Faith and Politics: The New Wars of Religion
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The Economist has an interesting article on the relevance of religion in today’s politics, discussing the liberal ideals of individual autonomy and the separation of church and state. While I generally agree with the broad conclusions they draw, I think they could have structured their discussion much more clearly and formally, particularly if they took psychological development into account. The differentiation of the various “spheres” of existence, that is, truth (science), beauty (art), and goodness (morals) as separate and irreducible knowledge domains (they can’t be described by each other) is only recognized by those who have sufficient reason to see it. This is a prerequisite for understanding the reasons why we separate church and state, and the good that comes of it (for example, things like multiculturalism/ pluralism, the rights of women and minorities, and a recognition that we can all believe as we please, as long as we behave along certain broad guidelines).
We must deal with religious fundamentalists and states and peoples who do not yet understand liberal (or “post-liberal,” where the Western states are now) ideals in a very different way. One easy-to-understand example of this is that it is very difficult to implement a working democracy among a people who will inevitably vote in a party which does not respect minority rights nor the separation of church and state, which ultimately leads to the erosion of that democracy by substituting majority religious values and laws for reasoned liberal ones, something a democracy must impose to function properly.
The new wars of religion
Nov 1st 2007
From The Economist print edition
Faith will unsettle politics everywhere this century; it will do so least when it is separated from the state
A RELIGIOUS fanatic feels persecuted, goes overseas to fight for his God and then returns home to attempt a bloody act of terrorism. Next week as Britons celebrate the capture of Guy Fawkes, a Catholic jihadist, under the Houses of Parliament in 1605, they might reflect how dismally modern the Gunpowder Plot and Europe’s wars of religion now seem.
Back in the 20th century, most Western politicians and intellectuals (and even some clerics) assumed religion was becoming marginal to public life; faith was largely treated as an irrelevance in foreign policy. Symptomatically, State Department diaries ignored Muslim holidays until the 1990s. In the 21st century, by contrast, religion is playing a central role. From Nigeria to Sri Lanka, from Chechnya to Baghdad, people have been slain in God’s name; and money and volunteers have poured into these regions. Once again, one of the world’s great religions has a bloody divide (this time it is Sunnis and Shias, not Catholics and Protestants). And once again zealotry seems all too relevant to foreign policy: America would surely not have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan (and be thinking so actively of striking Iran) had 19 young Muslims not attacked New York and Washington.
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It does not stop there. Outside Western Europe, religion has forced itself dramatically into the public square. In 1960 John Kennedy pleaded with Americans to treat his Catholicism as irrelevant; now a born-again Christian sits in the White House and his most likely Democrat replacement wants voters to know she prays. An Islamist party rules once-secular Turkey; Hindu nationalists may return to power in India’s next election; ever more children in Israel and Palestine are attending religious schools that tell them that God granted them the whole Holy Land. On present trends, China will become the world’s biggest Christian country—and perhaps its biggest Muslim one too. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, not usually a reliable authority on current affairs, got it right in an open letter to George Bush: “Whether we like it or not,” he wrote, “the world is gravitating towards faith in the Almighty.”
Gunpowder, treason and plot
How frightening (or inspiring) is this prospect? As our special report explains, the idea that religion has re-emerged in public life is to some extent an illusion. It never really went away—certainly not to the extent that French politicians and American college professors imagined. Its new power is mostly the consequence of two changes. The first is the failure of secular creeds: religion’s political comeback started during the 1970s, when faith in government everywhere was crumbling. Second, although some theocracies survive in the Islamic world, religion has returned to the stage as a much more democratic, individualistic affair: a bottom-up marketing success, surprisingly in tune with globalisation. Secularism was not as modern as many intellectuals imagined, but pluralism is. Free up religion and ardent believers and ardent atheists both do well.
