Founder / Director: Douglas J. Hagmann
E-Mail: director@homelandsecurityus.com
Douglas J. Hagmann is the founder and director of the Northeast Intelligence Network and CEO of a multi-state licensed private investigative agency serving many Fortune 500 clients. A 23 year veteran of conducting investigations in the private sector, he has logged over 40,000 hours of covert surveillance in his career and is the author of Tactical Surveillance. He is a member of the International Counter- Terrorism Officers Association and possesses many law enforcement related training certifications. He has been used as an operational asset by federal law enforcement and various police departments, and has performed over 5,000 civil and criminal investigations throughout the United States. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Hagmann began using his investigative skills and training to fight terrorism and increase public awareness by establishing the Northeast Intelligence Network.
Curious since I too worked in Security once, Pickerton, Burns and Securitas, I kept looking and found this:
: Doug Hagman is a shill for the Homeland Insecurity Dept.
: Everytime I hear him on Coast to Coast he has nothing but dire warnings of imminent terror attacks that never come to fruition.
: Nothing he has ever said holds any water with me. It's all a bunch of fear mongering basically. Whether he's a paid shill or just a dupe it's just a lot of hot air !!!
------
The Critique seemed accurate as I researched old claims and certain facts seemed odd so I would greatly suspect this post and the poster.
In Prophecy, I do not arbitrarily repost, or post unsubstatiated statements or claims because as a Writer, I know how people can be adversely affected by inaacuracies and error, Often I see the original sources of alot material posted on the Web and the "hype up" is often remarkble.
Michael James Stone
Homeland Insecurity Dept.
: Everytime I hear him on Coast to Coast he has nothing but dire
: warnings of imminent terror attacks that never come to
: fruition.
: Nothing he has ever said holds any water with me. It's all a
: bunch of fear mongering basically. Whether he's a paid
: shill or just a dupe it's just a lot of hot air !!!
Having introduced ourselves to the thinking of the New Age/New Spiritualists, we proceed to set forth their theory that sexuality-equals-spirituality, after which, we will see how this theory seems to be influencing avant-garde evangelical authors, teachers, and leaders, and then submit sex-spirituality to the scrutiny of Holy Scripture.
"SEXUALITY" AND THE "NEW SPIRITUALITY"
Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, the defrocked Dominican priest excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), is a proponent of Creation Spirituality. Creation Spirituality claims to be a cure for the ecological crisis the world finds itself in, a crisis the capitalist and Christian West created by separating nature from technology and science. To stop the wanton exploitation of nature by the Christian West, to stop the hemorrhaging of earth's resources, a spiritual awakening is needed. The old Christian worldview, because it is responsible for getting us into the trouble we find ourselves in, needs to be jettisoned and a new "framing story" embraced.[4] To save the earth, consciousness needs to change. Instead of viewing earth as a machine, humanity, especially the Christian West, must turnabout and embrace the sacredness of Creation. To this end, it is believed that something like Native American spirituality must be accepted.
So Matthew Fox tenders a hypothesis that the Christ and cosmos are co-extensive. Together, they form a cosmic Christ.[5] In his spirituality, Fox advocates a mystical mixing of liturgical Christianity with the religious beliefs and spiritual rites of Native Americanism (i.e., smoking the sacred pipe, visiting the sweat lodge, dancing in circles to the steady beat of drums, etc.). In his panentheistic understanding of Christ and nature, Fox does not hesitate to relate sexuality to the spirituality of creation. He writes: "[T]he Cosmic Christ is encountered in human love and sexuality. Sexuality is revealed in a living cosmology as still one other theophany, one other transfiguration experience."[6] Again, after extensively treating the presentation of human sexuality in the biblical book Song of Solomon, Fox writes that, "Play lies at the essence of all sexuality re-visioned in light of a Cosmic Christ paradigm."[7] To Fox's way of thinking, as well as other New Age/New Spiritualists, sexuality enhances one's relationship to the spirituality of a self-creating cosmos. Hence, Fox can speak of a Christ who is present in, with, and around sex; that is, because of its value in first, enjoying life (thus endorsing homosexuality, and seemingly any other pleasurable sexual experience), and second, in propagating the life of an ever-evolving human species. Seemingly, this is one way in which sexuality plays into the spirituality of the New Age/New Spiritualists.[8]
Eckhart Tolle (who came to fame by appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show) suggests that one hindrance for people consciously feeling at one with nature is their fear of, and consequent failure to become friends with, their "animal nature." He writes:
Adam and Eve saw they were naked, and they became afraid. . . . Shame and taboos appeared around certain parts of the body and bodily functions, especially sexuality. The light of their consciousness was not yet strong enough to make friends with their animal nature, to allow it to be and even enjoy that aspect of themselves--let alone to go deeply into it to find the divine hidden within it . . . [9]
New Age author Neal Donald Walsch claims God talks to him. He has stenographed his conversations with his god in a series of books named, Conversations with God. In one conversation, god told Walsch not to condemn that "which you call the lower, basic, animal instincts of man." Then Walsch records deity to have explained to him,
It is why I have said, play, play, play with sex--and with all of life. Mix what you call the sacred with the sacrilegious, for until you see your altars as the ultimate place for worship, you see nothing at all. You think "sex" is separate from God? I tell you this: I am in your bedroom every night! So go ahead! Mix what you call the profane and the profound--so that you can see that there is no difference, and experience All as One. Then when you continue to evolve, you will not see yourself as letting go of sex, but simply enjoying it at a higher level. For all of life is S.E.X.--Synergistic Energy eXchange. [10]
Such a view of sex makes God out to be a sort of cosmic "peeping Tom"! I make this crude analogy simply to ask, how far are we willing to reduce God's holiness to crassness, God's transcendence to immanence?
In that like a harlot the church ever desires to play with and posture toward the host culture, the question emerges, is sexual spirituality--like that of Fox, Walsch, Tolle, and other "New Lights"--influencing the church?[11] It appears to be subtly gnawing its way into the evangelical church and, in some instances, being openly promoted.
SEXUAL/SPIRITUALITY AMONG EVANGELICALS
This fall (October, 2009), one major seminary is hosting a one-day seminar on, "Sacred Sexuality." One purpose of the conference includes, "Casting a Vision for the Sexually Healthy Church," and one workshop is titled, "Holy Eroticism: Marital Intimacy."[12]
Though he makes some legitimate observations and provides some helpful counsel in his book Sex God, like a New Age teacher, emergent pastor Rob Bell also connects sexuality to spirituality. He writes: "Sex carries within it the power of Life itself. . . . Something given by the creator of the universe. Something divine."[13] We should note how like Neale Donald Walsch, Bell spells "Life" with a capital "L" and "creator" with lower case "c,"[14] and how like Eckhart Tolle, Bell views sex as "divine."[15]
A Canadian newspaper recently reported the view of one evangelical psychologist-professor summarizing it to be that, "the relationship between humans and spirituality is essentially erotic -- some Christians even have peak religious experiences while being sexual."[16] The article further states that Dr.-Professor MacKnee, "believes humans' relationship with God is essentially erotic."[17] Like other psychologists and philosophers, "MacKnee calls God 'Divine Eros'."[18]
In The United Church Observer, the in-house magazine of Canada's largest protestant denomination, Rev. Trisha Elliott, stated: "If our ability to love makes us most like God, then it stands to reason that when we make love we might be in our most holy state. Should we break out the linens, candles, incense, flowers and wine? O God, yes! Great sex is not only possible--it's divine."[19]
Similarly, in his latest book, Life with God, well-known contemplative author Richard Foster states: "[T]he luscious imagery of Song of Solomon has forever linked the spiritual and the erotic with exquisite unity."[20]
Thus we can see that the theory of sexual spirituality is asserting itself through church persons, both liberal and evangelical. The emphasis is not new. The internet user can observe the sculpture, Ecstasy of St. Theresa by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) displayed at the Cornaro Chapel of Santa Maria della Vittora in Rome.[21] By means of iconic visualization, the statue compares a mystical orgasm of soul to sexuality. The reporter for The Vancouver Sun writes that, "The Ecstasy of St. Teresa sculpture was inspired by the writing of 16th-century mystic St. Teresa of Avila when she described her vision of an angel who pierced her heart with an arrow 'to leave me all on fire with a great love of God'."[22] The sculpture visualizes that mystical moment when the marriage or union of one's soul to God is consummated. In seeking God, monks and sisters covet such an ecstatic experience because they feel their being has been fused into God's. Their soul to Soul union (i.e., theosis) takes place absent mediation by Christ or His Spirit (See Romans 8:9.).
