Yesterday, I continued with a series of planned diaries on religious fundamentalists, and argued that, contra to the claims of the religious right,
the United States is a secular, and not a Christian, nation and that it needs to remain so. I also noted the existence of some parallels between Islamic and Christian militant or extremist groups, such as the existence of two distinct "Armies of God."
I'd like to expand a bit on this last point by exploring the phrase the "American Taliban," as I've been hearing and seeing that phrase used more and more lately.
Here is some of what we know of the Taliban,
courtesy of the BBC (from a report dated 20 December, 2000)
The world first became aware of the Taleban in 1994 when they were appointed by Islamabad to protect a convoy trying to open up a trade route between Pakistan and Central Asia.
The group - comprised of Afghans trained in religious schools in Pakistan along with former Islamic fighters or mujahedin - proved effective bodyguards, driving off other mujahedin groups who attacked and looted the convoy.
They went on to take the nearby city of Kandahar, beginning a remarkable advance which led to their capture of the capital, Kabul, in September 1996.
The Taleban said their aim was to set up the world's most pure Islamic state, banning frivolities like television, music and cinema.
Their attempts to eradicate crime have been reinforced by the introduction of Islamic law including public executions and amputations.
A flurry of regulations forbidding girls from going to school and women from working quickly brought them into conflict with the international community.
Such issues, along with restrictions on women's access to health care, have also caused some resentment among ordinary Afghans.
The report added that UN sanctions,imposed on the country with the intent of forcing the Taleban to hand over the Saudi-born militant Osama Bin Laden, made it even less likely that the Taleban would have gained that recognition. Bin Laden was, at that moment, accused by the United States of plotting the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 250 people. The Taleban claimed that Osama Bin Laden was a guest in their country, and thus that they would not take action against him.
Shortly after this report, and just prior to the events of 9-11, the Taleban, allegedly assisted by Pakistani and Saudi engineers ordered the demolition of two ancient statues of Buddha carved into cliff sides at Bamiyan, an act decried around the world as barbaric. The Taleban's excuse was that all idols must be destroyed, because Islamic law prohibits idol worship (though this begged the question of whether the Bamiyan statues were any longer being "worshiped" by anyone).
The Taleban were also extremely misogynistic. As the Feminist Majority Foundation reported,
Upon seizing power, the Taliban instituted a system of gender apartheid effectively thrusting the women of Afghanistan into a state of virtual house arrest. Under Taliban rule women have been stripped of their visibility, voice, and mobility. When they took control in 1996, the Taliban initially imposed strict edicts that:
* Banished women from the work force
* Closed schools to girls in cities and expelled women from universities
* Prohibited women from leaving their homes unless accompanied by a close male relative
* Ordered the publicly visible windows of women's houses painted black and forced women to wear the burqa (or chadari) - which completely shrouds the body, leaving only a small mesh-covered opening through which to see
* Prohibited women and girls from being examined by male physicians while at the same time, prohibited most female doctors and nurses from working. (Currently there are a few, selected female doctors allowed to operate in segregated wards.)
Women were brutally beaten, publicly flogged, and killed for violating Taliban decrees. Even after international condemnation, the Taliban made only slight changes. Some say it was progress when the Taliban allowed a few women doctors and nurses to work, even while hospitals still had segregated wards for women; that in Kabul and other cities, a few home schools for girls were allowed to operate, although only in secret. In addition, women who conducted home schools were risking their lives or a severe beating. But the overall reality of the tragic plight of Afghan women and girls remained virtually unchanged.
The early 2002 defeat of the Taliban liberated Afghan women and girls from the regime's draconian decrees. The world witnessed reports of women in Mazar-e-Sharif, Kabul, and other cities going into the streets without male relatives and discarding their burqas--actions that would have garnered brutal punishments under the Taliban.
The Taliban - still engaged in fighting to retake Afghanistan as their base of power - thus were a violent, repressive, supremely insular authoritarian force. Mostly seen around the world as an illegitimate occupying force in Afghanistan, they were nevertheless legitimized by a handful of other backward, authoritarian societies - namely the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, as well as the unrecognized government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, each of these being countries governed by censorious and repressive regimes and being state supporters of terrorist activities.
Drawing upon this example, observers have taken to referring to the religious right as an "American Taliban." While sometimes the term is used to refer to John Walker Lindh, a young American convert to Islam who fought on behalf of the Taliban in its war with the U.S. and its allies, the term has more generally come to refer, perhaps a bit snarkily, to the Taliban-like qualities of our own would-be Christian theocrats.
Kos himself has used this phrase in this way.
