The late Ayatollah Khomeni once infamously issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, a book based loosely on a controversy dating back to the founding of Islam.

The Prophet Muhammad, the self-proclaimed Messenger of God/Allah, was illiterate and had to dictate the verses in the Qur'an to a scribe. Apparently, he later retracted some of those verses claiming he had been deceived by Satan posing as God. That sort of thing tends to call into question a claim of infallibility or divine revelation.

This controversy comes to mind because functionally illiterate Reverend Pat Robertson – preacher, pundit, politico, pontificator and prognosticator has issued another of his infantile “edicts” – in which he ascribes the cause of yet another natural disaster to Divine Retribution.

Most educated people are content to attribute natural disasters to natural causes, but Robertson sees them as punishment inflicted by God on people who don’t obey. Thus Katrina was the work of a wrathful God striking out in anger in reaction to “secular humanists” and social activists advocating for abortion and gay rights.

The problem with Robertson’s “logic” is that a lot of innocent people, including little children, get caught in these disasters, and it seems fair to say that punishing the innocent for the sins of the guilty sounds more like the work of Satan.

Could it be that the verses Robertson selectively plucks from that other supposedly divinely-inspired text the Bible were inspired by some other source? And could it be that the voice echoing in Robertson's head is not that of God but that of Satan?

That possibility ought to occur to Robertson (but it won't), since predictions he makes based on his “inside information” so often fail to materialize. He predicted the world would end in 1982, but obviously that didn’t come to pass. Nor did a tsunami hit the Pacific Northwest (and lord knows secular humanists in league with Satan – or is it Bill Gates – control the Pacific Northwest) in 2006 as he predicted. Nor did the US suffer a terrorist attack worse than 9/11 in 2007 as he predicted.

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Robertson’s latest outrage was prompted by a massive earthquake that devastated Haiti, leveling its capital city Port au Prince and leaving an estimated 150,000 dead and 3,000,000 homeless. According to the heartless Robertson, this isn’t a tragedy, it’s a just and fitting punishment dispensed by a god still pissed about a centuries-old slave rebellion.

"They were under the heel of the French ... and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' They kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got themselves free. Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other."

While these remarks are unimaginably and unforgivably thoughtless and cruel, they also reveal that Robertson is as ignorant of history as he is his own religion. Has he never heard of the Caribe, the Taino and the Arawak, the Indian tribes that once populated these islands? And what is it they did to deserve mass extinction?

Apparently, Robertson’s god feels white folks don’t deserve Divine Retribution for five centuries of rape, plunder and genocide.

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Robertson is so ignorant he makes the late Jerry Falwell look like Spinoza; and he is so lacking in compassion, he makes Ann Coulter look like Mother Theresa.  His pronouncements wouldn’t be worthy of a response if millions didn’t take him seriously. But they do.

For Robertson and his followers, Satan is no metaphor for evil; he is as real as a heart-attack; he is a demonic fiery-red fallen angel; he is a gothic gargoyle come to life, stalking the Earth to rob, rape and foment rebellion against God.

It’s all so medieval it would be laughable – if it didn’t get some people killed and other people elected. Where ignorance and intolerance are admired and celebrated, it can lead to mass insanity. Just ask the Germans.

And speaking of insanity, claiming to hear voices and exhibiting delusions of grandeur used to get you locked up in a padded cell in a loony bin. But in 20th/21st Century America, insanity gets you a television show and a following of millions. Just ask Glenn Beck.

It’s enough to make even a hardened secular humanist begin to wonder if we aren’t in the End Times.

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But let us suppose for the sake of argument that Robertson and his followers are correct about the way the Big Guy operates, suppose Haiti’s troubles are the result of God cursing the island because former slaves made a voodoo pact with the Devil to throw off their oppressors – that would certainly explain our current economic woes.

Those woes would be a fitting punishment for a people who made a pact with the Devil back in 1980, a pact rightly characterized by George H.W. Bush as Voodoo Economics. In that pact, the people of America agreed to take from those who had least and give to those who had most – forgetting the Christian imperative to feed the poor and ignoring the clear warning that “even as you have done unto the least of these, so also have you done unto me”.

