Two right wings

A report published yesterday by the Pew Institute states that their survey showed that 62% of conservative/evangelical Christians in the US approved torture of Islamic militants in order to get information. This compares to less than 50% approval by the general population. We might expect that evangelical Christians would be less tolerant of torture and mistreatment and more accepting of others and their differences. Instead, it seems that we find the opposite. How can we make sense of this?

Christian religions teach tolerance but conservative Christians appear to have little tolerance. This is not peculiar to conservative Christians. Nany religions (including Islam) profess tolerance while their followers frequently behave with intolerance. Their behaviors are not congruent with their professed beliefs. This conflict in values can occur because intolerance is a general characteristic of all groups, regardless of the values they profess.

Intolerance results from the anxiety provoked by the threat of change in values due to exposure to conflicting values. In recent years exposure to other values has been provided by the ubiquitous electronic media. The more rigid the values, the more intolerant its followers are. Exposure to tolerant, humanist values frightens extremists because of this vulnerability. Radical Islam began being faced with an onslaught of exposure to Western cultural values, values totally different from the traditional radical Islamist position. We showered the world with television, with products, with commercials, with travel and tourists destroying isolation and separation. Intolerance can only thrive when it is sheltered from alternative values. The extremist Islamists such as the Taliban saw their young people being seduced by new images and ideas.

As the radical Islamists saw their values and beliefs being undermined by our liberal and multicultural ones, they became more anxious and ultimately angry. The "9-11" attack, like the many smaller ones before it, were not intended to destroy us. Instead, their attempt was intended to polarize us against "them" and to unify the Muslim world in a last ditch attempt to protect their toppling power and religious structures. They wanted then and they want now to provoke a religious war, which they see as their only chance to preserve their power and religious ideals.

What group in the West is most threatened by Muslim attacks? Just what you would expect: those people, religious or not, who are most intolerant and threatened by different beliefs, just like the Taliban. Our religious right was not directly threatened by Muslim beliefs; they hardly knew that Islam existed. So the Taliban (as a type) had to bring the conflict to them, which they have done by the kinds of terrorist acts which most oppose our tolerant beliefs. They behead people, they stone women, they torture prisoners, AND they release videos showing this. Why publicize these atrocities? Precisely because they will provoke the most reaction from the extremists among us. It is the very unreasonableness of their behavior that garners our attention. Like watching a magician, we see what we are meant to see.

The more they can encourage the West to polarize against them, the more able they will be to get support from the Islamist moderates. While their behaviors are repugnant to most of the Islamist moderates, that doesn't matter in the long run, because the Islamist extremists believe that as the holy war becomes more immanent, the moderates will finally pull together with the extemists. The Taliban hopes the moderates will line up behind them at last.

Religion has ultimately little to do with this. It is our tolerance and acceptance of others they cannot bear, not our religious beliefs. The beliefs of the majority of the Western world includes loving our neighbors, tolerance, returning good for evil, and so on. As we become more frightened and angered by the Taliban, we move away from our beliefs into attitudes and values that mirror theirs. Ironically we become more like those we fight.

Perhaps we should just give them more television sets and more media machines.