"The War Against Tolerance," By Chris Hedges

The War Against Tolerance

By Chris Hedges

Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani
are the three stooges of the Christian right.
These self-described former Muslim terrorists are
regularly trotted out at Christian colleges-a few days
ago they were at the Air Force Academy-to spew racist
filth about Islam on behalf of groups such as
Focus on the Family. It is a clever tactic.

Curly, Larry and Mo, who all say they are
born-again Christians, engage in hate speech and
assure us it comes from personal experience.
They tell their audiences that the only way to deal
with one-fifth of the world's population is by
converting or eradicating all Muslims.
Their cant is broadcast regularly on Fox News,
including the Bill O'Reilly and Neil Cavuto shows,
as well as on numerous Christian radio and television
programs. Shoebat, who has written a book called
"Why We Want to Kill You," promises in his lectures
to explain the numerous similarities between radical
Muslims and the Nazis, how "Muslim terrorists"
invaded America 30 years ago and how
"perseverance, recruitment and hate" have fueled
attacks by Muslims.

These men are frauds, but this is not the point.
They are part of a dark and frightening war by
the Christian right against tolerance that, in the
moment of another catastrophic terrorist attack on
American soil, would make it acceptable to target
and persecute all Muslims, including the some
6 million Muslims who live in the United States.
These men stoke these irrational fears. They
defend the perpetual war unleashed by the
Bush administration and championed by
Sen. John McCain. McCain frequently
reminds listeners that "the greatest danger
facing the world is Islamic terrorism,"
as does Mike Huckabee, who says that
"Islamofascism" is "the greatest threat this
country [has] ever faced." George W. Bush has,
in the same vein, assured Americans that terrorists
hate us for our freedoms, not, of course, for
anything we have done. Bush described the
"war on terror" as a war against totalitarian
Islamofascism while the Israeli air force was
dropping tens of thousands of pounds of iron
fragmentation bombs up and down Lebanon,
an air campaign that killed 1,300 Lebanese civilians.

The three men tell lurid tales of being recruited as
children into Palestinian terrorist organizations,
murdering hundreds of civilians and blowing up a
bank in Israel. Saleem says that as a child he
infiltrated Israel to plant bombs via a network of
tunnels underneath the Golan Heights, although no
incident of this type was ever reported in Israel.
He claims he is descended from the "grand wazir"
of Islam, a title and a position that do not exist in
the Arab world. They assure audiences that the
Palestinians are interested not in a peaceful
two-state solution but rather the destruction of
Israel, the murder of all Jews and the death of
America. Shoebat claims he first came to the
United States as part of an extremist "sleeper cell."

"These three jokers are as much former Islamic
terrorists as 'Star Trek's' Capt. James T. Kirk was
a real Starship captain," said Mikey Weinstein, the
head of the watchdog group
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
The group has challenged Christian proselytizing
in the military and denounced the visit by the men
to the Air Force Academy.

The speakers include in their talks the superior
virtues of Christianity. Saleem, for example, says
his world "turned upside down when he was
seriously injured in an automobile accident."

"A Christian man tended to Kamal at the accident
scene, making sure he got the medical treatment he
needed," his Web site says. "Kamal's orthopedic
surgeon and physical therapist were also
Christian men whom over a period of several
months ministered the unconditional love of
Jesus Christ to him as he recovered. The love
and sacrificial giving of these men caused Kamal
to cry out to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
acknowledging his need for the Savior. Kamal has
since become a man on a new mission, as an
ambassador for the one true and living God,
the great I Am, Jehovah God of the Bible."

This creeping Christian chauvinism has infected
our political and social discourse. It was behind
the rumor that Barack Obama was a Muslim.
Obama reassured followers
that he was a Christian. It apparently did not
occur to him, or his questioners, that the proper
answer is that there is nothing wrong with being
a Muslim, that persons of great moral probity
and courage arise in all cultures and all religions,
including Islam. Christians have no exclusive lock
on virtue. But this kind of understanding often
provokes indignant rage.

The public denigration of Islam, and by implication all
religious belief systems outside Christianity, is part
of the triumphalism that has distorted the country
since the 9/11 attacks. It makes dialogue with those
outside our "Christian" culture impossible. It implicitly
condemns all who do not think as we think and
believe as we believe as, at best, inferior and usually morally depraved. It blinds us to our own failings. It makes
self-reflection and self-criticism a form of treason.
It reduces the world to a cartoonish vision of us and
them, good and evil. It turns us into children with bombs.

These three con artists are not the problem. There is
enough scum out there to take their place. Rather,
they offer a window into a worldview that is
destroying the United States. It has corrupted the
Republican Party. It has colored the news media.
It has entered into the everyday clichés we use to
explain ourselves to ourselves. It is ignorant and
racist, but it is also deadly. It grossly perverts the
Christian religion. It asks us to kill to purify the Earth.
It leaves us threatened not only by the terrorists
who may come from abroad but the ones who are
rising from within our midst.

Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America."

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