By Rudy
Barnes, Jr.
The
Brexit vote was a victory for Islamist terrorists as well as for isolationists in
libertarian democracies. Islamist terror
precipitated the Muslim refugee crisis that caused widespread anxiety, fear and
hostility to outsiders in Europe and the U.S.
As expected, that fear and hostility was exploited by politicians in both
the U.S. and abroad.
The
Brexit vote has dimmed the hope for reconciling diverse cultures and religions
in pluralistic nations around the world and has raised the specter of more
divisiveness, hostility and violence.
Such polarization reflects a human preference for walls rather than
bridges. It is a step away from peaceful
coexistence toward isolationism and violence in a pluralistic world.
It
has happened before. It led to The U.S.
Civil War, to Stalin’s Soviet Union, and to the Nazi regime of Adolph
Hitler. They all took place in Christian
nations where people knew better, but succumbed to pervasive fears, anger and
hostility toward others unlike themselves.
Each was a perfect storm of the forces of evil over those of good, and misguided
demagogues exploited that fear and anger to build their power and corrupt
nations and even continents.
The
religious dimension should be obvious.
It is God’s will to reconcile and redeem humanity and Satan’s will to
divide and conquer—and Satan does a convincing imitation of God in our churches
and mosques. In the ebb and flow of good
and evil in the world, Satan seems to have gained a political edge. In the U.S. that is exemplified in Donald
Trump, whose life and teachings are the antithesis of those of Jesus, as well
as those of Muhammad.
Brexit
reflected the growing fear and hostility of the British toward Muslims. The Church of England has been in decline and
Islam has been on the increase for some time, and Boris Johnson, a former mayor
of London who resembles Donald Trump in body if not in mind, was able to
exploit public fear and anger of the Muslim “other” in Great Britain and defeated
the forces of reconciliation with the divisive power of nativism and
isolationsism.
Donald
Trump has done the same in the U.S. with the support of evangelical Christians who
have corrupted the moral power of Christianity in politics. President Obama has complicated the issue by refusing
to acknowledge the religious nature of Islamist terrorism and countered it with
military force that has failed to eliminate the threat and even exacerbated it.
Radical
Islamism is a fundamentalist form of Islam, and its power depends upon its
legitimacy among Muslims. Today there is
a battle of legitimacy being waged by fundamentalist Islamists and progressive
Muslims for the hearts and minds of Muslims.
It is a battle for God that cannot be won by U.S. military might. It can only be won by progressive Muslims who
can undermine the legitimacy of radical Islamists by defining Islam as a religion
of peace and justice.
Progressive
Jews, Christians and Muslims all share a
common word of faith in the greatest
commandment to love God and our neighbors as ourselves. It requires that believers consider those of
other religions as their neighbors and share with them the freedoms that they
love, beginning with the freedoms of religion and speech.
Islamic
law (shari’a) denies the freedoms of religion and speech with apostasy and
blasphemy laws, and autocratic rulers like Egypt’s President Sissi have used such
laws to silence their opponents. Too
often the U.S. has supported such oppressive regimes, and it has been at the
expense of human rights and enabled radical Islamist terrorists like ISIS to recruit
followers.
The
real allies of the U.S. against Islamist terrorism are progressive Muslims who
are seeking to reform Islam into a religion compatible with peace, freedom and
justice. Those reforms must begin with
the elimination of apostasy and blasphemy laws, and the U.S. should be
supporting those libertarian reforms rather than the oppressive leaders who
oppose them;
The
objective of U.S. foreign policy is to promote U.S. strategic political
objectives overseas, and that requires cooperation with other nations that
share a commitment to libertarian democracy, human rights and the secular rule
of law. The isolationism and nativism
that led to Brexit oppose a politics of reconciliation. For U.S. foreign policy to achieve its
objectives in Islamic cultures it must shift from a policy of military
intervention to a policy of containment.
