Religion And The World Crisis

Religion And The World Crisis
By William E. Hull, Research Professor
Samford University, Birmingham, AL

Editor`s Note: The article is an expanded study version of a sermon preached at the Mountain Brook Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama, September 30, 2001.

•  I. The Islamic Crisis in Historical Perspective
• II. A Critique of Islamic Traditionalism and Western Modernism
• III. The Challenge of the Present Crisis
• ENDNOTES

In recent years we have witnessed a remarkable upsurge of freedom in our world. The Berlin Wall came tumbling down and with it the collapse of Soviet Communism. Nelson Mandela was released from prison, breaking the iron grip of apartheid in South Africa. With a couple of symbolic handshakes, first by Begin and Sadat, then by Rabin and Arafat, it seemed that intractable hostilities between Jews and Arabs might finally abate. As the half-century Cold War began to thaw, America relished the prospect of a "peace dividend" that would usher in a new era of unrivaled prosperity.

But before these millennial expectations could be fulfilled, an ominous new threat arose which foreshadows a civilizational clash of global proportions.[1] Each of its three defining moments launched a decade: First was the 1979-80 hostage crisis in Iran which all of our diplomatic and military might proved impotent to solve. Then came the 1990-91 Gulf War which, despite the success of Operation Desert Storm, left Saddam Hussein as entrenched as ever in Iraq. And now we reel from the terrorist attack of 2001 upon our own citadels of commerce and government, which we seemed helpless to anticipate or prevent. In all three instances, a fanatic fringe of Islam with roots in the Middle East has been able to hold hostage our long-deferred dream of universal peace.

My purpose today is not to second-guess our national leaders by proposing a political solution to the current crisis. Nor do I claim any special competence in the military or diplomatic aspects of the confrontation. Rather, my aim is to help us interpret what Jesus called "the signs of the times" (Luke 12:56), to discover the claims of God which this momentous crisis lays upon our lives. I hope to do that by probing the Muslim faith embraced by the overwhelming majority of the populace in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, the Islamic world has long been a mystery to Americans, especially as regards its 1,379 year history. Since this is the dimension most neglected in the media analyses, let us begin with a swift sketch of how the past has profoundly shaped the problems which we now confront in the present.

I. The Islamic Crisis in Historical Perspective
The founding of Islam is dated to the life of its supreme prophet Mohammed (born c. A.D. 570) who, in the month of Ramadan, 610, experienced a "Night of Power" when he began to hear the voice of the Angel Gabriel revealing to him the Koran, God`s eternal and infallible word. In 622, Mohammed made his fateful migration (Hegira) from Mecca to Medina, thus marking the start of the Muslim calendar. In the next ten years, before his sudden death in 632, he virtually completed his mission of unifying the diverse tribes of the vast Arabian peninsula under a theocracy governed by the one and only God, Allah. During the following century his movement spread like a devouring fire to the East and the West. Turned back in Europe at Tours, 135 miles southwest of Paris, by Charles Martel in 732, Islam`s expansive force was spent only after it had sunk deep roots in Africa and Asia and become the last great empire of the ancient world.[2] The magnitude of medieval Islam has seldom received its rightful place in world history. George Sarton, the Harvard historian of science, has written that in the tenth century, "The main task of mankind was accomplished by Moslems. The greatest philosopher . . . mathematicians . . . geographer and encyclopedist" were all Moslem.[3] From Islam came the rediscovery of Aristotle and the first scientific astronomy and medicine since the Greeks. By the time Columbus discovered America, this desert faith was not only the largest religion in the world but, in some respects, its most universal. For as the Arab empire decolonized itself, vast stretches of the world`s great sunbelt were left "permanently caught in the light but unbreakable net of a common Islamic culture."[4]

The centuries following this Golden Age were unkind to Islam, leaving it intellectually stagnant, politically impotent, and economically exhausted at the opening of the twentieth century. Perhaps its low point came in 1924 when the caliphate, or dynastic rulership, was abolished by Kemal Ataturk in connection with the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire. This move was part of a herculean effort to modernize the fossilized civilization of Islam, an effort which has deeply divided the Arab world ever since.

