TO RELIGION PARKS FROM RELIGION WARS OUTLINE Assumptions The Principle of Identity and the Functions of Spirit The Relation of Religion, Culture and Morality Resuscitation of Pre-Muslim Arab/Pan-African Assassin Cults Their Present and Future Profile The Job Underway and Ahead Critical Analysis and Political Creativity The Reason, Nature and Resolution of Religion Wars Mohammed, Islam and Their Actual Offenders Existential Base of Religious Common Point The Fight Is Over Secular, Not Religious Principles Religious Law and Civil Law and Keeping the Peace Proposal and Description of Religion Parks Economy, Peace and Security Religion as Response to Powers of Being, not Imaginings The Claim of Exclusive and Perpetual Validity for a Religion The Opportunity of KELO vs. CITY OF NEW LONDON Generic Description of a Religion Park Epilogue A Coup d'Oeil The Mutual Immanence of Religion, Culture and Nation-States What This Means for Us Answering the Cynic Tolerance and Coping with Legacy Structures of Religion CONCLUSIONS 1-The assertion that religious law (e.g., Sharia) must be civil law is unsupportable, dangerous and requires termination. 2-Federal, state and local governments are empowered through compelling government interest and Supreme Court decision to structure mutual appreciation, acceptance and support among religions by constructing Religion Parks and assigning church, synagogue, mosque, etc. properties to productive use. 3-Today, the nation-states are the viable forms of the religions whose cultures produced them. Eadem Mutata Resurgo READ-AHEAD Parmenides (5th century BC): ÒWhere there is being, there is also the logos of being.Ó . Words can grasp being because they are identical with being. . Words are meaningful because they correspond with reality. . The rational structure of man is identical with the rational structure of nature, the world and the universe. Subject and object belong essentially together. . The principle of identity is the basis of everything we do. . Without it ... well, that is unimaginable. The Honor Code of the United States Corps of Cadets can proscribe lying, cheating and stealing only by presupposing that there is truth that is achievable in word, thought and deed, respectively. Paul Tillich (1886-1965): ÒCulture is the form of religion and religion is the substance of culture.Ó . Culture, religion and morality are mutually immanent. . They inter-penetrate one another. . They constitute the dimension of spirit, which is the dimension in which power and meaning are united. . Culture, religion and morality are distinguishable but not separable. . Culture is a basic function of life involving the polarity of dynamics and form. . Culture is the self-creation of life in the dimension of spirit. . Culture is that which takes care of something, keeps it alive and makes it grow. . Man creates something new from every object he cultivates. . The new that man creates is first of all the double creation of language and technology, which belong together. . Religion is a basic function of life involving the polarity of freedom and destiny. . Religion is the self-transcendence of life in the dimension of spirit. . Religion is the point at which the answer to the quest for the unambiguous is received. . Religion is man's response to the power of Grace, effective through the mystery and miracle of revelation, re-binding together (from Latin religare) that which is paralyzed, unbounded, dangling and therefore useless. Religion is man's response to the initiative of God reuniting man with his self, his world and Himself. . Morality is a basic function of life involving the polarity of individualization and participation. . Morality is the self-integration of life in the dimension of spirit. . Morality is a constitutive act that actualizes the quality of essential centeredness, of individualization or personality, in a community. . Morality is not an act in which a divine or human law is obeyed. It is not moralism. . The moral norm is the universal, unconditional command or imperative (Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804) to acknowledge every centered being in the sublimity of their center. . During the 18th and 19th Centuries, ambitious criminals in Arabia and Africa resuscitated pre-Muslim Assassin Cults, calling themselves embodiments of true Islam and Juju or Voodoo. Actually, they were iterations of the Arab/Pan-African versions of treachery and thievery. . Arab/Pan-African Assassin Cults today are gangs of unctuous thugs claiming credibility and legitimacy as adherents of Islam or Voodoo. . Voodoo is torment/domination techniques meant to elevate one person over another at the expense of the other. Islam as meant by Arab/Pan-African Assassin Cults is a species of imperialistic ignorance driven by violence. . There is no place in Assassin Cults for religion, culture