Paul Hill and Religious Fundamentalism

September 3, 2003

William F. Harrison, M.D.

On September 3, 2003, Paul Hill - a militantly fundamentalist former Presbyterian minister, father of three children and confessed murderer of Dr. John Britton and his escort, Lt. Col. James Barrett at an abortion clinic in 1995 - is to be executed in a Florida prison.

Hill, according to an interview printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer May 6, 1999, smilingly told reporter Steve Goldstein, "I wouldn't advise them to give me my shotgun back and let me go unless they wanted a similar outcome. I am experiencing more joy and inner peace and satisfaction than I ever have in my life."

I was reminded yesterday of Hill's smug, self-satisfied remark when I saw the picture of the seemly delighted, triumphantly gesturing young Indonesian man, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, who had just been found guilty and sentenced to die for the 2002 terrorist bombing of a nightclub on the island of Bali that killed some two hundred people.

Amrozi, a Muslim terrorist nicknamed the "Laughing Killer" by the Balinese press, very obviously shares the sentiment of Hill, the smiling Christian killer. How are these two events connected? These men, one Christian, the other Muslim, and others like them, carry out these awful crimes because they think they are being directed by their god to destroy infidels. Both men belong to religious fundamentalist terrorist groups, one allegedly associated with al-Quida for Amrozi and a loose knit Christian hate group calling themselves "the Army of God" in Hill's case. And both are about to become more-than-willing "martyrs" in service to their fundamentalist delusions.

Of all the dangers facing the world today, violence promoting militant religious fundamentalism is the most immediate. Hate for the "other" is their almost ubiquitous passion. It may be preached by some local fundamentalist preacher or a Catholic priest teaching religious intolerance and calling for a "holy wa'", reiterating again and again slogans like, "abortion is murder", or "God hates 'Fag'Õ, or 'Kikes', or 'Ragheads', or ÔNigger'Õ, or 'Papists', or 'Prods'", or whatever degrading epithet or phrase they might direct against an individual or group that falls under their malevolent glare at a particular time, in a sometimes overt, sometimes covert attempt to inspire mentally unbalanced or emotionally immature true believers among their listeners to murder.

Or it may be indoctrinated by a radical Muslim imam in a London or New Jersey mosque or in some third world madrassa teaching children and young people violent jihad, to hate westerners, Jews and even other Muslims whose religious convictions do not quite conform to their own twisted and hate-filled version of Islam.

The Christian, Paul Hill, and the young Muslim, Amrozi, and their fellow fundamentalists of all religions have in common the unquestioning conviction that their own is the "one true religion", that their ways of interpreting their holy books are unerringly in line with the will of God or Allah, or Whomever. All semblance of reason, of respect for the religious belief or non-belief of others, even of compassion, are rejected as a thing sinful and abominable to their god. To subject their beliefs to questioning scrutiny is to raise the possibility of doubt. And they "know" this will endanger their immortal souls and place them among those whom their god hates.

There is no person more dangerous to others and to society at large than the true believer - the political or religious fanatic. And there is no more dangerous trend in a society than to allow political domination of that society by theocracy - or for leading politicians of a major political party in our democracy, to pander to and to utilize the radical beliefs of those religious fundamentalists who would willingly establish a theocracy, to gain and maintain political power.

The young man in Bali and Paul Hill - whose legal cases are nearing their end - and others in the United States like James Kopp who recently confessed to killing Dr. Barnett Slepian in New York and alleged Atlanta and Birmingham bomber, Eric Robert Rudolph, and the "good Catholic boy" John Salvi who killed two young women and wounded five others in two Brookline Massachusetts clinics, are the logical, perhaps inevitable, result of a covert, too often overt, appeal to violence by militant religious fundamentalists.

We are, whether most of us recognize it or not, engaged in a clash of civilizations - a "culture war" as Pat Buchanan so famously put it in a speech at the 1996 Republican Convention in San Diego. But it is not, as many among American political "conservatives" and religious fundamentalists would have you believe, a war of Christianity against Islam, or vice versa.

Rather, it is a war of militant religious fundamentalists of all types against the rest of us.

Want to go back to the Dark Ages? Just let them win!

William F. Harrison, M.D., FACOG

Fayetteville WomenÕs Clinic 1011 N. College Ave. Fayetteville, AR 72701

Tele (479) 442-8166 Fax (479) 442-0360

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