When nineteen jihadist hijackers slammed two airplanes into the World Trade Center towers and another into the Pentagon ten years ago, they saw themselves as heroes of an apocalyptic holy war. For a moment, it seemed that they had instead given new life to secular modernity.
During the decades preceding 9/11, religion of an intense variety made a surprising comeback. Pentecostalism blazed through South America, an exotic stew of indigenous Christianities bubbled up in Africa, Chinese churches grew at an astonishing rate, Evangelicals had political clout in the U.S., Islamic fundamentalism was on the rise. As the Economist’s John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge put it in the title of their 2009 book, “God is back.”
Some found the news of God’s return alarming and after 9/11 they said so, loudly and repeatedly. Days after the attacks, Richard Dawkins wrote in The Guardian, “To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.”
Stateside, Sam Harris interrupted his studies to write The End of Faith, which lumps jihadism with the Christian political theology of Antonin Scalia. “We should not be misled” by the apparent benignity of Western religion, Harris warned. The influence of religious ideas on the U.S. government “presents a grave danger to everyone.” For Christopher Hitchens, September 11 proved that the “poison” of religion “was beginning to reassert its challenge to civil society.” New Atheism rose from the ashes of the WTC. “Yes, God is back, and look where He got us!”
Scholars of religion got well into the fray. Religious violence was already a subject of scholarly interest, but after 2001 it became an academic cottage industry across a variety of disciplines: Charles Kimball’s When Religion Becomes Evil (2002), Charles Selengut’s Sacred Fury (2004), M. J. Akbar’s The Shade of Swords (2002), J. H. Ellens’ four-volume collection of essays on The Destructive Power of Religion (2004), Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer’s Is Religion Killing Us? (2005), and on and on.
In the wake of 9/11, Mark Juergensmeyer of the University of California, Santa Barbara, published a new edition of his 2000 Terror in the Mind of God: The Rise of Religious Violence. 9/11 became an important illustration of his central thesis. Religious violence is “performance violence,” “deliberately intense and vivid,” “meant purposely to elicit anger.” Non-holy violence has pragmatic or strategic ends in view, but religious violence aims at symbolic targets, which are “intended to illustrate or refer to something beyond [the] immediate target.” Religious violence is “symbol, ritual, or sacred drama.”
A horror spectacle, the attacks of September 11 offer “dramatic illustrations of this theatrical display of violence.” Theater was the point. Though thousands died, “the attacks on the World trade Center did not provide any immediate political benefits to those who caused them. Although the financial costs of the September 11, 2001 attacks were staggering, there is no evidence that Osama bin Laden and other members of the al Qaeda network launched their attacks solely to cripple the U.S. economy.” The attacks have “an internal logic,” but they do not qualify as “strategic”: “These creations of terror are done not to achieve a strategic goal but to make a symbolic statement.”
In a piece for the New Humanist, Juergensmeyer suggests religious conflicts around the world are “skirmishes in a new Cold War between religious politics and the secular state,” acts of resistance to globalization which aims to expand “secular values around the world.” What hope he sees lies in a secular global order: “Until there is a surer sense of citizenship in a global order, religious visions of moral order will continue to appear an attractive, even at some level a rational, solution to the problems of identity and belonging in a global world.”
Post-9/11 popular and academic analyses make the same assumption: Terror is bad, holy terror is far worse. Precisely what makes terror holy, though, has proven difficult to pinpoint. In his devastating demolition of The Myth of Religious Violence, William T. Cavanaugh points out that Juergensmeyer’s distinction of symbolic and strategic violence evaporates when Juergensmeyer himself admits that “power is largely a matter of perception.” The religion/non-religious distinction crumbles right along with it, as Juergensmeyer also half-admits: One can “state flatly . . . that secular nationalism is ‘a religion.’” If this is true, what is left to distinguish holy from profane terror? Juergensmeyer circles dizzily between his claim that religion gives violence symbolic power and his implied criterion, “if it’s symbolic, it must be religious.”
More generally, Cavanaugh argues that most analyses of religious violence fail because they understand religion as a “transhistorical” and “transcultural” feature of human life, neatly distinguishable from “secular” concerns. In reality, religion has no such “essence.” Most scholars adopt a very recent, very Western conception of religion embedded in a very recent, very Western configuration of power. What counts as religion “depends on what practices are being authorized” and which are being marginalized. The myth that religion promotes violence is a weapon for defending the battlements of “secular” politics. That is precisely how secular pundits and scholars deploy it.