SEXUALITY, THE SCRIPTURES, AND SPIRITUALITY
Some "spiritual" issues regarding sexuality include these: Does sex define who God is and what God does thereby investing him (pardon the lower case 'Him') , she, they, or it with sexuality? Is sex an attribute or an activity of God in heaven to which human sexual activity on earth corresponds--as above, so below?[23] Is there a mystical connection between human and divine sexuality? Does engaging in sex help people to become more spiritual on earth and more connected to God in heaven?
The issue at hand is not whether sex, when exercised within His parameters, is God's good gift to humanity (1 Timothy 4:3). It is. Rather, the issue concerns whether sex in any way is a sacred-spiritual activity, a part of life in God's kingdom. In relating sex to spirituality, a number of biblical issues regarding the sacred-sexual should be considered.
First, some may attempt to connect sexuality to God on the basis of Genesis 1:27. The creation narrative reads, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." On the face of it, the connection of dual gendering (i.e., "male and female") with "the image of God" implies the sexuality of God, that a part of God's image in man is sexual. However, the inference fails because animals, though they are sexual males and females, do not possess the image of God. Being in God's image, i.e., the Imago Dei, is exceptional to the human race. Therefore, sexuality does not define God's image in man.[24] God's image is something entirely "other" than sexuality.[25]
Second, those who link sexuality to spirituality find precedent for doing so in the biblical book, Song of Solomon. Like Matthew Fox and Richard Foster, churchwoman Susan McCaslin thinks Solomon's drama suggests, "that Spirit is more like a lover than a lawgiver or judge and that living in harmony with Spirit is more like falling in love than living up to an external standard of rightness."[26]
But human sexuality in Song of Solomon does not translate into divine spirituality. The book depicts the ideal, wholesome, and faithful courtship and marriage between two earthly lovers. The "Song" does not describe a love affair between people and God. The love scenes are earthbound. As such, the Song may be understood "as a series of six major poems . . . put together in a sequence that builds from anticipation (Poems I-II) to consummation (Poem III) to aftermath (Poems IV-VI)."[27] Old Testament scholar David Hubbard suggested that this understanding "shies away from any allegorical handling of the text, since it [the text] contains no clue as to hidden or spiritual meanings . . .." He concludes that, "the New Testament, which does not quote or refer to it, gives no support to attempts to spiritualize the book."[28] Those who connect sexuality to spirituality for reason of Song of Solomon do so in spite of the fact that the book does not mention the name of God.[29]
But desperate to find some analogical reason or biblical authority to combine sensuality and spirituality, the New Spiritualists allegorize the Song to describe the sensuality between God and His lovers. Yet since the days of Origen (circa 185-254) the allegorical method of interpretation has led to many wild and fanciful scenarios. Employing Song of Solomon to infer or support the idea of sacred sex is just such a fancy.
As an aside, I appreciate how the concept of "my beloved" might be employed to describe our relationship with Christ (Matthew 25:1-13; Ephesians 5:32), and view this to be a legitimate and metaphorical application of the book. However, it is an application. By interpretively employing Song of Solomon to link the two separate realities of earth and heaven (i.e., as below, so above) compromises, I believe, the distinctiveness and separateness of the two separate spheres (i.e., flesh and Spirit). I don't think that an application of Song of Solomon should dictate the interpretation of it.
Third, though Scripture indicates sexuality is transpersonal, such trans-personality does not equate to, nor is it analogical with, "spirituality." Humans do not have sex with God.[30] In fact the Bible teaches that "the flesh" (e.g. "immorality, impurity, sensuality") often "sets its desire against the Spirit" (Galatians 5:17, 19). Lusts oppose spirituality. Nevertheless, the Apostle Paul recognized the transpersonal nature of sex when he wrote: "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? May it never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her? For He says, 'the two will become one flesh'" (1 Corinthians 6:15-16). But just because sexuality is transpersonal does not endow it to be trans-spiritual. Soul to soul communication on earth does not translate into soul to Soul communication with heaven, especially so because as Spirit, God is asexual (See John 4:24.). This contrasts to the Near Eastern worldview in which, "the sexual activity of human beings" was believed to be "an earthly reflection of what takes place in the divine realm."[31] But according to the biblical worldview, not every activity that happens on earth translates to be happening in heaven.
Fourth, laying The Da Vinci Code and the inferences from Gnostic writings aside, the Gospels do not portray Jesus to have been married.[32] I can think of some reasons that necessitate the singleness of Christ, and those do not include His being against sex. After all, He created it![33] But against the backdrop of Near Eastern paganism, Jesus' singleness clearly communicated that spirituality does not involve sexuality. They are not to be confused. Furthermore, Jesus' singleness bears testimony to God's asexuality. Jesus' celibacy sends the message that Christianity is to have no part with goddess-ism. If He had married, Jesus would have opened the door to it.
Yet from Jesus' singleness we should not deduce that spirituality demands people abstain from marriage. Jesus' disciples were married. Church leaders are to be loyal husbands (1 Timothy 3:2). While Paul recommended singleness for the sake of giving undivided attention to the ministry (1 Corinthians 7:32-35), he stated elsewhere that celibacy for the sake of spirituality is sourced in demonism. Paul wrote: "But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits . . . who forbid marriage . . . which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good" (1 Timothy 4:1-5).[34]
Fifth, Jesus stated that regards marriage, heaven and earth are worlds apart. As a safety net for the woman, the Levirate Law required that a brother provide for his deceased brother's wife by marrying her (Deuteronomy 25:25). Based upon this law, the Sadducees asked Jesus a hypothetical question about a situation in which the eldest brother's wife outlived six brothers who had consecutively married her, but predeceased her. As she had been married to six of the seven brothers at one time or another, the widow became a hand-me-down sister-in-law-bride. So the trick question the Sadducees asked was, whose wife would the woman become in the resurrection--brother one, two, three, four, five, or six? Jesus answered that she would be married to none of the brothers, "For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven" (Matthew 22:30). My point is this: It's presumptuous to project that because there's sexuality on earth there's sexuality in heaven. Furthermore, it's dangerous to project sexuality into the spiritual being of divinity, to make the Creator out to be like His creatures. This projection, as the ancient Near Eastern worldview indicates, is the seedbed of idolatry. It is not above like it is below.
