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History > 2011 > USA > Faith (II)
Tim Eagan
Deep Cover
Cagle
5 March 2011
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extremist Christian preacher Terry Jones
Rev.
David Wilkerson Dies at 79;
Started Times Square Church
April 28,
2011
The New York Times
By MARGALIT FOX
The Rev.
David Wilkerson, an evangelical minister and author who founded the Times Square
Church to minister to the downtrodden in one of Manhattan’s seedier precincts,
but whose later writings included apocalyptic predictions for New York City and
beyond, died on Wednesday in an automobile accident in Texas. He was 79 and
lived near Tyler, Tex.
Mr. Wilkerson’s car veered into oncoming traffic on a highway near Cuney, about
110 miles southeast of Dallas, and was hit by a tractor-trailer, a spokeswoman
for the Texas Department of Public Safety told The Associated Press.
His wife, Gwendolyn, was seriously injured but is expected to recover, Mr.
Wilkerson’s brother, the Rev. Donald Wilkerson, said on Thursday.
David Wilkerson was known to a broad readership through his many books. His most
famous, “The Cross and the Switchblade” (1963), chronicled his ministry among
gang members in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where he had arrived as a young
preacher in the late 1950s.
Written with John and Elizabeth Sherrill, the book has sold tens of millions of
copies and has been translated into more than 30 languages, according to its
current publisher, Chosen Books.
“The Cross and the Switchblade” was made into a feature film of that name,
released in 1970. It starred Pat Boone as Mr. Wilkerson and Erik Estrada, in his
first film appearance, as a member of his flock.
Mr. Wilkerson was also widely known for his work with teenage drug addicts. He
was the founder of what is now Teen Challenge International, begun in Brooklyn
in 1958. The organization comprises about 200 religion-based residential drug
treatment centers throughout the country and many overseas.
Through World Challenge, the umbrella organization for his ministerial
activities, based in Lindale, Tex., Mr. Wilkerson founded the Times Square
Church in 1987. Originally in Town Hall on West 43rd Street, it now occupies the
former Mark Hellinger Theater, an ornate palace of lavish moldings and draperies
at 217 West 51st Street, near Broadway.
The Times Square Church is a nondenominational Protestant church whose worship
style draws on the Pentecostal tradition. Services typically include gospel
singing and the opportunity for congregants to approach the stage for healing
and salvation.
Today, the congregation of more than 5,000 spans the social spectrum, including
drug addicts, homeless people and well-heeled professionals. The church also
attracts many out-of-town visitors. Mr. Wilkerson was its senior pastor before
retiring and moving to Texas about a year ago.
David Ray Wilkerson was born on May 19, 1931, in Hammond, Ind.; his father,
Kenneth, was a Pentecostal minister, as was his paternal grandfather. David
Wilkerson studied at Central Bible College in Springfield, Mo., affiliated with
the Assemblies of God.
After his ordination in 1952, Mr. Wilkerson took a pulpit in Philipsburg, in
central Pennsylvania. In 1958, he read in Life magazine about a group of
teenagers, members of the Egyptian Dragons gang, then on trial in New York for
murder.
As he later said in interviews, the article impelled him to go to New York to
help the gang members. There he entered the courtroom and, with the trial in
progress, asked the judge for permission to speak with the defendants about
their salvation. The judge ejected him.
Not long afterward, Mr. Wilkerson settled in New York and began working with
young addicts and juvenile delinquents in Brooklyn, assisted by his brother
Donald.
In the mid-1980s, Mr. Wilkerson began his church in Times Square, then one of
the city’s most notorious neighborhoods.
“It was the summer of 1986, right after basketball star Len Bias died,” Mr.
Wilkerson told The New York Times in 1988. “I was walking down 42nd Street and
people were selling drugs, saying, ‘I’ve got the stuff that killed Len Bias.’ It
broke me down. Things had reached such a low. I felt something had to be done.”
After renting the Mark Hellinger in 1989, Mr. Wilkerson bought the theater in
1991 for a reported price of at least $15 million.
In later years, Mr. Wilkerson became known for his often dire public predictions
on subjects including the stock market and race relations.
In an interview with The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa., in 1994, for instance,
he said, “We are on the brink of a race war in New York between blacks and
Koreans and blacks and Jews that will see more than 1,000 fires burning — worse
than the Los Angeles riots.”
In 2009, in a post on his blog, David Wilkerson Today, Mr. Wilkerson wrote: “An
earth-shattering calamity is about to happen. It is going to be so frightening,
we are all going to tremble — even the godliest among us.” The post goes on to
warn of coming “riots and fires in cities worldwide.”
Besides his wife, the former Gwendolyn Carosso, Mr. Wilkerson’s survivors
include two sons, Gary and Greg, both ministers; two daughters, Debbie Yonker
and Bonnie Hayslip; his brother Donald, a former minister at the Times Square
Church who directs the Brooklyn branch of Teen Challenge; another brother,
Jerry; a sister, Ruth Harris; and 11 grandchildren.
This
article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 30, 2011
An obituary on Friday about the Rev. David Wilkerson, the founder of the Times
Square Church, misstated the date of a post on his blog, David Wilkerson Today.
It was March 2009, not last month.
Rev. David Wilkerson Dies at 79; Started Times Square
Church, NYT, 28.4.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/nyregion/rev-david-wilkerson-79-evangelist-dies-in-crash.html
What happens
when you try to leave the Church of Scientology?
Saturday 23 April 2011
The Guardian
Lawrence Wright
This article appeared on p57 of the Weekend section of the Guardian
on Saturday 23 April 2011.
It was published on guardian.co.uk at 00.24 BST
on Saturday 23 April 2011.
It was last modified at 00.24 BST
on Saturday 23 April 2011.
It was first published at 00.03 BST
on Saturday 23 April 2011.
On 19 August 2009, Tommy Davis, the chief spokesperson for the Church of
Scientology International, received a letter from the film director and
screenwriter Paul Haggis. "For 10 months now I have been writing to ask you to
make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of
San Diego," Haggis wrote. Before the 2008 elections, a staff member at
Scientology's San Diego church had signed its name to an online petition
supporting Proposition 8, which asserted that the state of California should
sanction marriage only "between a man and a woman". The proposition passed. As
Haggis saw it, the San Diego church's "public sponsorship of Proposition 8,
which succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of
California – rights that were granted them by the Supreme Court of our state –
is a stain on the integrity of our organisation and a stain on us personally.
Our public association with that hate-filled legislation shames us." Haggis
wrote, "Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent." He concluded, "I hereby
resign my membership in the Church of Scientology."
Haggis was prominent in both Scientology and Hollywood, two communities that
often converge. Although he is less famous than certain other Scientologists,
such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta, he had been in the organisation for nearly
35 years. Haggis wrote the screenplay for Million Dollar Baby, which won the
Oscar for Best Picture in 2004, and he wrote and directed Crash, which won Best
Picture the next year. Davis, too, is part of Hollywood society: his mother is
Anne Archer, who starred in Fatal Attraction and Patriot Games.
In previous correspondence with Davis, Haggis had demanded that the church
publicly renounce Proposition 8. "I feel strongly about this for a number of
reasons," he wrote. "You and I both know there has been a hidden anti-gay
sentiment in the church for a long time. I have been shocked on too many
occasions to hear Scientologists make derogatory remarks about gay people, and
then quote LRH in their defence." The initials stand for L Ron Hubbard, the
founder of Scientology, whose extensive writings and lectures form the church's
scripture. Haggis related a story about Katy, the youngest of three daughters
from his first marriage, who lost the friendship of a fellow Scientologist after
revealing that she was gay. The friend began warning others, "Katy is '1.1'."
