Djelloul Marbrook

“War on terror” is a cheap slogan. Try “war on fundamentalism.” Scary, huh? That would mean war on Christian and Jewish fundamentalists, too. Not just those awful Islamists. And it would be much more to the historic point, but heaven knows we don’t want to get to the point where we would actually have to address the (ahem) fundamental issue of terrorism.

Fundamentalists like to think they’re getting back to basics; the trouble is that basics are overthrown every day by scientific research and empiricism. In the face of such inconveniences as Darwinism fundamentalists are inclined to squint out the truth, preventing it from infecting their brains. If fundamentalism means examining the origins of a belief system to recover and rejuvenate its initial spirit, that’s one thing, but if it means turning back the clock and rejecting everything we have learned in the intervening times, then it’s simplemindedness.

The squinting out of the harrowing truth has brought down civilizations: ask any Arabist who will be glad to tell you how the marvelously tolerant and progressive caliphate of Cordoba and some of the Iberian taifas were brought down by squinters from North Africa who came as allies and stayed as oppressors. (And while we’re speaking of Islam, let’s re-examine the word Islamist. It’s inherently pejorative. We wouldn’t call a Christian a Christianist, so we should not call Muslim fanatics Islamists.)

Ask any historian of 20th Century Europe how hundreds of thousands of Christian fundamentalists supported the Nazi terrorist state in the name of their compassionate Lord, how Wehrmacht chaplains celebrated mass for members of Nazi death squads. Christians, Jews, Hindus, all of us, should take a deep breath before we refer to Islamists and Muslim fundamentalists, because dogmatism is alive and well in every quarter of the world, doing its inevitable harm.

Don’t bother me with new evidence, nuance or subtlety, the fundamentalists say. What I say is right, and if you don’t agree you don’t belong here and I may have to kill you. The definition of here can be Germany, Israel, Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan or the United States, anywhere where some people insist they are right and everybody else is wrong.

I receive e-mails on occasion referring to the People’s Republic of California, a veiled reference to California’s progressive tendencies. What it implies is that there is something wrong with California. It’s not unlike a drill instructor I once heard in boot camp who said, You’re a wise ass, you must be from New York. In other words, somebody has to be wrong for you to be right, and it is so important for you to be right that you are willing to slander the other guy.

Much is being made of the new administration’s agility in the use of social networking via the Internet. But the Republicans are catching on, too. John A. Boehner (R-OH), the House minority leader, recently explained to CNN that he had found the Internet helpful in communicating with supporters. But that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? We all communicate with the like-minded very well, we all preach well to the choir; but a functional republic requires that we communicate with the contrary-minded and that we reach agreements. It’s proving as difficult as Christ’s commandment to love one another, so there must be something to it, or it wouldn’t be so vexing.

About the time John Boehner was reporting that he, like our new president, is a web communicator, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al Faisal, was telling reporters that George Mitchell, our new special envoy for Middle East peace, should spend a year or two in Gaza to get a handle on the problems there. He was saying that Mr. Mitchell should not indulge in the kind of diplomacy which Donald Trump famously attributed to Condoleeza Rice, namely flying in, flying out and waving a lot. If followed, the prince’s advice would mean not only getting an earful every day for a long time but actually giving some evidence that you’re thinking about what you heard. That kind of advice, if taken, would represent a sea change in the American politics of the last thirty years, which has consisted of deaf choirs.

From seemingly innocuous beginnings fundamentalism can go to state policy, then state thuggery, and finally state terrorism. This is what happened in the wake of 9/11. Fundamentalists murdered our people and we responded with a fundamentalist frenzy of our own, instead of reaffirming our libertarian ideals in the face of an attack on them. We did, in fact, what our enemies would have wished us to do. We said in effect, In emergencies we must dismantle our republic and behave like the Taliban in order to deal with you. We could have simply said, You’re criminals and we will hunt you to the ends of the earth for the atrocities you have committed.

There is nothing new about terrorism, nothing new about fundamentalism. All terrorists are fundamentalists first. They become known to us by how far they push the limits of their fundamentalism. They do not intend to let us live our lives in peace, because they thirst to prove themselves right. Fundamentalism is by nature exclusionary, and when it operates in an inclusionary society, such as our own, it inevitably impinges on the rights of others.

Sound familiar? Sound like Aryan Nation, like every racist you’ve ever heard, like every preacher who has ever transgressed the separation of church and state, like every free-market ideologue who insists all other economic models are wrong, like every doctrinaire Keynesian?