From a classical liberal point of view, this multiplicity of sects is a good thing. Freedom of conscience is an axiom of liberal thought. If man is a theotropic beast, inclined to believe in a hereafter, it is surely better that he chooses his faith, rather than follows the one his government orders. But that makes religion a complicated force to deal with. In domestic policy, adults who choose to become Pentecostals, Orthodox Jews or Muslim fundamentalists are far less likely to forget those beliefs when it comes to the ballot box. The culture wars that America has grown used to may become a global phenomenon; expect fierce battles about science, in particular.
Abroad, yes, there is a chance of full-blown war of religion between states. A conflagration between Iran and Israel would, alas, be seen as a faith-based conflict by millions; so would war between India and Pakistan. But compared with Guy Fawkes’s time, when wars sprang from monarchs throwing their military might at others of different faiths, religious conflict today is the result as much of popular will as of state sponsorship: it is bottom-up, driven by volunteers not conscripts, their activities blessed by rogue preachers not popes, their fury mostly directed at apostates not competing civilisations. Ironically, America, the model for much choice-based religion, has often seemed stuck in the secular era, declaring war on state-sponsored terror, only to discover the main weapon of militant Islamism is often the ballot box.
Start praying now
For politicians doomed to deal with religion, two lessons stand out—one principled, the other pragmatic. The principle is that church and state are best kept separate. Subsidised religion has seldom made sense for either state or church: witness Europe’s empty pews. In some cases, separating the two is easy. In private, people can choose to believe that the world was created exactly 6,003 years ago, but teachers should not be allowed to teach children creationism as science. The state should not tell people whether they can wear headscarves, let alone ban “unauthorised” reincarnation (as China did recently in Tibet). But the line is not always easy to draw: this paper disapproves of publicly financed faith schools, especially ones that discriminate against non-believers, but it also believes in giving poor parents more choice—and in American cities the main alternative to public schools is Catholic ones.
The religion that invades the public square most overtly is Islam: it affords secular power the least respect, teaching that the primary unit of society is the umma, the international brotherhood of believers. At its most theocratic, it forces people to follow sharia laws, sometimes with barbaric penalties. Yet Islam can clearly co-exist with a modern liberal state. For all its failures in the Arab world, democracy has taken root in Malaysia and Indonesia. America’s Muslims worship freely and respect its secular constitution—a success the United States should make more of in its foreign policy. But the test case will be Turkey, a secular state currently ruled by Islamists whose progress is being watched with nervous attention.
The pragmatic lesson concerns those wars of religion. Partly because of their obsession with keeping church and state separate, Western powers (and religious leaders) have been too reluctant to look for faith-driven solutions to religious conflicts. Many of those struggles, notably the Middle East, began as secular tribal disputes. Now that they have a religious component they are much harder to solve: if God granted you the West Bank, you are less likely to trade it. “Inter-faith dialogue” may sound a wishy-washy concept; but it is a more realistic idea than presenting a secular peace to competing faiths without the backing of religious leaders. Priests and pastors condemned violence from both sides in Northern Ireland; that has not really happened in the Holy Land.
Atheists and agnostics hate the fact, but these days religion is an inescapable part of politics. Although it is not the state’s business “to make windows into men’s souls”, it is part of the government’s job to prevent grievances from stirring into bloodshed, and fanatics from guiding policy. But it isn’t easy. Catholics did not get back into Parliament for 224 years after the Gunpowder Plot. Unless politicians learn to take account of religious feelings and to draw a firm line between church and state, the new wars of religion may prove as intractable.
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jaehwan
1:33 am | Nov 03, 2007“Partly because of their obsession with keeping church and state separate, Western powers (and religious leaders) have been too reluctant to look for faith-driven solutions to religious conflicts.”
I’ve never been to the Middle East, and so what I’m about to say may be totally off, but I think the Western powers haven’t gone FAR enough in pushing NON-faith-driven solutions to these religious conflicts. While the accords and meetings and treaties have not used religion as a foundation, they also don’t use secularism as a foundation either. I think the only workable solution is for the parties to get together and to say, “Guys, we’re all living in the present. God may exist, but since we all have to deal with one another and none of us agree on which religion or sect is correct, let’s just agree to act in a secular fashion when we’re governing.”