The number refers to a sliding Tone Scale of emotional states that Hubbard
published in a 1951 book, The Science Of Survival. A person classified "1.1"
was, Hubbard said, "Covertly Hostile" – "the most dangerous and wicked level" –
and he noted that people in this state engaged in such things as casual sex,
sadism and homosexual activity. Hubbard's Tone Scale, Haggis wrote, equated
"homosexuality with being a pervert". (Such remarks don't appear in recent
editions of the book.)
In his resignation letter, Haggis explained to Davis that, for the first time,
he had explored outside perspectives on Scientology. He had read a recent exposé
in a Florida newspaper, the St Petersburg Times, which reported, among other
things, that senior executives in the church had been subjecting other
Scientologists to physical violence. Haggis said he felt "dumbstruck and
horrified", adding, "Tommy, if only a fraction of these accusations are true, we
are talking about serious, indefensible human and civil-rights violations."
Online, Haggis came across an appearance that Davis had made on CNN in May 2008.
The presenter John Roberts asked Davis about the church's policy of
"disconnection", in which members are encouraged to separate themselves from
friends or family members who criticise Scientology. Davis responded, "There's
no such thing as disconnection as you're characterising it."
In his resignation letter, Haggis said, "We all know this policy exists." Haggis
reminded Davis that a few years earlier his wife had been ordered to disconnect
from her parents, "because of something absolutely trivial they supposedly did
25 years ago when they resigned from the church". Haggis continued, "To see you
lie so easily, I am afraid I had to ask myself: what else are you lying about?"
Haggis forwarded his resignation to more than 20 Scientologist friends,
including Archer, Travolta and Sky Dayton, the founder of EarthLink. "People
started calling me, saying, 'What's this letter Paul sent you?'" Davis says. A
St Petersburg Times exposé had inspired a fresh series of hostile reports on
Scientology, which has long been portrayed in the media as a cult. And, given
that some well-known Scientologist actors were rumoured to be closeted
homosexuals, Haggis's letter raised awkward questions about the church's
attitude toward homosexuality. Most important, Haggis wasn't an obscure
dissident; he was a celebrity, and the church, from its inception, has depended
on celebrities to lend it prestige. To Haggis's friends, his resignation from
the Church of Scientology felt like a very public act of betrayal. They were
surprised, angry and confused. "'Destroy the letter, resign quietly' – that's
what they all wanted," Haggis says.
Paul Haggis: 'I had such a lack of curiosity when I was in the church. It’s
stunning to me because I'm such a curious person.' Photograph: Rudy Waks/Corbis
Outline
Last March, I met Haggis, 57, in New York. He was in the editing phase of his
latest movie, The Next Three Days, a thriller starring Russell Crowe, and
preparing for two events later that week: a preview screening in New York and a
charitable trip to Haiti.
Haggis was born in 1953, and grew up in London, Ontario, where his father, Ted,
had a construction company. He decided at an early age to be a writer, but after
leaving school, he drifted, hanging out with hippies and drug dealers.
He fell in love with Diane Gettas, a nurse, and they began sharing a one-bedroom
apartment. One day in 1975, when he was 22, Haggis was walking to a record store
when a young man pressed a book into his hands. "You have a mind," the man said.
"This is the owner's manual." The book was Dianetics: The Modern Science Of
Mental Health, by L Ron Hubbard, which was published in 1950. By the time Haggis
began reading it, Dianetics had sold about 2.5m copies. Today, according to the
church, that figure has reached more than 21m.
Haggis opened the book and saw a page stamped with the words "Church of
Scientology". He had heard about Scientology a couple of months earlier, from a
friend who had called it a cult. The thought that he might be entering a cult
didn't bother him. In fact, he said, "it drew my interest. I tend to run toward
things I don't understand."
At the time, Haggis and Gettas were having arguments; the Scientologists told
him that taking church courses would improve the relationship. "It was pitched
to me as applied philosophy," Haggis says. He and Gettas took a course together
and, shortly afterwards, became Hubbard Qualified Scientologists, one of the
first levels in what the church calls the Bridge to Total Freedom.
The Church of Scientology says its purpose is to transform individual lives and
the world. "A civilisation without insanity, without criminals and without war,
where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is
free to rise to greater heights, are the aims of Scientology," Hubbard wrote.
Scientology postulates that every person is a Thetan – an immortal spiritual
being that lives through countless lifetimes. Scientologists believe that
Hubbard discovered the fundamental truths of existence, and they revere him as
"the source" of the religion.
In 1955, a year after the church's founding, a publication urged Scientologists
to cultivate celebrities: "It is obvious what would happen to Scientology if
prime communicators benefiting from it would mention it." At the end of the 60s,
the church established its first Celebrity Centre, in Hollywood. (There are now
satellites in Paris, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Munich, Florence, London, New York, Las
Vegas and Nashville.) Over the next decade, Scientology became a potent force in
Hollywood. In many respects, Haggis was typical of the recruits from that era,
at least among those in the entertainment business. Many of them were young and
had quit school in order to follow their dreams, but they were also smart and
ambitious. The actor Kirstie Alley, for example, left the University of Kansas
in 1970 to get married. Scientology, she says, helped her lose her craving for
cocaine. "Without Scientology, I would be dead," she has said.
In 1975, the year that Haggis became a Scientologist, John Travolta, a high
school dropout, was making his first movie, The Devil's Rain, when an actor on
the set gave him a copy of Dianetics. "My career immediately took off," he told
a church publication. "Scientology put me into the big time." The testimonials
of such celebrities have attracted many curious seekers. In Variety, Scientology
has advertised courses promising to help aspiring actors "make it in the
industry".
Haggis and I travelled together to LA, where he was presenting The Next Three
Days to the studio. During the flight, I asked how high he had gone in
Scientology. "All the way to the top," he said. Since the early 80s, he had been
an Operating Thetan VII, which was the highest level available when he became
affiliated with the church. (In 1988, a new level, OT VIII, was introduced to
members; it required study at sea, and Haggis declined to pursue it.) He had
made his ascent by buying "intensives" – bundled hours of auditing, at a
discount rate. "It wasn't so expensive back then," he said.
David S Touretzky, a computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon University,
has done extensive research on Scientology. (He is not a defector.) He estimates
that the coursework alone now costs nearly $300,000 and, with the additional
auditing and contributions expected of upper-level members, the cumulative cost
may exceed half a million dollars. (The church says there are no fixed fees,
adding, "Donations requested for 'courses' at the Church of Scientology begin at
$50 and could never possibly reach the amount suggested.")
Haggis and I spoke about some events that had stained the reputation of the
church while he was a member. For example, there was the death of Lisa
McPherson, a Scientologist who died after a mental breakdown, in 1995. She had
crashed a car in Clearwater, Florida – where Scientology has its spiritual
headquarters – and then stripped off her clothes and wandered naked down the
street. She was taken to hospital, but, in the company of several other
Scientologists, she checked out against doctors' advice. (The church considers
psychiatry an evil profession.) McPherson spent the next 17 days being subjected
to church remedies, such as doses of vitamins and attempts to feed her with a
turkey baster. She became comatose, and died of a pulmonary embolism before
church members finally brought her to the hospital. The medical examiner in the
case, Joan Wood, initially ruled that the cause of death was undetermined, but
she told a reporter, "This is the most severe case of dehydration I've ever
seen." The state of Florida filed charges against the church. In February 2000,
under withering questioning from experts hired by the church, Wood declared that
the death was "accidental". The charges were dropped and Wood resigned.
