On the Dangers of Fundamentalism

by Larry Smith

"If you have suffered a defeat, so did the the enemy. We alternate these vicissitudes among mankind so that God may know the true believers and choose martyrs from among you; and that God may test the faithful and annihilate the infidels." -- The Koran (3:140).

"Most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday. Surely, if we create the world anew, the practice of organising our lives around untestable propositions found in ancient literature—to say nothing of killing and dying for them— would be impossible to justify."-- Sam Harris, The End of Faith.

According to the pope, since Islam has attacked the West, Christians should destroy Muslims as the enemies of God.

Of course, it was not the recently anointed Pope Benedict XVI who made this call. It was Pope Urban II - about a thousand years ago when he launched the first crusade against the Turks and Arabs who had conquered the formerly Christian Middle East.

But Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top deputy to Osama bin Laden, was quick to compare the two: "This charlatan Benedict brings back to our memories the speech of his predecessor charlatan Urban II in the 11th century...in which he instigated Europeans to fight Muslims."

The al Quaeda leader was referring to a recent lecture by Pope Benedict on the subject of faith and reason. In it, the pope referred to a 14th century religious debate between Greek and Persian scholars. This conversation took place about 50 years before the Turks captured Constantinople - putting an end to Christian civilisation in the East.

In his talk, the pope called for a "genuine dialogue of cultures and religions" based on reason. As a starting point he quoted a verse in the Koran that says "there is no compulsion in religion", and argued that violence is incompatible with the nature of God, who is "not pleased by blood."

According to Pope Benedict, theology - meaning inquiry into the rationality of faith - should be an important subject for modern scholarship, since "not to act reasonably is contrary to the nature of God."

That short speech in September - and the worldwide Muslim reaction to it in the form of protests, demonstrations and killings - points to one of the gravest issues of our age. In reality, the issue goes back to the earliest days, when our ancestors began forming the beliefs most of us take for granted today. But for the sake of brevity we will begin the narrative a little later.

In 1492, just a few months before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, the Spanish monarchs who sent him on his way to the Bahamas had finally succeeded in expelling Muslim armies from the Iberian peninsula after a 700-year occupation.

A couple of decades later the Turks - at the height of their power - were stopped at the gates of Vienna in Austria. And these two events set the limits of Islamic power at opposite ends of the European continent.

What followed was a long militiary and cultural decline for the Muslims, which culminated in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and its replacement by a secular Turkish state at the end of the First World War. Most Muslim lands were divided amongst the European empires at that time.

In fact, it was this final defeat of the Islamic caliphate in 1918 that Osama bin Laden alluded to in an October, 2001 statement. Referring to the 9/11 attacks, he said: "Our nation has been tasting this humiliation and contempt for more than 80 years...neither the United States nor he who lives in the United States will enjoy security before...all the infidel armies leave the land of Mohammed."

The followers of Mohammed had burst out of the Arabian desert some six centuries after the death of Jesus. They captured the original Christian homelands of the mid-east, destroyed the remnants of the Roman Empire in Greece and occupied Spain, Portugal, parts of southern Italy and the Balkans in a seemingly inexorable Islamic jihad to conquer the world.

It was this Muslim expansion that spurred Pope Urban II to launch his crusade in 1095 to recapture the Holy Land. The first of nine expeditions that attempted to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands, it was a short-term success, but a strategic failure that demonstrated Europe's fear of being overrun by Islamic armies.

Although Islam was a great civilisation when Europe was still in the Dark Ages, the Europeans eventually forged ahead by the use of science, technology and new forms of economic production. Today, experts say the performance of most Muslim countries is so poor - despite their oil wealth - that it has generated the kind of extremism we see expressed in suicide bombings and the 9/11 attacks.

As historian Bernard Lewis put it: "The revolutionary wave in Islam has several components. One of them is a sense of humiliation: the feeling of a community of people accustomed to regard themselves as the sole custodians of God's truth, commanded by Him to bring it to the infidels, who suddenly find themselves dominated and exploited by those same infidels."

Others, like former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, believe we are facing a war based on religion that opposes US policies, including "America's ability to keep Arab oil prices acceptable to the West; unqualified support for Israel; military presence in the Arabian peninsula; and protection for Muslim tyrannies."

