[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by T-Rock

Sigaba, you still haven't answered my question, since it is relevant, not in history, but globally today - particularly this - can you explain to me how these current day Islamic terrorists are theologically violating the basic tenets of their faith?

Where have I said that the terrorists are or are not complying with the tenets of their faith?

Since you are apparently trying to make a point, I am afraid that my answer to your question is going to be a bit of a disappointment. I am not as confident in my understanding of Islamic theology and practice as you are confident in your understanding of Islamic theology and practice. At this point and time, my view is similar to that offered by Bush the Younger on those occasions when he spoke of Islam being "hijacked."

That is to say, the fatwas for jihad are being issued by individuals such as OBL who do not have the ecclesiastical authority to call for holy war. While OBL and other Salafi jihadists subscribe to the writings of Ibn Taymiyya, Mawlana Abdul A'la Mawdudi, Sayyid Qutb, and Mohammed Abd al-Salam Faraj, it is my understanding that most Muslims do not recognize that cabal's critique of contemporary Islam nor its authority to launch what may be termed a counter-reformation with the objective of establishing a global caliphate.^

Here's the thing. The fundamental disagreement between the two of us is that I reject the notion that human beings are motivated to do anything for a single reason. Were human motivation so easily ascertained then there would be quite a few less biographies on Lincoln, more answers than questions about the motivation of Confederate and Union soldiers during the American Civil War, less controversy about what George F. Kennan "really" meant when he spoke and wrote about "containing" the Soviet Union,* and the question of questions (Why the Third Reich?) would not be driving the most vibrant trajectory of contemporary history.

We do have a fundamental difference in the understanding of Christian Doctrine - the banner of Christianity, is of course, carried by Christ. Christianity is not about religion, it is about a relationship. There are many standards people in the world use to develop and build character, but for the Christian, the only correct standard is that which is revealed in Christ, and I am sure you are aware of His example.

The very fact that you claim to understand the teachings of Christ--apparently without the mediation of an authority of one form or another-- and that Christianity is not about religion indicates that you are privileging your views over the millions of Americans who have different perspectives on issues of faith, worship, and religious education. While you are well within your rights to do so, and this observation is not a criticism, I suggest that this approach may inhibit a disinterested appreciation of the many ways faith is practiced in America both historically and contemporaneously. (A question: might you be mirror imaging your perception of the central features of a monolitich Christianity against a monolithic Islam?)

Christians who carried out forced conversions were not following the example of their prophet.

IMO, this formulation is ahistoric. It allows one to argue teleologically that people who pursued goals that we find abhorrent today were not really Christians. Such an approach invites one to decline opportunities to understand the role their faith played in the decisions that they made and the lives that they lived in their own terms. (To underscore a key point, understanding someone is not the same as justifying or apologizing for that person's actions or behavior. Empathy is not sympathy.)

I am fully aware of the role religion played in early America.

I respectfully suggest that you are slightly overstating your understanding of American religious history if not also the history of the early republic. Not even Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Nathan Hatch, Gordon S. Wood, or Jon Butler could make such a broad statement.

On the topic of your distinguishing between the study of the past and what is "relevant" in the world today. I would like to point out that positions on political, social, cultural, and religious issues often rest upon discussants' understanding not only of their present day situation but also upon their perception of the past.

As a convenient example**, the popular understanding of the history of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and the Holy Roman Empire's conduct during that awful conflict shaped Germans' view of domestic politics in the mid-nineteenth century, Germany's nation's place in European geopolitics in the decades leading up to the First World War, and also their receptiveness to Nazism and to Hitlerian theories of machine warfare. It was not until after the Second World War that central assumptions of German historiography began to receive critical re-examinations that might have served Europeans well had they taken place decades earlier.***

Sometimes history matters.

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^ Here, I'm drawing from United States Joint Forces Command, The Terrorist Perspectives Project: Strategic and Operational Views of Al Qaida and Associated Movements (Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2008), chapter 1. My conclusion that most Muslims reject the Salafi critique and call to global jihad is based upon the fact that there are approximately 1.2 billion Muslims and several hundred million of this total are, at worst, sitting on their hands. Those who think that sitting on one's hands is a casus belli for a war of extermination today may have a bit of a hard time justifying the reluctance of the United States to intervene in European affairs during the Interwar Period and World War II.
* From the "Not That Anyone Asked" department, but until either John Lewis Gaddis or Anders Stephenson complete their long overdue biographies of Kennan, I am going to stick by my view that if anyone is responsible for the alleged co-option of the Long Telegram and Mr. X article into the militarized containment of Communist aggression it is Kennan himself. It does not take twenty years for a person as articulate as Kennan to pick up the damn phone, call someone, and say "Hey, this isn't quite what I had in mind." YMMV.
** Convenient because I have a couple of books by Peter H. Wilson within arms' length, not because he's particularly easy to read. (Just because he's apparently familiar with the 14,000 or so books on the Thirty Years' War and the equally voluminous historiography of the Holy Roman Empire doesn't mean everyone else is. I mean, sheesh.)
*** Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire, 1495-1806, pp. 4-6; Wilson, The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy, pp. 4-5.