Haggis said that, at the time, he had chosen not to learn the details of
McPherson's death. "I had such a lack of curiosity when I was inside. It's
stunning to me, because I'm such a curious person." His life was comfortable, he
liked his circle of friends, and he didn't want to upset the balance. It was
also easy to dismiss people who quit the church. As Haggis put it, "There's
always disgruntled folks who say all sorts of things."
In 1977, Haggis and Diane Gettas got married and, shortly after, they drove to
Los Angeles, where he got a job moving furniture. In 1978, Gettas gave birth to
their first child, Alissa. Haggis was spending much of his time and money taking
advanced courses and being audited, which involved the use of an
electropsychometer, or E-Meter. The device, often compared in the press to a
polygraph, measures the bodily changes in electrical resistance that occur when
a person answers questions posed by an auditor. ("Thoughts have a small amount
of mass," the church contends in a statement. "These are the changes measured.")
The Food and Drug Administration has compelled the church to declare that the
instrument has no curative powers and is ineffective in diagnosing or treating
disease.
Haggis found the E-Meter surprisingly responsive. The auditor often probed for
what Scientologists call "earlier similars". Haggis explained, "If you're having
a fight with your girlfriend, the auditor will ask, 'Can you remember an earlier
time when something like this happened?' And if you do, then he'll ask, 'What
about a time before that? And a time before that?'" Often, the process leads
participants to recall past lives.
Although Haggis never believed in reincarnation, "I did experience gains. I
think I did, in some ways, become a better person." Then again, he admitted, "I
tried to find ways to be a better husband, but I never really did. I was still
the selfish bastard I always was."
At night, Haggis wrote scripts on spec. He met Skip Press, another young writer
who was a Scientologist, and they started hanging out with other aspiring
writers and directors who were involved with Scientology. "We would meet at a
restaurant across from the Celebrity Centre called Two Dollar Bill's," Press
recalls. Haggis and a friend from this circle eventually got a job writing for
cartoons, including Scooby-Doo and Richie Rich.
By now, Haggis had begun advancing through the upper levels of Scientology. The
church defines an Operating Thetan as "one who can handle things without having
to use a body or physical means".
"The process of induction is so long and slow that you really do convince
yourself of the truth of some of these things that don't make sense," Haggis
told me. Although he refused to specify the contents of OT materials, on the
grounds that it offended Scientologists, he said, "If they'd sprung this stuff
on me when I first walked in the door, I just would have laughed and left right
away." But by the time Haggis approached the OT III material, he'd already been
through several years of auditing. His wife was deeply involved in the church,
as was his sister, Kathy. Moreover, his first writing jobs had come through
Scientology connections. He was now entrenched in the community and had invested
a lot of money in the programme. The incentive to believe was high.
The many discrepancies between L Ron Hubbard's legend and his life have
overshadowed the fact that he was a fascinating man. He was born in Tilden,
Nebraska, in 1911. In 1933, he married Margaret Grubb, whom he called Polly;
their first child, Lafayette, was born the following year. He visited Hollywood,
and began getting work as a screenwriter, but much of his energy was devoted to
publishing stories, often under pseudonyms, in pulp magazines such as Astounding
Science Fiction.
During the second world war, Hubbard served in the US navy. He later wrote that
he was gravely injured in battle and fully healed himself, using techniques that
became the foundation of Scientology. After the war, his marriage dissolved, and
he ended up in Los Angeles. He continued writing for the pulps, but he had
larger ambitions. He began codifying a system of self-betterment, and set up an
office where he tested his techniques on the actors, directors and writers he
encountered. He named his system Dianetics.
The book, Dianetics, appeared in May 1950 and spent 28 weeks on the New York
Times bestseller list. Dianetics purports to identify the source of
self-destructive behaviour – the "reactive mind", a kind of data bank that is
filled with traumatic memories called "engrams". The object of Dianetics is to
drain the engrams of their painful, damaging qualities and eliminate the
reactive mind, leaving a person "Clear".
Dianetics, Hubbard said, was a "precision science". He offered his findings to
the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association, but
was spurned; he subsequently portrayed psychiatry and psychology as demonic
competitors. Scientists dismissed Hubbard's book, but hundreds of Dianetics
groups sprang up across the US and abroad. The Church of Scientology was
officially founded in Los Angeles in February 1954, by several devoted followers
of Hubbard's work.
In 1966, Hubbard – who by then had met and married another woman, Mary Sue Whipp
– set sail with a handful of Scientologists. The church says that being at sea
provided a "distraction-free environment", allowing Hubbard "to continue his
research into the upper levels of spiritual awareness". Within a year, he had
acquired several ocean-going vessels. He staffed the ships with volunteers, many
of them teenagers, who called themselves the Sea Organisation. Hubbard and his
followers cruised the Mediterranean searching for loot he had stored in previous
lifetimes. (The church denies this.)
The Sea Org became the church's equivalent of a religious order. The group now
has 6,000 members, who perform tasks such as counselling, maintaining the
church's vast property holdings and publishing its official literature. Sea Org
initiates – some of whom are children – sign contracts for up to a billion years
of service. They get a small weekly stipend and receive free auditing and
coursework. Sea Org members can marry, but they must agree not to raise children
while in the organisation.
As Scientology grew, it was increasingly attacked. In 1963, the Los Angeles
Times called it a "pseudoscientific cult". The church attracted dozens of
lawsuits, largely from ex-parishioners. In 1980, Hubbard disappeared from public
view. Although there were rumours that he was dead, he was actually driving
around the Pacific Northwest in a motor home. He returned to writing science
fiction and produced a 10-volume work, Mission Earth, each volume of which was a
bestseller. In 1983, he settled quietly on a horse farm in Creston, California.
In 1985, with Hubbard in seclusion, the church faced two of its most difficult
court challenges. In Los Angeles, a former Sea Org member, Lawrence Wollersheim,
sought $25m for "infliction of emotional injury". He claimed he had been kept
for 18 hours a day in the hold of a ship docked in Long Beach, and deprived of
adequate sleep and food.
That October, the litigants filed OT III materials in court. Fifteen hundred
Scientologists crowded into the courthouse, trying to block access to the
documents. The church, which considers it sacrilegious for the uninitiated to
read its confidential scriptures, got a restraining order, but the Los Angeles
Times obtained a copy of the material and printed a summary.
"A major cause of mankind's problems began 75m years ago," the Times wrote, when
the planet Earth, then called Teegeeack, was part of a confederation of 90
planets under the leadership of a despotic ruler named Xenu. "Then, as now, the
materials state, the chief problem was overpopulation." Xenu decided "to take
radical measures". Surplus beings were transported to volcanoes on Earth, and
bombed, "destroying the people but freeing their spirits – called Thetans –
which attached themselves to one another in clusters." The Times account
concluded, "When people die, these clusters attach to other humans and keep
perpetuating themselves."
