Was Anders Breivik Really a Christian?

Last updated on: July 25, 2011 at 2:59 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

What do we do with the fact that Anders Behring Breivik — the perpetrator of a terrorist attack in downtown Oslo and the mass murder of children on the nearby island of Utoya — identifies himself as a Christian? How do we make sense of the fact that he refers three times in his “European Declaration of Independence” to the “Lord Jesus Christ”?

1. First, before we say anything else, absolutely the first response of every Christian without exception must be unqualified condemnation of the horrific, disturbing, and profoundly sinful actions Breivik took last Friday. As I’ve written before, on occasion I’ve been frustrated when moderate Muslims fail to condemn acts of terrorism as loudly and unequivocally as possible; yet I understand how Muslims resent that the American public associates them with terrorism and looks to them for a response. The implication is that the moderates are somehow accountable for the actions of the fringe, and it’s incumbent upon them to distance themselves from the madmen who detonate school buses and attack summer camps.

I too resent the implication that I have to offer some sort of account for Breivik’s action. It should be abundantly clear that I have nothing to do with him. And yet – and yet – I do need to condemn his actions. Every Christian does. Every person of good will does. An act of such extraordinary moral monstrosity must, before anything else, be buried beneath an avalanche of condemnation. Christians should always be humbly willing to examine whether a cancer might be growing within their midst, a cancer that is hidden within the body because Christians assume that everyone in their community shares their best intentions. Extremists arise everywhere, and we ought not assume that our ranks are free of them. So let us respond with the moral clarity to call evil evil, and the humility to examine the record and consider whether our actions or inactions, the things we’ve said or left unsaid, could have contributed to the worldview of the madman.

2. Second, we should clarify precisely what kind of “Christian” Anders Breivik is. Because, as it turns out, he’s not much of a Christian at all, at least by ordinary definitions of the term.

Raised in a secular household, Breivik went from “moderately agnostic” to “moderately religious” and was baptized and confirmed in the Norwegian State Church at the age of 15. He is consistently critical of the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church (which he thinks has served its purpose and should reassimilate into the Catholic Church, in order to give a united front against Islam), as he believes both have abdicated their responsibility to defend Christian subjects against an Islamic invasion.

Then, square in the middle of his sprawling 1500-page manifesto, in a section (3.139) entitled “Distinguishing between cultural Christendom and religious Christendom,” Breivik himself tells us what kind of Christian he is. He argues that the inheritors of western Christendom are all, whether they like it or not, cultural Christians. Some are liberal cultural Christians, engaged in a massive act of cultural suicide by facilitating Islam’s demographic conquest of Europe. Others are conservative cultural Christians, such as himself, who have recognized the threat of Islamicization and the infection of a weak and accommodationist “cultural Marxist multi-culturalism” in the elite sphere of European society. Conservative cultural “Christians” should arm themselves for the new Crusade to reassert Christian cultural hegemony and drive the Islamic threat from European lands. As for religious Christians:

If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian.

Well, no, actually it doesn’t make you a Christian. Most believers – liberal and conservative alike – decry the notion of “cultural Christendom,” or the theory that a person could be Christian by participating in the outward forms of Christianity while abandoning its inward beliefs, values and relationships. Breivik several times asserts the superior authority of logic and science, and clarifies his commitment to “Christendom” as a monoculture, not “Christianity” as a life of personal devotion to Jesus Christ. Breivik does not see himself as a follower of Jesus Christ, but as a Crusader defending Christendom from Islamicization. He does not defend Christianity as a system of beliefs, stories and existential commitments; he defends Christendom as his own side in the clash of civilizations.

Breivik demonstrates no belief in the deity of Christ, in part because he’s not really sure that there is any God at all. Although he says that those who live “under full surrender with God the Father” will receive his “anointing” for battle, he also says that belief in God is a crutch in the face of death. He writes:

I’m not going to pretend I’m a very religious person as that would be a lie. I’ve always been very pragmatic and influenced by my secular surroundings and environment…Religion is a crutch for many weak people and many embrace religion for self serving reasons as a source for drawing mental strength…Since I am not a hypocrite, I’ll say directly that this is my agenda as well. However, I have not yet felt the need to ask God for strength, yet…But I’m pretty sure I will pray to God as I’m rushing through my city, guns blazing…

Breivik describes how he will be on a steroid rush in the midst of the attack, listening to his iPod (perhaps Clint Mansell’s Lux Aeterna, he says), in order to ward off fear. He explains that he chooses to pray and believe in God in order to overcome the fear of death. He recommends other martyr-crusaders do the same, as religion is “ESSENTIAL in martyrdom operations.”

