The Ties That Bind: Willful Ignorance and Religious Intolerance

After wrestling with a small mountain of data over the holiday weekend, I realized that my background in socio-cultural studies is too slim to write the kind of article I’d like to write about the recent influence of the right wing’s plunge into Judeo-Christianity on American culture. I can look at the tortures of Abu Graib and Guantanamo, and the incidents of religious and racial intolerance voiced by some religious leaders in this country, and sense the connections, the underlying patterns, a palimpsest of hatred and willful ignorance, that seems to shape this nation and its foreign policies. It has pseudo-religious over- and undertones. It occupies bandwidth on our airwaves. It persists in hinting of its existence even when we are most determined to ignore it.

• “They [Muslims] have said in the Koran there’s a war against all the infidels. Do you want somebody like that sitting as a judge? I wouldn’t.” –Pat Robertson, ABC’s “This Week”
• Tuesday May 24 2005, a church marquee features the following message: “The Quran should be flushed.” The church’s pastor, Rev. Creighton Lovelace, defended his inflammatory act by saying, “I knew that whenever we decided to put that sign up that there would be people who wouldn’t agree with it, and there would be some that would, and so we just have to stand up for what’s right.”
• May 16th, the current administration’s mouthpiece, in the person of Scott McClellan, denied knowing anything about incidences religious disrespect at US detention facilities: “I know of no such incidents. And the Department of Defense said last week that they could find no credible evidence of it either.”
• But Human Rights Watch has long documented tales of such abuse: “Three Britons released from Guantánamo have alleged that the Koran was kicked and thrown in the toilet. A former Russian detainee, Aryat Vahitov, has reportedly made the same claim. A former Kuwaiti detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, has said that the throwing of a Koran on the floor led to a hunger strike at Guantánamo that ended only after a senior officer expressed regret over the camp’s loudspeaker. Human Rights Watch also interviewed detainees who described a protest at a U.S. detention site at Kandahar airbase in Afghanistan in early 2002 that was set off by a guard’s alleged desecration of the Koran.“
• A man named Glenn Miller, the 700 Club’s “proven prophet,” had this to say about the reasons we are at war in Iraq: “It has nothing to do with terrorism. It has nothing to do with oil. It has everything to do with that there’s 1.2 million Muslims that have been deceived by the false God Allah, and that the God of heaven, Jehovah, is now in the process of doing war if you will against that spirit to … break the power of deception so those people can be exposed to the gospel.”
• In the aftermath of 9/11, Franklin Graham (Reverend Billy’s son) called Islam “a very evil and very wicked religion.”
• In November 2002, Pat Robertson conflated the Koran and “Mein Kampf,” the autobiography of Adolf Hitler, to the outrage of Muslims around the world.
• The photographs from Abu Ghraib, and the consequent self-absolution of Pentagon/DoD officials in any wrong-doing in the matter.
• From Mark Crispin Miller’s book, Cruel and Unusual: Bush and Cheney’s New World Order: “[Occupied Iraq] has been overrun by Southern Baptist missionaries seeking to exploit Iraqi misery for Jesus’ sake. Laden with clean blankets, bottled water, bread, and bandages — and countless Bibles — the Christian soldiers of the International Mission Board (IMB) use such material inducements to convert as many Muslims as they can, waging what their Web site calls a `war for souls’.”
• And now, under pressure to fill the blatantly obvious gaps in its battered credibility, the Pentagon has finally admitted that five incidents of Koran desecration can be confirmed as “credible” — but steadfastly refuses to admit that a religious holy book could have been anywhere in proximity to a toilet, at least, not in US hands.

There are more incidents, more quotes, more accounts than can easily be listed here. Those interested in following such matter should visit sites like ReligiousTolerance.org . What is disturbing is that these very extreme statements, policies and incidents aren’t coming from marginalized or extremist elements in our society. They’re coming from our leaders, originating in the highest echelons of our religious and political organizations, and defended by the kind of American who lives and works right next door to you. The American public is endorsing these acts and attitudes with their time, attention, money and votes, seemingly oblivious to the cognitive, emotional and moral disconnects they represent. They are equally unaware to the cost of such willful oblivion, measured in the gallons of American, Afghani and Iraqi blood drenching the sands half a world away, yet brought home to them on broadcast news every night.

If I’ve drawn any conclusions from this labor of Tantalus I’ve recently engaged, it’s that there are no coincidences, no isolated incidences, no accidental or off-hand remarks that don’t relate back to this elusive shadow structure that is at the heart of current American foreign and domestic policy. Exemplia gratis: When President Bush used the word “crusade,” I can no longer dismiss that as yet another unfortunate gaffe in a long list. Especially when Mark Racicot, head of the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign, later used the same word in a fund-raising letter. “From leading a global crusade against terrorism to signing into law two of the largest tax cuts in history, [Bush] has provided strong, steady leadership during difficult times.”

And when the president’s man in charge of finding top terrorists, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, is on record asserting that his targets are minions of Satan (my paraphrase of his words).

Or when the Republican leader of the Senate appears via telecast at a right-wing fundamentalist rally in an attempt to pressure other senators to help him pack federal circuit and appellate courts with other right-wing extremist judges…

The list goes on and on. I’m no proponent of conspiracy theories — I’ve always agreed with the idea of not assuming conspiracy where stupidity will suffice for an explanation. However, the palimpsest pattern here becomes too obvious to ignore, and I’m left here wondering for the 3,692nd time how in the hell I can explain this to that great slumbering American electorate in a way that will motivate them to get out and agitate for change.

Quote of the Day: What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents –Robert Kennedy
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