Others learned a more lasting lesson from 9/11. Tony Blair seized the opportunity to establish the Tony Blair Foundation “to promote respect and understanding between the major religions.” Without attention to religion, politicians are hamstrung in today’s world. “We in the West tend to see people of religious faith as people to be pushed to one side,” Blair said earlier this year. “That quite aggressive secularism you see in the West does not understand what is happening in the rest of the world.” Blair wants to see religious passion harnessed to “make globalization work,” but he resists secularists’ efforts to use fears of holy terror to bludgeon believers back into their hovels.
Ten years on, all this is now obvious. Resurgent secularism is a blip on the screen, New Atheism a rearguard action in a losing battle. The ferment among Muslims and Christians continues apace, and in some places it will again turn tragically violent. We have no choice but to deal with it. The message of 9/11 was always this: The gods are still back, and they are here to stay.
Peter J. Leithart is pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow, Idaho, and Senior Fellow of Theology and Literature at New St. Andrews College. His most recent book is Athanasius (Baker Academic).
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Comments:
I quite understand that Islamic terrorists are willing to kill other Muslims, especially those whom they consider as moderates or who "compromise" with "infidels", or even those Muslims who are merely innocent bystanders in a terrorist event. All are acceptable casualties in their push for world domination by Islam. But having said that, even you would agree that a moderate Muslim, who would not lift a finger to harm another soul, nevertheless has nothing to fear in an Islam-dominated system. Everyone else will need to run for the hills.
As to the idea that Christianity has world domination as its principal goal, I would beg to seriously disagree. Jesus clearly said "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight". Converting the hearts of men through the peaceful preaching of the gospel, and, in the process turning the other cheek when struck, is not in any way similar to flying hijacked planes into buildings or blowing up oneself and scores of others in a crowd in order to force attention and to terrorize and intimidate people into submission. I haven't heard of any "Christian" fundamentalists who routinely do this, or even advocate for it.
As for the position of strength that I allude to, this cannot in any way be construed as advocating for violence, other than in self-defense. If someone breaks into my house carrying a deadly weapon which he intends to use, I am certainly entitled to use reasonable means to incapacitate him to prevent him from harming my family. I should also upgrade my home security to prevent such intrusions in future. That is not violence, just common sense.
Violence would be if I were to retaliate by going to his house and shooting it up, killing him, his family and friends, and blowing up his entire neighborhood. This is precisely what the US is doing - taking the war to the enemy's "neighborhood" (if you can consider Afghanistan and Iraq as such), and using conventional warfare to fight a religious war.
We know from history that this strategy has never worked, so why should it work now? Because we have bigger guns than before? Almost 3000 were killed on 9/11, but in the decade since, more than 5000 US troops and hundreds of thousands of civilians have died as a result of the war on terror. Anytime you end up losing much more (whether in lives or in resources) in an effort to obtain redress than you lost in the original act of violence or injustice, what you have won is a Pyrrhic victory, or worse.
The children of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael, have been at each other's throats since, say, 4,000 years ago. But many of Ismael's children have tragically morphed into members of an extremely violent death cult -- much like the Thugees, whose mantra was to kill for Kali.
If Christianity is intent on world domination, it's only through spreading the Good News of freedom that our Lord and Savior commissioned us to take to all the earth. Historically, the religion of Mohammed has only spread by the sword, through domination and submission.
If we look to the Middle East and Southeast Asia, which group is causing violence and persistent persecution in the name of Allah?
I turn to Pope Benedict XVI's "Regensburg" lecture as anger and violence stormed in the Islamic world when he quoted Emperor Manuel II:
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
There are many Muslims who do not follow fundamentalist Islam, that are peaceful and co-exist with the rest of society. However, as the 10th anniversary of September 11 is approaching, we need to take a hard look at objective reality.
10 years later, terrorism and the continuing persecution of Christians, non-Christians and Muslim minorities by radical Muslims still exist. Why?
Islam needs reason. As Christians, our faith is based on Logos as it permeates scripture.
There are moderate Muslims exploring their once heritage of ijtihad, to reinterpret the Qur'an in light of the modern world. But their voices are drowned. We need to support them.
****
Pope Benedict XVI Regensburg Lecture
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html#_ftnref3
There are huge differences between the Islamic and Christian concepts of one-world dominion. With Christianity, it's not domination, it's restoration of the earth to its creator and rightful owner. It's not falsehood, it's truth. It's not counterfeit, it's the genuine article. Most importantly, it's not we humans dominating others, it is God himself exerting his righteous will over his creation. It's nearly as different as the wicked vineyard tenants are from the vineyard owner in chapter 20 of Matthew's gospel. It's as different as the robbers breaking down my front door and taking me hostage are from the SWAT team breaking down my back door to capture these evildoers by surprise and put them where they belong.
I take your intended context to be what a secular person will accept (a simple comparison vs. an absolute truth claim), but seeming to equate the two concepts can either promote sloppy thinking on our part, or give false impressions on the part of the Islamists or secularists, or both.
