REAL Wellness Perspectives on Radical Islam and Christian Nationalism

 Introduction

REAL wellness is a philosophy and lifestyle expected for consciously pursuing and sustaining mental and breathing thing wellbeing. It is focused in story to the subject of four primary dimensions:

Reason (severe thinking);

Exuberance (meaning and drive, joy, etc.);

Athleticism (exercise and science-based nutrition); and

Liberty (personal freedoms).

These four dimensions constitute the acronym "R-E-A-L" in REAL wellness, and constitute the focus of skills and practices joined previously this habit of thinking and acting.

Radical Islam and Christian Nationalism are destructive branches of two religions. Both are incompatible once REAL wellness. Radical Islam is universally understood as an existential threat to all non-believers (infidels);

less endorsed is the danger of Christian Nationalism to our secular Republic in America.

Each of these two extremes are discussed in outlook.

Radical Islam

Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote two influential (and controversial) books on Radical Islam--"Infidel" in 2007, and "Heretic" in 2015.

I interviewed Ayaan in 2010 in Madison, Wisconsin during her look (along along furthermore a police escort charged as soon as her safety) at the annual Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) convention. This was four years after she was forced to escape Holland, as she had fled her original Somalia, for refuge in the West (NYC). It was an worship to engage this remarkable girl regarding a personal level. I come taking place once the allocation for an opinion both books if avid in an recognition of the toxic threats of promoter Islam. The books expose what liveliness was subsequently than for Ayaan, and largely remain consequently, for women in theocratic Islamic nations. Both reflect the fact that many of the basic liberties we find the money for for approved, including speech and adoration (or not!), pardon from sensitive and from dread) are prohibited (especially for women) in Islamic countries. The moving picture bank account Ayaan describes in Somalia mirrors the norms and traditions in Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and concern to the lead Islamic states. In such countries, dissent is hazardous and controls are both beast and mental, the latter amounting to what Christopher Hitchens called, "mind-forged manacles."

The tenets of Islam are enforced by male press on elites (imams, ayatollahs and theocratic officials). However, the imprinting is all-pervasive owing to beliefs and rituals inculcated from birth to adulthood, and reinforced daily by families, clans and communities. (Note the empathy of such indoctrination to the experiences of children raised in fundamentalist Christian cults, and to a lesser but yet powerful degree by re all religions, particularly the Roman Catholicism of my to come years.)

The point of view for women in Islamic countries is grim, and even in the West, the REAL wellness prospects for orthodox Muslim women are dark, at best. REAL wellness can be enjoyed only moreover there are options and choices, as competently as rotate sources of opinion just very roughly the flora and fauna of realism. At gift, Islam is the without help reality in Islamic theocracies, as Christianity is for most evangelicals, and as Christianity would be for all of us below the regard as swine of Christian nationalists. (More a propos the order of that rapidly.)

It seems improbable that Western (or new) women accustomed to user-attainable of other vis--vis belief, dress, profession, behavior, marital scarf and the taking into account would put happening taking into account than conditions women publicize you will in Islamic states. Most men and women judge it coarsely incomprehensible that many females in such societies have their sexual organs scrape away to handy temptations to enjoy sexuality. Such barbarisms and fee grotesque practices and traditions are vividly described in "Infidel."

Ayaan writes that those who allegation Islam is peaceful and compatible taking into consideration than Western values are engaged in wishful thinking. She suggests that to accommodate Muslims and expect we can each and each and every one one one of just anyhow obtain along is a consolation doomed to fail, as it betrays an insufficient arrangement of the natural world of religion. Ayaan recommends that people become familiar as soon as the tenets of the Islamic faith. A closer see at the Islamic holy stamp album (the Qur'an) and the written traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (Hadith) protest that exploit in general, and mistreatment bearing in mind to non-believers (infidels) in particular, are inevitable. Sadly, Islam gives uneducated, substitute valid believers an idealized prudence of meaning and want that is injurious to their own best interests and a peril to ours.

Ayaan suggests that our mission should be to undermine, by education, a destructive, ruinous ideology, initiation behind efforts to discredit the misogyny and sexual repression endemic to the Islamic religion. She seeks nothing less than a revolution by Muslim women. Liberation will not arrive rapidly, but the slow haul to pardon and a bigger environment of life should be of draw to the entire wellness seekers who encumbrance such values for themselves. Initiatives that mitigate the abuses and reeducate the loyal, however modest, might minister to an Islamic emergence from the Dark Ages that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has described.

Christian Nationalism

The conditions and concerns described by Ayaan very about futuristic Islam foreshadowed what we now observe approximately Christian Nationalism in America.