Another example: writer Richard Rapaport wrote on The American Taliban a mere two months after 911, noting that.
Ashcroft, President Bush's "bad cop" and his administration's gift to the Christian right. Military tribunals, racial profiling, violations of attorney-client secrecy and prolonged unreported detention aside (although the Bush administration's assault on civil liberties can hardly be considered an aside), Ashcroft is the spearhead of the effort to use America's state of constitutional distraction to further the issues of greatest concern to homeland-based fundamentalists. Among these are the attempt to roll back abortion rights, bar human embryo stem-cell research, challenge Oregon's assisted-suicide law, attack California's medical-marijuana initiative and other laws that are seen as furthering the liberal, secularist agenda.
The most striking feature about the Bush administration's double-barreled assault on civil liberties and lifestyle is the post-attack Republican conversion to robust federalism. So much for the state's rights agenda that has been a supposed matter of faith in the modern GOP. The Bush administration has discovered the wonders of such once feverishly protested "liberal" means to power, such as presidential decree and federal intervention, which were used to great effect in areas such as civil rights and environmental protection.
Now, those same tools against which Republicans have fulminated for years, and against which Bush campaigned, are driving the administration's attempts to win such "sanctity of life" issues as medical research on human embryos. This issue is well understood by American fundamentalists as a Trojan Horse maneuver, such as the ban on so-called partial-birth abortions, through which to achieve the most deeply held fundamentalist desire; an end to legal abortion as guaranteed American women by Roe vs. Wade.
The Bush administration should be congratulated on its nearly flawless intervention in Afghanistan. But nothing less than loud protests will do in the face of the embrace of the American fundamentalist agenda at home under the protective cover of fighting fundamentalism abroad.
The final irony is that like the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Bush administration is very much a minority government. Handsomely outvoted in the popular vote and the barest possible winner in the electoral count, Bush should be very careful about mistaking popular support for the war against terrorism as a mandate to institute the agenda of Falwell, Robertson and their allies, members of what can, without blinking, be called "the American Taliban.
Or another example, blogger Steve Soto proclaimed that It's Time To Make The American Taliban A Campaign Headache For The GOP In 2006
Soto links to a Rolling Stone article which states
Dominionists -- biblical literalists who believe God has called them to take over the U.S. government. As the far-right wing of the evangelical movement, Dominionists are pressing an agenda that makes Newt Gingrich's Contract With America look like the Communist Manifesto. They want to rewrite schoolbooks to reflect a Christian version of American history, pack the nation's courts with judges who follow Old Testament law, post the Ten Commandments in every courthouse and make it a felony for gay men to have sex and women to have abortions. In Florida, when the courts ordered Terri Schiavo's feeding tube removed, it was the Dominionists who organized round-the-clock protests and issued a fiery call for Gov. Jeb Bush to defy the law and take Schiavo into state custody. Their ultimate goal is to plant the seeds of a "faith-based" government that will endure far longer than Bush's presidency -- all the way until Jesus comes back.
And on the wonderful Firedog lake blog site, the phrase is used to refer to the censorious efforts of Joe Lieberman and Sam Brownback, "two of the Senate's most uptight and close-minded prigs," to censor popular culture with a resulting chilling effect on the music industry. It notes that "suddenly a whole new internal bureaucracy had to be created to police every record and suddenly artists were being pressured -- sometimes overtly and sometimes less overtly -- to cave in to demands by two really reactionary fundamentalists whose values are far from mainstream. In one fell swoop Lieberman destroyed an alliance between young voters and the Democratic Party that had started with John Kennedy's election as he ham-fistedly savaged their culture for his own political ambitions."
Obviously, 1990s Afghanistan - with its anarchic social order and its weak central government - developed into a power vacuum. The analogy of the U.S. today to a poverty stricken agrarian society like Afghanistan is thus limited.
However, some parallels of each country's respective theocratic movements, i.e., their Taliban and our religious right, exist.
If Afghanistan was divided, politically, into the Pashtun in the south and other factions in the north regions of the country, and if the U.S. is divided in partisan terms between Republicans (dominated by their right wing) and Democrats, then we can examine the dynamics within those divisions to see points of similarity.
