AS POLITICAL and religious leaders take stock after the terrible carnage in Mumbai, the world waits anxiously upon the potential consequences. Extremist Pakistani groups as well as al Qaida have a strong interest in provoking fresh hostilities between Pakistan and India.
They would also like to see heightened violence across South Asia. Indian and Pakistani leaders will come under intense pressure to stoke nationalist passions, but they need to do the opposite, and exercise restraint and statesmanship.
The savagery in India is yet another example of how volatile our world is at the moment. We live in unstable times.
No matter who is responsible for these atrocities, the question of the contribution of religion to world affairs will, rightly, be raised again. To put the matter bluntly: does religion do more harm than good? By and large, atheists will say yes and religionists will say no, but I want to suggest that the issue is more complex than black-and-white answers would suggest.
Let’s be specific.
After the failed car-bomb attacks on Glasgow Airport and London’s west end, more than seven in 10 people interviewed by researchers said that the planned attacks had damaged Islam’s reputation.
The usual response to this kind of thing is to protest that Islam is a religion of peace. I want both to support and to challenge this conventional wisdom, and then to ask how justifiable the protestations of the other great monotheistic religions are.
I spent some years living in a multicultural area of Glasgow. Our next-door neighbours, Mr and Mrs Rafiq, were the epitome of Moslem kindness and hospitality. There’s not the slightest doubt that a huge majority of Moslems in this country regard the bomb attacks as utterly abhorrent. They also regard them as an affront to Islam. But are they right to do so?
This question leads us to the heart of the current problem. Islam is a religion of peace, with its emphasis on charity, justice, and love for the neighbour. But to leave the matter at that is simply dishonest. Islam is also a religion associated with war. Its history tells us so.
As well as many injunctions to peaceful living, there are some bellicose exhortations in the Koran and in the hadith (sacred commentary). The suicide pilots who flew innocent men, women and children to their deaths did so with the cry Allah Akbar – God is great – on their lips, believing that they were fulfilling the revealed will of Allah.
Sacred scriptures are problems as well as resources. The reiteration of so-called infallible texts solves nothing. The warring sects of the Moslem world – what is happening today is as much evidence of a civil war within Islam as it is a clash of civilisations – all believe that the Koran is the final, literal word of God which cannot be challenged in any way. This is bad news for women, as well as for freedom of speech. When novelist Salman Rushdie was honoured with a knighthood, the baleful Ayman al Zawahri, deputy leader of al Qaida, threatened an attack on Britain. What was truly shameful was the response of those who said Britain should not have honoured Rushdie – one of the genuinely great writers of our time – because it might provoke wrath. The day we let terrorists determine the boundaries of our hard-won freedom of speech is the day that liberal democracy dies.
The Moslem world is being disfigured and dishonoured by unelected and unelectable religious zealots who will kill indiscriminately to impose their view of the world on unwilling others (including other Moslems). They must be resisted utterly.
So am I saying that Islam needs a reformation, and that Christianity and Judaism are just fine? Absolutely not. Christianity is a religion of peace; but it is also a religion of war. As with Islam, its sacred writings and its history – crusades, inquisitions and religious wars – bear this out. There has been a lot of God-endorsed smiting going on.
Ah, but that’s all history, isn’t it? Better say that in hushed tones in Belfast. Despite much squirming, Christianity and Judaism still do not disown their own toxic texts. Yahweh is presented – with an apologetic little cough, of course – as a genocidal tyrant who tells the tribes of Israel to slaughter everyone in their path (although virgins may be kept as prizes) on the way to conquest of the promised land.
Slobodan Milosevic was in the dock for less.
There is a direct line between this ancient fanaticism and the problems in the Middle East in the Year of Our Lord 2008.
I think of playwright Dennis Potter’s searing words: “Religion is the wound, not the bandage.” Toxic religion’s grievous bodily harm is life-threatening.
The problem is that, even within the mainstream – and not just on the lunatic fringes – there is an unwillingness to confront religion’s grizzly badly-hidden secret with courage and clarity. The confusion of humanly sacred texts with the very word of a mysterious and elusive God is now one of the greatest dangers of our time.
Yet mainstream faith has life-enriching treasures to explore; the faithful of all three great monotheistic religions are, at their best, marked by generosity, compassion and justice. That is the truth. I have experienced it myself in a variety of places. In parish churches, Protestant and Catholic, up and down the land, members of the congregations are not planning – or justifying – atrocities, but are getting on with the tasks of caring for the sick and the outcasts.
Judaism, Islam and Christianity have a great track record, going back many centuries, in terms of education, healthcare, and compassion for the vulnerable.
Nevertheless, the leaders of the three great monotheistic religions must cease pretending that the vicious texts in their scriptures can be explained away.
This overdue reform won’t stop events like the Mumbai carnage. But when such atrocities happen, adherents of the three religions which look back to a common ancestor in Abraham will be able to say, with integrity: Not in Our Name.