Holy Terror, Revisited:

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

"That which is unchallenged and exercised as habit rapidly becomes ritual. When this occurs, dissent becomes an object of surprise, if not resentment."
-- B. Carmon Hardy

Even more prophetic, Mr, Hoffman also wrote: "if indeed, "past is prologue," the future quite likely holds a number of chilling possibilities. First and foremost, in light of a series of seemingly unconnected terrorist incidents that occurred between last January and March-involving the bombing of New York City's World Trade Center, evidence of the existence of a nascent Abu Nidal terrorist infrastructure in the United States..." We in fact did have the beginnings of a terrorist infrastructure growing here, but a different one. We have learned there are possibly thousands of such men, terrorists waiting to attack us, some still here within U.S. boarders. There are more in other countries. Many trained in Osama bin Laden's camps. All ready to die for their beliefs. It's a group with a lot of money and organizational savvy. The men are highly educated and they fit in with us, like good spies should. Learning how deeply entrenched they may be after the fact does seem a rather dramatic failure in our intelligence gathering. It's a blind spot we just learned that we have.

Well, we know it now. Mr. Hoffman was right and we know we can't remain blind to such an invisible army gathering within our boarders any longer. This could have been much worse if there were a hundred more such men acting on the same day and attacking us in more diverse ways with more deadly weapons. Trucks too can be bombs, and trucks are easy to rent. You can strap bombs to your body and walk into a building. You can't stop this with just security measures, not if they can walk among us undetected. An army of this type could actually defeat us if large enough and used properly. As Mr. Hoffman also said, "In the future, terrorists may become the "ultimate fifth column": a clandestine, cost-effective, force used to wage war covertly..." If we don't learn from this, then one day someone else will do a better job of organizing and using religious zealots. They may have necessary weaknesses we can exploit, however.

Unlike Mr. Hoffman and myself who think in terms of psychology and sociology, the "holy terrorists" is thinking in theological terms. As Mr. Hoffman has said, they "...transform abstract political ideologies and objectives into a religious imperative." Whatever the Sept. 11 terrorists expected to be the results of their action they are obviously not going to get it. Because they believe they are doing the will of God, and that God is on their side, they tend to do things that seem stupid and self-destructive from our perspective. Indeed, the results of the terrorist's actions will probably be the eventual destruction of most of the things bin Laden and his group values, their lives, their network and the Taliban that supports them. If they were rational they would have realized this would be the result. Their ideas about the results of their actions were flawed from the beginning. Their beliefs have given them a bad model of the reality they live and act in. This may be a flaw that could be exploited. The more we understand this model the more we can predict their actions.

Mr. Hoffman had this to say about what motivated "holy terrorists," "What is particularly striking about "holy terror" compared to purely "secular terror," however, is the radically different value systems, mechanisms of legitimization and justification, concepts of morality, and Manichean world view that the "holy terrorist" embraces. For the religious terrorist, violence first and foremost is a sacramental act or divine duty executed in direct response to some theological demand or imperative." The letter found in Mohamed Atta's luggage seems to suggest exactly that. We learned for certain from Atta's letter that these men were deeply religious Islamic fundamentalists. They believed God would reward them for their actions. They believed they were doing God's will. The more we learn, the more they resemble the zealots Rome dealt with, and we in turn begin to resemble Rome.

Also, as Mr. Hoffman noted, history has seen terrorism like this before, it informs the very language we use to describe terrorists. Zealotry usually has roots in a specific kind of religious belief. Ancient Rome, just one potent example, had the Jewish zealots, the original zealots, that finally provoked Rome to destroy Judea and later scatter the Jews. You can read all about it in Flavius Josephus' The Jewish War. It's a history of the Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire in the years 66-74 CE, as experienced by Josephus himself. The Jewish zealots were suicidal and religiously inspired terrorists too. The parallels are striking.

A fact we may have to face is that America has become very much like Rome and our past policies are partly to blame for causing this. Rome, like ourselves, also had a policy of religious tolerance, the Pax Romana. Our tolerance has a similar insensitivity and blindness to specific religious feelings. One of Osama bin Laden's many objections to America is the fact that we've moved troops into the holy land of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Infidels in the holy land are as offensive to fundamentalist Muslims as statues of Roman emperors in the Jewish temple. Our tolerance becomes insensitive to this exclusitivity, just as the Roman's was. That insensitivity is the first failing of our intelligence gathering. We need to know how they think from day one. We need to understand how every mass religious movement thinks all across the world. We had the Roman's blindness. Our tolerance became a demand to be tolerated by a religion that cannot tolerate us and which we do not respect enough to listen to. We would rather destroy them than understand them, and I would suggest we would rather do this because understanding them means facing up to a similar religious darkness in the American psyche, including the psyche of some of our important leaders.

