Up The Mainstream

What's the Difference Between Palin and Muslim Fundamentalists? Lipstick

A theocrat is a theocrat, whether Muslim or Christian.

by Juan Cole

John McCain announced that he was running for president to confront
the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century, "radical Islamic
extremism," contrasting it with "stability, tolerance and democracy."
But the values of his handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more
resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the
Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in
schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's
will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia
rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the
difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.

McCain pledged to work for peace based on "the transformative ideals
on which we were founded." Tolerance and democracy require freedom of
speech and the press, but while mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin
inquired of the local librarian how to go about banning books that
some of her constituents thought contained inappropriate language. She
tried to fire the librarian for defying her. Book banning is common to
fundamentalisms around the world, and the mind-set Palin displayed did
not differ from that of the Hamas minister of education in the
Palestinian government who banned a book of Palestinian folk tales for
its sexually explicit language. In contrast, Thomas Jefferson wrote,
"Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor
that be limited without danger of losing it."

Palin argued when running for governor that creationism should be
taught in public schools, at taxpayers' expense, alongside real
science. Antipathy to Darwin for providing an alternative to the
creation stories of the Bible and the Quran has also become a feature
of Muslim fundamentalism. Saudi Arabia prohibits the study, even in
universities, of evolution, Freud and Marx. Malaysia has banned a
translation of "The Origin of the Species." Likewise, fundamentalists
in Turkey have pressured the government to teach creationism in the
public schools. McCain has praised Turkey as an anchor of democracy in
the region, but Turkey's secular traditions are under severe pressure
from fundamentalists in that country. McCain does them no favors by
choosing a running mate who wishes to destroy the First Amendment's
establishment clause, which forbids the state to give official support
to any particular theology. Turkish religious activists would thereby
be enabled to cite an American precedent for their own quest to put
religion back at the center of Ankara's public and foreign policies.

The GOP vice-presidential pick holds that abortion should be illegal,
even in cases of rape, incest or severe birth defects, making an
exception only if the life of the mother is in danger. She calls
abortion an "atrocity" and pledges to reshape the judiciary to fight
it. Ironically, Palin's views on the matter are to the right of those
in the Muslim country of Tunisia, which allows abortion in the first
trimester for a wide range of reasons. Classical Muslim jurisprudents
differed among one another on the issue of abortion, but many
permitted it before the "quickening" of the fetus, i.e. until the end
of the fourth month. Contemporary Muslim fundamentalists, however,
generally oppose abortion.

Palin's stance is even stricter than that of the Parliament of the
Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2005, the legislature in Tehran attempted
to amend the country's antiabortion statute to permit an abortion up
to four months in case of a birth defect. The conservative clerical
Guardianship Council, which functions as a sort of theocratic senate,
however, rejected the change. Iran's law on abortion is therefore
virtually identical to the one that Palin would like to see imposed on
American women, and the rationale in both cases is the same, a
literalist religious impulse that resists any compromise with the
realities of biology and of women's lives. Saudi Arabia's restrictive
law on abortion likewise disallows it in the case or rape or incest,
or of fetal impairment, which is also Gov. Palin's position.

Theocrats confuse God's will with their own mortal policies. Just as
Muslim fundamentalists believe that God has given them the vast oil
and gas resources in their regions, so Palin asks church workers in
Alaska to pray for a $30 billion pipeline in the state because "God's
will has to get done." Likewise, Palin maintained that her task as
governor would be impeded "if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right
with God." Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei of Iran expresses much the same
sentiment when he says "the only way to attain prosperity and progress
is to rely on Islam."

Not only does Palin not believe global warming is "man-made," she
favors massive new drilling to spew more carbon into the atmosphere.
Both as a fatalist who has surrendered to God's inscrutable will and
as a politician from an oil-rich region, she thereby echoes Saudi
Arabia. Riyadh has been found to have exercised inappropriate
influence in watering down a report in 2007 of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change.

Neither Christians nor Muslims necessarily share the beliefs detailed
above. Many believers in both traditions uphold freedom of speech and
the press. Indeed, in a recent poll, over 90 percent of Egyptians and
Iranians said that they would build freedom of expression into any
constitution they designed. Many believers find ways of reconciling
the scientific theory of evolution with faith in God, not finding it
necessary to believe that the world was created suddenly only 6,000
ago. Some medieval Muslim thinkers asserted that the world had existed
from eternity, and others spoke of cycles of hundreds of thousands or
millions of years. Mystical Muslim poets spoke of humankind traversing
the stages of mineral, plant and animal. Modern Islamic
fundamentalists have attempted to narrow this great, diverse tradition.

The classical Islamic legal tradition generally permitted, while
frowning on, contraception and abortion, and complete opposition to
them is mostly a feature of modern fundamentalist thinking. Many
believers in both Islam and Christianity would see it as hubris to tie
God to specific government policies or to a particular political
party. As for global warming, green theology, in which Christians and
Muslims appeal to Scripture in fighting global warming, is an
increasing tendency in both traditions.

Palin has a right to her religious beliefs, as do fundamentalist
Muslims who agree with her on so many issues of social policy. None of
them has a right, however, to impose their beliefs on others by
capturing and deploying the executive power of the state. The most
noxious belief that Palin shares with Muslim fundamentalists is her
conviction that faith is not a private affair of individuals but
rather a moral imperative that believers should import into statecraft
wherever they have the opportunity to do so. That is the point of her
pledge to shape the judiciary. Such a theocratic impulse is
incompatible with the Founding Fathers' commitment to tolerance and
democracy, which is why they forbade the government to "establish" or
officially support any particular religion or denomination.

McCain once excoriated the Rev. Jerry Falwell and his ilk as "agents
of intolerance. " That he took such a position gave his opposition to
similar intolerance in Islam credibility. In light of his more recent
disgraceful kowtowing to the Christian right, McCain's animus against
fundamentalist Muslims no longer looks consistent. It looks bigoted
and invidious. You can't say you are waging a war on religious
extremism if you are trying to put a religious extremist a heartbeat
away from the presidency.

Copyright ©2008 Salon Media Group, Inc.
Salon contributor Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern
and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and the author
of "Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East."