Grace Amid
Uncertainty:
Making Sense
of the Global War on Terror
By Gregory W.
Hamilton
Today there
are two significant global movements that enjoy a symbiotic relationship. The
first involves America’s
accelerated role as the world’s propagator of democratic values, and as a
matter of national and international security the world’s enforcer of those
values. The second is the not-so-obvious rapid global expansion of
Christianity, a phenomenon that is aided by the expansion of democratic values
while also facilitating the spread of those values.
Terrorism Revives America’s Sense
of Destiny
Not a few
American presidents have invoked “manifest destiny” to describe America’s
political mission to establish freedom and democracy in every region and
country of the world.[1]
The war on terrorism has given this mission a renewed sense of urgency, as
evidenced by President George W. Bush’s declaration after 9/11: “Every nation,
in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are
with the terrorists.”[2]
During his
Inaugural Address in January 2005, President Bush emphasized in no uncertain
terms that America’s
mission, its destiny,[3] is to
market democracy to every nation, region, and corner of the world through
diplomatic means, or by force if necessary.[4] To date,
however, no American president has ever thematically employed the unilateral
threat of force as a means of exporting democratic reform on a global scale, or
made it the visionary cornerstone of their foreign policy. Indeed, despite persistent
questions about the Administration’s stated rationale for invading Iraq—the
enforcement of United Nations resolutions requiring Iraq to destroy its weapons
of mass destruction—few doubt the President’s commitment to prevail against
terrorism, and to establish democracy throughout the Muslim world, beginning
with Iraq.[5]
What doubts
do remain would likely dissolve should America suffer another terrorist
attack of serious magnitude. If the world was reordered after September 11, 2001, another
catastrophic attack would only intensify America’s resolve to swiftly and
decisively establish world order and security. Such an attack could also be
expected to unite international sentiment and support for the American effort
to secure peace and safety. The recent attacks in London have certainly heightened this sense
of awareness among European community leaders.
Further
terrorist attacks on American soil actually pose the greatest threat to Islamic
countries and Islamic hegemony in the Arab Middle East. While Islamic terrorism
may be motivated by a desire to establish authentic Islamic states, the
opposite would likely result. The United States and the international
community would only unite more fully to pressure the Islamic world to
implement democratic reforms.[6]
Democratic
reform has already become a linchpin of American foreign policy. As Fareed Zakaria observed in Newsweek, “The war on terror has given
the United States
a core security interest in the stability of societies.”[7] The United States
appears committed to the task of enforcing international standards of conduct
in the Islamic world, with or without United Nations support. The 9/11 Commission Report energetically
adopts President Bush’s call for a global effort to win the war on terrorism by
urging the U.S. to move more rapidly toward reforming the Middle East through
the projection of American power.[8] As The Economist couch-phrases it, this is
because “Terrorism against American interests ‘over there’ should be regarded
just as we regard terrorism against America ‘over here.’ America’s
homeland is, in fact, ‘the planet.’”[9]
Colonel Qadhafi’s recent repudiation of terrorism by Libya is
evidence that American policy is having some success. The Israeli-Palestinian
situation has certainly calmed down during the last couple of years. And
despite the prison abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, the
invasion of Iraq, following on the heels of a successful campaign in
Afghanistan, appears to be slowly achieving its intended effect on other
nations, including Egypt’s, Saudi Arabia’s, and Indonesia’s pledges and
assurances to conduct genuine elections.[10]
Stung by
the outrageous attack on American soil, the U.S. was compelled to dispel
assumptions about its unwillingness to spill American blood in fighting
terrorism.[11]
These assumptions were grounded in decades of vacillating responses to
terrorism. As N.Y. Times columnist
Thomas Friedman observed: “We invaded Iraq because we could.” The Iraq war was
never really about weapons of mass destruction. Instead, the war put the
Islamic world on notice that the United States was serious about
dealing with terrorism.[12]
Like it or
not, right or wrong, this prophetic trend regarding America’s induced boldness to renew
its destiny by projecting power abroad is happening.[13] The American
vision of its manifest destiny to export democracy and secure global peace has
become the centerpiece of American foreign policy. Such a Messianic vision may
well propel the United
States toward its prophetic destiny of
imposing a sort of global religious truce that is based on religious and
political compromise. In this apparent clash of civilizations—indeed, during
this time of increasing uncertainty—there is no rewind button, only painstaking
national and personal sacrifices from this point forward.
The Clash of
Civilizations
We should
realize, however, that the projection of American power is not the only threat
to the Islamic world. Although virtually unnoticed, Christianity has enjoyed
explosive growth in recent decades.
The
globalization of Christianity had its roots in the early Christian era, even
before Constantine
invested the prestige and power of the Empire in the church. After the fall of
the Caesars, the church cloaked itself with the mantle of Roman glory,
eventually fostering the Holy Roman Empire.