or morality and none of these phenomena of life in the dimension of spirit is in them. . After the exile of Bah‡ÕuÕll‡h from Persia and the usurpation of the Hashemite Throne by the Sauds, the Assassin Cults gathered force, overtook through intimidation the scholarly and clerical leadership of Islam and conjured for themselves visions of world domination. . During the last three decades of the 20th Century and continuing, the Assassin Cults, pretending as a nation, attacked actual nations, intending first to extort their wealth and obedience and then to overtake their culture, religion and morality and destroy them. . The goal of the Assassin Cults is world domination. . The question is, world domination by whom, with what? . The Assassin Cults answer, ÒBy us with Sharia,Ó so-called Muslim religious law ... as if thugs respect any law. . The truth is, (1) religious law has no civil implementation, to include Sharia, Ten Commandments, etc., and (2) Assassin Cults have available to them only the whims of their leaders as the content of the culture, religion and morality they intend imposing on the world. . Numerous Assassin Cults of Arab/Pan-African origin operate inside and outside the Middle East and Africa. Because they wish it, we hear their tread every day. The Assassin Cult grinding Iran since 1979 is of Arab (Semitic) not Persian (Aryan) origin. . The ÒcultureÓ they bring is death and destruction. The ÒreligionÓ they bring is idolatry of a book and themselves. The ÒmoralityÓ they bring is the annihilation of personality and personhood, particularly the feminine. . Because they operate in almost every nation, the community of nations is resolved to track the Assassin Cults and annihilate them and their supports wherever these may be found. . It is a dirty, long-term job for which there is no alternative but to see it thorough for as long as it takes to get the job done. . The consequence of not doing the job or of declaring it a purely judicial rather than a theological/military/diplomatic/judicial task is predictable. . Inviting Assassin Cults to supper in hopes of reasoning with them is suicidal because their members are implacably irrational. . Assigning the pursuit of Assassin Cults to the judiciary is suicidal because their police forces lack resources, organization, training and jurisdiction to protect everyone who needs it. . The Assassin Cults are demonic forces, not misguided ones. . Their reality transgresses every concept we thought enables us to live and operate successfully in the world. . For this reason they terrify us. . And for this reason they compel simultaneously our critical analysis, military action and political creativity. . The first and last of these necessities Ð critical analysis and political creativity Ð are the content of this briefing. Eadem Mutata Resurgo . Between 1618 and 1648, Europe decimated itself with war over religious principles. Germany alone lost half her population. . The battle was over the Protestant Principle of im-mediacy and the Catholic principle of inter-mediacy in the relationship with God. . Neither side could prevail. The Reformers could not reform the whole Church and the Vatican could not maintain its claim to universal hegemony. . This meant that each side represented important truths necessary to the welfare of man and his world. . When the inconclusiveness of the struggle became apparent, secular authorities stopped it. . Ever since, secular authorities have sought to disallow war over religion within their jurisdictions. . The time is come to do that again, but this time as a preventative step, learning from our past, BEFORE the chaos of religion war descends upon the towns, cities and countryside of our nation. . What is Islam? Islam is a great, dignified and holy religion. . Islam is a response to genuine revelatory experience that Mohammed (570-633), the Prophet, had. To belittle, disparage or not appreciate and be ungrateful for Mohammed's experience and for Islam is invita minerva (against the life of the mind). . Mohammed received the revelation of the oneness of God and the oneness of His world in His Oneness. This is the primal truth of existence. Mohammed received this truth in the midst of horrid degradations of life: tribal savagery, radical idolatry, habitual indolence, thievery and venality, and endemic/pandemic misogyny. Islam is a clean-up call in Arabia Deserta for all of that. . It has not been easy. The chief offenders, blasphemers, apostates and profaners of Islam are titular moslems. . Titular moslems call a non-Koranic tutti-frutti of Arab tribal, Roman civil and Jewish rabbinical laws Ð namely, Sharia Ð Islam. Islam is a response to the revelation of life as unconditional unity. No law, religious or civil, is unified or unambiguous or can produce unity and unambiguity. . Titular moslems put themselves in the