Roots of Fundamentalism

by Karen Armstrong

Excerpt from The Battle for God (published 2000) by Karen Armstrong.

Evangelical Christianity, Zionism and Radical Islam

There have always been people, in every age and in each tradition, who have fought the modernity of their day. But the fundamentalism that we shall be considering is an essentially twentieth-century movement. It is a reaction against the scientific and secular culture that first appeared in the West, but which has since taken root in other parts of the world. The West has developed an entirely unprecedented and wholly different type of civilization, so the religious response to it has been unique. The fundamentalist movements that have evolved in our own day have a symbiotic relationship with modernity. They may reject the scientific rationalism of the West, but they cannot escape it. Western civilization has changed the world. Nothing — including religion — can ever be the same again. All over the globe, people have been struggling with these new conditions and have been forced to reassess their religious traditions, which were designed for an entirely different type of society.

There was a similar transitional period in the ancient world, lasting roughly from 700 to 200 BCE, which historians have called the Axial Age because it was pivotal to the spiritual development of humanity. This age was itself the product and fruition of thousands of years of economic, and therefore social and cultural, evolution, beginning in Sumer in what is now Iraq, and in ancient Egypt. People in the fourth and third millennia BCE, instead of simply growing enough crops to satisfy their immediate needs, became capable of producing an agricultural surplus with which they could trade and thereby acquire additional income. This enabled them to build the first civilizations, develop the arts, and create increasingly powerful polities: cities, city-states, and, eventually, empires. In agrarian society, power no longer lay exclusively with the local king or priest; its locus shifted at least partly to the marketplace, the source of each culture’s wealth. In these altered circumstances, people ultimately began to find that the old paganism, which had served their ancestors well, no longer spoke fully to their condition.

In the cities and empires of the Axial Age, citizens were acquiring a wider perspective and broader horizons, which made the old local cults seem limited and parochial. Instead of seeing the divine as embodied in a number of different deities, people increasingly began to worship a single, universal transcendence and source of sacredness. They had more leisure and were thus able to develop a richer interior life; accordingly, they came to desire a spirituality which did not depend entirely upon external forms. The most sensitive were troubled by the social injustice that seemed built into this agrarian society, depending as it did on the labor of peasants who never had the chance to benefit from the high culture. Consequently, prophets and reformers arose who insisted that the virtue of compassion was crucial to the spiritual life: an ability to see sacredness in every single human being, and a willingness to take practical care of the more vulnerable members of society, became the test of authentic piety. In this way, during the Axial Age, the great confessional faiths that have continued to guide human beings sprang up in the civilized world: Buddhism and Hinduism in India, Confucianism and Taoism in the Far East; monotheism in the Middle East; and rationalism in Europe. Despite their major differences, these Axial Age religions had much in common: they all built on the old traditions to evolve the idea of a single, universal transcendence; they cultivated an internalized spirituality, and stressed the importance of practical compassion.

Today, as noted, we are undergoing a similar period of transition.Its roots lie in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of the modern era, when the people of Western Europe began to evolve a different type of society, one based not on an agricultural surplus but on a technology that enabled them to reproduce their resources indefinitely. The economic changes over the last four hundred years have been accompanied by immense social, political, and intellectual revolutions, with the development of an entirely different, scientific and rational, concept of the nature of truth; and, once again, a radical religious change has become necessary. All over the world, people are finding that in their dramatically transformed circumstances, the old forms of faith no longer work for them: they cannot provide the enlightenment and consolation that human beings seem to need. As a result, men and women are trying to find new ways of being religious; like the reformers and prophets of the Axial Age, they are attempting to build upon the insights of the past in a way that will take human beings forward into the new world they have created for themselves. One of these modern experiments — however paradoxical it may superficially seem to say so — is fundamentalism.

Members, One of Another: Gender Equality and Justice in Islam

By Riffat Hassan

Department of Religious Studies
University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky

[Dr. Riffat Hassan is a theologian and a leading Islamic feminist scholar of Quran. She has taught at Punjab University, Oklahoma State University and Harvard University. This article (source) is being for its feminist message.]

