God of War
Radbam May 27th, 2009
Just when you thought religion couldn’t be exploited for yet another perverse agenda… It’s cliché to cite the abuse of the Koran to drive Muslim teens to kill non-Muslim teens in pursuit of 3-score-and-ten virgins (or “raisins” depending on the translation). But the Jews and Christians who condemn the written revelation of the Arabian Peninsula as committed to violence selectively forget the proto-Jihadist tenor of the Hebrew Scripture’s description of the Conquest (no, the Canaanites did not greet the Israelites as liberators with chocolates and ancient nylons) of the Promised Land in the Book of Joshua and the not-so-subtle transformation of Jesus’ loving message into fodder for the Crusaders’ genocidal jaunts through Europe on their journey to annihilate the infidel in Jerusalem.
And now GQ (GQ?!?) has taken a brief hiatus from fold-over cologne ads and an endless parade of spikey-haired male ingénues to break a 6-year-old story on the abuse of scripture as window-dressing to augment Iraq War intelligence briefings (though perhaps the true revelation is that there were Iraq War intelligence briefings). It seems Rummy the Righteous adorned the covers of his uber-secret missives with triumphant photos of troop movements and equally triumphalist inscriptions from the Good Book-used-badly. Some believe this was a ploy to focus the former President’s famously limited attention span. But others see more insidious forces at work.
What began with W’s not-so-Freudian slip sanctifying a post 9/11 “crusade” against terror grew more insipid, but nonetheless damaging, in the puerile chauvinism of General Jerry Boykin’s anointing of US forces as the “army of God.” Yet what seemed merely sophomoric and parochial has grown into a systematic concern, as recent evangelizing at the Air Force academy and this current Captioning for Christ reveal widespread crossing of constitutional and customary boundaries within the armed forces.
These onward-marching Christian soldiers are not alone in their appropriation of faith for militant nationalism. Disturbing reports out of Israel’s recent incursion into Gaza cited many instances of chaplain rabbis teaching and preaching ancient doctrine embracing the re-establishment of the biblical Israel, requiring the liquidation or removal of today’s version of the accursed Canaanites, the Palestinians. To condemn the Islam of Koran-carrying 9/11 attackers while ignoring the abuse of faith within Jewish and Christian communities is to cast stones while clueless of sin.
A professor of mine coined (I think) the term “bibliolater” to describe those whose obsession with biblical literalism verged on the idolatrous. But when fidelity of thought morphs into a deadly sacrificial cult, when individual lives are cast on the altar of uncritical faith and whole nations called to war based on precepts and perceptions from our primitive past, it is not religion that should be called to account, but the exquisite capacity of the human mind to bend even the most loving doctrine to coarse ideology and malicious purposes.
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I feel it may be worthy to posture that war and religion (not faith) are two sides of the same soiled coin. These are man made constructs, developed for the sole purpose of power consolidation and control. Both are as old as human enlightenment. Both are controlled by small men (no offense) with significant issues and powerful allies. War and religion are like milk and cookies they are ok seperately but put them together and you’ve really got something special.
An old and tired canard….everything is a man-made construct, and for far too long war has been rooted as chiefly caused by religion…any ideology can be perverted for personal or national agenda…remember, Soviet and Nazi genocide were avowedly atheistic..