wouldn't have been much point in being against the war or those reasons why the war was wrong. It's abit too late for that. All that can be is either clean-up the mess in the best possible way or abandon Iraq completely, which isn't an option.


Will Russia really want to step into this mess? Didn't they learn a lesson in Afghanistan? Don't they have enough of their own internal problems with Muslims?

cl-Libraone~

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-18-2004
In reply to: hayashig
Mon, 08-02-2004 - 12:35pm
"All that can be is either clean-up the mess in the best possible way or abandon Iraq completely, which isn't an option."

What is Kerry proposing that is so different than Bush? UN or EU Support? It isnt going to happen. On the issue of Iraq Bush and Kerry are two sides of the same coin.

If Kerry hopes to win he will need to focus on issues other than Iraq or propose something different than what is already being done.