Robert Scheer’s Iraq: Religion’s Last Stand against Secular Imperialism

iran_vote_or_dieIs the epic conflict between the Sunni and Shia in the Middle East the last stand of centuries-old religion in a secular world bent on imperial conquest of the globe? Robert Scheers syndicated op-ed column this week in many local newspapers suggests that George W. Bush’s real crime was his failure to see that Saddam Hussein was actually a secular militarist, not a religious leader.

     “Bush responded to the 9/11 attacks by overthrowing a leader who had banished al-Qaida from Iraq and who had been an ally of the United States in the war to contain Iran’s influence in the region,” says Scheer.   “Instead of confronting the funders of Sunni extremism based in Saudi Arabia, the home of 15 of the 19 hijackers and their Saudi leader bin Laden, Bush chose to attack the secular leader of Iraq.”

      Scheer undoubtedly sees Jimmy Carter’s disposal of the secular Mohammad Reza Shah as an earlier example of unwitting extremist empowerment, resulting “in an enormous boon to both Sunni extremists and their militant Shiite opponents throughout the Mideast.”

      Christianity in the West has been marginalized, fully separated from the managerial elite that runs the secular government.  Perhaps the unstated plan is to turn church services into mere “fellowship” gatherings, a pacification that won’t challenge extreme libertarian and secular changes to society.  Will, then, the Sunni and Shia be the only moral counterweight willing to fight against secular oppression?

      Scheer sees the imposition of Western democracy on the Middle East as having been little more than cultural imperialism and corporate greed, “while our corporations quietly sucked up their oil.”

      The Sunni and Shia represent a religious dynamism not seen for centuries in the West, perhaps going back to the Reformation which led to millions of dead in the fight between Protestants and Catholics.

      But sectarian fighting in the Middle East is also galvanized by resistance to neocolonialism from Western democracies which, according to Scheer, have drastically underestimated the primal strength of raw religious determination to turn back “the imperial ambitions of non-regional actors. Those prisoners of imperial hubris always underestimated the resilience of the occupied and came to believe their own lies about being crusaders for enlightenment.”

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