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http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/when-religion-is-used-to-divide-and-conquer-us.html
Corrupt Government Officials – Many of Whom Are Atheists – Use the Most Extreme Forms of Religion to Divide and Conquer Us
Posted on May 4, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog
Preface: Fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Muslims all think
they are in a “holy war” against the other guy. As shown below,
fundamentalists are being manipulated by the powers-that-be – many of
whom are actually atheists – as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy to
disempower people.
The 2,000 Year Old Strategy
The strategy of dividing and conquering one’s foes is ancient.
Ancient Roman emperor Julius Cesar successfully used it thousands of years ago.
The application of the strategy in controlling one’s own people –
divide and rule – has been used for just as long. As Wikipedia notes:
<blockquote>Elements of this technique involve:
</blockquote>
In discussing the use of “divide and rule” in the U.S., Wikipedia discusses the “Use of left-right politics“.
Indeed – even though the Founding Fathers warned us against the danger of a two-party system
to divide the nation – left-right partisan divisions have successfully
been deployed to distract and weaken the American people for centuries.
Religion has been used for the same purpose:
<blockquote>England invaded Ireland in 1170, but for the first 439
years it was a conquest in name only. In 1609, however, James I founded
the Plantation of Ulster, imported 20,000 Protestant settlers, and
introduced religious strife as a political tactic. By favoring
Protestants over the native Catholics in politics and economics-the
so-called “Ulster Privilege-the English pitted both groups against one another.
The tactic was enormously successful, and England used it throughout its colonial empire. Nowhere were the British so successful in transplanting the Irish model than in India.
***
As prime minister [Churchill] once said that he hoped that
the tension between Hindus and Muslims would remain “A bulwark of
British rule in India.”
The British were not alone in using religion as a tactic to
divide and conquer. The French employed it quite successfully in Lebanon
and Vietnam. In the former, Paris favored Maronite Christians over
Muslims (and Sunni Muslims over Shiite Muslims), and in the latter,
Catholics over Buddhists.
***
Exploiting religious differences hardly ended with the demise of the great colonial empires.
The French continue to exploit religious divisions in
Lebanon, and the U.S. is currently trying to cobble together a Sunni
united front to confront Washington’s three opponents in the Middle
East: Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Syria is mostly
Sunni, but Bashar al-Assad’s regime is dominated by Alawites, a variety
of Shiism. Some 60 percent of Lebanon is Shiite.
But Shiites only constitute about 12 percent of Islam, and while
Washington talks of a “Shiia crescent” as if it constituted some kind of
united front, in fact there are enormous differences between Arab Syria
and Lebanon, and non-Arabic speaking Iran.
***
Religion is increasingly being used to ramp up the fear factor in international politics.
</blockquote>
Indeed, ramping up hatred and fear of other religions is an easy way
for any government to consolidate power and rationalize war.
“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the
leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a
simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a
fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship …
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
- Hermann Goering, Nazi leader
No wonder the powers-that-be in the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia do everything possible to whip up fear of foreign religions.
Atheist War Hawks Manipulate Believers to Beat the Drums of War
But wait, you may say ….
Perhaps the leaders of the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Israel really believe that we are really in a holy war?
That can’t be the case because – as shown above – U.S. and Israeli leaders have backed fundamentalist Muslims, and Saudi Arabia is working hand-in-hand with the U.S. and Israel in numerous endeavors.
Moreover, history reveals the cynicism of those manipulating people of faith to reach their goals.
For example, while the Saudi royal family pushes the most strict and fundamentalist form Islam, the Saudi royal family’s debauchery and corruption is legendary. The monarchs – while pushing strict Wahabism as the official state religion – don’t practice it.
Many orthodox Israeli Rabbis are against zionism as being antithetical to traditional Jewish values. As such, many Jews say that criticizing zionism is not anti-semitism. … and some zionists themselves admit that even non-Jews
have the right to criticize Israel. (This post will not get into the
debate about whether zionism is a good or bad political philosophy. We
are only pointing out that the Israeli government’s statements about
religion are disputed by many Orthodox Rabbis; and many Israelis claim
that the government is cynically pushing a view of religion only because
it promotes the government’s geopolitical desires).
In the U.S., Leo Strauss was the father of the Neo-Conservative
movement, including many leaders of both the Bush and Obama
administrations.
Indeed, many of the main neocon players – including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Stephen Cambone, Elliot Abrams, and Adam Shulsky – were students of Strauss at the University of Chicago, where he taught for many years.
The people pushing for war against Iran are the same neocons who pushed for war against Iraq. See this and this. (They planned both wars at least 20 years ago.) For example, Shulsky was the director of the Office of Special Plans – the Pentagon unit responsible for selling false intelligence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. He is now a member of the equivalent organization targeting Iran: the Iranian Directorate.