The jury awarded Wollersheim $30m. (Eventually, an appellate court reduced the
judgment to $2.5m.) The secret OT III documents remained sealed, but the Times'
report had already circulated widely, and the church was met with derision all
over the world.
The current Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige. He was Tom Cruise's
best man when he married Katie Holmes in 2006. Photograph: Time & Life
Pictures/Getty Image
The other court challenge in 1985 involved Julie Christofferson-Titchbourne, a
defector who argued that the church had falsely claimed that Scientology would
improve her intelligence, and even her eyesight. In a courtroom in Portland, she
said that Hubbard had been portrayed to her as a nuclear physicist; in fact, he
had failed to graduate from George Washington University. As for Hubbard's claim
that he had cured himself of grave injuries in the second world war, the
plaintff's evidence indicated that he had never been wounded in battle.
Witnesses for the plaintiff testified that in one six-month period in 1982, the
church transferred millions of dollars to Hubbard through a Liberian
corporation. The church denied this, and said that Hubbard's income was
generated by his book sales.
The jury sided with Christofferson-Titchbourne, awarding her $39m.
Scientologists streamed into Portland to protest. They carried banners
advocating religious freedom and sang We Shall Overcome. Scientology
celebrities, including Travolta, showed up. Haggis, who was writing for the NBC
series The Facts Of Life at the time, came and was drafted to write speeches. "I
wasn't a celebrity – I was a lowly sitcom writer," he says. He stayed for four
days.
The judge declared a mistrial, saying that Christofferson-Titchbourne's lawyers
had presented prejudicial arguments. It was one of the greatest triumphs in
Scientology's history, and the church members who had gone to Portland felt an
enduring sense of kinship. (A year and a half later, the church settled with
Christofferson-Titchbourne for an undisclosed sum.)
In 1986, Hubbard died, of a stroke, in his motor home. He was 74. Two weeks
later, Scientologists gathered in the Hollywood Palladium for a special
announcement. A young man, David Miscavige, stepped on to the stage. Short, trim
and muscular, with brown hair and sharp features, Miscavige announced to the
assembled Scientologists that for the past six years Hubbard had been
investigating new, higher OT levels. "He has now moved on to the next level,"
Miscavige said. "It's a level beyond anything any of us ever imagined. This
level is, in fact, done in an exterior state. Meaning that it is done completely
exterior from the body. Thus, at 20:00 hours, the 24 of January, AD 36" – that
is, 36 years after the publication of Dianetics – "L Ron Hubbard discarded the
body he had used in this lifetime." Miscavige began clapping, and led the crowd
in an ovation, shouting, "Hip hip hooray!"
Miscavige was a Scientology prodigy from the Philadelphia area. He claimed that,
growing up, he had been sickly and struggled with bad asthma; Dianetics
counselling had dramatically alleviated the symptoms. As he puts it, he
"experienced a miracle". He decided to devote his life to the religion. He had
gone Clear by the age of 15, and the next year he dropped out of high school to
join the Sea Org. He became an executive assistant to Hubbard, who gave him
special tutoring in photography and cinematography. When Hubbard went into
seclusion, in 1980, Miscavige was one of the few people who maintained close
contact with him. With Hubbard's death, the curtain rose on a man who was going
to impose his personality on an organisation facing its greatest test, the death
of its charismatic founder. Miscavige was 25 years old.
When Haggis finally reached the top of the Operating Thetan pyramid, he expected
that he would feel a sense of accomplishment, but he remained confused and
unsatisfied.
He was a workaholic, and as his career took off, he spent less and less time
with his family. He and his wife began a divorce battle that lasted nine years
and, in 1997, a court determined that Haggis should have full custody of the
children.
His daughters were resentful. "I didn't even know why he wanted us," Lauren
says. The girls demanded to be sent to boarding school, so Haggis enrolled them
at the Delphian School, which uses Hubbard's educational system, called Study
Tech. By the time she graduated, Lauren says, she had scarcely ever heard anyone
speak ill of Scientology.
Alissa found herself moving away from the church and did not speak to her father
for a number of years. When she was in her early 20s, she accepted the fact
that, like her sister Katy, she was gay.
In 1991, as his marriage was crumbling, Haggis went to a Fourth of July party at
the home of Scientologist friends. Deborah Rennard, who played JR's alluring
secretary on Dallas, was at the party. Rennard had grown up in a Scientology
household and joined the church herself at the age of 17. They became a couple,
and married in June, 1997. A son, James, was born the following year.
Despite his growing disillusionment with Scientology, Haggis raised a
significant amount of money for it, and made sizeable donations himself. The
Church of Scientology had recently gained tax-exempt status as a religious
institution, making donations, as well as the cost of auditing, tax-deductible.
(Church members had lodged more than 2,000 lawsuits against the Internal Revenue
Service, ensnaring the agency in litigation. As part of the settlement, the
church agreed to drop its legal campaign.)
Over the years, Haggis estimates, he spent more than $100,000 on courses and
auditing, and $300,000 on various Scientology initiatives. Rennard says she
spent about $150,000 on coursework. Haggis recalls that the demands for
donations never seemed to stop. "They used friends and any kind of pressure they
could apply," he says. "I gave them money just to keep them from calling and
hounding me."
Proposition 8 passed in November 2008. A few days after sending his resignation
letter to Tommy Davis in February 2009, Haggis came home from work to find nine
or 10 of his Scientology friends standing in his front yard. He invited them in
to talk and referred them to the exposé in the St Petersburg Times that had so
shaken him: The Truth Rundown. The first instalment had appeared in June 2009.
Haggis had learned from reading it that several of the church's top managers had
defected in despair. Marty Rathbun had once been inspector general of the
church's Religious Technology Centre, and had also overseen Scientology's
legal-defence strategy, reporting directly to Miscavige. Amy Scobee had been an
executive in the Celebrity Centre network. Mike Rinder had been the church's
spokesperson, the job now held by Davis. One by one, they had disappeared from
Scientology, and it had never occurred to Haggis to ask where they had gone.
The defectors told the newspaper that Miscavige was a serial abuser of his
staff. "The issue wasn't the physical pain of it," Rinder said. "It's the fact
that the domination you're getting – hit in the face, kicked – and you can't do
anything about it. If you did try, you'd be attacking the COB" – the chairman of
the board. Tom De Vocht, a defector who had been a manager at the Clearwater
spiritual centre, told the paper that he, too, had been beaten by Miscavige; he
said that from 2003 to 2005, he had witnessed Miscavige striking other staff
members as many as 100 times. Rathbun, Rinder and De Vocht all admitted that
they had engaged in physical violence themselves. "It had become the accepted
way of doing things," Rinder said. Scobee said that nobody challenged the abuse
because people were terrified of Miscavige. Their greatest fear was expulsion:
"You don't have any money. You don't have job experience. You don't have
anything. And he could put you on the streets and ruin you."
Much of the alleged abuse took place at the Gold Base, a Scientology outpost in
the desert 80 miles south-east of Los Angeles. Miscavige has an office there,
and for decades the base's location was unknown even to many church insiders.
According to a court declaration filed by Rathbun in July, Miscavige expected
Scientology leaders to instil aggressive, even violent, discipline. Rathbun said
that he was resistant, and that Miscavige grew frustrated with him, assigning
him in 2004 to the Hole – a pair of double-wide trailers at the Gold Base.
"There were between 80 and 100 people sentenced to the Hole at that time,"
Rathbun said in the declaration. "We were required to do group confessions all
day and all night."
