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NEWS & LETTERS, NOVEMBER 2003Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarryReligious intoleranceIn mid-October, it came to light that a U.S. army general, William Boykin, has been speaking in uniform at Christian fundamentalist gatherings, where he has stated that Muslims worship “an idol” rather than a “real God.” Bush administration officials refused to criticize Boykin, who helps coordinate their “war on terrorism” from the Pentagon. During the same week, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed told a gathering of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, “Today the Jews rule the world by proxy.” His speech was greeted by thunderous applause and supported in public statements by officials from Egypt and Yemen, as well as President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. Also during this period, there were howls of indignation from conservatives over the fact that Pope John Paul II was “passed over” for the Nobel Peace Prize. While the Pope speaks abstractly of peace often enough, few leaders have done more by their actions to undermine peace and human rights. * In the 1980s, the Pope attacked the Central American democratic and revolutionary movements, as well as theology of liberation, giving ideological cover to Ronald Reagan’s vicious Contra War against Nicaragua. * During the same period, he formed a triumvirate with Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, as they sought to roll back the gains of the 1960s on the rights of women, gays, and lesbians. * To this day, the Pope opposes all forms of abortion and contraception, even the use of condoms to prevent AIDS. As Polly Toynbee wrote in the Manchester GUARDIAN of Oct. 17: “No one can compute how many people have died” as a result of his pressure on governments and NGOs, “but it is reasonable to suppose that these unseen, uncounted deaths at his hand would match those of any self-respecting tyrant or dictator.” * Even when the Pope has done something positive, like apologizing for the Church’s anti-Semitism, he has combined this with efforts to beatify some of the worst anti-Semites, like Pope Pius IX (who kidnapped a Jewish child in 1858), or Pius XII, who remained silent (or worse) in the face of Nazism. * Even when the Pope has supported liberatory movements, like Poland’s Solidarnosc in the 1980s, he has favored the most fanatically religious tendencies in those movements. |
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