Religion, Faith and Belief – well covered in the Media, but with different slants

By Gary Berg-Cross

Lots of media (newspapers, magazines, radio and online types like blog sites etc.) have a Religion section or its equivalent.  WaPo has it online under the National section where you can read about the “Latest Religion News.

This includes local Religion events from around the Washington area including music

(Dixieland jazz), Martha’s Table, food drives, Super Bowl Fellowship, Bible study, yoga, wellness, organ recitals.

Under the WAPO  RELIGION heading you read how the ubiquitous  (and Controversial)

Koch brothers give big (again) to Catholic University. But you can also find related  coverage under the Metro or Style section which has On Faith.

The NYT has a Religion and Belief section with occasional posting like:

Mark Oppenheimer Beliefs column. A January post observed that many faiths struggle with concept of animal ensoulment; cites proliferation of pet cemeteries throughout the United States.

An earlier one in January was about former NY Gov Mario Cuomo willingness to speak publicly about his religious beliefs.

On Xmas day atheist Mark Bittman Op-Ed article cross-posted there that reflects that 2014 was the 100th anniversary of Christmas truce during World War I, when soldiers from both sides took break from fighting to be festive together.

Also on Xmas dayT M Luhrmann had a cross posted Op-Ed article about people attending God-neutral, growing in popularity movements like Sunday Assembly around Xmas Yes even for atheists group ritual is important to make sense of the world.

Even the Guardian has a Religion section and moving to online phenomena the news aggregating blog site called  the Huffington Post has a Religion news section. It’s under its Voices category. As a liberal site I find its coverage includes a bit more critical tone than most of the others. You can read about “Why Julianne Moore Stopped Believing In God” They break faith down into several categories and also have a  Religion and Science section that features "blog posts and news reports that address the ongoing conversation and tension between religion and science. The page has a pro-science and pro-faith point of view and highlights smart, sophisticated perspectives from all religious traditions on how to best improve relationships between these two fields of inquiry."

These feature research and fact-oriented coverage and not just opinion. Recent examples include, “Children Exposed To Religion Have Difficulty Distinguishing Fact From Fiction, Study Finds”  and “Religious Objections To Vaccines Are A Threat To Public Health.”

Still I find most of these sites could be considered religiously or faith oriented. They are labeled so.

A bit different is the Belief section of the very liberal blog aggregator Alternet.  Here we are beyond a religious and religious faith slant to one of the more general topic of belief including secular belief. Atheism is pretty prominently featured and discussed and discomfort to faith-based belief folks is likely.  They cover issues in a more confrontational way - sort of like a New Atheist style, but they include articles that might take on that topic too.

Recent posting included:

Eminent Biologist: Religion Should Be Eliminated for the 'Sake of Human Progress'

E. O. Wilson: You don't have to be an atheist to know that religion is harming the Earth.

Of course some of the coverage discusses the religio-political connections such as:

People With No Religion Underrepresented By a Factor of 100 in Congress ...

AlterNet-Jan 28, 2015

20 percent of Americans have no affiliation with organized religion. Only 0.2 percent of Congress says the same. By Zaid Jilani.

Another one with political connections was “This Week in Religion: Huckabee Claims God Blessed Him, and Mormons Back LGBT Rights.” 

Dan Arel, author of Parenting Without God and blogs at Danthropology, authors the This Week in Religion section. Just in January he has covered some critical topics:

This Week in Religion: Pope Francis Tells His Flock to Stop Breeding Like Rabbits Jan 23, 2015,

This Week in Religion: Christians Continue Their Assault on LGBT Community Jan 17, 2015,

The Past Week in Religion: God Pronounced Owner of an Alabama City Jan 11, 2015, and 

This Week in Religion: Bristol Palin Decries Separation of Church and State: Jan 2, 2015,

Other recent posts on Alternet.org include some overviewing non-belief in a bit of the way other media feature an established religion.

