In a sad recycling of historical patterns, a statement that Philip K. Hitti made regarding the Christian-Muslim exchange during the period of the crusades resonates with today’s events: “The Christian military venture left Islam more militant, less tolerant, and more self-centered.” Ironic that, at a time when some members of the American government are pooh-poohing Islam as retrograde and anti-democratic, it is precisely the religious rhetoric and religio-political discourse of “evil,” that is Christianizing the American-led venture into Iraq and is creating such strong and popular Islamist responses and retaliations that are at least couched in religious terms.
  
When we speak about an Islamist — or somehow Islamically oriented — movement, it is important to note that it would be a mischaracterization to necessarily absorb an Islamist movement exclusively into the religious sphere. It would be incorrect to understand a movement such as al-Qaeda, for example, as a strictly or even primarily religious movement. While al-Qaeda recruitment tapes are couched in religious language and utilize religious sympathies, the primary argument of al-Qaeda is a political one. Al-Qaeda makes an internationalist jihadist argument; an excellent source for information on this topic is the project that was undertaken by the Columbia International Affairs Online site that provides excerpts from and analyses of the Osama bin Laden recruitment tapes.  

In so adamantly adding a religious glaze to political topics and by consistently employing  religious and moral language — such as the “axis of evil,” and the consistent description of the insurgency movements in Iraq as “evil,” — the current administration, the media, commentators, and ordinary citizens who utilize such language are, it seems, making Christians more Christian, Muslims more Muslim, and all parties involved more extreme and uncompromising. Language is being actualized in politics and pushing religion to its extremes. In Hitti’s terms, “The Christian military venture left Islam more militant, less tolerant, and more self-centered.”  

The horrendous acts we have seen in the media lately — the brutal and inhumane beheading of an American civilian recorded on videotape, the naked Iraqi prisoners of Abu Ghraib jail being taunted and dehumanized — are shocking, vile, and horrifying. There is no question that what has been done is wrong. The question is, rather, is there anything positive to be gained by posing political questions in the religious and moral language of good versus evil?

We must understand the current state of affairs in Iraq as a situation that is beyond good and evil; to transpose political questions into the religious and moral sphere is to make all camps involved “more militant, less tolerant, and more self-centered.”

Mimi Hanaoka