Wrestling with the other issue

By Paul Haist

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The organizers and speakers at the Convergence Northwest 2007 Conference held in Vancouver, Wash., provided a serious educational forum on the long crisis in the Middle East.

Those who dismissed the event as one Web blogger did as "a one-sided affair with a right-wing agenda, with prominent Christian fundamentalist backing" are out of touch with reality and have little or no grasp of 20th-century Middle East history.

Was it right-wing? Yes. Was it attended largely by Christian fundamentalists or evangelicals? Yes.

As the Jewish Review's editor—and neither a right-winger nor a Christian—I attended as much of the conference as my schedule would permit. When a former Israeli prime minister takes time to speak to Christians and a few Jews in Vancouver, Wash., even if only by satellite, the Jewish Review needs to be there.

The Convergence conference was a gathering of like-minded individuals who already understand their opposition's perspective and dismiss that opposition as uninformed and wrong on most or all major points.

To suggest that there is something wrong for like-minded people to gather so that they might learn to communicate their shared beliefs more effectively is stupid.

I was impressed by the people I met and the speakers I heard at the conference, even if some of them seemed very different from me, other than me. I agreed and disagreed variously with what I heard.

It is difficult to disagree with people who love Israel and the best values for which it stands alone in a corner of our world where its immediate neighbors do not permit dissent, condone and underwrite the acts of terrorist murderers, and oppress women in slave-like circumstances.

However, one issue came up that bothered me.

That issue is the ease with which we seem able to group some among us as the other.

I heard one speaker at length on two occasions who said much that I agreed with, but who also left me fearful for the fate of Muslims anywhere.

Brigitte Gabriel is uncommonly well-informed about the conflict with radical Islam. She is highly articulate and persuasive. I don't hesitate to refer people to her Web site (http://americancongressfortruth.com) as a source for a wealth of apparently reliable information on the conflict.

That said, Brigitte Gabriel scares me.

She might call that a success. I think she wants people to be frightened by what is happening in the world, by the clearly stated goals of radical Islam and their apparent success in several areas.

She means to galvanize people to action, which is commendable, but to do so by inciting fear, which is what she does, is not the best route because it raises the specter of the kind of mass hysteria that enables, for example, ethnic cleansing, an action we should not pursue.

I heard in Gabriel's words a stridency and urgency that is justified by the great danger posed by radical Islam. But I did not hear mention of the dilemma posed by our commitment to human rights balanced against our desire to survive. It is a huge dilemma in this war and one we should not ignore.

Gabriel said she wants to throw political correctness in the dust bin. She's right. Political correctness is fascism.

But when she said, "I am sick and tired of hearing Muslims complain about how we profile. If the shoe fits, wear it," she lost me.

When she said, "They (Muslims) care about destroying us, at this point, much more than we care about staying alive, and this dynamic needs to change, this dynamic needs to change to the point where we as Americans and civilized nations need to stand up and defend our principles, our freedoms, every single freedom and every single line in our Constitution," I agreed completely.

But the principles we agree must be defended include respect for the rights of those who just happen to look like the enemy.

For years we have been performing a national act of contrition for incarcerating Japanese Americans during World War II, a dark chapter that should not be repeated.

Today, Muslims are part of our immediate world, right here in Portland, in the grocery store, the gas station, everywhere.

Gabrielle tells us that their presence is "an existential menace."

That is true only of the Muslims who want to kill us or otherwise destroy or unacceptably alter our society. We don't know how to tell the difference and, so, all Muslims become the other.

Holy Cross College philosophy professor Lawrence Cahoone defined "the other" this way: "What appear to be cultural units—human beings, words, meanings, ideas, philosophical systems, social organizations—are maintained in their apparent unity only through an active process of exclusion, opposition and hierarchization. Other phenomena or units must be represented as foreign or 'other' through representing a hierarchical dualism in which the unit is privileged or favored, and the other is devalued in some way."

In Nazi Germany, Aryans were "privileged" and Jews "devalued in some way." So it was also  among the Hutus and the Tutsis in Africa, and so it is among the Arabs and African tribesman in Darfur, the Armenians and the Turks of the last century, whites and non-whites in America, and whites and blacks in old South Africa, and so on, ad nauseum.

In this conflict with radical Isalm we run the risk of becoming our enemy, of becoming like them in order to survive.

The strident rhetoric of all the well-intentioned Brigitte Gabriels of our world may lead us to make of the Muslims the other that we knew it was wrong for us to be not long ago, and easily could be again tomorrow—you never know.

A significant difference is that the Jews did not plot, as Hitler and his minions charged, to rule the world. Radical Muslims really do plot to do that. But not all Muslims are radical Muslims—or so one hopes.

How do we do the right thing? Gabriel might argue that this is not a time to contemplate our navel, not if we mean to survive.

Must we sometimes do things that are contrary to our values in order to preserve our values? Is that possible?

If radical Islam persists on its current path, we are headed for a cultural conflict far more devastating than any chapter in our history books. It already has begun. We are already in it.

The dilemma is of apocalyptic proportions and, so far, there seems to be no way to avoid the worst possible outcome.

How do we avoid compromising our values in the fight to preserve them? How do we avoid annihilating the innocent?

I am not optimistic.