Osama bin Laden said this about the American occupation of their holy land, "After the Americans entered the Holy Land, many emotions were roused in the Muslim world, more than we have seen before. A great meeting took place a few days ago in Pakistan, and it was attended by 150 scholars. The goal of the meeting was to work toward liberating the Holy Land and coordinate efforts between Muslim masses in the area. Also, with Allah's blessings, scholars from Afghanistan, India and other Muslim nations' individual fatwas were passed, but here great joint fatwas were passed. The cooperation is expanding between general supporters of this religion. From this effort, the International Islamic Front for the Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders was formed, which we are a member of with other groups. It has a higher council to coordinate rousing the Muslim nation to carry out jihad against the Jews and the crusaders." Keep in mind, we Americans and our European allies are the crusaders. But it's much worse than just occupying their holy land, bin Laden also goes on about the massive killing of innocent women and children during the Gulf War with Iraq and our support of Israel. We should know when we have, as bin Laden said, roused many emotions.

From the moment such things are said, our intelligence services should get involved. Osama bin Laden was talking war very early on. We need to recognize that when it starts and begin gathering intelligence at that point. Of course, that's an expensive proposition because there is far more "war talk" than there are "war actions." Knowing exactly what to listen for is another problem.

Something, overlooked by Mr. Hoffman when comparing Islamic fundamentalists with Christian White Supremacists and other terrorist groups is that it's not just these "holy terrorist" who use religious language to justify violent behavior or "transform abstract political ideologies and objectives into a religious imperative." President Bush and other political leaders have used a similar rhetoric. On the day of the attack president Bush said he would "hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly attacks." To sacrifice one's life for a belief is hardly a cowardly act. To die for one's belief has been a clarion call to all religious believers throughout history, whether Christians being fed to the lions or Buddhists setting themselves on fire to protest a war. The intent of Bush's statement was to prepare U.S. citizens for war, not to help us understand our enemy. To malign and simplify the enemy in terms of cartoonish evil has always been a propaganda tool to justify future actions. A tool also used by bin Laden. Later Bush said, "this will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil," thus painting the coming war in religiously black and white terms.

Bush vowed that we would find and punish "those behind these evil acts." His language reflects a vague religiosity. Even the name of Bush's military operation, "Infinite Justice," has religious overtones. Just like bin Laden, Bush exploits our emotions of anger and fear to prepare us for war. This is the same type of rhetoric used by religious war mongers throughout history. We don't live in a black and white world of good and evil. Not only are there shades of grey, there are many colors to the different values we endorse or condemn. Bush has fallen back into a kind of fundamentalist thinking and appealed to biblical beliefs about "war," "punishment," and "evil." This is also what bin Laden has done.

In a speech to Congress on September 21st, Bush responded to the question, "Why do they hate us?", by saying, "they hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." Muslim extremists, including bin Laden, are not saying anything resembling Bush's statement. It is nothing but more propaganda for us Americans. If Bush believes it, he has a serious blind spot to the misery and death Muslims believe we've caused in the Middle East. They hate us for what they think we have done in their own lands, not for how we live in ours.

We can hear why Osama bin Laden thinks of us as the enemy, we can see him on CNN telling us why. Yet many Americans do seem to choose not to see this and Bush talks as if he is blind to these things, or that they simply mean nothing. We've chosen not to listen to terrorists because they use terror to express their protests. Listening and understanding do not mean giving in. In fact, listening and understanding can give us a greater power to destroy and help us destroy only what needs to be destroyed, leaving the innocents untouched. While we are shocked by the death of our own, many fail to realize how much death we've caused in Iraq and other places. The reality of what we have done is not as important as how it is perceived by Muslims. I'm not saying we had no justification for going to war with Iraq, but we did carpet bomb that nation, we too killed innocent women and children and on a far larger scale. So, I can imagine that we too are perceived as terrorists to those who live there and lost friends, family and children. When asked about the Iraqi casualties and so called "Collateral Damage" in the Gulf War, then-military Chief of Staff Colin Powell said, "That is really not a matter I am terribly interested in." Do you suppose there might be a few Muslims who felt horrified about the death of their friends and family which we call "Collateral Damage"?

