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A Christian On The Bin Laden Message Pt. 3
by John Mark Reynolds [author,
academic] 9/15/07
Osama has sent a message to his foes. His enemies include most of Islam (which he condemns as apostate) and all the West. He hates our vices, but he also hates our virtues.
His lies are persuasive to many since they are founded on fear and a lack of faith in the might of God to defend Himself. In tough times Holy Scripture shows people will rush to idols to relieve the problems of the moment.
Hopeless people in states all over the world may be deceived by a man, Osama, who would make a god of his own opinions.
Just as we must not allow Osama to define the West, we must not allow Osama to define Islam.
Contributor
John Mark Reynolds
John
Mark Reynolds is the founder and director of
the Torrey Honors Institute and Associate Professor
of Philosophy at Biola University.His
personal website can be found at www.johnmarkreynolds.com and
his blog can be found at http://scriptoriumdaily.com.
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What about Coalition members who are not Muslim?
For those in the Coalition who are not Muslim, it would be foolish to paper over disagreements with Islam or disallow academic debate about its merits. Free people need to be allowed to argue, debate, and choose.
An even more foolish path is to react to his insanity by forgetting the centuries of Islamic history and accepting Osama’s self-serving and sectarian description of Islam.
The history of the Ottoman Empire by itself indicates that Islam is capable of much better than the violence of 9/11.
This is not to forget the wicked deeds done by that nation (the genocide of the Armenians being but one example) and nobody in my Church could do so. It is to learn the hard won wisdom of centuries of those Christians living under Islamic rule that there is, even in a wrong idea, some of the Image of God.
It seems obvious, but bears repeating to Christian readers:
Not every Muslim behaves worse than every Christian and many behave a good bit better.
Few men become so demonic as to annihilate common grace utterly and few men are so angelic as to show forth Christ well (before His coming).
I am a Christian and I think Islam is wrong when it (for example) denies the divinity of Christ.
The glorious Incarnation of the God-Man solves many problems facing the modern religious person. This intellectual resource is not available to the Islamic scholar and that is a serious problem. Yet in philosophy, science, literature, and the arts no human would wish to lose the great contributions of those who followed Mohammad.
How should a Christian view history in light of this?
Christians view history as Saint Augustine taught us to do (building on the Word of God). History is controlled by divine Providence, but a divine Providence that is often hard to discern. In the short run, which is often hundreds of years to the Eternal, the wicked can seem to prosper, but in the End the judgments of a just God are sure.
Christians have also learned the irony of history: those who proclaim the Faith of a loving God are often less charitable than those who follow the religion of the Sword of the Prophet.
No person mourns the disaster of 1453 more than I do, but Islam has a long and complex history. It has done better than bin Laden and it will do better than his lies again. In the short term, we must hope for that day.
Of course, I (personally) long for every man and woman to see the truth of Christianity, but I know that this good thing cannot come about by force or in this age. This cannot be the mission of the Coalition.
All that is in the just power of the Church this day is to support any action that allows every man or woman the liberty and opportunity to choose or freely reject the Way.
Even then it will be hard to know the wheat from the tares.
Some of those who say that they will reject the Way will serve it best and others who blog loudly (God have mercy!) about it will serve it worst in their hearts.
This was the long hard lesson learned by the Church universal and it must not be forgotten for even a moment.
Osama and his followers ignore that lesson.
It will undo them and their “faith” in the end. Osama acts as if CNN needs only a prophetic exegete in order for men to immediately find the Will and Way of the Almighty, but the ineffable ways of God are not so easily discerned from the daily chatter of the fluffy-headed anchors of the media.
The first two parts of my analysis are here and here.
In this section of his wicked rant, Osama reveals a strange view of the history of the world. In it, the West has learned nothing since the thirteenth century and the Islamic world’s relative lack of progress on human rights since then is ignored.
Osama speaks:
And my proof for that is in what your brothers, the Spanish, did when they set up the horrible courts of the Inquisition to try Muslims and Jews, when the Jews only found safe shelter by taking refuge in our countries. And that is why the Jewish community in Morocco today is one of the largest communities in the world. They are alive with us and we have not incinerated them, but we are a people who don’t sleep under oppression and reject humiliation and disgrace, and we take revenge on the people of tyranny and aggression, and the blood of the Muslims will not be spilled with impunity, and the morrow is nigh for he who awaits.
My historian friends (such as Torrey’s Robert Thomas Llizo) would attack this version of history. Even the story of the Catholic Church and the Inquisition, one of the foundations of modern international law, is more complicated than Osama makes it.