Sixth, flesh and blood have no part in God's kingdom. Paul wrote: "And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption" (1 Corinthians 15:49-50). The application of this "no-flesh-in-heaven" statement to some ridiculous theory that "sexuality equals spirituality" is evident. Obviously, even though it's good (not dirty), and God's gift in a heterosexual marital context, sex it is a flesh-and-blood activity unrelated to God's kingdom. As such, sex is not spiritual.
Seventh, some try to inject sexuality into spirituality for reason of the biblical euphemism "know," which stands for intercourse (Genesis 4:1, 25). One sex-pert opines that "know" expresses, "how men and women through sexuality can deeply connect, truly 'know each other,' in the most holistic, ecstatic and divine way."[35] Such a convoluted idea about Scripture fails to understand that in sexual intercourse a couple grows to know each other, not God. "And Adam knew Eve his wife . . ." (Emphasis mine, Genesis 4:1). No divine gnosis is communicated via sex. Though sex is mysteriously transpersonal on a human level, it is not mystically translational to heaven. In sex, even married, heterosexual, non-Christian couples without the Spirit grow to "know" each other (See Romans 8:9; 1 Corinthians 7:14.).
Eighth, though it goes beyond the purpose of this essay to try and develop the nature of generic man--whether he is a trichotomous being (i.e., consisting of a body, soul, and spirit) or a dichotomous being (consisting of a body and soul)-- it is necessary to point out that the "two-become-one" concept is valid for all humanity, not just for Christians indwelt by God's Spirit. It stands to reason that if two unbelievers can become "one," then marital sex is not "spiritual" because they "have not the Spirit of Christ" (Romans 8:9). Those who are not "born from above" are not submissive citizens of the kingdom of God, and therefore, are not spiritual people (John 3:1-8). The very nature of their spiritual constitution (i.e., being unregenerate) militates against sex being a spiritual experience, for the couple possesses no Spirit to make it spiritual. Nonetheless, their sexual communion is transpersonal, soul to soul. They physically and psychologically become "one" on earth (Mark 10:6-9; 1 Corinthians 6:15-20).
Ninth, the Bible frequently warns against sexual lust. In fact, Jesus equated it with adultery (Matthew 5:28). While the apostle exalts the blessing of marital sex, he also sets forth the potential "spiritual dangers" of it. In defining "lusts" that war against the Spirit, the first he mentions are sexual-- "adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness" (KJV); or "immorality, impurity, sensuality" (Galatians 5:19, NASB). In that sex, for reason of human depravity (Mark 7:21-22), can easily degenerate into "lusts," it's difficult to see how the activity of it can be considered "sacred" or "spiritual." Though horizontally, sex can be holy in that a man and a woman have in the exclusivity of their marital vows and relationship separated their sexual activity from all other men and women, this does not thereby make sex a sacred activity in a vertical sense. Just because it's a certain way on earth does not mean it is that way in heaven.
Tenth, I think that the Bible's metaphor of God as being masculine better represents His asexuality. By themselves, males cannot reproduce. Therefore, the masculine gender of God affirms His solitariness (i.e., monotheism) and sovereignty (i.e., authority). Infusing sexuality into God deconstructs divine monotheism by imagining a mythological way for gods and goddesses to reproduce (i.e., polytheism). It undermines divine authority by imagining a feminine counterpart equal to Him (i.e., egalitarianism). God's asexuality also possesses Christological ramifications. It safeguards against the Arian or New Age idea that God's Son was "birthed" in time (See John 1:1.). God's solitary masculinity dismisses any thought that a first "christ" (i.e., Jesus) resulted from the conjugation of primal "father and mother" gods, thereby becoming the first-born of all spirit beings, i.e., the only difference between Him and us being that He was birthed before us. The myth of the Christ spirit's primogeniture is believed by many New Age spiritualists and cults, and the idea of sacred sex is essential to perpetuate this myth.
Eleventh and last, I must wonder at how the idea of sex spirituality might influence understanding of the biblical teaching regarding Jesus' Virgin Birth (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23). If sex is a spiritual activity, why did God alter the way that Jesus entered the world? Evidently, it was to protect Him from the way humanity passes on depravity through sexuality.[36] As David stated, "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me" (Psalm 51:5, NIV; Compare Romans 5:12-19.). But assuming that the process of sex is a sacredly spiritual activity, then why would Jesus' Virgin Birth have been necessary? Sex after all, is divine, isn't it?
I conclude that because of God's judgment upon sin and the intergenerational passing of the sin nature via the human begetting of life, that there's a sense in which the transcendent and holy God is distanced from the process of life. While sex is a physical, psychological and transpersonal union of two separate bodies and souls, it is not a spiritual activity. Sex does not connect earth to heaven and the human to the divine. It is not above as it is below.
"SEX GOD"
At this juncture, I return to the statement made by emergent pastor Rob Bell. Personally, I wonder why he accentuates "Life" with an upper case "L" and "creator" with a lower case "c." (Sex God, 197) As has already been pointed out, New Age author Neale Donald Walsh repeatedly spells "Life" with an idolatrous capital "L" because in one conversation God told him, "The words 'Life' and 'God' are interchangeable." [37] In taking a cue from New Age/New Spirituality now rooted in our host culture, did Bell get the idea of spelling "Life" with a capital "L" from some New Age spiritualist like Walsch?
Though disclaiming that men and women are, or possess the potential to become, gods, Bell does state that, "[I]n some distinct, intentional way, something of God has been placed in them. We reflect what God is like and who God is. A divine spark resides in every single human being." (Sex God, 19) But to what does the "divine spark" refer? Does the "spark" refer to the soul-spirit of a person, or to sex?
Because of Adam's fall into sin, and consequently, because people are born spiritually dead, mysteriously, this spiritual deadness is seminally passed on in procreation. Biblically and theologically, the "spark" therefore cannot refer to every person's soul-spirit (John 3:3-8; Ephesians 2:1-5; Romans 8:9). To believe that it does evidences a Pelagian or mystical worldview which believes that all persons are not quite spiritually dead, or that something divine lives in every human being. Thus, Bell's scheme suggests the "divine spark" is sex for as he states, "Sex carries within it the power of Life . . . Something divine." (Sex God, 197)
Is Bell saying that God placed a divine "sex-spark" in His creatures? Is the "sex-spark" something God created? Or, from His being, did He pass it on to humanity? As with spirituality, is sexuality a divine attribute which partially defines God? In that Bell calls sex "divine," states that our sexuality reflects "what God is like and who God is," and modifies God with the attributive adjective "sex" in the title of his book Sex God, he seems to suggest that sexuality helps to define God's being and that sexuality is something humanity shares in common with Him. Thus he creates fertile ground for goddess-ism.
I also question whether labeling it "divine" refers to the process of sex, as Bell makes it to, or to the product of sex, males and females reproduced in God's image (Genesis 1:26-27). In the Genesis record, the persons God created are distinct from the process by which they are to propagate ("Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth . . ."). Calling sex divine introduces eroticism into the nature of God, which becomes an interesting make-over for God, especially in light of the fact that most theologians believe He is Spirit and therefore asexual (John 4:24). But eroticism is an essential component of the goddess-ism endemic to the ancient Near Eastern religious worldview.
Thus, one must wonder whether Bell's sex construct elevates or degrades the image of God in man, and whether it affirms or denies the transcendence and separateness of the Creator from His creation. I myself look at it like this: If it degrades God, then it degrades man. I shudder to think of the perversity that might result from thinking that sex and God belong to the same cosmic and monistic whole--as below, so above. In pagan belief, sex is the spark that ignites and perpetuates "Life" with a capital "L," and taps into the cosmic Energy with a capital "E." So if it is divine, why not spell "sex" with a capital "S"?
