Around 2003 or so, an old boss and I took a side-trip on the way to a meeting to the church he attended. He was a bit younger than me, a devout evangelical Christian, a youth pastor and a pretty decent guy. He knew I didn’t share his particular brand of faith (full disclosure – I grew up Catholic, but now “it’s complicated”) and so long as I didn’t press any issues with him, would limit his proselytizing to little jibes about how “I really should check out how awesome the church is” and so on.
He sprung the stop on me on the way to our meeting, which was nearby his church, “remembering” he had to drop something off. Because I didn’t particularly like that job and always enjoyed an excuse to be outside the office, I didn’t argue. When we arrived, he took the chance to show me around. It was a newer building – rehabbed and endlessly added on to. The worship area had an open space large enough for hundreds of people to fill, a multimillion dollar sound system and giant projection television screens. I could only imagine that services were more akin to rock concerts than the more solemn Catholic masses I attended.
The worship area wasn’t the only building on the acres of property the church owned. The grounds, nestled between strip malls and gas stations on a busy suburban intersection contained living quarters for the pastor, a school, a warehouse and even a printing press. Since the company I worked for at the time was a print company, my boss made sure to make their printing press a stop on the tour. I generally enjoy visiting the theological worlds of others, even if I don’t share their beliefs or values because every experience teaches me something. This time, things became uncomfortable.
Amidst the rows of machinery, songbooks and pamphlets proclaiming salvation were books titled something akin to “The Coming War With Islam.” I’m not sure if they were printing them or just warehousing them to hand out to the congregation, but one thing was clear – these folks also believed in their own coming holy war.
I’ve thought a lot about that moment recently with all of the vitriolic rhetoric showing up throughout the media regarding the “ground zero mosque” and other mosques in other cities across America. At present, the question “should this mosque be built” is probably the biggest NIMBY issue in America. Much like our food, our shoes or our electronics – Americans love our country’s right to religious freedom, we just don’t like to see how it’s made.
And perhaps this simple thought is why it’s easy for the folks like Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin to froth at the mouth over the much debated community center, proposed to stand nearby the site where thousands of Americans of all faiths and beliefs were killed, physically injured and emotionally scarred. They can believe they’re doing their own God’s work, because they see someone else as intolerant and scary and justify it by blaming a hateful act by a small group of extremists on a group that comprises billions. These are the same people who once questioned the patriotism and “Americanism” of political dissenters during the Bush years, who now deride the American government almost as much as the jihadists they’re so afraid of.
In a recent New York Times piece, Damien Cave did an excellent job of pointing out and breaking down exactly how Islam as the mortal enemy of the west is now a mainstream belief. Damien writes about Terry Jones, the pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida. Pastor Jones and his flock will burn Korans on the anniversary of 9/11 and apparently have 10 “reasons” for this. While we might dismiss the folks at Dove World Outreach Center as far right lunatics, some of the sentiment behind their desire to burn books can be found in mainstream publications. Even those branded of a more “liberal” persuasion seem to have their own distrust of Islam, if masked slightly.
The list is pretty typical of right wing vitriol, charging all Muslims with everything from being pagans, imperialists, oppressors of women, absolutists about their religion being the “right” one, totalitarians, etc. According to Pastor Jones, Islam is an oppressive way of life that all its followers wish to impose on the rest of the world and they will maim and kill to crush everyone under their fascist sandals. So how is this, exactly different from Evangelical Christians? When we’re arming our soldiers with weapons that have biblical verses on them, demanding that the Ten Commandments be displayed in our courthouses, telling women what we believe they should do with their lives and bodies, expressing a desire to say who can and cannot get married and generally fearful and critical of anything that’s not “from the west,” how is that so different from Pastor Jones’ ten reasons to burn a Koran?
When we allow the most extreme practitioners of a religion to act as representatives and opinion makers for the entire religion, be it in Abrahamic faiths or others, we only make it easier for those extremists to perpetuate and justify their own brand of Holy War. While plenty of people in the world would like to evolve beyond a “my God can beat up your God” mentality and move to a future of larger understanding, we still allow those extremists to shout us down. Extremists feed on confrontation, anger, rhetoric and rage. By whipping up a national fervor over a planned Islamic center at a vacant building near Ground Zero, we’re playing into the hands of folks who whip up a similar tempest against all westerners.
So, whatever happened to “let ye who is without sin cast the first stone?”
It’s hard to take Paster Terry Jones very seriously, not least because of that unfortunate resemblance to The Beverly Hillbillies’ Jed Clampett!
Even if that Christian pastor in Gainsville, Florida postponed or cancelled his Quran burning, some imbecile just lit pages from a Koran on fire on September 11th at the WTC. What a asshole. His own ego means more to him than peace with the Muslim world.