But even if we accept his dubious interpretation, Osama is not vindicated.
It requires no remarkable intellect to point out that Christians have failed to live up to their own standards. Our Lord chastised the hypocrites and He has not stopped doing so ever since.
Charles Williams brief history of the Church, the too little read Descent of the Dove, could have provided Osama with even more examples.
The fact that five hundred years ago Christians did a very bad thing while Muslims did a good thing proves little about the world today without much more argument.
The proper response to Osama pointing out Christian errors is not merely pointing out the failings of the Islamic world.
Saying, “You too are bad.” is sometimes necessary, but it is only the starting point of a conversation since bad people misusing good things is not such big news.
Christianity teaches, and history has confirmed, that there is no great idea or even big idea that humanity cannot and will not turn to evil and abuse.
Science is misused and tortured daily by those who do not care about ethics. There is no idea so harmless (”love your neighbor”) that some busy-body or cad cannot turn it into something odious.
Osama points to a positive deed done in the name of Islam. I could multiply the list hundreds of times over, but the fact remains that the very forms of Islam that did these great deeds are odious to Osama!
The issue is the trajectory of the movement, not the sometimes odious details.
It is true that Islam generated nothing like the Holocaust, but it also has generated nothing like the Second Treatise of Government and the Christian republics of Switzerland, the United States, or the constitutional monarchy of Great Britain.
The trajectory is what matters and whether a Faith or Idea can learn and grow from the sins, horrors, and wickednesses done by some in its name. Does it have the resources to do so?
For Christianity everything must come back to the Person of Jesus Christ. He is the Prince of Peace who fought and killed no person. He loved and commanded love. He was fierce in attacking the powerful or their bad ideas in Words, but He did not bear the sword.
Christians are not (for the most part) pacifists, but whenever we bear the sword we do so (when we are really Christian) with regret. It is a failure of the higher way, necessary in this life. This causes a great restraint and worry in our actions.
This restraint has grown over time. Many Christians believe the War in Iraq to be a just war, but cannot condone torture or any unjustified means in prosecuting it.
Some Christians also oppose the War and those who disagree with them (as I do) know these brothers and sisters in Christ have less to prove. Those who would fight always have the higher burden of proof in Christianity.
At many times in our history (colonialism is but one example), Christians have erred and believed that force was justified for some good end when it was not. Our real motives were often different than our professed motives.
However, our religion did not first spread by conquest. We did not destroy Persia and Byzantium in order to make our first inroads from our home region. We are not a religion that can ever first turn to the sword without first making excuses for it.
Over the centuries we have become less and less willing to use the sword and more willing to suffer persecution rather than fight in an unjust manner.
Can Christianity regress?
Could we set up an Inquisition again?
Of course we could, as heaven has not yet come, but it would be much harder now than ever before in our history. There is no great group of Christians that does not sicken at the idea (at least at present), because we have learned from our errors.
Is this true of Islam? Can Islam learn or is it stuck with the virtues of the fifteenth century?
On this Osama is quiet. We know his men can blow up planes, but can they build a culture?
It is not enough for one group to point to the errors of the other. All groups will make errors over time, but can they learn from them?
Osama’s ideology has not and cannot.
Also, your Christian brothers have been living among us for 14 centuries: in Egypt alone, there are millions of Christians whom we have not incinerated and shall not incinerate. But the fact is, there is a continuing and biased campaign being waged against us for a long time now by your politicians and many of your writers by way of your media, especially Hollywood, for the purpose of misrepresenting Islam and its adherents to drive you away from the true religion. The genocide of peoples and their holocausts took place at your hands: only a few specimens of Red Indians were spared, and just a few days ago, the Japanese observed the 62nd anniversary of the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by your nuclear weapons.
There was a time when Islam could take much credit for making non-Muslims second class citizens. The slow cultural genocide practiced on the Orthodox Christians (and other Christian sects) over time was “preferable” to much of what Islam would have faced in the West.
A slow acting poison gives longer life than a fast acting one.
Christians in the Middle East have a long history of facing intense persecution, martyrdom, and denial of rights by Muslims that Osama overlooks. This persecution as government policy continues today.
Osama discounts the fact that in many regions of the world Islamic conquerors (and they almost always came by the sword) killed their own multitudes.
But again the chief problem is not this narrow view of history, but that Osama is not living in the world as it is today.
He acts as if all Christians and Muslims have learned nothing from the last five hundred years of history, because he and his followers have learned nothing.