But Stanford University philosopher Sam Harris (in his 2005 bestseller 'The End of Faith') shows us how we all suspend reason in favour of religious beliefs, even when those beliefs inspire the worst human atrocities.

"Nothing explains the actions of Muslim extremists, and the widespread tolerance of them in the Muslim world, better than the tenets of Islam," he writes. "Any systematic approach to ethics, or to understanding the necessary underpinnings of a civil society, will find many Muslims standing eye deep in the red barbarity of the 14th century."

And more to the point, he argues that in a world full of weapons of mass destruction, we can no longer afford well-armed, malevolent regimes like Iran: "We are at war with Islam...It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been 'hijacked' by extremists. We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran."

In this view there is no such thing as Muslim extremism or fundamentalism: "Islam is undeniably a religion of conquest. The only future devout Muslims can envisage - as Muslims - is one in which all infidels have been converted to Islam, subjugated or killed," Harris writes.

Or, put another way by Professor Lewis, "From the lifetime of its founder, and therefore in its sacred scriptures, Islam is associated in the minds of Muslims with the exercise of political and military power...For Muslims no piece of land once added to the realm of Islam can ever be finally renounced"

All this is not to let Christians off the hook, however. In fact, Harris would likely view Pope Benedict's discourse on faith and reason as irrational: "We live in an age in which mere words—'Jesus', 'Allah', 'Ram'—can mean the difference between eternal torment and bliss everlasting. Considering the stakes here it is not surprising that many of us occasionally find it necessary to murder other human beings for using the wrong magic words, or the right ones for the wrong reasons."

As Karen Armstrong notes in her seminal book, 'The Battle for God', the fundamentalism that has developed in Christianity, Judaism and Islam are deeply similar. They are "engaged in a conflict with enemies whose secularist policies and beliefs seem inimical to religion itself. They regard this conflict as a cosmic war between good and evil."

In fact, she says, the American Christian fundamentalists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson proclaimed the 9/11 tragedy to be "a judgement of God for the sins of the secular humanists in the United States - a view not far removed from that of the Muslim hijackers."

You would expect reasonable people to believe today that religious war should be as unthinkable for us as slavery and cannibalism are, but as Harris points out, this will be "a matter of our having dispensed with the dogma of faith." And that unfortunately appears to be far from the case.

For example, a news segment on Iranian television recently reported that the movie 'Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest', which was partly filmed in the Bahamas, is a Zionist conspiracy.

"Zionist ideology uses all means to impose its cultural control. Cinema, as an attractive and popular form of art, has always interested the Zionist circles....The example of Pirates of the Caribbean - Hollywood's latest effort to gain control - is all the more striking if we bear in mind (that) Disney and its productions have been associated, more than anything, with the Zionist lobby in Hollywood."

We can see echoes of this in our own society, where local fundamentalists condemned the movie Brokeback Mountain, and want to legislate their conception of right and wrong. Powerful preachers are trying to insert themselves into the political process, while liberals stand aside in the belief that it is much ado about nothing.

In point of fact, belief is not a private matter, and never has been. Beliefs can be intrinsically dangerous, according to Harris:. "As a man believes so he will act—believe that you are the member of a chosen people...believe that you will be rewarded with an eternity of unimaginable delights by dealing death to (the) infidels—and flying a plane into a building is scarcely more than a matter of being asked to do it."

Comments

[EB Christen]

I enjoyed the balanced analysis of fundamentalism across religions. Islam is not the 'enemy' that Harris seems to think though. The enemy is fundamentalism across the board, as you rightly conclude. It would be a great thing if all the 'liberals' and 'secularists' could voice themselves more strongly without resorting to the passionate, froth at the mouth screaming that these others always resort to and really make their voice heard in the world again. But whether it is the President of the USA or the President of Iran, reason has been placed on the back burner and the logic of power and the passion of religiosity (as opposed to genuine spiritualism) make dangerous bed fellows. As it is on the international level, so it is locally here in the Bahamas. To allow the increasing influence of the 'church' into politics here would be disastrous. Lawyers make bad enough politicians as it is, priests and pastors - truly frightening.

