Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 16, 1991 TAG: 9102150386
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By GEORGE W. CORNELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
It already has brought alienating incidents among some Muslims, Christians and Jews.
The war "has little to do with religion," said Carl W. Ernst, religion professor and specialist on Islam at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif.
However, he said "images and stereotypes" and "loose associations" have created misrepresentations that the war is somehow connected with religious differences.
"This is not a rational or reasoned position and it comes mostly from people who are not well informed," Ernst said in an interview. "It's a very serious problem."
It is aggravated by political exploitation of religious feelings, such as calls by Iraq's Saddam Hussein for "holy war," and by Jordanian King Hussein's declaration that "this war is against all Arabs and all Muslims."
What also scrambles the picture is that predominantly Christian and Muslim nations are allied against a mainly Muslim nation, Iraq, which also has bombed an uninvolved Jewish state, Israel.
President Bush, though asking God's guidance, has emphasized that the "war has nothing to do with religion per se." It "is not a Christian war, a Jewish war or a Muslim war," he says, but a "just war."
Nevertheless, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab "hate crimes" have soared in this country since the conflict commenced, according to the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington.
It documented 56 such incidents in January, 48 after the allied offensive began Jan. 16, and 42 in the five months of 1990 after Iraq invaded Kuwait, compared with only five in the preceding seven months.
The rate was up more than a hundredfold.
At the same time, Christian agencies have encountered increased hostilities in mainly Muslim countries, including an office bombing in Turkey. Resentments drove most missionaries out of Jordan and Iraqi missiles hit Jewish civilians.
"Many Christian workers had to evacuate the war zone because of changed attitudes," Ernst said. "This is going to make it harder for Christians after the war. Many Muslims consider it a `Christian' war.
"After a gigantic invasion such as the Middle East is experiencing now, hostilities toward the West and toward Christian missions will certainly be increased."
He also said "discrimination and attacks on American Muslims" have become a threatening, groundless byproduct of the war, although the war was divorced from religious differences.
It includes Muslim, Christian and Western Jewish troops among the allied forces, and Muslims and a few Christians among Iraqi soldiers.
"This war is not for religion," said Imam Hamad Chebli, religious director of the Islamic Center at Monmouth Junction, N.J. "Some people who try to call it that are creating untrue mischief.
"Some leaders from both sides push their agendas, but it has nothing to do with the religion of God."
Chebli, who lived through years of fighting in Lebanon, said that conflict also was not over religion but over business and commerce. "Religion can never be a reason for people fighting each other."
The Rev. Wadi Haddad, an Episcopal theologian and specialist on Christian-Muslim relations at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, called Iraqi attempts to stir religious animosities a "deceptive appeal."
However, he pointed out that it is directed to a mostly little-educated populace and "the overwhelming majority will respond to it and take it at face value, no matter whether it's true or not.
He said the "elite are very cynical" in misleading the populace in this way.
He said similar misapprehensions occur in the United States as reflected in anti-Muslim incidents. "There are people whose emotions need scapegoats," he said. They "express their anger at their closest Arab neighbor."
To counter it, he suggests "we must say again and again, there are Arabs on our side who are losing soldiers, too."
Concerning any attempts to portray the war as a religious conflict, the Rev. Nicholas B. van Dyck of Princeton, N.J., president of Religion in American Life, including Christian, Jewish and Muslim bodies, said:
"It's a blasphemous use of religion by military and political adventurers."
Ernst said that although Saddam Hussein sought to stir religious fervors, he "has no Islamic credentials," and heads an "extreme secular nationalist party."
On the other hand, a "common Western stereotype" that Islam is a "religion of the sword" also is misleading, Ernst said, adding:
"The attitude is a fantasy that probably derives from the West's anxiety about its own violence toward Islamic countries, from the Crusades onward."
by CNB