Llewellyn

King

Read Llewellyn's bio and previous columns

May 19, 2008

Dictators Brutalize Religion; Is Our Christian President Failing to Notice?

If cathedrals were comparable to battleships, St. Mary and All Saints in Harare, Zimbabwe would be a pocket cathedral. Conceived by its English founders, it is a gem of an Anglican cathedral, fitting in with its surroundings rather than dominating them.

Ten days ago, the Zimbabwe police stormed into the cathedral and beat the worshipers there, mostly women. They were suspected of being aligned with the opposition to President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party. Of all of Mugabe's savageries, from genocide in Matabeleland, to bulldozing the homes of Harare's poor, the attack on the St. Mary and All Saints' church-goers is, to me, the unkindest cut of all.

As a teenager, I spent a lot of time around the cathedral, reading in the cloisters; holding political discussions in the gardens; and dreaming of the great post-colonial nation, which so many of us believed would emerge.

Those days, the 1950s, were days of idealism laced with trepidation. As ever, the young believed in the future and the old in the past. Young whites and blacks, inspired by David Stirling and his Capricorn Africa Society, gathered in the cloisters and talked about the brave new world we would invent: the new America which would take its place among nations.

But that was before Ian Smith's unilateral declaration of independence; and before Mugabe's return from the Soviet Union to lead a civil war against the colonial past.

Of course, the cathedral always had its detractors because it was always liberal and radical. Although in my day, it had yet to become a center for social protest. But Christianity is driven to the barricades in the Third World, unless it is totally co-opted.

Religion has always been important in Africa. And it was important in the education of Mugabe and the leaders of his party. So Mugabe's invasion of the sanctuary of the church is a kind of crowning indecency.

Absolute power is a thing of wonder. Why do old men cling to it for life? Why does Mugabe, at 84, not go gently into retirement or exile? Why did Fidel Castro wait to hand over the reins until the complete collapse of his health? Why did Generallissimo Francisco Franco maintain a Fascist redoubt in Spain long after Fascism was ignominiously consigned to history?

President Bush is so right to preach democracy, as he did on his recent trip to the Middle East. Yet he seems to have a palpable affection for some dictators. Among them the faux democrat, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who intends for his son to succeed him. In Egypt there are no political rights, and the secret voice of opposition is the Muslim Brotherhood. As an Egyptian journalist said, “You can join the Brotherhood, or go to jail, and probably do both.” The real consequence of Mubarak's dictatorial ways is the strengthening of the Brotherhood's recruiting contribution to Al-Qaeda.

Then there is Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah; so close the Bush family and so far from the interests of the United States. He presides over a corrupt, indolent and hypocritical family. You have to visit the kingdom to understand how truly perverted its system is. There is no religious freedom, no political freedom, no press freedom. And to stay in power, the royal family has financed anti-Western madrassas and mosques around the world.

Bush has visited Abdullah and his palatial Arabian horse farm twice this year, both of which need mucking out. The president tolerates Saudi Arabia and Egypt as African leaders tolerate Zimbabwe.

Bush has made much of his Christianity. Does he not know that at some level the prohibition against all religious expression in Saudi Arabia is a part of the same evil of intolerance as the violation of the sanctity of a cathedral in Zimbabwe?

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.

This is Column # LK045.  Request permission to publish here.