[Peace-discuss] Faith and fanaticism

[C. G. Estabrook]

This is Hitchens' position, but I think the article is generally wrong (as well
as  wrong in detail.) And I'm a bit surprised you raise the question, given the
tut-tutting over a recent thread on theological matters on peace-discuss.
Members of the list sounded like Tony Blair's intellectual bodyguard Alistair
Campbell, who said, "We don't do God."

It's simply wrong to say -- in general or in contemporary politics -- that
"religion [is] the number one cause of violence, war and death."  It's rather
that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.

Suppressed political development is often displaced into religion -- Catholicism
in Ireland and Poland are examples.  But there are two areas where this
phenomenon is particularly important today:

[1] the United States, where organized religion is noticeably more prominent
that in similar societies in Europe.  Surely the source is that in early modern
Europe, religion was a department of government (in both Catholic and Protestant
countries), so revolt against the government -- in the string of bourgeois
revolutions from the 16th to the 20th centuries that ushered in the modern world
-- necessarily meant revolt against the church as well. But in North America the
church was a refuge from the government, from the Massachusetts Puritans to the
black church under slavery; by the closing years of the 20th century, class
animosities in the US (strongly suppressed by propaganda) were often expressed
in religious terms, notably in the off-shoot of traditional Christianity
generally called in the US (but nowhere else) Evangelicalism.

[2] the Arab world (and some other Muslim societies, like Iran) where post-World
War II secular nationalism was defeated (e.g., Iran in 1953), primarily by the
US (and its client Israel, especially in 1967) -- and religion-based
anti-colonialism took its place.  (Note that the three reasons Osama bin Laden
gave for the 9/11/2001 attacks were primarily secular, viz., the oppression of
the Palestinians, the sanctions against Iraq, and the US military occupation of
Saudi Arabia.)

Remember too that the Abrahamic traditions -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
-- are hostile to religion.  They condemn the worship of gods (see Exodus 20 and
parallels in Christian & Islamic texts) and insist that what they worship is not
a god as they are generally understood. ("There is no god but God...") All three
lack the liberal virtue of accepting other people's gods. The Roman Empire,
e.g., didn't make laws against Christians -- it simply prosecuted them under the
existing laws against atheism (of which the Christians were guilty -- they
didn't believe in the Greco-Roman gods). --CGE

Brussel Morton K. wrote:
> Maybe it's not about faith and god, but I couldn't resist posting this. Maybe
>  it's just faith in our leaders which causes the trouble --mkb
> 
> *Why We Need To Study God* *by Larry Beinhart*
> 
> /"Religious faith will be of the same significance to the 21st Century as 
> political ideology was to the 20th Century."  -- Tony Blair/
> 
> Mumbai. 9/11. Chechnya. Sectarian violence in Iraq. Somalia. Afghanistan. 
> Nigeria.
> 
> The man with the most military power in the history of the world is reported
>  to have said, "I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 
> 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did, and then 
> God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …' And I did."
> 
> It was called a Crusade.
> 
> These are the defining events of the new century.
> 
> After a brief, semi-retirement of a few hundred years, religion has returned
>  as the number one cause of violence, war and death.
> 
> So the fundamental national security questions of our time have to be about 
> faith.
> 
> What is it about faith that makes people eager to commit suicide so long as 
> it enables them to commit mass murder while they're at it?
> 
> What is it about faith that makes world leaders like George Bush and Tony 
> Blair - with armies, bombers, missiles, artillery, and navies - ignore good 
> advise, abandon good sense, and lead their countries to two of the stupidest
>  wars in history?
> 
> And while they're at it, to radically change the moral positions that their 
> countries adopted just sixty years ago and commit what were then called war 
> crimes: initiating a war of aggression, torture, and the failure to provide 
> for the populations of the countries they occupied?
> 
> What is it about faith that made it suddenly re-emerge as the driving force 
> in American politics and in the politics of the Islamic countries?
> 
> It seems self-evident that God should have become our number one area of 
> study during the last few years. Governments, universities and foundations 
> should have all rushed forward with funds to create programs and recruit 
> students to find out what this God thing is.
> 
> The war in Iraq ought to have taught us here in the West, two lessons.
> 
> We are very, very good at invading countries and smashing their armies. Even
>  better than we thought we were.
> 
> But that doesn't stop suicide bombers. It only encourages them.
> 
> The nature of the people who attacked us, and the results of our response to
>  them, make it obvious that understanding fanatical faith is at least as 
> important as developing a reusable hypersonic cruise vehicle, more useful 
> than developing new tactical nuclear weapons, and if we can find a way to 
> reach or to undermine the faith of fanatics, it will be far more economical 
> than invading a series of foreign countries.
> 
> But the opposite has happened: billions for bombs! Not a penny for thought! A
>  smart bomb remains as dumb as a brick if the people firing it don't know who
>  to hit or the right reasons to hit them.
> 
> God and religion should have become important to us, we, the just plain 
> people. Whether or not our leaders are people of "faith," we really need them
>  to balance their faith with good sense, so they make better decisions.
> 
> A serious conversation about faith and how it works, should have become one 
> of the leading topics of our national conversation.
> 
> What we had was a public parade of politicians on television competing to 
> prove how much faith each of them has. It was embraced by a universal 
> assumption that religious faith is a good way to pick our leaders. Although 
> the evidence before us – George Bush, Tony Blair, Osama bin Laden – points 
> the other way.
> 
> God, religion, faith, spirituality – whichever face of the prism we are 
> looking at – runs like a vertical pillar through all the levels of our lives.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Our international policies are fixed largely around this war on terror. Our 
> most volatile domestic political issues – regulating our sex lives, abortion,
>  birth control, homosexuality, separation of church and state – are rooted in
>  our religious views. Our social circles, our family structures, our 
> individual lives, our world views, how we live and die, our health and 
> happiness, are organized around our spiritual views, or lack thereof.
> 
> All this, without a serious attempt to find out what religion really is.
> 
> /Larry Beinhart is the author of /_/Wag the Dog/_ 
> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/156025663X?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>/, /_/The
>  Librarian/_ 
> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/1560256362?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>/, and 
> /_/Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin/_ 
> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/1560258861?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>/. All 
> available at //nationbooks.org/ <http://www.nationbooks.org/>