So, while it was obviously wrong for some commentators to rush to the assumption that this attack in Norway was perpetrated by a Muslim, it is a dramatic mischaracterization to say that it was perpetrated by a “Christian fundamentalist.” He might have been a “cultural Christian” by some definition, and a political fundamentalist, but he was certainly no “fundamentalist Christian.” It’s important to be clear: by almost every definition, Anders Behring Breivik was no Christian at all.

3. Finally, Christians should consider how they can build relationships of mutual respect and understanding across religious boundaries, and should understand the distinction between cultural and religious differences. Breivik is critical of George W. Bush, among others, for saying that our war is not with Islam. Yet Breivik’s atrocity illustrates the wisdom and the importance of this approach. As a matter of fact, there may be a sort of implicit, long-term struggle underway between different cultures and different civilizations, in the way that cultures and civilizations evolve and grow or else fade into obscurity. Yet this is not remotely the same thing as a religious war, and what is emerging may minimize cultural differences and let the truly religious and spiritual differences come through more clearly.

Christianity is not a cultural system. In fact, in those cases where it has become so intertwined with a culture that the two cannot be separated, this is inevitably to the detriment of Christianity. Christianity is fundamentally a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, a community and a way of life, all wrapped up in historical, moral and theological beliefs, values and commitments. These things are not culture and civilization. They shape culture and civilization. They ground and judge culture and civilization, and they can be expressed in a variety of cultures and civilizations. But if we grow committed to the culture and civilization, while the faith and spirituality are hollowed out of them, then we worship empty idols.

All of the western monotheistic traditions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – have violent elements in their sacred texts and histories, bloodstained threads that run through the tapestries of their stories. Christianity and Judaism had largely excised or decisively reinterpreted those elements by the time of the Enlightenment. It’s telling that Breivik had to look back to a medieval order (the Knights Templar) to find a version of Christianity that would arm and equip him for a battle with Islam. But even as we encourage those remaining pockets of extremists within contemporary Islam to reassess and reinterpret the violent threads in its scriptures and stories, we need to make sure that no one else, like Breivik, draws those violent threads out of Christianity and leaves the rest behind. If Breivik had been a “religious Christian,” and not merely a “cultural Christian” who chose to honor the most violent strains of Christendom’s cultural history, it almost certainly would have prevented him from taking the actions he took.

Harold Camping Needs an Intervention

Last updated on: May 27, 2011 at 2:10 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

Some of the intersections of faith and politics are so littered with landmines that it’s virtually impossible to navigate them without taking some shrapnel in the legs. People of faith and good will must discuss them, however, if they’re matters worth discussing, lest we leave the conversation to those who simply enjoy or actually profit from setting off explosions. So please bear with me. I’m about to draw a parallel that could easily be twisted. The parallel is not between Harold Camping and a terrorist Imam. I have no respect for that kind of moral equivalency. The parallel, rather, is between the way I feel toward Harold Camping and, in some limited respects, the way that some moderate Muslims seem to feel toward the preachers of Jihad.

So, to begin. I’ve often wondered why, when we hear of another Jihadist terrorist doing another terrible thing, moderate Muslims are not stumbling over themselves to condemn him. When an extremist Imam preaches for the downfall of America, the Great Satan, or teaching something that is completely and patently and destructively false — shouldn’t moderate Muslim leaders be angry at the harm the Imam has done to the reputation of their religion, and shouldn’t they be eager to condemn him, correct the record, and even seek to remove this Imam from power?

Some moderate Muslim leaders do speak up, of course. And some presumably cannot penetrate the media din. Still, even taking those things into account, I have often been surprised that we do not see and hear the majority of Muslims rising up en masse to carve this cancer out of the body of their faith and to bury it forever beneath a flood of righteous condemnation. If peaceful Muslims are angered when non-Muslims regard them with distrust, shouldn’t they direct their anger first at the Muslims who have attacked the innocent in the name of Islam and planted the seeds of distrust in the first place? Some moderate Muslims — including personal friends of mine — are openly frustrated when it’s suggested they should offer some comment or criticism.