Vices in the Muslim world (making everyone else second class citizens) were only “virtues” compared to greater vices in some parts of the Christian world. Much of that world has grown up and has rejected the greater vice, but Osama still glories in past injustices.
Make no mistake. The best Osama can imagine for Jews, Christians, and Muslims who do not agree with his new version of Islam is a second class citizenship.
The bad news for Osama is that the Coalition against him offers a better way. We offer the freedom for religion to be treated as knowledge without coercing men to believe religious truths.
Osama does not face Crusaders and Inquisitors. To the extent that Christians justly are fighting his twisted form of Islam, they fight to give others the right to be Muslims in ways Osama would forbid!
And among the things which catch the eye of the one who considers the repercussions of your unjust war against Iraq is the failure of your democratic system, despite it raising of the slogans of justice, liberty, equality and humanitarianism.
Failure?
It would first be good if Osama understood what the American experiment (to pick one example) has as its end.
Osama places all good and noble things in the working of government. This was not the vision of the Founders of America. Much good Americans do is done as Americans, but it is not done by the American state. This is by design.
The Founders wished to “form a more perfect union” to establish justice and promote domestic tranquility. They wished to provide for the common defense, ensure the (very!) general welfare, promote the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity.
Of course from the very start they failed to live up to such high ideals, with race slavery being the great original sin against the experiment. However, the experiment has slowly grown and has come closer to fulfilling the original vision over time.
Surely the poor of my home state of West Virginia are freer, live in a much more tranquil region, and are more easily able to practice their Faith than almost any other poor have been or are.
Is there injustice? Yes. Is there racism (a continuation of the sucking wound of our founding)? Sadly, yes. Are we making progress? Much more than any form of religion that would allow slavery, make Christians and Jews second class citizens, and destroy many other basic human rights..
This much we know:
Osama would make us Islamic by force or second class citizens by definition.
We prefer our problems to that.
Some Americans were tempted by the allure of Communism when it was combined with often just criticisms of our failings and hypocrisies. Most Americans were wise enough to turn away when they looked at the actual results of Communism. They recognized that a wise man does not cure a bad disease by killing himself with a worse one.
The same thing will happen globally when people are shown the wicked nature of Osama’s plans.
It has not only failed to achieve these things, it has actually destroyed these and other concepts with its weapons - especially in Iraq and Afghanistan- in a brazen fashion, to replace them with fear, destruction, killing, hunger, illness, displacement and more than a million orphans in Baghdad alone, not to mention hundreds of thousands of widows. Americans statistics speak of the killing of more than 650,000 of the people of Iraq as a result of the war and its repercussions.
Osama and others in the region who embraced terror (including Sadaam of Iraq) kill with no hope for a better future. They widow and maim by policy, but when Americans and the Coalition try to police their mayhem, then they blame the police action for the damage they have caused by their ideologies.
If tomorrow Osama would lay down his arms and order his followers to do so, then the world would be better off.
If Americans, her allies, and the Iraqi government win in Iraq, that nation will be better off (as every nation to lose to America in a War can attest). If we lose, then (like Vietnam) the people of Iraq will be worse off.
It may be that some bad American policies have harmed the Middle East, but no Americans have made the Arabs, Persians, or Egyptians continue to destroy themselves with terrible governments.
We are not inclined to “rule” but to liberty.
Japan shook off our “yoke.” Germany did the same. They now compete with us and disagree with us openly despite our military, cultural, and economic power. Sadly, the elites of the Middle East have chosen to embrace foolish, ahistorical, and failed ideologies that leave them in a weaker state.
Blaming America will not do. The Osama “plan” would bring greater misery and untold destruction to the people of Iraq. The Coalition plan (supported by thousands of Iraqis with their very lives) will bring greater peace and stability than Iraq has ever known.
People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of the tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven’t made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing and war there, which has led to the vast majority of you being afflicted with disappointment.
Osama is not good at reading polls or understanding elections or divided government.
Why?
Because he hates and fears “checks and balances” to state power, free elections, and the right to criticize the leader.
George Bush must allow (and defends!) freedoms that Osama would end immediately. Bush will step down from power in just over a year. He will do so without force being used.
How could Islamic critics vote Osama out of the political power he assumes?
You can replace a president, but idolaters will not allow their idol to be removed under any circumstance.
Anyone tempted in the Middle East by Osama should ask if Osama’s own organization (or states he would set up) would allow itself to be defeated at the polls as the Republican Party just did.
Would they allow themselves to be mocked daily as George Bush is by the opposition?
