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<b>Greetings:<br><br>
I've submitted the essay below to the <i>Sandpoint Reader</i>, and alert
Visionaries will remember an earlier version of this piece. Thought
you would be interested in the revision with the August
"history" conference in mind. Now disguised as a
"Trinity Festival." I hope that we can organize a
counter-festival of our own.<br><br>
THE MOSCOW TALIBAN: CHILLING PARALLELS BETWEEN CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM
FUNDAMENTALISTS (Revised)<br><br>
</b>by Nick Gier, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of
Idaho<br><br>
There are some chilling parallels between Christian and Islamic
fundamentalists. Both divide the world between believers and
unbelievers, and by deciding for themselves who is saved and who is
damned, they think that they can play God with our lives. <br><br>
Both have also declared war on the secular culture of liberal democracy,
the most peaceful and prosperous means of social organization ever
devised by humankind. They both reject the separation of church and
state and would set up governments based on their own views of divine
laws.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Of
greatest concern, however, is the fundamentalist view of the violent end
of the world. A common scenario is a great war in the Middle East
in which the armies of God destroy the armies of Satan. Radical
Muslims of course identify Israel and the US as the forces of evil, but
Christian fundamentalists see Islam as the ultimate enemy. The
horrifying implication is that the Jews, Muslims, and Christians of the
Middle East will be the primary victims of this holocaust.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Some
conservative Christians make yet another division: an ethnic one that
declares that one culture is superior to all others. Michael Hill,
founder of the League of the South, proposes that an independent
neo-Confederacy of fifteen states would have the duty to protect the
values of Anglo-Celtic culture from black Americans, who are "a
compliant and deadly underclass." A key word for the League is
“hierarchy,” the God-given right for superiors (read “white males”) to
rule over inferiors.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Since
1998, the League of the South has had close ties with the Sons of
Confederate Veterans, who in 2000 elected Kirk Lyons to its national
executive board. An outspoken racist, Lyons was married by neo-Nazi
Richard Butler in 1990, when Butler still had his compound in Hayden
Lake. Lyons has led an amazingly unsuccessful legal campaign to have
Southern whites defined as a “protected class.”<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The League
and the Sons of Confederate Veterans organize public protests with the
Council of Conservative Citizens whose website decries "negroes,
queers and other retrograde species of humanity." (Try replacing the
“Cs” in their acronym with “Ks”!) One League leader said that we
“need a new type of Klan.”<br><br>
Moscow pastor Doug Wilson and Steve Wilkins of Monroe, Louisiana wrote a
booklet entitled Southern Slavery as It Was in which they describe the
antebellum south as the most harmonious multiracial society in history.
Two University of Idaho history professors took time from their busy
schedules to refute this piece paragraph by paragraph. It was later
discovered that 20 percent of the essay was lifted from Robert Fogel’s
and Stanley Engerman’s "Time on the Cross." <br><br>
Wilson still stands by the booklet’s thesis, but he has withdrawn it from
circulation. The problem, however, is that there is remaining stock
in neo-Confederate book stores and at Wilson’s 154 Christian schools
across the nation. In December the principal of one of those
schools in Carey, North Carolina was forced to remove the booklet because
of local protests.<br><br>
Both Wilson and Wilkins deny that they are racists or neo-Confederates,
but Wilkins is a founding director of the League of the South. The
League’s website uses small Confederate flags as hot buttons for
information about the board members. Even though a visitor said that he
saw a Confederate flag displayed in Wilson’s office, he now claims that
neo-Confederates should “burn the flag and wear the ashes.” I would love
to see Wilkins and Wilson do this when they meet for a conference on the
American Revolution in Moscow on August 8-10, 2005.<br>
<br>
If Wilson has no sympathies with neo-Confederates, why is he associating
with Wilkins, displaying the Confederate flag at his Moscow school’s
functions, celebrating Robert E. Lee's birthday at this school, speaking
at the Southern Heritage Conference, and writing for Chronicles, a
journal whose editors boast that they are all members of the League of
the South? <br><br>
Christian nationalist George Grant, who believes in the death penalty for
gays and lesbians, has joined Wilson and Wilkins at earlier Moscow
conferences. Grant and Wilkins are promoting a novel entitled
"Heiland," whose hero leads a violent overthrow of a
"godless" federal government. "Heiland" has been
compared to the "Turner Diaries," which inspired the bombing of
the Oklahoma Federal Building. <br><br>
Another parallel between Christian and Islamic fundamentalism is a desire
to make religious laws the laws of the land. In his regular column in
Wilson’s "Credenda Agenda" (vol. 3: nos. 9, 11), Greg Dickison,
member of Wilson’s Christ Church and a Moscow public defender, states
that "if we could have it our way,” then there would be capital
punishment for “kidnapping, sorcery, bestiality, adultery, homosexuality,
and cursing one's parents.” Dickison also quotes biblical passages
(without qualification) that support slavery as "ordained and
regulated by God," death for apostasy (Deut. 13.6-9), and cutting
off a woman’s hand for touching a strange man's genitals (Deut.
25.11,12). Behold, the Moscow Taliban!<br><br>
I have obtained my information about the neo-Confederate movement from
the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has declared the League of
the South as a hate group. Wilson and his associates belittle the SPLC’s
achievements, one of which was supporting the suit that lead to the
dismantling of Butler’s Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake. We are now
faced with yet another national embarrassment in Northern Idaho, and many
Moscowans are already planning protests for the August
conference.<br><br>
I have fought religious fundamentalism all of my adult life, primarily
because I believe that it is one of the most destructive forces in the
world. These views do not deserve our respect nor tolerance, but call for
our strongest condemnation. Come join us in Moscow in August to
demonstrate once again that “Idaho is too great for hate.”<br>
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<x-tab> </x-tab>Nick Gier
taught philosophy and religion at the University of Idaho for 31
years. The quotations from neo-Confederates were taken from
<i>Intelligence Report</i> (Summer, 2000), pp. 29, 14. The title
“Moscow Taliban” was inspired by Mark Potok’s article “Taliban on the
Palouse?” in <i>Intelligence Report</i> (Summer, 2004). <br>
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