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Thoughts
on the Iraqi War
By
Rabbi David Eidensohn
Some
Iraqis cheered American/coalition forces saving them from the brutal
tyranny of Saddam Hussein, and yet tens of thousands of Americans
demonstrated, even being arrested, to protest this war. Can people really
protest freedom from enslavement by a murderer? If they go to American
colleges, and are influenced by American intellectuals, they surely can. In
the thirties, if you were not Red, you were not read. No prominent
intellectual protested Stalin’s mass-murders. How is it that idealistic
people who prize reason can hate those who fight Stalin and Hussein?
Obviously, Western intellectualism is flawed. Our youth, in order to earn,
must first learn perversity at college. It is a miracle that
No, this is not an article bashing the intellectuals. It is much worse
than that. I would never have dared write it, until I read today in the New
York Times Magazine a Paul Berman article about Sayyid Qutb, the major
philosopher of Islam terror. Berman says that the people who train little
children to blow up other children and themselves are not mindless religious
fanatics. Their philosopher, one Sayyid Qutb (Kuh-tahb), was a brilliant
intellectual, and his fanaticism is informed by legitimate questions about the
failures of Western civilization. Mr. Berman concludes his excellent article
by warning us that terrorism is created by thinkers. The people involved in
the September 11 bombings were well-educated, wealthy and idealistic. Their
system is based upon arduous thought, which requires them to kill anyone who
does not do as they demand. If we do not answer their complaints, we may not
prevail. Mr. Berman issues a clarion call to philosophers to answer Mr. Qutb.
The news today is that an American soldier who converted to Islam killed and
wounded many American soldiers in
In a previous piece I mentioned an article by David
Kupelian, the editor of World Net Daily. He described a poll that showed many
Protestant clergy, in the ninety and eighty percentile, who did not believe in
basic Christian theology. Mr. Kupelian concluded his article that we must
accept that Western religion is divided into hundreds and even thousands of
conflicting teachings, but somehow, within us, we are required to know the
will of G-d. This is the biggest problem of all. If I figure out the mind of
G-d, I am either G-d or an idiot. People cannot know what G-d wants unless He
tells them. Furthermore, if G-d’s Will is what anyone thinks it is, and
there is no clear standard, then Sayyid Qutb can invoke the Islam Shariah-Law
and stone to death an adulterer, or “for unmarried men and women it is
flogging, a hundred lashes, which in cases is fatal.” For those who are a
threat to society “their punishment is to be put to death, to be crucified,
to have their hands and feet cut off, or to be banished from the country.”
Of course, whoever does not agree with these laws is a “threat to society.”
We thus have a Western religion that is splintered and an Eastern
religion that is focused and ferocious. None of this is encouraging, but in
the West we have another problem: The Western religion is in an unstable
state. A few years ago I spoke to a senior Orthodox rabbi about the gay lobby
issues, and he reassured me: “Don’t worry, the Catholics will take care of
it.” I explained to him that times have changed. The Bishop of
Let us return to Mr. Berman’s article on “The Philosopher of
Islamic Terror” (NYT
Sayyid Qutb claims that the West has failed to find happiness; indeed,
the wealthiest countries were the most dissatisfied. Mr. Berman mentions that
other philosophers have asked the same question, and concluded that the
problem lies in ancient Greece, when the philosophers extolled reason and
technology to a point that it conflicted with natural life, thereby producing
anxiety and conflict. Mr. Qutb disagrees. He says that G-d gave a Law to the
Jews. However, under the Jews, the Law withered into “a system of rigid and
lifeless ritual.” Christianity made a serious error and rejected the Law of
Israel and embraced the philosophy of the Greeks, “the belief in a spiritual
existence completely separate from physical life, a zone of pure spirit.”
