Recasting conflicts as religious wars can only lead to tragedy

Have you noticed how so many people are eager to turn today's political conflicts into religious wars?

Last week it was the prime minister of Malaysia, who lectured leaders at an international Islamic unity gathering that they should wage holy war against the Jews.

He wasn't talking just about Israel; he meant the entire Jewish world. Israel, to these fanatics, is just a symptom of a much more insidious disease.

But the jihadist impulse is not unique to Islam; it's alive and well in Washington, where "Onward Christian Soldiers" is sometimes mistaken for the U.S. Army anthem.

Lt. Gen. William Boykin, the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, got into hot water last week for putting it bluntly in several appearances before evangelical groups. He said the Islamic God is an "idol," the fight against Islamic radicals is a fight against "Satan," and the United States is under attack because we are a "Christian nation."

Initially, he didn't get into too much hot water; Boykin was defended by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and by several conservative members of Congress.

The war on terrorism is going to be hard enough without turning it into a religious crusade against one of the world's largest religions.

But it is also increasingly hard — and dangerous — to deny the fanatic religious motives of those who are committed to the destruction of both Israel and the United States.

Last week Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad prompted disturbingly grudging criticism from Washington and some European capitals when he asserted, "Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

The Jerusalem Post reported that his offensive remarks "got a standing ovation from the kings, presidents, sheiks and emirs — including key U.S. allies."

In the Islamic world, the desire to turn the battle against Israel from a geopolitical one into a holy war reflects the abject failure of its leaders.

Islam is burgeoning, but it has not been able to create prosperous, democratic, peaceful societies. On the contrary, despotism reins supreme across the Islamic map, and the growing influence of extremist religious authorities has further retarded its ability to compete in today's global economy.

Countries such as Saudi Arabia have encouraged the most strident Islamic view of the world as a way of keeping the lid on restive populations, just as they have encouraged an irrational hatred of Israel.

President Bush has steadfastly discouraged the idea that the fight against terrorism is a religious war against the Islamic tide. But he has been undercut by officials in his own administration and his supporters, who sometimes give out a very different message.

To Boykin, the war in Iraq apparently isn't a matter of national interest, but a religious necessity. The enemy isn't radical Islam, but the forces of Satan — apparently all of Islam.

That's the same message that has been broadcast in strident terms from a key element in Bush's political base.

Since Sept. 11, politically prominent evangelical leaders — including Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell — have castigated Islam in ways that don't make distinctions between moderates and extremists, terrorists and non-terrorists.

To some Christian zealots, too, this is holy war, the fulfillment of religious prophecies of the final battle between good and evil. Negotiations are not an option when you're dealing with the devil.

And if it ends badly, with unprecedented bloodshed and misery around the world, well, isn't that just what their Bible predicted, anyway?

Thinking like that will make it harder to win allies in other parts of the world. And it will further stoke the fanaticism among the Islamic extremists who are our real enemies.

Some right-wing Jews see the Arab-Israeli conflict through the same lens.

They correctly see the growing religious fanaticism of the Islamic world as a daunting barrier to peace, but they append it with their own conviction that their political positions — such as holding on to every scrap of the West Bank— are ordained by God.

Negotiations, to them, are a deadly trap, since the other side is driven by religious absolutism, not political or pragmatic calculation. And never mind the religious motivations behind their own extreme views.

But they comprise a small minority in Israel and an even smaller minority among American Jews.

To our community's credit, most Jews — right wing, left wing and in the fuzzy middle — understand that recasting conflicts as to-the-death religious wars can only lead to more tragedy for Jews and for the Jewish state.

James D. Besser is a Washington correspondent for Jewish newspapers across the country.