When enormous wealth suddenly became available with the discovery of vast oil reserves, an aristocratic elite set out to transplant Western technology to the Arabian peninsula. But with that Westernization came a set of cultural values repugnant to the traditional Islamic faith, which was growing from 300 million at mid-century to one billion 300 million adherents today. A look at the map will show that its area of dominant influence now stretches from the western shores of North Africa to the eastern islands of Indonesia, a sweep which surpasses the size attained at the apex of its medieval glory.

This background prepares us to grapple with our first key insight: the crisis in the Middle East, at its deeper level, is the manifestation of a head-on collision between the modernizing power of Western consumerism and the tenacious conservatism of Islamic culture.[5] The United States has exacerbated this conflict by playing into the hands of those political leaders who would exploit an extremist Islamic fundamentalism for their own ends. As James Schlesinger shrewdly observed: "To move out of its isolationism, American society historically has required a crusade, and crusaders need to focus on infidels and rascals. . . . The great American presupposition is that other societies want to be like us. If they`re not acting like us, it must be because of some Lucifer-like figure."[6] Believe me, Islamic militants can play the demonizing game as well as we can, making our presidents look as menacing as their ayatollahs.

The problem here is that, ever since the Middle Ages, the Arab World has been dominated by the West. We travel as tourists to glimpse the monuments of the Crusades, but Arabs live with these galling reminders of their subservience on a daily basis. In their eyes, every time the United States mobilizes the Western world to intervene with massive military force, it is but the latest in a series of "crusades" against the Arab world. Moreover, they interpret this intervention as support for the oil sheiks who have invested untold billions of petrodollars in the West even as the Middle East, for all of its vast resources, sinks into economic squalor. On this understanding, the Ayatollah Khomeini or Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden wins even if he loses because he is fighting a Holy War (Jihad) for Islamic self-determination, while the West is fighting only to protect an oil supply that feeds the voracious appetite of its insatiable consumerism.

Seen in the context of the centuries, therefore, George Bush and Osama bin Laden are but human symbols of vast historical forces locked in mortal combat. That is why it is foolish to suppose that this crisis will vanish if only our latest antagonist is assassinated. We know that bin Laden is but one of many political leaders shrewdly exploiting the implacable opposition of Islam to Western modernization. If we were to silence his voice today, other spokesmen would be drawn into the powerful political void which has existed in Islam since the abolition of empire and caliphate.[7]

Once the problem is defined in this fashion, many Americans are left wondering why the Middle East should get so upset over the imposition of something as wonderful as "Western Civilization." Does not this legacy bring with it all of the benefits of the scientific revolution? The great Islamist scholar Bernard Lewis answers plainly: "For vast numbers of Middle Easterners, Western-style economic methods brought poverty, Western-style political institutions brought tyranny, even Western-style warfare brought defeat."[8] But that still does not bring us to the heart of the problem, which is: How could admittedly profound cultural differences cause these two civilizations to engage in such violent conflict? In particular, how could their religion condone the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians? How could the Islamic concept of Jihad, meaning "struggle" or "exertion," which Mohammed interpreted as the individual`s lifelong struggle to resist temptation, be used to justify random acts of mass terror?

Before we fly into a rage of religious judgmentalism in answering such questions, let us remember a few sobering facts. The Jewish and Christian scriptures of the Old Testament contain numerous references to "holy wars"[9] which include the idea of herem, a Hebrew word meaning "anathema" or "separated," according to which the enemies of Israel were to be utterly destroyed without mercy (Deuteronomy 7:1-2; 20:16-18), including men, women, children, infants, and animals (1 Samuel 15:3). Even those Israelite towns that compromised the faith were to be torched "as a whole burnt offering to the Lord" that would become "a heap forever" never to be rebuilt (Deuteronomy 13:12-18).