CONCLUSION
We would do well to remember that when practiced in the commitment of a monogamous and heterosexual marriage, sex is the gift of its Creator to His creatures (Proverbs 5:18). Sex draws committed couples into transpersonal oneness with each other and allows two individuals to better know one another. While in this context sex is good, it is not God, nor even a part Him. As such, we dare not to spell it with a capital "S"!
Will and Ariel Durant, a husband and wife team who were among the greatest historians of all time, state in their book, The Lessons of History: "[S]ex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group."[38] One must wonder, with all the discussion going on about sex now-a-days in the New Age/New Spiritual culture, and among emergent Christians who have and are taking their cues from that culture and spirituality, whether such prurient interests don't indicate that something deeper is going on, that Christians are being consigned into a state of eroticism for reason of God's judgment. Because of the idolatrous state of their hearts, is God giving people over (i.e., reprobating them) "to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves" (Romans 1:24)?
Pastor Larry DeBruyn
__________________
ENDNOTES
[1] Two titles of recently published evangelical books are juxtaposed to each other; The God of Sex, How Spirituality Defines Your Sexuality written by Dr. Peter Jones (Colorado Springs: Cook Communication Ministries, 2006), and Sex God, Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality written by Rob Bell (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007). In the latter title, as an attributive adjective, "sex," adds definition to God. The first title stresses God as the source of sex, as the creator. While Bell seems to make sex a part of God, Jones separates God from it. The later is the position held by this pastor. For the joyful purpose of propagating the human species, God created sex ex nihilo (i.e., out of nothing). He is the God of sex. However, it is improper to speak of the sex of God! Sex is not an extension of God. Other than the metaphorical reckoning of God to be masculine--theologians hold that, in His transcendent being, God is asexual--nowhere does the Bible speak of the sex of God. This may surprise many modern Christians who, like modern culture, are increasingly obsessed with it.
Nevertheless, in His holiness, and because the transcendent God has not, does not, and will not propagate Himself (i.e., polytheism), He, though being provident over and knowledgeable of His creatures, must remain separate from the process by which the planet is populated (contra process theology). As it is below, so it is not above. Failure to keep this distinction leads to idolatry. If God is to be considered holy, what's happening below must remain separated from what’s happening above. Yet with their monistic world view (i.e., all is one, all is god), and as will be documented in this paper, New Age/New Spiritualists are combining the below with the above. And in their attempt to mimic, to be "with-it," Christian ideologists are attempting to combine sex (what happens on earth) with spirituality (what's going on in heaven). We would do well to keep in mind that God is Being (Exodus 3:14), not becoming.
[2] Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft, Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (Novato, California: New World Library, 2003) 284.
[3] Jones, God of Sex, 47, citing Charles Pickstone, The Divinity of Sex.
[4] After pointing out three crises our world finds itself in--depletion of planetary resources, disparity between rich and poor, and danger of cataclysmic war--Brian D. McLaren traces their cause to a "spirituality crisis"; which is, "The failure of the world's religions, especially its two largest religions, to provide a framing story capable of healing or reducing the three previous crises." See Everything Must Change, Jesus Global Crisis, and a Revolution of Hope (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007) 5. With his dismissal of the collective sinfulness of humanity and fallen-ness of creation as sufficient causes for these crises, the Christian religion, especially that of a fundamentalist-traditional-evangelical variety, becomes McLaren's scapegoat. But McLaren's "new framing story" will not stop hurricanes and earthquakes (Romans 8:22), or oppression and terrorism (Ecclesiastes 4:1).
Though perhaps to a lesser degree, McLaren's "new framing story" is as visionary of social, economic, and political perfection as Sir Thomas More's Utopia. But it is difficult to see the picture when you're inside the frame. Even though McLaren calls his framing story "eu-topian" (297), utopia is a perennial heresy. See Thomas Molnar, Utopia, The Perennial Heresy (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967.). Personally, I prefer the hope inspired by the Apostle Peter who wrote: "[A]ccording to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13).
[5] Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1988); See also his Creation Spirituality (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991).
[6] Fox, Cosmic Christ, 169.
[7] Ibid. 171.
[9] One must wonder at how the new sexual-spirituality addresses the issue of when one person's ecstasy is another's agony (e.g., pedophilia and child prostitution), when one person's pleasure might cause another's pain.
[10] Neale Donald Walsh, Conversations with God, an uncommon dialog, book 3 (Charlottesville, Virginia: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc., 1998) 56. I am grateful to Peter Jones for drawing attention to this quote. See Jones, God of Sex, 48.
[11] Leonard I. Sweet uses the term "New Lights." In Quantum Spirituality he links to the writings of Matthew Fox; first in his chapter "PATHOS," Footnote #67, page 324, and then again in his chapter "THIRD TESTAMENT," Footnote #c, page 340. Calling, "Light . . . the metaphor for the great mystery of consciousness," New Lights are those persons who take on a "'new minded' approach to the planetary crisis," those creative individuals who seek a new spirituality to avert a planetary meltdown. See Quantum Spirituality, A Postmodern Apologetic (Dayton, Ohio: Whaleprints, 1991) 43-44. Though "light" is a grand biblical metaphor describing God (1 John 1:5), Jesus (John 8:12), the Word (Psalm 119:130), Creation (Genesis 1:3), and much more, we must note that Paul states, "Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14).
[12] See http://www.dts.edu:80/departments/campus/ccl/conferences/sacredsexuality/.
[13] Bell, Sex God, 197.
[14] Neale Donald Walsh, Tomorrow's God, Our Greatest Spiritual Challenge (New York: Atria Books, 2004) 69.
[15] Tolle, Power of Now, 114.
[16] Douglas Todd, "Sex brings Christians closer to god," The Vancouver Sun, July 26, 2008 (http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=c8cd77ac-b993-4bbb-963d-7cb4dc07e5de). Todd cites the view of psychologist Chuck MacKnee, who teaches at Trinity Western University in Vancouver, British Columbia.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid. Todd quotes Rev. Trisha Elliott and The United Church Observer.
[20] Richard Foster, Life with God (New York: Harper Collins, 2008) 113.
[21] See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy_of_St._Teresa.
[22] Todd, "Sex brings Christians closer to god."
[23] The phrase, "as above, so below," assigns unity (monism) and divinity (pantheism) to "everything" that exists. In his Bible paraphrase The Message, Eugene Peterson uses the phrase in Matthew 6:10. See "Decoding 'The Message'" by Pastor Larry DeBruyn (http://www.frbaptist.org/bin/view/Ptp/PtpTopic20080311121823).
[24] In Genesis 5:1-3 and 9:6, as well as 1:27, the Hebrew name for man (i.e., adam) "refers to every human being, male or female, not a duality of male or female. Clearly the image of God refers to the structure of the individual, and his or her capacity for companionship with a female or male respectively is an entailment." See Bruce K. Waltke with Cathi J. Fredricks, Genesis, A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001) 66, footnote #50.
[25] In a monistic worldview sexuality is part of the divine, for "God is all."
[26] Todd, "Sex brings Christians closer to god."
[27] David A. Hubbard, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, The Communicator's Commentary, Lloyd J. Ogilvie, General Editor (Dallas: Word Books. Publisher, 1991) 257-258. Examples of allegory are extant in the New Testament (See Galatians 4:24; 1 Corinthians 5:7; 10:1-11; etc.).