The church claims that such stories are false: "There is not, and never has
been, any place of 'confinement'… nor is there anything in Church policy that
would allow such confinement."
According to Rathbun, Miscavige came to the Hole one evening and announced that
everyone was going to play musical chairs. Only the last person standing would
be allowed to stay on the base. He declared that people whose spouses "were not
participants would have their marriages terminated". The St Petersburg Times
noted that Miscavige played Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody on a boom box as the
church leaders fought over the chairs, punching each other and, in one case,
ripping a chair apart.
De Vocht, one of the participants, says the event lasted until 4am: "It got more
and more physical as the number of chairs went down." Many of the participants
had long been cut off from their families. They had no money, no credit cards,
no telephones. According to De Vocht, many lacked a driver's licence or a
passport. Few had any savings or employment prospects. As people fell out of the
game, Miscavige had aeroplane reservations made for them. He said that buses
were going to be leaving at 6am. The powerlessness of everyone else in the room
was nakedly clear.
Davis told me that a musical chairs episode did occur. He explained that
Miscavige had been away from the Gold Base for some time, and when he returned
he discovered that in his absence many jobs had been reassigned. The game was
meant to demonstrate that even seemingly small changes can be disruptive to an
organisation – underscoring an "administrative policy of the church". The rest
of the defectors' accounts, Davis told me, was "hoo-ha": "Chairs being ripped
apart, and people being threatened that they're going to be sent to far-flung
places in the world, plane tickets being purchased, and they're going to force
their spouses – and on and on and on. I mean, it's just nuts!"
The church provided me with 11 statements from Scientologists, all of whom said
that Miscavige had never been violent. The church characterises Scobee, Rinder,
Rathbun, De Vocht and other defectors I spoke with as "discredited individuals"
who were demoted for incompetence or expelled for corruption; the defectors'
accounts are consistent only because they have "banded together to advance and
support each other's false 'stories'".
After reading the St Petersburg Times series, Haggis tracked down Marty Rathbun,
who says Haggis was shocked by their conversation. "The thing that was most
troubling to Paul was that I literally had to escape," Rathbun told me. (A few
nights after the musical chairs incident, he got on his motorcycle and waited
until a gate was opened for someone else; he sped out and didn't stop.) Haggis
called several other former Scientologists he knew well. One said he had escaped
from the Gold Base by driving his car through a wooden fence. Still others had
been expelled or declared Suppressive Persons. Haggis asked himself, "What kind
of organisation are we involved in where people just disappear?"
At his house, Haggis finished telling his friends what he had learned. "I
directed them to certain websites," he said, mentioning Exscientologykids.com.
The stories on the site, of children drafted into the Sea Org, appalled him.
"They were 10 years old, 12 years old, signing billion-year contracts – and
their parents go along with this?" Haggis told me. "Scrubbing pots, manual
labour – that so deeply touched me. My God, it horrified me!"
Many Sea Org volunteers find themselves with no viable options for adulthood. If
they try to leave, the church presents them with a "freeloader tab" for all the
coursework and counselling they have received; the bill can amount to more than
$100,000. "Many of them actually pay it," Haggis said. "They leave, they're
ashamed of what they've done, they've got no money, no job history, they're
lost, they just disappear." In what seemed like a very unguarded comment, he
said, "I would gladly take down the church for that one thing."
The church says it adheres to "all child labour laws", and that minors can't
sign up without parental consent; the freeloader tabs are an "ecclesiastical
matter" and are not enforced through litigation.
Haggis's friends came away from the meeting with mixed feelings. This would be
the last time most of them spoke to him.
In the days after, church officials and members came to his office, distracting
his producing partner, Michael Nozik, who is not a Scientologist. "Every day,
for hours, he would have conversations with them," Nozik told me.
"I listened to their point of view, but I didn't change my mind," Haggis says,
noting that the Scientology officials, "became more livid and irrational."
In October 2009, Rathbun called Haggis and asked if he could publish the
resignation letter on his blog. "You're a journalist, you don't need my
permission," Haggis said, although he asked Rathbun to excise parts relating to
Katy's homosexuality.
Haggis says he didn't think about the consequences of his decision: "I thought
it would show up on a couple of websites. I'm a writer, I'm not Lindsay Lohan."
Rathbun got 55,000 hits on his blog that afternoon. The next morning, the story
was in newspapers around the world.
At the time Haggis was doing his research, the FBI was conducting its own
investigation. Agents Tricia Whitehill and Valerie Venegas interviewed former
church and Sea Org members. One was Gary Morehead, who had been the head of
security at the Gold Base; he left the church in 1996. In February 2010, he told
Whitehill he had developed a "blow drill" to track down Sea Org members who left
Gold Base. In 13 years, he estimates, he and his security team brought more than
100 Sea Org members back to the base. When emotional, spiritual or psychological
pressure failed to work, Morehead says, physical force was sometimes used. (The
church says that blow drills do not exist.)
Whitehill and Venegas worked on a special task force devoted to human
trafficking. The California penal code lists several indicators: signs of trauma
or fatigue; being afraid or unable to talk; owing a debt to one's employer.
Those conditions echo the testimony of many former Sea Org members.
Sea Org members who have "failed to fulfil their ecclesiastical
responsibilities" may be sent to one of the church's several Rehabilitation
Project Force locations. Defectors describe them as punitive re-education camps.
In California, there is one in Los Angeles; until 2005, there was one near the
Gold Base, at a place called Happy Valley. Bruce Hines, a defector turned
research physicist, says he was confined to RPF for six years, first in LA, then
in Happy Valley. He recalls that the properties were heavily guarded and that
anyone who tried to flee would be subjected to further punishment. "In 1995,
when I was put in RPF, there were 12 of us," Hines said. "At the high point, in
2000, there were about a 120." Some members have been in RPF for more than a
decade, doing manual labour and extensive spiritual work. (Davis says that Sea
Org members enter RPF by their own choosing and can leave at any time; the
manual labour maintains church facilities and instils "pride of
accomplishment".)
Defectors also talked to the FBI about Miscavige's luxurious lifestyle. The law
prohibits the head of a tax-exempt organisation from enjoying unusual perks or
compensation; it's called inurement. Davis refused to disclose how much money
Miscavige earns, and the church isn't required to do so, but Headley and other
defectors suggest that Miscavige lives more like a Hollywood star than like the
head of a religious organisation – flying on chartered jets and wearing
custom-made shoes. (The church denies this characterisation and "vigorously
objects to the suggestion that Church funds inure to the private benefit of Mr
Miscavige.") By contrast, Sea Org members typically receive $50 a week.
Last April, John Brousseau, who had been in the Sea Org for more than 30 years,
left the Gold Base and drove to south Texas to meet Marty Rathbun. He was
unhappy with Miscavige, his former brother-in-law, whom he considered
"detrimental to the goals of Scientology". At 5.30 one morning, he was leaving
his motel room when he heard footsteps behind him. It was Tommy Davis; he and 19
church members had tracked Brousseau down. Brousseau locked himself in his room
and called Rathbun, who alerted the police; Davis went home without Brousseau.
In a deposition given in July, Davis said no when asked if he had ever "followed
a Sea Organisation member that has blown [fled the church]". Under further
questioning, he insisted that he was only trying "to see a friend of mine".
Davis now calls Brousseau "a liar".