Strauss, born in Germany, was an admirer of Nazi philosophers and of Machiavelli. Strauss believed that a stable political order required an external threat and that if an external threat did not exist, one should be manufactured. Specifically, Strauss thought that:
<blockquote>A political order can be stable only if it is united by
an external threat . . . . Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if
no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured
</blockquote>
(the quote is by one of Strauss’ main biographers).
What does this have to do with religion?
Strauss taught that religion should be used as a way to manipulatepeople to achieve the aims of the leaders. But that the leaders themselves need not believe in religion.
As Wikipedia notes:
<blockquote>In the late 1990s Irving Kristol and other writers in
neoconservative magazines began touting anti-Darwinist views, in support
of intelligent design. Since these neoconservatives were largely of
secular backgrounds, a few commentators have speculated that this –
along with support for religion generally – may have been a case of a
“noble lie”, intended to protect public morality, or even tactical
politics, to attract religious supporters.
</blockquote>
So is it any surprise that the folks who planned war against Iraq and Iran at least 20 years ago are pushing religious disinformation to stir up the evangelical community?
Talking heads in Saudi Arabia, Israel and the U.S. are all promoting
the Straussian playbook: stir up religious sentiment – even if you are
personally an atheist – to create and demonize an “enemy”, so as to
divide and conquer their people and other countries …
The 3 Governments Support the Hard-Liners of “Enemy” Religions In Other Countries
But aren’t Christianity, Judaism and Islam mortal enemies? Isn’t
there a holy war … which must be fought and won for our religion?
If that’s true, how come the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia –
the leaders of fundamentalist Christian, Islam and Judaism,
respectively – are all very close allies?
Specifically, 85%
of the American population identifies itself as Christian. The largest
concentration of Evangelicals in the world can be found in the United
States, where roughly a quarter of the world’s Evangelicals live (over 90 million). The U.S. is the seat of the most violent fundamentalist Christians (abortion clinic bombers, etc.)
Israel is obviously the center of the Jewish religion, and the seat of the most fundamentalist Jews.
And Saudi Arabia is the center of the most radical, fundamentalist
and terror-prone branch of Muslims … the “Wahhabis” (also called
“Salafis”). As Frontline reports:
<blockquote>For more than two centuries, Wahhabism has been Saudi
Arabia’s dominant faith. It is an austere form of Islam that insists on a
literal interpretation of the Koran. Strict Wahhabis believe that all
those who don’t practice their form of Islam are heathens and enemies.
Critics say that Wahhabism’s rigidity has led it to misinterpret and
distort Islam, pointing to extremists such as Osama bin Laden and the
Taliban. Wahhabism’s explosive growth began in the 1970s when Saudi
charities started funding Wahhabi schools (madrassas) and mosques from
Islamabad to Culver City, California.
***
The religious curriculum in Saudi Arabia teaches you that people are
basically two sides: Salafis [Wahhabis], who are the winners, the chosen
ones, who will go to heaven, and the rest. The rest are Muslims and
Christians and Jews and others [and these non-Salafis] are supposed to
be hated, to be persecuted, even killed.
***
[Wahhabism is] sort of an extreme orthodoxy that historically has not
been shared by a majority of Muslims, particularly nobody outside of
the Arabian Peninsula.
</blockquote>
But the U.S. has long backed Saudi Arabia … and the Madrassa schools within Saudi Arabia which teach radical, violent Wahabi beliefs.
The Washington Post reported in 2002:
<blockquote>The United States spent millions of dollars to supply
Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and
militant Islamic teachings ….
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured
drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as
the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the
American-produced books ….
</blockquote>
The Council on Foreign Relations notes:
<blockquote>The 9/11 Commission report (PDF)
released in 2004 said some of Pakistan’s religious schools or madrassas
served as “incubators for violent extremism.” Since then, there has
been much debate over madrassas and their connection to militancy.
***
New madrassas sprouted, funded and supported by Saudi Arabia and U.S. Central Intelligence Agency,where students were encouragedto join the Afghan resistance.
</blockquote>
And see this.
The U.S. also directly arms, funds and otherwise supports the most violent fundamentalist Muslim terrorists – including Al Qaeda – against the more moderate Muslims and secular Arabs. Indeed, the U.S. backs Islamic terrorists who are persecuting Christians and Jews.
As one example, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser – Zbigniew Brzezinski – admitted on CNN that the U.S. organized and supported Bin Laden and the other originators of “Al Qaeda” in the 1970s to fight the Soviets.
Brzezinski told Al Qaeda’s forefathers, the Mujahadin:
<blockquote>We know of their deep belief in god – that they’re
confident that their struggle will succeed. That land over – there is
yours – and you’ll go back to it some day, because your fight will
prevail, and you’ll have your homes, your mosques, back again, because
your cause is right, and god is on your side.
</blockquote>
The U.S. not only strongly supports Israel, many of the most
fundamentalist American Christians support the most fundamentalist,
hard-line, radical Israeli Jews. And the Israeli government supports the
Christian fundamentalists.
