An American computer programmer who later became an FBI informant told a British court during 17 days of testimony that he ran training camps in Pakistan for Islamic militants and nurtured a generation of homegrown British terrorists.
The slightly built Yankees fan from Queens described how he mingled with radicals from the fall of 2001, when he quit a job as a computer programmer and left New York for Lahore — saying he was radicalized by the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Babar told jurors that during visits to Britain in 2002, he and several others had cheered videos of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and heard speeches by radical British cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, jailed in 2006 for soliciting murder.
“We were shown a couple of videos, video wills of those people who carried out 9/11,” Babar said. “Everyone at the meeting agreed with it, everyone was in praise of those who carried it out.”
How does this happen? How does someone go from being a computer programming, Yankees fan to a terrorist training radical? How could he learn to hate the country that was his home? How could he cheer attacks against the city in which he lived? How?
When I was pretty new to being a “born again” Christian I ended up attending a fundamentalist church. I suppose that certain members of the congregation would blush at this characterization, and they are entitled to their opinion. However, I think if one was to look at this church from the outside this is how they would describe it.
Becoming part of this church caused me to agree verbally with viewpoints and ideas that I didn’t really agree with. Some of these ideas were contrary to some of my longest and most deeply held beliefs. Even though this was the case, I still went along with them. Why did I do this? I thought that these ideas were from God. I hadn’t ever heard the idea of understanding scripture in context. I didn’t realize that one could disagree with certain ideas in the Bible and still be a Christian.
It may seem like a huge leap to go from denying your own beliefs to training people to kill others, and really it is. But I think that the root of what is behind these two seemingly unrelated events is actually the same thing. Fundamentalist Christians sometimes spew hatred because they believe God wants them to. Islamic terrorists kill people for the same reason. In the past Christians killed hordes of people, including Muslims, in the name of spreading the Gospel to the world.
If you believe in a God that hates certain groups of people, it really won’t take much for you to screw up and be on the outs with this God too. If you believe in a God that so devalues human life that your fellow believers have to sacrifice themselves to kill other human beings, well, your life can’t be worth that much, can it? These two scenarios leave you with a picture of a God that you have to work very hard to please. No sacrifice is too small, no denial of self is enough.
I have heard many fundamentalist Christians say that Christians and Muslims don’t worship the same God. Ironically, the god of the fundamentalist Christian is the same as the Islamic radical. Just like the golden calf that the Israelites had Aaron make in the desert, this God is an idol. The real God values people, all people. The real God loves each and every one of us, not in spite of our sin, but with our sins and blemishes (incidentally, the Bible tells us that all sins are the same before God, none is worse than another. Even if you believe that certain activities and lifestyles are sin, they are no worse than the ones your are guilty of). When the Bible talks about people becoming new creations in Christ, it doesn’t mean that you turn your back on everything you know. It means that you are washed clean from your sins and are forgiven.
Think about it for a second. The god of fundamentalism is a pretty pathetic god. Any god that requires murder and hatred from us to accomplish their bidding is impotent. If God really hated certain people and wanted to wipe them out, shouldn’t God be able to pull that off without human intervention?
