Stirring up fundamentals

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Religion is back. The Falling Towers were only the opening thunderclap of the 21st century. Pundits tell us that what secular ideologies – Communism, Nazism – were to the 20th century, religious ones will be to the 21st.

Here is the Europeans’ nightmare: declining, ageing population. Bring in the worker bees from poor countries to work, pay taxes, feed the white folks in their nursing homes. The new workers are young, fertile, and brown skinned. They are slated to be a majority in Denmark in only 60 years, by one study.

The nightmare fear is that, in those 60 years, the immigrants’ fundamentalist religion will not change; that when ‘they’ become a majority, and get political power, they will execute homosexuals and women who have sex with the wrong man, even if raped (as happens in some Islamic countries today); that patriarchal religious law and intolerance, of the kind that Europeans have fought for centuries to rid themselves of, will triumph again.

Maybe sharia law has never been applied to non-Muslims, as claimed in the attached debate. But even today the nightmare is starting: a young Muslim woman killed by her own father in Sweden in 1998, because she refused to submit to a forced marriage and had the wrong boyfriend. There are several such ‘honour’ killings a year in Europe, in fact. ‘For Norwegians, the most striking aspect of the story was the number of Norwegian Muslims who, when asked by the media for their comments, did not condemn the murder outright. More than one interviewee was of the opinion that the father had done what he had to do.’

Is it racist to say that this is an outrage? Is it racist, or imperialist, to say it is an even greater outrage that there are, according to Amnesty International, three honour killings a day in Pakistan? This is a question to be debated on this site. Do we owe respect to any religion, whatever it proscribes? Do we let it off the hook, if it is at a different ‘historical or developmental stage’ than those we hold to a higher standard? Do we excoriate George W. Bush’s Bible Belt supporters but cut some slack for fundamentalist Muslims?

Can whites critique Islamism in a non-racist way?

Next week, I want to discuss Bruce Bawer’s article, Tolerating Intolerance: The Challenge of Fundamentalist Islam in Western Europe, in Partisan Review, July 2002. Bawer is a gay American Christian living in Norway. Interesting that it takes a gay Christian to make the most arresting contribution to this debate (at least, that I have seen – please send me links to others you think are better). Bawer argues that until the left finds non-racist ways to oppose and weaken fundamentalist Islamist ideology, it is giving carte blanche (hmm) to the right to do so in racist ways. Next week, I will summarise Bawer’s article. If you can read it and send me your comments, I will include them then or in following weeks.

Of course, another European nightmare is that religion dies altogether on the continent. In that case, the Muslims may be the saviours, the regenerating force. What do you think?

Is ‘fundamentalism’ a response to ‘backwardness’?

Today, we present a measured debate. Two wonderful voices – urbane, knowledgeable, reasonable. They say they disagree with each other, a German Catholic and an Iranian Muslim. And they do, to an extent. Professor Heiner Bielefeldt, the Catholic theologian, argues that human rights must be extended to all, without delay. Human rights are not an alien set of values, he says; instead they ensure the freedom to choose values.

Iranian writer and sociologist, Mohammad Saeed Bahmanpour, warns that the West must not impose its values. ‘What Western societies are currently doing in Muslim societies is to enforce the rate of change, rather than letting that change happen naturally, and that is what is dangerous,’ he says.

So their sense of timing and urgency is different, but both men seem to agree that economic development will at some point lead to pluralist societies, where different religions can co-exist. Is this true?

Is ‘fundamentalism’ (in quotes because there are real problems extending that Protestant term to other religions) a response to ‘backwardness’ and humiliation? Will affluence, success and confidence dissolve it? Is there a ‘natural development’ towards a secular society? Or is this just a crass sociological put down of religion? This I would also like to hear your views on. Or send me good Internet links that point us to answers.

Faith is not ‘at base’ all economics and politics, and yet no one can deny the links are there….

If so, how long does it take for economic success to dissolve religious intolerance?

Try this idea for size. You could argue that the US South (the so-called Bible Belt) went fundamentalist because it lost the economic race and thus the Civil War to the more urban, industrial, sophisticated North. It was humiliated. Today we see many humiliated, but educated, Islamic idealists looking to the next world, in a fantasy ideology (a fantasy of ease in heaven for martyrs) which has enabled the 9/11 and Palestinian suicide attacks. You could say it is the humiliation in being left behind or oppressed, rather than the poverty alone, that drives such dreams of semi-magical solutions. Many defeated US southerners turned to what they thought was the rock of ancient fundamentals plus a new fantasy of the Second Coming, the Rapture – a big magical release from the pain of this world.

