What’s
In a Name: Radical Christians and Islamic Fascists
By Dr. Paul Kengor
Executive Director
The Center for Vision & Values
Grove City, US
It
was one of those made-to-order moments: On September
12, on the women’s show, “The View,”
carried by ABC, co-host, comedienne, and political
activist Rosie O’Donnell compared “radical
Christianity” to the fanatical Islamic beliefs
that produced over 3,000 dead innocents on September
11, 2001. “Radical Christianity is just
as threatening as radical Islam in a country like
America,” judged O’Donnell, “where
we have a separation of church and state. We’re
a democracy here.”
There is too much wrong with O’Donnell’s
statement to address it in its totality, including
the misunderstanding of the place of religion
in our Constitution and democracy. What has garnered
most attention, however, was O’Donnell’s
comparison of radical Christianity to radical
Islam.
I, for one, was thankful for her comment. For
five years, I’ve been fielding similar observations
from people in the media, from callers to talk-radio
shows, from members of audiences. Just a few days
before Rosie’s remarks, I had raised the
comparison with my students, some of whom clearly
felt I was exaggerating: surely, their
looks suggested, no one is trying to claim
that there’s little difference between a
September 11 hijacker and someone who watches
the “700 Club” or attends Bob Jones
University!
In fact, the day before Rosie’s remarks,
I was on a talk-radio show out of Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania; the host asked if I agreed with
President George W. Bush’s provocative characterization
of our enemy as “Islamic fascists.”
I replied that I not only felt it was accurate
but much more on-the-mark than the political left’s
characterization of Muslim jihadists as “fundamentalists,”
which fuels the outrageous misperception that
religious fundamentalism is the threat
we all face—that is, fundamentalism of any
stripe, Muslim or even Christian.
And then, just in case any listeners again thought
I was exaggerating, Rosie O’Donnell quickly
spoke up to illustrate the point loud and clear.
It was a Kodak moment, albeit a perverse one.
Sadly, and unnoted in newspaper reports on her
remarks, was the reaction from the women in the
New York audience: they clapped in applause, roaring
their approval—as if someone finally had
the courage to out those Bible-thumping Neanderthals;
Rosie had performed a public service.
She had performed a public service alright, but
not in the way they believed: It is important
for Americans to understand not that there is
a linkage between fundamentalist Christians and
Muslim suicide bombers—since there is not—but
that there are secular extremists on the left
who believe there is a linkage.
Again, I can vouch for this; I hear it all the
time. Because I’ve written extensively on
the subject, I actually hear it in another context,
equally disturbing: President Bush is a fundamentalist,
I’ve been instructed, and is thus likewise
motivated by the same deadly impulses and ideology
as Mohammed Atta.
This is not merely a flip remark from angry e-mailers.
Recall the 2004 appraisal from former Vice President
Al Gore, who, in an interview with the New
Yorker, described the sitting president’s
faith as “the American version of the same
fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia.”
Ironically, one will not encounter such an assessment
of Bush from, of all people, Christian fundamentalists;
they rightly find the claim laughable. They know
that George W. Bush, a Methodist, is not a fundamentalist
by any definition. This is a man who has stated
that both Christians and Muslims go to heaven
and worship the same God. (In fact, Christians
worship Jesus Christ, who Muslims respect as a
prophet but adamantly reject as God or part of
a Trinity.)
In all of American history, there has never been
a president who has spoken so glowingly of Islam,
which George W. Bush calls a “religion of
peace.” He insists that the Koran “teaches
tolerance,” a claim that Christian fundamentalists
find ridiculous. Pat Robertson referred to Mohammed
as “an absolutely wild-eyed fanatic”
and “a robber and a brigand.” “You
read the Koran,” says Robertson, “it
says wage war against your enemies. Kill them
if you possibly can.” Billy Graham’s
son Franklin described Islam as “a very
evil and wicked religion.”
Lately, however, President Bush has provided some
clarity in defining the enemy. He has made a crucial
distinction: the danger we face is not from Islam
generally, but from what he rightly calls Islamic
fascism.
Alas, if we’re looking for labels, this
is a good one: we are threatened not by moderate
Muslims, not by Muslims in the government of Turkey
or Egypt, not by Bosnian Muslims, not by the Indonesian
Muslims running multi-national corporations, not
by the Muslims in the Pakistani intelligence services
who help us hunt down members of Al-Qaeda, not
by the Iraqi Muslims who blew the whistle on the
location of Saddam Hussein or Abbu Abbas or Mr.
Zarqawi, but by the very rare Muslim who is willing
to strap a bomb on his or her back or fly an airplane
into a building.
Such a Muslim is a fascist—an Islamic fascist.
Now that’s a label I can applaud. How about
you, Rosie?
(Paul Kengor is executive director of the Center
for Vision & Values at Grove City College
and author of God and George W. Bush. His forthcoming
book is The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall
of Communism.)
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