Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Kim Peckham
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000278A
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00:16 Welcome to the "Liberty Insider."
00:19 This is a regular program that gives you 00:21 up-to-date news, views, discussion, 00:23 insight and maybe even some provocation 00:27 on the issue of religious liberty in the United States 00:30 and indeed around the world. 00:33 My name is Lincoln Steed, Editor of Liberty Magazine 00:35 and my guest on the program is Kim Peckham. 00:40 Of any guests that I've had for a few years 00:43 you put it to me more than I can remember. 00:47 I've had some good discussions but you asked me 00:49 a few searching questions that get me hemming 00:52 and hawing because we are dealing 00:53 with such heavy stuff that, 00:55 you know, glib answer will get you into trouble here. 00:57 Yeah. 00:59 But let's talk about something that's 01:01 in almost every newspaper now, 01:03 they get the question of ISIL, 01:07 you know, what does it stand for? 01:08 Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, right. 01:12 Yeah. 01:14 So it's a country that it's not a country. 01:16 Yeah. 01:18 What do you know about them, questions for you, 01:19 put you on the spot? 01:21 What do you know about ISIL? What is it saying to you? 01:25 By the way, I have said it on this program before 01:28 but it tickle my fancy as a history major at one point 01:31 and I also was an English major, 01:36 I flip my major and Mark Twain 01:39 one of the icons of American literature 01:43 he wrote some really interesting stuff 01:46 because he was at the time as I remember 01:47 the Mexican American war 01:50 and but anyhow on the war in-- yes, 01:55 it was Spain. 01:56 The Spanish American war and he made a comment 01:59 that is all too true. 02:00 He says foreign wars says Mark Twain, 02:03 are God's way of teaching geography to Americans. 02:07 That's true. 02:08 All right, because we don't really know 02:09 where anything is until we go and fight there. 02:14 Well, there is a certain irony in this 02:15 because more and more will having to learn where is ISIL, 02:18 what is this boarder they crossed? 02:20 And the irony is they are all about erasing borders. 02:25 You know, what's going on? 02:26 Well, I don't know a lot but they sound very-- 02:30 by metaphor they sound like Christians 02:33 and talk about the kingdom of God 02:35 that they are brining together a country 02:37 that supersedes boarders and maybe even ignores them 02:43 or do you say it is building a new country. 02:45 Well, there is two things at the same time as I see it. 02:48 First of all the Islamic community 02:50 as I remember the Alimah or is that the Alimah? 02:55 Anyhow there is a word for the community of faith. 02:59 In Christianity we often say that, 03:01 you know, the bounder of faith. 03:03 So they see the-- and remember with Islam 03:06 it's much harder to explain 03:07 a separation of church and state. 03:09 The Quran that leads the other way. 03:11 So when you talk about the faith 03:12 for all around the world they should be sort of united 03:15 in the band of governance and, 03:20 you know, there is the imagery in Christianity 03:22 that probably do under members, 03:24 you know, poems sailing to Byzantium. 03:26 You know, the mythical Christian past 03:29 where the Roman Empire on the religious rule 03:31 was out of was anti more constant and noble. 03:34 Well, they have their mythical idealized state 03:38 of Islamic governance under the caliphate 03:43 of the Turkish caliphate. 03:45 That was really at its zenith. Zenith? 03:48 Yes or--the top. Yeah, the top. 03:53 Where there was a whole coalition of nations 03:56 that had their own local rulers 03:58 but they were under the Caliph or the Islamic king that-- 04:04 Caliphate. 04:05 Yeah, this is Osama bin Laden 04:07 was trying to bring in the Islamic caliphate. 04:10 Well, you know, its not good but I mean, 04:13 that's hardly unique sort of an attitude to have. 04:17 You know, the Holy Roman Empire 04:18 occupied a lot of Western Europe the idea 04:22 to bring together all the Christian. 04:24 You know, the joke about the Holy Roman Emperor was, 04:26 holy the Roman, yeah. 04:29 Yes, but that's what they are after 04:33 but what's ironic to me is at the same time well, 04:36 that may never happen and there is-- 04:39 threatening to many Christians countries 04:41 or countries where there are significant numbers 04:44 of Christians in those populations. 