The Gulf War began with a similar religious rhetoric as is used now to rally Americans against Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan's Taliban. In 1991 George Bush senior, with Billy Graham by his side, declared war on Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Graham endorsed it as moral and just. Most Americans didn't even know where Kuwait was on the map. They just accepted our leaders reasoning without question and rallied around the flag and prayed. That made this war we are in now start down the path to becoming a religious war in the eyes of Muslim fundamentalists because those words and images were later seen in Islamic countries. What Muslims saw was a foriegn leader standing with a priest from an infidel religion calling another Muslim evil. What kind of affect did the Bush presidents expect? Try to put yourself in the Muslim position. Such is the blindness we have. We seem to have thought we could make them suffer and die without having them get a little religiously crazy in their anger toward us. Was there a single instance of Islamic terrorism on American soil before the Gulf War?

Of course, we are different than the terrorists in important ways in spite of surface similarities. Our war against Iraq and terrorism is not an attempt to cause as much death and destruction as possible but an effort to eliminate an obvious threat. As I write this, we've sent more food to Afghanistan than bombs. Still, the Islamic terrorists are not alone in causing fear, terror, grief and death. We have used expensive weapons, they use a devious cleverness and a willingness to die, but in the end the results are the same: Two religious perceivers embody evil to each other. The feelings produced on each side are similar. The real issue is why we do these things to each other and why can't we change? Why can't we reason together and solve our problems in a more rational way? Those issues are beyond the scope of this paper. But I would suggest we stop taking a "holier than thou" attitude as the Bushs have done and proceed with caution, acknowledging past misdeeds, else we'll probably only incite more terrorists. Still, the question, why can't you reason with anyone from another faith about your different religious beliefs and come to some agreement about religion? is part of the answer. The problems are similar. No matter how cartoonishly evil we try to paint our enemy it's important to remember that they are human beings like us, their brains constructed from the same kind of neurons.

We know the terrorists had a deep faith that they were doing the work of Allah, a God they believed to be merciful and compassionate. They believed they would be rewarded in heaven after death. They believed in things many, hopefully, not so dangerous Christians do. What we are blind to is how they came to believe the darker side of their faith and how to counter those beliefs. Working against these beliefs may mean speaking against Christian beliefs too. The easiest way, if possible, to end this terrorism would be to convince all the terrorists they are wrong about their more deadly religious beliefs. Yet this is something we've completely given up on even thinking possible much less attempting in spite of having very powerful media tools we could use for this purpose. Why is that? Because we are so divided in our own beliefs and know the frustrations of trying to "reason" with those who have different beliefs. However, what we experience in our daily lives does not tell us what a properly armed psychologist can do with an imprisoned terrorist. It should be just as worthwhile to hire an army of psychologists to question and examine these imprisoned terrorists as to hire a literal army. In the end, the psychologists may give us our most effective weapons.

Mohamed Atta's letter suggests the terrorists might be "over religious" in the way people who suffer temporal lobe epilepsy are. Vilayanur Ramachandran heads a team of researchers at University of California, in San Diego, that have been studying temporal lobe epilepsy and they have even said there exists a "god module" in the brain. Modern neuroscience isn't shy about defining our most sacred notions - love, joy, altruism, pity and even religious belief - in terms of brain activity, just read Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs by Michael Persinger. These theories may be controversial, but they would certainly apply to studying the root cause of religiously inspired terrorism. They deserve a chance to prove themselves because the knowledge they develop could be our most important weapon.

Scientists are also now able to study how moral reasoning differs among individual people and across cultures. This article, Watching How the Brain Works as It Weighs a Moral Dilemma is only a scratch on the surface of the problem but it suggests we have the tools and theories we need to begin a more rational examination of religion, its morality and its connection to war and terrorism. What I say in the rest of this essay will involve a lot of speculation, but keep in mind that it doesn't have to remain speculative. So, before those of you with religious sentiments reject it because it is based on my own atheistic perspective, keep in mind we have the power to know without a need for faith at least certain things about the religious mind. We just need to apply it now. We might take the terrorists we now have, and soon will have, in prison and talk to them, scan their brains with functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and PET Scans while they are questioned about their beliefs and learn more about how they think. We might also learn what it takes to change their minds, without tools like torture and hypnosis, and discover what kind of mere arguments, if any, it takes to change their minds. Then we can apply this knowledge in a variety of ways, put it into media we know they'll read or listen to for example.

We should also consider the possibility that the terrorists have been the victims of cult style mind control. Steven Hassan has written Cult Mind Control Techniques May Have Fueled Terrorists, and expressed his opinon that the terrorists showed "behaviors that are reminiscent of cult members and may have been under the influence of destructive mind control."

People like Steven Hassan, Michael Persinger and Vilayanur Ramachandran should be hired by the CIA to train an army of psychologists to conduct research on imprisoned terrorists and develop methods for creating more defectors in the field. I think the goal is to take a terrorist and get them to the point where they are "dogma free," where they no longer feel a religious imperative, but a humanistic imperative. I'm sure those of you with Christian sentiments might object, but I believe this means getting the terrorist to the point where they are either agnostic, atheistic or Deist in their religious beliefs. No belief that god inspired ancient holy books is safe enough. This may sound extreme and bigotted, but if you bear with me I think the facts will demonstrate why this is so.

