Response
of Alan F. Segal
Professor of Religion and Ingeborg Rennert Professor
Jewish Studies
I took my charge to respond to the speakers
seriously and did not prepare a text. These
remarks were meant to be a response to my colleagues'
fine and very instructive talks. But since the
situation is changing rapidly, when I was asked
to turn my response into a text, I made the
changes in my statements that have occurred
to me from that dialogue and from the continuing
unfolding events.
I want to speak today not merely as a Professor
of Jewish Studies but as a professor who has
spent some time studying the scriptures of Judaism
Christianity and Islam and who is teaching about
some aspects of all three religions right now.
I don't have specific expertise in the countries
we need to know about but I am willing to learn.
In fact, I think that is what we all need to
do. And this talk is a plea for our government
to give us the time to grieve and the time to
gather the information necessary to make rational
and informed choices.
Nor
was I able to hear the President's speech last
night because I was teaching. I stayed up late
to get a recorded version but by then I was,
admitted, feeling tired and not a bit grumpy.
I was impressed with the President's desire
to comfort us and lead us in our mourning. But
I do not support all of his plans for the future
war on terrorism. I am concerned about offering
an ultimatum to Afghanistan turn over Osama
bin Laden because I am not sure that is something
they can do, even if they want to. Nor do I
think that Afghanistan should be our major focus.
I want to caution against getting involved in
a land war in that God-foresaken and God-intoxicated
place. It would not be like the Gulf War, which
had specific objectives in our national interest.
I
am also suspicious of the President's language
where he implies that we are involved in a war
of good against evil and his rehearsal of a
dozen other banalities. The terrorists are indeed
a great threat to us but I resist using religiously
motivated dualistic terms to describe the battle
or we will wind up with a huge war against a
great part of the world whom we should be committed
to helping. The majority of the Muslim world
is not a free world; it is a world under the
domination of fundamentalist clerics and vicious
dictators, some of whom we are supporting. That
is why most of Muslim Americans are here and
I applaud that. Just as we must avoid making
the mistake of our attackers in attacking the
innocent population in the United States, we
must avoid doing the same abroad. Instead we
must support the moderate Arab and Muslim states--I
think here for example of Turkey, Jordan, and
Egypt, among others--because they are as much
targets as we are and because, imperfect instruments
as they are, they are our only hope in the Middle
East. And we must be careful not to stint on
our support of Israel, lest we demonstrate to
the extremists that attacking the United States
is a way to gain their objectives. That would
be a costly mistake for the US, as it would
only encourage more acts of violence against
us.
On the way to Barnard today I heard that the
Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden
to the USA without some evidence of his wrongdoing.
Now the Taliban's views and opinions are abhorrent
to me and their treatment of the human rights
of the Afghani people is savage. I don't support
them in any way. In fact, I support any legitimate
means to moderate or undermine their regime.
But it did occur to me that, in view of the
fact that the President declared war on terrorism,
we should ask for the same information before
we buy into an ultimatum against Afghanistan.
I say this not because I want to undermine our
national resolve but because I do not want to
be deflected from the important task of finding
the people who did this and bringing them to
justice. And I am not convinced that Afghanistan
is the source of the tragedy we are now living
through. Even if it is implicated, there is
a much wider context of Arab radicalism the
roots of which we have been ignoring.
That
is not to say that I think that Osama bin Laden
is an innocent man; I have no doubt from his
previous despicable activities that he is involved
in enormous acts of terror in the world. We
should bring him to justice as quickly and efficiently
as possible. I am worried that if we do not
know exactly who did this deed we will not be
protecting ourselves. And I don't think that
an ultimatum is exactly the right way to deal
with the Taliban, some of whom are obviously
giving aid and shelter to him.
I am not a pacifist, though I think that non-violence
had had remarkable effects on the world. I have
the highest admiration for the courageous people
who used it to effect change. It was clearly
a big factor in the independence movement in
India and the American civil rights movement.
