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religion around our secular lives.”
Fairchild illustrated this with the Islamic requirement that practitioners pray five times daily towards Mecca. While most American Christians think of spiritual matters only on Sunday, practitioners of Islam are repeatedly throughout the day reminded of their beliefs.
“You wake up and you pray, and then you go to work and just as you start to get into that secular work mode, it’s time to pray again,” explained Fairchild.
Besides outlining the basic practice of Islam, Fairchild's talk was about the history of the religion. He explained the origins of the split between the Sunni and Shia Muslims, which goes back to a battle for the succession of the leadership of Islam after the death of the prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. Fairchild compared this split within Islam to similar divisions within Christianity between Protestants and Catholics. Religious hijackers
After giving his audience a historical framework, Fairchild went on to explain how further fractures within Islam resulted in the creation of several smaller sects, analogous to the Protestant denominations like Lutherans or Christian Scientists. One of these Islamic sects, Wahhabism, is the official religion of Saudi Arabia.
“Wahhabism is a virulent, violent version of Islam. It's anti-west, anti-secular, and anti-Jewish. Saudi Arabia is not our friend,” said Fairchild.
According to Fairchild, Wahhabism and similar movements within Islam led to the foundation in Egypt in 1928 of The Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that Fairchild says is responsible for the ideology behind Al-Queda, Hammas, and similar Islamic terror groups. According to Fairchild, this ideology is a threat greater than specific individuals or organizations.
“We're not fighting a war on terror. We'r^ fighting a war on ideology. As long as we have that ideology out there, as long
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