EDITORIAL: Take steps to reduce terrorist threat

Posted: 9/29/06

EDITORIAL:
Take steps to reduce terrorist threat

Did you ever think we would look back at the Cold War as something akin to the good ol’ days?

As a young seminary student, I participated in a peacemaking group. In addition to efforts to ease racial tensions in our community, our primary focus was the nuclear-freeze movement. We wanted to stop proliferation of nuclear warheads by the United States and the Soviet Union. The sobering realization that both countries could annihilate the human race many times over motivated us to write letters to Congress, speak up for arms reduction, and urge Christians and other citizens to join our cause and advocate for peace. As a first-time father, I felt frightened to bring a child into a world where simple miscommunication, to say nothing of malice and aggression, could usher “nuclear winter” across the planet.

A generation later, the Soviet Union has fallen. My children are grown. The “peace movement” is quieter. And, although many of those warheads still exist, most Americans and Russians don’t think much about the Kremlin-to-the-White-House nuclear hotline.

Frankly, I miss the Cold War. I don’t want to go back. But I’d trade today’s terrorism tinderbox for yesterday’s superpower standoff—in the time it takes a suicide bomber to blow himself and his victims to Kingdom Come.

Don’t misunderstand; I’m not diminishing the Cold War or the 70-year Soviet reign of terror. But the nature of totalitarianism capped the number and kind of would-be despots. We learned this in Eastern Europe after the Iron Curtain fell. Now, like a broken hornets’ nest, the forces that would wreak havoc worldwide are unstable, on the loose, angry and aggressive.

In addition to absence of a superpower that keeps political/military leaders in line, several factors make today’s situation more unbalanced and dangerous. Communication, of course, is a key. The Internet facilitates recruiting, indoctrinating, training, mobilizing and activating terrorists. Globalism has flattened the borders and boundaries between nations and cultures. People move about much more frequently and easily, enabling access—to leaders who whip them into fanaticism, as well as to victims who die in their wake. You can come up with other factors in this equation: From the convenience of a practically universal language, English, to the speed and ease of travel, to the affront of Western media’s hedonism upon Eastern sensibilities.

This last factor points toward the most important variable in the calculus that makes today’s global terrorism more dangerous than yesterday’s Cold War: Religion.

Communism was cold and calculating. Islamic extremism is hot and incendiary. Muslim clerics who recruit terrorists not only distort Christianity and Judaism, but they also exploit every weakness, every simple statement, every moral failure and every uncomfortable word of truth. They even misrepresent their own scriptures and religious history to fan flames of hatred and animosity.

Consider the vitriol and violence triggered when Pope Benedict cited a 14th century emperor’s statement that Mohammed’s influence was “evil and inhuman.” Never mind that he twice stressed these words were not his own. Never mind that he invited Muslims to the table of faith and reason. Never mind that he apologized. Still, as the Wall Street Journal reports, Benedict prompted a vicious response: Iraqi terrorists called for attacks on the Vatican. A Somalian cleric said Muslims should “hunt down” and kill the pope. A nun was gunned down in Mogadishu. Pakistan’s parliament condemned the pope.

This might seem far-off and exotic. But since we know terrorists fly planes into buildings and wear bombs to blow up civilians, it also seems very near and intensely personal.

Terrorism’s randomness and Islamic extremism’s fanaticism throw us off stride. We think we can’t do anything about it. But we can take at least three steps:

• Pay attention and learn. If you haven’t done so, read the package of articles on Islam in the Sept. 18 Baptist Standard. Read newspapers and magazines. Pay attention to global media, especially from other countries, like the BBC. You never know when an informed word will calm chaos.

• Put flesh on ideology. Get to know Muslims, and let them get to know a Christian—you. In Texas these days, you don’t have to look far. Personal experience will change perspectives and provide a platform for progress.

• Pray. Don’t have faith enough to pray that Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders will become Christians? Then pray they will live by the higher tenets of their own faith. Prayer brought down the Iron Curtain; perhaps it will part the Fanatic Veil.