On the other hand, I think it had no effect
on shortening the Vietnam War and may have exacerbated
the polarization of American society. I do not
think that non-violent action will have any
effect on the terrorism problem. In the Indian
and American case, non-violence was effective
because it was used within a society which already
had the strong consensual moral beliefs. Non-violence
showed that the aspirations of the Indian sub-continent
were no different from their own. Non-violence
was successful in the United States because
it had the same effect, especially after the
threat of violence gave far more credibility
to the student and clergy inspired civil rights
movement. But it does not always work, especially
when confronted by an entirely different ideology.
In the case of Tibet, the non-violent stance
of the Buddhist exiles has been very effective
in raising our consciousness but not in the
slightest bit effective in convincing China
to retreat from its program of oppression. The
enormity of the terrorist attack we have just
sustained, its willful and wanton destruction
of so many people with no threats or demands,
was simply an act of violent revenge, an attempt
to hurt us without any political objective.
That simply says that the perpetrators will
stop at nothing--biological warfare, chemical
warfare, and nuclear warfare. But that does
not mean that religion was their only motivation.
Their objective was terror and revenge. They
must be stopped, their cells must be eradicated,
and we must use military action where necessary.
This is an example of what Tom Friedman has
repeatedly called "Hama rules," after Hafez
Al-Assad's levelling of the city of Hama because
it was harboring political rivals in the early
80's.
Though
we must rid ourselves of this threat for our
own self protection, I caution against allowing
ourselves to start down the path toward "Hama
rules." That path begins with the sign: those
who are not for us are against us. We must not
trust empty protestations of support nor automatically
reject thoughtful neutrality. I am afraid that
if we do not ask careful questions as Americans
before we begin fighting, we may wind up doing
the same thing as the terrorists inadvertently
or, worse, sacrificing our troops in a hopeless
enterprise.
If
I say I can support military action, it does
not mean that I stand with the President. I
do not like his dualistic language. I do not
like his willingness to call this a crusade.
I am stunned that the military action is called
"Infinite Justice," an explicit reference to
a Muslim name for God. But we do not need Islam
to make us realize that we are pretending that
our policies carry out God's will on earth,
a claim which we find repugnant when it is offered
by Islamic militants. We have legitimate concerns
of self-defense even without pretending to be
God's instruments on earth.
It is true that religion is deeply implicated
in these events and our response to them. But
it is not such a clear-cut issue as seems to
our TV news journalists. Let me talk a little
bit about the religious factor in this tragedy.
First, we must admit that religion IS a factor
leading to violence. We ought to be aware of
that. But it is not the only factor leading
to violence and religion also operates to inhibit
violence. Religion also produces non-violence
and it normally prevents people from doing violence
even when they feel deeply wronged. In some
sense, our question ought to be: why has religion
failed to give these people its usual message
of the sanctity of human life, when that is
its message across all the Western faiths. It
is not an easy question to answer but the desperation
and fragility of the religious world that produced
it is surely a clue. Such an event allows the
religious fanatics who may have produced it
to believe that their religion is more powerful
than it appears to be otherwise.
I am not prepared or competent to analyze all
the religious factors in this conflict. But
I do want to say that extremist religion, like
political ideology, can provide terrorists with
their ideological justification for doing their
heinous acts of violence. They are not insane
because they operate rationally, based on terribly
wrong assumptions given credible cover by extremist
religion. They are not psychopaths but they
are sociopaths and extremist religion provides
some of them with the justification they need.
It does so in all religions, Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam. Surrounding extremist religion and
nourishing it is fundamentalist religion, an
ill-defined phenomenon in all religions that
encounters the modern world only to reject it
and proclaim the scientific worldview satanic.
