Bryan Fischer is also a dolt

Or maybe not a dolt. Yeah, that’s still unkind. How about “… a dangerous lunatic”? A danger to others, certainly. A danger to logic and rhetoric, unquestionably. A danger to America, without a doubt.

Take his appearance the other night on Anderson Cooper 360 (guest hosted by Sanjay Gupta).  Fischer made it very clear that, no matter what moderate extremists like Sarah Palin might argue for cover, the goal in his eyes is not to stop the Cordoba House / Park51 project, but to stop all mosque construction in the US, period.  He does so with fear-mongering, redefinition of terms, and rhetorical wingnuttery that would even have Beck and Limbaugh looking a bit embarrassed.

We’re joined now via Skype by Bryan Fischer; he’s the host of Focal Point on the American Family Radio Talk Network. . We should point out that he’s also issues director for the American Family Association. While he says his views are his own, not the association’s, the American Family Radio Network is, in fact, listed as a division of the AFA, just to get that all clear. Thanks for joining us, Mr. Fischer.

I.e., he works for them, he performs for them, they’re his main media outlet — but they try to maintain plausible deniability for his utterances.  (Dude, when you have even the AFA backing away from you, you might want to reconsider.)

GUPTA: … I want to be clear on your viewpoint here because you’ve made quite a bit of waves lately. You don’t want any mosques built in the United States, is that correct? You want a moratorium?

FISCHER: I think the reality Dr. Gupta is, that when we look at Islam, we’re looking at a totalitarian ideology that is anti- Christian, anti-Semitic.

Oooh! It’s not a religion, it’s an ideology.  (Religions are ideologies, too, of course, technically, if you want to actually look at the words, but we all know that the True Religion is something Very Different and Holy.)

Is Islam (a hard religion to apply a single label to, given its wide array of factions and lack of central authorities) totalitarian?

One could argue that, in an ideal Islamic world (according to some Muslims), yes, there would be one faith (Islam) and one God worshiped (Allah), and that Islam would control the government, the schools, the culture, etc.

One could argue that, in an ideal Christian world (according to some Christians), yes, you’d have the same thing. Except the Christians (the Right-Thinking True Christians™) would be in charge.

So, yes, in that sense, Islam is “anti-Christian” and Christianity is “anti-Islam,” as both seek totalitarian dominion over the nation and the world.

Of course, most Christians would deny they’re part of some fiendish plot to rule everything — especially, they’d say, because Christianity is so diverse, lacks a central authority, is filled with theological divisions, and is a religion of love and peace.  But that’s just what you’d expect them to say …

As to “anti-Semitic” … I’ll leave the very sorry records of both faiths to speak for themselves.

The values that are at the core of Islam are contrary to every single solitary western and American value.

So it’s okay if we have a totalitarian Christian nation, because that’s the Western and American thing to do, but we cannot abide a totalitarian Islamic nation.

Of course, a lot fewer folks are militating for the latter at the moment than the former, but let’s not quibble with (actually spoken) words.

Speaking of which, what are the core values of Islam?  Well, we have the Five Pillars, which are often used as a reference:

1. Monotheism and the Prophet
2. Daily Prayer
3. Charitable Giving
4. Fasting
5. Pilgrimages

No, nothing there that matches up with Christianity.  What a bizarre, un-Western, un-American religion.

Granted, how Islam implements those points is different from Christianity — but, then, Catholic worship is pretty different from that of the Baptists (not to mention Mormons), and orthodox Judaism is even more different from all of the above.

Of course, to be fair, Right-Thinking True Christians™ have accused Catholics, Mormons, and Jews of un-Western, un-American thinking.  Heck, back before we had a Bill of Rights, even Baptists and Quakers were persecuted for their unspeakable and anti-social beliefs.

I think communities ought to have the liberty to reject building permits.

Didn’t a Republican-led Congress unanimously pass a law in 2000 to keep local communities from imposing substantial burdens on churches that wanted to build or expand?  Oh, right, they just expected that to apply to Christians.

Each one of these mosques is either a potential or actual recruitment center for Jihadism or training center for Jihadism.

Yes, I suppose that’s true. And every Catholic church is either a potential or actual recruitment center for IRA supporters.  And every Baptist church is either a potential or actual recruitment center for abortion doctor assassins and bombers.  And every Mormon temple is either a potential or actual recruitment center for Republicans.

Even if a mosque can be used for recruitment of Islamic terrorists (what Fischer most probably means by “Jihadism”), doesn’t it make more sense to know where that’s happening, rather than driving it all underground?  Is it Fischer’s suggestion that, if only we don’t build mosques, we won’t have Muslims in this country?  That works so well (and so righteously) in countries where Christian church construction is restricted or forbidden, right?

On the contrary, of course. And, in fact, this whole “we are at war with Islam” simply supports Al-Qa’eda’s narrative, and plans, and, yes, recruitment process. “They talk about freedom, but they hate us and want to destroy the One True Faith.” How does Fischer think most people would react to that sort of rhetoric?