Brousseau says his defection caused anxiety, in part because he had worked on a
series of special projects for Tom Cruise. Cruise says he was introduced to the
church in 1986 by his first wife Mimi Rogers (she denies this), and Miscavige
has called him "the most dedicated Scientologist I know". When Cruise married
Katie Holmes in 2006, Miscavige was his best man.
In 2005, Miscavige showed Cruise a Harley-Davidson motorcycle he owned.
Brousseau recalls, "Cruise asked me, 'God, could you paint my bike like that?'"
Brousseau also says he helped customise a Ford Excursion SUV that Cruise owned.
"I was getting paid $50 a week," he recalls. "And I'm supposed to be working for
the betterment of mankind." Both Cruise's attorney and the church deny
Brousseau's account.
Miscavige's official title is chairman of the board of the Religious Technology
Centre, but he dominates the entire organisation. His word is absolute, and he
imposes his will even on some of the people closest to him. According to Rinder
and Brousseau, in June 2006, while Miscavige was away from the Gold Base, his
wife, Shelly, filled several job vacancies without her husband's permission.
Soon afterwards, she disappeared. Her current status is unknown. Davis told me,
"I definitely know where she is", but he wouldn't disclose where that is.
In late September, Davis and other church representatives met with me. In
response to nearly a thousand queries, the Scientology delegation handed over 48
binders of supporting material. Davis attacked the credibility of Scientology
defectors, whom he calls "bitter apostates". We discussed the allegations of
abuse lodged against Miscavige. "The only people who will corroborate are their
fellow apostates," Davis said. He produced affidavits from other Scientologists
refuting the accusations, and noted that the tales about Miscavige always hinged
on "inexplicable violent outbursts". Davis said, "One would think that if such a
thing occurred – which it most certainly did not – there'd have to be a reason."
I had wondered about these stories as well. While Rinder and Rathbun were in the
church, they had repeatedly claimed that allegations of abuse were baseless.
Then, after Rinder defected, he said Miscavige had beaten him 50 times. Rathbun
has confessed that in 1997 he ordered incriminating documents destroyed in the
case of Lisa McPherson, the Scientologist who died of an embolism. If these men
were capable of lying to protect the church, might they not also be capable of
lying to destroy it? Davis later claimed that Rathbun is in fact trying to
overthrow Scientology's current leadership and take over the church. (Rathbun
now makes his living by providing Hubbard-inspired counselling to other
defectors, but says he has no desire to be part of a hierarchical organisation.
"Power corrupts," he says.)
Twelve other defectors told me that they had been beaten by Miscavige, or had
witnessed Miscavige beating other church staff members. Most of them, such as
John Peeler, noted that Miscavige's demeanour changed "like the snap of a
finger".
At the meeting, Davis and I also discussed Hubbard's war record. His voice
filling with emotion, he said that if it was true that Hubbard had not been
injured, then "the injuries that he handled by the use of Dianetics procedures
were never handled, because they were injuries that never existed; therefore,
Dianetics is based on a lie; therefore, Scientology is based on a lie." He
concluded, "The fact of the matter is that Mr Hubbard was a war hero."
After filing a request with the National Archives in St Louis, we obtained what
archivists assured us were Hubbard's complete military records – more than 900
pages. Nowhere in the file is there mention of Hubbard's being wounded in
battle.
Since leaving the church, Haggis has been in therapy, which he has found
helpful. He has learned how much he blames others for his problems, especially
those who are closest to him. "I really wish I had found a good therapist when I
was 21," he said.
On 9 November, The Next Three Days premiered in Manhattan. After the screening,
I asked Haggis if he felt that he had finally left Scientology. "I feel much
more myself, but there's a sadness," he admitted. "If you identify yourself with
something for so long, and suddenly you think of yourself as not that thing, it
leaves a bit of space." He went on, "It's not really the sense of a loss of
community. Those people who walked away from me were never really my friends."
I once asked Haggis about the future of his relationship with Scientology.
"These people have long memories," he told me. "My bet is that, within two
years, you're going to read something about me in a scandal that looks like it
has nothing to do with the church." He thought for a moment, then said, "I was
in a cult for 34 years. Everyone else could see it. I don't know why I
couldn't."
• This article first appeared in the New Yorker.
What happens when you
try to leave the Church of Scientology?, G, 23.4.2011,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/23/try-to-leave-church-scientology-lawrence-wright
Obama calls killings in Afghanistan outrageous
WASHINGTON | Sat Apr 2, 2011
8:57pm EDT
By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Saturday
the killings in Afghanistan after a fundamentalist Christian U.S. preacher
burned a Koran were "outrageous" while calling the desecration of the holy text
an act of bigotry.
"The desecration of any holy text, including the Koran, is an act of extreme
intolerance and bigotry," Obama said in a statement released by the White House.
"However, to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an
affront to human decency and dignity," he said.
At least 10 people have been killed and 83 wounded in the southern Afghan city
of Kandahar, officials said on Saturday, on a second day of violent protests
over the actions of extremist Christian preacher Terry Jones, who supervised the
burning of the Koran in front of about 50 people at a church in Florida on March
20, according to his website.
A suicide attack also hit a NATO military base in the capital Kabul, the day
after protesters overran a U.N. mission in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif
and killed seven foreign staff in the deadliest attack on the U.N. in
Afghanistan.
"No religion tolerates the slaughter and beheading of innocent people, and there
is no justification for such a dishonorable and deplorable act," Obama said.
"Now is a time to draw upon the common humanity that we share, and that was so
exemplified by the U.N. workers who lost their lives trying to help the people
of Afghanistan."
Obama did not mention Jones by name in his statement.
JONES UNREPENTANT
In an interview with Reuters at the tiny church he leads in Gainesville,
Florida, Jones was unrepentant and vowed to lead an anti-Islam demonstration
later this month in front of the largest mosque in the United States, located in
Dearborn, Michigan.
Last year, Jones threatened to burn a Koran but did not end up following through
at that time. His threat last year came amid controversy over plans by Muslim
leaders seeking to build an Islamic center and mosque near the site of the
September 11, 2001 attacks in New York.
Obama appealed to Americans then to respect religious freedom while warning that
burning the Koran would endanger U.S. troops abroad.
The recent burning initially passed relatively unnoticed in Afghanistan, but
after criticism from President Hamid Karzai, and calls for justice during Friday
sermons, thousands poured into the streets in several cities to denounce Jones.
The United States has said it would help the United Nations in any way after the
attack.
Obama said in his statement that the American people honor the people killed in
the attack on the United Nations in Mazar-i-Sharif.
"Once again, we extend our deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of
those who were killed, and to the people of the nations that they came from."
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Will Dunham)
Obama calls killings in
Afghanistan outrageous, R, 2.4.2011,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/03/us-afghanistan-violence-un-obama-idUSTRE7312MI20110403
Koran-Burning Pastor Unrepentant in Face of Furor
April 2,
2011
The New York Times
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — His church’s membership is down to just a few of the
faithful. He is basically broke. His neighbors revile him and wish him ill. And
his head, he said, carries a bounty.
Yet Terry Jones, the pastor who organized a mock trial that ended with the
burning of a Koran and led to violence and deaths in Afghanistan, remains
unrepentant. He said he was “saddened” and “moved” by the deaths, but given the
chance, he would do it all over again.
“It was intended to stir the pot; if you don’t shake the boat, everyone will
stay in their complacency,” Mr. Jones said in an interview at his office in the
Dove World Outreach Center on Saturday. “Emotionally, it’s not all that easy.
