"Western morality only kicks in when the victims look like them." - Dr. Karim Wafa-Al Hussaini

On election night in 2024, Donald Trump reiterated what he had promised on the campaign trail: 

I’m not going to start wars.

That was sixteen months ago. Since then, he has bombed Iran, Yemen, Somalia and Nigeria, invaded Venezuela, embargoed Cuba, threatened Colombia and Greenland, and has completely disregarded international law in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. 

On the 11th day of Ramadan, the US and Israel started bombing Iran. Again. More than 170 children were murdered at an elementary school in Minab. 

Trump said that this had to happen. Because there were “imminent threats.”

US and Israeli leaders are using adjectives like “pre-emptive” and “preventative.” As if carpet-bombing is in the same category as cancer-screening.

Israel has way too much influence over American foreign policy. Over the past few years, both Biden and Trump completely sold out to the Israel lobby. They both lifted all constraints on Israel’s use-of-force in unprecedented fashion. The consequences have been horrific. However, any analysis that solely blames this bombing campaign on Israel or Netanyahu lets too many others off the hook. 

Israel is one part of a coalition funded by those now being referred to as “the Epstein class,” or “the pedophile oligarchy.” Veteran Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy calls it “the axis of Zionist extremism" This network of blackmailing Western Zionist billionaires wants to obliterate Muslim countries to pad their egos and their investment portfolios, to fulfill (fake) biblical prophecies and a (false) sense of security.   

There are very wealthy and powerful American, Canadian, British, German, French and Israeli bad actors who need this to happen for their bottom-lines and their belief systems. It’s not only the weapons manufacturers and oil producers. It’s the Christian and Jewish Zionists too. 

The axis of Zionist extremism gets away with murder by hiding in a bunker of Islamophobia. It has hoodwinked the average American into believing that Muslims are violent and aggressive and hate Jews and Christians. 

Privilege breeds pathology and one of the most pathological things that privileged people do is project their own derangement on to others. 

Every accusation is a confession. 

Remember this when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has Crusader symbols tattooed on his body and hosts end-times bible studies, proclaims that Iranians cannot be trusted because they believe in “Islamic prophetic illusions.” 

Remember this when Secretary of State Marco Rubio laments that Iran is run by “religious fanatic lunatics.”

Remember this when the congressman from Texas tweets, “How many Americans have to get Allahu Akbar’ed before we realize Islam is a problem?”

Western Christian crusader theology has long been the real problem, from anti-Jewish pogroms to the Spanish Inquisition to the Doctrine of Discovery to the Transatlantic slave trade to witch trials to residential schools to Jim Crow to the occupation of Palestine to apartheid to Abu Ghraib and so much more.  

This is not just back then. This is right now too. 

Christian Zionists, like Hegseth, are currently at the helm. They see the obliteration of Iran as a crucial step of their biblical end-times road map, on the way to the final battle of Armageddon and the glorious Rapture of Jesus.  

In their recently released Kairos document, Palestinian Christians call out the ways that Christian Zionists twist the bible to brandish beliefs that are utterly alien to the core of Christian faith and ethics. The Zionist tribal, racist god of war and ethnic cleansing is a theological and moral corruption.

Last week, more than a hundred US soldiers filed complaints with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, detailing the ways that their Christian Zionist commanders are portraying the war on Iran as “God’s divine plan” and Trump as “anointed by Jesus” to ignite Armageddon. 

Religious fanatic lunatics with Christian prophetic illusions are leading US soldiers into an end-times battle scripted by an absolutely pathetic interpretation of the Book of Revelation.

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Last summer, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor published a piece about how the most powerful people on the planet are preparing for the end of the world that they are accelerating. Despite their public denials, Elon Musk and his fellow tech billionaires know all about the real dangers of climate catastrophe, nuclear war, income inequality and unregulated AI – but they are ideologically committed to their horrific outcomes. 

As Klein and Taylor write, these end-times tech fascists are not content to just build the arks. They appear to be doing their best to cause the flood.

They are profiting off of disasters. They are also provoking and planning for them. They are building bunkers for themselves – and detention centers for those deemed disposable. 

The end-times tech fascists and the end-times Christian fascists do not care that the planet is being destroyed. Because the destruction of the planet props up their entire worldview.

Klein and Taylor pinpoint the kind of spirituality that undergirds this insanity. JD Vance is the model. In a Fox News interview, the Vice President promoted the medieval Christian concept of ordo amoris, which limits love to an orderly line-up. 

First, you focus on your nuclear family. Then your nearest neighbors. Then your community. Then your fellow citizens. Then the rest of the world. 

