American presidential and congressional elections can take on entertaining features, especially in the current cycle with a reality television candidate whose motto — “You’re Fired” — rings truly hollow. Of course, such television-propelled drivel is nothing new, as televangelist-entertainment filled the airwaves for decades, ranging the gamut from Jimmy Swaggart — whose 1980s telecasts were transmitted over 3,000 stations and cable systems — to Jerry Falwell — whose Lynchburg Christian Academy in Virginia became a university and who was responsible for creating what was once known as the “Moral Majority”. Several of these iconic personalities confronted scandals: In 1991, Swaggart was arrested with a prostitute, while numerous parties sued Falwell for slander over the years — even if all claimed divine inspiration.
Most of these preachers disgraced themselves, as only they knew how, but the phenomenon endured. All were staunch allies of Israel and sometimes referred to themselves as “Christian Zionists”. Falwell, in particular, displayed abject intolerance towards Muslims even if in his epistle, Listen, America!, he referred to the Jewish people as “spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Saviour”.
What these men and women created was an industry of unprecedented hate that, regrettably, seeped through the body politic in the United States. Beyond traditionalists or even neoconservatives, the Republican Party espoused with extremist ideals from the religious right, which came to be known as the “Christian Right”, and which pretended to support conservative social policies like opposition to abortion, affirmative action, and same-sex marriage. How Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump survived this vetting was a mystery that will long be debated after the November 8 elections, given his liberal preferences on socio-cultural matters!
Notwithstanding this caveat, we now have an entire gloom and doom industry that prevails over the mentally challenged or, to be kinder, on naive fundamentalists (the Christian and Jewish variety in these instances) who await the end of the world in earnest.
In his heydays, Falwell spewed apocalyptic views, called Islam “satanic” and identified the Messenger as a “terrorist”, though he added that he did not mean to offend “honest and peace-loving” Muslims. The disingenuous apology was, however, a perfect illustration of what happened to the Christian Right industry, and it is one according to the Washington Post, which estimated that Americans donated nearly $84 billion (Dh308.95 billion) in charitable contributions to religious groups in 2013. In comparison, the sports market in North America was only worth $60 billion in 2014, and few realised that these churches owned $600 billion in property — considered to be a low estimate — as they routinely collected hundreds of millions of tax-exempt dollars.
Where it gets dicey is when you have perfectly normal-sounding preachers fill the airwaves with mind-boggling assertions, and even threats, welcoming expert guests on their shows to spew more venom than all of the snakes in the Arizona desert.
One such regular expert is Dennis Avi Lipkin, also known as Victor Mordecai, a New Yorker who moved to Israel, worked for former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, began lecturing in Christian churches and synagogues in the US, studied theology, wrote six books — Is Fanatic Islam a Global Threat?, Christian Revival for Israel’s Survival, Islamic Threat Updates Almanac #1, Israel’s Bible Bloc, Islam Prophesied In Genesis, and Return to Mecca — and otherwise spread unadulterated loathing.
In Return to Mecca, he credits Jim and Penny Caldwell — who apparently lived in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for 14 years and shared their experiences with our fearless theologian — for enlightening him that Mount Sinai was deep inside the Arabian Peninsula, and not in the Sinai Peninsula.
Islam, he claims, is “a global threat” and affirms that his faith tells him “that either the Jews and Christians hang together or [they] will hang on the gallows separately”. As if this was not provocative enough, Lipkin offers the following gem: “To terminate Islam, one must ‘capture the flag’, or the Ka’abah in [Makkah], and either raise the Israeli flag over [it] or remove it as the vortex of Islam’s evil system.”
Terminate Islam and conquer Makkah and Madinah? Are these the results of theological studies? Should we not express our revulsions at such nonsense? Should we not recommend mental care for those who espouse such analytical talents?
Our confused theologian, who believes that Allah is different from God [or at least his God], needs serious redemption though few earthlings can accommodate his extremism. What are far more serious are the political consequences of such discourses at a time when our world encounters serious security challenges. In the context of American elections, where gullible voters buy — no pun intended — into such absurdity, extremist views mobilise voters who, in turn, perceive the Muslim world in negative terms. Most ignore that Allah is the Arabic word for God and that millions of Arab Christians — those who were there at the beginning — have lived and maintained the most cordial ties with their Muslim neighbours.
Extremist forces from all faiths naturally look for advantages in their “business models”, which feeds the hate industry, but true monotheists know that we merely aspire to earn eternal grace. Enough with hatred already!
Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is the author of the just published From Alliance to Union: Challenges Facing Gulf Cooperation Council States in the Twenty-First Century (Sussex: 2016).
