After the latest Islamic challenge of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush said that the War Against Terrorism would be a long war. Of course, he reduced Islam to terrorism when, in reality, suicidal terrorism is only a new weapon of the fanatical Islamic fundamentalist, the Islamic version of the hero who himself becomes the weapon; a hero whose imagination of the after life is a total denial of the life he has lived and of his creed.(i) What he has most rejected in his life on earth because of religious repression he will live in the beyond with his God, a projection of eternal blessedness, a psychology stemming from a primitive tribal warrior mentality. President Bush is probably right about the length of this war that has created fear in the American people. The popular backing of George Bush during these days has to do with his speeches being addressed solely to the dangers of terrorism, probably creating for the first time in American history a fear that disregards any other values in life. History will show whether this fear will mobilize the energy for giving a response to today's Islamic threat the long war Bush announced. We could say that the fate of the West depends on giving the right response to the present challenge from the East. (ii)
We can see clearly enough that for the time being Bush's rhetoric seems to be the same as his foes: the rhetoric of the American Protestant Bible opposing the totalitarian rhetoric of the Koran. The rhetoric of "evil" is common to both. It cannot be otherwise. Concerning evil, the philosopher Bernard Williams in Shame and Necessity says: ". . .there is a 'problem of evil' only for those who expect the world to be good . . ." [Berkeley: Univ. of California Press,1994), p. 68] So we have two monotheistic systems each reducing the situation to a projection of the repressed shadow upon the other. Modern psychology has used the term "Manichaeism", taken from the religious principles of Manes (216-274 AD), the division of the world between the children of light and the children of darkness, as an expression of a split off idea or a split personality. According to the historian Bernard Lewis the Islamic jihad:
. . . was interpreted to mean armed struggle for the defense or advancement of muslim power. in principle the world was divided into two houses: the house of islam, in which a muslim government ruled and muslim law prevailed, and the house of war, the rest of the world, still inhabited and, more important, ruled by infidels. between the two, there was to be a perpetual state of war until the entire world either embraced islam or submitted to the rule of the muslim state [new yorker november 19, 2001, p. 52]
The stupidity of Christianity's proselytizing power-bid to colonize the whole world pales in comparison to the Islamic world vision."
excerpt from EAST AND WEST by Rafael Lopez-Pedraza
prestented at the
III Latin American Congress of Jungian Psychology
Salvador, Brazil
April 30th to May 4th, 2003
"challenges of practice: the patient and the continent"