The 1,260 years of Roman Catholic dominance in the West was punctuated by the
Protestant Reformation, and then the Enlightenment. The first and second Great
Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries unleashed a powerful missionary
movement, continued by 20th-century American evangelicals and
Pentecostals until the entire world has been quietly but steadily influenced.
Americans
are often confused by the hostility and jealousy displayed by some in other
nations. We fail to recognize that the United States is more than just the
world’s superpower, but rather a vast multilateral empire (or leader of a
worldwide coalition of nations). The United States is more powerful than
ancient Rome,
with which Europeans often compare us, because of its overwhelming political,
military, economic, technological, and yes, spiritual influence around the
globe.
America is the
recognized leader of both the Christian and secular worlds—a colossal
civil-religious power unlike any in history. America is a powerful combination
of Caesar’s Rome,
with its military might—currently present in 137 countries[14]—and the
Holy Roman Empire, on account of its expansive
Christian missionary might. Charles Krauthammer observes that “we live in a new
world, a unipolar world of a sort that has not
existed in at least 1,500 years. We have not seen this since the end of the Roman Empire, and I do not think we have adjusted our
thinking to understand exactly what that means.”[15]
Although
American missionary might operates mostly independently of its political
structure, the close international cooperation escapes the notice of most
Americans. American foreign aid is associated with the mostly religious
charities that administer considerable disaster relief and development
projects. Americans may conceive of a separation of church and state in
functional and legal terms as our domestic reality, but foreigners, among them
Islamic fundamentalists, are not wrong to associate American policy with its
Christian missionary efforts.[16] The United States
has emerged as a distinctly civil-religious superpower. The American commitment
to propagating democratic values includes a respect for religious freedom,
which in practical terms means expanded opportunity for Christian missionaries
who are especially interested in the Muslim world. Radical Islamists perceive
this civil-religious combination as a “crusade” and therefore a distinct threat
to their own visionary quest to establish Islamic global dominance.
This new
crisis between the Islamic East and the Christian West is the successor to the
cold war, in the sense that it is truly global in scope. Indeed, it has been
aptly described as “the clash of civilizations.”[17]
From a prophetic standpoint, it would seem that Christianity is destined to
prevail. The Gospel commission commanded by Christ Himself is clear enough:
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations,” and “This Gospel of the
Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and
then the end will come.”[18] Indeed,
many Christian leaders have affirmed America’s “evangelical destiny” to
evangelize the world for Christ. Taken together with the political side of America’s
“manifest destiny,” and in the context of the war on terrorism, one begins to
perceive anew the profound prophetic implications of American civil and
religious might.
In The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global
Christianity, Professor Philip Jenkins astutely observes: “Western
evangelicals are talking seriously about spreading their faith within the ‘10-40
window,’ the heartlands of Islam.”[19]
The
effective preaching of the Gospel to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people
is a major prophetic trend. Since the Islamic world has been largely resistant
to the spread of Christianity for centuries, the global war on terror must be
seen in more than geopolitical terms; it has prophetic implications as well.
Global Christianity
Jenkins
observes that Christianity, especially Pentecostalism, is steadily capturing
the hearts and minds of millions in Latin America,
South America, Africa,
India,
Malaysia,
China,
and Eastern Europe, including Russia. Between
1900 and 2000, the number of Christians in Africa
grew from 10 million to 360 million, and by 2025 is expected to reach 633
million.[20]
Jenkins
contests Samuel Huntington’s thesis in The
Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,[21] that
“the relative Christian share of global population will fall steeply in the
[21st] century, and that this religion will be supplanted by Islam.” Huntington predicts that
“in the long run . . . Muhammad wins out,” mainly because Islam is advanced by
“conversion and reproduction,” whereas “Christianity spreads primarily by
conversion.” Based on statistical studies of current conversion rates, Jenkins
concludes: “Far from Islam being the world’s largest religion by 2020 or so . .
. Christianity will still have a massive lead, and will maintain its position
into the foreseeable future.” Jenkins estimates that by the year 2050
Christians will continue to outnumber Muslims by a margin of three to two
worldwide.[22]
The
competing speculations of Jenkins and Huntington are mostly irrelevant to the
significant prophetic trend. Regardless of which faith wins the numbers game,
the opening of the Islamic world to the preaching of the Gospel would
significantly fulfill the requirement that the Gospel must first be preached to
all the world before the Second Coming of Christ.[23]
Today, the most significant Christian communities within the Islamic world have
come under increased pressure, including outright persecution.[24]
American influence in the region has been to oppose persecution, and to
advocate human rights and religious liberty. The success of American policy to
spread democratic values can only mean increased opportunity for Christian worship
and evangelism. Indeed, the Second Coming may be closer than many realize.
