Address the problem of Christian nationalism

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

- Jesus, Sermon on the Mount

I’ve been asked a number of times, in mostly vituperative tones, to address the threat of radical Islam, i.e., Islamism.

One hundred percent of these entreaties, generally attacking me for my stupidity (it apparently goes with being a liberal), have come from – speaking loosely – “conservative Christians.”

It might well be worth future conjecture to examine why this is so (projection comes to mind), but I’d like to discuss their concerns, though I don’t suspect my take is going to make many of my critics very happy.

First, though, I want to make it very clear that I acknowledge the threat of Islamic nationalism, aka, Islamism. Daniel Pipes, perhaps the pre-eminent Western scholar on the subject, has often been attacked as an anti-Islamic extremist, but with occasional reservations, I find his views on this topic quite reasoned, sometimes even prescient.

For instance, he concluded his address to the Center for Strategic and International Studies on June 30, 1998, by offering several policy proposals to stem the spread of Islamism, saying (noting the difficulty of establishing democracies), “Be very careful about pushing for elections.”

Having said that, he’s also a neocon and so, naturally, was wildly off base in predicting the outcome of the Iraq War. He wrote in the New York Post on April 8, 2003, refuting a prediction by Egyptian President Mubarak that the war would increase terrorism, “Actually, the precise opposite is more likely to happen: The war in Iraq will lead to a reduction in terrorism.”

He then offered the usual bromides that the Iraqis would be grateful, there would be only a small number of civilian casualties, we’d hand control of the oil to the Iraqis, and, funniest of all, “The alacrity with which the allies remove themselves from controlling Iraq will assuage fears of it becoming part of a U.S. empire.”

So please don’t consider me a supporter of Pipes. In fact, I wrote a rather more accurate commentary, in a Spokesman-Review guest editorial critical of the war that appeared just two days later, concluding, “The rest of the world trembles in shock and awe at the demise of true American ideals.”

Still, Pipes did recently note that what we’ve done in Iraq is absolutely the opposite of the supposed goal: We’ve turned Iraq into an Islamist nation.

He said, writing in his Weblog this past Oct. 25, “I agree that we do not want Islamists ruling in Iraq. … Actually, the Bush administration has already helped Islamists take over in Baghdad through elections; is that really so different from their winning a military victory?”

So my first conclusion regarding the threat of Islamic fundamentalism is that we’re furthering its development; indeed, as many have pointed out, the war in Iraq is a dream come true for Osama bin Laden and others of his ilk.

I’ll say it once again, too, for the few remaining deluded souls: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and Saddam Hussein posed no threat to the United States.

This leads me to my second point, something Jesus was apparently ticked off by, as well. It seems to me that an illegal war, begun under false pretenses (i.e., lies), and engaged with appalling misconduct and the most flagrant violations of the Geneva conventions, does not exactly make America appear less fanatical than, say, your average Islamist nation.

Which brings me to this: What makes the Christian nationalism, i.e., Christianism, which President Bush seems determined to make the law of the land for Americans, so different from Islamic nationalism? And how can bringing death, destruction, and all the old tragedies and farces of empire do anything but breed extremism and opposition abroad?

Finally, for those who’ve told me what a horrible, imbecilic idiot I must be to even equate what we’re doing with the various “terrorist” atrocities in Iraq (atrocities, yes, “terrorism,” no – not when they’re seeking to free their own country from an illegally occupying force): How does killing, by the Johns Hopkins survey, an estimated 655,000 innocent Iraqis help to make us anything but a despised enemy?

“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye. …”

Islamism and Christianism look like two sides of the same coin to me.