The 6 Types of Atheists and Non-Believers in America

AlterNet-Nov 17, 2014

The answers tell us a lot about religion and non-belief in America. ... Not all of them identify as atheist or agnostic or a non-believer, but plenty do, and while there are many people offering to defend this particular community, few are willing to speak for them. ...

Still other posts are critical of religious leaders such as:

Billy Graham's Son Is One of America's Most Dangerous Islamophobes. This one by Bill Berkowitz  was aggregated from another liberal blog site TruthOut.

Alternet is one of those challenging sites.  No one is going to agree with everything they feature, but you get some interesting topics, usually documents and well reasoned if a bit argumentative – sort of like the New Atheists. An example is the “12 Worst Ideas Religion Has Unleashed on the World” By Valerie Tarico who argues that these 12 dubious concepts advocate conflict, cruelty and suffering. Among them are things hard to disagree with:

The idea of  Heretics, kafir, or infidels (to use the medieval Catholic term) are not just outsiders, they are morally suspect and often seen as less than fully human. In the Torah, slaves taken from among outsiders don’t merit the same protections as Hebrew slaves.”  Or Holy War – If war can be holy, anything goes.”  Blasphemy the notion that some ideas are inviolable, off limits to criticism, satire, debate, or even question. is of course on the list, but the #1 listed was:

Chosen People –The term “Chosen People” typically refers to the Hebrew Bible and the ugly idea that God has given certain tribes a Promised Land (even though it is already occupied by other people). But in reality many sects endorse some version of this concept. The New Testament identifies Christians as the chosen ones. Calvinists talk about “God’s elect,” believing that they themselves are the special few who were chosen before the beginning of time. Jehovah’s witnesses believe that 144,000 souls will get a special place in the afterlife. In many cultures certain privileged and powerful bloodlines were thought to be descended directly from gods (in contrast to everyone else).

Religious sects are inherently tribal and divisive because they compete by making mutually exclusive truth claims and by promising blessings or afterlife rewards that no competing sect can offer. “Gang symbols” like special haircuts, attire, hand signals and jargon differentiate insiders from outsiders and subtly (or not so subtly) convey to both that insiders are inherently superior.

No feel good Super Bowl Fellowship coverage likely at Alternet.org, but lots of thought poking topics.  It not only makes you think, it makes you want to think. 

Blasphemy and Issues around Free Speech

by Gary Berg-Cross

The recent Charlie Hebdo shootings have stirred a range of discussion, some reasoned and some emotion driven about persistent topical ingredients such as;

·         How do we and should we define the border between freedom of expression and hate speech?

·         Does religion or associated ethnic groups with their values have special status to consider?

·         What is the role of history, including facts and law in deciding these things?

·         How does this debate relate to extremists and to establishment power structures?

People, cultures and groups will differ as to what “facts” and assumptions are to be used in the debate, some of which we see embedded in the above questions. Some very liberal people’s preference is to defend freedom of all kinds of expression, including mockery and

incitement without any limitations. That's really free and there are no real borders to worry about.  There is no hate speech. It’s a mature & proper view and perhaps take maturity, tolerance and polite reflection all around to work.  Maybe it is the goal, but we have various types of hate speech or its equivalent enshrined in law. So we have to deal with gray areas that may vary from country and culture. there is also the idea of civilized discourse. I'm in favor or that too and the idea of this can also vary from place to place.  There may be practical issues to get to the idea of free speech and civilized discourse on the way to enlightenment without conflict or giving in to bullies and crazies. Every culture has some small percentage of unstables and events often afford them opportunities to make an impact and get into the spotlight.

Then there is the emotional vs. rational aspect of our behavior. We are not always reflective or tolerant and some things get the emotions fired up, even among rational, secular folks. Take something as simple as the proposition to respect a person’s right to believe whatever they want – so long as that belief does no harm to others. Of course harm is a judgemental thing -hurting a believer's mothers feelings may not be harmful to me, but it may be the way a belief culture wants things to be and mutual politeness may allow this if all other things are equal.  Alas, they are rarely so.  It is this unevenness that makes finding a useful position difficult.  Indeed certain groups are protected by laws and others by convention which builds in some unevenness. 