I think this is the only way to do it. The problem with a “faith based initiative” is that certain faiths believe very bad things about other faiths (such as fundamentalist Christianity’s belief that non-Christian activity is a sin), and without any logical secular basis, it is very hard for some of these religious folk to communicate with others.
If you ban religion from governmental activities, you’re more likely to have peace and cooperation. Sure, you’ll get a crazy right-wing George W in office every so often, but secular government is much better than anything that is “faith-driven.” In my opinion, “logic-driven” is superior to “faith-driven” is almost all cases.
Now is this possible? I don’t know, but I think it’s worth a try. I think it sounds a lot more promising than creating a government driven mostly by “faith.”
Dialectic
2:01 am | Nov 03, 2007The article isn’t advocating for a government driven by faith, or to necessarily set up governments driven by faith. What it is saying, however, is setting up secular governments where people appreciate things like the rule of law and respect for multiple faiths isn’t possible among certain populations. We liberal seculars have to account for the effect of strong religious beliefs when trying to structure a government. In a case where you have fundamentalist beliefs exacerbating tribal tensions, this takes democracy off the table.
jaehwan
1:05 pm | Nov 03, 2007I understand that the article isn’t “advocating for a government driven by faith,” but if I’m reading correctly, it is saying that faith needs to be a part of any solution, and it’s saying that the Western powers made a big mistake by trying to encourage secular government. It is saying that Western efforts need to take the indigenous religious beliefs into account. I’m reading “faith driven” to mean that the indigenous faiths need to be a part of any solution.
I’m saying (and of course, I could be totally wrong) that the solution isn’t to be more accepting of faiths. Nor is the solution to be based on secular government, where government simply ignores religion. I’m saying that the solution needs to be intentionally atheistic because the religions cannot coexist within government. Hopefully this culture based on logic, rather than belief, will pass on to the general population.
This focus on atheistic solutions may sound paternalistic–and it is–but has there ever been a government where religions peacefully coexisted side by side? Even in our own country, no person has ever become president without being a Christian. Any truly equal society, I think, has to have non-religious governance as a basis to enable everyone to be included.
jaehwan
1:07 pm | Nov 03, 2007Oops, when I said, “our own country,” I meant the U.S. Sorry. Didn’t mean to be an American snob…
nskripchun
12:05 am | Nov 05, 2007jaehwan>”Even in our own country, no person has ever become president without being a Christian. ”
Don’t forget ‘white’ or ‘male’! ;)
In general, I think people want a political leader that respects their personal values and perspective… unfortunately for atheists of the world, they neither have a reputation of respecting people’s faiths or being sympathetic to the beliefs behind them. Sam Harris, a hero of the atheist movement, doesn’t exactly get sympathy points from anybody with a religious faith for his brand of intolerance (which he freely admits, BTW). Which is sad, I think. I think atheists definitely bring a perspective that is needed in times like these.
Honestly, I think America will have a Jewish / Muslim / Buddhist / Sikh / Hindu president before we ever have an atheist president.
But discounting the current Bush regime, wouldn’t you say that our government has more or less been fairly secular?
jaehwan
8:54 pm | Nov 05, 2007nskripchun:
Yes, I agree!
It’s also unfortunate that Sam Harris has become a hero of the atheist movement. I think he’s become a hero because he appeals to the lowest common denominator. Whereas Richard Dawkins relies on logic, calm arguments, Harris is kind of a guy who, it seems to me, is often just trying to win the argument. I don’t have anything against him, per se, but I just don’t like the simplistic way in which he forms arguments.
And yes, except for the current Bush administration, I think our government has been fairly secular, but I emphasize “fairly.” We still fight over having the Ten Commandments in courthouses. Some people got bent out of shape when a Muslim Congressman wanted to get sworn in last year with the Koran. We still fight over school prayer, and “God” is still in our pledge of allegiance (I actually don’t mind it being there, but what if one was Hindu?). So even though it’s pretty quiet, the religious bias still exists.
