أحمد محمد لبن Ahmad.M.Lbn
مؤسس ومدير المنتدى
عدد المساهمات : 52644
العمر : 72
 | | موضوع: Killing For God or For Country? الأربعاء 16 يناير 2019, 4:44 pm | |
| Killing For God or For Country?
The history just referred to is actually very relevant for the contemporary discussion. It was this history that led to revulsion among Western thinkers to the idea of killing for the sake of God. There was so much killing of Christians by Christians in Europe that the great thinkers of Europe finally concluded that it makes no sense to kill “in the name of God.”
It did not take long for what occurred in the particular circumstances of Europe to be accepted by Western thinkers as “universal principles.” Nothing highlights this fact more than a short treatise prepared by the Institute for American Values shortly after 9/11. This paper was entitled, “What We’re Fighting For.” It was signed by many of the leading intellectuals in the United States, including Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and many others—including some of the leading just war theorists of today, such as James Turner Johnson, John Kelsay and Jean Bethke Elshtain.
In the opening passages of that paper, they state the following:
We affirm five fundamental truths that pertain to all people without distinction:
1. All human beings are born freeand equal in dignity and rights.
2. The basic subject of societyis the human person, and the legitimate role of government is to protect and help to foster the conditions for human flourishing..
3. Human beings naturally desire to seek the truthabout life's purpose and ultimate ends.
4. Freedom of conscience and religious freedomare inviolable rights of the human person.
5. Killing in the name of Godis contrary to faith in God and is the greatest betrayal of the universality of religious faith.
We fight to defend ourselves and to defend these universal principles.
Points numbers four and five are of most interest here. This author has to admit that the logic of this preamble escapes him. For example, how did Point 5 become a universal principle? It definitely goes against what the West believed in for centuries. In reality, to this day, it is not a “universal principle” within the West—as can be seen by Christians who have been fighting each other in Northern Irelandand those who have committed murder at abortion clinics in the name of God. It is astonishing to see that after mentioning the basic principles, they then say that they fight “to defend these universal principles.”
At the very least, they should have said that they believe that these principles are good for all of humankind and deserving of the greatest amount of support. They way they have stated their case—and as signed by numerous dignitaries—has a fundamental logical flaw in it. How can they “fight” to defend the “universal principle” of “killing in the name of God is contrary to faith” while also fighting to defend the principle of “religious freedom” as one of the “inviolable rights of the human person”? From what they stated, one could argue that it is acceptable to fight for the sake of God against those people who kill in the name of God because killing in the name of God is contrary to faith in God, as they have stated!
But what have they done in reality? All they have done is replaced religion—for which one is not allowed to fight—with some principles that they have concluded—for which one is allowed to fight! Why should more weight be given to their devised principles rather than the principles that one believes has been revealed from God? Isn’t fighting for man-made principles nothing more than a “secular holy war”? In one of his numerous writings, James Turner Johnson made a valuable comment that highlights the self-contradiction of the stance that these signatories have taken.
He wrote,
However, when the state itself develops a state ideology, something very much like holy war reasoning reasserts itself in secular guise. Examples include the ideologies of nationalism, nazism, communism, ethnicity, and even democracy. The West, then, has not completely rejected war for religion, for something very like it lives on in the form of wars for various justifying ideologies.
Now comes a very perplexing question for anyone who believes in God, which, it seems, is still the majority of humankind today: How is it that one is not allowed to fight for the sake of God’s religion—God who created and nourished all of humankind—yet it is considered acceptable today to fight in the name of man-made ideologies, such as “democracy” or “freedom”? Indeed, it is considered completely acceptable today to fight in the name of man-made “nations.” People get together and form a nation, sometimes a result of most arbitrary historical events, and yet it becomes considered acceptable and logical for the people of that nation to kill others in wars carried out in the name of that nation. The same people who defend those types of wars, including many of the signatories to the above mentioned treatise, will condemn killing or fighting in the name of religion or for the sake of God. Which one should make more sense to the one who believes in God, regardless of whether he be a Jew, Christian, Muslim or whatever?
The issue becomes even more perplexing for those who believe in God: An individual can be jailed for life and even put to death for treason, all in the name of the state, yet at the same time, in the name of freedom of expression, anyone is allowed to say anything they wish about God, religion or virtually any other subject. The man-made entity called the state—which may not even exist tomorrow, such as Yugoslavia, or may even give up its overriding ideology, such as the USSR—has the right to put someone to death but God has no right to call for the death of any individual.
The result is a rather hypocritical situation. If such rights for states are accepted then they must also be accepted for God, especially when one’s view of God embodies state, society and personal devotion, as in the case of Islam.
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