Christian Right Too Eager for Armageddon
http://commondreams.org/views02/1018-04.htm
Fundamentalism
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15100

These two articles, and those below,  are worth a careful read.

Hundreds of thousands of Hazara men, women, and children . . . have lost their lives to religious persection during the 19th and 20th centuries in Afghanistan. The Hazara are Muslim, whose religious practices vary from those of their fundamentalist Muslim persecutors.

In Israel the destruction of the Oslo peace process and the rumored plans for "relocation" or expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank (if they are not 'reduced' by Smallpox) is driven by the fundamentalist right of Judaism, assassins of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The murders of Muslims in Gujarat, India, is driven by the fundamentalist right of Hinduism.  If you missed the PBS special on that, and its coverage of the resurgence of the party, the fascist RSS,  which assassinated Ghandi, please try to see a rerun.  The BJP, currently ruling India, is a rightist Hindu fundamentalist party only slightly exceeded in extremism by the RSS, and supported by it.

The fudamentalist regimes in India and Israel appeal for support for their reigns of terror by comparing their actions to the "War Against Terror"   declared by Bush after the fundamentalist right of Islam achieved its own version of religious virtue, by destroying 3000 lives,  in their own idea of a Godly act.

(Bush's "War" is not against the terrorism that attacked us, however.  Fifteen of those were from the State which is the home of the fundamentalist Wahabi sect, Saudi Arabia.  Backed by Saudi oil money, Wahabism is responsible for the radicalization of Islam throughout Central and Southeast Asia, with the Taliban only the most apparent example.  Not one of those who attacked us on 9-11 was Iraqi.  Yet, in a massive, foolish, and dangerous policy non-sequitur, Bush turns his back on the root source of the terrorism, and asks for war on Iraq!!)

These movements are mirrors of the Fallwell and Robertson wet dreams for the future of the United States' culture and politics in their own hands.  This is the ambition of the Shrubbyists' political "base"; the source of their hatred of our secular society.

These are Death Worshipers.   It is time we faced that fact, and called them out on it.

If we do not, they will murder us all in the name  of their God.

Other resources:
http://19.org/  - http://19.org/english/   Islam and monotheistic rationalism
http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/00000006D90C.htm All cultures are not equal - Malik
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011217&s=willis Bringing the Holy War Home
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011015&s=willis Dreaming of War
http://www.ariga.com/avnery20020801.htm Indict the Murderers of Oslo!!
http://www.bu.edu/partisanreview/archive/2002/3/bawer.html Tolerating Intolerance:  - Bawer
 http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010219&s=willis Freedom From Religion
http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/Paine/Default.htm Thomas Paine
http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/Locke/Default.htm John Locke
Links to Sources:  The Radicalization of Fundamentalist Islam
http://rawasongs.fancymarketing.net/index.html Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan  (RAWA)

Christian belief has been infected with one particularily virulent form of fundamentalism, Darbyism, which goes under various aliases, chiefly Millenialism, the Apocolyptic Vision, "The End of Days", Dispensationalism, "The New Covenant", etc.  (In the US the latter two are centers of bigotry and racism, violent cults, and rightist militia organizations.)

A contrarian Evangelical take on Darbyism from Rethinking American Evangelicals’ “Love” for Israel by Gary Alley, Middle East Correspondent , is copied *here*, and includes the following:
In the 1870’s, John Nelson Darby of the Brethern Movement in Plymouth, England, made a number of trips to the United States in order to teach his views on dispensationalism.  Darbyism, or dispensationalism, is a doctrine that divides up the Bible and world history into seven eras or “dispensations” in relation to how God deals with humanity.  More specifically, it teaches that that God deals differently with his “earthly” people (Israel) representing the “kingdom of heaven,” versus his “heavenly” people (the church) or the “kingdom of God.”  Both Israel, a Jewish country with land and physical borders, along with the global Church, would play a part in the biblical end times as envisioned by Darbyism.

Nor is it confined to Christians - Muslims and Jews are also infected.

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/56/story_5673.html has a good summary of the issue by Gershom Gorenberg, copied *here*.  Included is this:

To make sense of all this, picture apocalyptic believers seated in a triangular theater around the stage of Jerusalem.   All agree that history's last act is being played out, but they hold different programs. Jewish Temple activists--bit  players in real life--have starring roles in the Christian play; Jews and Christians alike unknowingly play in the Muslim  script. Hope and fear are the sound system, wildly amplifying every word, every footstep. Small actions at the Temple Mount take on significance that nonbelievers--such as secular politicians and analysts--neither expect nor understand.

