Two Books: Threats from Religion or Terror

Strictly speaking, the two books I describe today are not about terror as a tactic or the so-called Global War on Terror (GWOT). Where they seem to me to intersect is in providing very different points of view on the subject from whence the terror threat to the West arises. Racing Toward Armageddon: The Three Great Religions and the Plot to End the World by Michael Baigent (2009) is about as strident and intemperate as the title suggests. I picked up a copy for a buck at our new Dollar Tree store recently as well as a scifi novel about nanotechnology, Leslie Caron’s autobiography, and a memoir about the 2009 Obama campaign. [Expect more on that last one in a subsequent post, but not too soon.] Conspiracy theorists will be disappointed that Baigent’s thesis doesn’t come close to living up to the promises of the sub-title. There is no plot by any of the three leading monotheist faiths and certainly no single plot uniting them – at least Baigent offers no evidence of any such plot. Rather, what Baigent describes are the apocalyptic visions of what he terms “fundamentalist” tendencies within each of three distinct religious traditions – Christianity, Judaism and Islam - and his conclusion that they are moving the world toward massive armed conflict. I do not claim to know nearly as much about Judaism and Islam, but I do know a bit about Christianity and here Baigent shows himself to be either ignorant or disingenuous on a few key points. Most strikingly, he lumps in with Tim LaHaye, and the nonsense peddled by LaHaye’s “Left Behind” fantasies, LaHaye’s most profound critics. Baigent also glosses over any distinction between signs of the end times and commands to believers. That is, not all signs of the end are things that believers are commanded to bring about. This is closely related to his failure to distinguish timing of events precedent to the end that are within the control of believers. For example, many Shia scholars teach that human actions can trigger the appearing of the Mahdi whereas most Christian commentators take seriously Jesus words that the timing of the end is entirely within the control of God. In his concluding chapter, Baigent offers what he seems to think is a way out, a way to avoid the coming catastrophe contemplated by the ascendant fundamentalists. What he offers, however, does not seem to me to be serious; but judge this for yourself: “Is it not time to accept that the Middle Eastern experiment with one God has failed, that it is leading us slowly but surely along a path to conflict and destruction?” Against this, he commends Sufi Islam, Jewish Kabbalah (and its Christian variant Cabala), as well as Catholic veneration of saints like Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. So, not a book about terror, per se; but it does offer some insights into the nature of the religious and cultural milieu from which terror springs. Now we’ll turn to another of those books I picked up cheap from WND.com – United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror (2009) by Jamie Glazov. Glazov leads his readers through nearly a hundred years of what, if the subject weren’t so serious, I would call tyrant tourism. Like the less strenuous eco-tourism, this is a leftist pastime that serves both to celebrate the tourist for his understanding of the problem and laud the object of his pilgrimage as a reproach to his own society. From praising Stalin amidst the starvation of the Kulaks and the Purge Trials through their adoration of Mao during his Great Leap Forward and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and on to the present, Glazov documents the parade of useful idiots, fellow travelers and party faithful who have journeyed far to see the beast close up and to praise it. This is an oft-told tale. What Glazov adds is that the enthusiasm for this sort of thing is in direct proportion to the brutality of the revolution on display at a given time and place. Glazov goes on to document how, as the steam ran out of the Soviet Union and the Chinese turned toward a sort of mixed economy, the opportunities for pilgrimages to communist regimes was limited and the internationalist Left turned more of its affections toward radical Muslim causes such as the Iranian revolution and the Palestinian struggle against Israel. Here, again, the bloodier the conflict, the more attractive to these tourists. I can’t do justice to Glazov’s arguments in a paragraph or two. Suffice it to say that he lays out a very persuasive case that communist and Islamist revolutions intersect at several points including murder and rape as matters of policy and their fans amount to participants in cults of violence. Highly recommended!