Christian Fundamentalism, the Global Crusade and
Muslims
Yoginder Sikand
If Christian fundamentalists are to be believed,
America's invasion of
Iraq and the consequent brutal slaughter of thousands
of innocent
civilians in that country are all part of a grand
divine plan that
will finally culminate in the 'second coming' of Jesus
Christ.
Establishing an empire that will extend all over the
globe, Christ
will rule like a powerful monarch, saving those who
believe in him and
dispatching non-believers, all non-Christians and
non-conformist
Christians, to everlasting perdition in hell. This is
no childish
nonsense for millions of Christian fundamentalists,
who sincerely
believe this to be predicted in the Bible. Not
surprisingly, American
Christian fundamentalists are today among the most
fanatic supporters
of Bush's global imperialist wars, in Iraq and
elsewhere, which they
see as in keeping with the divine mandate. They are no
eccentric or
lunatic fringe elements, for today Christian
fundamentalists exercise
a powerful influence in American politics. Among them
is George Bush
himself, who insists that the American invasion of
Iraq has been
sanctioned by God, with whom he claims to be in
personal
communication.
While the Western press is awash with stories, real
and exaggerated,
about 'Islamic fundamentalists', rarely is mention
made about
Christian fundamentalists, who, with their vast
resources and close
links with the current American administration, are a
potentially more
menacing threat than their Muslim counterparts.
According to newspaper
reports more than a third of Americans are associated
with one or the
other Christian fundamentalist outfit, most of which
are fiercely
anti-communist, anti-Muslim and are passionate
advocates of
free-market capitalism, global American hegemony and
the myth of the
civilizing mission of white America. In recent years,
these
fundamentalist groups have been engaged in aggressive
missionary work
in other countries as well, including in the so-called
'Third World'.
Fired by a passionate hatred for other religions,
which they dismiss
as 'false' and even 'Satanic', they are today among
the most
well-funded missionary groups in large parts of Asia
and Africa.
Crusading for Christ, these fundamentalist groups are
not simply out
fishing for souls. Rather, for them Christianity is
only part of the
agenda, which also includes aggressively promoting
American and
Zionist interests. Today, these groups preach not only
Christ but also
Pax Americana and even American-led imperialist wars,
which they bless
as holy causes to usher in the final arrival of Jesus.
Texas-based author and preacher Michael Evans is one
of the most
notorious American Christian fundamentalist preachers
today, a
passionate advocate of war in the name of Christ. In a
recently
published book, titled Beyond Iraq: The Next
Move-Ancient Prophecy and
Modern-Day Conspiracy Collide (Whitestone Books,
Florida, 2003), he
spells out a grand design for American global
hegemony, blessed in the
guise of a holy global war. Key players in this
'divine' plot include
the CIA, the American government and army, and Israel,
besides various
Christian fundamentalist outfits. The book is
dedicated, among others,
to what Evans describes as 'two old friends', Ehud
Olmert, former
Israeli Vice President, and the former Israeli Prime
Minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu. Equally revealingly, the book
begins with a
quotation which graces the lobby of the original
headquarters of the
CIA.
Evans is no petty crank who claims to be
God-possessed, although his
writings might seem to suggest that. The jacket of the
book describes
him as a 'TIME magazine best-selling author', who has
appeared on the
BBC and on American television channels and who has
written for such
papers as the Wall Street Journal and the Jerusalem
Post. He hobnobs
with the highest of American and Israeli politicians
and religious
leaders, and is evidently taken very seriously in
Christian
fundamentalist circles. That Evans is also a
passionate Bush-backer is
amply evident in his clam that, 'I know, from a first
hand, personal
interview with him that Bush is a man of faith who
believes in the
Bible'.
Evans is the founder of the 'Jerusalem Prayer Team',
which, he says,
he established after having been visited by God in a
vision. Among
those who participated in the inauguration of his
outfit were such
names as Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson and Jerry
Falwell, all
notorious American Christian fundamentalist leaders,
Governor Dick
Perry and Representative Dick Armey, and Benjamin
Netanyahu, former
Israeli Prime Minister. Thousands of others in America
and elsewhere,
so he claims, have joined his movement in the
aftermath of 11
September, 2001. His ultimate aim, he writes, is to
have one million
'intercessors praying daily for the peace of Jesus and
God's
protection for Israel' so that 'demonic powers will be
defeated by
holy angels in a battle that cannot be seen with the
natural eye'.