For example, Dr. Timothy Webber – an evangelical Christian who has
served as a teacher of church history and the history of American
religion at Denver Seminary and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in
Louisville, Vice-President at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in
Lombard, IL, and President of Memphis Theological Seminary in Tennessee –
notes:
<blockquote>Almost one out of four Americans believes that 9/11 was
predicted in the Bible, and nearly one in five believes that he or she
will live long enough to see the end of the world. Even more significant
for this study, over one-third of those Americans who support Israel
report that they do so because they believe the Bible teaches that the
Jews must possess their own country in the Holy Land before Jesus can
return.Millions of Americans believe that the Bible predicts the future
and that we are living in the last days. Their beliefs are rooted in
dispensationalism, a particular way of understanding the Bible’s
prophetic passages …. They make up about one-third of America’s 40 or 50 million evangelical Christians
and believe that the nation of Israel will play a central role in the
unfolding of end-times events. In the last part of the 20th century,
dispensationalist evangelicals become Israel’s best friends-an alliance
that has made a serious geopolitical difference.
***
During the early 1980s the Israeli Ministry of Tourism
recruited evangelical religious leaders for free “familiarization”
tours. In time, hundreds of evangelical pastors got free trips to the
Holy Land. The purpose of such promotional tours was to enable
people of even limited influence to experience Israel for themselves and
be shown how they might bring their own tour group to Israel. The
Ministry of Tourism was interested in more than tourist dollars: here
was a way of building a solid corps of non-Jewish supporters for Israel
in the United States by bringing large numbers of evangelicals to hear
and see Israel’s story for themselves. The strategy caught on.
***
Shortly after the Six-Day War, elements within the Israeli government
saw the potential power of the evangelical subculture and began to
mobilize it as a base of support that could influence American foreign
policy. The Israeli government sent Yona Malachy of its Department of Religious Affairs to the United States to study American fundamentalism and its potential as an ally of Israel. Malachy was warmly received by fundamentalists
and was able to influence some of them to issue strong pro-Israeli
manifestos. By the mid-1980s, there was a discernible shift in the
Israeli political strategy. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC), the Jewish state’s major lobbying group in Washington, D.C.,
started re-aligning itself with the American political right-wing,
including Christian conservatives. Israel’s timing was perfect. It began
working seriously with American dispensationalists at the precise
moment that American fundamentalists and evangelicals were discovering
their political voice.
***
In their commitment to keep Israel strong and moving in
directions prophesied by the Bible, dispensationalists are supporting
some of the most dangerous elements in Israeli society. They do so
because such political and religious elements seem to conform to
dispensationalist beliefs about what is coming next for Israel. By
lending their support-both financial and spiritual-to such groups,
dispensationalists are helping the future they envision come to pass.
***
Their convictions have led them to support the aims and actions of what most Israelis believe are the
most dangerous right-wing elements in their society, people whose views
make any compromise necessary for lasting peace impossible.
Such sentiments do not matter to the believers in Bible prophecy, for
whom the outcome of the quarrelsome issue of the Temple Mount has
already been determined by God.
Since the end of the Six-Day War, then, dispensationalists have
increasingly moved from observers to participant-observers. They have
acted consistently with their convictions about the coming Last Days in
ways that make their prophecies appear to be self-fulfilling.
***
As Paul Boyer has pointed out, dispensationalism has effectively conditioned millions of Americans to be somewhat passive about the future
[the goal of divide-and-conquer efforts] and provided them with lenses
through which to understand world events. Thanks to the sometimes
changing perspectives of their Bible teachers, dispensationalists are
certain that trouble in the Middle East is inevitable, that nations will
war against nations, and that the time is coming when millions of
people will die as a result of nuclear war, the persecution of
Antichrist, or as a result of divine judgment. Striving for peace in the
Middle East is a hopeless pursuit with no chance of success.
***
For the dispensational community, the future is determined. The
Bible’s prophecies are being fulfilled with amazing accuracy and
rapidity. They do not believe that the Road Map will-or should-succeed.
According to the prophetic texts, partitioning is not in Israel’s
future, even if the creation of a Palestinian state is the best chance
for peace in the region. Peace is nowhere prophesied for the Middle
East, until Jesus comes and brings it himself. The worse thing that the
United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations can do
is force Israel to give up land for a peace that will never materialize
this side of the second coming. Anyone who pushes for peace in such a manner is ignoring or defying God’s plan for the end of the age.
***
As [one dispensationalist group's] advertisement read, “Don’t just read about prophecy when you can be part of it.”
</blockquote>
Israel has also repeatedly been caught impersonating Muslim extremists. For example, Israel admits
that an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in
several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left
behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the
bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the
bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this).
NBC News reports that Israel backed a Muslim fundamentalist terror group against Iran, and former CBS News producer Barry Lando claims that Saudi Arabia helps fund Israeli’s Mossad in such efforts. (Of course, the U.S. has long backed these same Muslim terrorists against Iran, and has covertly been waging war against Iran for years. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.)
