The evolution of tolerance
Is it possible to be both Muslim and modern?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/649377.asp?0dm=C29EO
By Robert Wright
SLATE.COM
Oct. 29 - The politically incorrect view of Islam seems to be gaining
momentum. In the wake of Sept. 11, the Bush administration had insisted
that Islam is a peaceful religion, "hijacked" by a few extremists. Then,
in a New York Times Magazine essay, Andrew Sullivan dissented. He
acknowledged that there are moderate Muslims and that the Quran in
places counsels mercy and tolerance. "But it would be naive to ignore in
Islam a deep thread of intolerance toward unbelievers, especially if
those unbelievers are believed to be a threat to the Islamic world." He
then quoted the Quran's commandment to "kill those who join other gods
with God wherever ye shall find them."
NOW A RECENT Washington Post essay seconds the motion that we
look to the Quran for clues about modern Islam - and agrees that the
clues are damning. "Scholars of the Koran assure us that nothing in the
text commands the faithful to take up the sword against the innocent,"
writes Michael Skube. "But, as the text makes clear, the sword is to be
taken up - against those who deny Allah and his Messenger, against those
who once believed but fell away, against foes of the faith, real or
imagined."
PARSING THE SCRIPTURES
Modernization can threaten the values of the deeply religious. Hence
the paradox of the two types of 9/11 hijackers: the poor, uneducated
ones, and the middle-class but alienated ones.
In a recent appraisal of the ongoing argument over Islam,
Slate's Seth Stevenson notes in passing that Christian and Jewish
scriptures aren't devoid of belligerence either. He wasn't kidding. Here
is some guidance offered in the book of Deuteronomy.
"When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of
peace to it. And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then
all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and
shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war
against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives
it into your hand you shall put all its males to the sword, but the
women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city,
all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourselves."
Granted, the Judeo-Christian God - unlike the Muslim hijackers -
here seems to favor sparing women and children. But this treatment is
reserved for "cities which are very far from you." In nearer cities,
"the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you for an
inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall
utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and
the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has
commanded; that they may not teach you to do according to all their
abominable practices which they have done in the service of their gods,
and so to sin against the Lord your God."
In contrast, the Quran - as interpreted not by Mohamed Atta but
by Mohammed, who was something of an authority on it - counsels sparing
women and children, even in a holy war.
ROOTS OF FUNDAMENTALISM
If Osama Bin Laden were a Christian, and he still wanted to destroy the
World Trade Center, he would cite Jesus' rampage against the
money-changers. If he didn't want to destroy the World Trade Center, he
could stress the Sermon on the Mount.
I'm not saying that Islam is irrelevant to what happened on
Sept. 11. In fact, I buy much of Sullivan's argument - that
understanding contemporary Islamic fundamentalism, as distinguished from
moderate strands of Islam, helps illuminate our predicament. But I am
saying that this whole business of mining the Quran for incendiary
quotes is essentially pointless. Religions evolve, and there is usually
enough ambiguity in their founding scriptures to let them evolve in any
direction. If Osama Bin Laden were a Christian, and he still wanted to
destroy the World Trade Center, he would cite Jesus' rampage against the
money-changers. If he didn't want to destroy the World Trade Center, he
could stress the Sermon on the Mount.
To some of Islam's critics, this evolutionary view of religion
seems only to strengthen their indictment of the faith. Why, they ask,
hasn't Islam done what other faiths have done-use the leeway offered by
scriptural ambiguity to evolve away from truculent intolerance? Whereas
during the crusades Muslims and European Christians were equally bent on
slaughtering infidels (i.e., each other), European Christians today seem
to accept religious diversity in a way that millions of Muslims don't.
Why is that?
A man at a supermarket in Kota Baru, the capital of the northeastern
Malaysian state of Kelantan, breaks the state's rules for checkout
counters by paying for groceries at a women-only counter.
