A Christian Extremist Meets A Muslim Extremist

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One Nation Under God, By Force

 One Nation Under God, By Force


By David Sessions

Editorial Note: This article appears as part of a series, with contributions from varying perspectives, examining American Evangelicalism and National Idolatry.

Christian defenses of patriotism are often peculiarly prickly, as if the author is perturbed that anyone would be so bothersome as to question the compatibility of Christianity and Americanism. Or, as in the case of David Limbaugh, who argued here last week that "patriotism is not idolatry," they rebut arguments no one is making. Mr. Limbaugh, for example, hurried to reject the idea "that to be patriotic is to worship America" and to insist that revering the Constitution is "not inconsistent with Scripture." As far as I know, Christian critics of patriotism have not suggested otherwise.

When I accuse conservative evangelicals of worshipping the United States, I do not mean that they hang too many flags on their houses or get too emotional singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” (I can hardly recall a time I heard our stately national anthem without choking up.) What I have in mind are the excessive stakes they believe to be riding on the outcomes of the American political system, such that negative political activism has been the most energetic witness for Christianity for the past several decades. The fuel for that activism has been a kind of spiritualized American patriotism that lacks a global, eternal Christian view of what it means to be a wayfaring stranger on this planet.

Religion-fueled patriotism is no historical aberration. In the ancient world, when two nations established a diplomatic relationship, their gods often merged. To mount an assault on a country was to directly affront that nation’s god, its values, its existential conception of itself. Religion and patriotism are difficult to separate even in the modern world, as we see in the current struggles between the United States and the Muslim world, or Israel and Palestine. A huge number if not a majority on both sides see these conflicts as battles over whose version of history and reality will stand.

Christianity, however, proposes an alternative vision for relationships between humans and between God and man. By coming as a failed Messiah, a sacrifice for the anawim (scum of the earth), Jesus confounded, subverted, and overturned the long-held expectations of the Jewish people. His message and example were as radical as they were unmistakable: whoever loses his life will find it, the last will be first, and whoever does not leave his old allegiances behind is unfit for the kingdom of heaven. Entering that kingdom, he made clear, required a profound surrender of human “rights,” a willingness to give up the allegiances, squabbles, jealousies, hatreds, and passions with which humankind busies itself.

Jesus’ example is a transcendent ideal no human will ever attain. Human beings will naturally be drawn into social and even international conflicts. But by definition, Christians should have an uneasy relationship with earthly powers. They will see error, cruelty, dysfunction, arrogance, and failure in themselves and in their countrymen, individual and collective. They will see the tragic flaws in their nation's domestic and foreign policies -- and likely even in some of its defining characteristics. The New Testament commands Christians to obey earthly authorities and “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s,” but nowhere does scripture recommend they pledge allegiance to a flawed temporal nation. In fact, there is no clear evidence in the Gospel that patriotism is a priority for Christians or that it should be revered as a virtue. If anything, Jesus showed a remarkable indifference to traditional human relationships and to social and ethnic delineations.

Will GOP leaders share a stage with one of the most anti-Muslim, anti-gay men in America?

PFAW Calls on Values Voter Summit Speakers to Denounce Fischer’s Extremism

This weekend (Sept. 17-19), conservative luminaries including Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachman, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, and 2012 presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Pence, will be speaking at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit. Sharing the stage with them will be the American Family Association’s Director of Issue Analysis Bryan Fischer. Fischer has an AFA-sponsored radio program, which he uses to spout anti-gay and anti-Muslim propaganda. (The AFA is also a sponsor of the Summit).
“Reasonable people can, and do, have reasonable differences of opinion. Bryan Fischer is not a reasonable person,” said Michael B. Keegan, President of People For the American Way.
“By sharing a stage with Fischer, public figures like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Mike Pence, Bob McDonnell, and Michele Bachmann don’t necessarily endorse Fischer’s shameless anti-Muslim and anti-gay propaganda—but they do acknowledge its credibility. Any candidate thinking seriously of running for president in 2012 should think twice about standing alongside a man who has called for the deportation of all Muslims in America; insulted Muslim servicemembers; claimed that brave Americans died in vain because Iraq was not converted to Christianity; and called gay people deviants, felons, pedophiles, and terrorists. Bryan Fischer is no mainstream conservative. And neither is any person who shares a platform with him while refusing to denounce his hate-filled propaganda.”
People For’s RightWingWatch.org blog has tracked Fischer’s career over the past several years. His long and prolific record of hate speech and extremism includes the following recent statements:
On American Muslims:

