October 19, 2017--"Big Gods"

I've been reading a fascinating book from 2013 with this title by Ara Norenzayan. In less than 200 pages he surveys the evidence that human's propensity to create religions is both genetic and cultural. Also, that it is globally pervasive and dynamic. More religions are literally being created every day. 

In spite of the title, this is not pop social biology nor about the so-called "God Gene." It is chock full of findings from the latest and most sophisticated research. But readable. So, I recommend it highly since our planet is roiled in large part by religious strife. In spite of the Enlightenment that in the 18th century emphasized scientific evidence as opposed assertions based on belief, in only a few countries in Western Europe, religions continue to play a powerful and, in many cases, dominant role in shaping behavior.

Here is a brief sample about the number of believers--

There are today nearly 2 billion self-proclaimed Christians. Islam, with 1.3 billion people is thriving too, and fundamentalist strains are making fresh inroads into all three Abrahamic faiths. Christian fundamentalism in particular is spreading like wildfire in places like China and Southeast Asia and most of all, in sub-Saharan Africa. 

The United States--the world's most economically powerful society and a scientifically advanced one--is also, anomalously, one of the most religious. Over 90 percent of Americans believe in God, 93 and 85 percent believe in heaven and hell, respectively, and close to one in two Americans believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis.  

These facts and figures . . . about human evolution [that] despite many predictions of religion's demise in the last 200 years, most people in most societies in the world are, and always have been, deeply religious. . . . 

Religions have always been multiplying, growing  and mutating at a brisk pace. In one estimate [World Christian Encyclopedia], new religions sprout at an average rate of two to three per day. [My italics]  

"Many are called, but few are chosen," says the Gospel according to Matthew (22:14). This "Matthew Effect" might as well refer to the iron law of religious evolution, which dictates that while legions of new religious elements are created, most of them die out, save a potent few that endure and flourish. 

By one estimate (ibid), there are 10,000 religions in the world today. Yet the vast majority of humanity adheres to a disproportionate few of them.

Eye of Horus--Egypt--Late 6th to 4th Centuries BCE

December 10, 2015--Islamic Eschatology: "The Blessed Invasion"

About 15 years ago, at a Ford Foundation meeting where I was serving as a senior director, because our new president wanted to shift some of the foundation's emphasis to cultural grantmaking that would include funding organizations devoted to religious tolerance and interfaith projects, senior staff gathered to discuss what that meant and how we should proceed.

For me it turned out to be a life-altering experience.

One staff member who attended was a Pakistani-born and raised colleague who, after hearing the rest of us flounder for half a day, struggling with how to think about our new president's challenge, out of exasperation with us, she said--

"The problem is that all of you are liberals and liberals look back to the Enlightenment for guidance on how to think about the world and its problems. You all believe that there are rational solutions to every problem. In fact, you abjure anything that isn't rational or evidence-based. Thus you are uncomfortable with much that has to do with the power of culture, especially belief systems, religions, that are not strictly speaking rational.

"In fact, they are decidedly not rational nor fact-based. None of them are. They are about belief. Derived from that. And thus you do not know how to respond to our new CEO's mandate--that we pay more attention to the power of culture as it shapes peoples' lives, again, especially how religious beliefs affect behavior. Even, perhaps especially behavior that doesn't make sense if viewed through only an Enlightenment lens."

The room grew hushed. None of us, very much including me, knew what to think, how to respond, most important what to do.

And over the next few years of funding cultural institutions and organizations devoted to religious diversity, very little that we supported had much impact.

Retrospectively, we funded groups that were pushing against the mainstream, against orthodoxies mainly in the Middle East, orthodoxies that limited diversity of thought and practice. We supported, for example, groups that were fighting for more gender equality within powerful religious institutions. But to them, not unlike how our government's interventions in the Muslim world are meeting with such fierce resistance, the organizations we funded may have done more unintended harm than good.