FISCHER: … Well, the reality, Dr. Gupta, is that no one could claim First Amendment religious protections if their ideology and their activities are subversive.

For certain values of “subversive.”

All you’ve got do is ask the Christian militia, the Hutaree how much First Amendment protections they had when they set out to attack federal officers. They have Bible verses plastered all over their Web site. Everything they did, they did in the name of Jesus Christ. They are right now pondering the limits of the First Amendment from the inside of a jail cell, which is where they should be.

Except that the Hutaree weren’t busted for their religious faith, but for explicit criminal actions they committed or were conspiring to commit.  Their ideological basis for doing so was irrelevant (worrisome, but not a criminal act in and of itself).

Because that’s how we do things in this country.

Further, isn’t the extension of Fischer’s very argument that, given how we have an extremist Christian group we can point to (“Every Christian church is either a potential or actual recruitment center for violent Christian militias or training center for violent Christian militias”), that we should restrict all future Christian church construction?

Of course not.  Because Christian extremists and militias and violent lunatics are the exception. Whereas Fischer knows that all Muslims are jihadists.  The voices told him so.

GUPTA: You know, you have said — now, again, you’ve said some this before. Your evidence for saying that every mosque potentially here is dedicated to the overthrowing of the American government is a manifest, I believe, issued in 1991 by a group called the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, you quote some frightening passages from there about destroying Western civilization from within.

But, Bryan, you realize this group doesn’t speak for all Muslims; it doesn’t speak for all Muslims around the world. It doesn’t speak for all Muslims in the United States. It’s a radical political group, very controversial.

And while its history does involve some violence, they’re — they’re controversial even among Muslims. So, how can you — how can you use that one particular organization and say that they’re speaking for 1.2 billion people?

FISCHER: Well, Dr. Gupta, it’s nice of you to try to marginalize the Muslim Brotherhood, but their tentacles include the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Student Association, the Council for American-Islamic Relations — CAIR, and also the Muslim Association.

Ooooh … tentacles! How fiendishly Cthulhuesque!

The guilt by association here is, of course, the actual fiendish part.  I’d be willing to bet you I could play “Seven Degrees of Separation” between the Hutaree and Bryan Fischer, too.  Depending on who’s met with whom, who’s shared which podium, who’s radio show person X had gone on as well as person Y, it would be relatively trivial.

Regardless, the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood are really no more (or less) scary than the Christian Dominionist movement, which (through folks like Janet Porter) arguably have “tentacles” in most American Christian groups.  Does that justify oppression of Christians in Muslim nations?  Or, for that matter, in the US?

So, you’re looking at four — five, really, if you include the Brotherhood — five of the most prominent and most visible Muslim organizations in North America. They are far from a fringe group; they represent the essence and the core of Islam. And it’s very clear that the goal of Islam in North America is the extermination of Western civilization. No community should have to put up with that.

If there’s one thing that “Western civilization” points out, it’s that suppression of radical ideology rarely works.  The best way to avoid the “extermination of Western civilization” (though what that term means to Fischer is probably different from what I think of it) is to present a robust case for it.  The point of our freedoms is that they are self-perpetuating — the free marketplace of ideas is its own best defense.

… Islam is not a religion of peace. It is a religion of war. It is a religion of violence. Christianity, on the other hand, is a religion of peace. It was founded by the Prince of Peace. That’s the major contrast between the two religions.

How Fischer can make this statement with a straight face — looking at the history of war and violence in the “Christian West,” how many of those wars have been over Christian religious division, or been justified by Christian faith, or dedicated to the cause of the Prince of Peace — is beyond me.  Whether it’s Crusades in the Middle Ages, or framing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as modern “crusades” — let alone the history of Europe, the Irish “Troubles,” etc. — Christianity has been a tool in the pocket of those who want to oppress others in a violent fashion.

Not to defend Islam here, I certainly don’t suggest that followers of Islam have been intrinsically more peaceful than those of Christianity.  I’d simply say that neither faith has demonstrated a fundamental adherence to the ideals that its more enlightened modern adherents would like.  Arguing which is “worse” or “less bad” is a mook’s game.

Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? as one radical once said.

Islam, in reality, is a political ideology. It’s a totalitarian political ideology. And you simply cannot hide a totalitarian political agenda behind the First Amendment.

How, fundamentally, is Islam any different from Christianity in this regard?  Given the way Fischer and his cohorts are insistent on insinuating Christian religious dogma and doctrine into civil law, dabbling in politics, and trying to control the government … how, fundamentally, is it functionally discernible from Islam save for the serial numbers?

Sure, an Islamic-controlled nation would be a different place to live in from a Christian-controlled nation, in practice.  In many ways, though, it would be the same.