It is morally outraged at modern scientific
assumptions and especially by modern views of
the equality of women, for instance. Lastly
there is mainline, liberal religion. Now it
is all a spectrum and I am drawing somewhat
arbitrary lines in it. But it does occur to
me that one thing one needs to do to combat
terrorism is to support mainline and liberal
denominations of religion rather than the fundamentalist
ones out of which terrorism can grow. Neither
the Bible--the Old Testament and the New Testament--nor
the Koran is a document of peace; they are made
into documents of peace by liberal and mainline
religions. In spite of the many inspiring things
that they contain they all also contain grist
for the dualistic view of the world. They all
divide the world into insiders and outsiders
and promulgate various plans for conquering
unbelievers. Only the mainline and liberal churches
synagogues and mosques are the one small group
who interpret these ancient scriptures in such
a way that they add to social justice in the
modern world. Liberal Islam is in danger of
being squeezed out by the growing power of fundamentalism
but so is liberal Judaism and liberal Christianity.
Look at the patterns of charitable giving in
the US--its strength in the fundamentalist community
and its current weakness in the mainline denominations--and
you will see enormous reason for concern. It
is no surprise that President Bush has appointed
a fundamentalist to his committee on world morality.
There
is no doubt that Osama bin Laden and Al Kaeda
are religious extremists. They are so extreme
they make other extremists look moderate. His
plan of global terror is supported by a cruel
group of fundamentalist Muslim students turned
clerics, the Taliban, whose fundamentalism is
so extreme itself that it verges on terrorism.
Other fundamentalist states like Iran are also
very unhappy places to live if you cherish American
notions of separation of church and state. And,
of course, Saudi Arabia is ruled by a family
whose Wahabi fundamentalism is known world-wide.
And they are our friends.
But
Iran and Afghanistan are not our only enemies
in the Middle East. And religion is not the
only factor inhibiting democracy there. If you
think of who is likely to be implicated in such
an enormous act of vengeance against us as the
WTC, then the list is horrible to contemplate
but not short. Iraq, for example, and Saddam
Hussein is likely to have been implicated in
a major way. If Saddam Hussein is a player then
the issue of religion looks quite different,
since his regime is not religious and his attempts
to justify his criminal adventures--the Iran-Iraq
War, the Gulf War--were greeted by other M.
E. states and by the `Ulima with cries of disbelief.
Syria should also be considered a suspect. Libya
and Muammar Khaddafi should certainly be considered.
They all have personal reasons to be angry with
the US and it is very cheap to send out religious
fanatics to do your work for you. All of these
countries sponsor Universities of Terrorism
where the classes are hatred of the US and military
training takes the place of gym. I am saying
that religion is not the only motivation for
the attack on the Pentagon and the WTC. It is
merely one of the motivations. We should be
very careful about the way in which we invoke
religion in our discussions. Make no mistake
about it. If we are not careful and almost surgical
in the way we apply force we will find ourselves
in a real war, not in the metaphor of war. Just
as it is clear to us that we cannot blame Islam
for the crimes of a few extremists, we cannot
take on the whole Arab and Muslim world in a
war. We need, instead, to surgically remove
the places that plan and carry out terror.
That
is one thing that bothers me about our President's
speech. We have our own fundamentalists to worry
about. They are not as violent yet but they
foment violence as well. Bush himself plays
to an American fundamentalist audience, which
attracts a great many people in the South and
Middle American states. The Baptists, for example,
are a quintessentially American denomination
which can hold the religious attention of people
as different Bill Moyers and some of the Sunday
morning tele-evangelists. But lately it is the
fundamentalists who have slowly been taking
over seminary after seminary and enforcing their
particular brand of biblical intolerance. Bush's
dualist rhetoric last night seemed to me to
play to our own rising tide of religious intolerance.
In some ways, he seemed to me to be serving
as a cheerleader for it. Now the reactionary
members of fundamentalist movements are not
as savage and violence-prone as the Taliban
but they are dangerous. They believe the end
of the world is coming, just as do the fundamentalist
Muslims, and they think they have the right
to bring justice to the world. They have garnered
the help of Hollywood to get the message across
in dozens of cheezy films which are nevertheless
gaining wide audiences. I am convinced that
the fundamentalist interpretation of the world
is the seedbed out of which religious extremism
arises. I won't go into the details of groups
like the Branch Davidians or the extremists
in the Muslim or Jewish communities but the
general connection is easy to see. In a direct
way, the best way to assure that these attitudes
do not grow in our community is to support the
religious institutions of our community who
combat fundamentalist interpretations of scripture
with others that are more suited to modern life.