Would the law of any state Osama ran allow George Bush’s speeches to be printed and debated in the way that Osama’s speeches are printed and debated?
And here is the gist of the matter, so one should pause, think and reflect: why have the Democrats failed to stop this war, despite them being the majority?
I will come back to reply to this question after raising another question, which is: Why are the leaders of the White House keen to start wars and wage them around the world, and make use of every possible opportunity through which they can reach this purpose, occasionally even creating justifications based on deception and blatant lies, as you saw Iraq?
In the Vietnam War, the leaders of the White House claimed at the time that it was a necessary and crucial war, and during it, Rumsfeld and his aides murdered two million villagers. And when Kennedy took over the presidency and deviated from the general line of policy drawn up for the White House and wanted to stop this unjust war, that angered the owners of the major corporations who were benefiting from its continuation.
Nixon (with Rumsfield) came after Kennedy. Osama cannot even get his chronology right.
Osama must blame America for everything. If North Vietnam invades South Vietnam and America defends South Vietnam, then every death in the War is the fault of America.
But ask yourself this if you live in Iraq: would you rather live in South Korea now or South Vietnam? Which is freer? Which allows religion to be practiced and flourish?
Osama is afraid. He is afraid that in the competition of ideas that Islam will not survive. If I were Muslim, this lack of faith would offend me greatly.
Osama does not believe God can defend Himself.
He is therefore at best a worshiper of a small and false idol-god. He cannot worship the Almighty before Whom nothing will stand in the End.
This is why he must tell ever more outrageous lies about history (Kennedy after Nixon), because he fears his “god” cannot live in the world as it is. This is not a disagreement about the interpretation of history (about which there can and should be lively debate), but a desire to live in a fantasy world.
It is the ultimate end of the tyrannical mind that sets up an idol that ends up being self.
Self is too small to worship and so as the Kingdom of Self comes crashing down under the blows of a bigger reality the tyrant must deny ever more of that reality. Osama is in that position.
And so Kennedy was killed, and al-Qaida wasn’t present at that time, but rather, those corporations were the primary beneficiary from his killing.
Which corporations?
Osama should check to see what the largest corporations were in 1963 (the year of my birth) and check to see what they are today.
He will note that (with some exceptions) “corporations” wax and wane. Some who were not as rich then (the Walton or Gates family) are fabulously rich now. Some (the Kennedy and Rockefeller families) that were rich then are still rich, but relatively less so.
Osama lives in the stagnant world of all conspiracy theorists where there can be no change. Old conspiracies cannot keep up with a free market constantly churning up new rich men, new corporations, and new powers.
Osama is stuck trying to fit that evolving world into his template.
This (as Augustine showed) is not true religion, because it attempts to relate the Will of the Omniscient to every twist and turn of free men in His cosmos.
Such a reduction of the Almighty to the god of the Moment is the small minded religion of the idol toting barbarian, but not of the great monotheistic traditions. It worships the Moment and not eternity . . . Osama reads the paper more carefully (in reality) than he reads his holy books.
And the war continued after that for approximately one decade. But after it became clear to you that it was an unjust and unnecessary war, you made one of your greatest mistakes, in that you neither brought to account nor punished those who waged this war, not even the most violent of its murderers, Rumsfeld. And even more incredible than that is that Bush picked him as secretary of defense in his first term after picking Cheney as his vicepresident, Powell as secretary of state and Armitage as Powell’s deputy, despite their horrific and blood history of murdering humans. So that was clear signal that his administration - the administration of the generals- didn’t have as its main concern the serving of humanity, but rather, was interested in bringing about new massacres. Yet in spite of that, you permitted Bush to complete his first term, and stranger still, chose him for a second term, which gave him a clear mandate from you - with your full knowledge and consent- to continue to murder our people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is bit from Osama is confused enough to merit little comment.
It is worth noting that in the world of Osama generals are murderers, but terrorists (acting with no state but only at his idolatrous word) are good.
He has also learned his American history, it appears, from the worst sort of anti-American propaganda. Much of this stuff is produced by Americans in the United States. This (of course) is a sign of our strength and we must allow it to continue.
However, those who believe in the American experiment must work harder to counter the far left version of American history sold by so many “academics” to the world.
The most important fact for the War is this: Osama is more a man of the West than of the East.
Osama is revealed in his writings as less an authentic Eastern thinker and more as deeply Americanized thinker who has twisted (as he twists everything) far left American versions of history for his own ends.
He gives it an Islamic coating in order to motivate his followers, but it would be a mistake to think him Eastern.