Crusade and Jihad: Is
History Repeating Itself?
The church
militant has a worthy adversary in a revived fundamentalist Islam. Muslims are
militant and do not accept the notion of the separation of church and state.[25] The
Islamic legal tradition, Sharia,
combines religious and secular legal principles, and has always been considered
the fundamental legal code for government. Islam has its own vision of world
dominance and believes in the superiority of the Islamic revelation. Democracy
is not an Islamic political value, although shrewd Muslim politicians believe
they can utilize democracy to restore Islamic dominance.[26]
Jenkins
draws from the history of the Holy Roman Empire
to describe the Islamic perspective on Christianity and its evangelistic
fervor—as “forces of Crusade from the Christian Third World.”[27] This
represents “a future Christendom not too different from the old, defined less
by any ideological harmony than by its unity against a common outside threat.”
The threat, of course, is Islam, regarded as heresy. He warns that “we must
hope that the new Res Publica
Christiana [Christian World Order] does not confront an equally militant
Muslim world, Dar al-Islam [Allah’s
Islamic World Order] or else we really will have gone full circle back to the
worst features [the Crusades] of the thirteenth century.”[28]
Correspondingly, Jenkins says that “we may be entering the great age of Vatican diplomacy.”[29] Written
prior to September 11, 2001,
Jenkins’s words are eerily prophetic. Indeed, Jenkins’s fears are borne out by
popular Christian sentiment exemplified by Franklin Graham. In The Name, Graham writes: “Christianity
and Islam are eternal enemies locked in a classical struggle that will end with
the Second Coming of Christ.” He adds: “the war against terrorism is just
another conflict between evil and The Name,” meaning Jesus.[30]
While many
Americans are reluctant to engage in such a geopolitical religious conflict,
many evangelicals are saying, in effect, “Bring it on!” President George Bush
invoked the term “crusade” several times immediately after September 11, 2001, and that language
evoked powerful responses from within both the Islamic and Christian
communities. Since then he has been careful not to use “crusade” language, and
has rightly emphasized that the war is not against a peaceful religion of
Islam, but against terrorism. But whatever one chooses to call it, rightly or
wrongly, the global conflict between Islam and Christianity is real. The war on
terrorism has a profound religious dimension.
The Clash of Kingdoms
Huntington’s thesis in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking
of World Order is one in which the global conflict for political supremacy
is not merely a conflict among nation-states, but civilizations. Culture and
religion are the driving forces in this clash, rather than traditional sources
of conflict such as territory or economics.[31]
Seen in
this light, the global conflict between Islam and Christianity is more complex
and intransigent than many realize. It is more a clash of kingdoms than of
nations.[32] In Newsweek, Fareed
Zakaria wrote: “If envy were the cause of terrorism, Beverly Hills, Fifth Avenue, and Mayfair would have become morgues long ago. There is
something stronger at work here than deprivation and jealousy. Something that
can move men to kill but also to die. Osama bin Laden has an answer—religion.
For him and his followers, this is a holy war between Islam and the Western
world.”[33]
Islam may covet Western economic development and technology, but resists the
incursion of its political and cultural values.
The
emphasis on the religious element in the conflict does not mean it is the only
source of conflict. Of course, it is not. There is profound economic and
political conflict along with the religious, but it is religion that has driven
this from the diplomatic to the military field.
Franklin
Graham may be rather blunt in his assessment, but he is at least partly right.
There is a fundamental theological competition between Christianity and Islam,
a spiritual struggle over the path to salvation of men’s souls. What Graham and
many Christians do not realize is that Muslims and Christians alike are
preparing to receive a counterfeit Jesus. Both expect this Jesus to establish a
millennial reign of peace on Earth.
Bernard
Lewis observes in The Crisis of Islam:
Holy War and Unholy Terror, that although Western secularism is itself a
threat to Islam, most do not understand that “Christendom and Islam are two
religiously defined civilizations that were brought into conflict not by their
differences but by their resemblances.” Moreover, Muslims recognize Christians
“as having a religion of the same kind as their own, and therefore as their
primary rivals in the struggle for world domination.”[34] Indeed,
as Jenkins points out: “Muslims and Christians have so very much in common.
Scarcely known to most Christians, the Muslim scriptures are almost entirely
focused on the same characters who feature in the Christian Bible. The Quran has much more to say about the Virgin Mary than does
the New Testament, and Jesus is, apart from Muhammad, the greatest prophet of
Islam. It is Jesus, not Muhammad, Whose appearance will usher in the Day of
Judgment.”[35]
Islam teaches
that Jesus is a prophet whom Allah will send a second time to destroy the
infidels and unite Islamic believers into a worldwide kingdom.[36] Few
realize that of the five traditional pillars of Islam, the third (Zakat) requires
Muslims to financially support jihad or holy war intended to annihilate
infidels.[37]
Christians are viewed as apostates, and therefore infidels. All religions are
to be supplanted by the one pure and true religion, Islam.
