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of the
killers
When in comes to condoning violence it’s
a case of the christian kettle and the muslim pot.
a case of the christian kettle and the muslim pot.
Those Muslims who plant car bombs and turn their bodies into human bombs
and take the lives of innocent people are not simply proselytising. Of course
they believe that Allah will be pleased and rewarding but their action is not
simply a religious gesture; it is intended as a political act aimed at a political
end - though, of course, Allah‘s approval of their action makes it a sound
investment in their perceived ‘hereafter’.
Recently the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who is apparently
second in command, so to speak, of the Anglican Church speculated on the
morality of Muslims who do this sort of thing. In fact he asked what conception
these people had of their God. It is an excellent question and it implies
that the Archbishop wonders how any rational individual could conceive of
a good God who would endorse the slaughter of innocent people. That
is precisely the sort of question that atheists frequently pose when told that
the central purpose in life is to please an omnipotent being, thing or force with
the power but not the will to frustrate the events that cause so much grief
and pain to us mere human beings.
But the Archbishop’s interest in the Muslim killer’s perception of God
would seem to imply a certain moral selectivity on his part; indeed, given
the facts, it would seem that what troubles him about suicide bombers, for
example, is not the consequences of their action but the means they employ
in the performance of their evil deeds.
The United States, Britain and the other major nations of world
capitalism spend some 900 billion dollars annually on maintaining armed
forces whose purpose is the defence or expansion of the interests of their
national capitalist class. Much of this fantastic wealth is devoted to
the maintenance and development of aircraft and missiles destined to
attack cities and, as we know from experience, kill vast numbers of
completely innocent people. The grim total of those innocents murdered
by terrorists who plant bombs or use their persons to deliver death over the
last century is a very tiny fraction of the innocents murdered by massive
sophisticated aerial devices, and it is a fair assumption that many if not most
of the flying state killers profess one or other of the Christian faiths.
The Archbishop of York is simply articulating theselective attitude of the churches
to the killing business. In fact by confining his speculation to the terrorist’s conception
of God he is effectively restricting his condemnation of the killing of
innocent people to suicide bombers, car bombers or those who plant bombs
as opposed to those who drop massive bombs.
This is not meant to imply that the numbers slaughtered determines the
measure of guilt. Numbers do not influence the principle and both legal
and illegal military operations don’t confine their anti-human activates
within certain ‘morally’ defined limits.
they make it acceptable by claiming it as an inevitable consequence of what
they call the weakness of our ‘human nature’ - which, peculiarly, the ‘human
nature’ of socialists seems to
lack.
It would be a fairly safe bet that Dr Sentamu’s academic distinctionis theology especially Christian theology - effectively, interpreting
ancient religious texts to suit the mores of an intellectually superior society. He
must at least have read the Bible but surprisingly, while wondering at the
barbaric licence a Muslim killer finds in the Koran, he fails to acknowledge
the appalling savagery endorsed in the Old Testament by his own God.
Does he, for example, accept that people who break the Sabbath or who
are disobedient to their parents or commit adultery should be stoned to
death or that the ‘chosen people’ of the Lord should slaughter their enemies?
Does he accept the modern Christian view that the slaughter of anonymous
innocents can legitimately constitute a ‘just war’ or that the state can set aside
the Fifth Commandment?
Socialists can empathise with the Archbishop’s puzzlement at a Muslim
killer’s perception of Allah and the fact that he is confused by it manifests
what is good in the human condition.
Doubtless that goodness would be outraged by the brutal endorsements of
the God he believes in but that is part of the complexity of religious belief - no
stranger, indeed, than the incantations and prayers of humans supposedly
wicked in their nature imploring the compassion of an all-merciful god.
The Archbishop, to his credit, raised a more profane issue when
he roundly condemned the current Labour government for its encroaching
infringement of civil liberties. As an native of Uganda he probably
experienced the dictatorship of Idi Amin and like anyone who values the
limited liberties of political democracy he expressed his grave concerns at the
growing authoritarianism of the Blair government. Indeed, when you think
about it, it might lead you to wonder how the publicly religious Tony Blair
conceives of his God.
RICHARD MONTAGUE
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