This must also be done covertly when done by government financed institutions because if it became public knowledge then it could be said we not only have a war against Islam, but a war against religion, or at least what Thomas Paine called "revealed religion." Alas, I am convinced that is exactly what is necessary to end terrorism. We have to talk about religion. We need to overtly examine and skeptically scrutinize the revealed religions of both sides in the media and covertly convert our prisoners. What is possible is studying the effects of various beliefs on human behavior. It's not the belief that is dangerous, but the behavior that results from it. If a belief necessarily leads to terrorist actions, that belief does have to be eliminated. Does that mean removing Islam and Christianity and Judaism? No, it just means questioning what kind of God people believe in.

The theory I buy into, and it's an old one, is that the Old Testament, the Torah, the root of three religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, presents an image of God that is emotionally anthropomorphic, violent, immoral and deeply primitive. It was not God who created man, but man who created this God in his own image. My own initial reactions to the events of Sept. 11 were first primitive and vengeful feelings, but I got past them. I can think about the long-term results of my actions in non-religious terms and how they'll come back to me. I don't think people like bin Laden and those who spend years plotting such terrorist acts ever get past those first feelings, that Old Testament god has those feelings. Instead, because they believe in a primitive terrorist God, they believe they have a divine authority for dangerous and primitive emotional reactions and judgements that short circuits rational moral thinking about the real choices they have. Essentially, the fundamentalist mind is morally crippled if it can believe the God of the Old Testament is moral and most merciful and the most compassionate.

We might also discover potential terrorists with brain scanning and the asking of moral questions and puzzles. We might also learn to effectively change their minds and send them back as spies. But first we have to realize that religious beliefs and ideas may indeed be the real problem. Is it easier to kill them than to reason with them? This is what our curremt actions, the refusal to negotiate with the Taliban, the army being moved near Afghanistan, imply. We are saying "you're not worth reasoning with." This too is a way of dehumanizing an enemy. It may be possible to reason with them if our psychologists can tell us how.

One of the problems in getting defectors may be that our leaders and many in the media erroneously believe what they are telling us about religion. One of the "falsehoods" that's being said about Islam is a lie of omission and interpretation. It happens when people like president Bush say "Islam is a religion of peace" and then leaves it at that. Neither Islam nor Christianity nor Judaism have behaved as if they were "religions of peace" when we look at history and current events. All three religions rooted in the Torah seem to be religions of war and conquest. History proves it, and contrary to the popular opinion of those who believe but do not read, their holy books endorse it and I'll show you how. I'll also show how believers are blind to how their beliefs get them into these messes. The "peace" they all talk about is part of a bait and switch scam. The "peace" they write of in their holy books gets warped. To call these three religions "religions of peace" is like hanging a sign on a man-eating tiger that says "I am vegetarian."

Another important thing to remember in this regard is that, according to time.com's article on Atta, Atta started out as a moderate Muslim. His friends and family were shocked. He thought terrorists were stupid. Then, in a short time, he changed. This indicates to me that Atta's moderate Islamic views were vulnerable to a fundamentalistic conversion. Atta wasn't stupid, he was well educated and a good student, yet somehow radical Islamic fundamentalism reached his mind and heart.

The answers offered by the media and our leaders feel insufficient to explain how an invisible army of terrorists that is within our boarders can be inspired by a "religion of peace." The four page letter we found in Mohamed Atta's luggage was loaded with their "peaceful" religious sentiments. Our political leaders may not yet understand this simple fact because to acknowledge religious belief as a root cause of terrorism hits at their own faith. If you doubt what I'm saying, then you must read on because there are things I can show you about both the Bible and the Koran you must know before you decide. These are not the kind of religions we are lead to believe they are by the media.

What some Muslim jurists say about this "peace" is that there are two worlds: the world of Islam--Dar al-Islam--and the non-Islamic world--Dar al-Harb. These two worlds are in a state of perpetual war. Peace can only exist in Dar al-Islam, and Muslims can only bring us this peace by bringing the world Islam; the submission to god. If there is no god, then who are we really submitting to? According to some Koranic interpreters, any leader who fails to "make wide slaughter" in the land of the infidel is committing a sin. A statesman is only allowed the temporary expedient of peace if his forces are not yet strong enough to win.