Introduction

What I will say may surprise both Muslims who “know” women’s place and non-Muslims who “know” what Islam means for women. It is this: I am a Muslim, a theologian, and a women’s rights activist, and while I am critical in a number of ways of the life that most Muslim societies offer to women, twenty years of theological study, as well as my own deepest faith, convince me that in real Islam, the Islam of the Qur’an, women and men are equals. Liberating ideas lie at the heart of most enduring faiths, and Islam shares in these. Two themes in particular strike me as being of the highest importance. The first is the fundamental equality of humans before God. The other is religion’s revolutionary aim of human liberation. From religion should come freedom to seek understanding of the will of God and life’s purpose, and freedom to honor God’s creation through self-development and striving toward God’s ends.

Unfortunately, most Muslim societies also mirror a fault that has been noted by feminist theologians in cultures shaped by other religions: the gap between rhetoric of equality and the reality of profound inequality between the lives of women and men. While Muslim women continuously hear the refrain that Islam has given women more rights than any other religious tradition, they continue to be subjected to grossly unequal treatment.

Most Muslims — women and men — consider it self-evident that men are superior to women. Going further, they justify many manifestations of inequality as inherent in Islam. In fact, women are regarded in a number of contemporary Muslim societies as less than fully human because it is widely believed that in some contexts (such as inheritance or witnessing to contracts), one man is equal to two women. Most Muslim females, learning their culture’s assumptions even before they learn language, and denied the opportunity to become educated, also internalize this belief.

A Short Primer on Secular Ethics

by PAUL KURTZ

Free Inquiry – Volume 29, Number 3

Increasingly, world civilization is becoming secular; that is, it emphasizes worldly rather than religious values. This is especially true of Europe, which is widely considered post-religious and post-Christian (though with a small Islamic minority). Secularist winds are also blowing strong in Asia, notably in Japan and China. The United States has been an anomaly in this regard, for it has suffered a long dark night in which evangelical fundamentalism has overshadowed the public square with its insistence that belief in God is essential for moral virtue. Interestingly, this is now changing, and secularism is gaining ground. Even President Obama recognizes the existence of unbelievers; at least 16 percent of Americans do not belong to a religious denomination. Young people today are more secular, with up to 25 percent nonreligious.

Accordingly, we may ask, what is secular ethics? Although secularists are nonreligious, they may also be good citizens, loving parents, and decent people. Instead of religion, they look to science, the secular arts, and literature for their inspiration. They point out that religious belief is no guarantee of moral probity, that horrendous crimes have been committed in the name of God, and that religionists often disagree vociferously about concrete moral judgments (such as euthanasia, the rights of women, abortion, stem-cell research, homosexuality, war, and peace). As I have pointed out, secular ethics needs to be internalized within the life of a person to be effective.

The ethics of humanism traces its origins back to the beginnings of Western civilization in Greece and Rome, through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the scientific and democratic revolutions of the modern world. Secular humanists today affirm that every person should be considered equal in dignity and value and that human freedom is precious. The civic virtues of democracy are essentially humanist, for they emphasize tolerance of the wide diversity of beliefs and lifestyles, and they are committed to defending human rights. The conjunction of secular and humanism brings both of these intellectual and moral forces together.

But “How can you be ethical if you do not believe in God?” protests the believer. Perhaps such a person should enroll in an elementary course in ethics, where he or she would discover a rich philosophical literature dealing with this question. The good is usually defined as “happiness,” though there are differences between the eudemonistic (emphasizing enriched self-development) and the hedonistic (particularly American) brand of intemperate consumption. Perhaps a harmonious integration of the two theories can be achieved. I would call it rational exuberance. Philosophers have emphasized the importance of self-restraint, temperance, rational prudence; of a life in which satisfaction, excellence, and the creative fulfillment of a person’s talents is achieved. It does not mean that “anything goes.” Humanist ethics focuses on the good life here and now.

Secularists recognize the importance of self-interest in a person’s life—many of them are libertarians. Every individual needs to be concerned with his or her own health, well-being, and career. But self-interest can be enlightened. This involves recognition that we have responsibilities to others. There are principles of right and wrong that we should live by. No doubt there are differences about many moral issues. Often there may be difficulties in achieving a consensus. Negotiation and compromise are essential in a pluralistic society.

However, there is now substantial evidence drawn from evolutionary biology that humans possess an innate moral sense. Morality has its roots in group survival: the moral practices that evolved enabled tribes or clans to survive and function. This means that human beings are potentially moral. Whether or not this moral sense is realized depends on social and environmental conditions. Some individuals may never fully develop morally—they may be morally handicapped, even sociopathic. That is one reason society needs to enact laws to protect itself.

