Religion and the Terror War

By Rabbi David Eidensohn

“America, when you think about it, is itself an act of faith. Even before Lexington and Concord, the idea of a promised land far from blood-soaked Europe was forged in the fire of two great revolutions: the Reformation and the Enlightenment.” So begins an article in Newsweek/MSNBC Internet magazine of September 23, 2004, by Jon Meacham entitled “Faith in Freedom.”

To me, an Orthodox Jew, faith is a rational acceptance of a historical fact: G‑d came to Sinai and gave the Israelites His Law. His ancient bible and its promises have lasted the Jews thousands of years, and we have faith, based upon our history and rational study of the Law, in G‑d and His Law. Mr. Meachan obviously has no use for such faith. His faith is the belief in human freedom. My bible says that people are in the image of G‑d. We negate ourselves to reach heavenly values. Mr. Meachan’s deity is in the image of people. Religion and faith serve the spiritual and innate ego needs of people, especially their need to be fulfilled as human beings.

He adds, “Crusades are for the insecure, literalism for the weak. Faith that is forced on others is not faith–conviction does not come from compulsion.”

I surely disagree with this. I don’t like what Mohammed did to the “infidels” he found when he conquered much of the world for Islam, but whatever he did was not because he was “insecure.” This is worse than psychobabble. It seems to proffer the hope that if we could just make people like Mohammed happy and secure, the world would be safe. Just give them what they demand, and peace will arrive.

It doesn’t work like that, not at all. People completely secure that they speak truth by authority of heaven are the ones who make crusades. Only secure people have the strength to win over armies with their personalities and ideas. Weak and insecure people suck their thumbs in the nearest haven for the depressed.

I also don’t accept Meachan’s remark that “literalism is for the weak.” I am a literalist. If it says “do not kill,” it means that. The Supreme Court has ruled that all American laws, including the Amendments of the Constitution, are not literal, but are to be read relative to the environment and other matters to allow words to be “living” and thus meaningless. “Words” thus “move” wherever the court decides to go. Congress wrote the legal equivalent of “do not make racial quotas” in the Civil Rights Law of 1964. The Supreme Court in Bakke interpreted these words to mean their opposite, namely, “do not make racial quotas unless the courts feel they are needed.”

“Literalism is for the weak” means that all biblical teachings are essentially weak and irrational, and only people desperate for a faith to support their failing egos would believe in them. Thousands of college professors, doctors, and scientists spend hours each weak studying the Talmud, and they only wish they had more time.

Mr. Meachan writes further that, “Faith that is forced on others is not faith–conviction does not come from compulsion.” What Western faith, religious or secular, ever seized the imagination of the masses without compulsion? Was the secularism of the French Revolution successful because of the sweetness of the Jacobins, or because of the mounds of guillotined heads that decorated the main city thoroughfares? Violence produced Communism, Hitler, and Fascism. Unfortunately, violence works. In fact, helpless people are prone to believe in the violence that enslaves them. This is called the Stockholm Syndrome. If you can’t fight something, but thrash about with your fight or flight adrenalin flowing, you will eventually snap. Thus, the body arranges for you to identify completely with any overwhelming compulsion.

Did Mr. Meachan never read how Ambrose and Augustine worked with the Roman Emperor to kill or torment anyone who refused Christianity? Did Mr. Meachan never hear about what happened to the Catholics when the “Reformation” came to town? Did Mr. Meachan think that Islam became a world religion because it handed out flyers?

Conviction does–usually and unfortunately–come from compulsion. If we don’t know what terror religious faith can be, we are likely to fall victim to its savagery.

The world war between terrorists and everyone else is a crusade to compel faith, and it is supported by millions of people who believe in it. If we do not realize what we are up against, we cannot fight it.

The tragedy in Iraq and elsewhere is precisely what happens when you fight religious fanatics with neo-con and secular fantasies about religion.

The West is facing the reality of a fanatic religion of millions of people procuring more and more bombs and weapons, gaining adherents even in Western societies, and turning the converts against their country, as with Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber.” The West is slowly realizing the dimensions of the problem. First, the problem is not going to float away. Two, there are no civilized methods to extirpate the bombers. Third, the terrorists are on their way to getting atomic and biological weapons. We have only a few years. How does the West respond?

France has responded by trying to buy friendship with Arabs by attacking America and Israel, as pointed out by Charles Krauthammer. America has responded by fighting some wars in a civilized and remote manner, and then trying to get out as soon as possible. Russia has responded by taking away more and more rights from people and making Putin a supreme power. Often, Putin is interrupted on his vacations to come back and deal with a terrorist outrage, and then he takes even more power to solve things. Will this do the job? Of course, not.

The choice is very simple. Accept that faith such as Islam is a product of the sword, compulsion, and conviction. Accept that the West is not willing to fight very much, will not compel anyone, and has little conviction for its own values. Unless the West changes, and becomes capable of the savagery it is faced with, and gains the enthusiasm of fanatics, who will win?

The real choice is for the West to learn how to think, and accept religion for what it is. Religion is not a do-it-yourself feel-good philosophy. Only Westerners who are too soft and cynical for a personal G‑d believe in that hooey. People who believe in a personal G‑d accept religion as G‑d’s Will. Once you accept that, morality comes to a stand-still. Only the Word counts. Murder, shooting children in the back, bombing buses, are all moral if done to serve the “true religion.”

People who feared religion founded America. Religion in the form of battles between Catholics and Protestants destroyed Europe. Secularism was introduced there to save society from the Hundred Years War and the Thirty Years War. Until America learns to love religion and not hate it, those who have the gift of belief and the will to compel and destroy every other belief are the people of the future.

America will only be safe when it realizes that wars are not won with the ridiculous ideas secular people teach at colleges and in the major media. None of these people have any idea of how to live a normal life. Many can’t be spouses, parents, or even good sexual partners. They are constantly looking for new ideas, because the old ones always turn putrid. Some of these people become neo-cons, meaning they eschew the most extreme lunacy but keep the basic mistakes.

If we want to survive in life, and surely in the terror war, we have to have simple and clear ideas. America has no simple and clear ideas. Everything is so complex, so mystical, so brilliant, so hopeful. When you are that clever, there is no hope.