One of the
most powerful symbols of Islamic aspirations is the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the oldest
mosque outside the Arabian Peninsula.
According to Bernard Lewis: “The erection of this monument, on the site of the
ancient Jewish Temple, and in the style and the vicinity of Christian monuments
such as the Holy Sepulcher and the Church of the Ascension, sent a clear
message to the Jews and, more important, the Christians.” The message from
caliphate to Christian emperor: ‘Your faith is corrupted, your time has passed.
I am now the ruler of God’s empire on Earth.’” As Lewis explains: “In the
Muslim perception, the Jews and later Christians had gone astray and had
followed false doctrines. Both religions were therefore superseded, and
replaced by Islam, the final and perfect revelation in God’s sequence. . . .
[More specifically,] just as the Jews had been overcome and superseded by the
Christians, so the Christian world order was now to be replaced by the Muslim
faith and the Islamic caliphate.”[38]
The term
“caliphate” derives from the Arabic word chalifa, meaning “successor” or
political and spiritual heir to Muhammad.[39] As The Economist magazine recently observed
in an editorial: “Mr. bin Laden and his sort are impatient for the advent of
the global caliphate.”[40]
More than a
millennium after the completion of the Dome of the Rock in 691 or 692, the
stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabia sent a profound
symbolic message to Muslims, whose grasp of history is longer than many in the
West. To Osama bin Laden and many others, American troops presented a profound
challenge by the Christian West to Islam’s mandate of world domination: For bin
Laden, “his declaration of war against the United States marks the resumption
of the struggle for religious dominance of the world that began in the seventh
century. . . . America
exemplifies the civilization and embodies the leadership of the House of War,
and like Rome
and Byzantium,
it has become degenerate and demoralized, ready to be overthrown.”[41]
To the
Islamists, Christianity poses an even greater threat to their own imperial
aspirations than do the secular materialist values of the West. To Osama bin
Laden and his Al-Qaeda forces, therefore, it is Christianity itself and America, the
leader of the Christian world, which stand in their way. Islamists envision
more than the caliphate restored in the Arab world, but as the ruler of a
worldwide Islamic state, establishing Allah’s kingdom on Earth. In this sense,
the notion of a clash of kingdoms—being synonymous with the civil-religious
competitive clash of political and theological goals—is to be taken seriously.
This is because American projection of power in the Middle
East threatens to impose not merely democratic values, but a
Christian kingdom
of God on Earth. As
Bernard Lewis observed: “You have this millennial rivalry between two world
religions, and now, from their point of view, the wrong one seems to be
winning.”[42]
Lewis
explains further: “Islam has been on the defensive ever since 1683, when the
Turkish Ottoman Empire failed to sack Christian Vienna in Austria.”
Furthermore, for over “300 years Muslims have watched in horror and humiliation
as the Christian civilizations of Europe and North America have overshadowed
them militarily, economically, and culturally.”[43] Today,
Muslims rightly perceive that Western democratic values include an emphasis on
religious freedom. Exported to the Islamic world, what has been referred to as
the “10-40 window,” democracy means having to tolerate Christian evangelism,
which is unacceptable.
Manifest Destiny’s
Inherent Problem
The war on
terrorism has given the United
States a renewed sense of commitment to the
spread of democracy. The problem is that military force has become a primary
means to that end. A democratic system imposed by overwhelming military force,
through imperialistic means, is not only self-contradictory but holds little
hope for ending the war on terrorism. The transition to a constitutional
democracy in Iraq,
even if successful, is not expected to dramatically reduce the risk of further
terrorist attacks on Western soil.
The Bush
Administration has recognized the danger of having the war on terrorism be
perceived as a revival of the medieval Crusades. Yet, Muslims perceive this
conflict in essentially those terms. As Thomas Friedman has frequently noted,
the hands of terrorists will not be slowed as long as radical Muslims are
allowed to continue to win the internal struggle between them and progressive
Muslims in other Muslim countries in the “war of ideas.” Whatever geopolitical
goals American projection of military power may achieve, it also fuels
terrorist propaganda, and aids in their recruitment efforts.[44]
However,
this may explain why Bernard Lewis, President Bush’s chief academic adviser on
Middle East policy, has established what some Defense Department officials and
foreign policy experts refer to as the Lewis
Doctrine—the idea that “instilling respect or at least fear through force
is essential for America’s security.”[45] In
other words, in time it may become more and more apparent that if Mr. Bush’s
experiment in democracy in Iraq, and thereby America’s destined war on
terrorism, is to be successful, it may be compelled to take on a more draconian
approach if democracy is truly going to have a widening influence in other
parts of the Middle East. Certainly, diplomacy and democratic reform alone will
not curb the terrorist attacks by Islamists.
