Zealots Make Me Nervous

Zealotry makes most of very uncomfortable. Philosophically, that doesn't make it necessarily wrong or right. I guess I'm like most people and try to get along with everybody, without discussions ever becoming heated and mortal wounds being inflicted on friendships. Also like most, I try to keep my religious beliefs to myself and expect others to do the same, unless asked. Like politics, religion can spark some really hard feelings among otherwise civilized people. This also may be why most of us in the West can't quite get our arms around the problems in the Middle East.

Whenever I think of zealotry I think of the history of such intensity: Nazi Germany, al-Qaeda, et al. Zealotry based on hatred usually ends up killing a few million people, most of them innocent of any crime other than being a certain faith, nationality or color. But what of religious zealotry? There are religious scholars who can point to historical precedent of zealotry based on faith having wreaked a good bit of havoc over time, as well. So, then, is zealotry itself a crime? Is it synonymous with terrorism? Why do Islamic zealots hate the West so much?

Most western cultures have long since abandoned the notion that religion has any place in everyday life. Not so in the middle east. Almost since Abraham sired Isaac and Ishmael, there has existed a schism among the peoples of the Arab countries and Israel that has survived thousands of years and countless attempts to resolve. Isaac was the promised son of Sarah, his wife, both late in years. But some years prior to that, the tale says, Sarah, tired of waiting for God, gave her servant girl, Hagar, to Abraham. They bore a son, Ishmael. That God promised both heirs prosperity and that great nations would ensue from both of them was about the last time the two sons and their progeny agreed on anything. The break had to come later, though, because both religions write of Isaac and Ishmael both burying Abraham, sharing some sense of equality and entitlement from their mutual Father. Ishmael, according to Islam, is the forebear of Mohammad, and Isaac the "seed" of Judah, etc. Christianity shares the mutual ancestry of the Jew, hence Isaac, and so between these three religions, most of the world has a common thread. What went wrong?

One needs to get over one's reluctance to discuss religion to begin to understand the motivation of warring factions that purport religion as their impetus. Some will find it as uneasy a feeling as I do to even think about such things. The reality is, however, if we are to understand what lies at the heart of the problems in the Middle East, which has threatened each succeeding generation with annihilation of the human race, we must force ourselves to grasp the truth of why there is no peace there.

First of all, there needs to be a dispelling of some myths. There is no "Palestinian" race. The area of Palestine for millinea has been a crossroads of commerce, with untold numbers of nomadic tribes and traders having lived there or traveled through there at one time or another. It has been a corridor for trade that goes back thousands of years. That there were people living in the area known as Palestine when Israel became a state in 1948 does not confer some "national heritage" to people who lived there previously. Furthermore, there is historical precedent, agreed to by Islamic scholars, that lands were awarded by God / Allah at the time of Abraham. It may get fuzzy here according to the sacred scriptures of each, but Israel was land awarded to certain descendants of Abraham, namely Isaac's children, forebear of the Jews. And, what is now known as the Arabian Peninsula was awarded to others, primarily descendants of Ishmael and children from Abraham's third wife, Keturah, forebears of the Arabs. So, in assessing which people have which land, it's more important, in my view, that each party to the warfare in the Middle East consider this as a starting point when playing peacemaker.

Furthermore, logic dictates that if the Arab nations have 110 million square miles to play in, why can't Israel exist in only 10,000 square miles of their claimed homeland? Ah, there's the rub. It is arguable whether enmity of this sort can last thousands of years, but why else would so many (the Arab Zealots) with so much, want to exterminate so few (the Israelites) with so little? The unsettling truth is that this is nothing more than hatred masked in religious fanaticism. Not to digress into eschatology too far, it is unlikely that anyone other than God will be able to bring a lasting peace to the Middle East. That the CIA planted the seeds of the fanatical sects of the Islamic peoples in a unifying experiment "gone bad" is now widely known. Both we, and the moderate Arab states, wish that had never happened. Both the Western Cultures and moderate Arabs also are not bothered by allowing Israel their little swatch of land, to live in peace. So what of the Arab zealots?

We in America need to be a little more comfortable with addressing the religious aspects of the factions in the middle east, be better scholars of history and insist that our leadership, with other concerned states, create a diplomatic stand that though, unpopular in the Arab world, goes beyond the one tired, foggy principle of "being an ally of Israel". It goes much further than their being an isolated democracy. We should insist on Israel's historical right to their land and support them in their asserting that right up to, and including, driving out the factions and criminals that continually cause all of the trouble. Any diplomatic effort short of that end will inevitably fail.