[Peace-discuss] Faith and fanaticism

[Brussel Morton K.]

Maybe it's not about faith and god, but I couldn't resist posting this.
Maybe it's just faith in our leaders which causes the trouble
--mkb


Why We Need To Study God
by Larry Beinhart
"Religious faith will be of the same significance to the 21st Century  
as political ideology was to the 20th Century."  -- Tony Blair

Mumbai. 9/11. Chechnya. Sectarian violence in Iraq. Somalia.  
Afghanistan. Nigeria.

The man with the most military power in the history of the world is  
reported to have said, "I'm driven with a mission from God. God would  
tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And  
I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in  
Iraq …' And I did."

It was called a Crusade.

These are the defining events of the new century.

After a brief, semi-retirement of a few hundred years, religion has  
returned as the number one cause of violence, war and death.

So the fundamental national security questions of our time have to be  
about faith.

What is it about faith that makes people eager to commit suicide so  
long as it enables them to commit mass murder while they're at it?

What is it about faith that makes world leaders like George Bush and  
Tony Blair - with armies, bombers, missiles, artillery, and navies -  
ignore good advise, abandon good sense, and lead their countries to  
two of the stupidest wars in history?

And while they're at it, to radically change the moral positions that  
their countries adopted just sixty years ago and commit what were  
then called war crimes: initiating a war of aggression, torture, and  
the failure to provide for the populations of the countries they  
occupied?

What is it about faith that made it suddenly re-emerge as the driving  
force in American politics and in the politics of the Islamic countries?

It seems self-evident that God should have become our number one area  
of study during the last few years. Governments, universities and  
foundations should have all rushed forward with funds to create  
programs and recruit students to find out what this God thing is.

The war in Iraq ought to have taught us here in the West, two lessons.

We are very, very good at invading countries and smashing their  
armies. Even better than we thought we were.

But that doesn't stop suicide bombers. It only encourages them.

The nature of the people who attacked us, and the results of our  
response to them, make it obvious that understanding fanatical faith  
is at least as important as developing a reusable hypersonic cruise  
vehicle, more useful than developing new tactical nuclear weapons,  
and if we can find a way to reach or to undermine the faith of  
fanatics, it will be far more economical than invading a series of  
foreign countries.

But the opposite has happened: billions for bombs! Not a penny for  
thought! A smart bomb remains as dumb as a brick if the people firing  
it don't know who to hit or the right reasons to hit them.

God and religion should have become important to us, we, the just  
plain people. Whether or not our leaders are people of "faith," we  
really need them to balance their faith with good sense, so they make  
better decisions.

A serious conversation about faith and how it works, should have  
become one of the leading topics of our national conversation.

What we had was a public parade of politicians on television  
competing to prove how much faith each of them has. It was embraced  
by a universal assumption that religious faith is a good way to pick  
our leaders. Although the evidence before us – George Bush, Tony  
Blair, Osama bin Laden – points the other way.

God, religion, faith, spirituality – whichever face of the prism we  
are looking at – runs like a vertical pillar through all the levels  
of our lives.

Our international policies are fixed largely around this war on  
terror. Our most volatile domestic political issues – regulating our  
sex lives, abortion, birth control, homosexuality, separation of  
church and state – are rooted in our religious views. Our social  
circles, our family structures, our individual lives, our world  
views, how we live and die, our health and happiness, are organized  
around our spiritual views, or lack thereof.

All this, without a serious attempt to find out what religion really is.

Larry Beinhart is the author of Wag the Dog, The Librarian, and Fog  
Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin. All available at  
nationbooks.org
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