From an Enlightenment perspective, which still guided the foundation's work, we thought that all we needed to do was raise social justice issues and religious leaders would quickly see the light (pun intended) and embark upon campaigns of reform.

In fact, history is showing that various forms of Western intervention--from the cultural to governmental to military--most often contribute to the problem.

Out of arrogance, ignoring history, we may have caused harm with the best of intentions.

Thus, from that, for me, fateful meeting and our largely failed grantmaking, I have become convinced that national and ethnic and tribal culture derived from religious beliefs (from the arts to language to gender relations to governance structures) are more powerful than any other social force. Economics very much included.

In fact, people in the Islamic world (and for that matter, the rest of us) are not just longing to have access to Western consumer goods, Hollywood movies, rock and roll or, as too many of us back in the day metaphorically and literally thought, MTV.

Many, perhaps most reject the blandishments of the West--things that objectively-speaking would "improve" their lives--because belief systems and cultural practices teach them otherwise.

Thus, the power of culture and religion. Something my colleagues and I never fully came to understand.

Since that time I have attempted to learn more about belief systems, especially those that are so powerful and influential that they cause people frequently to act in ways that seemingly contribute to their own disadvantage.

Looking at the world and peoples' behavior that way, What's the Matter with Kansas can be extrapolated to most of the rest of the world.

I have been particularly interested in religious orthodoxies, especially those that are guided by an apocalyptic view of the world. That believe the End is near and that it is not too soon to be prepared to welcome it.

We find strong themes of this kind in all three Religions of the Book and those of you who have been following Behind know that this has for years been an ongoing topic for me, even to the point of obsession that runs the likely risk of boring you.

But during these dangerous times, I cannot resist applauding the New York Times, which two days ago, on the front page, ran a story about prophetic Islam and how an awareness of its wide-reaching power is guiding some of out best strategic behavior as we struggle to figure out culturally careful ways to limit and hopefully defeat ISIS.

Specifically, ISIS wants the United Staes to be drawn into a ground war in northern Syria.

ISIS leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi called our 2003 intervention in Iraq "the Blessed Invasion." A view based on Muslim prophetic texts that state that Islam will be victorious against the West after an apocalyptic battle that will be ignited once Western armies enter the region.

Jean-Pierre Filin, author of Apocalypse in Islam, says, "This is a very powerful and emotional narrative. It gives . . . [Islamic] fighters the feeling that they are not only part of the elite, they are part of the final battle."

These texts prophesize an apocalyptic battle in the small Syrian towns of Dabiq and al-Amaq. Last year Islamic State militants beheaded American hostage Peter Kassig in Dabiq. The executioner said, "Here we are burying the first American crusader in Dabiq, eagerly awaiting the remainder of your armies to arrive."

January 12, 2105--1,000 Lashes

Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, one of our closest allies, a blogger was sentenced recently to a fine of more than $250,000, 10 years in jail, and 1,000 lashes to be administered with a cane in public over several months.

His "crime," starting a bog called Free Saudi Liberals, which in itself was enough to bring him to the attention of the country's religious establishment. Specifically, he was charged with "cybercrime," "insulting Islam," and "disobeying his father." Probably, if he had obeyed his father, they would be giving him only 500 lashes.

This punishment was considered so out of line that the United States, through the State Department, took the very rare step of criticizing the world's largest exporter of oil and one of the few Arab countries joining us in the battle against ISIS.

Saudi Arabia, recall, is really a theocracy. The House of Saud, which operates as an absolute monarchy, to get away with that and to secure the hundreds of billions of petro-dollars that flow to them, has an ongoing deal with some of the most fanatical of Islamic factions--the Wahhabis (the same group that was responsible for 9/11)--to allow the Sauds to rule in return for diverting other billions to the Wahhabi leadership and allowing them to be in charge of spiritual, judicial, and cultural life in the kingdom. Thus, the suppression and punishment of blogger Raif Badawi.

According the Amnesty International, the Saudis have already begun to administer the flogging--the first 50 lashes were carried out recently.