[28] Ibid.
[29] Paul R. House, Old Testament Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998) 463. Because Esther or Song of Solomon "do not explicitly quote or mention the name of the Lord at all presents certain challenges to Old Testament theologians," writes House. The failure to mention God's name becomes an obstacle for those trying to impute sexuality and sensuality to Him.
[30] Sacred prostitution, like that practiced among the Canaanites and adopted in ancient Israel, believes the opposite. Through the mediation of sacred prostitutes, such paganism believes that "the devoted" are having sex with gods and goddesses.
[31] "Sex," Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, Tremper Longman III, General Editors (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998) 776.
[32] Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New York: Doubleday, 2003). Professor Teabing says to Sophie, "No, no . . . As I said earlier, the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is part of the historical record. . . . Moreover, Jesus as a married man makes infinitely more sense than our standard biblical view of Jesus as a bachelor." (245) In their book Cracking Da Vinci's Code, You've Read the Fiction, Now Read the Facts (Colorado Springs: Cook Communications Ministries, 2004), James L. Garlow and Peter Jones remark about Jesus' possible marriage to Mary Magdalene: "There is no credible historical record that Jesus was married. None." (117)
[33] Colossians 1:16.
[34] On this point, we should note that some evangelical teachers counsel sexual abstinence in marriage for the sake of spiritual development. In this regard, we should note the advice of Paul: "Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency" (1 Corinthians 7:5, KJV). As "forbidding in marriage" is a doctrine of demons, so also sexual fasting provides Satan a special occasion for temptation. As such, sexual abstinence in marriage could lead to marital and spiritual disaster.
[35] Quoted in Todd, "Sex brings Christians closer to god."
[36] This writer holds that traducianism accounts for how the soul, the immaterial part of a person's being, passes on from parent to child, from one generation to the next. Our sinful nature extends to us from Adam through our parents, a negative spiritual "heirloom." After Adam's fall and as judgment for sin, God infused a sinful-death disposition into Adam. In that there is no placental exchange of blood between fetus and mother, this sinful death-disposition seems to come to us via the blood contained in the male sperm of our fathers. As our soul is transmitted to us, so also is our sinful nature (Romans 5:12, 15-19). Though the blood initially gives life, the death sentence in it eventually takes it. Therefore, in Jesus' Virgin Birth, while His flesh was inherited from Mary, the unblemished blood of His life came via the Spirit's creative impregnation of Mary's womb. As such Jesus was the sinless Lamb of God who willingly died for our sins (Hebrews 9:12-14). While His precious blood was created, ours, with its inherent disposition to sin and death, is inherited from Adam through our fathers (Psalm 51:5). See M.R. DeHaan, M.D., The Chemistry of the Blood (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1943) 30-37.
[37] Walsh, Tomorrow's God, 69.
[38] Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968) 35-36.
July 20, 2009 by derek4messiah
I am vacationing in Cocoa Beach, an interim stop along the way to Miami and the UMJC annual conference (Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, umjc.net). If I pass an exam — not a comprehensive, but an exam in my final area for qualification — I will be ordained on Saturday (July 25). As far as I know, I will be only the fourth of fifth person to receive smicha under the new system of credentials. We are going to need to see those numbers increase greatly in coming years if Messianic Judaism is to have a healthy future.
My path to Judaism is not orthodox (pun intended, but in all seriousness, my story is not normative). As I find we all need stories and to see the stories of others, I mean this little autobiographical sketch only as a means of sharing a story, and not as though I am suggesting my story is more important than anyone else’s.
I was not born Jewish. I was not raised with any religious or spiritual teaching in my home, though I have lived in Georgia almost my entire life (South Carolina for elementary years and Illinois for undergrad school). Many would assume a man from Georgia who talks about Jesus and the Bible must have been raised Southern Baptist. The only encounters I had with Baptists were the one or two times my mother sent me with a neighbor to Vacation Bible School (I won a prize for answering the most questions right about a Bible story, even though I didn’t know anything of the Bible or attend church like many of the other kids — a sure sign I would grow to be a Bible scholar!).
My path to Judaism began when, as an undergrad at Georgia Tech (the first of two undergrad schools I would attend), I picked up a Bible and started to read. I had no idea what was inside. Literally, I thought there might be fairy princesses and unicorns. I found myself drawn to it as I worked through Genesis and Exodus and eventually into Samuel and Kings. I was in a fraternity with a lot of Jewish brothers. And it hit me that this was the ancient history of the people to which my friends (loosely) belonged.
The next part of my journey, which would seem to have nothing to do with Judaism, was reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I was already a giant Tolkien fan and had naively read the Narnia books with no inkling of their Christian allegorical nature (inkling, get it?). I devoured Mere Christianity and eagerly remain a Lewis devotee.
I picked up Mere Christianity a skeptic and two or three hours later I put it down a weeping believer in Jesus.
Again, in a path that surely must lead far, far away from Judaism, I accepted an invitation that very week to visit a Baptist church, a famous one at that (Charles Stanley and First Baptist Atlanta).
The next step was probably the most decisive. The Baptist Sunday School teacher urged me to read the New Testament (horrified that my only reading up to that point had been in the Old Testament, the inferior book taking up space in the Christian Bible).
It was in the very first pages of the New Testament that one foot got planted in Judaism and has never been removed. Jesus was Jewish. Soon I met a Jewish Christian and a circle of people at First Baptist interested in Jewish roots. I found out Jesus was Yeshua and though the array of teachings I heard over the years was confusing and contradictory, I was introduced to the stream of Jewish faith in Yeshua.
The next twenty years I will summarize very concisely. I went to Bible college to study Judaism and the Old Testament. I saw myself as a Christian missionary to the Jews. I am not proud of everything I did, said, and thought in those years, but I learned a great deal on the ground, face to face with Jewish people. In an odd way, I was moving myself into the Jewish community and identifying more and more as a Jew, even while I was trying to persuade Jews to leave Judaism and join a church!
After grad school (Emory University, M.T.S. in Hebrew Bible), I was working as a missionary in Atlanta and growing increasingly dissatisfied with the missionary posture toward Jewish friends and acquaintances. How could I encourage these Jews to abandon something their families had held onto for thousands of years in order to follow a Jewish Messiah in a Gentile manner? My mission, like others, paid lip-service to Jewish identity and continuity, but it was a joke and I knew it more with each passing year.
Eventually, not feeling that the only Messianic work in Atlanta was for us, I came to the conclusion that I should start a group myself. Although I love to teach and study, I have some well-known leadership limitations, such as a lack of attention to details, an emotionally volatile nature, and an inability to keep myself at arm’s length and avoid wearing every thought and emotion on my sleeve.
My family and I were far more Jewish now, though neither my wife, nor I, were born Jewish. We wanted a Jewish community that followed Yeshua.
I made a great mistake. Not having a Jewish background, I spent about six weeks attending Orthodox Jewish services to learn a little more about Judaism. I should have spent a year or even six years attending various synagogues, and Reform and Conservative as well. At the time, I identified Judaism with Orthodox Judaism only.
Because of my lack of experience, I knew almost nothing. I knew Hebrew because I studied Hebrew Bible in college. I knew Jewish beliefs and practices from my experiences of a limited nature in Messianic Judaism and my friendships with Jewish families (though they were usually pretty ignorant of Jewish life themselves).
So, I was leading a Messianic Jewish synagogue and I did not know how to chant the Alenu!
