Islamic militants are like Medieval Christians

By Wayne Dunn
web posted September 17, 2001

"The Muslim loves death and martyrdom, just as you love life.
There is a great difference between he who loves the Hereafter
and he who loves this world. The Muslim loves death [and
seeks] Martyrdom."

Spoken by an Islamic clergyman in Jerusalem months ago, no
one now doubts the sincerity of those who subscribe to such an
ideology. For only the contemptuous of life would crash planes
full of passengers into buildings full of people. Only haters of
"worldliness" would target a symbol and hub of material
prosperity -- the World Trade Center -- in one of the most
secular nations on earth. Only lovers of the "Hereafter" would jet
there in a blaze of suicidal infamy and have no compunction
about dragging others with them.

But foreign though such acts were to America, there's something
eerily familiar underlying the Islamic priest's invitation to commit
them. Minus praising martyrdom, his sentiment sounds about like
what's expressed in most Christian sermons ever preached:
rebuke the earth; yearn for life's end; sacrifice self; be anti-
material; follow faith.

In fact, when striped of details, Christianity and Islam are
identical in essentials. But why then do Islamic extremists traffic
in barbarism while their philosophic cousins seem relatively
docile?

History provides the answer.

There was a time when Christians took faith as seriously as
Middle-Eastern Muslims currently do: the Medieval Era. Man's
mind is impotent, said early Christian Fathers, and his proper
course is to renounce "this world" for an alternate, supernatural
world accessible only by death.

Christians complied. For over a thousand years they adhered to
a faith so stringent as to make Billy Graham look like the
Antichrist.

Then in the 13th century, Church scholar Thomas Aquinas --
strongly influenced by an ancient Greek philosopher, the father of
logic, Aristotle -- departed from the accepted idea that Christian
dogma is a province exclusively of faith. He undertook to
demonstrate that the unaided intellect could logically validate
Church teachings. That created, however, an unintended
consequence: if Christian tenets rest on purportedly logical
arguments, men questioned, mustn't those arguments continually
stand up to the scrutiny of reason, which all humans possess?
Then the next progression: if man's reasoning mind is qualified to
untangle "spiritual" matters, why not explore earthly ones as well?

The 200 or so years that those ideas percolated throughout
Europe culminated in the Renaissance, the rebirth of reason.
Having freed his mind from the Church's iron grip, man now had
means to rescue his body. The Age of Enlightenment, the Age of
Reason, individual rights, the Industrial Revolution, America,
capitalism and undreamed of prosperity came in due course.
Science, medicine and rocket launches eventually replaced
crusades, inquisitions and witch burnings.

Medieval Christians lived in hovels, mortified the flesh, rebuked
wealth, obeyed authority and died in their twenties. Modern-day
Western "Christians" reside in brick houses, soak in hot tubs,
buy stocks, govern themselves and live to be 80. The religion to
which the moderns still pay lip service is a thin, watered-down
version their distant predecessors would denounce as wicked.

The Islamic Faith, by contrast, never had an Aquinas and thus
never experienced a renaissance; it was never neutered. Today's
Middle-Eastern Muslims are as superstitious, pro-death, anti-
material and faith-filled as European Christians were a millennium
ago. Whether in 21st-century Iraq or 11th-century England,
focusing on the "next world" means abandoning this one, and
ignorance, poverty, famine and disease are predictable and
inevitable results.

Yet in the aftermath of the Islamic terrorist assaults, Americans
are praying, singing hymns, quoting scripture and the like. But
despite all that religious guff, few if any in the US, thankfully,
would tolerate President Bush implementing the ideals of his
"favorite philosopher," Jesus. Bless them that curse you, love
your enemies, surrender your life, turn the other cheek, if he
takes your cloak give your coat also, endlessly forgive, be meek
and humble, don't judge -- What Would Jesus Do? -- is a recipe
for disaster.

Americans must realize that the Muslim terrorists, and those who
openly or secretly cheer them, hate the US not for its association
with a "wrong" religion, but for its embrace of secularism.
Reason, freedom, self-interest, individualism, happiness, science
-- mastery of material production and production of material
wealth -- are the West's core values, disparaged by both Bible
and Koran.

Those we are at war with are consistent advocates of faith and
self-sacrifice. We cannot defeat them by "getting back to God"
-- that is, by clamoring to become earnest practitioners of a
slightly different version of the same evil we're fighting. Instead
we must selfishly, unequivocally and proudly stand for the
worldly values that ended the "dark and doleful night of Christian
rule" and ushered in the prosperous way of life the West now
enjoys.

Wayne Dunn (waydunn@aol.com) is creator/editor of The
Rational View at www.rationalview.com