And even, regardless of that, political ideology is also protected by the First Amendment (that’s the foundation of the Freedom of Speech, which is protective most strongly of political expression).

Imagine if Timothy McVeigh was a Christian. Now, he wasn’t. He was an atheist. But imagine he was a part of a violent Christian sect, and he wanted to build a 13-story center, cultural center, for his Christian sect overlooking the grounds of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. … I don’t think anybody in America would put up with that, and they would be right not to.

Fischer hand-waves away McVeigh’s religious faith, or lack thereof, too quickly.  It’s difficult to draw a coherent picture of his beliefs, but they don’t seem to fit a convenient atheistic mold. Raised Catholic, he spoke of “my God” at times, at other times of agnosticism, at other times of science, and at other times of a core “higher being.”  (Notably, he resisted attempts by Ramzi Yousef to convert him to Islam in prison.)

That said, Fischer’s example here is simply poorly premised and structured (no great surprise).  The Muslims behind the Cordoba House project are demonstrably not of the same Islamic sect as the 9/11 hijackers, and the project is not not planned to “overlook the grounds” of the former WTC.  A far better analogy would be the setup, and then asking what if someone then wanted to build a Methodist church a few blocks away from the Murrah Building site.

Would the American public put up with that?

Fischer is adamant that we not tar Christians with the same extremist brush as Christian wackos (the Hutaree, the hypothetical McVeigh).  But he glibly assumes that all Islam is monolithic, and that the murderers of 9/11 are fundamentally no different from any other Muslim, including the American Muslims supporting the project in question.

GUPTA: … Quickly, Mr. Fischer, a lot of Muslim-Americans watching tonight, some of them very upset by some of the comments you have made in the past, what do you say to them now?

FISCHER: Well, I say I love Muslims. I am pro-Muslim. I am anti-Islam.

Well, bless his heart.  He’s pro-Muslim (i.e., people who follow Islam), but anti-Islam.  He loves Muslims, just not the faith they dedicate their lives to.

I’m sure he hates the sin and loves the sinner, too. Unless they’re gay.

If the people behind Cordoba House were to say, “We love Christians. We are pro-Christian. We are anti-Christianity,” would Fischer call that hate speech and a justification for his position?

I would say to a Muslim, look, your ideology is destructive. It’s deceptive. It’s dark. I invite you to come into the light of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. That’s where hope and light, forgiveness and a promise for the future can truly be found.

If only they’d become good Christians, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

That’s the bottom line of Fisher’s position.  It isn’t about religious freedom — it’s about Us vs. Them.  It isn’t about Western Civilization, except insofar as he sees that as Christendom.  The problem is not the particular people involved or anything they say, it’s that they aren’t Christians, and therefore ultimately have no rights, have no basis for being trusted, and should be assumed to be an enemy until they capitulate and accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior.

It really is a holy war for him.  Now, who’s the Jihadist, again?

*     *     *

I would be remiss if I didn’t note some other doltish comments later on the show.  Like from Erick Erickson:

GUPTA: Erick, I read this — this column by you. You put President Obama’s speech supporting religious freedom in Lower Manhattan in the same category as someone supporting satanic worship, human sacrifice, and jihad. Do you stand by that?

ERICKSON: Yes. You know, I think a lot of people missed the point, other than people who picked up my point, which was, these are absurd results, but they are the results that come along with should Fred Phelps build a church where Matthew Shepard was killed or the Klan putting a center next to where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed? They’re absurd results.

Actually, while Erickson later tries to distinguish (like at least a few of his brethren) between whether there is a Constitutional right to do this, vs. whether it “should” be done, he again misses the point himself. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is not Osama bin Ladin.  The Cordoba Initiative is not al-Qa’eda.  Erickson’s analogies would be more properly “should the Lutherans build a church (by coincidence) where Matthew Shepard was killed?” or “the GOP putting a party headquarters next to where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed”?  Unless you are going to attribute guilt over Shepard’s death to all Christians, or blame all whites for the death of MLK, it’s simply not an issue.

And unless you are going to attribute guilt over 9/11 to all Muslims, and consider them all as the moral equivalent of practitioners of “satanic worship, human sacrifice, and jihad,” then it’s irrelevant.

And if you do, then you should be blocking all mosque constructions, a la Fischer (if not throwing them all in internment camps, right?).  Except that Erickson’s quick to back away from that position with a hearty “some of my best friends” kind of line.

Why, by this way of thinking, it’s okay to build a mosque in New Jersey, or Tennessee, or California (there are no 9/11 victims there? nobody still traumatized”like a stab with a knife” by the event? Islam magically stops being satanic there?) and not in Manhattan is beyond me.

And beyond Bryan Fischer. Who at least is honest enough to take his arguments to their logical conclusion, even if they are full of doltitude.

*sigh*

I’m glad I didn’t start this post last night when I thought of it.  I might never have gotten to bed.