place of Ullah and their tribal customs in the place of Islam. Against those demonic impulses in the hearts of some individuals Mohammed conducted Jihad. Not against the individuals, against those impulses! Decisive distinction. . I am to accept the ravings of an unctuous thug as Islam, the exclusively valid religion? . I think not! I declare him a criminal charlatan and the propaganda he retails irreligious rubbish. . I accept as representing Islam the one who in his life illustrates the Fatherhood of God Ð in His myriad Names, Ullah and otherwise Ð and the Brotherhood of Man Ð in his myriad Names, Moslem and otherwise. . Islam is a religion. . Christianity is a religion. . I am a Christian. . Therefore, if I understand Christianity, I understand Islam. . Therefore, if a moslem says I do not understand Islam, I declare him or her an impostor representing neither Islam nor religion. . The struggle between liberal democratic principles and Assassin Cults is over secular not religious principles. It is about maintaining national sovereignty and international comity. . Its inner nature is struggle to guarantee the free exercise of the three functions of spirit: culture, religion and morality. . Or we may say, the struggle is between humans, who continuously seek emergence in the Unconditioned, the Infinite, and evil or demonic individuals, who generate grief by declaring finitude Ð themselves and Sharia Ð unconditioned and infinite. . In this situation, secular authority, per its mission, must provide stability and order by regulating the conduct of life in the civil realm. . This means civil authority must regulate religious activity insofar as it occurs in the civil realm, as any activity must. . The thesis of this briefing is that civil authorities, within their jurisdictions and upon the principle of compelling government interest, must prevent civil conflict going under the name of religion by canalizing religious impulses and activities. . Prevention is the focus. . The resources of federal authority are and will continue to be committed outside the nation, across the street, so to speak, playing in the enemy's front yard rather than letting him play in ours. . If this enemy is able to concentrate the equivalent of a battalion of active, supported operators Òin our front yard,Ó he will overwhelm state and local resources and compel ground combat operations by United States Armed Forces inside the United States. . An actualization of this potentiality can and must be prevented. . A word on the difference between religious law and civil law. . All religions have religious law. What is their significance? . Religious law expresses man's essential nature. It reminds us who we are, of our personhood, of the categorical imperative that is our humanity. It is a guide but not a rule for navigating the sea of ambiguity called life. It can be neither accomplished nor enforced. . Civil law regulates man's existential condition. It sets and guides the enforcement of behavior appropriate in and to the changing circumstances of history. It can be accomplished and enforced. . Sharia, The Sermon on the Mount, the Ten Commandments, the Canons of the Church and the Torah are systems of religious law. . They express the moral norm, the categorical imperative of personhood. . They cannot and do not regulate behavior in the daily life. . Assassin Cults proclaim their intent to establish Sharia as the religious and civil law of the one-world nation of Islam they claim is they themselves. . Sharia is treated by Assassin Cults as religious law so long as they are Òin Muslim territory.Ó ÒOutside Muslim territoryÓ Ð meaning on anyone they find disagreeable Ð anything goes. . When effort is made to accomplish or enforce religious law, to treat religious law as civil law, despair Ð recall Luther Ð and desperation Ð recall Saudi "religious police" and the Vatican's Inquisition Ð are required for the futile and therefore brutal execution of it. . So, as they did during the 30 Years War in Europe Ð however, this time before the war expands on our soil, not after it has decimated our population Ð civil authorities must make the peace between adherents of religions, genuine and counterfeit. . Those adherents cannot or will not do it themselves. That is a lesson from our history. . The following slides offer a conceptual and a concrete basis for civil authorities to make the peace between adherents of religions. Esse Qua Esse Bonum Est . The mission of government is to foster economy, peace and security for citizens residing in its jurisdiction. Government accomplishes this mission by canalizing the personal and communal impulses of citizens toward those conditions. . Culture is economy, religion is peace and morality is security. Government constantly decides regarding all three functions of the dimension of spirit. . Economy means building up, internal and external. It does not mean making money. Building up is culture. . Peace means a quiet mind, internal and external. It does not mean absence of conflict. A quiet mind is religion. . Security means insouciance, freedom from concern, internal and external. It does not mean living without threat. Insouciance is morality. . Our intelligentsia (derived by Fabian Communists early in the 20th Century from the Russian intelligentsiya) describe religion in terms of meaningless imagination or subjective psychological projection. They announce the actualization of human potential through education as the intelligent alternative to religion. . Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) described religion in terms of powers of being which grasp the human mind itself, going through man's psyche, his conscious and unconscious mind Ð what Plato calls man's soul Ð but not deriving from it. They come from the roots man has in the depth of reality itself. . The several religions of man illustrate different powers of being by which men are grasped. The sacrifices, the seriousness, the glory and the cruelty of man's history of religion are understandable only in view of powers of being man encounters and responds to, not as wishful thinking that education remediates. . The factor in religious history which compels government attention is the claim of exclusive and perpetual validity for a religion. . This claim causes religion wars. . In consequence, civil authority, tasked with keeping the peace, must canalize personal and communal impulses to prevent this claim from occurring. If it occurs, civil authority must remove it. ÒAn ounce of prevention ....Ó . In KELO v. CITY OF NEW LONDON, the United States Supreme Court offers civil authority an opportunity to prevent civil disruption driven by a claim of exclusive and perpetual validity for a religion. . Civil authority has a compelling government interest to prevent religion war by canalizing religious impulses. . There are no constitutional impediments to this course of action. . Federal, state and local governments can now structure mutual appreciation, acceptance and support among religions by: (1) co-locating edifices for religious use on dedicated government property, (2) appropriating great centering sanctuaries as common treasures, and, (3) designating for development land currently designated for religious use. . Here by way of example is the concept of a Religion Park: (1) A government-built/owned/maintained park, comprising 9-18 acres or 1-2 city blocks of walkways, gardens, trees, water and buildings for religious use, underlain by parking, offices, etc., for each area comprising 27,000 citizens. (2) In the center of the park, a government-built/owned/maintained common hall without fixed furniture and able to accommodate 2700 citizens. (3) Around the common hall, edifices owned by government but built/maintained by and for each religion recognized by government, each paying monthly dues and able to accommodate no more than 270 citizens. . Here are details: (4) The dominant character of the Religion Park is quiet. (5) The entire park, including edifices, is open to all. (6) The edifice built and maintained by each religion serves all denominations of that religion. They have to work it out amongst themselves. One edifice each for Christians, Muslims, Hindus, etc. (7) The common hall may be used by all together for common prayer and meeting Ð this should be encouraged Ð or for special event single-religion meetings. It is open to all, protected by government for silent prayer 24/7/365. . Here are more details: (8) A minimum of 270 serious adherents residing in the 27,000-citizen area served by a Religion Park should be the threshold for government consideration of a group as representing a religion not already recognized. (9) The government process for recognizing a religion should set clear, firm standards, including as recommended by recognized religions. The process first should commend the group requesting recognition to leaders of the recognized religion from which they emerged for inclusion in the program of that religion. (10) Recognition of a religion not integral with a recognized religion should be considered a drastic step requiring unchallengeable justification. . Here are more details: (11) With government approval, schools of religion could be built in the Religion Park but not to overwhelm the character of the whole as a place of quiet. These, however should not be encouraged since the educational enterprise, today and forwardly, is carried out in the system of education comprising public, private and government schools. (12) Better than schools of religion would be small, ecumenical, limited-stay hermitages, study facilities and retreat centers. Ecumenical means Òflourishing of all,Ó meaning in this case, adherents of all religions. (13) No playgrounds, above ground parking, competitions, sports, loud activities, loitering, weapons, incitements to hate or violence, accommodating cheats and idlers (Òthe homelessÓ), etc. . And a final detail: (14) God is bliss, bliss is beauty and beauty is proportion. Therefore, Religion Parks should embed the proportions that evoke beauty Ð and its utility Ð in nature and technology. The most important of these proportions are 1:1.618 and 4:27. 