04:46 What ISIS is actually doing is not totally illegitimate 04:52 because the Western powers have doubled over the world 04:55 and in the Middle East they arbitrarily 04:58 and I think willfully made the countries 05:02 that we now have today that have no real logic 05:06 other than a logic of weakening different people groups 05:10 often borders are between the Kurds, 05:12 the Kurds are split up in three countries 05:14 that I could think of. 05:15 And that was by design. 05:17 So ISIL as they come across the border of Syria into Iraq 05:22 they wanting to pull them all together. 05:24 And they've got some historic arguments 05:26 that they once were a larger area of the Levant. 05:33 And so this is their, it's a political-- 05:36 I'm not saying that we in the west 05:37 and this is not a religious liberty thing but you know, 05:39 political thing of western past whether they should allow it. 05:42 But it isn't just religious fanaticism, 05:44 this is aspirations for statehood 05:49 and for autonomy in that region that have not 05:51 really been recognized till now. 05:53 And maybe the problem is that in casting 05:56 as just as religious fanaticism 05:59 we dismiss a very legitimate need to look again 06:03 at what's happening in that area. 06:06 And the great irony is I think the US started the ball rolling 06:10 by dismembering Iraq which was never as strong 06:14 as we thought 06:16 and we sort of broken it up into constituent parts 06:19 particularly the north with the Kurds 06:22 and its collapsing. 06:23 And so these-- 06:25 Now what is that that every time 06:26 we bring religious freedom 06:28 somewhere like we brought to Iraq 06:30 and like with the fall of the-- 06:31 We didn't bring religious freedom please. 06:33 Well, wherever we cause a relaxation 06:37 of the territorial government that certainly 06:40 you have an outbreak of religious conflict. 06:43 I mean, it happened in Iraq 06:45 and before that with the fall of Soviet Union 06:47 and Azerbaijan and places like that 06:49 where suddenly people left to themselves 06:54 will break out in religious conflict 06:57 where as under despotic control 06:59 they seem to get along just fine. 07:01 You bring up very good questions 07:03 and that great I had you on the program. 07:06 But you know, this are just not one reason, 07:09 not one thing at any one time 07:11 but you sort of answer the question 07:13 in couple of those cases like the Soviet Union 07:16 as a secular religion in essence 07:19 to religion of the progress of man had a necessity 07:22 the need to restrict religious expression 07:24 and identities try to submerge it. 07:27 So when it disappeared what they had thought 07:30 and frustrated bubbled up again. 07:33 It wasn't because we gave them freedom, 07:35 it was just that the damage that have been done 07:39 before now was more evident. 07:41 What disappoints me after 70 years of practice 07:44 of getting along together and apparently doing all right, 07:47 that the minute the led comes off 07:49 they are each other sorts again. 07:51 They didn't get on well. 07:52 And in Iraq this seems not to have impressed anyone 07:58 and I've not read discussions of it even after the fact 08:01 that Saddam Hussein who has probably well resting 08:07 in his grave not a good man 08:09 but as leader he held together a fractious country 08:14 against the direct threat of Islamic fundamentalism. 08:20 He did it in a very ruthless way 08:22 but that was his problem. 08:24 He kept the lid on it for a long time. 08:27 And so now we see it, it flying apart doesn't mean 08:30 that the problem is that they have freedom. 08:33 He had the problem all along but he solved it 08:35 by a means that I don't think 08:38 in the modern world is acceptable. 08:40 By being ruthless. 08:41 I will say murderer and -- 08:43 Secret police-- 08:45 I mean, every mechanism he could think of including 08:47 a divisionary war that killed a million Iranians. 08:52 Yeah. 08:54 Horrific conflict where children were killed 08:57 and all sorts of things. 08:58 I mean, this is a story-- 09:01 again the historians know it 09:02 and you can find it in the fight magazines 09:03 but the general public don't know. 09:05 Did like the Iraqi soldiers complained during that war 09:09 that they had a human waves, 09:11 you know, I think this way you are saying the children, 09:13 good proportion of them were tens and substance 09:16 the Irani's were conscription 09:18 because they didn't really have an organized military 09:21 of any consequence of that point. 