Osama Is My Hero

No, really, he is. Not that I can tolerate Muslims, respect Islam, reverence the Quran, or appreciate Mohammed and/or Allah; I consider that Islam and Islamists receive more than sufficient butt-kissing from the elites of what used to be Christendom. However, Osama bin Laden does provoke my admiration, and not because I think that his violence is a justifiable reaction to Western imperialism. I admire Osama bin Laden because he represents a vital, all-encompassing religious and political vision within his tradition. I wish his tradition the perdition it deserves and will eventually receive, but at the same time I am quite jealous. Where in the remnants of Christendom is there Osama’s counterpart?

Osama bin Laden espouses an orthodox version of mainstream (Sunni) Islam, which naturally includes an adherence to Islamic (Sharia) law, but he goes beyond the expected parameters of Islamic Revival thinking and also advocates the return of the Caliphate. His agitations have as their goal the reestablishment of a unified Islamic superstate under the leadership of the Caliph (supreme leader). It’s the rough equivalent of a French intellectual advocating the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire with both its ecclesiastical and political institutions reinstituted. As laughable as that seems, bin Laden has managed to spread his vision (and his organization) across the Arab world, and has managed to arrest the continuing theoretical, political, religious, and military attention of the West. He’s a devout, articulate intellectual who can organize and execute (pun intended) in an amazingly effective fashion.

As an orthodox Calvinist, I wish that there were a Presbyterian al Qaeda. Not for the violence, of course; remember that I’m a Christian, not a Turk. But as an alienated person in the post-Christian, post-industrial West, I long for the kind of leadership that someone like bin Laden provides. In the United States, we have a vital but nonetheless hopelessly confused Christian Right. What Presbyterian would go to war for D. James Kennedy or R.C. Sproul? Again, not that violence is a kind of litmus test for inspiring leadership, but the fact remains that there is a huge void when it comes to Christian leadership, especially Protestant leadership. This is an age of dwarfs, of little men in coats who perpetuate the achievements of their forbears. I long for the day when a Burke or an Anselm or a Knox or a Calvin will arrive again.