On Nov. 8, 2001, President George W. Bush gave an address on the "War or Terror." In that speech, he expressed his view of what makes the nation's enemies so "evil."
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"This enemy tries to hide behind a peaceful faith. But those who celebrate the murder of innocent men, women and children have no religion, have no conscience and have no mercy." |
Notice the inclusion of the time-honored idea of what makes a person totally despicable, not even fit for inclusion in the human race - they "have no religion..."
This has been going on from the start of civilization. Each nation thought that the very worst thing possible was for someone to fail to recognize the power and sovereignty of their gods. Socrates was executed by Athens for not following his nation's gods in a proper manner. Christians were called atheists because they didn't believe in Jupiter, Venus and the rest if the Olympian band. And the beat goes on even to today, when the President of the United States tries to deny that terrorists are properly religious.
I believe that this common thread of labeling people as "evil" in nature has its roots in the common myth and assumption that decent, civilized, moral behavior must be grounded in a belief in a deity. This basic idea is at the heart of all religions I've ever heard of, and it leads quite easily to the sorts of obviously ludicrous conclusions that we come across all the time.
Everywhere, we see this concept in use. If you want to make a person look as if he shouldn't be considered a member of the community, accuse him of not properly participating in the community's religion. Bush the Elder did it this way:
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"No, I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God." [Republican Presidential Nominee George Bush, 1987] |
In my opinion, this idea has long been outdated; a concept that may have been useful in the days when every tiny village had their own tiny, village gods. But those days should be far behind us now. Our world was changed (at least it should have been!) 230 years ago when men like Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison helped found a nation that was based on the powers and sovereignty of the people, rather than of any particular god.
All who believe that Democracy and Freedom are humanity's highest calling should actively fight against such sloppy wording as what we heard that night. Sure, terrorists who attack any innocent people are beasts. Certainly, they should be considered to live outside the community of civilized humanity. But to try and link them with atheism is an insult to moral, decent atheists around the world, and a completely ludicrous lie that should not be allowed to go unchallenged.
After all, there's a chance that this linkage between the terrorists of Al-Queda and the godless folks of America wasn't in the President's mind when he made his remark. He could very well have been trying to find a way for the more stable, civilized Muslims of our nation and the world to differentiate between themselves and the Muslims that we are fighting against.
But with talk of this nature, it most likely won't be long before televangelists and other fundamentalist nut-balls pick up on what the "leader of the free world" said and decide that there truly is a link between atheism and terrorism.
But what might Bush's options be, assuming he wanted options? To be sure, he tried at first saying that the terrorists weren't "true Muslims," which I understand didn't go over very well, considering that he was considered by most Muslims to be in a very poor position to judge who is and isn't a Muslim. Hearing that from such a devout Christian appears to have put many backs up. However, I can't help thinking that calling these people atheists wouldn't play any better with that audience, anyway.
An alternative that occurs to me would include simply stating that these people are criminals, regardless of what their religion might be. But worrying about how atheists in America (let alone the rest of the world) will be viewed is not something that is high on the presidential priority list, it seems. Options of this sort are most likely not of interest in the White House at this time.
No, this practice of demonizing the enemy by accusing them of being non-religious is simply misleading, at the very least. And being an easy route that plays well with the vast majority of Americans, I have little doubt that this type of inadvertant slur will be quite likely in the future.