Non-believers might think a "no harm respect-all" standard is an improvement over what we have now– believers should respect nonbelievers as people and not disrespect them as people.  We are human too and recent events might offer a teachable moment for respecting people.  Whether we should respect the belief itself is quite another matter that eventually leads to argument. When can we speak up about the silliness of other's belief?  

In a simple respect position non-believers would leave faith-based believers to their own thoughts.  And indeed this seems to me what many of us on the nonbelief side do - new atheists and anti-theists aside. This might be a nice peaceful world, if that was all there was to it. But there is history and custom to consider  and these conflict respect for people with having to respect certain beliefs - the religious ones for example.

For a long time, well maybe for as long as we know, believers don’t leave non-believers alone.  Believers have their hooks into the power structure and get laws, such as Blasphemy statutes, passed, which do beyond disagreeing with the belief and take action on non-believing people, such as not allowing them to hold office. 

For evidence let’s look at the International Humanist and Ethical Union. They have released their annual global report Freedom of Thought Report 2014, on discrimination against humanists, atheists, and the non-religious, and their human rights and legal status. As input to the report, a group  called Atheist Ireland contributed information about religious discrimination in Ireland as part of the overall process of developing the Report.

Here are some of the General systemic issues noted on how nonbelievers are affected in Ireland: 

§  There is systematic religious privilege
§  Preferential treatment is given to a religion or religion in general
§  Religious groups control some public or social services
§  State-funding of religious institutions or salaries, or discriminatory tax exemptions
Freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief; Establishment of religion
§  Official symbolic deference to religion

Much of this is due to article 44.1 of the Constitution of Ireland in which

 “the State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion”.

This clause, smells of the concept of blasphemy - the act of insulting or showing a lack of reverence for God, religious or holy persons or things, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable.

This Irish thing is surprisingly close to a foundational tenet of Islam, namely, submission to Allah (the Arabic word for a universal “God”). There may be thankfully fewer acts of violence seen in Ireland than the Middle East for a variety of reasons. These things happen when people are stressed and conflicts are ongoing. There are sometimes sparks from a real war with people being killed and tortured that lead to violent response.

Coming back to what we saw for Ireland, a contextual question might be “Is it legal to draw and publish caricatures like these in Europe?”

Well we think clearly yes, but it turns out with reservations, legal ones at times.

There are still laws in Europe criminalizing blasphemy, although there has been a trend to decriminalize it over the last 40 years. In the Netherlands, it was only abolished completely in 2014

In the US prosecution for blasphemy is in theory "unconstitutional” after the 1952 Supreme Court case of Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson. But there are still laws on the books.  So although we aren't whipping people anymore we aren't pure on this issue of free expression that we hug to our breast.  We can do better.

The extremist claiming the attack in Paris declared that it was revenge for the publication of caricatures in the Charlie Hebdo symbolically depicting the Prophet Muhammad, as a terrorist, but also as revenge for torture they cited in Iraq.  The equating of a proclaimed prophet as a terrorist is certainly provoking.  As some have noted characterizing killers of abortion clinics as Christians, perhaps with a picture of Jesus doing the bombing would not be a fair, mocking characterization.  We don't blame world wide Jewry of depict Moses as a bomber of Palestinians in Gaza. A few fringe zealots and defenders of belief turf may take react violently, but we don't blame or satirize an entire religion.  They are often few, such as our US Koran burners or government building bombers, but allow broadly the scapegoating of the other side and may use religious cover for this. But then the caricature of the Prophet is also broad in seemly condemning an entire religion using its prophet symbolically.  It would seem that civilized cartooning as part of debate could be smart enough not to smear an entire religion in anger.  But maybe that is the point and one that can be debated in a civilized fashion.

