Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [188]
And, finally, I condemn them perpetually to the deep pit of hell, there to remain with Lucifer and all his fellows, and their bodies to the gallows … first to be hanged, then ripped and torn by dogs, swine, and other wild beasts, abominable to all the world. And their candle goes from your sight, as may their souls go from the face of God, and their good reputation from the world, until they forebear their open sins, aforesaid, and rise from this terrible cursing and make satisfaction and penance.54
This sixteenth-century anathema against the evildoers has an antique ring. But it also has more modern resonances. The Islamic religious decree, or fatwa, was virtually unknown in the West until the condemnation by Ayatollah Khomeini in February 1989 of the author Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses. Such was its blasphemous and evil effect, Khomeini said, that the author deserved to die. Pastors, priests, and ministers inside the Christian churches were also inveighing against evil to their congregations, but their most extreme sanction was spiritual.55 Moreover, their efforts had little impact outside the communities of Christian believers in a largely unbelieving society. Khomeini pushed the language of evil once more into the center of the political domain, an example which political figures in the West were reluctant to follow.
The classic exception was President Ronald Reagan and his famous “Evil Empire” assault on the Soviet Union. The address that President Reagan had delivered to the British House of Commons on June 8, 1982, has since become known colloquially as the Evil Empire Speech.56 But oddly, the words do not exist in the official transcript. On that occasion and before the notoriously cantankerous British parliamentarians, President Reagan had eschewed this emotive phrase. He reserved it for a very different audience.
The Reverend Richard C. Cizik, a vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, had suggested that Reagan should deliver a speech on religious freedom. On March 8, 1983, the president obliged. In the Citrus Crown Ballroom of the Sheraton Twin Towers in Orlando, Florida, Reagan spoke to the assembled evangelists. He touched on all the traditional topics that preoccupied his audience. He spoke of abortion, school prayer, of the “spiritual awakening” of America. Then he spoke of history:
But if history teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past … So, I urge you to speak out against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority … I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.57
Reagan, a skillful speaker, had selected his register to suit the audience. In London he had intended to touch different bases: freedom, democracy, a turning point in history. He declared that totalitarianism and communism were destined for the “ash can of history.” Symbolically perhaps, the disquisition on “evil” was reserved for a niche group, the congress of pastors at Orlando.58
In Europe Reagan was often condemned as a buffoon, who misspoke, said the unsayable, stepping outside the boundaries of proper political discourse.59 That was also my view until I heard him speaking directly to the nation in one of his regular “fireside chats,” modeled on Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s pioneering talks in the 1930s. Every Saturday, starting in 1982, Reagan talked to Americans about the political and governmental issues of the day. The performance was flawless, convincing even to a skeptic. Every word fell into place, every intonation conjured up a man talking to you across the room, not across a continent. Thereafter I listened