Like the
doctrine of preemption, this policy is capable of creating a wider region of
conflict. The stalemate over Europe’s and America’s
efforts to persuade Iran
to end its nuclear program is one example. The recent economic sanctions placed
on Syria
for arming and allowing foreign terrorists to filter into Iraq, is
another. Indeed, since the events of 9/11 the fog is slowly lifting from the
eyes of many observers to the shocking realization that a clash of
civilizations, an unintended holy war (at least on America’s part), has been revived
and unleashed over the global war on terror.
No matter
how one chooses to evaluate the global war on terror, it is evident that there
are larger forces at play—two global phenomena that seem to be moving forward
on their own momentum. The characteristic imagery of Revelation 13, verse 11
perhaps describes it best: “Then I [the apostle John] saw another beast coming
out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but spoke like a dragon.”
If
Seventh-day Adventists correctly assume that this verse is a description of the
rise of the United States of America as the civil-religious leader of both the
political and religious worlds—as “a lamb” possessing the spirit of benevolence
in keeping with its Protestant and evangelical historical foundations, and as a
dragon where its benevolent missionary and political zeal is carried out by
force—then its prophetic destiny never needs to be in doubt in this apparent
clash of civilizations.
For
example, notice the following comparative lesson in diplomatic history
involving the United States
and its approach to foreign policy. In his book Diplomacy, which continues to be used as one of the standard textbooks
in many university graduate programs in diplomatic history and political
science, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger describes America’s
traditional role in the world during the 20th century this way: “Almost as if
according to some natural law, in every century there seems to emerge a country
with the power, the will, and the intellectual and moral impetus to shape the
entire international system in accordance with its own values . . . . In the
twentieth century, no country has influenced international relations as
decisively as the United
States. No society has more firmly
intervened in the domestic affairs of other states, or more passionately
asserted that its own values were universally applicable. . . . No nation has
been more pragmatic in the day-to-day conduct of its diplomacy, or more
ideological in the pursuit of its historic moral convictions. No country has
been more reluctant to engage itself abroad even while undertaking alliances
and commitments of unprecedented reach and scope.”[46]
Did you
take note of Mr. Kissinger’s use of the word “reluctant?” Seventh-day
Adventists believe that America’s
prophetic destiny is to repudiate its benevolent, generous, and yes,
“reluctant” lamblike principles and become transformed into a dragon. But in
what manner, and under what circumstances? As a dragon, it is interesting to
note that since 9/11 and the ensuing global war on terrorism, America has
shifted away from Mr. Kissinger’s definition of America’s manifestly benevolent
and moral role in the world to the official, if not insecure, foreign policy of
“preemptive strike”: the need to export democratic principles by force before
another power rises up to threaten or compete with it.[47] In
fact, it is interesting to note that The
American Heritage Dictionary defines America’s historical experiment
with manifest destiny as “a policy of imperialistic expansion defended as
necessary or benevolent.”
According
to Revelation 13, verses 11-15, American
imperialism—if one could rightly call it that—is expected to lead to a
religious compromise enforced by legislation and constitutionalized,
both here and abroad. In the new Iraqi constitution, religion is expected to be
blended with democratic reforms. Ironically, the Islamic approach to relations
between the state and the religious establishment is an example of what
Revelation 13 predicts, not only for the United States, but also for the
world.
The
advancing dual phenomena of steady democratic and Christian advancement
throughout the world, particularly as embodied in America’s manifest destiny to lead
the world, are having their effect. These dual phenomena represent more than
just a threat to Islam. They clearly tell us that Christ’s coming is sooner,
not later.
The Clash Between
Heaven and Earth
While America’s
global war on terror and the forced advancement of democratization in the
Muslim world since 9/11 may open up
the heartlands of Islam to Christianity, the most important question to ask is:
“Which gospel will be preached, whose kingdom promoted?” Are we all striving
for the same kingdom, or is it possible that much of the religious and
political world—made up mostly of Muslims and Christians—are preparing to
receive a counterfeit savior and a kingdom of their own making?
The Gospel
is advancing on the heels of the American military, and whether or not military
or other forms of force are effective in the spread of democracy, their use is
foreign to the spirit of the Gospel. Only one Gospel is consistent with
Christ’s declaration: “My Kingdom is not of this world. If My Kingdom were of
this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the
Jews; but now My Kingdom is not from here” (John 18:36). Christ’s Gospel,
Christ’s millennial Kingdom, is Heaven-based (see Revelation 20). Yet another,
more popular, gospel proclaims that the millennial kingdom of God
will be established on Earth. (Its adherents are also the same ones most
adamant about tearing down the constitutional principle of the separation
between church and state.)