People have tried to make us responsible for the people who are killed. It’s
unfair and somewhat damaging.
“Did our action provoke them,” the pastor said. “Of course. Is it a provocation
that can be justified? Is it a provocation that should lead to death? When
lawyers provoke me, when banks provoke me, when reporters provoke me, I can’t
kill them. That would not fly.”
Mr. Jones, 59, with his white walrus moustache, craggy red face and basso
profundo voice, seems like a man from a different time. Sitting at his desk in
his mostly unadorned office, he keeps a Bible in a worn brown leather cover by
his side and a “Braveheart” poster within sight. Both, he said, provide
sustenance for the mission at hand: Spreading the word that Islam and the Koran
are instruments of “violence, death and terrorism.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Jones said, he had received 300 death threats, mostly via
e-mail and telephone, and had been told by the F.B.I. that there was a $2.4
million contract on his life.
For protection, his followers — the 20 to 30 who are still left — openly carry
guns (they have licenses, he said) and have become more rigorous about checking
their cars and the bags of visitors. The church is locked. Police protection is
sometimes required when the members travel, Mr. Jones said.
Mr. Jones’s rustic church sits on 20 acres of land, up a long driveway that is
dotted with Australian pines. There is a small above-ground pool, and three
police cars idled nearby on Saturday.
“I don’t right now feel personally afraid,” he said. “But we are armed.”
Mr. Jones said he the decision to hold the mock trial of the Koran on March 20
was not made lightly. “We were worried,” he said. “We knew it was possible. We
knew they might act with violence.”
There were similar predications last year, when Mr. Jones threatened to burn the
Islamic holy book on Sept. 11. When that decision was being discussed, throngs
of reporters descended on the church, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates
personally called and asked him not to do it. President Obama appealed to him
over the airwaves.
This time would be different — and not just because the event would be held in
relative obscurity, with only a small group of sympathizers. This time, Mr.
Jones said, there would be a trial, a fact that he said added heft to his
decision.
He teamed up with Truth TV, a satellite channel out of California that is led by
Ahmed Abaza, a former Muslim who converted to Christianity and who, Mr. Jones
said, sympathizes with the church’s message.
The pastor said Truth TV reached out to him last year after he canceled his plan
to burn the Koran, and a partnership of sorts has flourished since then. Mr.
Abaza helped provide him with most of the witnesses and lawyers for the mock
trial, Mr. Jones said.
“I was not the judge,” said Mr. Jones, who also said he has read only portions
of the Koran and not the entire text.
There would be a prosecutor and a defense lawyer for the Koran, an imam from
Texas. There would be witnesses — although the defense did not call any — and a
jury.
Yes, he said, he knew some of the jurors, Mr. Jones said, and others came to the
event after learning about it through his group’s Facebook page. (“People were
afraid, so not many volunteered,” he said.) And yes, perhaps, his Facebook
followers voted on the online poll that sentenced the Koran to burning.
Nevertheless, he said, “It was as fair a trial as we could have.”
Truth TV streamed the mock trial live to the Arab world in Arabic but chose not
to broadcast the actual burning.
Mr. Jones’s mission is not a popular one in these parts. The Dove World Outreach
Center’s membership evaporated after his preaching began to focus on what Mr.
Jones said are the dangers of Islam.
“We don’t have any members,” said Mr. Jones. “It’s not something your average
person wants to do.
“People want to hear the good news. But the church has a responsibility to speak
about the word of God. But it also has to speak out about what is right — be it
abortion or Islam. Churches and pastors are afraid.”
No longer welcome in Gainesville — which he said he considered too small and
unenlightened to understand his message — he is seeking to move. A bigger city,
like Los Angeles, might be more open to his message, he added.
First, though, he has to sell the church’s property, which is not easy in
Florida, which is one of the nation’s foreclosure capitals. Meanwhile, as his
personal stake in his mission grows deeper, his bank account is running dry.
“Things are not easy at this particular time,” said Mr. Jones, a Missouri native
whose first career was as hotel manager. “This has not been a money-making
venture.”
Residents in this college town, home to the University of Florida, are also less
than thrilled.
“We have definitely felt pressure to move,” he added. “Gainesville will not
award us keys to the city.”
Out front of the church, signs that read “Islam is of the Devil” have been
edited by outsiders to say “Love All Men.” In a housing complex across the
street, some of the residents said they cannot wait for Mr. Jones to leave. They
said they feared for their safety and were outraged by his message.
“Why are they trying to incite hatred and anger?” asked Shawnna Kochman. “They
are mean. God is meant to have loved everyone. It’s a cult.”
Koran-Burning Pastor Unrepentant in Face of Furor, NYT,
2.4.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/us/03burn.html
The
Truth About American Muslims
April 1,
2011
The New York Times
At the
Justice Department, it’s called the post-Sept. 11 backlash — the steady stream
of more than 800 cases of violence and discrimination suffered by American
Muslims at the hands of know-nothing abusers. These continuing hate crimes were
laid bare at a valuable but barely noticed Senate hearing last week that
provided welcome contrast to Representative Peter King’s airing of his
xenophobic allegation that the Muslim-American community has been radicalized.
Offering federal data rather than mythic scapegoating of an easy political
target, the Senate hearing focused on the fact that while Muslims make up 1
percent of the population, they are victims in 14 percent of religious
discrimination cases. These range from homicides and mosque burnings to job,
school and zoning law abuses, according to the Justice Department.
In running the hearing, Senator Richard Durbin tried to set the record straight
about the patriotism of a vast majority of American-Muslim citizens and the
continuing assaults on their civil rights. He warned against the “guilt by
association” whipped up by Mr. King’s broadsides — that there are “too many
mosques” in the nation, that most of them are extremist, and that American
Muslim leaders have failed to cooperate with law enforcement against home-grown
terrorism.
It was former President George W. Bush who first warned against turning on
Muslim Americans after Sept. 11, 2001, stressing the fact that Islam is “a faith
based upon love, not hate,” regardless of the religious veneer the fanatics of
9/11 tried to attach to their atrocities. Since then, American Muslims have
served as the largest source of tips to authorities tracking terror suspects,
according to a recent university study.
The Senate hearing was not designed as a full refutation of Representative
King’s wild thesis, but it put a more human and factual face on a community that
has been badly slurred. Mr. King is promising more committee haymakers. This is
unfortunate. At least Mr. Durbin’s hearing made clear that the nation’s struggle
against terrorism is best served by information, not dark generalizations.
The Truth About American Muslims, NYT, 1.4.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/02/opinion/02sat2.html
Five myths about Muslims in America
Friday, April 1, 2011
3:28 PM
The Washington Post
By Feisal Abdul Rauf
I founded the multi-faith Cordoba Initiative to fight the
misunderstandings that broaden the divide between Islam and the West — each
perceived as harmful by the other. Millions of American Muslims, who see no
contradiction between being American and being Muslim, are working hard to
bridge this gap. It is therefore not surprising that they have become the target
of attacks by those who would rather burn bridges than build them, and the
subject of recent congressional hearings exploring their “radicalization.” What
myths are behind the entrenched beliefs that Muslims simply do not belong in the
United States and that they threaten its security?
1. American Muslims are foreigners.
Islam was in America even before there was a United States. But Muslims didn’t
peaceably emigrate — slave-traders brought them here.
