Religion and Conflict

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I got a funny little surprise the other day, with a student I hadn't heard from in over a year suddenly writing me out of the blue with this little gem of a question:

I would like to get your opinion on Pantheism. Since October I was involved with a community of the Catholic Church, but these questions came up again. Why are there other religions and why are there so many conflicts between religious groups and how can we all live together peacefully.

(And that was pretty much all he had to say.)

After I woke up at around 3 this morning, and completely failed to fall back asleep, I decided do something more useful with myself than blink in the dark, and got up to take a stab at an answer; I'm wondering if there's anything I might add or unmuddle before sending it off (or, given the length, remove - I just felt I needed to work it up a bit from my usual pat answer of "people suck").

...

Your question is huge, and I don’t know if I’m able to answer it in the space of an email; I figure that’s why they do have graduate programs, to sort through these kinds of things carefully, critically, and with the time and resources to exhaust as many dimensions of them as possible. I can give you my two cents, though, for what it’s worth.

Pantheism has been regarded as heresy (i.e. against standard teachings) in orthodox (i.e. “of common beliefâ€, not Orthodox in the sense of the Eastern churches) circles for centuries. The word in English itself only goes back to the 18th century, but connotes the idea that God is (in) everything. Already there is a problem, in that you start running into metaphysical questions – is God a substance, like the things found in nature? Are things themselves really “substantialâ€, as the world of physics has questioned seriously since at least the last century, and not some indeterminate agglomerate of waves and particles? If God is infinite, does not that infinity comprise the finite world, or does it stand apart from it – which would compromise the very meaning of the word “infiniteâ€? What are the implications, for theology and for non-theological rationality, of a God or infinity that stands apart from the rest of the world? Without the latter being the case, though, the whole Christian theology of the atonement becomes problematic – why would Christ need to be sacrificed, if there was no separation of humanity from creation, and from God, caused by the Fall?

My own sense is that it’s this getting stuck on terms, their fixed meanings, and the way they fit in with established systems of thought that accounts for your second question, why religions seem consistently unable to get along. Language can never exhaust reality, try as we sometimes might. Try describing anything exhaustively. Look at a pen in your hand, and try saying absolutely everything about it that could be said. It can’t be done. Can words create a thing out of nothing? There are old expressions that get at this: the map is not the territory; the menu is not the meal. I’ve been persuaded myself for years that humanity shares in a common reason, that we live in the same world, that our brains work more or less the same way, that we are equally capable of insight into and intuition about the world around us. I think this extends as well into our use of poetry to describe the world, which takes one of its most elevated forms in religions, whatever they may call themselves and wherever they may come from.

But there again, we’re back into the problem of trying to make something real using words. What is “religionâ€, anyway? The word only comes into English as a noun in the early modern period, and then only to denote “acceptable†traditions in Europe, chiefly Christianity; this is extended by degrees to recognise Judaism and Islam, all others being considered as “paganâ€. When explorers and Christian missionaries start bringing back reports of other literate cultures, the envelope is stretched to include traditions like Hinduism and Buddhism. But again, we find ourselves squeezing reality into the box of language. You don’t find “Hindus†calling themselves Hindu, because the word “Hindu†has been imposed by people from outside India (the word only really means, “people who live around the Indus river,†in present-day Pakistan, where Persians, Greeks, etc. entered the region); they’re more likely to identify themselves as followers of particular gods like Vishnu or Shiva, or more regional gods who don’t appear on anyone else’s radar (and this too has evolved over centuries). Similarly, what is to be done with Buddhism, which appears in some contexts to have hierarchies of gods, but which at its philosophical core is concerned with finding freedom from the world of appearances and from the suffering that is part and parcel of being alive, and from which any talk of gods is a big distraction.

But all those questions – or as they say, meta-questions – have always had a tendency to make people uncomfortable; we like simple answers to these big questions, not complex ones, particularly when people have bought into systems of meaning from childhood; questioning those can entail questioning major choices that have been made in life, and having to take responsibility for living life directly, rather than mediated by some external system of meaning that religions provide. And there are currents within religious traditions that cater precisely to that insecurity. Look at the history of anti-Semitism within Christianity and Islam. “Why do people practice Judaism?†they ask. “Because they don’t know, or refuse to accept, the redemptive power of Christ and/or the Church,†on the one hand, or “the final revelation through Muhammad,†on the other. So they may try to convert them; when that fails (and really, why should it succeed?), then they’re faced with a problem: either their own system of beliefs is untenable, that is, irrational, or the other is “stuckâ€, and so needs to be “removedâ€. Who, though, is really “stuckâ€? A Muslim might similarly see the Christian as “stuck†– unable to move beyond the partial, incomplete revelation given through Jesus on to the perfect revelation given through Muhammad and given final form in the Qur’an. A Christian, on the other hand, might look at a Muslim as taking the perfect sacrifice of Jesus-as-son-of-God and perverting it, having said that Jesus was only a man, like Muhammad.