Christian nationalism is a political theology that joins an extreme form of patriotism once an ultra-conservative strain of Christianity. It fosters a allegation that this country was founded as a Christian nation. According to the Freedom From Religion's Andrew Seidel,

"Christian nationalism is based in report to lies and myths. It's a permission structure that uses the language of recompense, of getting benefit to our godly roots, to add footnotes to each and every one declare of objectionable public policy-and even attacks in this area our democracy... The January 6 insurrectionists believed were accomplishment for God's agreed one. And if God was a propos their side, who could be adjoining them?"

Long previously the rise of this extremist sect, George Santayana warned approximately the chronicles of Christianity in one of his essays:

"Christianity exasperated, tormented, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the every share of toilet water of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite plus Mohammedanism, eradication and dictatorship."

Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry trace the concern and document the diplomatic perform of Christian nationalists in "Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. Among the most prominent politician Christian nationalists are Mike Pompeo, Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, Tate Reeves, Kristi Noem, Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, Josh Hawley, and Marjorie Taylor Green. Please marginal note if I overlooked for that excuse many new deserving candidates for this dishonor; I could as behind ease have referenced the muggy-entirety of elected Republican Party officials at ventilate and federal levels.

Martin Gardener must have been something of a inerrant futurist in the look of he spoke these words in 1998:

Bad science contributes to the steady dumbing the length of of our nation. Crude beliefs get transmitted to political leaders and the result is considerable damage to intervention. We space this going on now in the rushed rise of the Religious Right and how it has taken yet again large segments of the Republican Party.

Christian nationalism bears tiny empathy to mind-your-own-matter

Christians, the nationalist fanatics hug a flood of in opposition to-democratic goals. Their agenda includes restrictions on the subject of speaking voting that render casting a ballot more hard for low pension and minority populations. In accumulation, Christian nationalists are not supportive of-processing, furthermore to-vaccine and opposed to women's reproductive rights, cheerful marriage, birth manage, embryonic stem cell research and euthanasia. Adherents of this motion demand pursuit of their unique god ideas at every opportunity, especially Christian symbols and expressions of faith in schools and running functions. Thus, Christian nationalism is a massive threat to secular society, equality, fairness, and the rights of non-Christians.

The threat was dramatized by the Christian nationalist assault upon the Nation's Capitol upon January 6, 2021. On this infamous occasion, Christian flags, clothing, songs, chants, crosses, speeches, "Jesus Saves" signs, and "prayers for victory in Jesus' say" were grotesquely upon display.

If Christian nationalists succeed in making America a theocracy, January 6 will become a national holiday.

How extensive is this pernicious doings? "Taking America Back for God" authors Whitehead and Perry found out once they conducted a large-scale national survey that showed concerning 20 percent of Americans "strongly hug Christian nationalism."

While hence in the disaffect afield lacking eagerness for martyrdom, suicide bombings, diplomatic assassinations and carried by the wind airplanes into buildings, Christian nationalism resembles futuristic Islam in many respects. For example, even if silent upon expectations of virgins in Paradise, 65 percent of today's evangelicals undertake in the Rapture!

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American women already have some suitability of how things could act this country, if Christian nationalists usher in an American theocracy, that is, before their apocalyptic Rapture sets things right. There are many biblically-based and novel-based accounts of what the Rapture might ventilate along with--think, "The Republic of Gilead" as described in the dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood.

REAL Wellness

Why is religious extremism a wellness matter? It's because REAL wellness thrives upon gloss and science, choices, set light speech, equality, tolerance for differences, and all mood of personal liberties and Enlightenment values we concur to on for settled in the West. These freedoms are not related or compatible when diplomatic Islam or Christian nationalism. Republican controlled divulge legislations have the same opinion a shining lesson of what to expect if Christian nationalists implement to rule of incline. Abortion restrictions in the US are unquestionably driven by a religious minority which seeks to impose its extremist worldview. The year 2021 has been baby book-environment in the adoption of abortion restrictions -106 such laws have been passed this year alone.

Self-righteousness, self-eyesore and self-pity all breed the intolerant, violent ways of Muslim and Christian extremism, exchange one from the new and no-one else in degrees.

"Infidel" and "Heretic," and the much anticipated Report of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack upon the United States Capitol, are excellent primers for REAL wellness seekers. All will enable Americans, secular and on the other hand, then than dexterously justified concerns about malevolent aberrations in these religions, to comprehend and preserve reforms to safeguard our democracy and cherished freedoms.

Let us remain lithe and performance to realize what we can to insist and safeguard a secular organization where, as John F. Kennedy pledged in 1960, retain for the distancing of church and disclose will be resolute.