We see, for example, that the Taliban started their quest for power as low level functionaries. The Republican Party has, similarly, got Christian right activists as many of its own functionaries and volunteers. This has become blatantly evident under the reign of Bush and the GOP led congress. And just as the Taliban was bankrolled by forces larger, wealthier and more powerful than themselves, namely elements of the Pakistani military junta (a faction of which today gives refuge to Osama bin Laden and remnant of Al Qaeda), the religious right, too, has its sugar daddies, namely the likes of Richard Mellon Scaife and Howard Ahmanson Jr
Afghanistan's need for increased security became the basis for an extremist faction like the Taliban to seize power. We have seen how, in our own country, the post-911 calls for increased national security, the maneuvers to cede greater power to the Administration on behalf of national security, and the many acts of government carried on in secrecy under the guise of national security have paved the way for elements of theocracy to take root. Concerns for security have also brought out the worst prejudices and latent racist tendencies in many of our officials. Remember, for example, Rep. Howard Coble, a Republican from North Carolina who chairs the House subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, tacitly agreeing to detention camps for Arab-Americans on behalf of national security? Or this gem from racist right wing extremist, Sue Myrick, while speaking at the Heritage Foundation
"You know," she said, "and this can be misconstrued, but honest to goodness (husband) Ed and I for years, for 20 years, have been saying, `You know, look at who runs all the convenient stores across the country.' Every little town you go into, you know? I mean it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there are people who don't like us all over this country no matter what their nationality may be."
And then there is Senator Conrad Burn's line about a faceless enemy of terrorists who "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night."
Some parallels also exist betweenthe misogyny of the Taliban and the Christian right. Here are some choice quotes:
Diane Passno, an executive vice president at Focus on the Family:
I hope people will see the feminist movement for what it is -- hurtful to women. Feminism's two focal points are its love affair with abortion and lesbianism.
Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:
We must choose between two unavoidable options: either the Bible is affirmed as the inerrant and infallible Word of God, and thus presents a comprehensive vision of true humanity in both unity and diversity, or we must claim that the Bible is, to one extent or another, compromised and warped by a patriarchal and male-dominated bias that must be overcome in the name of humanity. [ ]For too long, those who hold to the biblical pattern of gender distinctions have allowed themselves to be silenced, marginalized, and embarrassed when confronted by new gender theorists. Now is the time to recapture the momentum, force the questions, and show this generation God's design in the biblical concept of manhood and womanhood.
Mary Kassian, author of "The Feminist Mistake: The Radical Impact of Feminism on Church and Culture" (Crossway Books, 2005):
Feminism has failed miserably, and ironically it has exacerbated the very problem it set out to resolve," she writes. "Instead of promoting healthy self-identity for women or contributing to a greater harmony between the sexes, it has resulted in increased gender confusion, increased conflict, and a profound destruction of morality and family. It has left in its wake a mass of dysfunctional relationships and shattered lives. People of this culture no longer know what it means to be a man or a woman or how to make life work.
John MacArthur Jr., pastor of Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, CA:
One of the most devastating, and debilitating, and destructive movements in our day is the "Feminist Movement." [ ] The real feminist agenda is frightening. The real feminist agenda is Satanic [ ] Feminism with all of its assorted features and its unique companionship with homosexuality is an old, old heresy that is meant to destroy God's design. It really started in the Garden when Eve, the original feminist, stepped out from under Adam's authority and thought that she would act independently and led the whole race into sin; and thus the first act in Satan's feminist agenda was successful.
Doug Phillips of Vision Forum Ministries, Phil Lancaster of Patriarch magazine and R.C. Sproul, Jr., of the Highlands Study Center:
Central to the crisis of this era is the systematic attack on the timeless truths of biblical patriarchy. This attack includes the movement to subvert the biblical model of the family, and redefine the very meaning of fatherhood and motherhood, masculinity, femininity, and the parent and child relationship. We emphasize the importance of biblical patriarchy, not because it is greater than other doctrines, but because it is being actively attacked by unbelievers and professing Christians alike. Egalitarian feminism is a false ideology that has bred false doctrine in the church and seduced many believers. In conscious opposition to feminism, egalitarianism, and the humanistic philosophies of the present time, the church should proclaim the Gospel centered doctrine of biblical patriarchy as an essential element of God's ordained pattern for human relationships and institutions.
Doug Giles, Townhall.com columnist and host of the Clash Radio show:
If concerned conservative Christians want to improve our nation biblically, then the Church has got to eliminate its effeminate drift and re-establish a masculine base.
