Intolerance spans the religious divide

Now, here comes Salon.com, one of the finest magazines on the Web, with an article titled "How Satan Is Propping Up Bush's War on Terror." The piece, by Salon editor Andrew O'Hehir, is based on an interview with Penn State University professor Bill Ellis, author of a new book on Satanism in popular culture. Ellis, writes O'Hehir, "says he understands exactly why so many Americans believe that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were working together, despite the lack of any factual evidence." The key, he claims, lies in the popularity of evangelical Christianity, which sees the devil as a real, ever-present and ever-scheming entity.

In O'Hehir's (and Ellis's) view, the same fundamentalists who can fall for a satirical story claiming that the evil influence of the Harry Potter books is driving millions of schoolchildren into Satanic covens can also easily believe in an "axis of evil." For a "born-again believer," Ellis is quoted as saying, there is no doubt that "the person who is giving the orders to bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and the leader of Iran and the leader of North Korea is, of course, Satan."

Never mind that the phrase "axis of evil" was coined not by "our born-again president" (as O'Hehir refers to President Bush), but by a speechwriter, David Frum, who happens to be Jewish. Never mind that plenty of Americans who are not evangelical Christians supported the war in Iraq or that the war's most ardent champions in the media included Andrew Sullivan, a Catholic critical of religious fundamentalism, and Christopher Hitchens, an outspoken atheist.

Whether or not there was a Hussein-bin Laden connection, going to war against Saddam isn't quite the same as going after "Harry Potter." There is a perfectly good reason many Americans were willing to believe in such a connection: For all their differences, the secular former dictator of Iraq and the fundamentalist Islamic leader of Al Qaeda shared a passionate animosity to the United States.

I happen to agree that on many occasions, President Bush has gone too far in injecting religion in his political rhetoric. But it is equally true that his critics have used and misused his faith to impugn his policies. Left-wing Bush-bashing websites have widely circulated a purported quote from the president: "God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did." This June 2003 report is based on records from a conference among Palestinian Authority leaders, including then-Prime Minister Mahmoud Abas, who claimed that Bush had made this statement to him (through an interpreter) in a meeting about two weeks earlier. This isn't exactly heavy on factual evidence.

Other public figures, too, have been targets of faith-based prejudice. In a column this month in the left-of-center weekly The Village Voice, Cynthia Cotts expresses dismay at the fact that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman donated a $2,000 journalism award to a library at a synagogue he helped found in Bethesda, Md. Cotts thinks it's not kosher (pardon the pun) to give journalism award money to a religious library whose fare is likely to reflect only a limited range of viewpoints. Somehow, I suspect that she would not have had this objection if Friedman had donated the award to, say, a women's studies program.

Cotts goes on to state that "Friedman's religious beliefs are relevant because they shed light on his political ideology." How so? He has spoken out against the excessive influence of ultra-Orthodox religious extremists in Israeli politics. (Why, the sheer gall of the man!) Also, "he endorsed the war in Iraq, which he casts as a moral imperative." And here I thought it was the antisecularists who equated religion with morality.

Lack of religious devotion should not be a basis for a smear. But neither should religious belief -- and the truth is that the intolerance of the religious right can be fully matched by that of the secular left.

Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine. Her column appears regularly in the Globe.