Those
proclaiming this popular gospel are among the most ardent supporters of
American unilateralism and the expanded use of military power throughout the
world. As Andrew Bacevich, Director of the Center for
International Relations at Boston University argues, American militarism
emerged as a reaction by “various groups in American society—soldiers,
politicians [Democrats as much as Republicans], intellectuals, strategists,
Christian evangelicals, even purveyors of pop culture . . . as the antidote to all
the ills besetting the country as a consequence of Vietnam and the 1960s.”
But, he
contends—and rather convincingly—of this group the most significant
contribution to the rise of the new American spirit of militarism has come from
evangelicals and their passion-driven vision for establishing Christ’s Kingdom
on Earth: “Conservative Christians have conferred a presumptive moral
palatability on any occasion on which the United States resorts to force. They
have fostered among the legions of believing Americans a predisposition to see U.S. military
power as inherently good, perhaps even a necessary adjunct to the
accomplishment of Christ’s saving mission. In doing so, they have nurtured the
preconditions that have enabled the American infatuation with military power to
flourish. Put another way, were it not for the support offered by several tens
of millions of evangelicals, militarism in this deeply and genuinely religious
country becomes inconceivable.”[48]
When
appealing in April 2003 for Pope John Paul II to intervene and prevent the U.S.
invasion of Iraq, Mohammad T. Al-Rashid, an Islamic scholar writing from Saudi
Arabia, also made the following interesting broadside: “Fundamentalism is not
the exclusive domain of the Middle East. The Far Right in America has its
agenda and now that they have control of the mighty American war machine, the
problem is global.” He asked, “Will Iraq be the first drop of blood on the road
to Armageddon?”[49]
No wonder
Islamists view this as a religious war. Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, after beheading
one of his captives, recently remarked in a recording that “we will carry on
our jihad against the Western infidel and the Arab apostate until Islamic rule
is back on Earth.”[50] The
irony in all of this is that fundamentalist Muslims and Christians alike are
susceptible of welcoming the same counterfeit savior, Satan appearing as
Christ, and a counterfeit earthly kingdom.
This leads
us to a more serious conclusion in this discussion. Far more important than the
outcome of any earthly clash of civilizations is the clash of kingdoms between
Heaven and Earth. Indeed, the real battle is to help people to understand the
true nature and meaning of Christ’s Kingdom, and the eternal grace and
character of the King. Only the righteousness of Christ can save mankind—not
any militaristic, legislative, or utopian attempt to save the race. The three
angels’ messages found in Revelation 14:6-12 can be summed up with these ten
words: “The essence of all righteousness is loyalty to our Redeemer.”[51] Perhaps
this is what Christ meant when He uttered that most sobering of truths: “He who
stands firm [or endures] to the end will be saved.”[52]
That is
why, during this time of seeming uncertainty, during this global war on terror,
our prayers need to ascend to the merciful God of Heaven for global
intervention and specifically for the personal courage to be used by the Holy
Spirit to prepare the peoples of all the civilized world to receive the true
Jesus, and His Kingdom prepared for them in Heaven, when He comes (see John
14:1-3). Indeed, understanding the present and future—however awkwardly or
precisely—is not enough. During these difficult times, our faith experience
must not shrink from the mission assigned to each of us by Jesus Christ Himself.
His personal calling reaches all of us where we are.
NOTE
Gregory W. Hamilton is President of the Northwest
Religious Liberty Association, the government relations division of the North
Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in the states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. He also serves as Director of
the Office of Public Affairs and Religious Liberty for the North Pacific Union
Conference. Gregory and his wife Laura live in Vancouver, Washington.
[1]Endnotes
[1]
President Thomas Jefferson used the metaphor “manifest destiny” to describe the
continental, coast-to-coast vision of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, called
the Corps of Discovery, whose mission began in St. Louis, Missouri,
on May 14, 1804,
and was completed when returning to St.
Louis on September 23, 1806, nearly 200 years ago. However,
Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were the first to
internationalize the concept of “manifest destiny” in relationship to the
marketing of democratic values, both militarily and diplomatically. This is
well established in high school and undergraduate college textbooks in American
history. For an interesting short discussion of the history behind America’s
notion of “manifest destiny,” and parallels to today’s events in the global war
on terror, see “Special Report: America
and Empire: Manifest Destiny Warmed Up?” in The
Economist, August 16,
2003, pp. 19-21.
[3]
“We are led,
by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our
land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best
hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. . . .
So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of
democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the
ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. This is not primarily the task of
arms, though we will defend ourselves and our friends by force of arms when
necessary. Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens,
and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities. . . . The difficulty
of the task is no excuse for avoiding it. America’s influence is not unlimited,
but, fortunately for the oppressed, America's influence is considerable, and we
will use it confidently in freedom's cause. . . . We will persistently clarify
the choice before every ruler and every nation: the moral choice between
oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right.
