Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 17, 1995 TAG: 9509160002
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES A. HAUGHT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Fanaticism.
The 1990s are a heyday of deadly zealots. Outside of war zones, today's worst threat comes from True Believers who kill strangers to make political or religious statements. A recent tally:
nMuslim militants bombed New York's World Trade Center to smite ``the Great Satan.''
n``Pro-life'' fundamentalists murdered workers at abortion clinics, twice in Florida and once in Massachusetts.
nNutty ``militias'' preached hatred for the American government - and fellow travelers are charged in the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 169.
nFundamentalists who want to make Algeria an Islamic theocracy shot teen-age girls in the face for not wearing veils.
nJapanese cultists allegedly loosed poison gas in Tokyo's subway, killing a dozen commuters and sickening 5,500.
nSikhs seeking to turn Punjab into a theocracy called ``the Land of the Pure'' gunned down Hindus at weddings.
nDoomsday cultists holed up with David Koresh at Waco and burned themselves alive with their children.
nHindu mobs destroyed a Muslim mosque which they said defiled an Indian hilltop where Lord Rama was born 900,000 years ago - triggering Hindu-Muslim riots that killed 2,000.
nMembers of the mysterious Solar Temple sect perished in a mass murder-suicide in Switzerland and Canada.
nMuslim suicide bombers killed busloads of Jews in Israel - and a Jewish doctor with a machine gun mowed down 30 Muslims at prayer.
Much of the world's fanaticism involves religion. In Islamic lands, multitudes clamor for theocracy, and a few kill to achieve it.
America likewise has a fundamentalist movement with a violent fringe.
Television evangelists and their political organizations rage against abortion doctors - but deny responsibility for followers who turn their words into lethal actions.
America is more pious than other advanced democracies, and suffers a high rate of religious ferment.
Currently, the so-called Christian Right is gaining ground. It seeks to impose religion in public schools, ostracize homosexuals, censor movies and magazines, increase executions, revoke women's right to choose abortion, curb sex education, cut welfare for the poor, curb teaching of evolution, provide tax money to church schools, end public funding of arts, allow carrying of pistols, reduce day-care centers, amend the constitution to require a balanced budget, etc.
To call this agenda ``Christian'' seems bizarre.
The Religious Right's claim to moral superiority is shaky. For example, Beverly Russell was a loud-praying South Carolina leader of the Christian Coalition - until it was revealed that he was a child-molester. He had sex with his 15-year-old stepdaughter, Susan Smith, according to evidence in her trial for drowning her two sons.
And the movement suffers from goofiness.
TV minister Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, has declared that his prayers can deflect hurricanes, that he is ``God's prophet,'' and that the European Community may signal the coming of ``the Antichrist.'' In his nutty book, ``The New World Order,'' Robertson said a conspiracy by the Illuminati secret society and Jewish international bankers causes most wars and other horrors. He said American presidents unwittingly serve ``a tightly knit cabal whose goal is nothing less than a new order for the human race under the domination of Lucifer.''
Vaguely allied to the Religious Right is America's zoo of armed, white, hate groups: self-styled ``militias,'' the ``Christian Identity'' movement, neo-Nazis, Posse Comitatus, white supremacists, the Church of Jesus Christ Christian Aryan Nations, skinheads, the Cosmotheist Church, the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord, the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), the Christian Patriots Defense League, etc.
Leaders of these outfits tend to be born-again ministers or gun dealers, or both.
They preach paranoia. That U.S. officials are conspiring to disarm ``patriots'' and let the United Nations suck America into a ``new world order.'' That Los Angeles street gangs are being trained to seize guns from American homes. That black helicopters stalk ``patriots'' by night. That secret prison camps have been built to hold the ``patriots.''
In my state of West Virginia, one militia leader, the Rev. Ervin ``Butch`` Paugh, solemnly told news reporters: ``The U.N. forces worldwide are going to be the powers that help enforce the Antichrist's dictates.''
Out of these right-to-bear-arms fever swamps came the plotters responsible for the Oklahoma City tragedy.
Sometimes I think no cure is possible for murderous fanaticism. What can be done about zealots who think it's heroic to shoot unveiled teen-age girls in the face?
Sooner or later, terrorists of the sort who bombed the World Trade Center may acquire enough fissionable material for a crude nuclear device - one that can be trucked unnoticed to mid-Manhattan, or taken in a boat up the Potomac to the heart of Washington. If that happens, the day of the fanatic will have reached colossal proportions.
What protection can be devised against belief-driven killers? All of America's police and intelligence apparatus didn't prevent the New York and Oklahoma City blasts.
However, sensible people must do whatever is possible to avert tragedy. Aside from beefed-up security and surveillance, the only remedy I can envision is to try to defuse dangerous passions before they get out of control.
One defusing device was prescribed by America's founders: Keep church and state separate. Let each faith operate freely, without impinging on others. Never let majority believers use governmental power to coerce smaller groups.
That's a formula for conflict. As for crackpot cults and gun-obsessed groups that breed murder, maybe constant public exposure of their irrationality may dissuade potential joiners.
Meanwhile, we live in a time when the threat of international war seems less menacing than the peril of True Believers in our midst. It is a curse of the 1990s.
James Haught, author of two books on religious extremism, is editor of The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette.
- New York Times News Service
by CNB