A fierce Christian Zionist, Evans has close links with
the Israeli
establishment. The book's jacket states that he
received the
'Ambassador Award' from the government of Israel and
relates that he
has been 'a confidante to most of Israel's prime
ministers and to both
of Jerusalem's mayors'. The jacket quotes Benjamin
Netanyahu as
praising Evans for having 'consistently demonstrated
the moral clarity
that is necessary to defend Israel from the lies and
distortions of
its enemies'. This is no empty boast: the book
contains pictures of
Evans with Menachem Begin endorsing his first book,
'Israel: America's
Key To Survival', praying with Shimon Peres,
comforting Jewish victims
of a bomb blast in Israel, launching the 'Jerusalem
Prayer Team' along
with Jerusalem's mayor, pledging support to Israel
before Yitzhak
Shamir along with half a million signatures of fellow
Christians,
championing Israel's cause at the royal palace in
Madrid and keeping
company with American soldiers in Lebanon and Somalia.
*
Christianity, War and the 'Defence' of Israel
For Evans, and numerous other rabid Christian
fundamentalist preachers
of hate like him, one of the most crucial purposes of
America's
invasion of Iraq is the 'defence' of Israel, which he
regards as a
solemn Christian duty. If till recently Jews were
routinely reviled by
the Church as 'Christ-killers', and, accordingly,
hounded by Christian
authorities, many of today's Christian
fundamentalists, like Evans,
are passionate advocates of the state of Israel. This
does not,
however, represent any shift in their fervent belief,
intrinsic to
mainstream Christianity, that non-Christians, Jews
included, are
destined for Hell. Rather, it is part of a wider
conversion agenda.
Jesus, they believe, will return to the world to rule
only once the
Jews have 'returned' to Palestine and have rebuilt the
temple of David
that was destroyed almost two thousand years ago.
After this momentous
event, many Jews will convert to Christianity and
those who refuse to
will be sent to hell. Till then, Christian
fundamentalists argue, the
Jews and their state must be passionately defended
from their
'enemies', who are invariably identified as Arabs and
Muslims.
The 'defence' of Israel, a central point in the
Christian
fundamentalist agenda, is typically argued in racist
terms. Israel,
Christian fundamentalists believe, are God's 'chosen
people', and they
quote the Bible as making this claim, suggesting,
therefore, that
non-Jewish peoples are somehow lesser beings. Evans,
too, makes this
point and argues that according to the Bible 'God will
bless those who
bless Israel' and will 'curse those who curse it'.
'History records',
he says, 'that God deals with nations in accordance
with how those
nations deal with Israel'. Hence, in the 'defence' of
Israel,
Christians, Evans argues, have no choice. If they are
true to their
faith, he says, they must join hands with America in
its war for
'defending' Israel, and must 'support Israel in every
possible way'.
'We must either choose Mount Zion [Jerusalem] and be
among those who
obey the voice of the Spirit of the Lord', he writes,
'or we will be
left to the passions of our flesh, drinking the wine
of her [Bablyon's
or Iraq's] fornication'.
The invasion of Iraq, and the broader American 'war on
terror', is,
Evans says, is akin to 'divine light [.] proclaiming
like a trumpet a
spiritual battle of monumental proportions', pitting
Babylon, the
Biblical Iraq, the 'spiritual centre of darkness',
against Jerusalem
or contemporary Israel, the 'spiritual centre of
light'. But so that
this 'divine light' should spread beyond the confines
of Babylon,
Evans pleads for America to extend its war all over
the globe, to
every country that dares to challenge American
supremacy and the state
of Israel. This war, he says, should aim at the
elimination of all
'terrorists', defined as those who refuse to support
Israeli and
American interests. In this, the invasion and
occupation of Iraq is of
vital importance, Evans says, because it will 'become
a US base' to
destroy 'terrorist' networks elsewhere in the Middle
East and
eventually to usher in what he calls 'the apocalyptic
battle' of
Armageddon, 'the final battles of the ages' as
allegedly 'prophesied
in Daniel, Jeremiah and Revelations', chapters of the
Bible.
America, as Evans sees it, must be ready to sacrifice
itself to
protect Israel, because that, he says, is precisely
what the Christian
God wants. Hence, Palestinians resisting the illegal
occupation of
their land and all those who opposed to Israel and its
imperialist and
expansionist policies must be crushed with the might
of American arms,
he insists. The Christian God does not brook any peace
with such
people, he argues. The Bible, he announces, says that
those who fight
against Israel, God's supposedly chosen people and
recipients of His
'special blessing', would be destroyed by God Himself.
He quotes the
Bible as declaring: 'And this shall be the plague with
which the Lord
will strike all the people who fought against
Jerusalem: Their flesh
shall dissolve while they stand on their feet. Their
eyes shall
dissolve in their sockets. And their tongues shall
dissolve in their
mouths'.
