Col. (Ret) Nate Slate: In Praise of a Cruel God

One of the more striking realizations while in Iraq was this concept of a poverty of consciousness.  For some Iraqis, there was the belief that if someone else had something good, they could not have it.  So, in order to have anything, they had to take it from another.  By contrast, if you had it, they assumed you had stolen it from them.  Their envy of the West was far beyond reason.  People have a poverty of consciousness in every culture, but in Iraq, it was made prominent by the extreme ways that it was expressed.

The horrible contradiction for this group was that they were sure they were superior to Westerners in every way.  They were more devout.  They worshiped the correct god.  They were god’s chosen people.  Then how could it be possible that the West grew rich, while they grew ever more poor?

It had to be some kind of test.  In fact, it had to do with the holiness of suffering.  The self-flagellation of the Shia during Ashura is a great example.  Once a year, they covered themselves in ash, whipped themselves to a bloody pulp and marched to An Najaf to share in Imam Hussein’s pain.  The humiliation of his defeat had to be experienced to ennoble it.

The next question was what should they do about these injustices?  Obviously, in their minds, the West (by way of its wealth) was responsible for their humiliation.  For those completely committed to the poverty consciousness, revenge was the only answer.

It seemed to me that years of this type of thinking had created sub-cultures.  For the truly devout, they had stopped reading the benevolent passages in the Koran that moderate Muslims quote.  They only saw the references to war, revenge and cruelty.  For others, none of this seemed to matter.  The holy war was an excuse for criminal behavior.  If you wanted to kill someone, or steal something, you hid behind the cover of religion.  How firmly the common criminals believed this excuse, I was left to wonder.

My cultural adviser in Iraq was adamant that they knew better.  He said that locally, the Iraqis referred to both the groups mentioned as criminals.  He said there was no doubt.  If you steal and murder, both strictly prohibited in the Koran, you are a criminal and should be addressed as such.  I was very disappointed that the American military and the media referred to these groups as “the insurgents.”  We dignified their behavior by giving it a political name.  In my opinion, the Iraqis had it right.  They were criminals and we should have called it so.

If the good Iraqi people believed in a kind and loving God, the criminals believed in a cruel and vindictive god.  Conveniently, this god conformed to whatever end they had in mind.  And, it seemed, became ever more cruel with each application.  Over time, the criminal group that called itself Al Qaeda would decide that the Iraqis – Sunni and Shia – were fair targets as well.

IN PRAISE OF A CRUEL GOD

sons of the dry baked desert