Israel and Saudi Arabia also now support each other. For example, the Sunday Times reported that Saudi
Arabia has tested the ability to stand down its air defenses to allow
an Israeli strike on Iran to pass through its airspace. After the Arab Spring, Israel views the Saudi government as “guarantor of stability”,
according to the New York Times. In 2011, Israel approved a German sale
of 200 Leopard tanks to Saudi Arabia. The approval came from Uzi Arad, the national security advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu.
These 3 countries – centers of 3 different religions – are also all fighting on the same side in various wars. For example, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Israel are all fighting against the Syrian government, and backing Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood. (Indeed, the New York Times reported last week that virtually all of the rebel fighters are Al Qaeda terrorists.)
As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh noted:
<blockquote>The Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East.
***
A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni
extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile
to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
***
The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace ….
</blockquote>
Again, what does it mean that the centers of fundamentalist Islam,
fundamentalist Judaism and fundamentalist Christianity are all backing
the same group of terrorists to promote certain geopolitical goals?
It means that religion is being used by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli
governments to divide and conquer the rest of the world … and to divide
and rule their own people.
Postscript 1: I agree with Christian writer and psychiatrist M.
Scott Peck, who argued that there are different stages of spiritual
maturity, and that fundamentalism – whether it be Muslim, Christian,
Jewish (or any another religion’s) fundamentalism – is an immature stage of development.
Specifically, Peck believed that fundamentalism is a pendulum swing
0ver-reaction to the anarchy and chaos of lawlessness and hedonism.
Peck believed that fundamentalism is a desperate attempt to impose order
and consistent, unchanging rules in an unstable, chaotic situation.
Postscript 2: Many Christians and Jews assume that Islam is the most violent religion. But the FBI and other official U.S. sources say that Christian and Jewish extremists carry out more terrorist attacks in the U.S. than Muslims.
And Muslim scholars – such as University of Michigan professor Juan Cole – say that Islamic law forbids terrorism
– but that the radical Wahabis are twisting Islam into something
different … a violent religion. Given that (as discussed above) the
U.S., Saudi royal family and Israel have backed Wahabis and fought
against moderate Muslims and secular Arabs, they are at least partly
responsible for the spread of these violent extremists.
While it is easy to point out passages of the Koran which appear to
be a call to violence, terrorism or honor killings, it is equally easy
to do the same with the Bible. By way of example only:
Leviticus 21:9
<blockquote>A priest’s daughter who loses her honor by committing
fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to
death.
</blockquote>
Isaiah 13:15-18
<blockquote>Anyone who is captured will be run through with a sword.
Their little children will be dashed to death right before their eyes.
Their homes will be sacked and their wives raped by the attacking
hordes. For I will stir up the Medes against Babylon, and no amount of
silver or gold will buy them off. The attacking armies will shoot down
the young people with arrows. They will have no mercy on helpless babies
and will show no compassion for the children.
</blockquote>
Ezekiel 9:5-7
<blockquote>“Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, “Follow him
through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no
mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and
little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task
right here at the Temple.” So they began by killing the seventy
leaders. “Defile the Temple!” the LORD commanded. “Fill its courtyards
with the bodies of those you kill! Go!” So they went throughout the city
and did as they were told.”
</blockquote>
Jeremiah 51:20-26
<blockquote>“You are my battle-ax and sword,” says the LORD. “With
you I will shatter nations and destroy many kingdoms. With you I will
shatter armies, destroying the horse and rider, the chariot and
charioteer. With you I will shatter men and women, old people and
children, young men and maidens. With you I will shatter shepherds and
flocks, farmers and oxen, captains and rulers. “As you watch, I will
repay Babylon and the people of Babylonia for all the wrong they have
done to my people in Jerusalem,” says the LORD. “Look, O mighty
mountain, destroyer of the earth! I am your enemy,” says the LORD. “I
will raise my fist against you, to roll you down from the heights. When I
am finished, you will be nothing but a heap of rubble. You will be
desolate forever. Even your stones will never again be used for
building. You will be completely wiped out,” says the LORD.
</blockquote>
Deuteronomy, Chapter 2, 32-37
<blockquote>And the LORD said unto me, Behold, I have begun to give
Sihon and his land before thee: begin to possess, that thou mayest
inherit his land. 32 Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his
people, to fight at Jahaz. 33 And the LORD our God delivered him before
us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. 34 And we took
all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the
women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain. 36
From Aroer, which is by the brink of the river of Arnon, and from the
city that is by the river, even unto Gilead, there was not one city too
strong for us: the LORD our God delivered all unto us
</blockquote>
As such, the claim that Islam is a uniquely violent religion has been greatly exaggerated for geopolitical reasons.
