Dennis Farr Guest Writer

When Americans think about government and religion, we focus too much on creationism and neglect to read the other end of the book, where one can find all kinds of interesting tidbits about the prosecution of the world’s end. If we did, our current policies regarding Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran may come into sharper focus. Then we may have to wonder about a most uncomfortable rush to judgment on our part. Have we too quickly dismissed the possibility that we are engaged in a war on Islam?

We’re not unfamiliar with religion as a wartime consideration, but aware of it primarily from a corrective standpoint. For example, many American circles represent Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s “liberation” as progressing gender emancipation in the region. They wrap Islamic gender relations around the “Muslim veil” and “honor killings” as unfortunate results of the sharia’s harsh application. These concerns render American women, a demographic historically at the frontlines of American peace and anti-war movements, ambivalent.

Another example is the insistence that sustained participation in the Iraqi war will thwart theocratic tendencies in favor of democracy. This assertion ignores the Christian principles embedded in our democratic notions. These examples evidence an implicit criticism of Islam. Therefore, even hawkish justifications warrant an analysis of the Iraq war’s religious orientation. Internal religious elements propelling us forward are largely unexamined, spelling eventual ruin. While a parallel reality exists in the Islamic world, the discourse is overwhelmingly focused on what “they,” not “we,” believe in and practice, and how “their” actions are in disparity with “their” beliefs, not “ours.” The discussion needs balance.

Doomsday, like creationism, is a fundamental tenet of many who now trespass America’s corridors of power. I’m amazed that the constituency most closely aligned to Bush is not more closely connected to our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Conservative Christianity’s involvement in anything includes the involvement of apocalyptic sentiments. Thus their elevation to significant and unprecedented political power and operational functionality one year preceding the millennium is most disconcerting. As moments held to be immediately preceding Jesus Christ’s return, moments that must be attended by catastrophe and conflagration, 9/11’s perpetration by Muslim hijackers on the millennial year had a catastrophic psychological impact peculiar to this demographic. Many connections, entirely lacking in credibility, were made between Iraq and 9/11. As an alternative, we tend to believe baser economic motives governed the invasion, but we also lack significant evidence to corroborate these alternative scenarios. Therefore, let’s consider other possibilities.

Straddling 9/11, various Christian groups pondered on the “Rapture,” an intensely complex religious phenomenon guffawed at in more secular circles, and thus oversimplified and underestimated. Some believe it has occurred, others that it has not, and others that it is currently ongoing. The phenomenon’s influence has widely penetrated many circles, politically in the resurgent influence of figures like Pat Robertson, and artistically in the insanely popular Left Behind book series and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ. If we put aside our giggles for just a second, we may detect some interesting correlations. For example, “the prophetic speedometer of endtime activity,” the Rapture Index, “[factors] together a number of related end time components into a cohesive indicator, and…[standardizes] those components to eliminate the wide variance that currently exists with prophecy reporting” (www.raptureready.com). Interestingly, the Rapture Index spiked immediately following 9/11.

Answering 9/11, the Department of Defense designated the upcoming Afghan mobilization Operation Infinite Justice, supposedly rooting it to the 1998 Operation Infinite Reach airstrikes against bin Laden’s Sudanese and Afghan facilities. The connection only reinforces the religious import. Supposedly reeling from the Muslim backlash, the title was quickly retracted in favor of Operation Enduring Freedom. However, it flies in the face of our mockery continual mockery of the Bush administration that such a name passed through so many erudite minds and clutching hands. Many sympathetic Muslims huddled nearby to lend credence to Bush’s eloquent appraisals of Islam, and not one had the slightest clue as to its religious import at the apocalyptic moment in time. It would seem to me that the administration may have been gauging public response, and was not taken aback by Muslim outcry, but by Christian reaction from within our own nation.

If we more seriously discussed these matters, we might come to understand why we are referred to as “crusaders.” Such understanding may alter our prosecution of the war, or even contribute to anti-war movements. As a nation, we know very little about Islam, and supposedly, as much about Christianity.The facts remain largely unexplored.