And that’s only to start talking about conflict between the three major monotheisms, who share tradition and lineage; by and large, they’re on the same page as far as the story goes from Adam and Eve through Moses and all the rest.

One of my favourite phrases I ever heard used to describe this whole problem came from a former program director at Vision TV, who used to have to moderate between conflicting groups at the station. He used to talk about the “scarlet and vermilion theory of religious conflictâ€. It’s those colours that are jarringly close to one another that arouse the worst sense of fashion crime in observers. Some of the bloodiest wars have been fought in the last century, for example, not between Muslims and Buddhists, say, but between Sunni and Shi`ite Muslims; more death and misery has unfolded not between Christian and Taoist, but between Catholic and Protestant. It’s the endless hair-splitting within traditions – and here we can fold Christians, Muslims, and Jews together into their broader tradition to see into the violence there – that makes people dig in their heels the way they do.

And all of this, I should maybe have said earlier, is what Marxists would call “epiphenomenal†– that is, it’s the stuff of thought and words, and doesn’t yet have anything to do with the rough-and-tumble of how we make a living in the world, in practical terms, that is, with the competition, work, and strife involved in staying alive. The British used to exploit this in India. They noticed that in different parts of the country, ownership of the land would sometimes fall into the hands of one community, while the people that worked the land would belong to another. Then, according to the principle of divide-and-conquer, they would push the cultural differences between those groups, pitting Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, etc., against one another. In the case of the famous Ayodhya conflict, they fostered the story that an ancient Hindu temple had been destroyed by Muslims during the reign of the emperor Babur. When the British subsequently pulled out of India in the late 1940s, Hindu nationalists seized on that story to install idols of the god Rama in the mosque that supposedly stood on the same site. Fast-forward to the early 1990s, and vote-hungry Hindu politicians stoked that fire to the point where rioting mobs not only ripped the mosque apart – by hand, even – brick by brick, but also spread communal riots across the country, resulting in thousands of men, women, and children being killed and maimed. Now, is it “fixed†religion per se, a static and inflexible vision of the universe and humanity’s place in it, that is behind these differences and ensuing conflicts, or is it more common human insecurity, borne out of the struggle to survive in an uncertain and rapidly changing world? Or is it some combination of the two?

I’m personally inclined to think the latter, but also know that every situation is going to have its own characteristics that need to be explored in their own right. So I’ll stop there, hoping that what I’ve said makes some kind of sense, and encourage you, if you want to pursue these questions, to follow through on the details particular to each case (and who knows, you might get a graduate thesis out of it!). There is, I suppose my point is, always a human temptation to systematise, and sometimes this can be done to useful effect; the danger, as always, is in trying to force the details to fit the system. In the end, it’s always the details, the particulars, which most need to be seen, understood, and respected.

I was going to say something about the power of narrative, too, but figured that would just end up spilling over another bunch of pages. But something tells me too that meaning has more to do with stories (myths), in the end, than with systems of abstract logic. Maybe I'm finally getting sleepy, too, and stopping making any sense at all.

[Lazlo]

To many words. All we really have here is a case of Mydadstougherthanyourdadsyndrome.

[StoneMtn]

Well done, Evil. Based on the banality of the question, and clear lack of any thought on the part of your former student, I suspect you just wrote a paper for him that he has likely submitted for grades, and possibly publication.

[color:purple]I hope he gets an "A".

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I don't think there's any problem with that kind of thing here; he's an Accessibility student, made no secret of it, and the question he threw at me was just the sort of thing we used to chat about walking between buildings after class. I just wonder if he took anything away from the year's worth of classes, given that I used to yammer about pretty much the same sort of thing in lecture.

Mind you, I don't think my own focus was especially sharp when I was an undergrad either (not that much has changed ).

[StoneMtn]

Sorry to doubt you my friend. I should have realized that you would have already taken that possibility into account before you wrote him your reply.

Oh, and RE: "focus" ... wait ... what was I talking about again?

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Hell, somebody wants to submit something I wrote at four in the morning, power to 'em . I am a bit of a hack at writing, though; I was just curious to see how much or little sense I was making.