Peaceful Muslims have also been in the media to tell us that "Jihad" merely means "struggle," and should refer to an internal struggle to submit to Allah's will. That is based on a liberalized and incomplete interpretation of the Koran and it's not necessarily correct. The fundamentalists interpret the Koran based on the example of its only true Prophet, Mohammad. While Islamic literature praises Mohammed as a man of peace, it was true only in the early years before the religion had enough followers to go on the war path. Later Mohammad became a military leader. In 624 AD, Mohammad announced the concept of the Jihad. In his Koran he says, "I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them. ...And slay them wherever ye catch them..." In the next decade, the man of peace ordered over twenty military campaigns and personally led nine of them. He slaughtered God's enemies in the name of peace, such is this religion of peace.

To say that Islam is "a religion of peace" is a kind of Orwellian newspeak when the holy book it's based on proclaims these passages are the will of God:

Sura 8.12 "Remember thy lord has inspired the angels with the message. Give firmness to the believers and instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers. Smite them above their necks and smite the fingertips of them."

Sura 8:60 "Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of God and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom God doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of God, shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly."

Sura 8:65 "O Apostle! rouse the Believers to the fight. If there are twenty amongst you, patient and persevering, they will vanquish two hundred: if a hundred, they will vanquish a thousand of the Unbelievers: for these are a people without understanding."

Sura 9.5 "When the sacred months have passed, kill the idolaters whereever you find them."

Sura 9:14 "Fight them, and God will punish them by your hands, cover them with shame, help you (to victory) over them, heal the breasts of Believers,"

Sura 47.4 "When you encounter the unbelievers, Strike off their heads. Untill you have made a wide slaughter among them tie up the remaining captives."

The above is only a small samplig of what can be found here: Islam's dark side
and here:
Islam is not religion of peace

The verses quoted above are chosen selectively. They do not include the exhortations to peace that sometimes follow these more ferocious passages. These additional verses such as, "Thus, if they let you be, and do not make war on you, and offer you peace, God does not allow you to harm them" (4: 90) are irrelevant in the long run. Osama bin Laden, in fact, spends a great deal of time working on his justifications that show how America is harming Muslims, he notes our support of the Jews, our war with Iraq, troops in Saudi Arabia, etc.. What is "harm" is not well defined by the Koran. He justifies his own terrorist tactics based on how we've fought war in the past.

Scholarly Muslims will point out that Sura 8 is about a specific battle, the Battle of Badr, and is not an instruction to go around killing all unbelievers everywhere. However, why does the battle get written up into the holy books this way? Why mention it at all if it has no relevance to a modern Muslim? Trying to say the context is that specific is like saying it's suppose to mean nothing. The point of recording this battle is because the battle itself has more general meaning about future battles and how they will be fought. The language is still very generalized, the term "unbeliever" is used, not the name of a specific enemy. The phrase "kill the idolaters whereever you find them" is also very general in application. Is this a flaw in traslation? Trying to say these are about a specific battle doesn't quite cut it, the terminolohy is too general even if there is a specific context, that context too has another larger context.

The larger context is this: Islam was born in war, before Mohammad pre-Islamic Arabia was already caught up in a vicious cycle of warfare, the early Muslim community narrowly escaped extermination by the powerful city of Mecca. The Koran was revealed in the context of this all-out war and no matter how much it might reflect a desire for peace, seek peace, the Prophet and those who came after him, like Hasan Sabah, made holy promises to their warriors about great rewards in the afterlife for those who died in battle. It's those promised rewards that are the danger inherent in Islam, in order to get them you have to have a justified war. War is thus sought and expected by fundamentalist Muslims because of those promises and records of battles fought. That is the deeper context fundamentalists are plugged into that gets ignored by moderate Muslims. In the end, these verses in the Koran glorify the act of murder and elevate violence to a holy deed no matter what comes before or after them. Do not be fooled by apologists for Islam. Many Islamic cultures portray the extinction of other human beings as a validation of manliness, a heroic gesture in the name of truth, or simply a good way to get to heaven.

Of course, that's not all there is to Islam and the Koran, one can find seemingly positive passages that good people so want to believe is the word of a God that they are willing to believe it. Moderate Muslims (and remember, Mohamed Atta started out moderate) tell us that terrorism is forbidden in Islam, and a muslim may only take up arms to free himself from oppression, or to defend his family, property, or country/religion. They insist The Koran says, "begin not hostilities." This "begin not " hostilities is too vague, at what point does one begin a "hostility"? Am I hostile when I question the Truth of the Koran and whether I find its message threatening me as a non-believer? Did the U.S. begin hostilities when it fought Iraq, or put troops in Saudi Arabia?