1:1.618 is The Divine or Golden Proportion widely found in nature and the works of man. Boeing embedded the Golden Proportion in their 747 Jumbo Jet while Pythagoreans used it to sight the facade of temples. 4:27 is a Pythagorean favorite embedded, along with the Golden Proportion, by Cistercians/Templars at Chartres and other Sanctuaries. Labora Est Ora EPILOGUE Be all of the foregoing as it may, there is another thing to be said. A coup d'oeil that sets the whole business in full view and in motion. A few words about this are desirable. Arab/Pan-African Assassin Cults claim that Islam is not only a religion but also a nation-state. They go farther, claiming Islam Ð their version of it Ð is the only valid nation-state and announcing their intention to eliminate all others. Arab/Pan-African Assassin Cults are imperialistic. And they go farther still, asserting that Christianity and Hinduism, especially Ð their principal enemies in their own eyes Ð are not only religions that are nation-states but also failed, heretical religions that are putrefying nation-states, detritus of history requiring pyretic destruction Ð by themselves in full flood of righteous wrath. Heady stuff! Now, what are we to make of it? Is it raving? Yes, and dangerous. And whereas all raving is dangerous, the danger of this one is acutely imminent world-wide. Is it more than raving? Yes it is, and this more is what I want to expose to view. Awareness and acceptance of the accurate grasp inside the raving of Arab/Pan-African Assassin Cults bear directly on the beat down of them as well as on the desirability and feasibility of Religion Parks. This is what ÒterroristsÓ have grasped, and accurately: today, nation-states are the viable forms of the religions whose cultures produced them. Religions produce cultures from the power of revelatory experience and their response to it. Cultures produce governments from the power of their desire for stability, self-preservation and expansion. Religions produce nation-states by way of producing cultures. Religion, culture and nation-state are distinguishable but not separable. They are mutually immanent. This is the reality world-wide. Al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's intellectual superior, is not the first to grasp it. The Christian political prisoner Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) grasped this reality during his imprisonment, if not earlier. The Christian theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965) grasped it while teaching at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) intuited it while teaching at the University of Berlin. Recognition of the mutual immanence of religion, culture and nation-states is found in the Ramayana, the Old Testament, Plato's Republic, the Middle Ages of Europe and the work of Thomas Jefferson. Interestingly, the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), the founder of Deism, which separated God and the world, said that tolerance should extend to everyone except Catholics and Atheists, the one because they are intolerant on principle and the other because they deny the religious foundations of tolerance. The given now is that the nation-states are the viable forms of the religions whose cultures produced them. What does this mean for us and the world we encounter? It means that today the viable forms of the religions are not their sects and denominations but the nation-states generated by the cultures those religions generated. The nation-states are the being of the religions today and forwardly. The daily activities of the nation-states embody, represent and carry forward the religions whose cultures produced them. Christianity is not Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, etc. Christianity is Italy, Spain, Venezuela, Croatia, Mexico, Russia, France, Germany, England, Sweden, Australia, Uganda, United States, Greece, Armenia, Philippines, New Zealand, etc. When asked, ÒWhat is Christianity?