Politics
Taliban in America
I served as a social scientist/cultural adviser on a human terrain team attached to a combat brigade in Iraq during 2008-09. I found most of the ordinary people there were understandably suspicious but very nice and peaceful. They just want to go about their lives without war and religious persecution. They are predominately Muslim and in Muslim cultures religion (as laid down by their holy book, the Koran or Quran) governs the entire scope of human affairs, including politics, government and education, and is the source of Islamic law (the Sharia). al-Qaeda and other Sunni fundamentalist extremist groups, as well as Shia extremists, carry this to Jihad or Holy War against nonbelievers and Muslim sectarian elements. They want absolute and complete control. I lived and worked with both the Shia and Sunni populations in Iraq and experienced this and the carnage it wrought.
You say it can never happen in the United States, but it is. Right wing evangelical conservative Christians and their banner bearer Rick Santorum, are the American Taliban. They want to control our government and all its programs and actions, the courts, education policy and subject matter, personal expression, reproductive rights and the role of women, just like the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It’s possible you smile, thinking this is a good thing, but I am repulsed and repelled. The separation of church and state is meant to protect all forms of religious expression from government control, but equally to protect people and the government from religious control.
Religion should be a personal matter; Christians talk about a “personal” relationship with God. It’s time to put that talk into action. If someone shows up at my door to convert me to his religious beliefs, I politely tell him that is my personal concern and ask him to leave my property. The conservative right wing Republican, evangelical Christians and their poster child, Santorum, should control their own lives and stay at their own houses. The Christian Crusades are thankfully far behind us. Hopefully, the conservative right wing Republican Christians won’t start another holy war.
Wayne Reese
Kailua-Kona