[Birdy]

not to be entirely naive, but maybe he just values your opinions DEM, and really was curious as to what you had to say.

i mean, i like to read what you have to say, maybe he does too. let's have a little faith people!!!

[d_rawk]

I think you nailed it really well, DEM. Seems to me also that religious sectarian conflict is just another example of general sectarian conflict. IE. religion is so regularly simply emblematic -- the flagship of cultural (and territorial! definately territorial) differences. We're pretty good at delineating between 'us' and 'them' - sometimes finding very creative ways of forging difference where only very minor differences, if any, are evident - and attacking/defending accordingly. As you pointed out, the biggest threat is often the one that is more similar than different, probably because it has more potential to sway those who are already won over.

Pretty sure that, contrary to popular thought, an absense of religion wouldn't lead to any reduction in conflict or violence. Just the language surrounding it would change. But that has little to do with pantheism, and I thought you pointed out very well why that idea is seen as threatening or incompatible with many threads of theological thought.

But something tells me too that meaning has more to do with stories (myths), in the end, than with systems of abstract logic.

Heck yeah. We pay so much attention to accuracy and details, that we so often tend to devalue anything approximating valuable truths. (truth being a flexible category, mind you. I don't want to come across as saying something that I didn't intend to say)

PS. This was the first thing I read when I woke up this morning. And I've had a headache all day.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I finally managed to shake my own and catch sleep by just after midnight. Must've been some residual "sleep-prevention agents" stored up in some fat cells somewhere what got released, or something .

Every read much Weber? I've always liked his categories of rationality, where "value-rationality" (Wertrationalität) gets given due recognition, alongside instrumental, traditional, etc.

[d_rawk]

Every read much Weber?

I haven't, but someone (StoneMtn probably) told me I should, and I plan to. I've read about him, but mostly material of the encyclopedia entry variety.

One of these days!

Hey -- did you ever get a response from your former student re: your reply?

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Nothing yet; at this point, I'd be more curious to have a chat with the folks at this church of his.

I had a good talk yesterday with a relative of CJ who's an Anglican minister in New Brunswick; she's on the healthy side, imo, of the Essentials divide there, and had all sorts of things to say about how badly the whole thing is being handled (by her Bishop, largely), particularly given that Essentials people are by and large completely inflexible and uncommunicative with people who aren't already on their side.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Interesting tale here. It reminds me of the story of how religious instruction in Ontario was nixed after 1990, on the heels of a case of a Baha`i girl in St. Thomas who ended up having nightmares of herself and her family burning in hell following some "instruction" by an evangelical Bible teacher.

The Terror Raids: 'This is not why we came to Canada'

'I cannot accept my son could be caught up in this situation'

COLIN FREEZE

From Monday's Globe and Mail

SCARBOROUGH, ONT. — The youngest of the 17 suspects arrested on terror-related charges turns 16 Tuesday in a Toronto-area detention centre and his parents still can't understand how their son, a Hindu who liked to play soccer and aspired to be a veterinarian, got caught up in the alleged plot.

The family of recent immigrants insists their son was never a Muslim. Yet police allege he took part in "al-Qaeda-inspired" terrorist training along with more than a dozen other recruits, some of whom are accused of planning to bomb targets in Toronto.

In the bedroom he shared with an older brother, there are no images of Osama bin Laden, just an old poster of SpongeBob SquarePants.

In the living room of the family's modest, two-bedroom apartment in Scarborough, there are pictures and statues of Durga, Shiva and Ganesh. Those are the same Hindu gods whose images some of the 17 suspects allegedly shot at for target practice during a terrorist training camp in December, as The Globe and Mail reported June 7.

"Every morning, we clean the altar with a wet cloth," the boy's mother said in an interview, pointing to a small Hindu shrine her son helped clean.

"I cannot accept my son could be caught up in this situation," said the boy's father, who brought the family to Canada from South Asia three years ago. "This is not why we came to Canada. I never expected this to happen in Canada."

In hindsight, the family concedes there were warning signs that something was wrong. But at the time, it seemed like nothing more than growing pains of any teenager.

Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act prevents the teenager or his parents from being publicly identified. His parents are also reluctant to reveal what country they are from, fearful that any publicity of their son's arrest will jeopardize their hard-won employment prospects.

Nor did they want a reporter to speak to their older son, 18, who graduated from high school last month and plans to attend college in the fall.

The father recently took his professional-certification exams and the mother has a steady job in retail. Both parents, who are in their 40s, look forward to a time when long bus commutes to low-paying jobs are a distant memory. They dream of owning a house so that their younger son can have the pet dog he has always wanted.