One glimmer of humanity--according to an article in the New York Times, Human Rights Watch reports that in Saudi Arabia floggers are supposed to distribute the lashes from the top of the back to the back of the legs without breaking the skin.

Nine-fifty to go.

September 19, 2014--Best of Behind: Off With Their Heads!

This one is from March 27, 2006. Unfortunately, it could have written today--

As a secular liberal I am trying very hard to get comfortable with the idea that there is great diversity within Islam—that not every Muslim is an Islamist radical. That though the Mullahs have control of the government of Iran and run most of the Madrasses in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, over the long course of Islam there have been moderate and tolerant voices, traditions, and practices. I spend a lot of time in Spain, and although I know the period during which much of Spain was under Islamic domination was not exactly a Jeffersonian democracy, Christians and even Jews were tolerated and played open and significant roles in the government, places of study, and the economy.

But the situation in Afghanistan right now, where there is the likelihood that the courts will sentence to beheading Abdul Rahman because he 15 years ago converted from Islam to Christianity, is nudging me toward my own shrinking limits of tolerance.

Like you I know that this is now a hot political issue in the U.S., with President Bush being pushed by the hard Christian Right to intervene. After all didn’t we invade and occupy Afghanistan in retaliation for their harboring and supporting bin Laden as well as to bring democracy to that part of the world? Didn’t we help them write a constitution that attempts to straddle our notion of democracy and their version of conservative Islam? And perhaps, just maybe, didn’t some of us see this as an opportunity to do a little proselytizing on the side?

I know that the Sharia laws about apostasy were shaped as early as the eighth century and when that occurred it was viewed as equivalent to treason—after all Islam at the time was fighting for its very existence and for someone to abandon the religion was literally going over to the enemy.

But that was then and this is now. Some contemporary Muslim jurists who read Islamic history this way also point out that the Prophet never called for the execution of apostates and taught that there should be no compulsion in religion.

Islam is in no way today so equally imperiled, in spite of how many in the Islamic world view our preemptive wars, and so shouldn’t it be possible for Afghanistan to have a constitution that might serve as a model for the moderate diversity within Islam? We’ll see.

I have a further question—putting aside this history, why should conversion from Islam (or any other religion) be such a burning issue? If yours is The True Religion and your coreligionists are the only ones who will go to your version of heaven, isn’t the very fact of leaving your religion and thereby losing the eternal rewards it offers punishment enough? Why not just let apostates live on and suffer throughout the remaining years of their natural lives and after that be condemned for all of eternity to the punishment they so deserve?

Yet once again, I don’t get it.

August 4, 2014--The War Against Culture

This is not a culture war as we in the United States know it. It's not about matters such as same-sex marriage or if evolution should be taught in public schools. Our culture "wars" seem trivial in comparison to what is being fought over in the center of Iraq.

There, in Mosul, in the country's second-largest city, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has seized control and is imposing strict Islamic law--sharia. ISIS is also waging war on culture itself, on history, and on people's identity.

The headlines have been about ISIS extracting vengeance against the Shiites who are their historic enemies. How they have been rounding up and summarily executing anyone with the taint of having served in or supported the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.

All of this is sadly familiar. What is different is that ISIS is deliberately and systematically obliterating everything that makes Mosul Mosul and everything that connects the people there to their 8,000-year history and culture.

Mosul is one of the most ancient of cities and was once the capital of the Assyrian Empire. For centuries, at the crossroads between East and West, it was fought over and conquered in turn by the Persians, Arabs, Turks, and others, all of whom left evidence of their occupation.

Now ISIS has seized control and rather than adding their imprint to this cultural mix they are doing all in their power to obliterate all evidence of the past, especially destroying any Assyrian, Jewish, Christian, and even every Islamic shrine, the presence of which, according to their beliefs, are heretical.

Thus far they have leveled statues of Abu Tammam, a revered Arab poet, and Mullah Othman, a famous and popular 19th century musician and poet. And they have driven all Christians from the city, obliterating their holy places or forcing their conversion to ISIS's form of Islam. A form so severe that even Al-Qaeda has denounced them.