09:22 So they were trying to overwhelm the Iraqis 09:25 by sheer weight and numbers and the Iraqi soldiers 09:27 many of them some eventually panic and ran 09:30 because they couldn't deal with the fact the bodies 09:32 were piling up so high in front of their gun employments. 09:35 They just kept coming and kept coming. 09:37 They were just bulldozing and mowing down. 09:39 It was an horrific war and one of the images 09:42 that I will never get rid of just before the fall of Saddam 09:47 and then once I saw it after he built 09:49 a victory arch in Baghdad-- 09:52 With two swords. 09:53 With the two swords, yeah I'm trying to think of it. 09:55 Two makers, two swords and then on either side 09:58 and immense pile of helmets, 10:01 Iranian helmets that they had 10:03 from soldiers killed in the war. 10:05 Mecabra remembrance of war. It was a bloody war. 10:10 And-- 10:13 Now the issue on nationhood is a religious one. 10:16 No, on the issue of nationhood 10:17 it was a disaster for both of them. 10:20 But it sort of guaranteed that when the lid 10:25 was taken off religion would be part of the mix though. 10:29 Because, you know, 10:31 the people were existentially bothered. 10:35 So what is the answer to this? 10:36 Do we just make fences between people that believe 10:39 differently in that part of that world 10:41 because they are just not gonna get along? 10:43 It sounds like to me that we need to get Liberty Magazine 10:46 to that part of the world 10:48 because they need to understand well, 10:50 religious freedom more than anyone does. 10:53 No we do, I was joking with you in response. 10:55 No the answer-- the best answer I can see is education. 10:58 Not formal education but to inform people 11:01 so they sort of see what's happening 11:04 and see as a solution, openness, freedom, 11:11 respect for the rights of other just even exist 11:15 and to realize that yes, 11:17 religion has caused a lot of problems 11:19 but religion is not the only problem. 11:20 The disputes and the inheritance 11:24 of bad history, bad country and bad lines drawn, 11:28 all of these sort of turn religion itself 11:33 I think often into a bad player 11:36 but it's a little more than just faith runner-- 11:39 And so back to ISIL where we started talking about here 11:43 we've got several things at play. 11:45 We've got a very natural renegotiation 11:51 of the very countries in the Middle East 11:54 and on the norms of history it's overdue. 11:58 You know, we kept a lit on it for a while 12:00 in pay route Lebanon. 12:06 Lebanon is a totally out official construct of the west 12:11 with and we see it as religious factions 12:14 but it's just not really a very good 12:17 well thought out state. 12:18 And so a lot of this something needs to be renegotiated 12:22 and yet we are-- 12:23 we seem determined to hold the borders. 12:26 Then we see religion 12:27 which is an inspiring force for most people. 12:30 All religions get, you know, the Jesus, 12:32 emotions Jesus is going at people 12:34 because you are on a higher course, 12:36 God the diving is with you to move on that, 12:38 we need to deal with that. 12:40 And then what the west is going to find 12:43 we've also got young people in western societies 12:47 that's become concerned about video games 12:52 and getting this and getting a car 12:53 and all that who don't really fit in real world. 12:57 There's not true values, there are little bit alienated 13:00 in their own society 13:02 and who are easily drawn to this great Jihad. 13:06 So it's a commentary on my view 13:08 on western societal breakdown on GIA political breakdown 13:14 of false constructs that date back even further 13:18 but certainly it's the first world war 13:21 and then of course a bit of a poison pill 13:24 and that Islam at this point in history 13:29 is sort of a victim of the Jihad concept 13:31 which comes from their own books. 13:34 So there is no single answer to this 13:36 and I'm only describing it. 13:38 I don't even know that it's the immediate conclusion 13:41 but self awareness is always very good. 13:44 And so education, facts and figures 13:46 will bring some self awareness to this. 13:49 Oh, we hope it would help. 13:53 We will be back after a short break. 13:54 I've talked myself out but not quite. 13:58 Stay with us, with guest Kim Peckham 13:59 we will talk a little further 14:01 about what's happening with ISIL 14:04 and that phenomena in the world. |
Revised 2015-09-03