Hopefully we’ll learn something about governing ourselves after the past eight terrible years, and hopefully we can pass our message of secular tolerance to others. (But of course, we need to learn it ourselves first. :) )
Dialectic
8:27 pm | Nov 11, 2007Jaehwan, they’re saying that in certain cases, a purely “atheistic” solution is impossible and will only exacerbate the situation further.
A very brief discussion: Iraq was an empire run by a dictator who monopolized military and political power, ruling heavily religious people with an iron fist. When they took out Saddam, they should have made certain that he could have been replaced with another dictator who monopolized military and political power, who knew how to rule heavily religious people with, hopefully, a not quite so iron fist (but still pretty iron). Why?
Because human societies develop from bands to tribes to chiefdoms to empires (or early states) to nation-states to transnational state federations. Each is accompanied by its own type of psychology and cultural beliefs. Empires require “national myths” or religions to exist stably.
When you destabilize any of these structures, if you don’t replace it with an equivalent structure real quick, it will blow apart into its smaller constituent pieces. Iraq was an empire. They thought they could basically dismantle the empire and replace it with something resembling a republican nation-state. This is impossible, because you can’t skip phases of development: in this case, you had to continue to ensure national unity in a mythic membership empire, which meant putting in somebody else to rule, and trying to establish some sort of state religion with hopefully a minimum of bloodshed.
Instead, they didn’t do that, because Bush’s crew assumed you could treat different groups of people at different phases of development the same way, and that anyone who was freed of a dictator would readily embrace democracy and republicanism. This was impossible, because they were not at that level of psycho-cultural unity, and also because each type of social organization arises with a certain type of techno-economic mode of production, and Iraq is hardly a fully industrialized state, something which a functioning democracy requires.
So instead, everything blew apart into, you guessed it, bands, tribes, and chiefdoms, and it looks very unlikely that the U.S. or anyone else is going to be able to put Iraq together again.
The last thing Iraq needs is some sort of purely atheist or secular response, because that’s what put them in this situation in the first place. If Iraq as we know it is to continue to exist, the country needs a ruler who will unite them in the name of God, who will then willingly, or be pressured into, slow decentralization and democratization.
DONKEY
11:29 pm | Nov 13, 2007Portraying these conflicts as religious conflicts is a good way to ignore the facts and history of the situation. Conflict in Ireland was not a sectarian conflict no matter how many times the Anglo/Protestant establishments repeat that lie. The IRA’s goal was to establish a sovereign socialist state which would encompass the entire island. There were Protestants who fought on their side and vice versa.
Right now the u.s. government and these mouthpieces in the media will do their best to portray all unrest as religious violence as a way of portraying resistance as irrational as if we are to believe that it is totally unrelated to u.s. military aggression. Vietnamese people were portrayed as irrationally communist murderers who weren’t capable of choosing their own government. Some mainstream politicians in the united states even recommended using nuclear weapons on them.
A critical study of history shows us that these conflicts and more are to be expected whenever there are certain strains on society such as unemployment, lack of security, food, or any of the basic needs which often are the result of a destabilizing force such as an invasion.
The problem with the secular powers in the Middle East is that almost none of them will cooperate with the Americans. Syria is ruled by the Ba’th party. The party was founded by a Christian named Michael Aflaq, a friend of Saddam Hussein. His teachings were perverted to justify secular military dictatorships. Any hope of collaborating with secular powers in the Middle East flew out the window when Saddam was toppled.
Furthermore I can’t take this article seriously because of the conspicuous absence of Saudi Arabia in the article. How can you write an article about religious fanaticism and Islam without even mentioning Saudi Arabia? It is arguably the least secular or democratic state. Saudi charities are known to support Islamist factions abroad. Not mentioning this with such a relevant topic is intentional and political.