However many values may be found in Islam, it's important to know that Democracy, secularism, separation of church and state, free speech and rational scientific inquiry unhindered by religious dogma are values that do not have any source at all in any ancient religious document. In fact, both the Bible and the Koran are opposed to those ideas. Those ideas came out of the "Age of Enlightenment." A large part of the Islamic world has never been exposed to this enlightenment. Enlightenment happened to the West because of a weakness in Christianity, not because of its strength.

The domination of the Christian Church during the dark ages meant that all affairs of life had to conform to the dogma of the Church. This caused obvious problems since the Church was not always in touch with reality. Curiosly enough, the enlightenment started when the West discovered Islamic science. The mathematics of Muslim scholars gave us a new way to measure the universe around us. Science flourished under Islam in the early days, but it was taken over by the West and sparked the scientific part of the enlightenment, which in turn sparked a re-evaluation of our philosophical and moral roots. Rationality and reason began to dominate over revealed dogma. The eventual outcome of the struggle for power between the Church and the scientists and philosophers were the ideas we built the United States on, free speech, separation of Church and the state etc.. Free thinkers were free to contribute their radical ideas and that's what they did, including a lot of biblical criticism. This division never happened in the Islamic world and it has held them back.

The Islamic world, after the West got enlightenment, has been characterised by failure, disunity and stagnation in science and technology. Islamic states still lag behind in industrial development despite the fact that the Muslims have a lot of oil wealth. They never got the full effects of the enlightenment, only partial bits of it in scattered places. There are many parts of the Islamic world where free thinkers are punished. These include places like Pakistan where Dr. Shaikh, a Pakistani rationalist and founder of "The Enlightenment", got a death sentence for blasphemy. All that Dr. Shaikh had said was that Mohammad's parents could not have been Muslim since they died before the prophet got his message. That's not blasphemy, that's a slight bit of rational criticism. One of the reasons for this kind of suppression of free speech is because the Islamic faith didn't suffer the same kind of dogma crushing blow Christianity did when it encountered modern science. Things like orbital mechanics didn't shatter their crystal spheres and pull the Earth away from the center of the universe. This lack of division has created an environment where critics and free thinkers are still silenced and thus fundamentalism runs rampant. The critics in the West don't succeed in removing Christianity, but they do help keep a lid on the rampant fundamentalism through continual rational criticism.

Part of ending terrorism may mean these blasphemy laws in places like Pakistan will have to be removed if they contribute to an environment of communal reinforcement where religious fundamentalism grows unchecked.

In spite of those Muslim scholars in newspapers and on TV assuring us that suicide and Jihad as Holy War go against the "essence of true Islam" (disregarding its historical roots), there are many ideas expressed in the Koran that provide the justification necessary for a Muslim to carry out a terrorist action. Similar, if not worse, ideas are in the Bible yet no sizeable terrorist Christian army has yet arisen here. The reason most Muslims are not drawn to this terrorist Jihad has less to do with the "essence of true Islam" and more to do with the fact that many Muslims are exposed to at least a small degree of philosophy from the "Age of Enlightenment." They are mixing these enlightenment ideas into their religious beliefs and trying to claim a rationality and tolerance for their holy book that it does not really have. They are either not admitting that they have an extra wisdom that has sources in Deist and atheist philosophy, and that goes beyond and trumps their holy books, or they do not really own such wisdom but only manage to mimic it.

Muslims in the West are either seeking to mislead non-Muslims or simply ignorant of their holy books. They can cite apparently benign passages in the Koran like 2:256 which is about "compulsion in religion," but it's divorced from the context outlined above. It says "Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in God hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And God heareth and knoweth all things." The purpose of Jihad is not conversion, but death of the unbeliever, so it's not considered compulsion. Nor are the Koran's passages about how to conduct war a true counteractive to the danger. The Koran's rules of engagement about not using fire, not killing children etc., are NOT saying you should not kill adult male unbelievers. As an adult male non-believer I consider the Koran a dangerous document. It threatens my life and those who believe such nonsense must also be considered a potential threat no matter how enlightened they pretend their religion is. This is true of Christians also.

When a Christian challenges Muslims on the violence and hatred in Koran, and the Hadith as well, the Muslim can point to errors and God-endorsed violence in the Bible. The Christian has no more defense than the Muslim, both are religions of war and conquest, as I'll show next.

Religious intolerance in the Bible
The Dark Bible: Morality And Paradoxes
Skeptics Annotated Bible
Is the Bible True?
Evil Biblical Stupidity

The Bible portrays Moses as someone who talked to the creator of the Universe and took orders from him. This creator/owner god then told Moses to go around and kill people for various absurd and morally offensive reasons, and that's in addition to his own terrorist actions. This is what the Old Testament tells us here (and in other places):

The Midians are killed, all of them except the virgin girls:
Numbers, Chapter 31
Moses wife was Midian, his father in law kind:

On God's instructions, Moses sent soldiers against the Midianites in response to some of the Israelite men having had sex with some of the Midianite women. Moses then ordered them to slaughter all the captives, saving only female virgins. The latter were apparently to be retain for purposes of rape. Verse 35 talks about 32,000 virgin captives; this implies that there were probably about 32,000 boys killed.