The fact is, jihad is part of the very frame of the Islamic tapestry. To use a more contemporary computer software analogy, it's a feature, not a bug. Our Muslim neighbors hold the "values we hold so dear" not because of Islam, but in spite of it.
That is the truth to which we must give our allegiance.
Christians who believe the Apostle's Creed ("fundamentalists") are not violent against non-Nicene Christians. You should know that.
Christians attempt to persuade, and then leave it alone. Muslims are commanded to use the sword. I find that a rather significant difference, Andrew.
As far as world domination being part of Xianity - note that you indicate that Christ will be doing the dominating. If Xianity is not true, then there is no supernatural being that will be doing the dominating. OTOH if a religion were to teach that its *followers* need to dominate the world, that can happen whether or not the supernatural being(s) in that religion actual exist.
I believe we all have to pursue truth wherever it takes us. Doing so we have to remember that we are not omniscient and have no basis to claim that we ever get it exactly right. The truth as I see it is that a small body of men decided they had the answer for the world and the U.S. was standing in the way. That they were Sunni Muslim this time was irrelevant. They persuaded many (21 in particular on 9/11) to attempt to force this view on the world. Nothing new here. It's happened before. It will happen again. This group has not succeeded. They have been faced down.
We should bear in mind our own tendencies to violence as human beings when we think we have the answer for someone else. That is the lesson here.
As Christians, we must stop drawing so many dividing lines between "us & them" & start seeing even our enemies as our neighbors, fellow children of God, who we must love as much as God loves us, whether they see us similarly or not.
Sources & links, please. You're drawing a dividing line between yourself and them; we just want to see it more clearly. An army is more than sixty, or even six hundred, people. I doubt you can total up more than that number individuals like that in the whole U.S.
This still looks beyond the author's point, though, which is this: "The myth that religion promotes violence is a weapon for defending the battlements of 'secular' politics. That is precisely how secular pundits and scholars deploy it."
The fundamentalists that should cause us just as much alarm as the jihadists are not religious at all in the ordinary sense. They are secularists and atheists with a self-righteous and murderous (e.g., abortion, euthanasia) devotion to their cause.
You make the author's point perfectly, if perhaps unwittingly. Please open your eyes to the militant, fundamentalist secularists who have taught you to say this.
Are you seriously asking this question?
But it all very interesting.... as a cultural study ....until something bad happens, and then we have to sort it all out again. And something bad has been forewarned this weekend.... we'll see if the fore-warnings prove to be true.
The holy books of Islam speak of Jesus and the profits of the old testament as profits of Islam. There are no Jews or Christians in their holy books; all are of Islam. But in the real world Jews and Christians exist.
Historical and archeological evidence confirms much of the history of Jews and Christians as described in their holy books. However, there is no historical or archeological evidence of the existence of Islam prior to 600AD. So, how could Jesus, Jeremiah, or Isaiah be profits of Islam if Islam did not exist in their times? Clearly Islam claims a history that it does not rightfully own and it's leaders are desperate to hide that fact. Hence their goal for centuries has been to erase the Jews and Christians out of existence, bury the archeological evidence and rewrite history.
My suggestion is that we in the west establish Christian sanctuaries throughout the Islamic world and then broadcast the truth of Islam. In the end we should have lots of good Christians.
We already have such sanctuaries. They are called Christians. They radiate grace, forgiveness, patience and sacrificial love everywhere they go. Those who see their good works realize that Islam cannot produce any of that; only Christ can. Their daily life turns over the hard earth of the Muslim heart, so they can receive the seed of God's word. Send such people.
There is also SAT-7, the Christian network broadcasting by satellite to the Middle East in Arabic, Turkish and probably other languages. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, have embraced Jesus the Messiah through their ministry. Give to such ministries.
And there is God himself, who has his own broadcasting license. Many Muslims have become followers of Jesus through dreams and visions. Pray for such revelation.
Pray for the hardened secularists as well.
We have all the authority we need: "All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And I am with you always, even to the end of the age." -- Matthew 28:19-20
You write about which you do not know. Islam, as a tradition that identifies itself in the Abrahamic tradition, does in fact lay claim to persons such as Jesus, Jeremiah, and Isaiah. Modern Muslims (with a capital 'M') would call Jesus and Hebrew prophets muslim (with a lower-case 'm') insofar as these historical persons submitted their individual wills to the will of the One God. That is the linguistic root of 'islam' and 'muslim'. As a believing Christian, I have no problem with a Muslim referring to Jesus with an Arabic word that means "one who submits his will to God". In fact, I see Christ as the 'muslim' par excellence. Besides, we Christians lay claim to the Jewish patriarchs and prophets, even though 'Christianity' as such did not exist during the time of Abraham, et. al.