To me, the answer seems simple: The predominately Christian
nations have become more economically advanced, more globalized, which
naturally leads to a more cosmopolitan outlook. It's impossible to do
business with people while slaughtering them, and it's pretty hard to do
business with them while telling them that they'll burn in hell forever.
Modern global capitalism has its faults, but religious intolerance isn't
one of them.
RELIGION AS SUPERSTRUCTURE
In this view, the intolerance of Islamic fundamentalists is a
reflection not of scripture laid down 1,400 years ago, but of their
sociological circumstances in recent decades. In Pakistan, alongside
millions of insular and mostly poor fundamentalists, are wealthier,
worldlier, and more moderate Muslims. Marxists may get most things
wrong, but when they view religion as "superstructure" - a product of
deeper economic and political dynamics - they're onto something.
Some who acknowledge that modernization saved Christianity from
rabid intolerance would like to turn even this into an indictment of
Islam. Why, they ask suspiciously, didn't the Islamic world modernize
readily? Why did Christian Europe beat Islamic civilization to the
industrial revolution? Mightn't there be something inherently oppressive
and economically stultifying about Islam? Wasn't some Christian emphasis
on personal liberty the key to Europe's industrial-age success?
There are several things I dislike about this line of thought:
Its incompatibility with the great intellectual and economic
accomplishment of Islamic civilization during much of the Middle Ages;
Its incompatibility with the intense authoritarianism of some leading
Christians before the industrial revolution (Calvin ruled Geneva roughly
as Stalin ruled Russia)
Its incompatibility with my own favorite theory about why Europe
industrialized before either China or Islamic civilization, both of
which had earlier been on the leading edge of commerce and technology.
A WRENCHING TRANSITION
There is no timeless, immutable essence of Islam, rooted in the Quran,
that condemns it to a medieval morality.
This theory stresses the lack of effective empire - of firm
centralized rule - in Europe during the late Middle Ages and the early
modern era. Because Europe was politically fragmented, there were lots
of polities experimenting with forms of political and economic
organization that would let them best their neighbors. The more
experiments there are, the more likely you are to find a winning formula
- such as the combination of political and economic liberty that was
proving its power in the Netherlands by the late 16th century and in
Britain by the late 17th. The success of this formula gave nearby
Christian nations little choice but to adopt it, and their Christianity
evolved accordingly.
The magic formula of political and economic liberty has since
spread across much of the world. Eventually, I'm sure, it will prevail
even in currently repressive Islamic states.
Unfortunately, the transition could be wrenching. Though
globalization is the long-run hope for Islamic society, it is the
short-run threat. Yes, market economies are the only lasting cure for
poverty. But the first step in the cure often strains the bonds of
tradition by moving people from rural, kin-based communities into cities
or shantytowns. And even decades after this initial dislocation, when
families have been pulled safely out of poverty, modernization can still
threaten the values of the deeply religious. Hence the paradox of the
two types of 9/11 hijackers: the poor, uneducated ones, and the
middle-class but alienated ones.
EVOLVING TOLERANCE
There is obviously a sense in which the blame-Islam-first crowd
is right, and Islam is part of the problem. The attitude of Islamic
fundamentalists - an abhorrence of the non-Islamic world-conflicts with
the logic of globalization, and, sooner or later, something has to give.
But if history is any guide, what will give in the end is reactionary
religion, not technological progress. And the result will be, as it has
been in the past, the evolution of a more humane, tolerant faith. There
is no timeless, immutable essence of Islam, rooted in the Quran, that
condemns it to a medieval morality.
The truth is depressing enough: We have to fight poverty and
ignorance, yet the surest cure for these things - economic modernization
- carries intense short-run dangers. We don't need to further depress
ourselves by forgetting that most of the world's prosperous Christian
lands once had the same mindset as today's fundamentalist Muslims. They
were mired in a pre-modern belief system - and there but for the grace
of a few quirks of history they might still be.
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--------
Robert Wright, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, is
the author of "The Moral Animal" and "Nonzero: The Logic of Human
Destiny."
THE END
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