The UMJC is what saved me from myself. The meetings with other rabbis, the friendships that developed, and the learning from mentors in the UMJC is where I learned how to live a Jewish life and how to lead others.
In the eight years since I started Tikvat David, I have had little help locally in learning and building a Jewish communal life. Most who have come my way have brought little knowledge with them. The Jewish congregants at Tikvat David have mostly not been the type who could teach me new areas of ritual life or worship. I have made many mistakes (in a few places, our melodies have a distinctive nature — the result of my musical innovation in the early years when I found it difficult to learn some of the melodies of communal prayer).
As I celebrate with my friends in the UMJC in Miami, I am coming full circle. If I pass the exam and all is well, as UMJC colleagues lay hands on me and impart a chain of tradition from Moses until the present, I have come home. To me, at least, there are many evidences I was bound up with the destiny and life of the Jewish people from the beginning. I am grateful for the great leaders who have built and sustained the UMJC and made this possible for me, for my synagogue family, and for my wife and children. May God increase our tribe within the congregation of Israel!
(IsraelNN.com) The Israel Land Fund, a group dedicated to restoring Jewish property in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, is reportedly looking east. According to AFP, the organization plans to begin buying historically Jewish properties in Jordan as well.
Many Jews purchased land in what is now Jordan during the British Mandate, when such land was seen primarily as part of the greater Land of Israel. In 1946 Jordan declared independence as an Arab, Muslim country. Two years later, the state of Israel declared independence, and Jordan's rulers confiscated Jewish-owned land in their own country for state use.
Israel Land Fund chairman Aryeh King told AFP that his organization has proof that thousands of properties in present-day Jordan were historically Jewish, adding, "We have records of the ownership."
The plan is in its early stages, and no properties in Jordan have been bought to date. Purchasing would likely take place with the help of Jews in Europe, King said, as Israelis are prohibited from buying land in Jordan under Jordanian law.
The same Jordanian law is enforced by the Palestinian Authority, which views the sale of land to Jews or Israelis as a capital offense. The Land Fund manages to circumvent PA law by buying land through middlemen. In many cases, the group also helps Arab sellers to flee the country in order to avoid PA retribution.
Jewish properties bought or reclaimed by the Israel Land Fund in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria are guarded and used to build homes for Jewish activists. It was not clear what would be done with property reclaimed in Jordan.
AFP noted that if the plan were to succeed, it could cause anger in Jordan, where anti-Israel sentiment runs high despite a 1994 peace treaty.
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by Ryan Mauro
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2406/damascus-supporting-terrorists
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On March 3, 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that she would send Jeffrey Feltman, assistant secretary of State, and Daniel Shapiro, a senior National Security Council official, to meet with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.[1] The trip was the most prominent manifestation of the Obama administration's moves to reverse the Bush administration's isolation of Syria, imposed because of Syrian sponsorship of terrorism, its continued interference in Lebanon, and its support for insurgents in Iraq.[2]
 Syrian president Bashar Assad (L) meets with U.S. senator Benjamin Cardin (Dem., Md.) in Damascus, February 18, 2009. The Syrian government continues to provide critical support to the infrastructure that allows the Iraqi insurgency and Al-Qaeda to survive in the Middle East. Despite Syrian support for terrorist activities, the Obama administration has been keen to engage the regime. |
The U.S. State Department has listed Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism for the past twenty years. The 2007 Country Reports on Terrorism noted that Syria provides political support to myriad Palestinian terrorist groups. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command continue to operate offices openly in Damascus.[4] The Syrian government provides material support to Hezbollah, the organization responsible for the deaths of more Americans in terrorist attacks than any group until Al-Qaeda struck New York City and Washington on September 11, 2001. The Syrian government long hosted—until his February 2008 assassination –Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah's operations chief, who engineered the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985, and the kidnapping, torture, and execution of American hostages, including William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Lebanon.[5]
Despite the Syrian government's continued support for terrorists targeting U.S. citizens and U.S. interests—or perhaps because of it—the Obama administration has been keen to engage. In his inaugural speech, Obama declared, "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit … we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."[6] Obama, after all, promised during his campaign to focus U.S. counterterrorism efforts more on Al-Qaeda.[7] However, it is difficult to reconcile the fight against Al-Qaeda with a new embrace of Syria, given the Assad regime's array of both direct or indirect links to bin Laden's organization and its operatives.
Many international Al-Qaeda plots have Syrian links. The head of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain, which claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings in Casablanca in May 2003, trained in Syria.[8] The prosecutor in the trial of the terrorists who attacked Madrid in 2004 suspects Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain member Hassan el-Haski of involvement in the train bombings.[9] In May 2004, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's lieutenants and, perhaps Zarqawi himself, held meetings on Syrian territory to plan terrorism in Iraq aimed at provoking sectarian violence.[10] Syria harbored and refused to extradite Suleiman Khaled Darwish, Zarqawi's second-in-command and, reportedly, a liaison between Al-Qaeda and Syrian military intelligence.[11] (He was finally killed in October 2008 in a U.S. raid on Syrian territory).[12]
Abu Faraj al-Libi, a high-level Al-Qaeda operative, met with several of his colleagues in Syria to plan terrorist attacks on the U.S., Europe, and Australia, according to testimony at his hearing.[13] Hamid Mir, the only journalist to interview bin Laden after 9/11, explained in 2006, "Syria is a safe haven for Al-Qaeda now" even if Al-Qaeda does not trust the Syrian leadership.[14]
While Al-Qaeda can pursue its own operations, the organization must often establish symbiotic relations with states that host it. The Taliban, for example, utilized Al-Qaeda in their fight against Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud.[15] Perhaps in exchange for free passage if not a safe haven in Syria, Al-Qaeda has launched attacks against states whose governments Assad distrusts, including Jordan, Lebanon, and the United States.
Between May and September 2002, for example, Zarqawi set up the terrorist cell in Syria which, on October 28, 2002, gunned down U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley outside his home in Amman.[16] Then, in March 2004, Jordanian authorities thwarted an Al-Qaeda chemical weapons attack that had been organized in and launched from Syria.[17] Operatives linked to Zarqawi planned to attack the Intelligence Ministry, the U.S. embassy, and the Office of the Prime Minister, killing up to 80,000 people and, according to King Abdullah, decapitating the government.[18]
The Syrian government has also used its contacts in an Al-Qaeda affiliate to destabilize Lebanon. The Syrian government had long used its army's presence on Lebanese territory to exert its influence over its neighbor, but after the February 14, 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, both Lebanese outrage and diplomatic pressure compelled Damascus to withdraw its troops. According to Lebanese officials, rather than allow the Lebanese government to go its own way, the Syrian regime used its ties to Al-Qaeda to assert leverage by sponsoring a radical, Sunni terrorist group, Fatah al-Islam, which established itself in Lebanon's Nahr al-Barid refugee camp. Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora, for example, reported to the United Nations that interrogations of captured group members showed direct contact between Fatah al-Islam and senior Syrian intelligence officials.[19] Arab press reports suggest that the Syrian government both provided weaponry through groups under its control and used Fatah al-Islam to assassinate thirty-six individuals in Lebanon who opposed the Syrian government.[20]
Fatah al-Islam leader, Shakir al-'Absi, is a former Syrian air force officer, sentenced to death in absentia by Jordan for his involvement in the 2002 assassination of Laurence Foley.[21] While 'Absi denies the group is part of Al-Qaeda,[22] it is allied with Asbat al-Ansar which, according to the State Department, is an Al-Qaeda affiliate.[23]
Perhaps nowhere does the Assad regime's willingness to enable Al-Qaeda impact U.S. interests as much as in Iraq where, even after the troop surge, insurgents and terrorists continue to threaten, wound, or kill U.S. soldiers. As the U.S. administration prepared to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003, the Syrian government was already transforming its territory into a critical lifeline for the Iraqi insurgency.[24] While the Syrian government says they have no control over foreign fighters entering Iraq, eyewitness reports from the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom described how "fighters swarmed into Iraq aboard buses that Syrian border guards waved through open gates."[25] Toward the end of 2004, Bush administration pressure led Syrian domestic intelligence services to sweep up insurgency facilitators, but many returned after just a few days.[26] In 2004 after coalition forces recaptured Fallujah, photographs were found of Muayid Ahmad Yassin, the head of the Jaysh Muhammad insurgent group, meeting with a senior Syrian official. Coalition forces also captured a GPS system that showed waypoints in western Syria.[27] Damascus rebuffed Riyadh's demands to shut a terrorist training camp in Syria, then hosting approximately 1,000 Saudi jihadis.[28] Four streams of Syrian financing totaling $1.2 million per month reached insurgents in Ramadi as of 2004.[29] Fatiq Sulayman al-Majid, a former Iraqi intelligence officer and a relative of Saddam Hussein, is also a key financier of the insurgency in Iraq.[30] The Iraqi insurgency consists of two major components: Iraqi Baathists fighting for nationalist reasons and foreign fighters serving Al-Qaeda. From 2003 to 2007, the interests of the two parties converged. So, too, did their reliance on Syrian facilitation.