Then you claim to be innocent! This innocence of yours is like my innocence of the blood of your sons on the 11th - were I to claim such a thing. But it is impossible for me to humor any of you in the arrogance and indifference you show for the lives of humans outside America, or for me to humor your leaders in their lying, as the entire world knows they have the lion’s share of that. These morals aren’t our morals. What I want to emphasize here is that not taking past war criminals to account led to them repeating that crime of killing humanity without right and waging this unjust war in Mesopotamia, and as a result, here are the oppressed ones today continuing to take their right from you.
This war was entirely unnecessary, as testified to by your own reports. And among the most capable of those from your own side who speak to you on this topic and on the manufacturing of public opinion is Noam Chomsky, who spoke sober words of advice prior to the war, but the leader of Texas doesn’t like those who give advice. The entire world came out in unprecedented demonstrations to warn against waging the war and describe its true nature in eloquent terms like “no to spilling red blood for black oil,” yet he paid them no heed. It is time for humankind to know that talk of the rights of man and freedom are lies produced by the White House and its allies in Europe to deceive humans, take control of their destinies and subjugate them.
So in answer to the question about the causes of the Democrats’ failure to stop the war, I say: they are the same reasons which led to the failure of former president Kennedy to stop the Vietnam war.
Those with real power and influence are those with the most capital. And since the democratic system permits major corporations to back candidates, be they presidential or congressional, there shouldn’t be any cause for astonishment - and there isn’t any- in the Democrats’ failure to stop the war. And you’re the ones who have the saying which goes, “Money talks.” And I tell you: after the failure of your representatives in the Democratic Party to implement your desire to stop the war, you can still carry anti-war placards and spread out in the streets of major cities, then go back to your homes, but that will be of no use and will lead to the prolonging of the war.
Osama finally reveals his true secularism in this set of paragraphs. He imagines (in his Utopian dreams) a society where money does not corrupt. He is shocked when liberty is abused for licentiousness or when private property turns to the love of money.
Why?
Osama imagines heaven on earth before the Judgment of God, because he thinks he is god. Like all unbelievers, he thinks that he can bring perfect order to society now.
Whenever there is failure or corruption (always in the world before Paradise), he can use this failure to justify greater horrors in the name of his promised good. We have learned the hard lesson that such promised good never comes in the West.
The East would do well to ignore the rants of a man who does not understand republican forms of government. He cannot understand that “winning an election” did not make Democrat’s dictators. He cannot understand the complexities of opinion in the Democrat Party, because Osama confuses the his will, and any wills who agree with him, with the Will of God.
Vox Osama, vox Dei.
However, there are two solutions for stopping it. The first is from our side, and it is to continue to escalate the killing and fighting against you. This is our duty, and our brothers are carrying it out, and I ask Allah to grant them resolve and victory. And the second solution is from your side.
Osama returns again to his ultimate delusion. He seemingly believes that he is the leader of a great movement, but this movement depends utterly on the ability of Osama himself to convince masses of people of his myths. He is not a man of the Book, but a man of his own words, creating reality in his mind. If Osama fears secular modernity, giving it the worship of a fearful man, then he is truly a post-modern believing that his mere wish can change that reality.
The United States and her allies must combat this myth making with a better story. The Coalition must not merely argue that people’s material lives will be better if Osama is defeated for that plays into the trap that he is trying to create. Instead, we must argue that the spiritual well being of the people can be better with liberty than with repression. This is true, but it is not an easy case to make.
The Coalition is not making it.
Since the vices of liberty are easy for religious people in the Middle East to see, they need only turn on their television, it is important for free peoples to show the other side of the story. There must be a message that true religion flourishes under freedom.
This message must be repeated again and again at all levels of culture both popular and elite. The Coalition needs the equivalent of the the Disney cartoon Der Fuehrer’s Face that pokes fun at Osama’s idolizing of self or the much more serious “Education for Death.”
What is our story? God intends all mankind for liberty within law. Religion prospers best when free men choose it to regulate and give meaning to their lives.
This is not secularization, but a better and more useful role for religion.
The state can (and should) be filled with religious men who use their beliefs to govern their decisions, but who leave as much liberty as possible for those who dissent. The God of History is secure enough that we can leave His ultimate defense in His hands. This was a hard lesson for the Christian Church to learn, but learn it we did.
Islam must learn it as well. It cannot prosper by rejecting truth and listening to the seductive lies of Osama, a man fearful that God cannot defend Himself. ExileStreet
copyright
2007 John Mark Reynolds
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