Harold Camping and his ongoing doomsday debacle have helped me to understand the dynamic a little better. There’s no equivalence between the wanton destruction of innocent human life and the proclamation of a false prophecy about the end of the world. It would require moral obtuseness of the highest order, and abandonment of our powers of moral discernment, to equate a proclamation that the world is ending and all should take refuge in Christ with the attempt to explode school buses full of children. So, as I said, I’m not at all equating Harold Camping with terrorists or with Imams who exhort their followers to become terrorists.

What are illuminating, I think, are the tensions in both cases between the periphery and the center. (Of course, the more extreme critics of militant Islam will argue that the ultra-violent ideology that motivates the likes of al-Qaeda is not actually on the periphery of the Muslim world, but is more common and widespread than we care to admit. While there are pockets around the world where those who sympathize with Jihadist terrorists outnumber those who do not, I don’t believe that’s true as a general characterization of ‘the Muslim world,’ and thankfully the Arab Spring is showing another way to struggle for reform.)

So, all qualifications aside, how is this comparison illuminating?

(1) What does he have to do with me? When I’m pressed by atheists and skeptics to respond to Harold Camping and his extreme ideas — not just the 1994 prediction and the May 21st prediction, but the numerology and the esoteric calculations, the notion of a “spiritual judgment” to justify the doomsday dud, and his teaching as far back as 1988 that Satan had taken possession of American churches — some part of me resents the association in the first place. Why am I accountable for what Harold Camping says and does? Why is the presumption that I am like him, unless I publicly demonstrate otherwise? Why should I have to answer for him? Are we even of the same tribe?

One part of this is justified. There is no good faith from the skeptic who demands that I condemn him. The skeptic ought to be able to see the significant differences between myself and Harold Camping; they are obvious in the things we believe and in the ways we act. But the skeptic pays no heed to those differences because he does not really care whether or not I condemn Harold Camping; he just wants to paint me with the same brush as another Christian crackpot with crazy, irrational, unscientific ideas. It irritates me that people cannot see — or the skeptics are not willing to see — that Harold Camping is not a representative of healthy, orthodox Christianity. I imagine many Muslims feel this way: why should I be compelled to distinguish myself from the extremist, when the extremist does not represent my faith in the first place?

But another part of this is pride. I don’t want to be associated with a Harold Camping, or a Terry Jones (the Koran burner), or etc. However, as deceived as I believe Harold Camping is, insofar as he trusts in Jesus Christ (and I give the benefit of the doubt here), we are not only of the same tribe, we are of the same family. As much as I resent the association, as much as I’m embarrassed by their actions and the ways in which they harm the credibility of the Church, the fact is that I am associated with them.

There are all sorts of crazy people in the Church; some of them have megaphones. I am not called to ignore them and pretend they have nothing to do with me. I am called to reach out to them, to listen, to rebuke and correct and restore, even as I explain to the world that they have misused the Word.

2. I understand where he’s coming from. The truth is, even though we differ on some very important beliefs, Harold Camping and I have many things in common. We read the same Bible and pray to the same God. Some of our core beliefs and values are the same. I believe that the God revealed in Jesus Christ is the creator and author of all history. I believe that history will consummate in judgment and restoration.

I was raised in a non-denominational evangelical church where some of the adults believed things I found embarrassing. In various ministry settings, in the prisons and inner cities of the United States as well as on mission fields overseas, I’ve encountered countless Christians whose beliefs I found strange or implausible. I’ve had some of the most intelligent Christians I know (objectively, dazzlingly intelligent, with doctorates and many accolades to their names) tell me that they believed Christ would return in the next few years — or that demons were active in their homes before they prayed them out — or that the world is merely thousands of years old — or that my broken neck would be healed if I believed it fervently enough. And you know what? They’re good people. I love those people. In most cases, I respect them too. When you burrow deeper and deeper into a particular way of interpreting the world, you can find yourself coming to conclusions that seem very strange to people with different worldviews.