There is another practical side to this too.  Some defend a more limited conception of freedom of expression to avoid the downsides.  The idea here is that some speech may incite violence and cause hate speech. Certainly we recognize this is some aspects of social media.  Ever been banned from a web site for heated argument?  What about police who crack down on targets that talk back.  Their speech seems quite limited, but perhaps if they used satire it would go better.  Well maybe not.  We read how French police are rounding people up because of the stuff they "said", including a drunk driver who was arrested for apparently feeling his freedom expression too much, and talked tough.  As troubling as well, is a know French comedian who made a joke in poor taste on Facebook. He was arrested.  There seem to be practical limits, especially if you are talking to the power structure in your society as opposed to one that your power structure is in conflict with. And that is another point people have made about Charlie Hebdo. Their criticism has been characterized as more of punching down to a minority group and its religion in the country but at odds with the power Charlie H rarely punched up against that power structure it is claimed. As one letter to WaPo put it:

It is easy to claim to promote and stand for freedom of expression and to wrap oneself in the mantle of righteousness at the expense of those who are already beleaguered, downtrodden, marginalized and oppressed. But it is a gross abuse of a worthy principle, and there is nothing admirable or praiseworthy about it.

 Freedom to speak is not nearly absolute especially when it makes groups in power uncomfortable. Secularists have understood and experienced this for a long time. You might have a right to say what you feel to the law yet you might get arrested or charged with disrespecting a law officer. Some have been killed.

As advice here, consider this practical, civilized point of  view from the David Ignatius posting , “Sorry, but this war-on-terror mobilization is the wrong response to the Charlie Hebdo tragedy.” It would repeat mistakes the United States made in its reaction to Sept. 11, 2001.

“The role of religion in all of this is dangerously exaggerated,” says a former State Department official who now organizes private-sector efforts to counter extremism. “When we get stuck in a religious debate we are never going to win, we miss the point, which is that extremists are offering young people a sense of belonging, an outlet for adventure, and some kind of enhanced status. To combat this, we have to appeal to them as young people more than we have to appeal to them as Muslims...

Cracking a joke or publishing satire has its place in this discourse, but so does delicacy and civility. If we want to rise above barbarity, sometimes our humor needs to rise above as well. It doesn't mean we need remain silent in the face of fraud, atrocity or illiberality or discard our fundamental right to free expression. It just means instead of a sledgehammer, sometimes the knife of subtlety is a much better tool..”

State constitutions, public office and people's belief in God

Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)

Roy Torcaso and I were friends. I met him shortly after moving to Maryland in 1966 to work for Americans United. I delivered a eulogy at his memorial service at his Unitarian congregation in Maryland. Roy was a very gutsy guy.  His Supreme Court case, Torcaso v Watkins, was a great victory for church-state separation and religious freedom.

That said, it is important to comment on the Dec 7 NY Times story.

(see http://www.witn.com/home/headlines/In-seven-states-atheists-push-to-end-largely-forgotten-ban-285005441.html)

1.      Yes, there are statements mandating certain religious beliefs in order to hold public office in MD and several other state constitutions. However, thanks to the Torcaso ruling, these are all inoperative museum relics,  dead letters. But, then, many state constitutions are crammed with such inoperative relics, such as one state’s ban on a guy kissing a woman in public on a Sunday., and other nonsense.

2.      Can these relics be removed? Very unlikely. And attempts to do so will surely fail. Not only  will they fail, but they could well generate backlash that will actually harm the secularist cause. Further, tinkering with a state constitution could open a real can of worms, whether through a legislatively proposed constitutional amendment or a state constitutional convention. The result could be constitutional changes that divert public funds to faith-based private schools, further restrict abortion rights,  allow “creationism” to be taught on public schools, or cause other mischief.

3.      Let’s note that the US Constitution, Article I, Section 2, still contains language that says that African Americans only count as 3/5 of a person for determining the composition of the House of Representatives. This was rendered inoperative by the 14^th Amendment, but it’s still in the Constitution forever.