They also destroyed the grave site and shrine to the prophet Jonah whose life story plays a prominent part in the traditions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Residents fear that ISIS is planning to tear down and reduce to rubble the city's ancient leaning minaret. It is older than the Leaning Tower of Pisa and its image is represented on Iraq's 10,000 dinar bank note.

    Wrecked grave site of the biblical prophet Jonah

When ISIS militants entered Mosul in June, government troops stripped off their uniforms, threw away their arms, and attempted to blend into the civilian population for at least two reasons--to save their lives and because they felt that ISIS rule would be less oppressive than that imposed by the Maliki regime.

But with their history and culture imperiled, according to the New York Times, resistance to ISIS has emerged and Mosul residents, taking up arms, are coming forward to resist further desecration of their historical and religious shrines.

This is a reminder that culture trumps politics and economics every time.

There is a lesson here for those of us who, above all else, believe in reason and are reluctant to see the geopolitical force of emotion and belief. And thus we frequently fail to understand the power of culture.

Belief systems, history, national narratives, language, customs, arts, collective memory are more powerful than flatscreen TVs, Nikes, or iPhones.

OK, maybe not iPhones.

October 9, 2013--Virgins in Paradise

This must be the week for passing along quotes from my reading. 

Monday, from Woodrow Wilson, I shared A. Scott Berg's description of the leaders of the Four Powers, victors in the First World War, literally redrawing the map of the world while on their hands and knees on the floor of the president's office in Paris.

Today I offer one from Jess Walter's powerful 2006 novel, The Zero, set in the days right after the destruction of the World Trade Center at what became Ground Zero. Largely through the eyes of a policeman who was there that day, Walter takes readers on a harrowing tour of a city and a country shuddering through the aftershocks of that devastating terrorist attack.

His hero cop, Brian Remy moves through the dreamscape narrative in a state of heightened awareness and simultaneous dislocation, encountering "The Boss" (a slightly fictionalized version of Mayor Giuliani), first responders, government agents who inhabit an Kafkaesque world of mystery and half-truths, and U.S. and foreign nationals living double and and at times metaphoric lives.

One of the most vivid characters is peripheral to the main events--Walter calls him "the old Middle Eastern man"--but is an important truth-teller. At one point, he says to Remy--

"The way people here mock a religion that promises virgins for martyrs in the world after this one. Your own culture would seem to indicate that there is nothing more profound than sex, nothing more humbling or graceful or suggestive of the mystery of creation. And yet the idea of virgins in paradise somehow seems to draw your greatest scorn. Do you honestly imagine yours is a sexless heaven? What kind of paradise is it that has harps and angels but no orgasms?  

". . . You're always convincing yourselves that the world isn't what it is, that no one's reality matters except your own. That's why you make such poor victims. You truly can't know suffering if you know nothing about rage. And you can't feel genuine rage if you won't acknowledge loss. 

"That's what happens when a nation becomes a public relations firm. You forget the truth. Everything is the Alamo. You claim victory in every loss, life in every death. Declare war when there is no war, and when you are at war, pretend you aren't. The rest of the world wails and vows revenge and buries its dead and you turn on the television. Go to the cinema. 

". . .  Entertainment is the singular thing you produce now. And it is just another propaganda, the most insidious, greatest propaganda ever devised, and this is your only export now--your coffee and tobacco, your gunpowder and your wheat. And while people elsewhere die questioning the propaganda of tyrants and royals, you crave yours. You demand the propaganda of distraction and triviality, and it has become your religion, your national faith. In this faith you are grave and backward fundamentalists, not so different from the grave and backward fundamentalists you presume to battle. If there are barbarians knocking on the gates with stories of beautiful virgins in the afterlife, then aren't you barbarians too, wrapping the world in cables full of happy-ever-after stories of fleshy blondes and animated fish and talking cars?"