I’ve also spent plenty of time in places where my beliefs were regarded with suspicion and astonishment. At Stanford, Oxford, Princeton, and Harvard, students and colleagues and faculty typically treated me with respect; I was good at what I did, good at what we did. They knew I was no fundamentalist. But they could not believe that an intelligent and educated person should be an evangelical, much less a conservative one.

So I feel a generous measure of sympathy for Harold Camping. I know where he’s coming from. I know how he came to believe the things he did, even though I find them (the beliefs and the methods through which they were reached) wrong. And I imagine many moderate Muslims feel the same way. Even though they deplore the violence of their fellow Muslims, they understand their sense of frustration, of disenfranchisement, of anger. They’ve heard the criticisms of the west, of colonialism, of American support for despots, and they know those criticisms make a certain kind of sense to people who live inside of that worldview.

3. It’s not always easy to cut out the cancer. As I’ve watched the Harold Camping travesty unfold, I’ve often felt, “Can’t someone put a stop to this? Can’t someone intervene and show him the error of his ways?” The answer that’s come back to me is: “Why don’t you do it? If you’re going to call for other Christians to reach out to Camping and try to put a stop to the damage he’s doing to the church, shouldn’t you be willing to do so yourself?”

And yes, I should. In the same way that moderate Muslims should do what they can to correct the Imams who encourage young men to go detonate themselves in crowded marketplaces, I should do what I can to correct a Christian teacher who is misleading his followers in destructive ways. But it’s not an easy thing to do.

There are a number of reasons. (1) Do I really want to get involved? Reaching out to Camping as a fellow believer implies that he is, indeed, a Christian leader of sorts who deserves the time and attention it would take. It only makes the association between him and me even stronger in the minds of the skeptics and the mockers. (2) Is there any hope of changing his mind? A man like Harold Camping believes wholeheartedly that he’s doing the right thing, and that critical voices are (perhaps literally) the voice of the devil tempting him to give up the task to which God has called him. He’s not likely to be dissuaded, any more than an extremist Imam is. (3) Could his influence really be curbed? Camping has substantial resources and a radio network at his disposal, as well as bitter-end supporters. We live in completely distinct circles. Short of physical or legal coercion, what could I really do? (4) My life is overwhelming enough already. I have a wife, a child, another child on the way, a more-than-full-time job, side jobs and side projects, ministries. Do I really have the time to reach out to someone I’ve never met and seek to dissuade him (as I did attempt to do, for instance, with Terry Jones)?

Some of the same reasons must come up when moderate Muslims are asked, “Why don’t you remove the cancer of Islamic extremism from your community?” Moderate Muslim Americans are struggling to keep their heads above water, like everyone else, and may have no connections with, and no influence over, the extremist Imams. It’s much easier to insist that the extremist does not represent your faith than it is to correct the extremist or remove him from influence.

These are some of the tensions between the middle and the periphery in religious communities. Do you get angry at the extremists whose words and deeds tarnish the reputation of your faith? Or do you get angry with those who use the extremists for their own partisan purposes to smear the whole faith? Or both? Do you resent the embarrassing association with the crazies on the margins, or do you accept the association, accept that there are crazies in all communities and do something to heal and restore them? Do you confess that you understand where they’re coming from, or do you pretend there’s no overlap between their views and yours? And are you bound to involve yourself in the near-impossible task of changing their minds or undermining their influence, when you are overwhelmed already with the life God has given you?

I think Christian leaders, rather than lobbing criticisms from a distance, or in addition to that (since it’s important to correct the record on what the Christian faith teaches), should reach out to Camping and see whether he can be persuaded to end this damaging charade. And I should do the same. Camping should be encouraged to repent, to seek forgiveness, and to make amends. Even if it seems hopeless, it’s the right thing to do. And you never know what might happen. God has done much more astonishing things.

Morning Report, September 22nd: Rifqa, Reiki, Olympiobama, Next Housing "Boom," Dancing Republicans, Environmental Shock Therapy, and Raising Afghanistan

Last updated on: September 22, 2009 at 12:37 pm By Timothy Dalrymple

One Christian’s Perspective on the Day’s News

1. BURNED ALIVE TO BORN AGAIN. Many are familiar with this picture, where children and villagers, followed by South Vietnamese soldiers, run down a road after an aerial napalm attack. Her clothes were burned off by fire, and the damage caused by the napalm led her to fourteen months in the hospital and 17 operations. It would have been worse if a soldier, moments after the photograph was taken (one hopes that photographer put the camera down to help), had not given her water and poured water over her body. Few know that the naked girl, immortalized in the Pulitzer-Prize-winning photo, converted to Christianity.