Qutb says that when Constantine joined the Roman Empire to Christianity, the
royal pomp and immorality conflicted with the need of natural religious
living, and pushed the Christians into the other extreme, the monastery. This
produced schizophrenia in Western civilization it never solved, ultimately
separating one’s daily life from spiritual regulation. The proper world
order will be when the caliphate controls the daily doings of people in their
mundane activities, and has complete control over all aspects of life. Anytime
a part of life is not controlled by the caliphate and religion, this produces
conflict. A person utterly unified in one force is free to find happiness.
Mr. Qutb says that happiness is being enslaved to a police state that
regulates every private matter. Who is happy at that point? Only the people
who believe, without the police, that this is the right way to live. The other
ones are miserable. So how does the pursuit of happiness lead to forcing
people to be happy? Secondly, Mr. Qutb claims that G-d gave the Law to the
Jews, but that it became in their hand a “rigid and lifeless ritual.” If
that is the whole problem, let Mr. Qutb become a Jew, and infuse elasticity
and life into ritual. That is a lot more humane than blowing up school buses.
Also, why is G-d not as brilliant as Mr. Qutb? G-d made a mistake to give the
Law to the Jews and Mr. Qutb will rectify it? What deity does Mr. Qutb believe
in, someone he invented and can criticize? G-d “is not a man to change His
mind,” as the Scriptures say. Even if Mr. Qutb’s complaint about Jews is
valid, and we have to be suspicious hearing this from a ferocious anti-Semite,
still, even if Israel failed in their rituals, does this mean that every time
Israel fails someone may come along and re-invent G-d’s Will, make a new
religion and then kill everyone who won’t accept it?
Mr. Qutb says that Judaism received G-d’s Law but it withered into
“a system of rigid and lifeless ritual.” Is it wrong for people to obey G-d’s
rituals “rigidly”? I don my tephilin, two boxes with leather
straps, on my head and arm because G-d told me to do it. How am I to do this
without “rigidity”? Mr. Qutb says that when I put on my tephilin I am
engaging in “lifeless ritual.” If G-d commanded us to wear tephilin, as it
says in the bible, and G-d is pleased with this ritual, how can it be “lifeless”?
The rituals, far from being lifeless, are the source of life. We invoke, by
these rituals, very spiritual Life forces that connect us with infinity, and
raise us to ethereal dimensions of holiness. Without these additional
incentives, the ritual has a revealed purpose. We constantly remind ourselves
of our obligation to G-d by putting on tephilin and other such
practices. Thinking of G-d, a process produced by the rituals, is itself a
deeply rewarding experience. It is hard to put on tephilin and then go
yell at someone or get drunk. Those who don tephilin every day would
never consider the rituals to be without life and meaning. Furthermore, G-d
rewards those who obey His rituals with His Presence, as our lives become
suffused with the Shechina-holiness.
Note that those who broke with Judaism railed against “rituals.” A
religion of rituals is one with clearly defined rules, and all people are
equal. Judaism received from G-d a Law where all people are equivalent, and
all do the same rituals. Jews don’t need humans to rule them and raise them,
although all pious Jews seek out, on their own, without the police reminding
them, the presence of the pious and their guidance. In this, Judaism clashed
head-on with Plato, who believed that only a few “philosopher-kings” could
reveal the light to the masses of people who lived “in the cave.” Judaism
clashed with Plato because he believed that material things are unimportant,
and we must raise the reality of materialism to a mystical level of “forms.”
Plato’s apple is not worthy of the philosopher and so he created a
fictitious “form of the apple” to sanitize it from material reality. The
democratic councils of Israel, where scholars and saints sat all day in the
study hall studying the Torah and performing acts of kindness was not what
Plato had in mind. He wanted a powerful elite to control a mob of the masses,
and each person would be a cog in the machine of Plato’s society. This is
the complete antithesis of Judaism where each individual is “in the image of
G-d.” A major debate in the Talmud was decided by the remarks of two
launderers. Jews are and have always been a people who have no use for strong
dictators, as King David said, “It is easier to control the entire world
than two Jewish thinkers.” The Jewish glory was “each under his grapevine
and fig-tree,” minding his own business, raising a family, participating in
society and performing the rituals. The Greeks would never consider this the
proper way. The Greek hero had a sword. Alexander the Great had plenty to eat
in his own country, but he had to massacre thousands of people to show his “greatness”
in
We know almost nothing about what the earliest Christians were like,
because the first recorded teachings of the Church were in Greek and written
decades after the events they describe. We do know, however, that a favorite
Christian pastime was going into the
When we see people like Sayyid Qutb telling us how terrible ritual
religions are, we know how important they are. When we hear Sayyid Qutb tell
us about “lifeless ritual” we know what kind of life he has in mind.