But now that air conditioning and sunshine have concentrated American economic growth in the South, will the fundamentalists become more interested in this world again? More worldly, more political, more eager to rule the world. This we have seen for some decades now. But then the next stage: more into stewardship of the Earth’s resources, and care for the world’s poor – a renewal of the social gospel? There are many signs of just that. Check out Senator Jesse Helms, the Bible Belt political leader who has blocked aid to Africa but recently had a conversion, helped by Kofi Annan and rock star Bono (who is a Christian and had more faith in Helms than I would have dared to have).

But what is the cultural time lag? How long does it take for economic success to dissolve partisan religious zeal and intolerance, if it is true that it does? In Ireland, it seemed to happen rather fast: the South took off, fastest growth in Europe, Irish per capita income overtook English, and zip, the religious war in the North was over.

Are we actually that materialistic? Is religious faith second best to shopping? Once we are affluent, will all our societies allow divorce, including divorce from religion?

Is Islam’s homophobia cultural, not religious?

Or it is that once we are affluent, we allow individualism, and dream of becoming all that we each could be? I find it inspiring – though many readers of this site who cleave to more traditional faith will not – that the UK Guardian reports on a three-year-old support group for Muslim gays in Britain. ‘We believe that homosexuality is not a religious problem, it’s a social taboo,’ says Adnan Ali, who runs the group. ‘So we started this group because we thought we’d explore what the Koran says. For many of us, our link with our Creator, with Allah, is still important to us. And we are determined to remain Muslim and gay.’

Bahmanpour, in our debate, says: ‘I can’t imagine rights for homosexuals being included in any Muslim version of human rights. Homosexuality is punished by death in Muslim societies. Even so, suppose that instead of 80 homosexuals in Iran, there turn out to be 80,000. What are you going to do then? You will begin to say, “OK. This is animal behaviour. It is a social disease. But it is not an offence.’’’ And his very next sentence is the one quoted earlier, about the West pushing too fast for change. He’s not challenging the direction, just the timing and origin of the change. He leaves open the door: what if it is Muslim gays who push for the change from inside?

Can we recreate our religions? Have there not been amazing homosexual poets and spiritual leaders in the Muslim past? Tell me if I’m wrong.

And what do you have faith in?

This column is yours – email me! It is going to discuss faith and religion, in the world and in our lives. In my opinion, even people without religious belief need faith. To choose to have a child, to work for others, to be bold, to be oneself, takes some kind of faith. Call it something else, but you need it.

Each week I am going to bring you questions and opinions, articles, links, debates, personal stories. I have faith that they will help us understand what is happening to religion. Or else they will mightily confuse us. Surely anyone who has not been highly confused at some point in their religious/spiritual quest is missing out.

I hope that many of these questions and opinions will be yours. There’s an ‘email me’ button on this page. Please use it to drop me a note, a link, an article, whatever. I will put on this page (or quote from) those that most interest me. (Anything you write to me that is NOT labelled Confidential will be fair game for me to quote here.) There is a personal filter going on here. I’ll tell you more about the person as time goes on, in small doses.

Will religion be the new millennium’s ideology?

Oh yes, the pundits. As in: ‘Pundits tell us that what secular ideologies – Communism, Nazism – were to the 20th century, religious ones will be to the 21st.’ A must-read article is Philip Jenkins’ "The Next Christianity" in the October Atlantic (not reachable free, but costing $2.95, online – however this interview with him is freely available).

Two quotes. From the blurb, ‘Tumultuous conflicts within Christianity will leave a deeper mark than Islam’s on the century ahead.’ (This is because Christianity is bigger, and growing faster.) From the text, ‘the twenty-first century will almost certainly be regarded by future historians as a century in which religion replaced ideology as the prime animating and destructive force in human affairs, guiding attitudes to political liberty and obligation, concepts of nationhood, and, of course, conflicts and wars.’ Read it and weep. Or shout for joy. And tell us which.

This too, we will discuss in the weeks ahead. See you there.

Want to share your thoughts? Join the discussion here. Or email: dave.opendemocracy@earthlink.net