Of course, with all these concentric circles in place, there is not enough time, energy or resources to tend to those at the end of the line. 

This is not just some sort of Fox News fetish. The American culture war is bound together by this bogus love bunker mentality. 

Make no mistake. Conservatives aren't the only subscribers of ordo amoris. A lot of liberals limit their love to those who look like them too. 

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On the same day that the axis of Zionist extremism started bombing Iran, Dr. Butch Ware hosted the first session of an online series called “Ramadan Revolution.” His working thesis that afternoon? Islamic humanism is the antidote to the ways that love is atrophied by our racial, religious, patriotic and financial commitments. 

Dr. Ware is not just a professor of History and African-American Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is also campaigning to be the next governor of California on the Green Party ticket. He became a Muslim when he was fifteen years old after he checked out the Autobiography of Malcolm X from the library and read it cover to cover in one night. 

When he devoured that redemptive narrative back in the late-80's, Ware realized that he wanted what Malcolm had: a liberatory spirituality that dealt with his inner demons and his external oppressors. Islam freed Malcolm from his ego games and addictions – and from the racist policies and perspectives of the pedophile oligarchs who run America. 

In his teach-in on the 11th day of Ramadan, Dr. Ware took us back to the creation story. In both the Koran and the Hebrew bible, God makes human beings by molding them out of mud and breathing life into their nostrils. 

Dr. Ware told us that every 
human being is created  
with a caress and a kiss. 

I know from my own studies that Hebrew scribes crafted this story while they were exiled in Babylon, an empire that placed statues of their king in public places. Every Hebrew was forced to bow to these graven images. Or else.    

In the Jewish, Christian and Muslim creation accounts, every single person is molded into the divine image. Not just the king. There is no human hierarchy of value. We are all royalty, born to bow in reverence to each other.  

Dr. Ware told us that in the Koran, the devil refuses to bow to the human being. The devil believes that he is better than us. Because he was made out of fire, not clay. In Islam, it is literally Satanic to refuse to bow to another human being.

Every form of supremacy is Satanic. 

There are two supremacist cracks in the Western Christian creation story that are not present in Islam. 

The first crack is the way “original sin” seeped into our story and made humans fundamentally flawed. It teaches us that we cannot trust our gut – our own Inner Teacher – because our sin poisoned our Source. Shame became the primary motivator.

Muslim theology is adamant that we are created pure, precious and connected to the divine – and that a faithful life is about maintaining this intimate connection to our Creator who gives us endless opportunities to re-connect. No matter what. 

The second supremacist crack in the Western Christian creation story is God’s command, in Genesis, for the human being to subdue the earth and have dominion over other “lower” forms of life. 

In the Koran, the human being is charged with stewardship – to preserve the land, to keep the peace, to construct just societies. Being human is about taking responsibility for other forms of life – not taking over other forms of life. 

Dr. Ware made it clear that Islam does not have the monopoly on sealing up these supremacist cracks. He told us that Islam teaches that 124,000 prophets - including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon all of them) - were sent by Allah to every branch of the human family, to spread Something Else.

The message of the prophets was told in everyone’s native tongue. It proclaimed that real Love puts the priority on those who have a lot less than us, who probably do not look like us.

The prophetic message compels us to move beyond bunkers that protect us in ways that dehumanize others. 

Bunkers are for folks who have rejected the prophetic message. 

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In their article from last summer, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor say that, in this season of escalating end-times fascism, there are powerful possibilities for resistance. The task is to build an open-hearted movement that is both wide and deep – and both political and spiritual. 

Klein and Taylor said that two things are crucial:

1. We must wake up and face the depth of depravity of end-times fascism. We cannot live in denial. These people are perfectly fine shit-canning the planet - and they have a tremendous amount of power.

2. We must confront the pedophile oligarchs and Zionist extremists – and the cynicism and centrism of their enablers – with a completely different story that values interdependence, belonging and stewardship. 

Love is not an individual impulse confined to concentric circles. 

Love is a collective insurgency conspiring for a world that works for everyone. 

Love flows through all kinds of people, in every context, who sincerely care about the future of the planet - and who reverently bow to those who do not look, speak, dress, or worship like they do. 

The good news is that there are many more of us than there are of them. 

As our Muslim comrades teach us during this holy month of Ramadan, God sent 124,000 prophets to every corner of the planet to make sure that every culture and language got the message. We have access to Something Else - and it will keep moving Love forward, far beyond bunkers and algorithms, from one generation to the next. 

Inshallah.