• Demanded that no new mosques be built anywhere in America. (8/10/2010)
• Argued that inbreeding has caused Muslims to be stupid and violent. (9/10/2010)
• Says that Muslims should be banned from serving in the U.S. military. (11/9/2009)
• Insisted that all Muslims are traitors, called for the deportation of all Muslims from the U.S. (4/10/2010)
• Claimed that U.S. service members died in vain because the U.S. failed to make Iraq a Christian nation. (8/19/2010)

On Gays and Lesbians:

• Said that “homosexuals should be disqualified from public office.” (8/5/2010)
• Insisted that gays are biased, sexually deviant felons, not to mention pedophiles, and should never serve on the Supreme Court. (4/15/2010, 4/16/2010)
• Called gay adoption “a terrible, terrible, inexcusable, inhumane thing to do to children.” (8/10/2010)
• Argued that we should“impose the same sanctions on those who engage in homosexual behavior as we do on those who engage in intravenous drug abuse." (2/3/2010)
• Wrote: “The inescapable conclusion is that gay sex is a form of domestic terrorism.” (6/10/2010)
• Said: “Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual solders basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Brownshirts, were male homosexuals.” (5/25/2010)

On Hispanic Americans:

• “Also, the illegitimacy rate among Hispanic women is over 50%. I’m not sure pro-family values are as strong in the Hispanic community as Dr. Land wants to believe.” (7/23/2010)

On President Obama:

• Called the President a “fascist dictator” for taking steps to hold BP accountable for the Gulf oil spill: “And remember the President's been a fascist ... he says ‘I've been a fascist from day one. They can't blow their nose without asking permission from me, they can't clean the wax out of their ears unless they get a sign-off from me.’ That's what fascist dictators do!” (6/18/2010)

On the Animal Kingdom:

• Lamented that a whale at SeaWorld wasn’t stoned to death for killing its trainer. (2/25/2010)
• Oh, and by the way: God is cursing us with bear attacks for failing to follow the Bible. (6/21/2010)

Burning of Quran disappoints many in East Lansing community (w/ video)

Burning of Quran disappoints many in East Lansing community (w/ video)
Nearby residents bring Muslim holy book's pages to mosque

Melissa Domsic and Matthew Miller • mdomsic@lsj.com, mrmiller@lsj.com • September 13, 2010

EAST LANSING - There was a carnival Sunday afternoon at the Islamic Center of East Lansing, part of the celebration of Eid al-Fitr, the three-day holiday that marks the end of Ramadan.

Children dressed in rainbow-striped Velcro suits waited in line for a chance to fling themselves at an inflatable velcro wall. Tables in the lobby were loaded with cupcakes and nachos and Little Caesars pizza. Outside, a group of young men played a game of touch football.

This was not the picture of a community shaken. Early Saturday morning, a burned copy of the Quran was found at the entrance of the mosque. Pages were shredded, some of them smeared with feces.

"The goal that these guys intended to achieve, which was to incite anger or to incite controversy, they were not successful," said Abdalmajid Katranji, a spokesman for the center.

The Quran was found at 1:30 a.m. Saturday by a group of young men who had just finished a basketball game, Katranji said. Members of the community walked the streets that night, retrieving shredded pages scattered by the perpetrators in the surrounding neighborhood.

But mosque leaders waited to make the incident public.

"We felt (Saturday) had its own purpose, its own need for reflection," Katranji said, "and so we wanted to make sure that the focus stayed on the issue of 9/11. We did not want the messages to be mixed."

They did file a police report, and, on Saturday, East Lansing Police left an unattended police vehicle in the center's parking lot as a show of support and means of protection, Katranji said.

They have not identified any witnesses or suspects, East Lansing police Lt. Kevin Daley said.
FBI contacted

The Council for American-Islamic Relations in Michigan also asked the FBI to investigate the act as a possible hate crime.