And recall the burning of Beatles records back in the mid 1960s, after John Lennon, in a widely misunderstood quote, proclaimed the Beatles more popular than Jesus? Here, then, are some examples of censorious tendencies of the American Taliban
Harry Potter
During the last school year, right-wing groups sought to remove books from the Harry Potter series from schools across the nation by alleging that they are luring students into witchcraft and the occult. On a December 2001 700 Club, host Pat Robertson followed up an interview with an anti-Harry Potter activist by warning that God will forsake nations that tolerate witchcraft. Robertson advised his audience that the Bible said that, "there's certain things that he says that is going to cause the Lord, or the land, to vomit you out. At the head of the list is witchcraft....Now we're welcoming this and teaching our children. And what we're doing is asking for the wrath of God to come on this country....And if there's ever a time we need God's blessing it's now. We don't need to be bringing in heathen, pagan practices to the United States of America."
Communications Decency Act (CDA)
The CDA doesn't target arguably obscene items like Dirty Debutantes or even Debbie Does Dallas. Instead, it effectively bans a broad class of fully protected speech from public forums on the Net.
By criminalizing "indecent" and "patently offensive" speech in cyberspace, Senator James Exon and the Christian Coalition's self-serving censors waded into a constitutional swamp. Unlike "obscene" material, content that is merely "indecent" or "patently offensive" is protected by the First Amendment. Of course, the Supreme Court has held that "indecent" speech can be regulated (but not banned altogether) in the broadcasting arena. Even so, the Feds have constitutional authority to regulate broadcast content only because of what the court calls the "scarcity" of broadcast frequencies and the "pervasiveness" of broadcast media. To prove that Uncle Sam has no general authority to regulate protected content in cyberspace, we'll argue that the Net has no problem with either "scarcity" or "pervasiveness."
Note: Soon after the Republicans released their Contract with America, the Christian Coalition responded with its Contract with the American Family; item 10 called for strict regulation of the Internet to protect minors against sexual material.
Public Libraries(CDA)
You might wonder what could possibly be wrong with a group that calls itself Family Friendly Libraries. But be prepared: its true purpose is belied by its genial-sounding name. Family Friendly Libraries is the creation of people who are very angry at libraries -- and librarians -- and they are hard at work shaping libraries to fit their narrow beliefs and to "protect" the public from the "wrong" books, films, periodicals, and ideas.
Family Friendly Libraries is organizing a nationwide campaign to pressure librarians and boards of trustees to repudiate the "infamous" Library Bill of Rights, the strongly anti-censorship policy statement of the American Library Association. They are urging local communities to adopt their charter in its place.
The purpose of the public library, according to that charter, is not to provide materials and information presenting all points of view. Libraries that do so are dangerous places.
The library's purpose, says FFL, should be to emphasize the "superiority" of the traditional family -- "mother and father, married to each other, committed to a lifetime monogamous relationship and caring responsibly together for their children." To promote formation and survival of such families, librarians should create restricted areas in their libraries where people would need to request materials on topics which may be controversial, including sexual topics.
Anti-homosexual bigotry provides much of the fuel for Family Friendly Libraries, as it does today for pro-censorship movements across the country. Extremists have learned the utility of tapping into -- and deepening -- the existing reservoir of fear and resentment at the perceived success of the "homosexual agenda." Exploiting homophobia, they have learned, quickly polarizes communities and makes reasoned debate nearly impossible.
Textbooks
Textbooks are censored. The school board in Franklin County, North Carolina, ordered three chapters literally sliced out of a ninth-grade health textbook because the material did not adhere to state law mandating abstinence-only education. The chapters covered AIDS and other STDs, marriage and partnering, and contraception. In Lynchburg, Virginia, school board members refused to approve a high-school science textbook unless an illustration of a vagina was covered or cut out.
The Tin Drum
The Academy Award-winning film, The Tin Drum, is among the literary and entertainment materials seized by Oklahoma City police under pressure from Oklahomans for Children and Families (OCAF), an organization started in the 1960's as Oklahomans Against Pornography. The Tin Drum, a searching film about a weird child observing and coping with the grotesque aberrations of life in Nazi Germany, was removed from the City library and six video stores after a county judge---in an off-the record opinion---concurred with OCAF's charge that the film is "obscene." At least one copy of The Tin Drum was confiscated from the home of a private citizen (a staff member of the ACLU!) by police who obtained his name from a video store. The ACLU of Oklahoma and the Video Software Dealers Association have brought suit against the City for violating the First and Fourth Amendments and the Federal Videotape Privacy Protection Act.
Seizure of The Tin Drum came two weeks after police had arrested employees of several convenience stores in the county on charges of selling allegedly obscene magazines. While those charges have been dropped, retailers in the City have been warned that it is "illegal" to distribute any magazine depicting nudity other than Playboy and Penthouse.