I am also concerned because this apocalyptic
language covers rather than uncovers the truth.
Bush is not an elected president and he does
not seem to me to have defined his job as the
real top administrator. He does not seem to
me to bother with the facts. I do not see a
careful and thinking man at work when the President
departs from his prepared texts. Instead I see
a person who probably unwittingly serves as
cover for a group of people whose actions and
beliefs are not as clear to me. We are going
to be in a very unsettled period and I would
like to see leaders in the United States who
can deal with the subtleties and changing face
of our upcoming conflict and who are responsible
for telling us what they are thinking.
Of
course, Bush emphasized that we are not making
war on Islam and I think that needs to be said
and restated continually. It will be hard for
him to him to convince the world of our aims
if we start a land war in Afghanistan. I think
we should insist that he give us rational and
reasonable information so we can have a national
debate on how to carry on this program of security
and self-preservation. I am worried that an
unelected President who has so far served more
as a cover for the real leaders of his administration
will use religion and patriotism to secure a
mandate in place of the election he has so far
not won. And I think his unilateral and isolationist
policies have been a dangerous provocation to
people who will do us wrong.
While
I think we should use force to take out terrorists,
I do not think we should kid ourselves into
thinking we are always the good people and everyone
who opposes us is evil. If we do, we will surely
make even worse an already tragic event. I oppose
the President's leadership but I do not oppose
every part of the program. We need to keep ourselves
safe. But we also need to be thoughtful about
how we apply our enormous military might. In
the New York Times this morning Michael Walzer
suggested that two criteria we should use in
applying force should be 1) a clearly defined
target and (2) protect innocent parties. I doubt
that the Taliban are innocent either; they are
largely foreign invaders themselves. But the
people of Afghanistan are surely so; they have
even been our allies. And they are being oppressed
by the Taliban. I think we should think of ways
to help them by supporting the small more moderate
groups within the Taliban and even more by supporting
the Northern Alliance.
Obviously,
World Trade Center terrorist attack is a terrible
and frightening event. It is hard to know how
to respond to it. We know that crime is not
an adequate way to describe this slaughter of
innocent civilians. I do not think war is the
way to respond to it. In place of war I would
like to suggest that we think of this as a war
crime. I would like to hear a national debate
on that issue. The President suggested we bring
the perpetrators to justice. That means to me
that we should act in similar ways that we did
in the Balkans when we saw the crimes committed
there. It took an enormous diplomatic enterprise
and even the application of force. In the end,
we succeeded in bringing at least some of them
to justice. We should have the patience we asked
the people of central Europe to endure. Perhaps
we can learn from our diplomatic and military
experience there (by the way supporting endangered
Muslims). I would suggest that Osama bin Laden
and anyone else who participated could be apprehended
in the same way and turned over to an international
tribunal for trial.
I already said to you that I do not think that
non-violent resistance will work in this case.
And I do not think that peace marches will call
the American people together to our responsibilities
to consider carefully our use of force. Like
the Vietnam war marches, it will do nothing
but further polarize the nation. We need a subtler
form of national debate.
I
never thought I would call politics sophisticated
but compared to violence it is more subtle.
If you ask me what we can do about this terrible
and disheartening disaster, I would say that
we can organize politically and make sure the
American populace knows what its political choices
are. I was disappointed that there was no significant
response to the President's program but perhaps
it is too early to expect our national debate
to take place. We are still grieving. I do not
think we should allow anyone to rush through
bills that arrogate the democratic powers of
our state. And I think we should be at least
courageous enough to go out and live our lives
as normally as possible after the period of
national mourning is over.
The president is surely right that it will be
a long and sometimes frustrating campaign. But
remember that we have congressional elections
coming up in less than two years and a presidential
election in less than four. If you disagree
with Bush as I do, we have regular and important
ways to make our perspectives known. Organizing
for those events and making sure we have a candidate
we can all agree on in competition to Bush is
the best possible way to ensure that we continue
to have a national choice.
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