There is also of course cultural relativity, but there are, I submit, also a set of common moral virtues that cut across cultures—such as being truthful, honest, kind, keeping promises, being dependable and responsible, avoiding cruelty, etc.—and these in time become widely recognized as binding. Herein lie the roots of empathy and caring for other human and sentient beings. Such behavior needs to be nourished in the young by means of moral education (and cultivated throughout life). In any case, human beings are capable of both self-interested and altruistic behavior in varying degrees.

Secular humanists wish to evaluate ethical principles in the light of their consequences, and they advise the use of rational inquiry to frame moral judgments. They also appreciate the fact that some principles are so important that they should not be easily sacrificed to achieve one’s ends.

To say that a person is moral only if he or she obeys God’s commandments—out of fear or love of God or a desire for salvation—is hardly adequate. Ethical principles need to be internalized, rooted in reason and compassion. The ethics of secularism is autonomous in the sense that it need not be derived from theological grounds. Secular humanists are interested in enhancing the good life both for the individual and society.

Today, a new imperative has emerged: an awareness that our ethical concerns should extend to all members of the world community. This points to a new planetary ethics transcending the ancient religious, ethnic, racial, and national enmities of the past. It is an ethic that recognizes our common interests and needs as part of an interdependent world. It is rather urgent in our global world that we develop morality applicable to the twenty-first century and beyond.

Postscript: Secular ethics, in my view, will not be fully effective unless it can be applied to personal morality.

Islam And Sexual Equality

By Asghar Ali Engineer

14 January, 2004

(I am not trying to endorse any religious point of view here but I rather intend to bring out alternative voices both within and outside of religion. Anything not written by me, need not correspond fully to my views)

The question of sexual equality is very important parameter of modernity along with democracy and human rights. Whatever be the status of women in the Qur’an, status of women in Muslim societies is far from satisfactory. Be it in India, Pakistan, Bangla Desh or any other Muslim country in West or South East Asia like Malaysia and Indonesia. In all these countries the problem of women’s status has acquired critical proportions. Many women’s organisations have sprung up in these countries and are struggling for their rights. The problem is acquiring more and more serious proportions as modern education is spreading among middle class women.

Earlier the orthodox in the community were strongly opposed to education for women. Even today in rural areas and smaller towns education for girl child is frowned upon. Nevertheless in bigger towns and among growing middle classes it is no more possible to stop women from acquiring education and hence proportion of educated women is increasing and with increased percentage of education among women awareness for their rights is also increasing. They increasingly demand equal status with men. Some women tend to become indifferent to religion and even consider religion as serious obstacle in their right to equality.

The orthodox among Muslims too, on their part, show stiff resistance to any change and want to maintain status quo. They of course quote from the Qur’an and hadith and also from opinions expressed by the Islamic jurists, to prove their case. This further strengthens impression among these women that Islam is not going to help them and they begin to reject it.

However, there are also women who are determined to use religion in their favour and for fighting their battle against the male understanding of the divine scripture. They believe in women reading and understanding the Qur’an. Thus there are various women’s organisations doing this exercise and re-interpreting the Qur’an. It is a better sign and I believe, a more healthy sign. Women have as much right to understand and interpret the Qur’an from their perspective. Even most orthodox among the Muslims would agree that women have also right to interpret the Qur’an.

Science and Delusion

They use Global Positioning System (GPS) devices to find out the direction of Kiblah. Their smart phones, priced hundreds of dollars, are equipped with all the necessary software they need to perform their religious duties. Their black berry devices are all too ready to send out emails containing lucrative material preaching the ideology of the school of thought they belong to. They use World Wide Web to watch streaming videos of hate-mongers, pseudo-scholars and so called security analysts spilling out the most profound lies in the name of history. They watch TV Channels dedicated to bring stage illusionists, presenting self-sustaining and cyclic arguments as rational proofs of what they want to believe. They cannot help but clapping, along with all the mindless spectators present at those TV “entertainment shows”, at the most ludicrous arguments that any college freshman, taking a course comprising of epistemology, can debunk in less than five minutes.

