(Port) Coquitlam Odysseus

At the end of the day a traditional Muslim is doing the will of a fanatic, fundamentalist, terrorist God. I know this is harsh to say. Most governments avoid this subject. They don’t want to admit this is an ideological war.

“The problem is not in Muslims,” he continues. “The problem is with their God. They need to be liberated from their God. He is their biggest enemy. It has been 1,400 years they have been lied to.”

These comments come from Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of the founders of the terrorist organization Hamas and new author of the book “Son of Hamas.” I first learned of Yousef via acquaintance Horace Jeffery Hodges’ blog, though now I am unable to find the post in question. A few weeks ago Haaretz, Israel’s equivalent of the New York Times, did a series of articles on Yousef, the longest of which details his conversion to Christianity and his work for the Shin Bet. Now, the Wall Street Journal, from which the above quotation is taken, is picking up the story.

I don’t believe that there is only one kind of Islam, or that all Muslims have the same concept of God, just as it’s obvious that there are many kinds of Christians, from the terrorist Catholics of the IRA to the saintly Mother Teresa. I think that Bernard of Clairvaux and the Ayatollah Khomeini have more in common with each other than with many of their fellow Muslims or Christians, like, say, Rumi or Thomas Merton, respectively.* That said, as a former Christian, I think Yousef’s words have some merit. Too often religion dehumanizes people instead of edifying them, and when this happens, the ultimate cause is an improper concept of “God,” which is used to justify all sorts of perversions. Humans do, indeed, make their gods in their own image. What is needed is for religious people to ask themselves honest questions about the gods they are creating.

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*Both Bernard and the Ayatollah spoke, respectively, of the “lesser” struggle with physical enemies without, and the “greater” struggle with the spiritual enemy within. Both ignited violent movements with religious motivations. Rumi was a Sufi mystic of the 13th century whose works are now widely read by all sorts of people all around the world; Thomas Merton was a Cistercian monk and mystic writer who was acquainted with civil rights activist Martin Luther King and Buddhist monk and writer Thich Nhat Hanh.
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UPDATE: Chris Taylor has picked up this conversation and added much to it.