This kind of extreme militancy has surfaced repeatedly in both Jewish and Christian history, notably in the medieval Crusades (1096-1396) which provided papal armies with abundant opportunities to ravage and plunder Muslim lands.[10] Thus when bin Laden ignited anti-American passions in 1998 by issuing a fatwa, or religious ruling, declaring it to be "the individual duty" of every Muslim "to kill Americans and their Allies-civilians and military . . . in any country in which it is possible,"[11] he was merely borrowing an old religious idea from some of his Abrahamic cousins.

In the light of this historical background, we now see that our challenge is much larger than capturing Osama bin Laden and destroying his terrorist network. However these problems are resolved, we will still be left with the bitter confrontation between Western modernism and Islamic traditionalism. Therefore, let us now evaluate these two warring options to see if we can discover a way beyond the impasse that so deeply divides them.

II. A Critique of Islamic Traditionalism and Western Modernism
Turning first to the situation in Islam, the reactionary mentality prevalent among its masses throws into bold relief the dangers inherent in all forms of religious fanaticism. Here is a militant religious movement offering authoritarian opinions based on a literalistic interpretation of one ancient book to which zealous followers give unquestioning obedience. Quite simply, it is old- fashioned religious fundamentalism raised to the level of national and international policy. The problem is not that Muslims have no right to their convictions, or that they are not entitled to base them on the Koran, or that they are wrong to urge them on others. The problem, rather, is that their views are both determined and delivered with finality, that there is no room for alternative viewpoints, that self-criticism has been overwhelmed by certainty. In a word, the root problem is that of religious absolutism, treating our understandings which are human and therefore contingent as God`s decrees which are divine and therefore categorical.

To cite the most current example: in Afghanistan, the ruling regime in Kabul is called "Taliban," a Persian word meaning "students," so called because they emerged in late 1994 out of traditional Islamic schools located in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, a lawless region ruled by tribal chiefs and smugglers of arms and hashish. After gaining popular notoriety fighting Soviet infidels in the 1980s, these untried and narrowly trained "students" seized control of Afghanistan in 1997 from the feuding warlords who had plunged the country into civil war. Immediately they imposed a rigidly puritanical version of Islamic law by issuing a litany of repressive edits not found in the Koran, the first of which ended all education for females from kindergarten up. A woman was not to step outside the home and would receive 100 lashes if seen with a man not her relative. Banned were music, dancing, television, Internet, Western hairstyles, and photographs of any living thing. All of this from "students" of a school whose faculty of religious scholars (ulema) teach nothing from the modern era but only Islamic tradition that is memorized, not discussed.[12]

The tragic consequences of this mindset unfolding in the Middle East should warn us against some of the same symptoms that have emerged in American life. The "noise level" is rising in many pulpits as popular preachers bellow and scream with a stridency that says unmistakably, "Don`t talk back, I have declared the last word, take it or leave it!" A new zealotism among the masses welcomes this bombast as a way of verbalizing gut feelings of anger and frustration over the course of human events. One veteran participant in Baptist life remarked after attending a highly publicized showcase of such preaching, "Anybody who brought his mind to this meeting wouldn`t know what to do with it." Whenever we allow others to do our thinking for us just because they rant and rave while waving a Bible in the air, we are starting down the same dangerous road that Islamic fundamentalists are now walking.

A particular problem with the religious totalitarianism in Islam is that it is fused to the political ideal of a theocratic civilization. Throughout its history, Islam has steadfastly advocated the union, rather than the separation, of church and state. That is why ayatollahs can issue edicts touching on every aspect of private and public life, from decisions of national diplomacy down to minute details of manners and morals. Again, the issue is not whether God`s will embraces the totality of life, or whether clerics may hold an opinion as to what God`s will might be on any particular point. The issue, rather, is whether expertise in the Koran, or in any other scripture, confers an omnicompetence-or indeed, any special competence at all!-in areas not directly related to religion. Do religious leaders have a monopoly on the full range of human wisdom, or does God guide others into secular callings where they may become far more expert in the affairs of statecraft than scriptural specialists ever could?