America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that
women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to
live at the mercy of bullies. . . . Today, America speaks anew to the peoples
of the world: All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United
States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you
stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.” See Office of the Press
Secretary, January 20, 2005, Inaugural
Address by President George W. Bush, United States Capitol, Washington,
D.C., 11:59 a.m. EST. For a transcript of President Bush’s speech, visit the
official Web site of the White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/01/print/20050120-3.html.
[4]
Ibid. The traditional American theme of “manifest destiny” was unmistakable: “From the day of our
founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights
and dignity and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of
Heaven and Earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of
self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to
be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our nation. It
is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement
of our nation’s security, and the calling of our time. So it is the policy of
the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and
institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending
tyranny in our world.”
[5]
According to speechwriters in the White House, the inspiration for President W.
Bush’s speech was from former Soviet dissident and political prisoner Natan Sharansky. See Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer, The Case for
Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004). The other source was Robert Kagan’s Of Paradise
and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (New York: Vintage
Books, 2004), which provides on pages 85-103 America’s historical rationale for
“manifest destiny” dating back to its founding. Kagan
makes this significant observation: “Americans have always been
internationalists . . . but their internationalism has always been a by-product
of their nationalism.”
[6]
This theme is prominent in The 9/11
Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Upon the United States, Authorized Edition (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
2004), pp. 362-383. See also “In Search of Pro-Americanism: Why America Is More
Loved Than You Think” by Anne Applebaum in Foreign Policy July/August 2005, pp.
32-40; and Robert Kagan’s Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order
(New York: Vintage Books, 2004).
[8]
The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report
of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,
Authorized Edition (New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004), pp. 362-383.
[9]
The Economist, September 11, 2004, p. 32. The
primary source for this quote can be found in The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 362.
[10]
An excellent slate of articles entitled “Debating a World Without Israel”
thematically titled on the cover of Foreign
Policy magazine with “Is Israel What’s Wrong With the Middle East?” clearly
demonstrates that democratic reform in the Middle East is not only desired by
Islamic countries, but it is desired by Arab and Islamic leaders in part to
demonstrate that Israel is, and always has been, the problem in this region of
the world. This has certainly been Colonel Qadhafi’s
underlying strategy. This merely confirms the historical, cultural, and
psychological nature of the seemingly never-ending Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. See the lead article in the debate by Josef Joffe,
“A World Without Israel,” Foreign Policy
January/February 2005, pp. 36-42; and the articles responding to Joffe’s article in Foreign
Policy March/April 2005: 56-65.
[11]
The Economist, August 16, 2003, p. 19. “Stung by the
events of September 11th, America is no longer shy about
spilling blood, even its own. Weren’t the Afghan and Iraqi wars largely
designed to show just that?”
[12]
“Because We Could,” The New York Times,
June 4, 2003; and
“The War Over the War,” August
3, 2003.
[13]
See Gregg Easterbrook, “American Power Moves Beyond the Mere Super,” The New York Times, April 27, 2003; and Fareed Zakaria’s explanation of
why America’s
unprecedented power scares the world: “Arrogant Empire,” Newsweek, March
24, 2003. Online: http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/032403.html.
Easterbrook puts it this way: “No other military is even close to the United States.
The American military is now the strongest the world has ever known, both in
absolute terms and relative to other nations; stronger than the Wehrmacht in 1940, stronger than the legions at the height
of Roman power. For years to come, no other nation is likely even to rival
American might. Which means: the global arms race is over, with the United States
the undisputed heavyweight champion. Other nations are not even trying to match
American armed force, because they are so far behind they have no chance of
catching up. The great-powers arms race, in progress for centuries, has ended
with the rest of the world conceding triumph to the United States.”
[14]
The Economist, August 16, 2003, p. 19. International
hegemony, influence and power “on a scale never seen before.” The article
refers to America
as the world’s “Globocop.” “What other country
divides the world up into five military commands with four-star generals to
match, keeps several hundred thousand of its legionaries on active duty in 137
countries—and is now unafraid to use them?” This article highlights a quote by
Max Boot, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who refers to America as an
empire, but only uniquely: “America’s
destiny is to police the world.”
[15]
What followed the demise of the Rome
of the Caesars? The Rome
of the papacy. America
is both wrapped into one. This is my emphasis. See transcript of a panel
discussion response by Charles Krauthammer: “Religion and American Foreign
Policy: Prophetic, Perilous, Inevitable.” A discussion cosponsored by The Pew
Forum on Religion and Public Life and The Brookings Institution in conjunction
with Georgetown University and The Brookings Foreign Policy and Governance
Studies Programs, February 5, 2003. See also Charles Krauthammer, Democratic Realism: An American Foreign
Policy for a Unipolar World (Washington, D.C.:
AEI Press, Publisher for the American Enterprise Institute, 2004), pp. 1-28,
from which his response originates.
