In 1984 I went to attend a lecture at Oral Roberts University, a major evangelist institution in America, but I was politely refused entry. I later found out that I was denied entry because I had facial hair. I did not make a big deal out of this. I thought to myself, “Maybe the event was sponsored by Gillette.” Years later, I wondered how ironically similar this ignorant mindset is to that of extremist from the Muslim world, who would not welcome me because I don’t have enough facial hair. The US has indeed changed. That mindset is today in power and its values affect global foreign policies and the livelihood of millions around the world.
Bush is the first un-elected President of America, installed by a right-wing Supreme Court in a sort of judicial coup d’etat. He is the first to actively subvert one of the pillars of American democracy: The separation of church and state. There are now daily prayer meetings and Bible study groups in every branch of government, and religious institutions are being funded to control educational and welfare organizations that have traditionally been the property of the state.
Bush is the first president to specify “Jesus Christ” instead of the ecumenical “God,” and he has encircled himself with evangelical Christians who influence his domestic and foreign policies greatly. The Christian-Jewish “Interfaith Zionist Leadership Summit” held in Washington last month was “to oppose rewarding murderous Palestinian territory with statehood.” At the conference there were some of the most important representatives of the Christian right; supported by a whole infrastructure of churches, radio stations and Bible college courses offering “Middle-East history.” Since the late 19th century, an increasing number of fundamentalists have come to believe that the second coming of Christ is bound up to be the political geography of Israel. Forget about the pre-1967 borders, for them the borders that count are the ones appearing on maps at the back of the Bible.
The acceptance of Israel by the UN in 1949 brought excitement to those who believed the second coming was being prepared for. A similar reaction greeted the six-day war in 1967. The displacement of Palestinians was insignificant compared with the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Evangelical Christianity believes that the biblical prophecy leads to Armageddon and finally to the conversion of the Jews to Christianity. According to the most prominent the Christian Zionists, Hal Lindsey, the valley from Galilee to Eilat will be bloody and “144,000 Jews would kneel down before Jesus and be saved, but the rest would perish in the mother of all holocausts.” These lunatic ravings would be irrelevant had they not been so influential. This has made more room in the US for bigotry and intolerance. It has also been a fertile ground for Islamophobia — the nasty cousin of anti-Semitism. Muslims are feeling discriminated and demonized and are witnessing a palpable sense of alienation in schools, universities, in the workplace and most severely on TV, radio and the Internet.