"We are aware of the situation and we're working with mosque leaders at this time," said Sandra Berchtold, spokeswoman for the FBI in Detroit.

CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid did not mince words when it came to the significance of what had happened.
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"To have the Quran burned at a mosque is equivalent to having a cross burned at a black church," he said.

'We stand with you'

Saturday morning, Karen Hoene's husband sent her a text message about the torn pages of the Quran he'd seen scattered around their neighborhood.

She did the only thing that felt right. She took her 9-year-old son, Elijah, and went out to pick them up.

A few hours later, she decided to return them to the mosque.

"I got real emotional at that point, because it was shameful to me," she said.

"I don't know if I felt shame as a white person, or as a resident of this town, or just a general disgust with anyone who would do something like that," she added.

"I naively thought higher of people. I didn't think that in this community something like that would happen."

She wasn't the only neighbor to bring back pages - some were found as far away as Michigan Avenue - nor was she the only member of the community to express her regret and disgust at what had happened.

A Quran reading was held Saturday night at All Saints Episcopal Church in East Lansing, an event designed to counter Florida pastor Terry Jones' plan, which he didn't carry out, to publicly burn the Quran that day.

When the Rev. Kit Carlson, rector of All Saints, heard Sunday morning about the incident, "I was sick, because we left last night on such a great note," she said.

A card was taped to the door Sunday that read: "We stand with you. In solidarity, All Saints Episcopal Canterbury MSU." Flowers were taped there as well.

East Lansing Mayor Victor Loomis met with members of the center Sunday afternoon.

"It's a very deplorable act, and we condemn the actions of whoever did this," Loomis said. "I suspect, along with members of the Islamic Center, that it was someone from outside our community."
'A copycat attempt'

In recent weeks, there has been "a perceptible increase in Islamophobic rhetoric in the country," said Mohammed Ayoob, a professor of international relations and coordinator of Michigan State University's Muslim Studies program.
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He chalks it up to the upcoming elections "and the attempt by the right to capitalize on this issue in the context of 9/11 and the controversy surrounding the establishment of an Islamic center close to ground zero."

He also chalks it up to media coverage, "or overcoverage" of Jones' Quran burning plans.

The East Lansing incident strikes him as "a copycat attempt."

But it's not an isolated incident. In the past week, there have been incidents of vandalism at mosques in Hudson, N.Y., and Phoenix.

The portion of the Quran that was burned has been handed over to police. But in the office of the Islamic Center, there are plastic bags filled with pages returned by neighbors.

"You may tear the book, but you're not going to tear the beauty that is the Quran," Katranji said.

"Ultimately, you have the freedom to express what you want," he said. "You have the freedom of speech. In fact, you have the right to burn the Quran. What we're asking is don't burn it here on our property, coming here and trying to intimidate our community."...more

Bachmann Uses The Word 'Extremist'

This is interesting because Bachmann used the word "extremists". Many supporters of the Tea Party tend to steer away from this word as it, also, self-describes certain Christian factions who, themselves, are supporters of the Party.

 Congresswoman Michele Bachmann issued the following statement today on the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks

“Today is a day where we all pause, reflect and honor the ones we lost on this tragic day nine years ago. We join those who are mourning their loved ones. We will never forget those who perished in New York city, at the Pentagon or in the countryside of Pennsylvania. Our thoughts, prayers and support are with the families who lost loved ones on September 11th 2001. We honor all those who died and will never forget them.”

“We also offer our gratitude to the first responders who heroically rushed into the burning building to save others. Many of these heroes lost their lives by trying to save others. We grieve with their loved ones for paying the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty.”

“Nine years after that tragic day, we must also remember to remain vigilant and that we are still fighting extremists. In the last year we have seen several examples of terrorists who wish to bring harm to this blessed soil of ours. We remain grateful and supportive of our troops who keep us safe and fight to protect our freedoms.”

“Our resolve, our determination and our perseverance never faltered in the face of the cowards that attacked us. We pledge on this day and every day that America will still remain a beacon of freedom, a light of hope and an advocate for justice to all.”

“We will never forget. May God continue to bless America.”