Religion Tied to State: Allies in Terror

The furor--both carefully calculated and calibrated as well as hysterical--in the Muslim world over Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” is a potentially murderous example of Islam’s shrill intolerance and an illustration of the danger of fundamentalism when it embodies the power of a political state and organization.

Islam as such, with all of its schisms, offshoots and splinters, remains a religion--a way of life, a code of ethics, a particular mode of human behavior and existence--just the same as Judaism and Christianity. In addition to having in common a tone of piety in their scriptural framework, all three religions have at one time or another been noted for outbursts of intolerance, authoritarianism and schismatic convulsions.

Despite a history spotted with spontaneous persecutions, none of the three great religions’ leaders, philosophers and theologians ever officially preached a doctrine of specific assassination, as did the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini when he called for the death of Rushdie, his publishers and any others who may have had something to do with the publication of his novel.

Murder, assassination and mass executions become official doctrine when religion becomes tied to the state, when it becomes the state, and religious intolerance mixes with pervasive xenophobia and a political struggle for supremacy between the secular and theological forces.

There is historical precedent for the kind of behavior we are witnessing in Khomeini’s Iran. The Spanish Inquisition is one case in point: In the name of Spanish imperial ambition and national unity, a highly systematic and elaborate effort at mass murder, exile, torture, excommunication and forced conversion took place, wrapped in a thin gauze of legality as represented by canon (church) law. A totalitarian state authority, which dominated and exploited the Roman Catholic Church, sanctified its crimes by religious motivation and a claim to holiness.

Small wonder that today’s democracies have as a basic precept the separation of church and state, and that the Soviet Union and other communist societies render churches either nonexistent or powerless.

State-organized Islam is not the Islam of believers, the pious followers of Allah. Rather, it is an Islam dominated and submerged into a secular political system. But it is the doctrine, the practice and international behavior of the Islamic state that should be questioned and examined here. In the name of Islam, the state condones and decrees the most vicious acts of fundamentalist terrorism. Khomeini’s followers believe that they have achievedthe ideal Islamic state. What they have achieved is another in a long line of totalitarian states--a danger to the rest of the world.

This Islamic state hungers to gain revenge on its “oppressors,” its Christian, Western and Soviet masters of time past. The function of the Islamic-dominated state is to annihilate and eradicate the nonbelievers, the foreigners and the blasphemers, which is one of the reasons why “The Satanic Verses” is such an ideal target. Islam at its most fundamental is totally intolerant. It cannot abide ridicule, irreverence or what it perceives as blasphemy. This is true in its approach to art, even if it is unfamiliar with the work itself, which is surely the case here.

In contrast, Israel is a Jewish state but its society and politics are secular. Israel is dominated by a democratic and secular government and its political leaders are neither rabbis nor religious judges. Khomeini, however, is a head of state who decrees Islamic laws. His Iran is run according to the Islamic traditions. Israeli political leaders are not authorized religious figures nor do they presume to legislate Jewish religious rights. Israeli society has historically been resistant to the efforts of its own fundamentalists to gain political power and legislate religion.

In a religious totalitarian society, the riots, killings and calls for assassination have a political motivation, too. Khomeini has recently been repeatedly criticized and questioned by his designated successor. When a leader, a political leader, is in trouble he seeks scapegoats and distractions, hence the rather convoluted process by which the Great Satan, the United States, is blamed for a book written by an Indian and published originally in England.

This sort of process is also true in Pakistan, even though today it is ruled by a moderate Muslim, Benazir Bhutto. Moammar Kadafi, no devout mullah, still represents a version of the fundamentalist-dominated state. Although shorn of the ayatollah’s original message, Libya does practice Islamic terrorism, motivated by anti-Western, anti-Christian and anti-Semitic attitudes.

Stripped of its religious message, Khomeini’s call for the assassination of a Muslim author is nothing less than a declaration of war against human rights and international order. It does not echo Allah but Adolf Hitler and every other head of a totalitarian state who sought dominion over his neighbors and the world.

Political leaders East and West must join forces to combat this perversion of Islam. Totalitarian Islam is no less dangerous than secular totalitarianism. When a mullah calls for murder, he is no less a thug for wearing a holy man’s garment.