Nauman Khan reflects on how divine dispensation and religious imagery is sought to justify war and the cruelty of man on man....religious fundamentalism is alive and well in the west, causing action and reactions elsewhere...
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In his book, 'Making War In The Name Of God', Christopher Catherwood correctly concludes "the age of religious warfare is with us still, as potent a force as it has always been, throughout history."
In his book 'America: Empire of Liberty', David Reynolds writes about the United States as an "empire forged by anti-imperialists, a land of liberty that rested on slavery and a secular state energized by godly ambition."
American exceptionalism that is rooted in religion where Christian colonists saw themselves as 'a chosen people' destined to 'fulfill a unique historical destiny.' This ideology surfaces from time to time, especially when the nation is in crisis. Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and George W. Bush all used it because it resonates well with the public and reasserts their identity.
Many in the west still view the east from the Crusaders’ battlements. Thus George W Bush who perhaps saw 'Crusades very much in a Protestant light' referred initially to the 'war on terrorism' that sent a confrontational message loud and clear to the Muslim world.
Bob Woodward vividly records in his book, 'Plan of Attack', an exchange with George W Bush, in which he asked whether the president had discussed the Iraq invasion with his father before making the decision to act. No, said Bush. He preferred to consult his "higher father."
Lt. General William G. "Jerry" Boykin a highly decorated covert military operation veteran and army officer being close to the elite of the US administration had been going round evangelical churches (often in uniform) and making fervent statements such as “I knew my God was bigger than his God, and his was an idol” (referring to a Muslim Somali warlord). Boykin staged a travelling slide show around America where he displayed pictures of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. "Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a Christian army," he preached. They "will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus."
There can be little doubt that he envisaged the global war on terror as a crusade. With Geneva conventions apparently suspended – biblical law supplanted international law.
Boykin was in God’s chain of command.
President Bush, he told an Oregon congregation in June 2003, "was not elected by a majority of the voters in the US. He was appointed by God."
Boykin was not unique in his belief that Bush was God’s anointed against evildoers. Before his 2000 campaigns, Bush confided to a leader of the religious right: "I feel like God wants me to run for president…I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen." Such revelations of fundamentalist Christians that seemed to be gripped with feat were "not so much about policy, as about what beliefs were acceptable in the Bush administration."
In agnostic Britain the Christian faith of Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, influenced his decision to go to war in Iraq, according to the aid credited with being his mentor. John Burton, Mr. Blair’s political agents for 24 years says that Labour’s most successful leader in terms of elections won was driven by the belief that "good triumph over evil."
In his book 'We Don’t Do God', Mr. Burton reveals for the first time the strength of Tony Blair’s religious zeal. Quoting Alastair Campbell, the PM’s director of communication, he was convinced that "Tony’s Christian faith is part of him, down to his cotton socks." Mr. Burton says that Mr. Blair’s religion gave him a "total belief in what’s right and what’s wrong", leading him to see the so-called War on Terror as "a moral cause." According to Mr. Burton, “there was never a dividing line between [Mr. Blair’s] politics and Christianity".
Mr. Blair’s critics fear he saw the Iraq war in a similar light to the former US President George W Bush, who used religious rhetoric in talking about the conflict, as well as the war in Afghanistan, describing them as "a crusade." Mr. Blair made a remark in 2006, suggesting, that the decision to go to war in Iraq would ultimately be judged by God. He complained, in 2007 that he had been unable to talk about his faith while in office as he would have been perceived as "a nutter."
In the Middle East, during the Gaza war this year, Schmuel Kauffman, a military rabbi from occupied West Bank, used to stride between the Israeli soldiers’ tent and urge them to fight what he deemed an "obligatory war" ordained by the ancient scripture, according to London’s The Times. It was Israel war effort to gain religious imperative.
No wonder Taliban or al-Qaeda marching in step with their adversaries’ do response not only to events, but their actions are responses to responses, of course in the name of God.
Incidentally, though not making war in the name of God, it is not out of place to mention here the barbarisms of the 20th century, many of which were the work of atheistic ideologies and amoral scientists, of secularized West as superior and largely unquestionable standard to which the rest of the world must conform.
"The resurrection of religion as a major player in world affairs"that has "caught the secular academic world completely off guard" perhaps be reminded by what George Barnard Shaw said: "We learn from history that man can never learn anything from history."
http://blogs.salaam.co.uk/article.php?story=20090910112419361