Americans, particularly Republicans, really like to invoke God; especially when great things happen. I notice they don't have much divine, gleeful explanation for all the bad things that happen though. They evidently prefer to think that God was watching the Super Bowl just like them, and that the fate of his favorite team (chosen people?) on 3rd and 1 is miles more important than a hundred million people with HIV.
Of course a few popular Christian evangelists attribute wild fires, hurricanes and such to their loving and just God's punishment for there being working, voting, taxpaying homosexual American citizens.
I still don't know what their proposed biblically-inspired solution for all this homosexuality is. Prisons for gays? Mass extermination? Natural disasters sure seem a sloppy and uncertain way for an omnipotent all-knowing God to go about it if you ask me. God's solution doesn't seem to be working. And it's hard for voters to make the connection between hurricanes and sin, however easy it is for Pat Robertson and his herd. Then again, man has always fit rather awkwardly into God's plan.
The Islamic Muslims have the same problem. They too invoke God in most foolish and ignorant ways. Perhaps to a more absurd degree it might appear at first. But actually they are far more sober and practical about it than the American Christians. For instance, they don't believe God is a sports fan like Texas Longhorn fans, and the rest of the Bush/GOP Christian base do. And they stick to the no-pork rules etc.
The Muslims and Allah are just the subject of a lot of bad PR. Violent unsettling video, most of their own making, is widely trafficked in Western media and they are much more overt (less insidious?) than the Christians, publicly praying three times a day no matter where they are, and blowing up suicide bombs to drive the Christian invaders from their "holy land" of Islam; real attention-getters, those Muslim Jihadists. The video of 9/11 had millions more replays than any MTV video ever. They rejoice in all of this, believing Allah ordains their actions.
If one considers Commander-in-Chief Bush's "favorite political philosopher" is Jesus, he quite possibly similarly believes his crusade to invade Islam is God-ordained, the same way, it is widely assumed, the 9/11 lunatic Islamic hijackers proclaimed Allah Akbar! (God is great!), as they crashed into the World Trade Center.
Whether you can see the similarity or not, that is how the indigenous Muslims see Bush and the Americans in Islam, and how Bush's Christian GOP political base sees it. The religious war is clearly the focus of both.
The Bush/Islamic wars are:
Religious fundamentalist right-wing anti-democracy, Christian conservative extremists.
VS
Religious fundamentalist right-wing anti-democracy Muslim conservative extremists.
There are no liberals fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. No matter what you believe you may be assured of that.
In fact, the American Christian GOP conservatives share directly almost every religious/moral/political belief with the Islamic Muslims. They just have a slightly different mythical supreme being.
They are both, amongst many other things: Anti-gay, they both hate Jews and atheists, they oppose birth control as well as abortion, they believe women are less-than-worthy of God or man....and of course they hate and want to kill anyone who doesn't share their religious beliefs.
But most important, they are both pro-theocracy and anti-democracy. That man should live by God's law and not man's law is basic to their political belief. I say this is most important because for all the GOP/Christians' talk about Democracy and freedom, God is a dictator and all religions are dictatorships; including Christianity.
The Koran and Bible, and all of the laws in them, were not debated and enacted by an elected parliament. They are dictates from God. Dictate is the word from which the word dictator is derived.
In the end, there's not a spit of difference between mass murderers Tim McVeigh and David Koresch; to name just two American homegrown White racist Christian bigot homicidal maniacs.....and the 9/11 Islamic Jihad terrorists. I'm pretty sure that their victims would agree if they could speak.
This all came home to roost with me when a Christian with whom I went to catechism and knew all my life, was incredulous to learn from me that I had been a devout atheist since I was twelve years old. I remember wondering, as a Nun warned me I would burn in hell forever, why God would want to hurt a kid like me. This "Christian" blurted out:
"If you don't believe in God, what keeps you from killing people?!"
I replied, a little terror racing through my brain:
"What do you mean? Are you telling me that God is the only thing that keeps you from killing people?"
The conversation was lost on him too, just like everything else. I prayed that he remain devoutly religious at least till I got out of his sight.
His Christian brethren however have demonstrated in Iraq and Afghanistan that indeed, assured God ordains it, mass murder is perfectly A-OK.
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