To be sure, it would simplify things if we could put all of the problems of life into one basket and hand them over to a prophet for solution. But God does not offer any such shortcuts to building a better world. If politicians could find all the answers by becoming experts in Scripture and theology, they would line up to enroll in the nearest seminary. But our most sensitive and spiritually committed public officials have learned, on the contrary, that true faith, far from conferring easy answers to complex problems, may actually intensify the difficulty of finding a just but workable solution. Issues of governance need to be discussed on the basis of input from a wide range of viewpoints, with differing conclusions likely from equally sincere and dedicated Christians. To determine public policy by single issue crusades which equate one position with the will of God for American life is to drift toward the very disaster which is unfolding in Islam.

To reject Islamic fundamentalism, however, does not mean that we are to embrace the Westernized modernism that is championed as its alternative. For even in the West we are beginning to realize that this way of life is not an unmixed blessing. The scientific method has brought a vast increase in knowledge but with it a positivism that questions the reality of anything transcendent. Technology has brought a cornucopia of prosperity but with it an insatiable materialism shot through with competitive selfishness. Psychology has brought an introspective individualism but with it a narcissistic infatuation that shreds the fabric of community and leaves an aching loneliness in its place. Too often, the controlling ideology of modernism has brought with it a secularism of spirit, a relativism of values, a reductionism of purpose calculated to erode the religious foundations of Western civilization.

If we in America are having second thoughts about our consumerist culture, imagine what millions of Middle Eastern peasants are thinking who cannot come to America to discover our better side. They see only what we export: our movies, our television, our magazines, our celebrities. What if you were a foreigner being fed a steady diet of dubbed reruns of "Dallas" and "Dynasty" as a showcase of American culture? There one sees all of our insatiable greed, imbued with the hubris and macho for which we are hated, treating the most sacred expressions of sex as a casual conquest for nothing more than momentary pleasure. No wonder the mullahs sound credible when they insist that the struggle is not between Islam and Christianity but between believers and infidels!

In this anguished moment of human history, therefore, we must transcend the temptation to embrace either extreme that has polarized our two cultures almost to the breaking point. On the one hand, we could be driven by our shame over Western decadence to conclude that Islam is right and so try to become as fanatic, legalistic, and absolutist about our religion as their most reactionary followers are about theirs. On the other hand, we could be stampeded, not by remorse but by anger, to conclude that we are right and that Osama bin Laden and his ilk should be bombed back into the Stone Age from whence they so recently emerged, after which we can get back to the main business of making as much money as possible.

Clearly we need to reject both of these extremes and search, instead, for a way to unite the passion for material progress in the West with the passion for spiritual stability in Islam.[13] The deepest lesson of the present crisis is that both antagonists stand judged, Islam for its effort to turn back the clock and so have no future, the West for its effort to abandon all spiritual foundations and so have no past. Finally, it is theologically illegitimate to choose between the Western drive to have dominion over the secular and the Islamic drive to have dominion over the sacred because God is our creator as well as our redeemer who calls us to honor both the physical and the spiritual, to love both the earthly and the heavenly-which is exactly what he did when "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14).

III. The Challenge of the Present Crisis
Now that we have some sense of the issues involved, how shall we respond to the present crisis? There are clearly two stages in this response. The first is to root out and remove the threat of terrorism wherever it may lurk. In this regard, let us give our duly constituted public officials all of the loyal support that conscience will permit as they execute what Paul called "God`s wrath on the wrongdoers" (Romans 13:4). But once that effort succeeds, we must be ready to wage peace just as aggressively as we have waged war. Indeed, a long-range strategy for making peace should be integral to our short-range strategy for making war. In formulating these plans, I have three suggestions to offer regarding our responsibilities as global Christians, plus a concluding remark regarding our role as American citizens.