I do not mean to gloss over the real differences between Islam and Christianity regarding the person of Jesus specifically. However, it doesn't behoove us as Christians when we willfully or through ignorance misunderstand and misrepresent the beliefs of our Abrahamic brothers and sisters.
PS- It is worth noting that the distinction between capital 'M' Muslims and lower-case 'm' muslims is transparent in Arabic, a language whose alphabet has no capital/lower-case differences. Hence, in the Qur'an, the Arabic word 'muslim' could be understood in both ways noted above. When the Qur'an calls Jesus or a Hebrew prophet a 'muslim', it is clearly not saying that Jesus/Jeremiah/Isaiah was a member of the historical community led by Muhammad in western Arabia in the 7th century. The clear meaning is "one who has submitted his individual ego to the Divine Will." Any faithful Christian should not be offended by such a description of Jesus and the prophets.
Say whatever you will about atheism's battles, but it has already won the war in Europe and will likely do the same in America.
Maybe so and maybe not. But if atheism does win, it will not hold the ground long. What is there that an Atheist would die for? Islam will extinguish it and be the world's slavers again, but this time with nuclear weapons.
Like all spiritual parasites, secular humanism eventually kills its host.
Those who place power over truth will lose more than power when truth eventually triumphs. It's the "eventually" part that litters battlefields with body parts and pieces. The sanctuary plan is just a contingency until "eventually" happens.
@Steve S . Thank you for your enlightenment about Islam tradition and linguistics. You have brought the point to much better focus. Islam's sidestepping the fact that Jesus was a Jew (with Jewish heritage and lineage) by calling Him muslim is no small matter; it's the difference between history and legend. Legend is one step from myth. Is Islam dealing in myth? There are those who demand power or peace at any price as long as they can devise a way to deceive someone else into paying the price. At the bottom of every deception is an untruth and/or an invitation to sin. So, are the Jews of today occupiers/invaders or are they brothers? Would you call the Jews of today muslim?
Christ did not rewrite the Old Testament. The Septuagint was accepted as-is with original authorships in tact. Christians did not claim that Jewish patriarchs and profits were Christian. As Christians we did not rewrite history; we added to history.
“Man, in short, is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his belief to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.
We do not believe that every Englishman who was reconciled to the Catholic Church would, as a necessary consequence, have thought himself justified in deposing or assassinating Elizabeth. It is not sufficient to say that the convert must have acknowledged the authority of the Pope, and that the Pope had issued a bull against the Queen. We know through what strange loopholes the human mind contrives to escape, when it wishes to avoid a disagreeable inference from an admitted proposition. We know how long the Jansenists contrived to believe the Pope infallible in matters of doctrine, and at the same time to believe doctrines which he pronounced to be heretical.
Of the ten thousand clergymen of the Church of England, there is scarcely one who would not say that a man who should leave his country and friends to preach the Gospel among savages, and who should, after labouring indefatigably without any hope of reward, terminate his life by martyrdom, would deserve the warmest admiration. Yet, we can doubt whether ten of the ten thousand ever thought of going on such an expedition. Why should we suppose that conscientious motives, feeble as they are constantly found to be in a good cause, should be omnipotent for evil?”
And since when "preemptive strike" is the same as "self-defense"? congnitive dissonance much?
Interesting article.
Ps: And I am not arab, or muslim. I'm southamerican (we have also suffered because of USA foreign policies)
Islamic fundamentalists are equal opportunity terrorists. They offer the same choices today that they have been offering to non-Muslims for centuries - Islam or death. It matters not whether their victims are Jews or Jainists, Buddhists or Bahai'sts, Shintoists or Sikhs. This is why most of the conflicts with Muslims occur in non-Christian areas - Muslims vs. Jews in "Palestine", Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs. Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs. Russians in Caucasus, etc.
In Europe, most of the population do not describe themselves as "Christian" any more, so again, the conflicts there with Islamists hardly qualify as Christian-Muslim conflicts. In any event, unless something changes soon, most of Europe will be fully Islamised before the end of this century, given the below-replacement birth rates of Europeans, and the higher-than-replacement birth rates of Muslim immigrants. In reality, the only places where there are substantially Christian-Muslim conflicts are in Africa and, since 9/11, the US.
The western world needs to come to its senses before its too late and realize that the war with Islamic fundamentalism will never be won by conventional warfare. Peaceful coexistence with a religion that seeks ultimate world domination can only be achieved from a position of unrelenting strength and resolve, and not through liberal notions of inclusiveness and capitulation. Until then, we will continue to witness senseless acts of violence and intimidation, all aimed at forcing a surrender of the values we hold so dear.