Corrupt Government Officials – Many of Whom Are Atheists – Use the Most Extreme Forms of Religion to Divide and Conquer Us
Posted on May 4, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog
Preface: Fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Muslims all think
they are in a “holy war” against the other guy. As shown below,
fundamentalists are being manipulated by the powers-that-be – many of
whom are actually atheists – as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy to
disempower people.
The 2,000 Year Old Strategy
The strategy of dividing and conquering one’s foes is ancient.
Ancient Roman emperor Julius Cesar successfully used it thousands of years ago.
The application of the strategy in controlling one’s own people –
divide and rule – has been used for just as long. As Wikipedia notes:
<blockquote>Elements of this technique involve:
- creating or encouraging divisions among the subjects to prevent alliances that could challenge the sovereign
- aiding and promoting those who are willing to cooperate with the sovereign
- fostering distrust and enmity between local rulers [or groups]
- encouraging meaningless expenditures that reduce the capability for political [organization or opposition] …..
</blockquote>
In discussing the use of “divide and rule” in the U.S., Wikipedia discusses the “Use of left-right politics“.
Indeed – even though the Founding Fathers warned us against the danger of a two-party system
to divide the nation – left-right partisan divisions have successfully
been deployed to distract and weaken the American people for centuries.
Religion has been used for the same purpose:
<blockquote>England invaded Ireland in 1170, but for the first 439
years it was a conquest in name only. In 1609, however, James I founded
the Plantation of Ulster, imported 20,000 Protestant settlers, and
introduced religious strife as a political tactic. By favoring
Protestants over the native Catholics in politics and economics-the
so-called “Ulster Privilege-the English pitted both groups against one another.
The tactic was enormously successful, and England used it throughout its colonial empire. Nowhere were the British so successful in transplanting the Irish model than in India.
***
As prime minister [Churchill] once said that he hoped that
the tension between Hindus and Muslims would remain “A bulwark of
British rule in India.”
The British were not alone in using religion as a tactic to
divide and conquer. The French employed it quite successfully in Lebanon
and Vietnam. In the former, Paris favored Maronite Christians over
Muslims (and Sunni Muslims over Shiite Muslims), and in the latter,
Catholics over Buddhists.
***
Exploiting religious differences hardly ended with the demise of the great colonial empires.
The French continue to exploit religious divisions in
Lebanon, and the U.S. is currently trying to cobble together a Sunni
united front to confront Washington’s three opponents in the Middle
East: Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Syria is mostly
Sunni, but Bashar al-Assad’s regime is dominated by Alawites, a variety
of Shiism. Some 60 percent of Lebanon is Shiite.
But Shiites only constitute about 12 percent of Islam, and while
Washington talks of a “Shiia crescent” as if it constituted some kind of
united front, in fact there are enormous differences between Arab Syria
and Lebanon, and non-Arabic speaking Iran.
***
Religion is increasingly being used to ramp up the fear factor in international politics.
</blockquote>
Indeed, ramping up hatred and fear of other religions is an easy way
for any government to consolidate power and rationalize war.
“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the
leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a
simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a
fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship …
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
- Hermann Goering, Nazi leader
No wonder the powers-that-be in the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia do everything possible to whip up fear of foreign religions.
Atheist War Hawks Manipulate Believers to Beat the Drums of War
But wait, you may say ….
Perhaps the leaders of the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Israel really believe that we are really in a holy war?
That can’t be the case because – as shown above – U.S. and Israeli leaders have backed fundamentalist Muslims, and Saudi Arabia is working hand-in-hand with the U.S. and Israel in numerous endeavors.
Moreover, history reveals the cynicism of those manipulating people of faith to reach their goals.
For example, while the Saudi royal family pushes the most strict and fundamentalist form Islam, the Saudi royal family’s debauchery and corruption is legendary. The monarchs – while pushing strict Wahabism as the official state religion – don’t practice it.
Many orthodox Israeli Rabbis are against zionism as being antithetical to traditional Jewish values. As such, many Jews say that criticizing zionism is not anti-semitism. … and some zionists themselves admit that even non-Jews
have the right to criticize Israel. (This post will not get into the
debate about whether zionism is a good or bad political philosophy. We
are only pointing out that the Israeli government’s statements about
religion are disputed by many Orthodox Rabbis; and many Israelis claim
that the government is cynically pushing a view of religion only because
it promotes the government’s geopolitical desires).
In the U.S., Leo Strauss was the father of the Neo-Conservative
movement, including many leaders of both the Bush and Obama
administrations.
Indeed, many of the main neocon players – including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Stephen Cambone, Elliot Abrams, and Adam Shulsky – were students of Strauss at the University of Chicago, where he taught for many years.
The people pushing for war against Iran are the same neocons who pushed for war against Iraq. See this and this. (They planned both wars at least 20 years ago.) For example, Shulsky was the director of the Office of Special Plans – the Pentagon unit responsible for selling false intelligence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. He is now a member of the equivalent organization targeting Iran: the Iranian Directorate.