When we read about Sayyid Qutb we understand a lot about the crisis in
the West in religion and lifestyle. At one time the Church agreed with Sayyid
Qutb. The Church turned the police against anyone who didn’t practice
Christianity. A nineteenth century Pope sent his police to steal a Jewish
child. If Christianity is a world religion, it got there with the sword, and
this is true of Islam as well. People were simply forced to convert. Then
these religions preach “love” and “peace” and are not embarrassed.
This lasted until the Second World War. Afterwards, people realized that the
slaughters in
I am reading a book “
This is the crisis of the West. Its religion is unstable and revealed
for teaching hate. Today, teaching hate is just not acceptable. Thus, religion
bends over backwards not to be seen as bigoted, and thus refuses to get
involved too much with the gay issue, to fight Gay Rights. In the West we have
the following situation: Consumption is so high that the mother cannot stay
home and take care of children. Once women have to be in the marketplace she
cannot be in the family. The tension in this kind of lifestyle and the
confusion about gender role deeply damages family so that genders are unsure
and are at war. Heterosexuality is so threatened by the misery of people even
sexually that some feel the solution is homosexuality. The future of the West
is therefore one without the solace and peace of family. Without family, what
is there? Therefore, when some mass-murderer like Sayyid Qutb comes to an
American and talks about the glory of family and community, people convert.
The major successful religions are not the ones that are the most rational,
but those that offer inducements such as a warm community. The beliefs, almost
by definition, can be mystical and irrational, and religion is accepted by
some as such. Once spirituality is defined by a sad world as Sayyid Qutb
defines it, murder becomes a virtue, and kindness an evil.
The West has not failed by elevating reason. The West has failed by
promoting mysticism over reason and calling that, wrongly, “reason.” Plato
was not interested in truth. He wanted mystery. Truth can be understood by all
people. Mystery is known only to those who invent it. If professors in college
teach people insane ideas, they are merely following Plato who said in effect,
“Keep it weird, or the masses will participate.”
Plato wrote in The Republic that society has three levels of people,
those best fitted for reason, those best suited to fighting, and those who
seek pleasure. This last group he despised and wrote of them that they, “delight
in fine voices and colors and shapes and everything that art fashions from
that sort of things…but their minds are incapable of seeing and delighting
in the nature of the beautiful itself.” They may not take part in ruling or
defending the state. What is so terrible about people who love the beautiful
voice or the beautiful object? This makes them sub-human? Plato wanted beauty
to be invented, just as he wanted his apple to be invented as the “form of
the apple” because he despised the real apple. The person of “reason”
rejects the pleasure of beauty and finds pleasure only in what he invents with
his mind and what is not real. This is the ultimate corruption of the mind.
It replaces reality with fiction, and to add insult to injury, calls it truth.
The scions of Plato promoted wonderful phrases like “reason” or “love”
or “peace” and this always meant the opposite.
The Greeks taught us to lie for power and call it reason. Those who
follow Plato run the colleges and teach that Stalin was good. Those who follow
Plato shriek that
We must confront the Big Lie. We must not allow the fanatics to
rationalize with intellectual tricks enslaving and harming of others. We must
be free of the elite who proclaim their inventions as “light” to the human
“masses-in-the-cave.” There is only one cave, and that is where true
reason is corrupted.
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