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A year has passed since a pair of jetliners flew into the World Trade Center towers. With the collapse of those two buildings, more tumbled to the ground than just concrete and steel and glass. The final reach of the ripples created by the crimes of that handful of men, however, has yet to be determined.
The mass media approached this anniversary with their usual penchant for saturating the airwaves and magazine pages with story after story recapping what happened in New York City and elsewhere. Once again, we were treated to anecdotes about the bravery of those who survived and of those who did not. Other reports, though, explored the darker implications of last September's events.
Americans are becoming more skeptical and concerned, for example, about the leaders and citizens of Saudi Arabia. Despite the oil stored in the ground beneath those desert sands and our need for that oil, some people here are questioning the wisdom of supporting a kingdom that denies its own inhabitants the ability to exercise basic human rights. The princes tell us that Saudi nationals are content and happy with their existence because, hey, we don't see them protesting in the streets, now do we?
Of course, those pampered and privileged brats in their lavish palaces deny any validity to the objection that maybe, just maybe, the reason the average Saudi does not express his displeasure is because he fears for his safety or his life. As long as the average Joe Saudi receives his largesse from the royals, we are told, then, by Allah, he has nothing to complain about.
It also does not matter to these royals that their wealth would be nonexistent if not for foreign entrepreneurs initially developing the oil fields. To these arrogant souls, they are the ones who deserve the credit for the wealth extracted from their country while United States businessmen are mere "exploiters" who "steal" from the worthy Muslim lands.
Beyond a country where the "official" line contains expressions of friendship and solidarity with the United States while the news on the street denounces Americans as evil incarnate for "defiling" their soil with our troops, the entire Muslim world is being viewed with a jaundiced eye by many who espouse different religions.
Indeed, watching and listening to some Muslims who are native-born Americans can send a shiver up one's spine. The robotic unity of bowing in prayer five times a day towards Mecca seems an exemplar of mindless obediance. Interviews with proponents of Islam are even more disturbing. Teenage Muslims tell us that all answers to life are to be found in that holy book, the Koran. No need to think or wrestle with complex issues. Just read the book.
These young people -- who are surrounded and inundated with the "evil" images and temptations of secular America -- tell us that it is a sin to respond to the hormonal urges swarming through their pubescent bodies. A teenage Muslim boy enlightens us with the statement that it is all right to glance at a girl who is nearby, but to look a second time...! Oh, no. That counts against you. Look down, look away, deny and repress those stirrings in the nether reaches of your body. Carnality distracts you from the purity of a mind devoted to understanding and exemplifying the teachings of Mohammed as distilled in the Koran.
Teenage American Muslim girls -- with only their faces and hands exposed -- support such denial of sexuality by praising the practice that keeps them wrapped from view like a shameful secret. With the ability of anyone actually to view their bodies curtailed, they are well pleased that they can now be appreciated solely on the basis of their minds, on "who they are," implicitly endorsing the notion that physicality, the material body that provides us the pleasure and pain that helps distinguish us from rocks and trees and water, is, at best, unimportant and insignificant, and, at worst, the source of the evil that leads us from the Truth. For these young women, dating is the odd behavior, not their own excessive modesty and unspoken abasement.
Such oddness is not confined solely to young people, however. A female Muslim teacher makes it clear that the husband is the final arbiter in any familial matters. Oh, sure, he is supposed to "consult" with his wife (or wives?) -- sort of how our president intends to "consult" with Congress regarding an attack on Iraq -- but the final decision on any action belongs to the man.
When the Muslim students praise the suicide bombers in Israel and assure us those martyrs (and the Saudis who died on 9-11) will find honor in the afterlife, when even a teenage girl tells us that she would be willing to blow herself up at a military base, we are little mollified when other teachers are aghast and explain that the Koran clearly forbids taking one's own life...or when the teens "correct" their earlier statements and assure us they mean "in Israel," not the United States.
Apparently, as long as Muslims attack the repressive warmongers of the Jewish faith, anything goes.
Such a disparity between the written words and the reality of religious practices is hardly a new phenomenon.
The fundamental issue, of course, goes far deeper than the particular religion in question. For example, the mandated separation between young men and women expressed in Islam is not much different from similar strictures imposed by more orthodox branches of Judaism. Mandates of husbands as heads-of-households with the final say in family concerns can be found in different flavors of both these religions and, of course, in Christianity.
Martyrdom is standard fare, as well, in all three religions. The Jews at Masada reputedly preferred death at their own hands to capture by Roman soldiers. Christianity is founded on the voluntary death of Jesus for the "sins of mankind." Christians, especially, are exhorted to "sacrifice" for a plethora of causes and people. Nor were Christians reluctant to sacrifice others to advance their religion; consider the Crusades or the Inquisition as good examples.
Endlessly arguing as to the cogency or relative value of one religion compared to another is futile. The commandments of a particular holy book are honored more in the breach than in the observance. Under the skin, all religions share the same foundation of mysticism.
No. The answer is not to be found down that road.
Compare the situation today in various religions with what people say and do in other areas of their lives.
On this first anniversary of "9-11," we see average Americans and political leaders with tears in their eyes as they promote the ideals of freedom and the principles embodied in the Constitution...even while the latter are shredded by our lawmakers and ignored by the populace.
Commentator after commentator declares that the "terrorists cannot be allowed to win" even while a recent poll shows that nearly half of Americans support restrictions on our First Amendment rights to speech and religion and favor increased State surveillance and intrusion into our private lives in the name of a supposed safety. Meanwhile, the prez and his minions fulfill Osama's prophecy that our country will enter an era of tyranny and repression post-9-11.
In a parallel of the disconnect between a religion's teachings and its practices, we have Americans who profess to support freedom...but only in those areas of direct interest to them. Such unknowing hypocrites are the first to push for infringements on liberty in aspects of life cherished by others.
The number of folks who support freedom in all areas for everyone is statistically insignificant. But then, this has been the case throughout history. If liberty is to be restored, the impetus will come from the few, not the many.
Until then, unfortunately, we face an unholy alliance -- not among the various major religions -- but among the vast majority of people for whom there is only One True Religion: the exercise of coercive power over the existences of others. To force the unwilling to act as the worshippers of the One True Religion want them to act is the motive force of the acolytes. Such control is the object of their adoration.
Some who bow before the altar of the One True Religion do so in the name of Allah, others in the name of Jehovah or Jesus. The figurehead, however, to whom the practitioners of the One True Religion give titular allegiance is, at the core, irrelevant. Whether in the name of the State or the Proletariat or the Greatest Good or the Majority or the Collective or the Children or National Security, at the root of all these perverse idols lies the subversion of one's mind, the rejection of reason, the denial of objective reality.
On the anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center, the peoples of the world have yet to learn that there is truly only one "Original Sin" for which they must atone. That "sin" -- which most cultures and individuals have elevated to a virtue, the most holy of holies -- is irrationality.
This stain on the human soul, though, is not one imposed by our nature or a distant god or even the material dialectical forces of history. This sin, this essence, this distillation of the One True Religion, is one that individuals have embraced...by choice.