[doug]

I just watched "Obsession - Radical Islam's War Against The West"

Everyone on the planet must watch this.

If I had ultimate power over the country I'd implement manditory public education days. For 1 random hour on 1 random day of every week all tv, cable, satellite, radio, even internet will be forced to show the same thing. The first thing I'd show would be this movie. I'd probably show it 2 weeks in a row.

Then I'd show 20/20's Stupid In America (if the usa is dumb and our kids arent on their level, God help us)

http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5862460287603221198&q=obsession

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338

[bahamianworldcitizen]

Following EBC's comment...Islam is a religion of peace. There is no doubt that extremism and fundamentalism is alive today, but I think it is a mistake to make the direct link with the Qur'an and the religion. Fundamentalism exists among followers of all of the Ibraheemic faiths.

This article begins with an excerpt from sura al Imraan or the Family of Imraan. This sura reflects on the battle of Badr and Uhud and calls upon Muslims to remain constant in faith, pray for guidance and maintain hope in the future. The translation you provided was probably written as an abridged version by Lewis or another western scholar. The following is a translation, directly from the Arabic:

'If a wound hath touched you,
Be sure a similar wound hath touched others.
Such days (of varying fortunes)
We give to men and men
By turns: that God (Allah)may know
Those that believe,
And that He make take
To Himself from your ranks
Martyr witnesses (to Truth).
And God (Allah) loveth not
Those that do wrong.' 3:140

This ayat refers to the battle of Uhud fought in 625 between the Muslims of Madina and the non-believers Makkans. There were many casualties in this battle and many setbacks. This sura describes the stages of the battle and describes those who fought in the battle in terms of their strength of faith in the oneness of God (Allah). It is a shame that this ayat has been mistranslated and misinterpreted to fuel hatred, evil and misunderstanding.

Sura al Imraan ends with a hopeful message for all those who believe in God-- Christian, Muslim and Jew:

'And there are, certainly,
Among the People of the Book (Jews and Christians),
Those who believe in God (Allah),
In the revelation to you,
And in the revelation to you,
Bowing in humility to God (Allah):
They will not sell
the Signs of God (Allah)
For a miserable gain!
For them is a reward
With their Lord,
And God (Allah) is swift in account.
O ye who believe!
Perservere in patience
And constancy; vie
in such perseverance;
Strengthen each other;
And fear God (Allah);
That ye may prosper (in faith). 3:199-200.

As an aside, this article was posted during the holy month of Ramadan, the month when the Qur'an was revealed and the month where Muslims fast. The feast at the end of Ramadan (called Eid ul fitr) will be on the 22nd or 23rd of this month and is a good opportunity for non-Muslims to get together with Muslims and learn about Islam. Perhaps yourself or one of your readers might wish to take up this opportunity.

[larry smith]

I could care less about the military campaigns reflected in that verse. They only reinforce the fact that Mohammed was a military leader.

I could care less about Islamic rituals and observances. They are meaningless in the context of this discussion.

What about Muslims standing up publicly and forcefully against the crimes that are being committed in the name of Allah?

What is Islam doing to proclaim itself as a religion of peace?

[EB Christen]

@Larry
I think bahamianworldcitizen's selection of that passage was intended to prove a valid point. It is this particular passage that is often cited as justification for jihad and martyrdom among fundamentalists. By showing that the passage is misinterpreted, bahamianworldcitizen is trying to demonstrate that it is fundamentalist men and not Islam or the Qu'ran itself that has given rise to Islamic fundamentalism. Given the context of the conversation, it is a truly valid point. You likewise make a valid point in asking what Islam is doing to proclaim itself as a religion of peace, but then, western media does a pretty poor job of showing groups that are opposed to fundamentalism. Just because FOX and CNN don't show these groups, doesn't mean they don't exist. The goal of the west must be to strengthen the voices of these groups - thus far, they have done a very poor job and most of their actions have only served to strengthen the more radical segments of the societies.

[larry smith]

Next week's column will present a review of this issue taken from a variety of Internet sources.

[muhammad]

hi i am watching your web and injoing i am modren islamic schoolar i am writing a book . i want joint one of your seminar i can spend my own money .without any body help .when you inviting me?