4.      Attempts to remove these offensive provisions from state constitutions will not only fail but will distract attention and energy from dealing with really important hot issues like climate change, right wing attacks on public education and reproductive choice, the transfer of wealth to the top 1% from the rest of us, and other matters.

5.      Instead of wasting time, energy, money and good will on a lost cause, secularists need to be broadminded and practical enough to work with others across the religio-political spectra to accomplish important  goals on the issues that really count.

(Edd has been a Full time church-state activist for the last 50 yeara)

A Debate on Blasphemy in Ireland

by Gary Berg-Cross

Michael Nugent features his debate on RTE Radio (Ireland's National Radio Broadcaster) about blasphemy laws in Ireland and internationally with Dr Oliver Scharbrodt lecturer in Islamic Studies of UCC. Nugent is the chairperson for Atheist Ireland. Michael covers some of the various cases around the world and how Irish law's have been cited to the detriment of secularists and atheists. He argues for the right to criticize religion.

Scharbrodt argues for protection of Muslims in Ireland and elsewhere from Islamophoic statements and discusses the range of views of Muslims about the range of proper reaction to a blasphemy.

The debate was hosted on RTE radio RTE’s Miriam O’Callaghan who asks about the use of the laws by extremists. You can hear the audio recording on Nugent's page at http://www.michaelnugent.com/2012/09/03/my-debate-on-rte-radio-about-blasphemy-laws-with-dr-oliver-scharbrodt-of-ucc/ or on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WipER8PQWoI

One might be struck by the civility of the discussion on this topic on that side of the Atlantic.

Image Credit

Nugent: http://alienonamission.blogspot.com/

Criminal blasphemy laws

By Mathew Goldstein

Human Rights First’s 2011 report, Blasphemy Laws Exposed: The Consequences of Criminalizing “Defamation of Religions,” documents over 100 incidents from 18 countries. They include "Outbreaks of Mob Violence as a Direct Consequence of Blasphemy Laws" in their count of blasphemy law incidents. Their report cites over 40 incidents in Pakistan. Other countries with governments that are cited for abusing their power by making criticism of religious beliefs a punishable offense are Kuwait, Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, India, Sri-Lanka, Palestinian Authority, and Algeria. There are also a few Christian majority countries cited for imposing fines: Austria fined a citizen for asserting that Islam's prophet Muhammed would today be considered a pedophile for marrying a six year old and Poland fined a citizen (a popular singer) for characterizing the authors of the bible as writing as if they were intoxicated by alcohol and marijuana.

One of the victims is an atheist. Walid Husayin was arrested in Oct 2010 for his criticisms of theism on Facebook and in his blog posts. He correctly observed that all religions are "a bunch of mind-blowing legends and a pile of nonsense that compete with each other in terms of stupidity". At its peak, Husayin's psuedonymous Arabic-language blog had more than 70,000 visitors. He also posted English language translations of his essays in the blog "Proud Atheist". His lawyer asserts "there are limits to freedom of speech" and that he faces a sentence of up to three years, although the law actually has a maximum penalty of life in prison. Public opinion in his home town appears to be universally against him, with some residents calling for his death. His own family expresses shame. Several months after his arrest, Husayin apologized for offending Muslims and characterized his Internet writings as " stupidity".

He remains in prison more than a year after his arrest with no trial and no end to his detention in sight. France, to it's credit, dared to go so far as to publically express "concern" after his arrest. Apparently worried about their own credibility with public opinion in the Islamic world, the United States and other countries have not commented publically about this incident. Will Western countries find their voice if he is convicted or if his detention continues indefinitely without trial?

Nature Does NOT have Rights

We need to have a clear notion of what a right is and how and why government should be used to define and protect a right. I think the only coherent source of a “right” is a social agreement between people that their interests are better served with a legally enforced understanding that a right exists. Without an understanding that rights rest only with people we can get the preposterous behavior in the United Nations which resulted in the notion that religions have rights.