Deuteronomy 7:1-2: ... the seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.

Joshua 6:21: And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

These passages would revolt a Muslim, they don't think our version of the Old Testament is accurate. The passages describe an event in the invasion of Canaan by the Israelites. After the walls of the city of Jericho fell, the soldiers ran into the city, and killed every man, women and child, even infants and newborns. Their goal was to entirely wipe out the Canaanite culture by destroying its people; this is, by definition, genocide. Acts of genocide are today condemned by all religions and secular groups and by the international community.

When Moses orders the worshippers of the golden calf killed it's an example of murderous religious intolerance:
Exodus, Chapter 32

Exodus 32:26-28: "Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men."

God had responded to the people's desire to change their religious beliefs by killing off thousands of them. This contrasts with the concept of "separation of church and state" in an extreme way. Current laws in most of the civilized world allow individuals full freedom to change their religion. It's only in a few of the Islamic countries where religious beliefs are enforced.

Mass murder of fighters for democracy:
Numbers 16:2-3: "And they rose up before Moses, with certain of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown: And they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them: wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the LORD?"

Numbers 16:20-39: "And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, Separate yourselves from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment... the ground clave asunder that was under them: And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up..."

Num 16:41-49: "But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the LORD...And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Get you up from among this congregation, that I may consume them as in a moment..."

Some Israelite leaders approached Moses and Aaron and not quite politely asked that Moses stop being a theocratic dictator and be replaced by something resembleming a more democratic governing structure. They wanted a say in their fate. They felt that the whole nation was holy, and should share in governing themselves rather than being led by a single individual who claimed to speak to God alone. They advocated a transition from a dictatorship to an oligarchy or partial democracy. God's response was to destroy them. The next day, some Israelites were critical of Moses and Aaron for such a tragic loss of life. God again wanted to commit genocide by killing them. Moses persuaded God to merely send a plague. So any thoughts of a move towards a democratic government were suppresed by fear of God and people were happy Moses was there to talk God out of it.

Democracies insure greater respect for human rights from their governments. Dictatorships and theocracies, like the Taliban's, are noted for their lack of fundamental freedoms because the rulers do not have to answer to their subjects. Obviously god didn't like democracy and religious freedom, two of the foundation stones of U.S. government. God pretty much told Moses to rule over his people like the Taliban rules over Afghanistan.

Biblical and Koranic literalists and fundamentalists don't appear to have a problem with the violence of God, assuming as many do, that God's wrath will not be aimed in their direction, or if it is, they'll go to heaven. However, the majority of liberal traditions in all three religions that are rooted in the Old Testament image of God do have a problem with this. They devise all sorts of complex theologies that try to contain the poison, but they are all doomed to fail. Christianity may have been the first attempt to contain the dangerous beliefs in an Old Testament God that lead Jewish zealots to their self-destruction.

"But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before me."
-- Jesus, Luke 19:27

"Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother- in-law...."
-- Jesus, Matthew 10:34 (Luke 12:51)

"If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple."
-- Jesus, Luke 14:26

That Old Testament God of traditional Christian theology was waiting as if a time bomb for later generations, just as it was lying in wait within Mohammad himself. God was still the creator of you and me and all that is and he had the intrinsict right to do as he pleased without questions from you or I. "Does the clay jug ask the potter how dare you do this or that?" All this dose is endorse God's right to inflict terror. It says nothing about why men should not feel themselves to be the instrument of that terror and primitive emotional judgement -- nor did Jesus or Muhammad, nor Koran or New Testament. God is right because might makes right.

It's easy to find conservative Christian sites with sentiments that seem quite similar to those of the Taliban right here in the U.S.. For example, www.godhatesamerica.com and www.tencommandments.org. The ten-commandments web site considers the American constitution and its amendments (particularly the first amendment) to be corrupt. and democracy is nothing more than the "deranged principles of 'Mob Rule'." Freedom of religion they consider nothing more than the "Freedom to practice idolatry." On the god-hates-America site you see America compared to Babylon. This site has similar sentiments but seems really upset with homosexuals as well. These Christian groups are simply opposed to almost all the ideas that came out of the age of enlightenment. The sites probably indicate groups that need to be watched. However, the point is that all three religions that were born out of the Torah are potentially going to have god-endorsed terrorist feelings toward our country. Our real enemy is "revealed religion."

