Jerry Falwell, the Christian fundamentalist preacher who advises presidents


By: Ali Ismail
0778-842 5262 (United Kingdom)
aliismail_uk@yahoo.co.uk





CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM DRIVES AMERICAN POLICIES

The religious right and Zionism are partners in the Middle East



Almost every single reader of this newspaper has probably at some time in the recent past asked himself the question: “Why does America do what it does in the Middle East and in the general Muslim world?” or words to that effect.

An approach to a full answer to such an enquiry would fall outside the scope of this newspaper, let alone this article. However, I do hope to provide you, gentle reader, with at least a faint glimmering of an insight into the forces which drive this particular superpower into the conduct which affects us all, implicitly or explicitly.

The first thing I want to point out is that it is fashionable, nay, virtually compulsory to attribute the only role that religion plays in the torments which we Muslims undergo every day to the teachings and interpretations thereof of Islam.

To this end we find zealous Western individuals trying to “understand” us by speed-reading the Holy Qu’ran and such like activities, the effect of which is to place us into the category of persons who have to be “studied” because of the “problems” our “behaviour” causes.

In other words, if one wants one’s career to progress and to be a welcome face in the social club one has to regard Muslims in general and Arabs in particular and as not being very far short of delinquents on the stage of life. That includes non-Muslim Arabs, by the way.

It was during a telephone conversation with somebody from my schooldays that the subject of evangelical Christianity directing American foreign and domestic policies came to my attention.

Subsequently, I came across a film entitled: “Why the MidEast bleeds” which is produced by a group called the National Prayer Network, which again brought up the factor. In that presentation the role of Calvinism in particular was highlighted.

The truth appears to be that fundamentalist Christianity is a multi-headed phenomenon with a range of viewpoints and emphases and that several churches are involved in the USA such as, for example, the Southern Baptists and the Calvinists.

It is not for us to look into the exact ins and outs of the teachings of this variety of Christianity as Muslims because there are higher priorities at this time. I reckon that it is for us to ascertain, insofar that it is possible, what the fundamentalists are doing to us, why they do it, what they intend to do in the future and how they do it.

The first thing that comes to mind is Israel which one Arab post-graduate student once described to me as “a dagger in the heart of our homelands.”

Sure enough, this is a focal point; some would say the focal point of a great deal of American foreign policy in the region and a particular emphasis for the fundamentalists.

One cannot write an article on this subject without bringing up Christian Zionism. This movement is involved with fundamentalist Christianity and strives to be, if anything, more extreme than Jewish Zionism and to be on a level of Gush Emunim the (very) extreme Jewish movement.

In a nutshell, pulling all the strands together, one can say without enormous distortion, over-simplification or exaggeration that these fundamentalist Christians think that we are, all of us, living in “end times” as described in biblical prophecy and that it is the task of the Christian to prepare for this eventuality and to take an active role in bringing it about.

To that extent, their approach is not so very different from the Muslim beliefs about the day of judgement and the Islamic apocalypse as given in the Qu’ran.

The difference is that almost all Muslims do not actually do anything to adjust their lifestyles to an imminent doomsday while the Christian fundamentalists do.

