Televangelist, Fundamentalists believe their strict morality is the only

answer

Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle Religion Writer Sunday, September 23, 2001

Televangelist Pat Robertson, a Christian, and convicted bomber Mahmud Abouhalima, a Muslim, agree on a few things, including why God let thousands of innocent people die in the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Robertson, who received nearly 2 million votes when he ran in the Republican presidential primary in 1988, said the terrorist attack succeeded because "God Almighty lifted his protection."

An immoral nation, Robertson explained, is now paying the price for allowing too many abortions, too much Internet pornography, and prohibiting prayer in public schools.

Abouhalima, one of the militants convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, sounded a lot like Robertson when he explained to an interviewer that the "holy war" is not against God-fearing Americans, but against secularism in the United States, Egypt and around the world.

Before this month's attack on the World Trade Center, Abouhalima was asked in a jailhouse interview if he thought the United States would be better off with a Christian government.

"Yes," the convicted terrorist replied. "At least it would have morals."

Robertson and Abouhalima are not saying exactly the same thing, but it's close enough to be shocking. If there is a "holy war" in the world today, it is not between Islam and Christianity, nor Afghanistan and the United States. It is between secularism and religious fundamentalism in all its forms.

FALWELL'S ANALYSIS

And that's exactly what the Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, was talking about in his now-notorious analysis of what was really behind the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "

There has been lots of talk of Muslim "holy war" since Sept. 11, so perhaps it's worth noting that Falwell and Robertson and millions of other American Christians envision a between the forces of good and evil -- the battle of Armageddon.

Based on their reading of the Book of Revelation, millions of fundamentalist Christians are taught that the true believers will be raptured up to heaven and escape the horrors of this final, fiery battle.

Falwell seemed to be hinting at Armageddon when he spoke on Robertson's television show, "The 700 Club."

GOT WHAT WE DESERVED

"What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve," Falwell told Robertson.

Falwell later apologized and retracted his statements, saying, "I misspoke totally and entirely."

Of course, envisioning a violent, vengeful God allowing the death of thousands of innocent people is different than actually murdering thousands of innocent people in the name of God.

But the comments of Falwell, Robertson and Abouhalima tell us something about the fervor of fundamentalism, and its reaction to secularism and secular governments at home and abroad.

They also remind us that no religion has a monopoly on twisting spiritual truth.

"Not all Muslims are fundamentalist anymore than all Christians are fundamentalist," said Karen Armstrong, a leading religion scholar and author of "The Battle for God."

"Everyone has belligerent passages in their scripture, and what fundamentalists have done is to stress those ferocious passages."

Armstrong is a former Roman Catholic nun and author of numerous books on Islam, Jerusalem, Buddhism and other topics.

At one point in her life, after leaving her religious order, Armstrong decided that "religion had done more harm in the world than good because it had inspired so much violence."

RELIGION 'A DANGEROUS THING'

"Religion is not a nice thing," she said in an interview in The Chronicle's offices long before the World Trade Center attacks. "It is potentially a very dangerous thing because it involves a heady complex of emotions, desires, yearnings and fears."

In the end, however, she said she changed her mind, realizing that the universal call to compassion in the world's religions may have tipped the scales on the side of good.

Mark Juergensmeyer, a professor and sociologist of religion at University of California at Santa Barbara, may not be so sure.

He is the man who conducted several interviews with Abouhalima, now serving a life sentence at the maximum-security federal prison in Lompoc, just north of Santa Barbara.

Juergensmeyer profiled religious terrorists claiming allegiance to Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Judaism in his book "Terror in the Mind of God -- The Global Rise of Religious Violence," published last year by University of California Press.

Abouhalima, who was born in Egypt, is a tall, bearded, red-headed man also known as "Mahmud the Red." He went to Germany in 1981, at age 21, and moved to New York City in 1985, where he worked as a cab driver. After spending some time in Afghanistan, he returned to New York and helped Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, a radical Muslim cleric, get established in the United States.

'ENEMIES OF ISLAM'

In his interviews with Juergensmeyer, Abouhalima made it clear that his Islamic brothers have no fight with Christianity. He said the holy war is caused by the U.S. government supporting "enemies of Islam," such as the state of Israel or the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Abouhalima is among the "new breed" of terrorist. He lived in the West for years.

He told Juergensmeyer it took him a long time "to understand what the hell is going on in the United States and in Europe about secularism of people, you know, who have no religion."

"I lived their life, but they didn't live my life, so they will never understand the way I live or the way I think."

Juergensmeyer's book has color photos of three people on its cover -- Timothy McVeigh, the Waco-obsessed American executed for blowing up the Oklahoma City federal building; Shoko Asahara, the Japanese cult leader convicted in a deadly poison gas attack in the Tokyo subway; and Osama bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire who needs no introduction.

Those pictures tell the story. Terror fueled by religious fanaticism can infect all cultures, corrupt all faiths.

Abouhalima was asked what he thought of all those secular people walking around the streets of Cairo and New York, while he sat in federal prison for trying to blow up the World Trade Center. He called them lost people, nonbelievers who lacked the "soul of religion." Then he said:

"They're just moving like dead bodies."

E-mail Don Lattin at dlattin@sfchronicle.com.