Strauss, born in Germany, was an admirer of Nazi philosophers and of Machiavelli. Strauss believed that a stable political order required an external threat and that if an external threat did not exist, one should be manufactured. Specifically, Strauss thought that:
<blockquote>A political order can be stable only if it is united by
an external threat . . . . Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if
no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured
</blockquote>
(the quote is by one of Strauss’ main biographers).
What does this have to do with religion?
Strauss taught that religion should be used as a way to manipulatepeople to achieve the aims of the leaders. But that the leaders themselves need not believe in religion.
As Wikipedia notes:
<blockquote>In the late 1990s Irving Kristol and other writers in
neoconservative magazines began touting anti-Darwinist views, in support
of intelligent design. Since these neoconservatives were largely of
secular backgrounds, a few commentators have speculated that this –
along with support for religion generally – may have been a case of a
“noble lie”, intended to protect public morality, or even tactical
politics, to attract religious supporters.
</blockquote>
So is it any surprise that the folks who planned war against Iraq and Iran at least 20 years ago are pushing religious disinformation to stir up the evangelical community?
Talking heads in Saudi Arabia, Israel and the U.S. are all promoting
the Straussian playbook: stir up religious sentiment – even if you are
personally an atheist – to create and demonize an “enemy”, so as to
divide and conquer their people and other countries …
The 3 Governments Support the Hard-Liners of “Enemy” Religions In Other Countries
But aren’t Christianity, Judaism and Islam mortal enemies? Isn’t
there a holy war … which must be fought and won for our religion?
If that’s true, how come the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia –
the leaders of fundamentalist Christian, Islam and Judaism,
respectively – are all very close allies?
Specifically, 85%
of the American population identifies itself as Christian. The largest
concentration of Evangelicals in the world can be found in the United
States, where roughly a quarter of the world’s Evangelicals live (over 90 million). The U.S. is the seat of the most violent fundamentalist Christians (abortion clinic bombers, etc.)
Israel is obviously the center of the Jewish religion, and the seat of the most fundamentalist Jews.
And Saudi Arabia is the center of the most radical, fundamentalist
and terror-prone branch of Muslims … the “Wahhabis” (also called
“Salafis”). As Frontline reports:
<blockquote>For more than two centuries, Wahhabism has been Saudi
Arabia’s dominant faith. It is an austere form of Islam that insists on a
literal interpretation of the Koran. Strict Wahhabis believe that all
those who don’t practice their form of Islam are heathens and enemies.
Critics say that Wahhabism’s rigidity has led it to misinterpret and
distort Islam, pointing to extremists such as Osama bin Laden and the
Taliban. Wahhabism’s explosive growth began in the 1970s when Saudi
charities started funding Wahhabi schools (madrassas) and mosques from
Islamabad to Culver City, California.
***
The religious curriculum in Saudi Arabia teaches you that people are
basically two sides: Salafis [Wahhabis], who are the winners, the chosen
ones, who will go to heaven, and the rest. The rest are Muslims and
Christians and Jews and others [and these non-Salafis] are supposed to
be hated, to be persecuted, even killed.
***
[Wahhabism is] sort of an extreme orthodoxy that historically has not
been shared by a majority of Muslims, particularly nobody outside of
the Arabian Peninsula.
</blockquote>
But the U.S. has long backed Saudi Arabia … and the Madrassa schools within Saudi Arabia which teach radical, violent Wahabi beliefs.
The Washington Post reported in 2002:
<blockquote>The United States spent millions of dollars to supply
Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and
militant Islamic teachings ….
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured
drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as
the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the
American-produced books ….
</blockquote>
The Council on Foreign Relations notes:
<blockquote>The 9/11 Commission report (PDF)
released in 2004 said some of Pakistan’s religious schools or madrassas
served as “incubators for violent extremism.” Since then, there has
been much debate over madrassas and their connection to militancy.
***
New madrassas sprouted, funded and supported by Saudi Arabia and U.S. Central Intelligence Agency,where students were encouragedto join the Afghan resistance.
</blockquote>
And see this.
The U.S. also directly arms, funds and otherwise supports the most violent fundamentalist Muslim terrorists – including Al Qaeda – against the more moderate Muslims and secular Arabs. Indeed, the U.S. backs Islamic terrorists who are persecuting Christians and Jews.
As one example, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser – Zbigniew Brzezinski – admitted on CNN that the U.S. organized and supported Bin Laden and the other originators of “Al Qaeda” in the 1970s to fight the Soviets.
Brzezinski told Al Qaeda’s forefathers, the Mujahadin:
<blockquote>We know of their deep belief in god – that they’re
confident that their struggle will succeed. That land over – there is
yours – and you’ll go back to it some day, because your fight will
prevail, and you’ll have your homes, your mosques, back again, because
your cause is right, and god is on your side.
