your comment: The absence of a “rush to judgement” instead for a “rush to therapy” in this case was perhaps a sign that this country is in the process of becoming more aware of nuance, away from a Bushonian “Us vs. Them” mentality, and away from a public discourse that frames explanations in terms of good and evil- especially when it relates to Muslims, Islam and Fundamentalism. Maybe it is this ability that can make us a more moral and politically serious nation.

me: I feel a bond with my country, and yet have witnessed a decline in its ability to think during the Bush years. I actually saw forewarnings of this dummying down of democracy. The forewarnings were in the cultural domain of the “tube” – that conditioning box which the populace of this democracy watches with significant regularity.
In the 70′s All in the Family showcased ignorance, overly rigid us-them thinking, as a joke in the form of Archie Bunker (note the defensive/paranoid connotation of a “bunker”). He was a character who was laughed at.
A few years later, the sit coms had similar characters at their helm, but these were in naratives that encouraged laughing with them, instead of at them – populist naratives in which it became cute to be narrow mindedly opinionated and rude, practically glamorizing ignorance. Archie the joke was being replaced by Rosaine, a blue collar heroine (sp? not the drug – or is it the same thing?). In a whole bunch of sit coms and in various advertisments, I saw dumb being made trendy. By the time Dennis Rodman of the Chicago Bulls basketball team wrote a book called “Wild as I Wanna Be”, it had become fashionable to be “Dumb as I Wanna Be”.
These naratives enabled ignorant personas which were in just the right position to vote for Bush or for any other candidate that offered simple solutions which laughed at the role of critical analysis and snubbed its nose at any form of intellectual or accademic knowledge. It not only was cute to be dumb, it was taboo to be a thinker. Mindless action was the preferred course. Nike’s “Just Do It”, perverted from its intended message of taking personal initiative for exercise, and turned into “Don’t think, Just Do It”.
After 9/ll, Bush was leading the nation in prayer. I heard his prayer on the radio. As soon as I heard him petition God for us to get even with the bad guys who perpetrated the tragedy, I knew much suffering was ahead for us, because I had just heard a gross violation of spiritual law. Bush was using God to do our bidding, instead of quietly, reverently, waiting for God’s healing and guidance. He was taking the Lord’s name in vain. We were an accomplice to this incorrect setting of mind and spirit.
I saw, in my mind’s eye, hell right then and there. I even screamed at the time. And my insight was completely right. I then had to experience the truth painfully unfold for the next 6 years or so, witnessing many karmic consequences for the spiritual distortion, or “sin”, heard in the prayer.
Thus, your final statement suggesting that perhaps we have matured, and are now able to slow down and look at the complexities of problems, was, for me, a breath of fresh air. Thank you.
Darrell

Darrell

It seems absurd to me to assume that one can generalize at all about who Muslims are. I am Jewish, I know many Jews, and still could not presume to make blanket statements about Jews.

It seems to me that as Jews, we certainly don’t like hearing statements that start “Jews…..[this] or Jews….[that]“.

Interestingly, I wonder how many of those who are making the pronouncements actually know any Muslims, have Muslim friends, have ever hosted a Muslim in their home, or been a guest in a Muslim’s living room, traveled to countries where Muslims predominate, visited a mosque, etc.

I make a related point that I feel that I have more in common with a deeply spiritual Muslim than I have with a “cookbook” Christian (am a Christian), in a book I wrote.
If interested in the context of this point, here’s the section of the book which pertains to our discussion here:

No Walls in Allsberg

Fortunately, the divisiveness resulting from the various organized religions disappears as
people go deeper into spiritual understanding and faith. A deeply spiritual Christian has
more in common with a deeply spiritual Muslim than the deeply spiritual Christian has with
a “cookbook Christian”.

Taking down the walls between organized religions may be accomplished by cultural/
educational processes that take congregants deeper into the faith experience, into the
spirituality that the religions are intended to serve. Metaphorically speaking, the bible story
of the sound of the trumpet that took down the walls of Jericho may have been an allusion
to “hearing” (sensing) the frequencies of deeper spirituality, the power of spiritual truth.
The teaching of deep spiritual experiences, practices, and principles would be like the
trumpeting that took down the walls of Jericho, only now it would take down the walls
between organized religions and would allow for a truly cohesive interfaith community.

Understanding the etiology of lack of spiritual depth may also be helpful when it comes
to the process of effectively sounding the “trumpet” of innermost faith. Organized religions
typically spend most of their resources on attracting those of non-faith to the first levels of
the particular religion…

The second solution to the problem of religious divisiveness is for the interfaith
community to agree upon spiritual principles which all faiths endorse, and which appear
essential to spiritual well-being. These core principles may even turn out to be found in the
5 core virtues. Each of the five may be translated into the terms of a spiritual principle, and
then compared to principles as articulated in different faiths.

If these 5 characteristics suggest healthy ways of being, it is entirely possible that they
lend themselves to the same qualities pursued by spiritual traditions. Spirituality in general
seems to direct our attention to quality, as opposed to quantity, in life. Therefore, it may
well turn out that the 5 core virtues represent “principles” of spiritual living.