The Baathist element of the insurgency has long enjoyed safe haven in Syria. The Bush administration reportedly presented the Assad government with videotape of Iraqi Baathists dining in a Syrian resort town.[31] Former members of Saddam Hussein's regime have formed a "New Regional Command" that directs and finances the insurgency from Syria.[32] At an April 15, 2004 press conference, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reported, "There are other foreign fighters. We know for a fact that a lot of them find their way into Iraq through Syria."[33] By the end of 2004, U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officials concluded that Syria played a larger role in directing the insurgency than they had earlier realized. U.S. troops in Fallujah, for example, found a GPS system in an explosives production facility that showed routes originating in western Syria.[34] The Iraqi defense minister in 2005 said that 400 detainees had trained in Syria.[35]
Since 2006, Syria has hosted Misha'an al-Jaburi, a former member of the Iraqi parliament and owner of Az-Zawra'a television, which broadcast pro-Baathist and insurgent propaganda. In one case, Jaburi broadcast songs with secret messages in them for the Islamic Army of Iraq. His nephew provided him with safe houses in which to store weapons and money that was moving in and out of Iraq.[36] While Jaburi was publicly critical of Al-Qaeda, the U.S. Treasury Department has argued that he worked with an Al-Qaeda jihadist umbrella organization, the Mujahideen Shura Council, to fund Sunni extremist operations.[37]
Syrian support of terrorism has helped other Al-Qaeda affiliates in Iraq. Ansar al-Islam, an Al-Qaeda-linked group that operated out of northern Iraq, benefited greatly from Syria's lax attitude. Italian court documents show that Ansar operatives traveled to Europe from Iraq and vice versa through Syria. These Syria-based operatives oversaw the flow of terrorists and often made telephone calls to their colleagues in Europe. In a police state such as Syria, such high-level coordination and communication by telephone is unlikely without the authorities' knowledge. Among the operatives overseeing this network in Syria are fugitives linked to the Hamburg Al-Qaeda cell that planned 9/11 and also to a car bomb targeting Israelis in Kenya in November 2002.[38] Italian authorities arrested seven Al-Qaeda operatives that took part in this network after they sent forty terrorists to Iraq via Syria where the Al-Qaeda operatives were to team up with Ansar al-Islam.[39]
Perhaps no network was as devastating within the context of the Iraqi insurgency as Zarqawi's. In May 2004, Zarqawi's lieutenants held meetings on Syrian territory to plan a terrorism offensive in Iraq aimed to provoke sectarian violence.[40] On February 23, 2005, Iraqi television aired the confession of a detainee who admitted to "receiving all the instructions from Syrian intelligence" to "cause chaos in Iraq." The detainee, who identified himself as Lt. Anas Ahmad al-Issa, said he was sent to Iraq in 2001 in order to prepare for the day that America would invade. Reuters quoted another group of captured insurgents who said they were being trained in Latakia, Syria, as far back as 2001 in terrorist tactics that included kidnappings and beheadings.[41]
Another Iraqi detainee in the videotapes named a range of insurgent groups and said they were Syrian fronts. Ten Iraqis on the tapes said that Syrian intelligence recruited them.[42] Egyptian and Sudanese insurgents also confessed to being trained in Syria. One of Issa's aides said that insurgents were required to send progress reports back to Syria, that they received $1,500 per month, and were supplied with weapons, explosives, and other equipment. The aide said that he was originally recruited in an Iraqi mosque in 2001 and then went to Pakistan for eleven months of training. After that, he traveled to Syria for a month where Syrian intelligence provided training before his dispatch to Iraq.[43]
There is little doubt that the foreign fighters network in Syria constitutes a link between the regime and Al-Qaeda. It is impossible for Syria not to know that the networks it sponsors are working with Al-Qaeda. In fact, in April 2005, an admitted supporter of Al-Qaeda was arrested in Iraq as he was planning a car bomb attack. He confessed to his captors that he had links with Syrian intelligence.[44]
The Iraqi government said in 2007 that more than half of the foreign fighters arrive in Iraq via Syria.[45] A large number of these fighters fly into the Damascus International Airport.[46] In October 2007, U.S. military forces discovered a stockpile of records in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar documenting 606 foreign fighters in Iraq. These "Sinjar records" describe how foreign fighters met with Al-Qaeda representatives upon arriving in Syria. Approximately 90 percent of the fighters that arrived in Iraq between 2006 and 2007 arrived via Syria, and these fighters are responsible for 90 percent of the suicide bombings in Iraq.[47]
Syria's assistance to the Iraqi Baathist network directly benefits Al-Qaeda. Today, it is virtually impossible to make a distinction between the two forces because of their tight cooperation. Many of these ex-Baathists have joined Al-Qaeda, partially morphing the two forces into one insurgent army.[48]
Some diplomats and analysts argue that if Washington engages Damascus, Syria could become a responsible partner in the war on terror. The State Department praised Syria for its cooperation in 2003, but Cofer Black, the department's counterterrorism coordinator, said that public proclamations do not tell the whole story. In 2003, he told Newsweek, "We clearly don't have the full support of the Syrian government on the Al-Qaeda problem. They have allowed Al- Qaeda personnel to come in and virtually settle in Syria with their knowledge and support."[49] Still, the idea that engagement can flip Syria has resonance. After all, intelligence shared by Syria helped thwart a terrorist attack against the U.S. navy in Bahrain. Syrian cooperation, however, was less than complete. The Syrian government refused to give U.S. investigators direct access to Muhammad Zamar which, according to one expert, means it can be "safely assumed that the Syrians did not pass on information that reflected poorly on them in any way."[50] The high profile 2006 Iraq Study Group report, cochaired by former secretary of state James A. Baker III, and Lee H. Hamilton, the vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, for example, recommended that the United States should "actively engage Iran and Syria in its diplomatic dialogue, without preconditions."[51]
The Assad regime has become more adept at public relations. In an attempt to portray itself as a natural ally in the war on terror, the Syrian government has framed itself as an enemy and target of Al-Qaeda. The examples given of Al-Qaeda targeting Syria, however, do not hold up. In April 2004, the Syrian regime accused Al-Qaeda of bombing a vacant U.N. building, an attack for which Al-Qaeda did not claim credit.[52] Timing, however, was suspect since the alleged Al-Qaeda operation occurred just as the U.S. Congress debated placing tougher sanctions on Syria. Syrian officials then refused to allow U.S. investigators to look into the incident. Nor is there any evidence that a September 12, 2006 attack on the U.S. embassy in Damascus was Al-Qaeda's handiwork.[53] Within ninety minutes of the attack, the crime scene was cleared of debris, including the destroyed vehicle, the bodies, and any forensic evidence. If the Syrians believed Al-Qaeda was behind the attack, they failed to allow the examination of any evidence.