Divine retribution would certainly explain why a lifelong loser was placed in the most powerful position on Earth despite losing by half-a-million votes in the 2000 election. And just as God kept the sun hanging in the heavens for Joshua, so Divine intervention might have kept all those chads hanging on ballots in Florida. Divine intervention could also explain the suspect results from  electronic voting machines in Ohio, though a less than divine intervention seems far more likely.

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Permit me a moment of levity in this otherwise depressing diatribe; allow me to draw another parallel with the Haitian pact with Satan. Like the Haitians, the makers of this satanic pact demonized the French so thoroughly French fries had to be rebranded as Freedom fries and sales of French’s mustard plummeted – though in fairness, it must be said the French were more than happy to have been dissociated with both products.

Of course this manufactured “hatred” of the French was hardly as justifiable as the Haitians’, and it was certainly more superficial, as evidenced by the fact that so many of those most vocal about demonizing the French were as fond of French wines as they were Cuban cigars.

But perhaps the Devil made them do it – after all, it’s well-known that alcohol is the Devil’s doing – though the same can’t be said for tobacco – at least not in Robertson’s part of the country where tobacco is still a blessed sacrament.

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Robertson enthusiastically supported this pact with the Devil; defended it vociferously even when Voodoo Economics 2.0 cut taxes for the wealthy again, this time during an ill-advised war based on trumped-up charges of a Saddam/Al Queda connection and suspect evidence of WMD.

Even a secular humanist could see Satan at work in that because a secular humanist can see what Pat Robertson apparently can’t – Satan doesn’t run around in a Halloween costume – that would be like trying to rob a bank wearing prison garb.

On the contrary, Satan is frequently found in an expensive three-piece suit, sporting braided leather suspenders and a $400 dollar haircut. Satan attended prep school and graduated from a prestigious university with a degree in Business Manipulation. 

Satan says greed is good.

Satan says God wants him to be rich.

Satan says there's a sucker born every minute.

Satan has an expensive condo facing Central Park, a summer place in the Hamptons, a Bentley, a Hummer and a Lear Jet. Satan also has an ex-wife and heavy alimony payments. All this keeps Satan chasing the great god Dollar.

Satan plays fast and loose with other people’s money. Satan convinces people to lie about their income on a loan application. Satan tricks unsophisticated buyers into signing for home loans with exploding interest rates, balloon payments and inevitable defaults.

Satan believes it's his right and duty to enrich himself at other people's expense. Satan is a fervent capitalist who vows his undying love for the free-market but abandons it at the first sign of trouble and pronounces his business too big to fail.

Satan is a bankster who uses unscrupulous tactics and usurious rates to force the public to repay loans the public made to his bank and pays himself an obscene bonus for being so diabolically clever. Satan has backdated stock options and a golden parachute.

Satan doesn’t believe in government or social welfare or paying taxes; he avoids rendering unto Caesar, and he stashes away the profits from his schemes in an off-shore account.

Satan is a lobbyist who lavishes wine, women and golf outings on legislators in order to influence their vote. Satan is a legislator who accepts these bribes, votes against the public interest and pronounces himself a fiscal conservative free from the influence of campaign contributions and lobbying largess.

Satan is very well-connected. Satan belongs to the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, and he signed onto the Project for a New American Century. Satan is the slick dick who fudges intelligence to justify an unnecessary war in order to enrich his friends and his former employer with billions in no-bid contracts.

Satan is the uncaring compassionate conservative who fiddles while Rome burns – or plunks a guitar while New Orleans drowns. Satan sees an entire city in ruins, sees bodies rotting in the streets and says “Heckuva job” to one of his minions.

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No, Satan isn’t who Pat Robertson and his followers think he is, and those looking to blame the biblical Satan for all this world’s woes are as mistaken as those looking to find Jesus in Robertson’s ignorant "revelations".

Frankly, I’ve had enough of Pat Robertson and his Satanic Curses. And while I consider a fatwa too extreme even for his blasphemy, it would be a blessing if he was made to sit down and shut up.

But that will probably take an act of God.

©2010 Tom Cordle