For instance, the core virtue of awareness may be translated into the following principle:
It is best to keep one’s mind open to wholeness, and to operate from wholeness. This
principle seems essentially the same as the biblical “1st commandment” of honoring God,
and putting no other (less whole) gods before him. God is the epitome of wholeness. God
is the wholeness function which only an open and humble mind could access. The only
way to honor God is to open up one’s mind to this wholeness function, and to submit to it,
rather than acting stubbornly from part-mind states.

Anya, thanks for opening up the discussion in the direction of the human face.
Darrell

Edie, thanks for your nudge to look at systemic issues within religion. I hope it was OK that I included systemic issues outside of religions. I believe that larger cultural influences are huge in shaping the minds and lives of both individuals and individual religions. In fact, my first attempt at writing a book (The Marketing of Virtue: Allsberg Rising) is partly based on an activist notion that religions are standing idly by and allowing secular culture to go as it may, rather than to take responsibility to shape culture in a spiritual way. Of course, this would require a unification of the faith communities. For such unification, I borrow a page from cognitive psychology, in that I think we need to find core spiritual cognitions (beliefs/principles) that all major faith traditions can consent upon. Then we would have a sort of spiritual community constitution to build spiritual communites with. From small communities, then would (or could) come a whole new social order, as the communities would become an example of a more spiritual version of collective living – a living example.
Darrell

(page 32 of hardbound version of Our Endangered Values)

A few weeks before our hostages were seized in Iran, the newly elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention cam to the Oval Office to vist me. This had been a routine ceremony for many years, especially when the president of the United States happened to be a Baptist. I congratulated him on his new position, and we spent a few minutes exchanging courtesies. As he and his wife were leaving, he said, “We are praying, Mr. President, that you will abandon secular humanism as your religion.” This was a shock to me. I considered myself to be a loyal and traditional Baptist, and had no idea what he meant.
Later, after attending worship services at First Baptist Church, I met with our pastor and asked him to explain the troubling comment. He replied that a small group of conservative Southern Baptist leaders had marshaled adequate political support at the convention to elect the new president, an event about which I had been only casually aware. Without knowing how further to answer my questions, he surmised that I had made som presidential decisions that might be at odds with political positions espoused by leaders of the newly formed Moral Majority and other groups of conservative Christians. Some of the things we considered were tht I had appointed many women to high positions in government, rejected using government funds in religious education, established an independent Department of Education to enhance the public schools, accepted the Roe v. Wade abortion decision of the Supreme Court, worked with Mormons to resolve some of their problems in foreign countries, normalized diplomatic relations with the Communist government of China, called for a Palestinian homeland and refused to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and was negotiating with the Soviet Union on nuclear arms control and other issues.
Both my pastor and I were still i a quandry, but I had no alternative except to ignore the condemation and continue doing what I thought was best for our contry (and also compatible with my traditional Baptist beliefs). At the same time, I began to learn what I could about both Islam and the generic aspects of fundamentalism.
For generations, leaders within my own church and denomination had described themselves as “fundamentalists,” claiming that they were clinging to the fundamental elements of our Baptist beliefs and resisting the pressures and influence of the modern world. This inclination to “cling to unchanging principles” is an understandable and benign aspect of religion, and a general attitude that I have shared during most of my life.
I soon learned that there was a more intense form of fundamentalism, with some prevailing characteristics…

(he goes on to list some of these characteristics)

My reason to include the above excerpt is to show how a new, more aggressive, form of fundamentalism has grown in recent times in more than one faith. To say which faith tradition is doing worse at radical fundamentalism seems to entirely miss the point of the problem of radical fundamentalism and what may be contributing to its growth. The rise of the Christian right became even more problematic since the time of Carter’s initial “shock”.
I agree with you, that blaming a faith tradition is of little use in addressing the “fundamental” (punn) issue and its contributing factors.

Darrell Moneyhon

Please watch this clip carefully from beginning to end:

Then read this:

A study of public opinion in predominantly Muslim countries reveals that very large majorities continue to renounce the use of attacks on civilians as a means of pursuing political goals. At the same time large majorities agree with al Qaeda’s goal of pushing the United States to remove its military forces from all Muslim countries and substantial numbers, in some cases majorities, approve of attacks on US troops in Muslim countries.

People in majority-Muslim countries express mixed feelings about al Qaeda and other Islamist groups that use violence, perhaps due to this combination of support for al Qaeda’s goals and disapproval of its terrorist methods.

However large majorities support allowing Islamist groups to organize parties and participate in democratic elections. In some majority-Muslim countries, Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, are forbidden from participating in elections.

Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, comments, “The US faces a conundrum. US efforts to fight terrorism with an expanded military presence in Muslim countries appear to have elicited a backlash and to have bred some sympathy for al Qaeda, even as most reject its terrorist methods.”

You can read the entire report of the poll by clicking here.