The
military component of a policy of containment in Islamic cultures would rely on
military advisors and trainers who can keep a low profile in hostile cultural
environments. That was the original
mission of the U.S. Special Forces in Vietnam, but the deployment of U.S.
combat forces in 1965 transformed a U.S. advisory mission into a U.S. war that
was lost.
The
U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq reversed that sequence, with U.S. advisors
and trainers following the withdrawal of large deployments of U.S. combat
forces. Perceived as infidels they unwittingly undermined the
legitimacy of a U.S. military presence in Islamic cultures. That will make it difficult for U.S. military
advisors and trainers to establish the legitimacy they need for mission
success, and make them targets for Islamist terrorists.
A
politics of reconciliation is essential to the legitimacy of U.S. foreign policy
and military operations in Islamic cultures, and it will require conforming Islamic
standards of legitimacy to those of libertarian democracy, human rights and the
secular rule of law. To that end, U.S.
foreign policy should be based on aiding and assisting progressive Muslims who
support fundamental human rights that begin with the freedoms of religion and
speech. The elimination of apostasy and
blasphemy laws will be the first sign of progress.
Notes
and references to related blogs:
On similarities between Brexit
supporters and those of Donald Trump, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/brexit-meet-trexit/2016/06/24/d8ef7692-3a43-11e6-a254-2b336e293a3c_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1.
On evangelical Christians selling
out their faith to support Donald Trump, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/evangelical-christians-are-selling-out-faith-for-politics/2016/06/23/f03368de-3964-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1.
On President Obama’s refusal to
acknowledge that Al Qaeda and ISIS are radical Islamists, and why it is
important to acknowledge the relationship of terrorist violence with radical
Islamism, see Ed Rogers at https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/06/15/its-important-the-president-says-radical-islam-heres-why/?wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1 and David
Brooks at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/opinion/religions-wicked-neighbor.html?_r=0.
On Secretary of State Kerry’s
ambivalence on the role of religion in Islamist terrorism, see http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/kerry-acknowledges-some-terrorists-are-radicalized-reasons-having-do.
On the role of religion in the
Middle East and U.S. foreign policy, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/akadir-yildirim/religion-and-the-middle-e_b_10110130.html.
See
the following related blogs in the Resources at http://www.jesusmeetsmuhammad.com/: Religion
and Reason, December 8, 2014; Faith
and Freedom, December 15, 2014; Religion,
Violence and Military Legitimacy, December 29, 2014; The Greatest
Commandment, January 11, 2015; Love
Over Law: A Principle at the Heart of Legitimacy, January 18, 2015; Jesus Meets Muhammad: Is there a
Common Word of Faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims Today?, January 25,
2015; Is Religion Good or Evil?, February 15, 2015; Religion and Human Rights,
February 22, 2015; The Kingdom
of God, Politics and the Church, March 15, 2015; The Power of Humility and the
Arrogance of Power, March 22, 2015; May
10, 2015; Faith as a Source of
Morality and Law: The Heart of Legitimacy, April 12, 2015; A Fundamental Problem with Religion, May
3, 2015; Religion, Human
Rights and National Security, May 10, 2015; De Oppresso Liber: Where Religion
and Politics Intersect, May 24, 2015; Fear
and Fundamentalism, July 26, 2015; Freedom
and Fundamentalism, August 2, 2015; Balancing
Individual Rights with Collective Responsibilities, August 9, 2015; How Religious Fundamentalism and
Secularism Shape Politics and Human Rights, August 16, 2015; The Power of Freedom over Fear,
September 12, 2015; Politics
and Religious Polarization, September 20, 2015; Who Is My Neighbor?, January
23, 2016; The Politics of
Loving Our Neighbors as Ourselves, January 30, 2016; The American Religion and Politics
in 2016, March 5, 2016; We Are Known
by the Friends We Keep, February 14, 2016; The Relevance of Religion to
Politics, April 30, 2016; Religion
and a Politics of Reconciliation, May 7, 2016; and The Arrogance of Power, Humility,
and a Politics of Reconciliation, May 14, 2016.