A World in One

Two minor, although significant events occurred recently that illustrate how much the world today has become a singular place. Vast oceans, soaring mountain ranges, walls and barriers (whether man-made or natural) no longer separate countries or peoples from each other – no matter how far we live from one another we are rubbing elbows thanks to technology and modern transportation.

The first event was when a Texas plumber found that the Islamic State in the Levant had acquired one of his pickup trucks, the name of his company emblazoned on the side doors, which he had traded in to a Ford dealership for a newer model. A photo of an ISIL fighter firing from the bed of the pickup was featured in an ISIL propaganda video the group Tweeted, later appearing in news media around the world. 

The plumber, who was harassed as an ISIL sympathizer, is suing the Ford dealership for not removing his business decal before it sold the truck. What this event shows is that commerce, particularly American commerce, easily and quickly overcomes whatever barriers it confronts on its way to serve the globe.

The second event occurred in rural Virginia, where Augusta County closed all its schools for a day after parents who profess to the Christian faith became enraged over a history lesson. A teacher, following state guidance and the curriculums of teaching world history, had her students “try their hand at writing the shahada, an Islamic declaration of faith, in Arabic calligraphy,” the Washington Post reported. 

According to the Post, this sparked anger not just in the community, but across the country “including angry emails, phone calls and threats to put the teacher’s head on a stake – led the school district to close rather than risk disruption or violence.”

For the Christian parents, the lesson was tantamount to indoctrinating students in the faith of Islam, but to educators it was about helping students understand the fastest growing religion in the world.

Ironies abound in this event, particularly how people of Christian faith want to disregard Christ’s message of peace and understanding and turn to violence in response to a religion they fear and they fear because they are ignorant about it, so ignorant that they are afraid to enlighten themselves and their children.

Some of the politicians in America today who refer to themselves as leaders relish the fear suffered by Americans – Christian or otherwise – that is largely due to ignorance. Divisive figures like Donald Trump find this fear about the world useful in the tactics and strategies they employ to gain support for their political ambitions.

Instead of discussing the complexities of issues to help understand terrorism and religion and to alleviate fears, they promise simple solutions that involve either isolating ourselves or others from ourselves. Such solutions should make everyone wary. We live in a complex world now that challenges many of our previous held beliefs about pretty much everything.  

Americas’ greatest leaders – and even not-so-great but people tolerant and worldly nonetheless – push Americans to engage the larger world, to encourage our understanding of other races, creeds and cultures. They do so for one reason – the peoples of the world grow closer and closer every day.

Technology and modern transportation has bought us close, so close that we can see we are essentially the same in body and spirit – having the same wants, desires, concerns and hopes.

Our glimpse via television, computer and iPhone screens at the inside of the apartment of the San Bernardino terrorist couple was perhaps crude public voyeurism, yet it nonetheless spoke to our need as Americans to know who this Muslim couple was. Their belongings showed us that to some degree they were just like the rest of us, and that is perhaps what scares us the most.

Lost Souls, Dead Souls

 Although federal, state and local authorities are still assembling evidence to determine the exact motives and operations of the recent terrorist attack by a young Muslim couple in San Bernardino, California, it seems doubtful, based on what the newspapers have reported so far, that it was a coordinated attack by the Islamic State of the Levant (ISIL or ISIS).

What is certain is this:

 

   The wife, Tashfeen Malik, was a Pakistani who had lived in Saudi Arabia, where friends said she had become so extremely conservative and religious that she began to isolate herself from not just friends and relatives, but society.

·   Her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, was born in Chicago to parents who emigrated from Pakistan more than a quarter century earlier, a college graduate and gainfully employed in Southern California – an American.

·   The two married in August 2014, Farook having met his wife in an arrangement, either through an Internet marriage service or an agreement between their two families, exactly which remains unclear.