A less extreme example of this type of thought would be the kind of comments made by Jerry Falwell on Pat Robertson's "700 Club." (9/13/01) Falwell said about the events of Sept. 11th, "The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this... The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. ...the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'." Jerry Falwell's belief in Devine Retribution called down upon us because of pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays and the ACLU is another example of the kind of thinking that's inspired by reading and believing in the Old Testament in a literal way. It means, "If you don't do things the way we say, more innocent people will die." Funny, that sounds like terrorist talk to me. It's divisive and accusatory, not to mention threatening. The reason Falwell feels certain of what God's will is and that he can therefore say anything based on that and be justified is because it's right there in the Old Testament.

Granted, most Christians, except maybe Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, don't want a Taliban style government -- well, not exactly. All fundamentalists, Islamic, Christian and Jewish, share a revulsion with the modern, secular world, which they see as seductive but also corrosive and corrupt. To them it is a world in which God and tradition have been expunged. They wish to rescue the world from its own self. There are, however, two kinds of fundamentalists, active and passive. The passive fundamentalists respond by building walls that separate them from secular culture, fortifying their communities against the outside world. The active fundamentalist response to the evils of modernity is a counterattack. These are the kind of fundamentalists who kill doctors who perform abortions if Christian and slam planes into buildings if Islamic and throw stones at cars driving on the Sabbath and have pushed for the expulsion of Arabs living in the Palestinian-controlled territories if Jewish. They no longer go around killing witches and unbelievers who don't war on them first, but they're not far from it. All fundamentalists share a superstitous belief in the necessity of praying and worshipping their particular brand name for God in order to insure that god's protection of themselves and their various states. This too is something both Christian and Islamic fundamentalists share. Religious mind control begins with that kind superstitious belief and fear.

Another example of how religion and war go together can be seen in what happened after the tragedy, church attendance rose and there was a lot of God talk going around. A heartsick country united under patriotism and God. They turned to their religious leaders and it's a very vulnerable time for implanting religious ideas. From the frequent playing of "God Bless America" at sporting events, to Larry King's guests, to the president's assertion that "God is not neutral," religion took center stage. President Bush even declared September 14th as a day for "Prayer and Remembrance" and asked the nation to pray for the families of the victims. The government is not suppose to organize prayer vigils and other sectarian events. The cause of separating church and state has become a little bit tougher. The president spoke from a pulpit in the National Cathedral, surrounded by leaders of the country's major faiths, and many of us atheists felt estranged for none of our own were included. Then he quoted Psalm 23, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for you are with me." The implied meaning is that "we all" believe God is on our side. But remember, the Islamic terrorists feel that God stands on their side too and it was a factor that contributed to their ultimately stupid and self-destructive act of terrorism.

Rev. Billy Graham spoke at Washington's National Cathedral while George Bush and others listened. He said, about the people in the Twin Towers, "And many of those people who died this past week are in Heaven right now." Leave it to religion to reward those who are in and punish those who are out. What Graham doesn't say, but what is conveyed, is that some of those people who died are not in Heaven. Graham went on about how it's so glorious up there, they wouldn't want to come back. Mohamed Atta's letter expressed a belief similar to Graham's in this regard; "Everybody hates death, fears death," goes the translation of the letter obtained by The Washington Post. "But only those, the believers who know the life after death and the reward after death, would be the ones who will be seeking death." Again, if we are to question Atta's beliefs, we must question our own religious beliefs.

If people like President Bush cannot ask themselves, "Why does this Billy Graham claim to know something I don't about the afterlife? How can any person on Earth speak authoritatively on that subject? Does it all come from the Bible? How can I take the word of a book written about two thousand years ago as the word of God when a similar old book also is capable of inspiring men like Mohamed Atta?" then can we expect him to really understand the religious causes of terrorism? I don't think George W. Bush knows what's in that Bible he believes in, nor in the Koran he doesn't believe in. I don't think he knows that hate and war and violence are clearly encouraged by both the Koran and the Bible. I have doubts about our intelligence agencies and the beliefs of the people who head them. The God of both the Bible and the Koran is himself a terrorist who destroys cities, spreads plaques and orders Moses to kill unbelievers. If God is a terrorist, then what do you expect of a man who submits to his will? Well, you should expect to get a terrorist.

"Skepticism's bad rap arises from the impression that, however necessary the activity, it can only be regarded as a negative removal of false claims. Not so... Proper debunking is done in the interest of an alternate model of explanation, not as a nihilistic exercise. The alternate model is rationality itself, tied to moral decency--the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known."
-- Michael Shermer (Why People Believe Weird Things : Pseudoscience, Superstition & Other Confusions of Our Time, p. xii)