Given this supposed divine backing, Evans exhorts
America to invade
and subjugate all countries opposed to Israel,
specifically naming
Lebanon, Syria and Iran. The ultimate agenda, he says,
is to destroy
these countries and establish what Zionists call Eretz
or Greater
Israel, extending to and including Iraq. This is
because, Evans quotes
the Bible as saying, God allegedly gave this vast
stretch of land,
from the Nile to the Euphrates, to Abraham and his son
Isaac and his
descendants, ancestors of the Jews, as a covenant and
as their
'everlasting possession'. Echoing hardliner Zionists,
Evans insists
that there can be no peace with the Palestinians at
any cost, because,
he claims, the Christian God is opposed to this. If
Israel and America
are to faithfully abide by the Christian God's will,
he says, they
must not let anything get in the way of the
establishment of Eretz
Israel. Thus, various peace proposals that involve any
territorial
concessions on the part of Israel are ruled out. This
is because, as
Evans alleges, God has given the entire territory to
the Jews till
eternity.
Christianity and the New Anti-Muslim Crusade
As for the Arabs and Muslims more generally, Evans
seems to suggest
that the Christian God desires that they be
humiliated, subjugated and
crushed. Thus, he quotes the Bible as saying that
while God specially
blessed Isaac and his descendants, the Jews, he had a
different plan
in mind for the Arabs, descendants of Ishmael,
Abraham's other son.
Referring to Ishmael Evans quotes the Bible as saying,
'He will be a
wild man; His hand shall be against every man and
every man's hand
against him'. This racist stereotype, so deeply rooted
in traditional
Christian discourse about Muslims, is held by Evans to
be what he
calls 'a fitting description of the Arab terrorist'
and, presumably,
as justifying the annihilation of the Arab people, as
well as other
Muslims. Evans goes so far in vilifying Arabs and
Muslims as to call
Muhammad a proto-terrorist, alleging that he had
banished and killed
Jews for not believing in him. 'Terrorism', he claims,
is a logical
consequence of Islam, and he argues that 'Muhammad set
a sordid
example for his present-day disciples, the Qadafis,
Khomeinis, Arafats
and bin Ladens and Husseins of this world'. Claiming
knowledge of the
unseen, he even announces that Islam is 'a malevolent
manifestation of
a religion conceived in the pit of hell'.
Evans thus equates Islam with the forces of the
'Anti-Christ', against
whom he appeals to Christians to marshal all the
resources at their
command. Ironically, while spewing hatred and calling
for a global
war, he presents Christianity as peace-loving,
contrasting it with
Islam, which he equates with 'terrorism'.
'Christianity differs from
Islam as day differs from night', he claims,
completely unmindful of
the sordid and blood-soaked history of the faith he
claims to
champion. In the same breath as he issues a general
summons to
Christians to wage war in the name of their faith he
refers to the
Bible as instructing Christians to 'turn the other
cheek' when
slapped, in order to argue that, unlike Christianity,
Islam is an
inherently vile religion, equating it with what he
terms 'the law of
the bullet, militancy, treachery, terrorism and
violence'.
Christianity, America and Oil
Christian fundamentalists are ardent advocates of
free-market
capitalism, having played a key role in America's war
against
communism during the Cold War. Christ, capitalism and
American
supremacy go together, Evans believes, and so, while
announcing that
an American-spearheaded global war is precisely what
Christ mandates,
he approvingly quotes Isser Harel, founder of the
Israeli secret
services' organization Mossad, who speaks of the
'terror' threat to
America's 'freedom', 'capitalism' and 'power', and
exhorts America to
take appropriate defence measures. Evans goes so far
as to advise the
America to capture all the oil wealth in Arab lands in
order to
prevent 'terrorists' from using oil wealth to target
Israel, home to
God's supposedly 'special people'. A more ingenuous
excuse to justify
American greed could hardly be devised!
Since Muslims, especially the Arabs, are branded
virtually as agents
of the Devil, Evans argues that America, as
self-appointed agent of
Christ, should have no qualms about invading oil-rich
Arab lands. This
would, he says, break America's dependence on Muslim
countries for oil
which. If America seizes all Arab oil-fields, it
would, he says,
sharply reduce oil prices, forcing Muslim countries
'to their knees',
giving them only two options: 'cooperate with the war
on terror or go
bankrupt'. At the same time as he exhorts America to
invade and occupy
all the countries, no matter what the human cost,
Evans warns that it
should not be serious about its rhetoric of exporting
'democracy' to
the Middle East, for, he argues, it would lead to
anti-American and
anti-Israeli Islamists taking over.