While busy, the parents have always kept a close watch on their two teenagers. The boys are allowed to go out only if they write the telephone number of the friends they are visiting on a white board affixed to the fridge. Sleepovers are forbidden. In fact, only school-sponsored excursions are allowed.

Their younger son had expressed an interest in tattoos and piercings, but then said he wanted to try out different religions.

In December, he came home with a note on his school's letterhead, urging his participation at a "fun camp" for boys.

"A day or two before the trip, he said he hadn't been anywhere in Canada," his father recalled. "At this fun camp he will learn this and that. It was an official school letter. We had no reason to doubt anything. It was a holiday season, so we said, 'Okay, you can go.' " The 15-year-old spent about a week away, checking in with his parents briefly through a friend's cellphone. He told his mom he was learning a lot.

"He was learning how to start fires, by rubbing a stone; he was doing hiking," his mother said. "They caught some fish with a stick -- what do you call it? -- a spear."

But when he returned home, he was sullen and refused to talk about the experience.

"When he came back," his father said, "he was not the jovial boy that he was before."

A few weeks later, the parents got a call from their teenager's math teacher. She is also a Hindu and wanted to know why the 15-year-old had stayed home from school for the Muslim holiday of Eid.

The mother was outraged and knew whom to call. In the previous year, her son had become friends with a boy a couple of years older than him and this boy's devotion to Islam had not endeared him to the family. She called and called and called, until the older boy finally answered his phone.

"I said 'I want my son back . . . I'm very sure he's with you, and if you don't give him back, I'm going to call the police," the mother said.

The boy denied her son was with him, but eventually admitted it. Then he changed tactics. "He took the phone and said, 'Why can't he embrace Islam?' " she recalled.

She was dumbfounded. She told the boy her son was a 15-year-old child, and not equipped to make these kinds of decisions.

"And then he said, 'Why do you hate Muslims?' " she recalled.

The conversation grew more heated, so the father took the phone. But the young man on the other line wasn't budging.

"He said, 'Islam is the fastest-growing religion, why shouldn't [your son] have the freedom to choose?' " the father recalled.

But the father ordered his son to come home. And when the teenager did, his parents grounded him for a month. And he was no longer allowed to see his friend.

As spring began to turn into summer, the teenager's mood changed drastically. "He said, 'I don't want to go to school, I'll home study,' " his mother said. "I said, 'Why? School days are the best days of your life.' " But that didn't cheer him up at all. She recalled how he cozied up to her on the family couch. "He put his head here," she said, pointing to her lap. "And with his two hands he hugged me."

He wouldn't say what was wrong. But clearly something was disturbing him.

"One month before his arrest, he was very scared," his mother recalled. ". . . He said someone was outside, he thinks somebody is watching him."

The 15-year-old told his mother an old, bearded man kept appearing to him in his dreams, and kept asking him why he was leaving Islam.

The teenager told his mother he was afraid of burning in hell.

The boy was supposed to have been playing soccer when a police officer called his home on the evening of June 2 and said he had been arrested. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service had contacted the parents of some of the terrorism suspects earlier in the year, alleging that they were embracing "extremist ideology" and asking them to keep an eye on their children -- but not these parents.

"I said 'You cannot arrest him for terrorism!' " the mother recalled telling police that day.

But it was true. She and her husband rushed to the police station.

It was 3:30 a.m. before they were allowed to meet their son in a small room. Everyone cried.

"He said, 'Mom, I didn't do anything,' " the mother recalled. Forced to leave after a half-hour, they went home and called the first lawyer they could find in the Yellow Pages.

Later that day, police told reporters they had foiled a major terrorist plot. They displayed army fatigues, a 9 mm handgun, a bullet-riddled door and camping gear. Police said the materials were used in December at a training camp in a wooded area near Orillia, Ont.

The 15-year-old's parents, who now regard the "fun camp" school letter as a forgery, say their son's older friend is another one of the five young offenders who was arrested.

The youngest suspects face charges of taking terrorist training, while a core group of older suspects stand accused of instructing recruits and conspiring to detonate truck bombs.

But the parents insist their son is not like any of the others. While he was denied bail last week, they are hopeful he will succeed at another bail hearing in mid-July.

In the meantime, they have bought him a birthday card for tomorrow's 16th birthday. His mother is planning a visit.

"He said, 'Mom can you bring me some chicken curry and rice, please?' " she said.

Funny how "youth camps" can have such great success in bringing out the worst insecurities in teens.