This page contains links and my comments related to some beliefs held in common by religious terrorists and by many zealous believers in mainstream religions, including Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. It is a continuation of the pages Religious terrorism (RelTer10, 15, 20, 25) and My religious beliefs (MyRel010, 020).
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. . . Rev. Jerry Falwell ___ My religious beliefs ___ Overview
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See also Jerry Falwell.
ArgosyFrom Argosynet On Secularity and Fundamentalism: http://argosy.mta.ca/argosy01-02/09.20.01/13.html Argosynet: Mount Allison's Independent Student Journal Online.
. . . I have been thinking a great deal about why those 19 men hijacked those four planes. . . . who they hated and who they represent. . . . Most commentators seem to agree that the terrorists responsible for the attacks hope to ignite a war. The aim seems to be to draw a violent over-reaction from the Americans in order to solidify a unified Muslim opposition behind a fundamentalist leadership. I agree with Robert Fisk who said "this is not the war of democracy vs. terror." What this is, I believe, is a struggle between the secularized world, and those who feel totally displaced by it. . . . There is no indication however that bin Laden and his cohorts are fighting oppression, for the oppressed, or against an oppressor. I say this because these men extol a deeply satisfying theology of violence to a desperate population -- not only a hallmark of fascism, but a failure of imagination for a group lead by a man with a 300 million dollar inheritance . . . they make their home within Afghanistan, one of the most oppressive and controlling theocracies ever articulated, and are clearly aligned with the ideology of the Taliban. And finally because I believe America, no matter how misguided and disastrous its foreign policy may be, is only symbolic of what is hated -- not the thing itself. . . .
The Rev. Jerry Falwell, an American, a confidant of President Bush, and a Christian Fundamentalist, said after Tuesday's attack that God had removed His protection from the US, punishing our nation because of those who have "secularized" America: gays, the A.C.L.U., Feminists, etc. I mention this because I believe that the Fundamentalist Christian, Falwell, and the Fundamentalist Muslim, bin Laden, share a failure of logic. For both these fundamentalists, secular culture is the absence of God. For men who live their lives and order their worlds by means of religion this is a frightening threat to their entire world. In America, . . . the anxiety of the Christian Fundamentalist is expressed as an ambivalence for popular culture, its celebrity is coveted, its forms copied with bizarre outcomes . . . Less harmless has been the Christian Right's resentment of the cultural elite, and of "alternative lifestyles" . . . This has lead to damaging legislative attacks on the arts, non-traditional families, science education and public health. At its most extreme this resentment becomes hate speech, the bombing of abortion clinics and gay bars, and the assassinations of doctors in their homes.
I do not feel that Falwell is a terrorist. . . . I think he speaks for a large group of Americans who feel culturally marginalized in a world that does not put their morality before all else. . . . I have been imagining what it would mean to put him and his followers in a situation as desperate as those who support Qaeda. It is interesting to note that suicide bombing almost never (if ever) targets temples or churches. . . . Why not bomb Rome? Why not bomb important Temples and Cathedrals? Perhaps because they are not threatened by other religions. To a fundamentalist other religions may not have the Truth but they are at least recognizable. But secular laws and culture introduce a levelling that these uncompromising men cannot abide, for them it seems nothing must be over God. Like the fundamentalists here in the US I believe Qaeda longs to take back the center. The Qaeda's extremism is the logical extension of the extremism at the fringe of the American Christian Right. . . .
by John Powers.
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