The Bush Administration Is Charged With Fighting Radical Islam?

Five Years After 9/11.

Is It Ironic That The Bush Administration Is Charged With Fighting Radical Islam?

I think is something ironic about the most socially conservative administration in history being charged with destroying the Taliban and radical Islam.

The Taliban as a misogynist, anti-gay,anti-booze, pro-censorship regeme that permits violence toward those who chose to live their lives apart from a narrow and monastic status quo. Radical Islam believes that religion and government should be one and the same. Their ambitions are for a state that is governed by the Quran.

The most extreme elements of evangelical Christian political activism reek of a similar ambition toward oppression. They believe that since they are against gays,abortion,other religions, stem cell research and adult oriented entertainment that the laws of the nation should strictly prohibit such things. It is not enough for them avoid sin on their own accord or for them to exercise their faith freely. They often make the case that they are under assault because others are permitted to live a life that isn't prescribed by the most narrow interpretations of the Old Testament.

Similarly, radical Islamic leaders say that moderate governments like Jordan are oppressive because they allow people to make their own choices rather than offering brutal retaliation for non-compliance with the sharia.

Five years after 9/11, the Bush administration has been arguing that global trends are now similar to what existed shortly before World War II. They say that currently we have a choice between appeasement and triumph over tyranny. I would be sympathetic to this argument if they drew a connection instead of using WWII and Nazisim as a thinly veiled emotional cudgel. They have not told us the actions that must be taken to prevent the next World War. I am not convinced that we are in a similar place.

I wonder if the political climate in the United States is not unlike the political climate before the rise of Nazi Germany. The Nazi's were very effective as using pre-existing communities of faith to embolden them. Though their basic core principles had little do with Christianity, they did influence Christian communities to support the Nazi cause.

In many Churches in United States it is not permissible to be a Christian and a Democrat. In some sects of the Democratic party, it is a faux pas to be a Christian. This is a dichotomy of identity similar to that which developed in Nazi Germany. It was eventually not permissible to identify as a German and not as a Nazi. The German Volk became synonymous with Hitler's National Socialism. Though the phenomenon has been somewhat muted, there are some communities where patriotism means being a Republican, and being a against Republican policies means being against America--which is being "with the terrorists". The conservative tautology says that to be un-Republican is to be an enemy of American values.

Is there a greater danger within our own boarders? Religion and faith is not by itself a catalyst for wrong doing. However, when politicians exploit faith communities and feign kinship with them for political gain, I think it is something that should be of grave concern. Radical religious groups within the United State's continue to view the separation of church and state as hostility toward their culture. Republicans have ridden this sense of victimization all the way to victory in the last three major elections. Is there a monster dwelling? Is this radical culture going to try to establish a national religion and make everyone live by its rules?

Don't laugh. Ave Maria, Florida is a closed community under development in Florida. It plans to build a community of the "Catholic faith". They will enforce the Catholic doctrine by including prohibiting the sale of pornography, contraception and they will ban the performing of abortions. Evangelical groups plan to build similar communities in South Carolina.

Is this a model for something larger? A state with an established religion? Do they have goals to model the entire United States is a similar way? I am not sure. Even as a Christian, I am made very uneasy by these prospects.

On this the fifth anniversary of 9/11, I think it is ironic that an administration that is proped up by religious fanaticism has been charged with fighting against that very phenomenon.