Furthermore, the second group want to involve everybody else in it and do so because they are in the driving seat (along with a few others) of American policy making. The USA influences the whole world greatly although it has less than 5% of its total human population.
The Indian writer Yoginder Sikand wrote on 17 November, 2005 in http://www.countercurrents.org/: “As for the Arabs and Muslims more generally, Evans (a fundamentalist Christian leader) seems to suggest that the Christian God desires that they be humiliated, subjugated and crushed. Thus, he quotes the Bible as saying that while God specially blessed Isaac and his descendants, the Jews, he had a different plan in mind for the Arabs, descendants of Ishmael, Abraham's other son.
“Referring to Ishmael, Evans quotes the Bible as saying, 'He will be a wild man; His hand shall be against every man and every man's hand against him'.
This racist stereotype, so deeply rooted in traditional Christian discourse about Muslims, is held by Evans to be what he calls 'a fitting description of the Arab terrorist' and, presumably, as justifying the annihilation of the Arab people, as well as other Muslims.
“Evans goes so far in vilifying Arabs and Muslims as to call Muhammad a proto-terrorist, alleging that he had banished and killed Jews for not believing in him. 'Terrorism', he claims, is a logical consequence of Islam, and he argues that 'Muhammad set a sordid example for his present-day disciples, the Qadafis, Khomeinis, Arafats and bin Ladens and Husseins of this world'.
“Claiming knowledge of the unseen, he even announces that Islam is 'a malevolent manifestation of a religion conceived in the pit of hell.’
“Evans thus equates Islam with the forces of the 'Anti-Christ', against whom he appeals to Christians to marshal all the resources at their command. Ironically, while spewing hatred and calling for a global war, he presents Christianity as peace loving, contrasting it with Islam, which he equates with 'terrorism.’ 'Christianity differs from Islam as day differs from night', he claims, completely unmindful of the sordid and blood-soaked history of the faith he claims to champion.
“In the same breath as he issues a general summons to Christians to wage war in the name of their faith he refers to the Bible as instructing Christians to 'turn the other cheek' when slapped, in order to argue that, unlike Christianity, Islam is an inherently vile religion, equating it with what he terms 'the law of the bullet, militancy, treachery, terrorism and violence'.”
Donald Wagner writing in The Information Clearing House on 12 October 2003 stated: “Christian Zionist organizations and the pro-Israel lobby are among the significant special interest groups whose interests have converged since Bush’s election to shape the administration’s policy toward the Middle East.
“In some respects, most of these groups and political tendencies were lined up and waiting to merge their ambitions even before the election. The tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, provided the spark for this.
“Among these interest groups, of which we can broadly identify six is, first of all, the right wing of the Republican Party. During his election campaign, Bush, with the help of former members of the Reagan administration, discarded the Middle East strategy of the first Bush administration, which advocated a more nuanced, multilateral and collaborative approach to the UN and to international law in resolving conflicts.
“By 2000, a shift had taken place in the Republican Party. It began embracing the doctrines of neoconservative ideologues who advocated US unilateralism and favoured military solutions over diplomacy. This more aggressive approach was put into action after Sept. 11, and to no one’s surprise, Israel’s war against the Palestinians and its other enemies was soon linked to the US ‘war on terrorism.’”
As I stated above I got wind of this subject partly because of the “Why the MidEast Bleeds” film which concentrates on the Calvinist church, which I consider to be a mistake akin to looking at one tree instead of the whole forest.
For the record, however, Calvinism is a factor to be reckoned with. Its chief danger is that its teaching gives out that attaining a place in heaven is hardly, if at all, dependent on conduct and that the simple act of faith involved in inviting Jesus into one’s life secures paradise.
The fallout of this is that the fear of divine retribution is greatly diminished for these people. They believe that thought alone gets you to where you want to go when you are dead.
The only concession to punishment of bad behaviour as a deterrent is that if one of their number behaves so terribly that it is an embarrassment then they say that he could not ever have been “saved” by faith, as exemplified by whatever he had done.
As a result Calvinists, when dealing with out groupers like us, need not fear divine retribution as any number of atrocities can be done without fear of consequences.
The final product is, of course, what does get done in the Middle East. I found it difficult to get a quote from a Muslim in the UK on the subject of American Middle East policy.
Nazir in Scotland, however, did say: “It is absolutely wrong but what can we do? It (the USA) is a big country. We can’t say anything. We feel pain. It is so hard.”
As to why the USA does what it does, I suspect that at the end of the day only those shadowy and extremely powerful individuals who control the fates of billions in camera can answer that.

THE END

This article was published in the 7 September, 2006 issue of the Bangla Mirror, the first English language weekly for the United Kingdom's Bangladeshis - read everywhere from the Arctic to the sub-Antarctic.