First, let us categorically reject the use of violence to fight "holy wars" in the name of God. In all three Abrahamic faiths-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-a small but noisy minority of fundamentalists use a simplistic and literalistic understanding of Scriptural inerrancy to sanction the kind of slaughter which long ago accompanied the Israelite conquest of Palestine. It is just here that the disputed principle of using Christ as the criterion of biblical interpretation is so crucial.[14] Measured by the ministry of Jesus, and by the example of his first followers, the use of indiscriminate violence to fight "holy wars" has absolutely no place in the will of God for his people. We as Christians cannot invite Judaism and Islam to join us in that understanding unless we first put our own house in order.

Second, let us strengthen rather than weaken the wall of separation between church and state. In Baptist history this relationship was needed because we were a despised minority persecuted by the magistrates on behalf of an established church. But in the present crisis it is needed so that Christianity will be clearly perceived by all, not as an American religion or even a Western religion, but as a global religion not beholden to any country or culture. This does not mean that we cannot voluntarily cooperate with various governmental entities on matters of mutual concern. What it does mean is that preachers and politicians alike should recognize the enormous value of protecting the complete freedom of Christianity to function in the present crisis as a universal faith unencumbered by entangling alliances with any nation-state. Both Judaism and Islam find it extremely difficult to adopt this stance because of theocratic assumptions in their traditions, which make it all the more important for American Christianity to provide an unambiguous example of how it may be done.

Third, let us concentrate in this crisis on the commonalities that Christianity shares with Judaism and Islam rather than on the differences that divide us. To be sure, there is a time and place to emphasize the distinctives of our faith, even the ways in which we may consider it superior to other options. But now we need to explore the extent to which we can present a united front against extremist partisans in all three movements who would sanction lawless violence as a legitimate response to one`s enemies. The central point to be considered in such trilateral conversations is surely the monotheism which is at the core of the Abrahamic religions. For if there really is only one God, as all three faiths emphatically affirm, then this universal deity must be the God of us all, friend and foe alike. Finally there is no place for tribalism, or even for nationalism, in religion if God is truly one, and the three great monotheistic religious need to learn how to say that loud and clear with one voice.

The consensus of the commentators is that the twenty-first century did not begin at 12:01 a.m. on January 1, 2000 in Times Square, but at 8:45 a.m. on September 11, 2001 in the World Trade Center. In this new era when things will never be the same again, we now live in an interconnected, interdependent world threatened by powerful forces that transcend the national borders behind which we once felt secure. One of the most destructive of those forces is an intractable intolerance posing as religious fervor which enjoys more popular support than it deserves because of a seething resentment by the masses against Western imperialism. If the twentieth century taught us anything, it is that once ideological hatred is deified, its fury knows no bounds.

To rid the world of that hydra-headed monster, America will need not only its military might but a new mindset. Before September 11, all that we could talk about was how to cut taxes, reduce government spending, and prop up an economy that was in danger of falling below the double-digit yields to which we had become accustomed. In the recent presidential campaign, for example, our global responsibility as a nation was hardly discussed by either candidate because the polls showed that voters couldn`t care less. If September 11 taught us anything, it is that the richest nation in the world cannot spend all of its time and energy becoming even richer and let the rest of the world go to hell in a handbasket. If we try that approach long enough, the embittered whom we ignore will bring their hell to our shores in a suicidal frenzy of wanton destruction.

So we are tutored by tragedy in the lessons of noblesse oblige, that privilege imposes obligations. The time has come to set aside our consuming greed for extravagance and relearn the disciplines of compassion for those homeless and starving millions living on the outer edge of human subsistence. It will not be easy to show the world that we care for others as much as we care for ourselves. Indeed, it may prove easier to win the war against terrorism than to win the peace against that desperation which makes it possible. But we do not have to look far to find models of selfless global commitment that is the overriding imperative of our present crisis. They are called missionaries. The church has been sending them out for twenty centuries as agents of a universal faith intent on uniting the entire human race in a fellowship of life and love.