Although I suffered from pain, itching and headaches all the time, the long hospital stay made me dream to become a doctor. But my studies were cut short by the local government. They wanted me as a symbol of the state. I could not go to school anymore. The anger inside me was like a hatred as high as a mountain. I hated my life. I hated all people who were normal because I was not normal. I really wanted to die many times.

I spent my daytime in the library to read a lot of religious books to find a purpose for my life. One of the books that I read was the Holy Bible. In Christmas 1982, I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior. It was an amazing turning point in my life. God helped me to learn to forgive — the most difficult of all lessons. It didn’t happen in a day and it wasn’t easy. But I finally got it.

Read the rest. May God give us all such grace to forgive.

2. BELITTLING RIFQA. We have followed the story of Rifqa Bary. I have mixed feelings about the article in Newsweek. It provides some more information, but its bias is clear, and it does not provide the detailed story I would like to see. It claims that there is “no evidence” that her parents threatened her life because of her conversion to Christianity. There is evidence, actually: her testimony, and not only her testimony now but the things she wrote over the course of a year, such as an email that say, “The day has come that I dreaded. I’m ready to die for my faith.” What other sort of evidence the writer expects for a private conversation between parent and child is not exactly clear.

The agenda is clear. The writer has decided that the problem here is not with Muslim attitudes toward conversion and other faiths, but evangelical delusions about violent Muslims. The author writes, in a parenthetical comment, that “Muslim scholars say that in Islam, there’s no such thing as an honor killing for apostasy.” This is the kind of religion writing that drives me nuts. Who are these unnamed “Muslim scholars,” and what do they mean by “in Islam”? What version of Islam do they mean? Do these scholars (did Arian Campo-Flores actually consult any?) mean that there is no call for honor killings for apostasy in the Koran? That may be true; and there are times and places where Islam has been very tolerant of other religions, as in Spain. Or do the scholars mean that honor killings for apostasy don’t happen in Muslim nations? Surely that’s the relevant question, right?

A good friend of mine operates a mission-related organization that works in Muslim nations, and they have seen converts killed for their conversions. These things do happen. This reporter (Arian Campo-Flores) includes this line, a line which would seem to de-legitimize Rifqa’s concern, with no counterpoint. Actually over the course of the article it becomes clear that the reporter has concluded, or wishes for the reader to conclude, that Rifqa got a little carried away with her Christian devotion, and bought into misleading anti-Muslim attitudes from conservative Christians. Yet she’s a very bright young woman, and gives no impression otherwise of having taken leave of her senses. She clearly felt very threatened, for at least a year. Whether she misinterpreted her parents’ words and actions or whether her fears are exaggerated, she probably had some reason to be afraid.

Or consider this: “In her affidavit, Bary contends that her father forced her to attend youth gatherings every Saturday at the Noor Islamic Cultural Center in Dublin, Ohio (though the center says its records show she attended only three classes there in 2007).” It’s unlikely that Bary (in court, with the guidance of a lawyer) would make a claim like this, which could easily be disproven, if it weren’t true. Has the reporter seen the records? Evidently not. Since the center has been accused of radicalism, is it a reliable witness? Perhaps not. And are “classes” the same thing as the “youth gatherings”? Probably not; and if so, did they take careful records every Saturday night? This is sloppy reporting, but the reporter doesn’t seem to notice or mind, since it’s sloppy in a way that comports with her bias. She measures everything Rifqa says against “evidence” or counter-claims, but does not do so for the parents’ or center’s claims (if she were interested in that, she would have asked to see their records). She only treats one side’s claims with the proper journalistic skepticism.

So I will continue to await a good investigative story on the matter.

3. RCC AND REIKI. The U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has decided that Reiki, a Japanese “healing” art which involves transfers of energy from Reiki practitioners to the bodies of their patients, should no longer be given in Roman Catholic hospitals. The justification seems pretty sound: “Without justification either from Christian faith or natural science, a Catholic who puts his or her trust in reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition, the no-man’s-land that is neither faith nor science. Superstition corrupts one’s worship of God by turning one’s religious feeling and practice in a false direction.’’

