9/11 Plus 12

Twelve years ago today, near three thousand of our fellow Americans, living, breathing, sentient beings with children and mortgages, with lovers and dreams, were reduced to burnt dust in the rubble of the Looming Towers. They were not killed by ignorance or poverty or because “they hate our freedoms”. They were murdered by Faith. Faith in unseen gods, in invisible paradises, in the ancient fairy tales of nomadic desert tribes abutting hydraulic despotisms, weaving  finely spun myths of creation, sacrifice, redemption and eternal life. Faith caused 9/11.

Oh how easy for us, children of the West, to scoff at the outlandish, misogynistic beliefs of the nineteen “holy warriors”, the shaving of their body hair, the 72 virgins awaiting each assassin, the eerie willingness of these highly educated sons of affluent families to viciously slaughter and die for lurid storybook endings in the happily ever after.

But, were not tens of thousands burnt at the stake in just Madrid’s main square over the course of the Holy Inquisition? Were not some 70,000 Protestant French Huguenots suddenly massacred on cue by their most Christian neighbors on the Feast Day of St. Bartholomew in 1572?  Did not all Europe’s Catholic and Protestant armies slaughter and starve to death one third of the entire German people in the horrible war of 1618 –1648, fought over whether the Holy Father or the Holy Bible was inerrant, over whether Communion wafers were truly, truly the very flesh of the Living Lord, or just a symbol of his gory sacrifice? And did not our German cousins, in living memory, grind six million unarmed men, women and children into wet mud in the crematoria of Central Europe because of their peculiar pagan faith in an omniscient Fuhrer?

Chosen People, Elect of the Lord, Master Race, Party of God, on and on, faith in fanciful tales, embellished and handed down for a hundred generations. Faith in omnipotent Fathers and bright Forevers; the lies used by priests, preachers and politicians, by imams and rabbis, since the first witch doctor sought sway over his fellows in a cave at the dawn of our species.

Faith, its arrogant certainties, and its absolute moral imperatives caused 9/11. Faith kills.