·    After their marriage, Farook seemed to have joined his wife in living an isolated life, even leaving the mosque where he once prayed a few months before he and Malik went on their killing spree of Farook’s 14 co-workers.

·    Authorities believe the couple received two weapons, the military style rifles, from a friend and neighbor of Farook’s, Enrique Marquez. Other neighbors say Marquez and Farook had an abiding interest, cars, and were often seen working on them.

·   Since the incident Marquez has checked himself into a mental health clinic. He has not been charged with a crime.

·   The other two weapons the couple possessed, like the rifles, were most likely easily and legally purchased in another state, which makes California’s strict gun laws weak at best. The bomb-making materials the couple had amassed for their pipe bombs are easily and legally purchased on the market.

·   Just before Malik and Farook started killing, Malik went on Facebook and professed loyalty to ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. To date, authorities have found no link between the terrorist group and the couple. ISIL has praised the couple as “supporters,” but have not claimed to have planned and coordinated the attack as they did for the Paris killings.

 
With these facts taken together it appears the San Bernardino terrorist attack was not part of ISIL or al-Qaeda or the Taliban or any other terrorist group with death-cult ambitions to rule to world.

What does seem plausible in the murkiness of this early investigation is a young couple, in their late 20s, chose to live an isolated existence, far from a support network of family and friends that could help them see a better world for themselves and their six-month-old daughter, who they left with Farooks’ mother on the way to conduct their killing.

What could have driven a young, educated couple with every hope and dream before them to choose murder and death over life?  

Perhaps the clues are in the facts, and one fact that continues to appear in all these terrorist incidents related to people who practice an extreme form of Islam is a Middle East nation – Saudi Arabia, a country ruled by a royal family whose wealth is, to the average person, unimaginable. Most of the 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia, where freedom of religion, other than the practice of Islam, is forbidden, and the brand of Islam the Saud’s allow is Wahhabism, an extremely ultra conservative doctrine that imposes such quaint strictures as forbidding women to drive to such brutal and archaic punishment as beheading criminals. As in any ultra conservative religion, there is no room to think for oneself in Wahhabism – only to obey or face harsh penalties.

Outside the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, like any religion, is practiced to varying degrees by its adherents, from casually obedience to obeying every word without question.

In this respect, Islam is not unlike other religions. In the United States, where devotion to any religion including Christianity is on the wane, the same type of ideological thinking exists in conservative churches as it does in conservative mosques.

Take, for example, the recent words about San Bernardino from Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, a conservative Christian school: “I’ve always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in,” according to the Washington Post.
 
Falwell’s comments are interesting, if not disturbing, in that he speaks from a pulpit to promote unfettered gun ownership and use to the young followers of a conservative brand of Christianity. Falwell’s comment earned their roar of approval. As  polls now demonstrate, belief in owning a gun has for gun owners become an ideology, which is as fervent as those who hold deep religious beliefs that say one must be pure in the eyes of the Lord, or that  killing is required of all non-believers, or that abortion clinics should be attacked.
 
While we tremble at the thought of terrorism and its fear-mongering images of beheadings, we are not considering what is actually happening at home and abroad. It is a clash of ideologies – religious and secular – between moderate and conservative Muslims against a rapidly changing world in which technology challenges long-held beliefs. It is a battle for Middle East hegemony between that region’s dominant powers, Iran and Saudi Arabia.  Some intelligence analysts believe the Saud’s are helping Sunni ISIS battle the Shiite Iranians.  That seems apparent.

ISIL’s aspiration for a worldwide Caliph is as delusional as any other ideology that seeks world domination. Cults of death don't seem to have much staying power because everyone dies.

We may never know why Malik and Farook killed 14 people in a San Bernardino municipal building. They appear to have been two lost souls who chose to join a legion of dead souls that believe death and murder is better than living with imperfection.
 
We do know this: religious extremism – no matter what the faith – and diehard beliefs (oppose any gun regulation in the name of the Second Amendment) leaves no room for humanity.