Tim Lott offers a devastatingly accurate picture of what
drives Muslim suicide bombers and the difference between them and their typical Western contemporaries: The Muslims have lives with meaning.
The meaning said this: my life is not futile and my death is not final. This carnage has a higher purpose than anything the barren ceremonies of the West can offer me with its expensive gewgaws, watered-down religions, trips to the leisure centre and celebrities.
This is a terrifying reality - that these bombers want nothing in return for their lives other than what they perceive to be the virtue of martyrdom. But as usual in incidents where it is suspected that al-Qaeda is involved, no demands were made. The point was to kill non-believers and thus gain not only a place in heaven but also a paradoxical assertion at the exact point of detonation of the absolute reality and significance of their own lives.
This is not specifically a criticism of Islam, or even fundamentalist Islam. In fact, there is something weirdly admirable in the fundamentalist Islamist, however maniacal, compared, say, with his wishy-washy, half-baked Anglican counterpart. Because the real difference between a fundamentalist Muslim and a moderate Christian (or a moderate Muslim for that matter) is surely that they really, really do believe.
They don't use their religious custom as social glue, or conventional ritual, or a way of fitting in. They talk the deadly talk and they walk the deadly walk.
The difference between a fundamentalist and a moderate is that the fundamentalist is not playing games, at least not games that he is conscious of. In fact, "I'm not playing games" is one of the meanings that the bombings expressed. This is another way of saying: "I am the hero of my own life. I have the courage of my terrible convictions. I will not flinch in fulfilling my bloody destiny." Again, this is not suggesting that Islam is "mad".
It is no madder than Christianity, where we have a whole raft of leaders and politicians who seem quite happy to believe that 2000 years ago a man performed miracles and then died to rise again. The only difference being that, I suspect, most Christians in the UK do not really, really believe it. They just say they do, even to themselves, whistling in what they secretly recognize to be the dark.
Christian faith is dying in the West, and in Britain it is nearly dead (deduct all the people who are trying to get their kids into the local school and it looks even more moribund).
In the meantime, man's desperate thirst for meaning and heroism continues.
What can we offer? A few drinks down the pub, some nice glittering objects, sex, entertainment, a safe refuge for family and friends, a reasonably rich and stable society. Surely that is enough? Sometimes, but not for anyone with a spiritual imagination (and that may be most of us).
Many of us get by, happy enough to await our eventual extinction through old age or disease, distracting ourselves with toys and work, bringing up our kids till they push us aside and into the grave. Others find a gigantic and growing void in the place where meaning should be, a place they fill with endless millions of prescriptions of Prozac, binge-drinking, self-harm, crack cocaine and reality TV.
The bombers are lying to themselves, just as we are, but they are doing it in a more committed, one might even say, more honest way. This is their way of saying life is not a joke and death is not a rumor. This, the life we are living, is real and deadly, beautiful and terrifying. We must burn away the illusion, they say. In their case, it is simply, tragically, to reveal another illusion.
But is there anything but illusion, any truth about the world that could give the atomized, lost century a meaning powerful enough to act as a buffer and a prophylactic against suicide bombers? Are there truths worth living for beyond family, finance and fun? Because if there aren't, make no mistake, more bombers will come, and will succeed.
Lott is exactly right up to this point. The empty, nihilistic, hedonistic void created by the West’s materialistic worldview has left the culture starved for something more. And radical Islam does a much better job of filling that void than anything the West is offering. Just read the testimonials of the young Muslim radicals profiled in an excellent Christian Science Monitor report from Britain:
On 7/7, the jihad came. The suicide bombers were aged 18 to 30 - the same age as Abu Osama's cohorts. By portraying militancy as the ultimate expression of piety, Abu Osama and preachers like him are leading young Muslims down the path toward violence.
"Some of the people tell you Islam is a religion of peace because they think that then you'll want to convert," says Dublin-born convert Khalid Kelly, who soaks up Abu Osama's sidewalk sermon. "But you cannot possibly say Islam is a religion of peace; jihad is not an internal struggle."
Armed struggle was the last thing on Mr. Kelly's mind until his conversion several years ago. "I was your average Irish drunkard, partying and so on," he says. Arrested in Saudi Arabia, where he worked as a nurse, for brewing his own alcohol, Kelly found Islam in prison - an increasingly common arena for Muslim conversion and radicalization … Like many, his dedication to Islam arose from a messy flirtation with a Western lifestyle … "When reality hits you, you come back to Islam," he says. "If you read the Koran, you see that Allah gave us the right to terrorize the enemy."
The report goes on to say that hard core Islam is reaching many like Khalid Kelly:
Hard-line mosques are an intoxicating arena for disillusioned young Muslims, Britain's fastest-growing, poorest, and worst-educated minority.
The pull to Islam in general is not bad," says [LondonAbdul-Rehman Malik, contributing editor at the Muslim magazine Q-News, based.] "It gives [young people] a sense of identity and spirituality that is important to their lives."
Unfortunately, as Tim Lott wrote, these Muslims are believing a lie. There is no Allah who is going to reward them for blowing up buildings and murdering people. They may firmly believe that they are living and dying for a noble eternal cause, but they are wrong. As Lott also points out, the great mass of Westerners who spend their lives keeping themselves drunk and distracted from the meaningless of it all are also wrong. There must be more to it than that. But what? This is where Lott also goes wrong.
To his question of “Is there anything but illusion, any
truth about the world that could give the atomized, lost century a meaning
powerful enough to act as a buffer and a prophylactic against suicide bombers?
Are there truths worth living for beyond family, finance and fun?” he answers “I
believe that meaning is there - in the sacredness of life itself, in the deep
mysteries of science, in the magic of collective storytelling, in the cage of
time and space we all have to share.” He suggests that we get “mystical” and
turn to the “religions of non-religion” like “world humanist philosophies such
as Buddhism and Taoism. These schemes of thought have also been hijacked by the
religious, but at their root they do not talk about God, but man.” He goes on
to explain that the only hope for mankind is to rid itself of the “religion
virus” and find the meaning in our lives by focusing on its “mysterious” and
“magical” qualities, whatever that means.
What hogwash. There is no more reason to believe this
“mystical” worldview is true than there is to believe the terrorists or the
materialists. There is meaning in life but it is not revealed to us by looking
inward or by straining to see something ambiguous and mystical. It is found by
following the evidence where it leads: to Jesus Christ. His life, death and
resurrection (along with the rest of the revelation of scripture) show us that
we were indeed made for more than sex, drugs and sitting like a blob in front
of the TV our whole lives. But it does not tell us that we are to establish a
Muslim political kingdom on earth, either. The testimony of the Bible is that
we are in the middle of a supernatural war for our very souls and that our
eternal destiny hinges on what we do with the time we have on this planet. What
could be more meaningful than that?
As I wrote in my last post, people are feeling lost and empty. The solution is not to try to fill the void with false religion, (as the Muslims do and Mr. Lott suggests, even though he uses a different label) or entertain yourself so you don’t have to think about it (as most Americans do), but to seek the Truth. Then, when you find Him, (He is not far), follow.
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