Invasion of Iraq and the Ushering in of Global
Christendom and Pax-Americana
Evans sees America's invasion and occupation of Iraq
as the unfolding
of a divine plan for the world. It is not nothing less
than what he
calls a grand 'spiritual battle', between Christianity
and Satanic
forces and 'demons', as represented by Muslims and
other
non-Christians. Accordingly, he fervently welcomes
America's invasion
of Iraq and pleads that America should expand the
theatre of war by
invading various other, mostly Muslim, countries.
The murder and destruction that America has wrought in
Iraq is nothing
to grieve about, Evans seems to suggest. It is a
price, he argues,
that God is supposedly exacting from Muslims for
having been 'coerced'
by Satan to 'loathe' the Jews, 'God's Chosen People'.
It is also a
divine punishment, he says, for Iraq having allegedly
possessing
'deadly chemical, biological or nuclear weapons',
echoing the bogus
claim made by Bush, Blair and their henchmen which
they used to
justify their invasion of that country. Weak-hearted
Christians who
might disagree are advised to all in line, for, Evans
says, this is
precisely what the Bible predicts and what God
mandates. 'I will raise
against Babylon an assembly of great nations from the
north country,
for she has sinned against God', the Jewish prophet
Jeremiah is said
to have announced, and Evans takes this as evidence of
his claim that
the American invasion of Iraq is demanded by God and
that all America
is doing is to faithfully follow God's will.
Iraq, the Biblical Babylon, Evans insists, represents
the forces of
Satan, and hence deserves to be crushed by America,
God's agent,
through invasion and war. 'Babylon is fallen, that
great city, because
she has made all nations drink of the wine of the
wrath of her
fornication', he quotes the Bible as saying. 'I will
rise up against
them [.] I will cut off from Babylon her name and
survivors, her
offspring and descendants [.] I will turn her into a
place for owls
and into swampland. I will sweep her with the broom of
destruction',
Evans quotes the Biblical God as having declared. He
marshals other
Biblical verses to press the argument about Iraq being
allegedly
inherently 'evil' and hence deserving harsh repression
at American
hands. Eve and Adam are said to have committed the
'first sin' there;
it was in Iraq that occult and astrology were
invented;
Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of Babylon, conquered Israel and
enslaved the
Jews; the Babylonians built the Tower of Babel,
thereby defying God by
trying to reach heaven without His permission; and the
Bible describes
Babylon as the 'seat' of the Anti-Christ and the
'Beast', the 'seat of
Satan's evil', in contrast to Jerusalem, the 'seat of
God's
righteousness', against whom it is destined to be
pitted in the final
battle that will usher in Jesus' 'second coming'.
In all, then, Evan argues, America is simply acting as
the Christian
God's handmaiden in wreaking destruction and death in
Iraq. Instead of
being blamed or castigated for this, he argues, it
should be praised.
This destruction is Biblically mandated, he repeats,
for the Bible has
announced that, 'Babylon, the great, has fallen and
has become a
dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul
spirit, and a cage
for every unclean and hated bird [.] Therefore, her
plague will come
in one day-death and mourning and famine. And she will
be utterly
burned with fire [.] Thus with violence the great city
Babylon shall
be thrown down and shall not be found anymore'.
But this terrible destruction in Iraq is only the
beginning of a
bloody trail of events mandated by a supposedly
blood-thirsty and
vengeful God. According to Evans' reading of the
Bible, the American
invasion of Iraq is what he calls 'the
dress-rehearsal' for the grand
global battle of Armageddon between the forces of
Christ and Satan.
Prior to this battle, he quotes the Bible as saying,
'demons and
spirits' bound up in the Euphrates in Iraq will be
released, and, with
an army of 200 million, will kill off a third of the
world's total
inhabitants through nuclear war. This grand battle,
Evans writes, is
not far off. Hence, he appeals to Christians to 'put
on the armour of
God' and 'engage in spiritual battle'. Now, is the
time, he says, to
prepare for the impending return of Christ.
Presumably, after Iraq is
destroyed through the agency of the Americans, Christ
will suddenly
appear in Jerusalem and establish his global empire,
ushering in the
end of the world as we know it.
Horrendous as Evans' views are, they do find a
powerful echo in
Christian fundamentalist circles today, more so given
their growing
influence in policy-making circles in the West,
particularly in
America. If the world is to be saved from the
Armageddon that Evans
and his ilk are bent on calling down from the heavens
it is imperative
that Western imperialism and Christian fundamentalism
be interrogated,
challenged and opposed, particularly by sincere
Christians themselves.
Sukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur Soye
Dukhia Das Kabir Jagey Aur Roye
The world is 'happy', eating and sleeping
The forlorn Kabir Das is awake and weeping
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