Frankly we are now in the embarrassing position of having little to say against the draconian blasphemy laws in Islamic countries when European countries also have blasphemy laws on their books. Ireland is a case in point on this. Irish atheists are trying to challenge the law which imposes a fine of up to 25,000 Euros on anyone who is guilty of "publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion...” Michael Nugent, the Chair of Atheist Ireland said, “This new law is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage, and because Islamic states led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level.” This quote is from the Guardian. As secularists we cannot object to Islamic governments supporting abusive laws punishing blasphemy if we do not have a clear notion that rights of necessity apply to people only.

A right is a liberty or privilege protected by the force of law. Rights do not exist as transcendental artifacts coming from a supreme being or our over active imaginations. Where does this leave the currently popular notion of nature having rights? I will argue that almost every legitimate right that would be in place from a theory that nature has rights can be derived from ascribing those rights to people.

We need to make it clear that people have a right to very limited pollution of their environment. People should have a right to expect that the vast array of services provided by the wider ecosystem will not collapse because capitalists do not want to pay for the devastation they leave behind in their quest for money. Our children should have a right to live in a world that has not been devastated by the early stages of a great extinction that will massively reduce the number of species in their future world.

I think most importantly we should have a right to have the food supply that is critical for the survival of humanity to remain intact. We should have a right to have the fisheries of the world survive into the future. We should have a right to be able to eat fish without ingesting unacceptable loads of mercury from coal fired power plants. We should have a right to see the Midwest, the bread basket of our nation, not be turned into a scrub desert due to global warming. We should have a right to have our beach-front property not be flooded out by a rising ocean. We should have a right to not see our forests destroyed by a vastly longer fire season caused by anthropogenic global warming.

Obviously by the time we list and enforce the all the rights that people should have we will have protected nature also. That is because our survival and positive well being is tightly linked to the preservation of the wider natural ecosystem within which we have evolved as a species.

Holy Terror

Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab a Pakistan state, was assassinated on January 4, 2011 by one of his bodyguards. He was opposed to the Pakistan's blasphemy law. There was a Christian woman in his jails who was condemned to death for blasphemy. He expressed his support for her and he was contemptuous of those who disagreed with his position. He publicly deemed them to be illiterate. He called the blasphemy laws black laws. He was an immensely courageous man who paid for his courage with his life. In Pakistan there are 500 “religious scholars” who are asserting that the government is at fault for not acting sooner against the governor. There were mobs in the streets demanding that the assassin, who was one of the Governor's bodyguards, should be released. There were rose petals strewn in the path of the assassin as he entered a courtroom.

Pakistan's only Christian governmental minister was killed on March 2 by gunmen. Shahbaz Bhatti was the Minister for Minorities. It was generally seen as a governmental role with very little power or influence. However, he did argue against the blasphemy law. He was also the head of a committee to review the country's blasphemy laws. This was a combination that could not be tolerated by the Islamic extremists.

We might look at the de facto abolition of free speech by vigilante action in Pakistan with a certain degree of horror. However, we fail to realize that the same terror is alive and well in our country. Molly Norris is the creative cartoonist who inspired “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day.” She drew a whimsical cartoon that had a teacup and a domino and other objects each claiming to be the true image of Mohammed. She immediately voiced her desire to minimize or disown the resulting viral response to her cartoon. She had a wonderful sense of humor and became very unhappy when she was informed of the anger from the Islamic community.

A fatwa against her was declared by the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. The 2010 Winter edition of Al Qaeda 's Inspire magazine quoted him saying, "This snowball rolled out from between

her evil fingers. She should be taken as a prime target of assassination along with others who participated in her campaign. This campaign is not a practice of freedom of speech, but is a nationwide mass movement of Americans joining their European counterparts in going out of their way to offend Muslims worldwide."

Molly Norris has moved and changed her name. The FBI said that she could not be protected and they recommended that she “go ghost.” She obviously could no longer make a living as a cartoonist resulting in a huge disruption in her life.