When I worked for three years with a congregation inside a maximum security prison, many of the brothers there sought to heal me of my neck wound (I broke my neck in a gymnastics accident when I was 19) and the chronic pain it brings. I don’t mean to deny from the outset the possibility that there may be some people with special gifts from God. If God is God, then He can do what He wishes, through natural means or in other ways. But I also know that for many of those brothers their desire to have healing power was more about their desire for religious distinction (the same sort of desire that led Jesus to say that “He would would be first must become the last”), and that it functioned as a sort of superstition for many of them. The Bishops are right, and I probably should have addressed their motives more directly. Superstition corrupts worship; superstition forms idols; it leads us to trust in our superstitions and not in God.

4. NEWER WORLD ORDER. Obama administration pushes new economic world order. The US wants exporters like China and Germany to consume more. I would be happy if China would just stop holding its currency at an artificially low rate.

5. HE WON’T GO AWAY. The latest on Manuel Zelaya and his refusal to leave the limelight for the good of Honduras.

6. SOCIAL INSECURITY. Democrats objected when the Bush administration spoke of an impending crisis in social security and its solvency. It may be true that Bush, like Obama with health care, used crisis language too much to create pressure for immediate and dramatic change. Yet the Congressional Budget Office now tells us that Social Security is going to run deficits in 2010 and 2011, and then deficits will return and grow larger in 2016 and after. Check out Hot Air for some commentary.

7. DRIFTING BACK TO 9/10. As noted earlier, the threat posed by the terrorist cell that was recently disrupted with arrests in Queens and Denver appears to have been substantial and imminent. It may have involved hydrogen peroxide bombs on trains, and, as it turns out, our rail security has been badly compromised recently by political change, corruption and union squabbling.

8. RACE-BASED PUNISHMENT. Where would people create a system of school discipline that disciplines students in one way if they are white, and in another way if they are black or Hispanic? Tucson. Really.

9. OLYMPIOBAMA. Could Obama bring the Olympics to Chicago? If so, I would be truly grateful. While some are already critical of apparent conflicts of interest, cronyism, etc., well, such is the political system we have, and I would just be glad to have the Olympics nearby. Hard to imagine outdoing the elaborate (and excessive) ceremonies China arranged, though, for its global coming out party.

10. CROSS-STATE CONFUSION. If the White House’s position on cross-state competition for health care is unclear to you, you’re not alone.

11. UH OH. The next wave of mortgage problems?

12. ACORN FALLING ON OBAMA? While it’s true, as John Fund writes at the WSJ, that Obama’s ties to ACORN go back decades, and true that ACORN helped get him elected, and true that the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress have helped direct substantial federal monies toward ACORN, and true that some parts of ACORN have seen widespread election fraud problems, I don’t think there’s much here to condemn Obama for. It’s worth investigating; any political investigative reporter worth his salt should be interested in getting to the bottom of these things, it seems to me that Obama cannot he held accountable for he offenses shown in recent exposé videos. And ACORN is a many-tentacled animal; as many liberals have said, it should be remembered that ACORN does provide valuable services to the poor. I would like to see the corrupt elements disciplined and cleansed, and the electioneering parts of ACORN severed from the housing parts.

13. FEAR THE DANCING REPUBLICAN. Even liberals are voting for Tom DeLay on Dancing with the Stars.

14. TODAY’S TWO-SIDES, PT I. From the Left, Gordon Brown setting forth his agenda for the Copenhagen climate conference. Bjorn Lomborg has long been a valuable voice in the climate change conversation, especially for his ability to avoid the alarmism and think outside the box. Yet voices like his have no play in the “shock therapy” approach favored by UN mandarins.

15. TODAY’S TWO SIDES, PT II. Bob Herbert from the Left, and Leslie Gelb from the Right, concerning the war in Afghanistan; many on the Right, like Ralph Peters, are ready to wash their hands of Afghanistan and the Taliban and focus only on al-Qaeda (if such a thing is possible). This is a crucial, pressing, and decisive issue for Obama. It will, in large part, define his foreign policy.