Historians estimate that up to 30 percent of enslaved blacks were Muslims. West
African prince Abdul Rahman, freed by President John Quincy Adams in 1828 after
40 years in captivity, was only one of many African Muslims kidnapped and sold
into servitude in the New World. In early America, Muslim names could be found
in reports of runaway slaves as well as among rosters of soldiers in the
Revolutionary War. Muslims fought to preserve American independence in the War
of 1812 and for the Union in the Civil War. And more than a century later,
thousands of African Americans, including Cassius Clay and Malcolm Little,
converted to Islam.
Currently, there are two Muslim members of Congress and thousands of Muslims on
active duty in the armed forces. Sure, some Muslim soldiers may have been born
elsewhere, but if you wear the uniform of the United States and are willing to
die for this country, can you be really be considered a foreigner?
2. American Muslims are ethnically, culturally and politically monolithic.
In fact, the American Muslim community is the most diverse Muslim community in
the world.
U.S. Muslims believe different things and honor their faith in different ways.
When it comes to politics, a 2007 Pew study found that 63 percent of Muslim
Americans “lean Democratic,” 11 percent “lean Republican” and 26 percent “lean
independent.” Ethnically, despite the popular misperception, the majority of
Muslims in the United States (and in the world, for that matter) are not Arabs —
about 88 percent check a different box on their U.S. census form. At least
one-quarter, for example, are African American. Anyone who thinks otherwise need
look no further than the July 30, 2007, cover of Newsweek magazine, which
featured a multicultural portrait of Islam in America.
Muslim Americans are also diverse in their sectarian affiliation. And whether
they are Sunni or Shiite, their attendance at religious services varies.
According to the State Department publication “Muslims in America — A
Statistical Portrait,” Muslim Americans range from highly conservative to
moderate to secular in their religious devotion, just like members of other
faith communities.
With above-average median household incomes, they are also an indispensable part
of the U.S. economy. Sixty-six percent of American Muslim households earn more
than $50,000 per year — more than the average U.S. household.
3. American Muslims oppress women.
According to a 2009 study by Gallup, Muslim American women are not only more
educated than Muslim women in Western Europe, but are also more educated than
the average American. U.S. Muslim women report incomes closer to their male
counterparts than American women of any other religion. They are at the helm of
many key religious and civic organizations, such as the Arab-American Family
Support Center, Azizah magazine, Karamah, Turning Point, the Islamic Networks
Group and the American Society for Muslim Advancement.
Of course, challenges to gender justice remain worldwide. In the World Economic
Forum’s 2009 Gender Gap Index, which ranks women’s participation in society, 18
of the 25 lowest-ranking countries have Muslim majorities. However, as
documented by the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality ,
Muslim women are leading the struggle for change through their scholarship,
civic engagement, education, advocacy and activism in the United States and
across the world.
4. American Muslims often become “homegrown” terrorists.
According to the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, more
non-Muslims than Muslims were involved in terrorist plots on U.S. soil in 2010.
In a country in the grip of Islamophobia — where Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) can
convene hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims — this has been
overlooked. In 2010, the Triangle Center also found, the largest single source
of initial information on planned terrorist attacks by Muslims in the United
States was the Muslim American community.
As an American Muslim leader who worked with FBI agents on countering extremism
right after Sept. 11, 2001, I fear that identifying Islam with terrorism
threatens to erode American Muslims’ civil liberties and fuels the dangerous
perception that the United States is at war with Islam. Policymakers must
recognize that, more often than not, the terrorists the world should fear are
motived by political and socioeconomic — not religious — concerns.
5. American Muslims want to bring sharia law to the United States.
In Islam, sharia is the divine ideal of justice and compassion, similar to the
concept of natural law in the Western tradition. Though radicals exist on the
fringes of Islam, as in every religion, most Muslim jurists agree on the
principal objectives of sharia: the protection and promotion of life, religion,
intellect, property, family and dignity. None of this includes turning the
United States into a caliphate.
For centuries, most Islamic scholars around the world have agreed that Muslims
must follow the laws of the land in which they live. This principle was
established by the prophet Muhammad in A.D. 614-615, when he sent some of his
followers to be protected by the Christian king of Abyssinia, where they
co-existed peacefully. Not only do American Muslims have no scriptural,
historical or political grounds to oppose the U.S. Constitution, but the U.S.
Constitution is in line with the objectives and ideals of sharia. Muslims
already practice sharia in the United States when they worship freely and follow
U.S. laws.
In his 1776 publication “Thoughts on Government,” John Adams praised Muhammad as
a “sober inquirer after truth.” And the Supreme Court building contains a
likeness of the prophet, whose vision of justice is cited as an important
precedent to the U.S. Constitution.
Feisal Abdul Rauf is the founder of the Cordoba Initiative.
Five myths about
Muslims in America, WP, 2.4.2011,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-muslims-in-america/2011/03/30/AFePWOIC_story.html?hpid=z4
Koran burning by Florida pastor initially went unnoticed
By Michelle Boorstein
Friday, April 1, 2011
9:17 PM
Wearing a judicial robe and doling out a punishment
selected through an online poll, the pastor of a tiny Florida church on March 20
declared Islam’s holy book “guilty of crimes against humanity” and ordered it
set ablaze in a portable fire pit.
In a video later posted on the Dove World Outreach Center’s Web site, the pastor
can be heard saying that the Koran smoldered “very good” and that the flame
would work well for burgers or marshmallows.
Compared with last September, when the world was riveted by the Rev. Terry
Jones’s threat to burn the Koran, the bizarre mock “trial” last month of the
Muslim scripture went largely unnoticed in the United States.
Two days later, however, Pakistan’s president called it a “serious setback” for
the civilized world, and the U.S. ambassador agreed that it was “abhorrent.” On
March 24, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called for Jones’s prosecution. But
among U.S. faith and government leaders as well as the hordes of reporters who
covered Jones last fall, there was largely silence.
“We tried to really downplay it. We didn’t want to escalate it. It didn’t seem
to be getting traction in the media, and we certainly didn’t want to bring
attention,” said Geoff Tunicliffe, head of the World Evangelical Alliance, one
of the world’s largest faith organizations.
But after an angry mob killed seven people at a United Nations office in
northern Afghanistan, faith leaders rushed Friday to condemn the killings and
Jones’s actions, which could reverberate throughout the Muslim world.
Tunicliffe, whose group represents hundreds of millions of evangelicals, said he
was having emergency meetings with Muslim and Christian leaders to organize a
summit in Pakistan or Afghanistan about religious violence.
Representatives of several major Muslim American organizations held a joint
conference in Washington to denounce the killings. Among them were the Council
on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Jones has been on the receiving end of condemnations before. In September, he
and his obscure church commanded media attention from around the world by
threatening to burn the Koran on the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
After being pressured by everyone from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
to Gen. David H. Petraeus, he abandoned that plan. But in the months since, the
church has repeatedly sought the limelight, with a Web site and press releases
every few days announcing everything from Jones’s views on Egyptian politics to
his plans to protest Islam in Britain (his visa was denied).
In January, Dove announced that it would “put the Koran on trial” in March and
asked readers to vote whether to burn, shred or drown it.
Koran burning by
Florida pastor initially went unnoticed, WP, 1.4.2011,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/koran-burning-by-florida-pastor-initially-went-unnoticed/2011/04/01/AFl2LEKC_story.html
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