{ Islam from inside }

There was the sudden narrowing of the eyes as he spoke about the terrorists and their evil actions, the slight smile as he enunciated America's greatness, and the furrowing of the brow as he decried the grave threat to freedom - then with a final dramatic assertion of America's assured victory, George Bush concluded his speech. I experienced a strong feeling of deja view. It was as if this speech was only a recasting of the previous ones, as if the President had only one simple message to deliver to his people and that message was to be repeated and looped time and again, with only minor variations in its theme. The sentiments he expressed seemed unfeigned, the determination genuinely felt, yet with each emerging statement, each dramatic turn of phrase, each narrowing of his eyes, my sense of the solidity, trustworthiness, and maturity of the political world displayed in front of me seemed to slip away as if into an obscuring haze.

This sense of slippage began early in the crisis, and has accelerated with each passing month and each Presidential broadcast, until it now appears as if America has slid unawares into a comic book world where all talk and all action is painted larger than life, both in its melodramatic theatricality and in its potentially fearsome consequences.

While refugees fled the bombing in Afghanistan, a different type of bombing campaign was underway in America. This campaign's weapon delivery system was political language, and its destructive payload was the emotive terminology, legislation, and phraseology used to define and target the terrorist threat. Together they were used to clear the ground of public resistance to the war and to the politically messy actions that unfolded as the war widened to include other strategic targets. It's a transformation that began gradually, with false starts, even some major terminological fumbles (such as the ludicrous names given to military campaigns) but gradually begun to take on a mantle of firmness, authority, and vigorously pursued and forcefully enunciated policy.

It is not surprising that with the horrendous erasure of the trade centre towers an overpowering sense of crisis and imminent danger took hold of American society. The events were so sudden and so dramatic in scope that few questioned the overwrought and emotionally charged language of America's response to the events. But as time passes it is starting to appear as if the whole field of public political discourse and the relationship of government and citizenry has been injected with a current of emotion that deflects critical thought and substitutes simplified platitudes in place of truly informative content. The official statements and speeches emerging from the white house sometimes seem pitched at the cerebral level of the speech balloons that appear over the heads of comic book heros as they confront caricatured enemies.

But it may be that there is a clever and effective art behind this almost pabular level of public discourse. At a time of anxiety and fear, people traditionally reach towards religion or government to seek comfort, direction, and relief from apprehension. But in a society that is primarily secular, religion and religious institutions are largely devoid of any material power to physically protect or safeguard from danger or to advise a course of political action. So government takes on the role of a protecting, guiding, and rallying figure that has both the authority and the apparent wisdom to select the best course of action. It will relieve the fears and anxieties that the citizens cannot handle, it will turn aside ideological evils and safeguard the people from dangerous external threats and covert, hidden internal threats, and it will rally the nation to battle the foe.

The government takes on the role of protecting parent or concerned guardian, and just as with a child, the language of public discourse is simplified - reduced to protective, patriotic, and emotional statements directed towards its own citizenry and aggressive statements of power and punishment directed towards the enemy and their way of thought and feeling. But both the internally and externally directed statements serve a clear purpose - to shape the manner in which the world is perceived and understood by the American people.

Through a simple (almost simplistic) but strongly stated political language, the parameters, the boundaries, and the nature of the political playing field is generated. In a time of crisis, political language seeks to shape perceptions of reality and it is through the definitions, characterizations, and emotional coloring of this language that events are interpreted, explained, and experienced. Just as symbolic religious language gives meaning to the world, so also the political language of the government seeks to present a filter through which people view the world and react to unfolding events. To the extent that this language is adopted, accepted, and disseminated by the media and absorbed by the average citizen, it becomes an instrument in defining the role and shaping the response of the general public. In this way the language of government in times of crisis acquires a force and potency that can equal or even surpass the power of religious language. People give themselves over to the worldview defined by these politically generated filters with a level of passion, acceptance, and devotion that even religious faith within a secular society does not claim from them.

It is as if strategic secular politics has acquired the life and power once commanded only by religion and its acolytes. Now, as America lays out the course of its "war against terror", it's secular priesthood calls for faith instead of questioning, belief in the righteousness of America instead of reflection about past actions and present aims, trust instead of investigation, and acceptance of the course set instead of contemplation of alternative options. Those who are true servants to this simplistic secular faith are held up as saintly examples, while those who dissent or protest are chided as immature or irresponsible for disturbing and endangering the difficult quest which the nation has undertaken. It is doubtful that any religious institution in America could command the degree of submission that the secular strategic politics of America commands.

In a speech given during the war in Afghanistan, with an emotional, almost glowing expression of pride on his face, George Bush read a line from a letter he received from a 4th grade girl. "As much as I don't want my dad to fight," she wrote, "I'm willing to give him to you." Now some of us - unbelievers in the ideology and strategic goals underlying the deepening commitment to long term war, are not so willing to give ourselves to President Bush and his  mission. We are doubtful of the wisdom of the messianic front man for the war against terror. A clear lesson that even the most negligent student can derive from a cursory reading of history is this: When someone states there is no alternative path - only his way or the enemy's way -  be suspicious of his motives, be suspicious of his methods, be suspicious of his goals, and carefully check out all the alternatives he does not want you to choose. Otherwise, sacrifices you may not want to make may be forcefully taken from you for the sake of questionable political and strategic gain.