They belong to the urban educated middle class of Pakistan. They are one of the luckiest people in this country who are equipped with the necessary tools of language and basic understanding to grasp the reality of this universe and the way this world behaves with an open mind. But here comes the catch. The method that has assisted us in learning how this world behaves is termed as a human invention, a faulty tool created by all so incompetent and “evil” human species. The way science elegantly describes this universe and challenges our dogmatic notions is ignored and most of the time comically challenged with the utmost stubbornness. It has become a custom of these people to dig deeper into its intellectual ignorance by rejecting natural sciences and at the same time using the technology developed (by infidels of course) upon the foundations of  science. It is therefore not strange to find a person rejecting Theory of Evolution, modern genetics or the Big Bang Model of the universe but it will not stop him from having a DNA test to confirm the paternity of his children (what else could one expect from male chauvinists) or play with the wireless inventions of the modern day that owe their existence to the underlying electromagnetic theory of Physics.

I can recall watching a discussion with Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg (who shared Nobel Prize for Physics with Abdul Salam and Glasshow). Weinberg narrated how Salam went to oil rich Gulf States, in order to convince them to develop universities in the Islamic world, where research in natural sciences would be given its due share. He was given a cold shoulder as most of the rulers of Muslim majority countries are interested in technology but consider natural sciences as corrosive to faith and hence to the hegemony of those monarchs who use religion as a tool of authoritarian rule and subjugation of their subjects.

What else could be more comical than a religious zealot using a computer connected to internet and within all his/her senses (if he/she is left with any) denying the authenticity of science. What is more troubling is the fact that he/she does not even appear to understand the absurdity of that claim. One must need to realize that the GPS devices, desktops, laptops and the blackberries and all such computing devices are manifestations of elegant engineering achievements which are based upon the basic predictions and theories of natural sciences. Any powerful computing device of today consists of a large number of micro-processing devices. It is quite common these days for an average microprocessor, which itself is no large than a postage stamp, to contain millions of embedded electronic switches, turning on and off more than one billion times a second in a musical harmony which can easily disrupt a fundamentalist’s mind as it is usually unable to understand figures such as billions. It is quite natural because for most of the fundamentalists, planet earth is a few thousand years old (rather than four billion years, which is the actual age of the earth).

This state-of-the-art computing technology of today did not grow out of nowhere. It was not plucked from trees. It did not land from the heavens. It was not brought to us by extra-terrestrials traveling in U.F.O(s).  It was developed scientifically, systematically, meticulously and (most importantly) intelligently. It is based upon some of the most important discoveries of natural sciences that explain how a certain element of nature named Silicon shows a peculiar electronic behaviour under certain conditions. The electronic behaviour is itself explained by natural sciences as a phenomenon that exists due to the flow of an elementary particle of all matter, named as electron. If just for once, it is assumed that there exists no such particle named electron or that there exists no such phenomenon as the motion of electrons, the whole body of knowledge that was used to develop the world of today will collapse. There will be no foundations to support the sky scrapper of the modern day technology. Therefore whenever a fundamentalist uses his/her computer to post, on an online forum, an arrogant, ignorant and absolutist stance that science is not reliable, he/she actually exhibits a perfect example of self-contradiction, intellectual degeneration and cowardice.

The purpose of above example is to relate how technology exists due to the accurate and precise explanations predictions of the natural sciences.The same argument could be based upon the examples of breakthroughs in applied sciences such as medical science, mechanical and structural engineering to name a few. Therefore whenever a Science-Rejecting-Arrogant-Fundamentalist visits a doctor to seek cure for an ailment affecting him/her or his/her children, undergoes a complicated surgical procedure, drives an automobile, boards an airplane, switches on an air conditioner, makes an electronic financial transaction to his/her favourite Jihadi outfit or simply switches on TV to watch the renowned stage magician from India, play tricks with his/her mind, in the name of religion, he/she implicitly acknowledges the accuracy of the scientific theories and their predictions that led to those technological achievements. Natural science is the firm, solid and essential foundation of all the luxuries that these confused arrogant fundamentalists use to preach their baseless hypocrisy to unsuspecting youth, caught in the vicious ford between modernity and tradition.