While we need Christian missionaries as never before to help overcome the cleavages caused by our religious animosities, we also need missionaries of the American way of life at its best: travelers, entrepreneurs, teachers, social workers, agriculturalists, engineers, and a host of others willing to go and give, willing to listen and learn, willing to save and share that a broken world might be rebuilt on the basis of mutual tolerance and respect. The task will not be easy nor will it be brief. There is little hope of changing the entrenched attitudes of those long infested with the virus of violence, but we can begin to lay the foundations of a new world order in which the moderating forces of justice and compassion in all of our religions can gain the upper hand. My hope is that we as a nation will not gain the whole world only to lose our soul. Rather, I pray that we give our soul to the whole world and thereby gain the chance to live in peace with all humanity.

ENDNOTES
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1 The thesis that geopolitics is entering a new phase in which conflict will be primarily cultural rather than national was advanced by Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations," Foreign Affairs, vol. 72, no. 3, Summer, 1993, 22-49; subsequently expanded into a book, The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). On the discussion generated see The Clash of Civilizations? The Debate. A Foreign Affairs Reader (New York: Foreign Affairs, 1993).

2 For a picturesque account of this conquest, with a map showing its extent, see Thomas J. Abercrombie, "The Sword and the Sermon," National Geographic, July, 1972, 3-44.

3 Quoted in Time, April 16, 1965, 73.

4 Peter Brown, "Understanding Islam," The New York Review of Books, February 22, 1979, 30.

5 For a comprehensive study see Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld (New York: Times Books, 1995).

6 Time, September 3, 1990, 40.

7 Note the summary of a paper by Muzammil Siddiqi on "Transnational Organizations in the Muslim World" in Harvard Seminar on Muslim-Jewish-Christian Faith Communities as Transnational Actors for Peace and Justice: Report and Interpretation, edited by Joseph Gremillion (Washington: Interreligious Peace Colloquium, 1979), 10-15.

8 Bernard Lewis, "Western Civilization: A View From the East," The Jefferson Lecture for 1990, cited in the Chronicle of Higher Education, May 9, 1990, A4.

9 For a convenient summary see Roland deVaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), 258-267.

10 For a general summary of Christian relations with Islam in the Middle Ages see Jeremy Johns, "Christianity and Islam," The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, edited by John McManners (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 163-195. His conclusion: "Yet, the dominant reaction of Western Christendom towards Islam remained violently xenophobic. The majority view was that Muslims were subhuman brutes, diabolically inspired, and unworthy of the rights and considerations due to mankind" (193).

11 Cited in U. S. News & World Report, September 24, 2001, 56.

12 Information in this illustration is drawn from Daniel Del Castillo, "Pakistan`s Islamic Colleges Provide the Taliban`s Spiritual Fire," Chronicle of Higher Education, September 28, 2001, A19, A21.

13 I have been influenced in such a quest by trilateral conversations involving Christian, Jewish, and Muslim economic and religious leaders at a symposium sponsored by The Interreligious Peace Colloquium, Lisbon, Portugal, November 7-11, 1977. For proceedings of the conference see Joseph Gremillion and William Ryan, editors, World Faiths and the New World Order: A Muslim-Jewish-Christian Search Begins (Washington: Interreligious Peace Colloquium, 1978). The key paper contributing to this sermon was by Professor Robert Bellah who used the concepts of a "second naivete" and of a "dialectic or return" to discuss how we might move beyond both modern ideology and uncritical religious traditionalism.

14 The Baptist Faith and Message statement of 1963 contained the statement, "The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ" (Article I on The Scriptures). This statement was removed in the 2000 revision.

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