They have instilled terror within our country. Everyone who drew a cartoon is now on the hit list. In Pakistan no one now wants to even talk about the blasphemy law because they have to live there.

What would be the most rational way to end this madness? It is an extremely complex phenomenon but I think there is a path which is more likely to succeed than others.

Let me start by suggesting that Osama bin Laden was brilliant in his move to precipitate our ill-informed “war on terror.” It instantly elevated his stature and the respect within Islam of the Al Qaeda group. It explicitly said that it was worthy of “war” from the greatest military power on our planet. If instead we used the term “criminal” and had a much more limited notion of how to pursue those criminals we would be much more likely to succeed.

The use of “war” is more appealing to religious thinkers who worship a fierce, judgmental father figure. These people are contemptuous of those who approach complex phenomenon with a stance of critical inquiry and a desire to more fully understand the underlying dynamics. We are seen as weak and ineffectual by those who have saturated their minds with the fierce ideology of fundamentalist Christianity. The absurd and disgusting iconography of the crucifixion is indicative of the insanity that is the starting point of this type of religiously inspired thinking. They actually think that a supremely sadistic event can create positive outcomes for humanity and they worship a “God” who supposedly is telling us that we are saved because of this sadistic nonsense.

A rational foreign policy must start from data on the ground concerning the psychology of those with whom we are relating. In Pakistan we are told that we have a ally in the “war on terror.” However, roughly sixty percent of Pakistanis view America as an enemy. They feel that the war is a war on the religion of Islam. I don't have such data on the various ethnic groups in Afghanistan but it is highly likely that the views are similar or worse. Similar views are common in virtually every Islamic country and it is certainly true for all of the Islamicists who have committed terror attacks in America and Europe.

I think the supporters of the “war on terror” would be hard pressed to show that we have derived value from that effort that is worth the trillion dollars plus that is already invested. That does not count what is likely to be another trillion dollars in the future care and support of soldiers and their families and the costs to repair our military preparedness that should be included in the actual cost of this ill conceived “war.” If the government is to spend tax money for some purpose shouldn't the central question be have we derived value that is equal to the money invested?

The war in Iraq was a massive mistake. Sadam Hussein wanted nothing to do with Al Qaeda for a number of reasons, including the fact that his regime was deemed to be secular by the Islamic militants.

The occupation of Afghanistan is also a massive mistake. Perhaps there was good reason to bring our military forces into the country because the Taliban had a strong alliance with Osama bin Laden. We managed to kick the Taliban out of Afghanistan in a matter of weeks. This display of military might sent a strong message to the Taliban concerning what we could do in support of justice. If thereafter we just provided training and weaponry to the groups with whom we could have a positive relationship then a central message that criminals need to be brought to justice would eventually be understood throughout Afghanistan and our costs would have been lower by an order of magnitude. The Taliban historically is not monolithic. It is almost certain that we could have created communication and positive relationships with some Taliban related groups.

We need to understand that for the people that we are fighting we are the terrorists. We are committing a Crusade against their religion and they see their religious duty to be one of fighting the Satanic evil that we represent. We create the “holy terror” that we despise because of the ham handed ignorance of our foreign policy.

I am certainly not arguing against the use of military force. I am saying that we need to be more thoughtful and selective in how and where we use that force. I am also saying that the most important part of any action we take against terrorists is the psychological understanding of the other actors with whom we are interacting. If we can sell the notion that we are after a few criminals and nothing more then we can create the alliances required to get those few criminals.

I am also saying that the mind numbing stupidity of our foreign policy in regard to terrorism is tightly linked to the fierce emotional aspects of fundamentalist Christianity. The critical issue is whether those with power in government can process empirical data and calculate whether or not given actions will work. The secular perspective is required if we are ever going to ever get away from the preposterous stupidity of our current policy. Until we get rid of the mindless stupidity (holy terror) on our side if we are never going to get rid of the mindless stupidity (holy terror) from the other side.