[16]
See endnote 19, second portion.
[17]
The phrase “Clash of Civilizations” originated with Princeton Professor Bernard
Lewis in a 1990 essay “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” and was subsequently
popularized by Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington in a 1993 article published
in Foreign Affairs called “The Clash
of Civilizations?” See Foreign Affairs,
Summer 1993, pp. 22-49.
[18]
Matthew 28:19 and 24:14 (NIV).
[19]
Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The
Coming of Global Christianity (New
York: Oxford
University Press, 2002),
p. 168. What is sometimes referred to as the “10-40 window” is a description of
the actual geographical region between ten and forty degrees latitude,
consisting of a wide swath of North Africa,
the Middle East, and including the largest
Islamic countries in the world, Indonesia
and Pakistan.
As an example of the emphasis on reaching those in the 10-40 window, see the
mission statements of Gospel Outreach and Adventist World Radio, respectively,
by logging onto their Web sites: www.goaim.org
and www.awr.org.
[21]
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: A Touchstone Book
published by Simon & Schuster, 1996).
[22]
The Next Christendom, pp. 5, 6.
[24]
Sudan
and Nigeria
are prime examples of persecution. Indonesia has been fraught with violence
between jihadists and Christians; while in Saudi
Arabia it is very difficult for any Christian, even foreign workers, to worship
in private, much less in public. In many countries, Muslims who convert may be
killed. As Jenkins puts it in The Next
Christendom: “We have to remember that for a Muslim to abandon his or her
faith is apostasy, an act punishable by death under Islamic law. As the maxim
holds, ‘Islam is a one-way door. You can enter through it, but you cannot
leave’” (p. 168).
[26]
Ibid. Case in point: Iranian Shiites have carefully organized Iraqi
counterparts, who are poised to take control of the new Iraq, shorn of
its secular Sunni administration under Saddam Hussein.
[27]
The Next Christendom, p. 6.
[28]
Ibid., pp. 189, 190.
[30] Franklin Graham, The
Name (Nashville:
Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2002). Quotes are from a Washington Post editorial, April 15, 2003.
[31]
Huntington
observed in his groundbreaking article in Foreign
Affairs (Summer 1993), that “world politics is entering a new phase, in
which the great division among humankind and the dominating source of
international conflict will be cultural. Civilizations—the highest cultural
groupings of people—are differentiated from each other by religion, history,
language, and tradition. These divisions are deep and increasing in importance.
From Yugoslavia
to the Middle East to Central
Asia, the fault lines of civilizations are the battle lines of the
future. In this emerging era of cultural conflict the United States
must forge alliances with similar cultures and spread its values wherever
possible. With alien civilizations the West must be accommodating if possible,
but confrontational if necessary” (contents summary, p. iii). Huntington predicted with amazing accuracy
that “the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict
will be cultural. Nation-states will remain the most powerful actors in world
affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between
nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will
dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the
battle lines of the future” (p. 22).
[34]
Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy
War and Unholy Terror (New York:
The Modern Library/Random House, Inc., 2003), p. 43.
[35]
The Next Christendom, p. 168.
[37]
Zakat, which initially meant alms, later came
to signify payment of taxes for purposes of war. See The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 372. “The Western notion of the
separation of civic and religious duty does not exist in Islamic cultures.
Funding charitable works is an integral function of the governments of the
Islamic world. It is so ingrained in Islamic culture that in Saudi Arabia,
for example, a department within the Saudi Ministry of Finance and National
Economy collects zakat
directly, much as the U.S. Internal Revenue Service collects payroll
withholding tax. Closely tied to zakat is the dedication of the government to propagating the
Islamic faith, particularly the Wahhabi sect that
flourishes in Saudi Arabia.”
The Ministry of Islamic Affairs in Saudi Arabia “uses zakat and
government funds to spread Wahhabi beliefs throughout
the world, including in mosques and schools.”
[38]
The Crisis of Islam, pp. 44, 45.
[39]
Ibid., pp. xvii-xix. See also The
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.
[41]
The Crisis of Islam, pp. 162, 163.
Westerners have difficulty understanding that Muslims perceive Christian
culture as thoroughly corrupt and decadent. Christians are seen as the ones who
eat pork, drink liquor, and indulge in pornography and obsessive sexuality.
This provides Seventh-day Adventists with a unique opportunity to build
bridges, since we share the Islamic rejection of pork, liquor, and decadent
Western values.
[42]
The Wall Street Journal Europe,
February 3, 2004,
p. A10.