Islam
And America’s Most Powerful Cult: Renewed Alacrity In
Attacking Islam
18 September 2010By M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
In their spirited assault on Islam, conservatives have
seized upon one notion with particular delight: the
Abrahamic faith embraced by a quarter of humanity is a
"cult."
Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey popularized the claim in
July when a constituent asked about the "threat that’s
invading our country from Muslims"; Ramsey wondered
aloud whether Islam "is actually a religion or is it a
nationality, way of life or cult" and later asserted
that "far too much of Islam has come to resemble a
violent political philosophy more than peace-loving
religion." Soon after, some of Ramsey’s constituents
set ablaze a planned mosque site near Nashville and
fired shots when parishioners tried to inspect the
damage.
Farther south, in Florida, Pastor Terry Jones
proclaimed that Islam is not just a cult but a Satanic
creation — hence his planned bonfire of Qur’ans. He is
not alone among Floridians. Congressional candidate
and retired Army officer Allen West announced earlier
this year that Islam is "not a religion" but a
"vicious enemy" intent on "infiltrating" America.
Another candidate in the sunshine state, Ron McNeil,
described Islam as a malicious plot to "destroy our
way of life."
And in upstate New York this August, teenagers who
viewed the local mosque as a "cult house" terrorized
mosque-goers by blasting a shotgun and sideswiping a
parishioner.
What accounts for this renewed
alacrity in attacking Islam?
Muslim paratroopers did not suffuse the skies with
crescent-shaped parachutes and descend on America. Nor
did Muslim terrorists unfurl prayer rugs camouflaged
as conifers and seize the highways. The bleating about
the Muslim "cult" was provoked by nothing more than a
proposed Muslim YMCA, one which is to be headed by a
State Department-sponsored Sufi imam and located no
closer to Ground Zero than sundry pubs, food stands,
pornography stores, and strip clubs.
To repeat the facts, however, is to miss the point.
The "Islam is a cult" mantra is not an epithet: it is
the axiom of a belief system that outmatches any
religion in America in influence and irrationality.
Within this belief system, facts cannot weaken the
pull of the idea that "whole blocks of millions or
tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled
‘good’ or ‘bad,’" and reason cannot compete with the
coveted "habit of assuming that human beings can be
classified like insects."
This belief system is nationalism (distinct from
patriotism), and the quoted descriptions are two
symptoms of the disease as identified by George Orwell
in his matchless 1945 essay on the subject.
The source of sustenance for our endless and boundless
wars, American nationalism brooks neither logic nor
nuance.
When Ramsey complained that Islam resembles "a violent
political philosophy" while cheering invasions,
occupations, and bombings that form the apex of
violence, he showed more than a personal failing. For
the nationalist, Orwell observed, "Actions are held to
be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according
to who does them."
Likewise, when Sherry McLain, a protester of the
proposed Tennessee mosque, told Nashville public
radio, "Something’s going on, and I don’t like it.
We’re at war with these people," this reflected more
than individual ignorance. It was an expression of
adherence to a belief system — a cult, to borrow
popular parlance — that demands ignorance as a
condition of entry.
Anyone who doubts the cult-like qualities of American
nationalism need only examine the signature slogan of
the anti-Muslim movement. When Newt Gingrich averred
that no "mosques" should be built near Ground Zero so
long as there are no churches in Saudi Arabia and no
non-Muslims in Mecca, his pout became the indignant
refrain of many protesters.
Critics rightly countered that America should not
devolve to Saudi levels of intolerance and that
American Muslims should not be conflated with the tiny
Wahhabi sect that rules over the Arabian Peninsula
(with American support, no less).
But that is beside the point: why compare a site of
3,000 deaths to a place of religious significance at
all? Mecca’s Kaaba is comparable to, say, the Temple
Mount or the Chapel of the Ascension; these are places
where religious leaders inspired their flocks and
urged them to lead just and pious lives. Ground Zero,
on the other hand, is a site of destruction surrounded
by trinket-peddlers, food stalls, and cheap bars.
And yet the nationalist cult hankers to place a halo
of sanctity around the site. The cultists do not
complain about the seedy environs and they do not care
about first-responders who forfeited their health to
rescue the victims. But the idea of Ground Zero serves
as a fountainhead — one which allows the nationalist
faithful to soak in vengeful anger against Muslims and
fulminate for more war — and is thus "sacred" to the
war project.
Deep irrationality and false sanctity are not the only
characteristics of a cult. Belief in the infallibility
of specious leaders is also a marker. In the case of
American nationalism, it is the most striking one.
In the hazy, distant past — that is to say, seven
years ago — the high priests of the Iraq War promised
that Iraqis would warmly embrace us. Neoconservative
soothsayers prophesied that Iraq would be just the
first of many Muslim countries to fall under America’s
awesome sway.
The catastrophic result of the invasion was matched
only by the willful ignorance of its proponents. None
knew or cared to know about Arab or Muslim sentiment,
the differences between Sunnis and Shiites, or the
role of Israeli loyalists in pushing for war against
one of Israel’s most hated enemies.
And now, as we receive official blessings to "turn the
page" on the war, the leaders of the war cult are not
humbled but brazen. They have not only escaped
punishment but attained a platform to pine for a
repeat performance.
Witness the spectacle of Bush loyalists begrudging
Obama for not "crediting" Bush with the surge; the men
demand gratitude for slowing the bleeding they
themselves caused by carving wounds into Iraq’s flesh.
Witness the gaggle of Israel-friendly figures peddling
war against Iran; they are led by former Israeli
soldier Jeffrey Goldberg, who once admonished "people
with limited experience" for reaching the "naive
conclusion that an invasion of Iraq will cause America
to be loathed in the Middle East."
Such is the backdrop of the anti-Islam movement in
America. Learning from past mistakes, filling gaps of
ignorance, and engaging with Muslims might produce the
dreaded result of peace, so disciples of the
nationalist cult fan the flames of hatred at the altar
of endless, winless war.
It is tempting to believe that this cult is limited to
conservatives, but some liberals are also devotees. A
writer at American Prospect recently inveighed against
a new book that dared to compare American
conservatives to Islamic extremists, intoning that
there is no "excuse" for the "obscenity of comparing
our political opponents to killers and terrorists." As
Glenn Greenwald reminds us, the comparison "is true by
definition": those who attacked Iraq are responsible
for ruining and ending the lives of hundreds of
thousands of civilians. The nationalist, however,
always places the nation "beyond good and evil" and
"the smallest slur upon his own unit…fills him with
uneasiness which he can relieve only by making some
sharp retort," as Orwell observed.
It is also tempting to believe that our
nationalism-gone-amok is a new phenomenon, but
America’s militarist and messianic strains go back to
its early days. As the scholar Eric Foner noted in his
2001 address to the American Historical Association,
"The nation’s rapid territorial growth was widely
viewed as evidence of the innate superiority of a
mythical construct known as the ‘Anglo-Saxon race,’
whose special qualities made it uniquely suited to
bring freedom and prosperity to the continent and the
world."
There are, of course, other, more noble impulses
evinced in American history: justice, prudence, and
pragmatism. These are the attributes that must
resurface if America is to wean itself from its
violent political philosophy and become a peace-loving
country.
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