Right on cue, it seems, the historians have set in, reminding us that two centuries ago the fledgling United States prosecuted a similar war against terrorism. Only, we didn't call it "terrorism," but piracy. The so-called Barbary pirates, harbored and encouraged by the North African nations Algiers, Tripoli, Morocco, and Tunis (The "Barbary states"), gave the early republic fits by hijacking naval vessels and holding their passengers hostage. The pirates demanded tribute money, but they were also driven by a fundamentalist religious vision that seems achingly familiar today. Some hostages taken by the Barbary marauders could save their lives by "taking the turban" -- converting to Islam.
What's not obviously parallel, though, is the nature of the American nation that finally resolved to stop paying the pirates' ransoms and fight back. Sure, our government eventually took the war to the "shores of Tripoli" in the early 1800s, much as we've taken it to Afghanistan over the past several weeks. But I'm reminded of a passage from the U.S.'s earlier 1797 treaty with Tripoli, whose breach led us to respond with armed conflict:
As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded onthe Christian Religion -- as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws,religion or tranquility of Musselmen, -- and as the said States never have enteredinto any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by theparties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce aninterruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Tripoli violated the spirit of this anti-Crusading passage just a few years after it was agreed upon, when its pasha demanded increased tribute from the U.S. and unleashed the pirates. Not that the U.S. side in the conflict lacked its own religious overtones. William Eaton, the U.S. consul of Tunis who led the resulting assault on Tripoli, sounded a lot like the pan-theocrat George W. Bush: "Our religion teaches us to fear and worship God and to be kind to all his creatures . . . Be assured that the God of the Americans and of the Mohometans is the same; the one true and omnipotent God."
Nevertheless, at the time of the 1797 treaty -- and during the 1801-1805 war with Tripoli, presided over by Thomas Jefferson, the great Enlightenment deist and church-state separationist -- the U.S. clearly possessed a strong secularist consciousness, something we lack today. When attacked by Islamic extremists, most of us have enough sense not to adopt overt Crusader language (with the exception of the now thoroughly discredited Ann Coulter). But we also come together as a "Christian nation," holding not-so-subtle national days of prayer.
Moreover, some Americans have gotten the self-righteous notion that Osama bin Laden has bought his own demise not because he has offended humanity, but because he messed with a Judeo-Christian nation. Writing in the National Review Online, the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Novak takes this tack in an article titled "Don't Call Me Secular!" and subtitled "The U.S. is anything but." Our religious heritage, Novak gloriously explains, makes us willing to die for our beliefs, too (just like Islamic fanatics, though Novak explains that the Judeo-Christian tradition doesn't condone suicide). Novak begins as a scholar of religion but ends a crusader, writing:
Don't call us secular, bin Laden. Don't call us unbelievers. Don't call us infidels. God shed His grace on us! and crowned our good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.
You ought never to have messed with us, bin Laden.
Novak's religious sensibility correctly identifies Americans as the good guys in this struggle, but for all the wrong reasons. And in its loving but thoroughly uncritical embrace of religiosity, Novak's approach seems closely linked to the sugary Islamic apologism that, as Franklin Foer shows in The New Republic, has become the party line of the Bush administration. Novak evinces a naiveté about radical Islam that can only arise from the chowder-headed notion that religion is always a plus rather than a minus, writing, amazingly, that he doubts whether "politicized Muslims actually do believe that suicide bombings are a way to Paradise." Where was he on September 11th?
At a time when we're at war with a particularly virulent strain of religious extremism, we can't slight the religious side of the equation. And we especially mustn't take the bait of the extremists and fight fanaticism with fanaticism. With Osama bin Laden, as on so many occasions during the twentieth century, we're witnessing the terrible power of extremist beliefs extremely applied. The last thing we ought to do is go around sucking up to belief in all its forms and manifestations.
George W. Bush cites Thomas Jefferson constantly -- but never on religion. Upon winning election in 1800, Jefferson swore "eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." That included the Barbary pirates and those at home who wanted to establish the Christian church. The latter are still around today, and some of them see September 11th as an attack on Christianity, and a cause for the renewal of public expressions of faith. And we have no president to stand them down.