Ó we point to nation-states. We do not point to Episcopalians, Baptists, etc. Note that Catholics already recognize this reality in deeming the Vatican a nation-state, although they also deem it the only legitimate nation-state Ð the claim al Zawahiri makes for himself and his minions! Hinduism is India and Nepal. BahaÕi is Persia (Iran). Buddhism is Tibet, Mongolia, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, etc. Islam is Turkey, Afghanistan, Egypt, Indonesia, etc. Judaism is Israel. Shinto is Japan. Taoism and Confucianism are China. Even agnosticism Ð a misnomer referencing an existential impossibility Ð has partial representation as a nation-state, for example as South Korea and the United States. However, African torment/domination techniques, such as Voodoo, are not religions, do not, therefore, produce cultures and cannot, therefore, produce nation-states Ð much less maintain and evolve them. At this point the cynic says, ÒIt all goes to entropy, so what is the point, where is meaning, who can care?Ó ÒCynicÓ is from Greek kunikos, meaning Òliving like a dog.Ó Greek Cynics applied radical doubt to everything and took the consequences, living like dogs and in desert hermitages. Cynics did not intoxicate themselves on spirits, sex, status and spondulics whilst submitting to extortion by students and their parents and proclaiming products of common sense news flashes. Philosophy charges cynics to subject cynicism itself to radical doubt. Entropy itself is entropic, existential, and therefore non-ultimate. Nation-states produced by cultures produced by Christianity, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism are mostly tolerant and sincere, requiring practice of the human values of truth, gracious conduct, peace, love and non-violence. Nation-states produced by cultures produced by Islam, Taoism and Confucianism are mostly intolerant and hypocritical, declaiming human values to journalists while understanding them not at all and practicing them less. Nation-states produced by cultures produced by Buddhism and Shinto have a mixed record regarding tolerance and human values. In principle, the multi-national community supports tolerance and human values. In practice, it frequently fails. Regardless, human values are the norm in the multi-national community and nation-states of the Christian, Hindu, Zoroastrian and Jewish orbits made that happen. This reality is a point of pride and the ultimate tribute to the billions from their cultures and nations across the centuries whose self-sacrifice brought it forth. Today, nation-states have to duke it out among themselves over this issue of toleration. They are already to it, of course, and they will finish it. I would not bet on nation-states sponsoring intolerance. The intentions and actions of the nation-states are to the community of nation-states as religious law is to civil law. The nation-states describe essential reality while the community of nation-states does what it can regarding existential reality. Arab/Pan-African Assassin Cults nurse imperialist ambitions without the support of a culture or the instruments of a nation-state. This means that civil law, including police power backed by decisive military power, can beat down their pretense of religious law as civil law (Sharia) because civil law actually does apply in daily life and can adjust to needs as they arise, whereas religious law does neither. Where Sharia is attempted as civil law, there is an hallucinated reconstruction of 7th Century Arab hypocrisy, tribalism, superstition and barbarity. Not the stuff of a nation-state. Nor the stuff of an umma, which, as its sound denotes, means the common point of unity of all religions, something civil law should encourage but cannot control, as it can civil comm-unities. Les Chansones de Dieu Finally, that the nation-states now represent the religions whose cultures produced them means that in creating Religion Parks governments will be coping with legacy structures: the sects and denominations of religions led by genuine and demonic clerics and scholars. These structures preserve symbols, traditions and rituals that still occasion revelatory experience, so they will linger as legacies. But because they are not the center of cultural, religious and moral creativity Ð the nation-states are Ð and are prone, on that account, to the twin perils of dissolution and fanaticism, they can disrupt society and that potential must be prevented from actualizing. Therefore the Religion Park. Religion Parks will: . canalize legacy structures and energies of religion, . center a neighborhood in quiet and beauty, . encourage the common point of unity of all religions, . transport us beyond jejune rhetorical clichŽs, and . illumine a human values solution to a scary problem. Thank you for reading this work and considering its assumptions, methods, insights, assertions and proposal. Religion Parks is an Òopen source conceptÓ that may not be copyrighted. Specific versions or constructions from the concept may be copyrighted, but the concept itself may not be copyrighted. It is to continue as an Òopen source concept.Ó This work is complete. The Rev. David R. Graham nobody.108.11529@gmail.com May 2006 Diligentibus Deum Omnia Cooperantur In Bonum A.M.D.G.