Art in NYC
Then-mayor Giuliani and New York City, offended by piece in the Brooklyn Museum's exhibition "Sensation," attempted to revoke federal funds previously designated for the museum and eject the museum off the city-owned land. The painting in controversy was Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary, depicting a black Madonna with cut-outs from pornographic magazines and elephant dung.
Homophobic Attacks on Schools and Libraries
Schools and libraries are the setting for many community censorship controversies. Teachers and librarians who seek to expose children to a wide range of ideas, to be sensitive to our cultural and religious diversity, and to encourage curiosity and critical thinking are most likely to be targets.
Two books, Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman and Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite have been at the center of controversies in many communities. Both books are written for young children and each portrays the life of a child who has homosexual parents.
In Salisbury, Maryland a local minister demanded the two books be removed from the public library, claiming their presence "invaded [his] privacy." In Mercer County, New Jersey, a library patron asked that Daddy's Roommate be moved from the children's section of the library, where it belonged, to the adult section.
With NCAC's help, concerned citizens organized against the censors. In Mercer County, a broad-based community anti censorship organization, Many Voices, was formed with NCAC's support. Although the library has not returned the book to the children's section, Many Voices is continuing to educate the community on the dangers of censorship.
The Drowning of Stephan Jones, by Bette Greene, is the story of the drowning of a gay man because of community intolerance. A Boling, Texas school board member objected, alleging that the book--which was being used in a cultural diversity curriculum--promoted anti-Christian beliefs, contained objectionable language, and condoned illegal activity.
Despite threats that she would be fired, the teacher defended the book, calling it a "teaching tool that sets the foundation for our students to learn responsible behavior." NCAC provided support and technical assistance.
The review committee recommended that the book be retained, but the school board voted to remove the book from the curriculum and from the library. The teacher secured an attorney and the book was returned.
Maurice by E.M. Forster and The Education of Harriet Hatfield by May Sarton were removed from the New Ipswich, N.H. regional high school. The novels' purchase was financed by a grant that teacher Penny Culliton received and was approved by the school superintendent and principal. However, shortly after a local newspaper reported that Ms. Culliton was involved with a lesbian and gay support group for young people, the books were found unsuitable and were banned. Maurice and The Education of Harriet Hatfield were seized from the students while they were reading the novels in class. The teacher has been fired. NCAC publicized the case widely, collaborated with the New Hampshire Education Association, which is taking her dismissal to arbitration, and, at Ms. Culliton's request, worked to build a local group to become involved in local school issues.
In the Kansas City, Missouri metropolitan area, two young-adult novels with gay characters (Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden and All-American Boy by Frank Mosca) in school libraries ignited controversy in seven separate communities. In the towns of Olathe and Shawnee Mission students and parents organized demonstrations against the removal of the books from the library. To protest book-banning, Shawnee Mission students checked out 3,000 books in one day. (They then returned the books and helped with reshelving). The books were ultimately retained in Shawnee Mission and in Kansas City and North Kansas City. In Olathe, the case is in the courts.
An award-winning high school history teacher in Port Charlotte, Florida, was accused during a school board meeting of "recruiting" his students for homosexuality, because he had assigned Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine, a novel set in ancient Greece. The book's plot includes a homoerotic relationship.
NCAC worked with activists throughout Florida to protect the rights of the students and of the teacher. And we won: The Board of Education voted 4-0 to retain the novel. But the cost to the teacher, who was publicly vilified and humiliated, has been high.
In Fairfax County, Virginia, the objection to Meredith Tax's Families, used in first-grade classrooms, was that it presented a "lesbian theme." "Nowhere in this book is the word `marriage' emphasized," charged another objector. NCAC worked with local teachers and parents as well as the author in defending the book. Two review committees recommended retaining the book but also added another book to the curriculum. As a result of the controversy, several principals have removed the book from classrooms.
The array of facts around these two parallels - Afghanistan's Taliban and America's version - make it rather clear. While the USA is no Afghanistan, particularly given that we enjoy such things as widely accessible education, higher rates of literacy, and a constitutional system of government meant to protect the rights of each of us to pursue life, liberty and happiness, nevertheless, we also have, as a cancerous element of our society a sizable faction which, like Afghanistan's Taliban, would, if they could, have our country be ruled on the basis of fear, repression and ignorance. Racist, misogynistic, censorious, and militaristic, this faction distorts the truth about itself.
What to do then? Let's all keep standing up against the American Taliban in every which way we can and let's support the things that make this a free and open society. Go, for example, to a public library, take out a book and read it. Or, ask to borrow the Tin Drum, and if they don't carry it, ask them why. And while there, ask the librarian what you might do to help keep libraries free of all forms of political interference.