Proponents of diplomacy base their recommendation on the assumption that the Syrian government has reformed. Practitioners, however, find evidence to support such conclusions lacking. In an October 2008 interview, U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commander in Anbar province, said, "The Syrians clearly have harbored AQI [Al-Qaeda in Iraq], allowed them to live over there and go back and forth. It's a sanctuary." And "They have done cross-border raids and killed Iraqis. The biggest mistake they made was a cross-border raid on the second of May and murdered 11 Iraqi policemen. They cut their heads off, a sickening thing. It was a huge mistake. We know the guy who did it, AQI guy. Kind of a big dog who works with Syrian intelligence."[54]
The Assad regime sponsors terrorism because it is a regime based on terrorism. The advantages for the Assad regime to sponsor jihadists are many. They seek to use terrorists to defeat the United States in the region, thwart the development of democracies in Lebanon and Iraq, and to employ terror as a means of waging war against Israel. Outmatched by the weapons the West possesses, Syria repeatedly turns to unconventional means. Terror sponsorship also creates a dependency upon the Assad regime making it counterproductive for the forces of Islamic extremism to wage war against it. So long as Assad retains a tight grip on Syria, he need not fear these forces turning against him. Finally, the regime sponsors such forces as a tool of diplomacy. By supporting insurgents and terrorists and allowing radical Islam to show its head inside Syria, Assad makes clear that there is no viable alternative to him and that it is he who must be courted if the West is to be successful in the region.
Any strategy to tackle Assad's support for terrorism must rely on more than engagement and shuttle diplomacy. The Obama administration should develop ways to make Syrian support of terrorism counterproductive to its own objectives. Rather than allowing terrorism to be an effective tool of diplomacy, such actions must be met with economic sanctions and international pressure. Rather than handing Assad victory in the region, every move by Syria should be countered. The regime must see no gain and only loss from its support of terrorism. Finally, the West should find a third option beyond either reliance on Assad or removing him from power—which would allow the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamists to take his place. The Obama administration should assist the development of the democratic opposition forces in Syria, however weak they may be. By promoting Syrian democratic forces, Washington will regain a strong hand at the negotiating table, simultaneously decreasing the power of Assad and the Muslim Brotherhood and, most importantly, ending the brutal terrorist regime that threatens innocents both in the Middle East and in the West.
Ryan Mauro is the founder of WorldThreats.com and the assistant director of intelligence of The Counter Terrorism Electronic Warfare and Intelligence Centre.
[1] Associated Press, Mar. 4, 2009.
[2] Claudia Rosett, "Commerce Department Waives Syria Sanctions," Forbes, Feb. 12, 2009.
[3] Agence France-Presse, Jan. 20, 2008.
[4] "State Sponsors of Terrorism Overview," Country Reports on Terrorism 2007, U.S. Department of State, Apr. 30, 2008.
[5] The Guardian (London), Feb. 13, 2008.
[6] "President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address," The White House, Jan. 21, 2009.
[7] "Homeland Security," "Barack Obama and Joe Biden: The Change We Need," official campaign website, accessed Mar. 23, 2009.
[8] Emerson Vermaat, "Madrid Terrorists Possessed an Important Al-Qaeda Manual," Militant Islam Monitor, Feb. 20, 2007.
[9] Ibid.
[10] International Herald Tribune (Paris), May 19, 2005.
[11] The Daily Star (Beirut), Oct. 1, 2004.
[12] BBC News, Oct. 28, 2002.
[13] "Summary of Evidence for Combatant Status Review Tribunal—Al Libi, Abu Faraj," U.S. Department of Defense, Feb. 8, 2007.
[14] Author interview with Hamid Mir, May 24, 2006, via e-mail.
[15] "Profile: Afghanistan's 'Lion of Panjshir,'" Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Sept. 5, 2006.
[16] Jane's Security News (Surrey, U.K.), June 16, 2003.
[17] CNN.com, Apr. 26, 2004.
[18] The Jordan Times (Amman), Apr. 27, 2004.
[19] The New York Sun, Oct. 25, 2007; Ar-Ra'y (Amman), June 8, 2007.
[20] Ya Lubnan (Beirut), June 5, 2007; Michael Young, "Syria's Useful Idiots," The Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2007.
[21] CNN.com, May 24, 2007.
[22] The International Herald Tribune, Mar. 15, 2007.
[23] The New York Daily News, June 18, 2007.
[24] The Washington Post, June 8, 2005.
[25] The Washington Post, June 8, 2005.
[26] The Washington Post, June 8, 2005.
[27] The Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 23, 2004.
[28] The New York Sun, Sept. 14, 2007.
[29] Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), p. 409.
[30] The New York Times, July 5, 2004.
[31] Gary Gambill, "How Significant Is Syria's Role in Iraq?" Terrorism Monitor (Jamestown Foundation, Washington, D.C.), Oct. 7, 2004.
[32] The Washington Post, Dec. 17, 2004.
[33] "Coalition Provisional Authority Briefing with General Richard Myers, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander, Coalition Ground Forces," Baghdad, Iraq, Apr. 15, 2004.
[34] The Washington Post, Dec. 8, 2004.
[35] "180 Terrorists Escape to Syria at Start of Operation Steel Curtain," Kuwait News Agency, Nov. 5, 2005.
[36] "HP-759: Treasury Designates Individuals, Entity Fueling Iraqi Insurgency," U.S. Department of Treasury, Jan. 9, 2008.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Los Angeles Times, Apr. 27, 2003.
[39] Los Angeles Times, Apr. 17, 2003.
[40] The International Herald Tribune, May 19, 2005.
[41] BBC News, Feb. 23, 2005.
[42] Associated Press, Feb. 24, 2005; USA Today, Feb. 24, 2005.
[43] USA Today, Feb. 24, 2005.
[44] CNN.com, Apr. 12, 2005
[45] CNN.com, Feb. 4, 2007.
[46] Sen. Joseph Lieberman, "Al Qaeda's Travel Agent," The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 20, 2007.
[47] The Washington Post, Jan. 21, 2008.
[48] Mark Eichenlaub, "Hundreds of Loyalists and Benefactors of Saddam Hussein's Regime Have Been Found Working with or for Al-Qaeda in Iraq," RegimeofTerror.com, July 20, 2007.
[49] Newsweek, May 6, 2003.
[50] Matthew Levitt, "Iran and Syria: State Sponsorship in the Age of Terror Networks," lecture presentation, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Mar. 7, 2005.
[51] The Iraq Study Group Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2006), p. 36.
[52] BBC News, Apr. 29, 2004.
[53] BBC News, Sept. 13, 2006.
[54] U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 27, 2008.
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