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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/90667_russell11.shtml Falwell is America's hate machine Friday, October 11, 2002 By JAN JARBOE RUSSELL SYNDICATED COLUMNIST Now that the communists, with all their conspiracies, have been overthrown, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who claims to speak not only for God but for 70 million evangelical Christians, offers an answer to the question that lies in the heart of America's darkness. That question is: Who, pray tell, are we to hate next? By God's own hand, according to Falwell, it's now America and Israel versus the Muslims. The Muslims are, in his mind, the new red menace. Falwell's answer, given as he looked into the CBS-TV camera on "60 Minutes" last Sunday, is that a line in the sand was drawn by God himself, who, more than 1,000 years ago, wrote the script we are now living. "I think Muhammad was a terrorist," Falwell told CBS' Bob Simon. "I've read enough of the history of his life written by both Muslims and non-Muslims, that he was a violent man, a man of war." Words are weapons, just as surely as hijacked airplanes, and naturally Falwell's words found their target. At least 14 people were killed in a disputed region of India in a riot that broke out the morning after Falwell's remarks were published in a local newspaper. Demonstrators claimed that Christians, not Muslims, are the real terrorists. All this proves only one thing: The spiritual landscape of our time is governed by people who are dangerously inspired not by reason or logic but by their own internal fears. At a time when we need leaders with the capacity to stay open to many different points of view, we instead have people such as Falwell and his powerful, well-placed allies in Washington, who drive us ever closer to what they see as our fate: Apocalypse Now, Apocalypse Always. The Muslims are afraid -- and, it turns out, with good reason -- about the alliance between Christians and Jews, who are, in turn, terrified of becoming victims in some fanatical Muslim's private holy war. As in the poem "Waiting for the Barbarians" by Constantine Cavafy, the whole world stands alert on its walls, awaiting the enemy's advance. When the enemy doesn't come, we feel even more afraid and confused. "And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?" asks Cavafy. "Those people were a kind of solution." The solution that the Muslims offer Falwell is instant relief from his own personal anxiety. The problem is, Falwell's solution to his own anxiety is not only his private consolation. He is not nearly as harmless as the survivalists who looked at Y2K a few years ago not as a technological problem that could be solved with reason and hard work, but as a worldwide conspiracy that could provoke chaos. Falwell's own fears and doubts are so great that they can be assuaged only by the battle of Armageddon. When that battle is over, according to Falwell's reading of the book of Revelations, the Earth will be covered with blood, the Muslim world will be vanquished and two-thirds of the world's Jews will be wiped out. But the good news, according to Falwell, is that Jesus Christ will come again, and all Christians will be saved, as well as the lucky few Jews who convert to Christianity. Sentence by slippery sentence, Falwell and those who fervently agree with him are building their case for Armageddon. Either you believe in the Bible or you don't, they say. You're with us or you're against us. It's good versus evil, no questions allowed. Falwell's rhetoric is becoming increasingly hysterical as he injects himself in the world's hottest spots. "It is my belief that the Bible Belt in America is Israel's only safety belt right now," he said on "60 Minutes," sounding as though he were issuing a decree from God. Hysteria, as history shows us, drives people and countries to make colossal errors. Rather than following Falwell's script, we need to ask ourselves a series of questions, beginning with: Who are the real barbarians? 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