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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 America has survived the poisons of this
indoctrination. On the other hand, America has suffered. If family
is declining, if marriage is disappearing, if gender issues are what
they are, the colleges and intellectuals have a lot to do with it.
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
Iraq. If we cannot win the war of ideas, will our children destroy
us?
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 Maine fought for the Gay
Rights Law there, and elsewhere, the activists tell me that the
Church will make a statement here or there, but does not get
involved in a meaningful manner. The change was so fast that few
could believe it. There are mighty internal battles in Western
religion, pushing the right and left farther apart, which ratchets
up the discord and chaos to new levels.
Let us return to Mr. Berman’s article on
“The Philosopher of Islamic Terror” (NYT 3/22/03). Pan-Arabists
and the Islamists want to return to the days of the caliphate when
Moslems dominate the world. Some Pan-Arabists feel that Arabs must
emulate the Nazi example of racial superiority over those who are
not Arabs. The Islamists see the caliphate as a state where the
police enforce strict Moslem law. Neither of these groups have any
tolerance for those who disagree with their religious and racial
ideas. Sayyid Qutb is an Islamist who preaches violence and even
suicide.
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 India and Persia. The religions that broke with
Judaism didn’t do so because of a flaw in Judaism, but because
they wanted to dominate the world with the sword. The quiet Jewish
Temple, “My House a place of prayer for all of the nations,” was
not for them.
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 Temple to throw over the tables where
people changed money and sold pigeons. What could be so terrible
about people changing money for all of the pilgrims who traveled
from all over the world to offer sacrifices in the Temple? What is
so terrible about selling pigeons for the Temple ritual? Nobody
knows. Perhaps, in line with our discussion, we can understand.
Those who broke with Judaism did so because of its rituals. The
Temple was the “great ritual.” Therefore, it was the target. The
new religions wanted a religion without ritual, so that the powerful
personality of the “philosopher-king” could control things and
be the sole spiritual source, and the “masses” would be in the
“cave.” Christianity has gone through many stages, and has
defined and redefined the deity, unfazed. The idea was never to have
a clear understanding. That is for “rigid ritual” religions. The
Greek idea that influenced Christianity was for a religion to
empower the leader as the intermediary between the
“cave-dwellers” and heaven. As long as people knew who the
leader was, the head of the Church, nobody cared what the religion
was, how it defined its deity, or anything else.
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 Europe
had a lot to do with the Church. The Church began to do damage
control. This led to a war between conservatives and liberals. We
cannot understand what is going on in America, Europe and the West
regarding family and religion until we know this.
I am reading a book “Constantine’s
Sword: the Church and the Jews: A History” by James Carroll, a
Catholic priest. It shows that the Church from the beginning taught
hate of Jews. It mentions that Martin Luther cursed the Jews even on
his deathbed. I didn’t need to read the book, actually. In my
childhood we used to play together, Jews, Catholics, Protestants,
until one day Billy Wilson went to parochial school. Then he came
back, not to play with us, but to curse us Jews. Jewish boys
couldn’t play against a baseball team, because Jerry, the son of a
preacher, would throw at a Jew’s head. This was after the
Holocaust. Imagine what it was like before the Holocaust.
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.”
The Greeks had two great philosophers,
Plato and Aristotle. Plato, as we mentioned before, despised the
material world and dealt with mystery and the power of the
philosopher-king to invent “truth” and control others with his
monopoly on mysticism. Aristotle, on the other hand, founded Western
science. What did Aristotle say about Plato’s social ideas?
Aristotle had a problem. He was not a mystic, and so could not
follow Plato’s philosopher-king and masses-in-the-cave program.
But could an empiricist accept the ridiculous notion that only the
elite could think? How did Aristotle justify free males enslaving
everyone else? Aristotle explained in his Politics: “The slave
does not possess the faculty of deliberation at all; the female
possesses it but in an indecisive form; and the child possesses it
but in an imperfect form.” Thus, free males dominate slaves and
women. If Einstein were enslaved, would he still think logically?
The Greek talked about reason, but ultimately, his “reason” was
more about empowering the advantaged.
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 America is
evil and support Saddam Hussein. The Gay Lobby passed the HIV
Confidentiality Laws that are the ultimate Plato Big Lie. New York
State, California, Florida and other Gay Lobby states declared that
AIDS and HIV are not infectious diseases. Of course, you don’t
believe this. So I suggest a scientific experiment. Go to the
website of New York State and check the list of Infectious Diseases,
those diseases that the state considers a threat. AIDS and HIV are
not on the list. Why? Because the Gay Lobby doesn’t want public
health doctors to quarantine people who have HIV and infect. For
this, hundreds and thousands of people are infected, because the Gay
Lobby pushes death and the politicians sign on to it.
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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