</blockquote>
The U.S. not only strongly supports Israel, many of the most
fundamentalist American Christians support the most fundamentalist,
hard-line, radical Israeli Jews. And the Israeli government supports the
Christian fundamentalists.
For example, Dr. Timothy Webber – an evangelical Christian who has
served as a teacher of church history and the history of American
religion at Denver Seminary and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in
Louisville, Vice-President at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in
Lombard, IL, and President of Memphis Theological Seminary in Tennessee –
notes:
<blockquote>Almost one out of four Americans believes that 9/11 was
predicted in the Bible, and nearly one in five believes that he or she
will live long enough to see the end of the world. Even more significant
for this study, over one-third of those Americans who support Israel
report that they do so because they believe the Bible teaches that the
Jews must possess their own country in the Holy Land before Jesus can
return.Millions of Americans believe that the Bible predicts the future
and that we are living in the last days. Their beliefs are rooted in
dispensationalism, a particular way of understanding the Bible’s
prophetic passages …. They make up about one-third of America’s 40 or 50 million evangelical Christians
and believe that the nation of Israel will play a central role in the
unfolding of end-times events. In the last part of the 20th century,
dispensationalist evangelicals become Israel’s best friends-an alliance
that has made a serious geopolitical difference.
***
During the early 1980s the Israeli Ministry of Tourism
recruited evangelical religious leaders for free “familiarization”
tours. In time, hundreds of evangelical pastors got free trips to the
Holy Land. The purpose of such promotional tours was to enable
people of even limited influence to experience Israel for themselves and
be shown how they might bring their own tour group to Israel. The
Ministry of Tourism was interested in more than tourist dollars: here
was a way of building a solid corps of non-Jewish supporters for Israel
in the United States by bringing large numbers of evangelicals to hear
and see Israel’s story for themselves. The strategy caught on.
***
Shortly after the Six-Day War, elements within the Israeli government
saw the potential power of the evangelical subculture and began to
mobilize it as a base of support that could influence American foreign
policy. The Israeli government sent Yona Malachy of its Department of Religious Affairs to the United States to study American fundamentalism and its potential as an ally of Israel. Malachy was warmly received by fundamentalists
and was able to influence some of them to issue strong pro-Israeli
manifestos. By the mid-1980s, there was a discernible shift in the
Israeli political strategy. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC), the Jewish state’s major lobbying group in Washington, D.C.,
started re-aligning itself with the American political right-wing,
including Christian conservatives. Israel’s timing was perfect. It began
working seriously with American dispensationalists at the precise
moment that American fundamentalists and evangelicals were discovering
their political voice.
***
In their commitment to keep Israel strong and moving in
directions prophesied by the Bible, dispensationalists are supporting
some of the most dangerous elements in Israeli society. They do so
because such political and religious elements seem to conform to
dispensationalist beliefs about what is coming next for Israel. By
lending their support-both financial and spiritual-to such groups,
dispensationalists are helping the future they envision come to pass.
***
Their convictions have led them to support the aims and actions of what most Israelis believe are the
most dangerous right-wing elements in their society, people whose views
make any compromise necessary for lasting peace impossible.
Such sentiments do not matter to the believers in Bible prophecy, for
whom the outcome of the quarrelsome issue of the Temple Mount has
already been determined by God.
Since the end of the Six-Day War, then, dispensationalists have
increasingly moved from observers to participant-observers. They have
acted consistently with their convictions about the coming Last Days in
ways that make their prophecies appear to be self-fulfilling.
***
As Paul Boyer has pointed out, dispensationalism has effectively conditioned millions of Americans to be somewhat passive about the future
[the goal of divide-and-conquer efforts] and provided them with lenses
through which to understand world events. Thanks to the sometimes
changing perspectives of their Bible teachers, dispensationalists are
certain that trouble in the Middle East is inevitable, that nations will
war against nations, and that the time is coming when millions of
people will die as a result of nuclear war, the persecution of
Antichrist, or as a result of divine judgment. Striving for peace in the
Middle East is a hopeless pursuit with no chance of success.
***
For the dispensational community, the future is determined. The
Bible’s prophecies are being fulfilled with amazing accuracy and
rapidity. They do not believe that the Road Map will-or should-succeed.
According to the prophetic texts, partitioning is not in Israel’s
future, even if the creation of a Palestinian state is the best chance
for peace in the region. Peace is nowhere prophesied for the Middle
East, until Jesus comes and brings it himself. The worse thing that the
United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations can do
is force Israel to give up land for a peace that will never materialize
this side of the second coming. Anyone who pushes for peace in such a manner is ignoring or defying God’s plan for the end of the age.
***
As [one dispensationalist group's] advertisement read, “Don’t just read about prophecy when you can be part of it.”
</blockquote>
Israel has also repeatedly been caught impersonating Muslim extremists. For example, Israel admits
that an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in
several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left
behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the
bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the
bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this).