 Now consider how Israeli hardliner Ariel Sharon's late-September (1999) visit to the Mount would have looked to anyone  who'd read Ayyub or Da'ud. Consider as well how it might appear now that polls show Sharon way ahead of Ehud  Barak in the race to become Israel's prime minister.

Will fundamentalist Christians and Jews ignite apocalypse? is a Catholic point of view on the matter.
Left Behind!  (Truer words were never spoken!  ;-)

What the Qur'an Really Says: "The Qur'an says that Allah gave the Land of Israel to the Jews, and He will restore them to it at the end of days. by Shaykh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi"   (MmmmHmmm..... Yep, I'll bet it does.  jp)

A particularily juicy instance of millenialist ichor:

http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/religionet/endtimes/bot.htm  More than anyone needs to know about the whole sorry mess, in glossary form.   Check dispensationalism, millennialism, and premillennialism for an overview.

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/61/story_6196.html has an excerpt from Gershom Gorenberg's book "The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount," published by The Free Press.    Gorenberg's important book is available through Amazon, which has several excellent brief reviews at the purchase information page.   One comment: ". . . the first textbook in current Middle East politics 101. . ."
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195152050//102-1360132-4904158?v=glance

Links to related books there include:
Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence Updated Edition with a New Preface (Comparative Studies in Religion and Society) by Mark Juergensmeyer

What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response by Bernard Lewis contains Mr. Lewis's "firmly moral" judgement that it is not a matter of what Islam, or the West, or the Mongols have done to the Muslim world, so much as what Muslims have done to (or in the name of) Islam that is at issue.  From a brief review:

Science provides another example of Arab decline. The Medieval Arabs inherited a vast corpus of knowledge from the Greeks, Egyptians, and Babylonians and they added their own insights to that received wisdom; but by the end of the  Middle Ages this came to an end. "In the Muslim world,"Lewis writes,"science was reduced to the veneration of approved knowledge."

Yet, considering the contemporary condition of the Christian, Jewish, and Hindu civilizations, as exemplified by the growth in the social and political influence of their own brands of religious fundamentalism and its alliance with fascist social principles and parties, it is too early for any member of those civilizations to congratulate themselves on "firmly moral" grounds.   Including Bernard Lewis.

We have not yet escaped the grip of superstition, ignorance, and authoritarianism.

We are in the hands of madmen.

These are Death Worshipers.   It is time we faced that fact, and called them out on it.

If we do not, they will murder us all in the name  of their God.
 

In a short while, there may be only three populations in the world protected against a virulent disease, for which near universal vaccination existed only 35 or so years ago, and for which vaccination ceased when the US declared the disease was extinct.  This is the disease which, transmitted through infected blankets, clothing, etc.,  largely depopulated the Americas of their native populations.

Do you think that, faced with this threat, even if it is only illusory and a paranoid chimera, other countries with proportional threats, such as nuclear,  will not plan for their use?  No wonder the Shrubbyists want a missile defense.  In the world they are creating for us, it would be needed, if it would only work.

I must be either "incompetent in my use of the language", or a "lying jerk"  to paraphrase your posting.  Perhaps both, as I chose the words "planning for" in my note quite purposefully.   I did not say "planning to wage biowarfare".  I did not say "planning to defend against" biowarfare.

I said, and I meant, "planning  for" biowarfare.   Flexible, as the strategy itself seems to be flexible.  In the case of the strategy however such flexibility is not a good thing.   The strategy of preparing for biowarfare, preparing your population to survive a Smallpox epidemic, is subject to interpretation, most importantly to mis interpretation, and over interpretation.

Some of us will admit to only one interpretation.  Others will admit only to its opposite.   I see only that it is not a strategic "balance of power".  It creates a terrifying, and destabilizing strategic imbalance.  The people who it terrifies most are the ones who are apt to act first, and destructively.   (Create the conditions in which your opponent must make the first move, and be so blameless when you react.  A childhood game, 2 year olds are expert at it.)

Restraint in matters which create strategic imbalances of such significance is a matter of sense and statesmanship.   Rabin, however has been assassinated; the Israeli political system has no such sense or statesmanship at its helm.   Nor does the US.

We are at a Death Watch folks.   Get that straight.  We are at a death watch.  Quite possibly it is not just other folks' this time.

Nurev Ind wrote:

This sentence... "There is a clear and imminent danger ***THAT*** A. Sharon is planning for BioWarfare  in the Middle East." ... Implies that because they are preparing for a bio-attack, which the ISRAELIS will chose to implement.

Is that what you are trying to convey? Because you don't mention that they are expecting an imminent biological attack from Iraq.

Joshua2
========

http://www.jimpivonka.com/pages

Write!