If we could reframe our view of terrorism we would end up examining why some of us need to be right, why it is so difficult to say, I hear you, I respect your ideas, I will reconsider my own, I will work towards a consensus. What in the human psyche makes it so difficult for so many to reach this evolutionary point?

My guess is fear. I think fear of women is pervasive. I think—witness the horrific oppression of women by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan—that women represent the spirit of accommodation, synergy, practicality—qualities fundamentalists despise. I think most if not all fundamentalist belief systems institute the oppression of women.

There is a profound difference between benign reexamination of the origins and bases for ideas and practicing a form of simple-mindedness that refuses to tolerate contrary or agnostic views.

I think fear of otherness is at play: Other cultures, other ethnicities, other ideas. Homogeneity drove Nazi Germany and now drives our racism. It’s not an accident that the slave trade often thrives where Al Qaeda finds safe havens.

To confront Islamic terrorism we must confront Jewish, Christian and other forms of fundamentalism. If we don’t, our hypocrisy will trip us up. To confront our own fundamentalism and, indeed, fundamentalism everywhere, we must open up our closets and let the skeletons tumble out.

For example, when Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s difficult head of state, calls for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we must be willing to examine the idea with respect, instead of brushing it aside because we know the Palestinian birth rate far exceeds Israel’s and one state would soon become a state with an Arab majority. We must take note that a radical Arab leader is calling for a solution, not driving the Jews into the sea. Sure, we can dismiss his call as cynical, but we can also respond by saying, The birth rate is an issue, what is your opinion about that?

We can examine—Israel can examine—the question of whether Israel is a theocracy or a Jewish ethnic state or a bastion of democracy in the feudal Middle East, as its advocates are wont to say. If it is a bastion of democracy, what is wrong with a one-state solution? If it is a theocracy or an ethnic state, isn’t it reasonable that the Arabs should regard us as hypocrites for continuing to call it a democracy? A democracy for whom? they might ask.

Dicey issues. Yes. Uncomfortable. Troubling. But the alternative is to go on thinking and acting like fundamentalists, and fundamentalism of any kind breeds terrorism. It’s one thing to have faith, it’s another thing to insist everybody else is wrong. It’s one thing to believe what we choose to believe in a democratic republic, it’s another thing to try to diminish the other guy for what he believes.

Perhaps it might be put another way. Do any of us expect our teachers to harangue their students? Is that the teaching model we support? Do any of us expect our teachers to divide their classrooms between the students who are right and the students who are wrong? No, we expect our teachers to encourage the exploration of ideas, and to do this in a calm, supportive and friendly environment.

This being the case, why do we choose to conduct government by hectoring, haranguing, diminishing, mocking, bribing and conniving?

Do we expect our teachers to take bribes from people who want subjects taught a certain way or some subjects not taught at all? Of course not, and yet that is the way we conduct government.

If our teachers acted like preachers and politicians, polarizing the students, dividing them according to their adherence to “fundamentals,” we would be aghast. And yet we expect our government to function in an environment where polarization, a conflict of fundamentalisms, is standard operating procedure.

As long as we are polarized, as long as we beat each other over the heads for disagreeing with each other, we are vulnerable to terrorist attack, because we’re focused on the wrong thing. We will keep on fighting in the wrong countries for the wrong reasons, and we will keep on dismantling our fondest dreams out of fear. Out of fear will come nothing but mistakes, as the Bush Administration so sadly taught us.

Sound-byte journalism, if it can be called journalism at all, exacerbates the polarization of the country. Trivial, carping presentation of the news is a form of fundamentalism—the simplification of great issues, reducing them to absurdities. Take television reportage of President Obama’s stimulus package. The President says Detroit must retool to make more efficient cars, so the press says, Here’s what it’s going to cost you. Think about such knee-jerk, simpleminded reportage. Sure, it’s going to cost the automakers and the taxpayers. But it’s an investment in the future. Why wasn’t that the headline? It wasn’t the headline because it’s not as disturbing, as polarizing, and the press likes to disturb, to polarize, which is why it often sounds like pharmaceutical warnings: you know, this is great medicine, you should take it, but it will kill you.

Polarization and fundamentalism go hand in glove. They are the great issues of our time and a more immediate danger to us than even global warming, because if we can’t achieve consensus we can’t do anything about anything. If you can’t bear to hear what I say, and I can’t bear to hear what you say, and we malign each other, then democracy fails and one form of oppression or another succeeds it. I think the last election has proven that we have not arrived at that juncture. But we have come close.—DM