NBC News reports that Israel backed a Muslim fundamentalist terror group against Iran, and former CBS News producer Barry Lando claims that Saudi Arabia helps fund Israeli’s Mossad in such efforts. (Of course, the U.S. has long backed these same Muslim terrorists against Iran, and has covertly been waging war against Iran for years. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.)
Israel and Saudi Arabia also now support each other. For example, the Sunday Times reported that Saudi
Arabia has tested the ability to stand down its air defenses to allow
an Israeli strike on Iran to pass through its airspace. After the Arab Spring, Israel views the Saudi government as “guarantor of stability”,
according to the New York Times. In 2011, Israel approved a German sale
of 200 Leopard tanks to Saudi Arabia. The approval came from Uzi Arad, the national security advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu.
These 3 countries – centers of 3 different religions – are also all fighting on the same side in various wars. For example, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Israel are all fighting against the Syrian government, and backing Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood. (Indeed, the New York Times reported last week that virtually all of the rebel fighters are Al Qaeda terrorists.)
As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh noted:
<blockquote>The Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East.
***
A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni
extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile
to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
***
The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace ….
</blockquote>
Again, what does it mean that the centers of fundamentalist Islam,
fundamentalist Judaism and fundamentalist Christianity are all backing
the same group of terrorists to promote certain geopolitical goals?
It means that religion is being used by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli
governments to divide and conquer the rest of the world … and to divide
and rule their own people.
Postscript 1: I agree with Christian writer and psychiatrist M.
Scott Peck, who argued that there are different stages of spiritual
maturity, and that fundamentalism – whether it be Muslim, Christian,
Jewish (or any another religion’s) fundamentalism – is an immature stage of development.
Specifically, Peck believed that fundamentalism is a pendulum swing
0ver-reaction to the anarchy and chaos of lawlessness and hedonism.
Peck believed that fundamentalism is a desperate attempt to impose order
and consistent, unchanging rules in an unstable, chaotic situation.
Postscript 2: Many Christians and Jews assume that Islam is the most violent religion. But the FBI and other official U.S. sources say that Christian and Jewish extremists carry out more terrorist attacks in the U.S. than Muslims.
And Muslim scholars – such as University of Michigan professor Juan Cole – say that Islamic law forbids terrorism
– but that the radical Wahabis are twisting Islam into something
different … a violent religion. Given that (as discussed above) the
U.S., Saudi royal family and Israel have backed Wahabis and fought
against moderate Muslims and secular Arabs, they are at least partly
responsible for the spread of these violent extremists.
While it is easy to point out passages of the Koran which appear to
be a call to violence, terrorism or honor killings, it is equally easy
to do the same with the Bible. By way of example only:
Leviticus 21:9
<blockquote>A priest’s daughter who loses her honor by committing
fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to
death.
</blockquote>
Isaiah 13:15-18
<blockquote>Anyone who is captured will be run through with a sword.
Their little children will be dashed to death right before their eyes.
Their homes will be sacked and their wives raped by the attacking
hordes. For I will stir up the Medes against Babylon, and no amount of
silver or gold will buy them off. The attacking armies will shoot down
the young people with arrows. They will have no mercy on helpless babies
and will show no compassion for the children.
</blockquote>
Ezekiel 9:5-7
<blockquote>“Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, “Follow him
through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no
mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and
little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task
right here at the Temple.” So they began by killing the seventy
leaders. “Defile the Temple!” the LORD commanded. “Fill its courtyards
with the bodies of those you kill! Go!” So they went throughout the city
and did as they were told.”
</blockquote>
Jeremiah 51:20-26
<blockquote>“You are my battle-ax and sword,” says the LORD. “With
you I will shatter nations and destroy many kingdoms. With you I will
shatter armies, destroying the horse and rider, the chariot and
charioteer. With you I will shatter men and women, old people and
children, young men and maidens. With you I will shatter shepherds and
flocks, farmers and oxen, captains and rulers. “As you watch, I will
repay Babylon and the people of Babylonia for all the wrong they have
done to my people in Jerusalem,” says the LORD. “Look, O mighty
mountain, destroyer of the earth! I am your enemy,” says the LORD. “I
will raise my fist against you, to roll you down from the heights. When I
am finished, you will be nothing but a heap of rubble. You will be
desolate forever. Even your stones will never again be used for
building. You will be completely wiped out,” says the LORD.
</blockquote>
Deuteronomy, Chapter 2, 32-37
<blockquote>And the LORD said unto me, Behold, I have begun to give
Sihon and his land before thee: begin to possess, that thou mayest
inherit his land. 32 Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his
people, to fight at Jahaz. 33 And the LORD our God delivered him before
us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. 34 And we took
all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the
women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain. 36
From Aroer, which is by the brink of the river of Arnon, and from the
city that is by the river, even unto Gilead, there was not one city too
strong for us: the LORD our God delivered all unto us
</blockquote>
As such, the claim that Islam is a uniquely violent religion has been greatly exaggerated for geopolitical reasons.
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