Scientific Method

Scientific method allows human species to expand the circumference of its knowledge. These techniques, employed by scientists, allow us to understand this universe as it is. Science is elegant and beautiful as it incorporates both the beauty and creativity of human consciousness and at the same time requires the accuracy and precision of observation and evidence. Scientific method involves:

1. Observation of natural phenomena.
2. Formulation of a hypothesis – an outcome of the creativity of human mind which could be artistically aesthetic – to explain the observed natural phenomena.
3. Usage of the formulated hypothesis to predict new phenomena or observable outcomes of the model, that are testable.
4. Testing those predictions through experiments and hence falsify the hypothesis if those predictions are wrong.

By continuously applying the above method, human species has been able to expand the sphere of its knowledge to a level where children of both Secularists and Fundamentalists alike have much higher chances of survival through infancy as compared to their ancestors. Science has beyond no doubt helped us in reducing infant mortality rates. It has allowed us to live longer and healthier by providing better health care services. It has served to raise our consciousness  by ridding us of the self-indulgent delusion of being the centre of a small pre-Galilean universe. It has saved us from indulging in the horrors of burning alive old women at stakes after declaring them as witches just because we had low yield of crops that year. It has freed us (or at least some of us) from the evil spirits and demons that ran amok during the times of our ancestors and caused great damage through storms, hurricanes and thunderstorms. It has allowed us to stop exorcising demons out of anguished psychological patients and instead provide them with proper medical care and finally it has enabled us to challenge the tyranny of those ruling in the name of divine rights.

Science is a perpetual, systematic quest of seeking the unknown and turning it into the known. It requires respect towards facts, the ability and courage to shed already present notions of the world, when finally contradicted by evidence, no matter how dear and personal they are to the scientist.  Most importantly, science operates on the principle of methodological naturalism, that is; this universe, which is to be studied, is a closed, self-sustained system where we strive to explain the unknown. But whatever remains unknown in this system does not belong to the supernatural. It only remains “unknown” to be later explored, sought, explained and hence converted to the “known” by the systematic study of the world.

Had it been a habit of the scientists to attribute, what they could not understand- during the course of their work- to the supernatural, we would not have known this world as we now know it today. Had Benjamin Franklin and Michael Faraday used supernatural explanations, rather than conducting experiments, to study and explain the phenomena related to electric charges, our beloved fundamentalists would not have been able to appear on TV screens and shamelessly deny the discoveries of science. Had Galileo and all the following astronomers, made use of tradition instead of observation to explain a model of the solar system, these modern day stage acts would have been using their putrid arguments to explain how their scriptures prove that sun and everything else in the universe revolves around the planet Earth.  Had Newton (and every one else) attributed motion of objects and their fall towards the earth to a divine presence rather than the inherent laws of this ordered universe, we would not have even developed a basic theory of mechanics and hence pop-artists-turned-fundamentalists would not have been able to travel in Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV), priced millions, along with their fellows in order to preach what they thinks is right. In fact no fundamentalist would have been able to drive a car, board a plane (or crash those cars/ planes into buildings) because there would not have been any cars or planes.

Modern astronomy has shown us that this universe is extremely vast for our minds to fathom. We live on a a small sized planet, revolving around a middle sized star, located at an insignificant spiral of a galaxy, that contains billions of such stars and we are in an expanding universe that may contain billions of such galaxies. Not to forget the theoretical possibility, that there could be many, perhaps billions of such universes. To imagine such cosmic loneliness may turn out to be one of the most horrifying mental experiences by opening doors to an intolerable feeling of despair and hopelessness. But perhaps all is not that bleak as we expect. The same doors that can make a human mind plunge into despair, may lead a way towards the realization of the most cherished gift of nature to human species.

The very same, not yet fully understood, human consciousness that allows us to realize the vastness of this cosmos, look at it, touch it, feel it and perhaps love it, is what makes us special. It is exactly when Descartes exclaims, “Cogito, ergo sum“, a human is defined. Our brain creates a visual model of this world inside us, which is then interpreted by our subjective consciousness as the world we see. This world is all what our mind shows us to be. It is, at the end, only our ability and capacity to think that differentiates us from lifeless matter and most of the other animal species.

Being extremely insignificant creatures of this universe, the very thing that makes us special is the ability to realize, understand and explore this insignificance. Such a realization can open new doors towards appreciating the beauty of life, consciousness and last but not the least, every other being that can think, feel and understand like us. To develop a very humble feeling of pride in being a human  and to be able to feel and care for every other human being is perhaps not a bad deal at the end.

Note: The example of electron is inspired from an audio recording of a Keynote address delivered by Pervez Hoodbhoy.