Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
org/article/religion-reason-and-conflict-in-the-21st-century-352)
5 MAY 2014
What is the exact nature of the famous "clash" between Islam and the
West? Is it merely sibling rivalry, with each civilization having
derived much of its heritage from Judaism? Westerners are competitive
about everything under the sun; indeed, it is one of the marks of
Western civilization. We compete in sport, in the beauty of women, in
culture and inventions, even in demography. The West has specialized
in being competitive and has invented ways of being--or seeming to
be--superior that no other culture has even dreamt of. One might
indeed think that the recent vogue for suicide bombing is Islam
raising the competitive stakes by advancing a claim to be less afraid
of death than decadent Westerners.
For some few Muslims, however, the clash has been more than a
competition. It has become a kind of duel to the death, after which
only one civilization will survive. Here we have conflict, but no
rules. This has been the attitude of those Muslims who despise the
supposedly corroded spirituality of the West and are confident that
the evident superiority of Islamic values will eventually lead to the
political triumph that evaded the Arabs in 732 at Tours and the
Ottomans in 1683 at Vienna. This alarming expression of sheer will
that we call "fundamentalism" is in evidence when Muslims demonstrate
1
in European cities (as they did over the Salman Rushdie affair)
carrying banners reading: "Islam--our religion today, yours tomorrow."
At no point does Jenkins seem to remember the crucial text that "my
kingdom is not of this world", and the result is that his view of
Christianity is tinged with ideological incitements to perfect a
system that is of the world. He seems to favor whatever is passing
itself off as reform rather than making the clear demarcation between
the spiritual and secular life which, worked out over the centuries,
has been the secret, or one of the secrets, of the West's relative
peace and stability. The dangers facing Christian clergy in the Third
World remind Jenkins of Becket and other martyrs of the Middle Ages.
Following this train of thought, he cites the case of the Catholic
Archbishop Christophe Munzihirwa, who was murdered by Rwandan troops
invading Zaire (as it then was called), and draws a conclusion: such
martyrs "were powerful nuisances to secular authority. In death they
became indomitable foes." What principle of order does he imagine
might curb lawlessness, such as that generated by unreconstructed
5
African tribalism, if not that of authority? He seems to think
authority is the same as power. It isn't.
Indeed the situation is worse than that: at both the popular and the
elite levels, American secularists are becoming increasingly hostile
to Christian believers. The same is true in Europe, where such
hostility is even more puzzling because there is a strong feeling
among European rationalists that they have already "won the
argument." Why has hatred for what is believed, rightly or wrongly,
to be a defeated enemy become more intense? This is one of the basic
puzzles in Western civilization today; let me suggest an explanation
for it.
6
Secular rationalists in the West believe that their enviable
rationality has emerged only after a long struggle with superstition,
prejudice, obscurantism and all of the intolerance and oppression and
violence they have caused. Building on the rationality of the Greeks,
the modern world has created the empirical viewpoint of modern
science in a long struggle against the repressive authority of the
Christian churches. As rationality, it is believed to be--and I use
"believe" very deliberately--the expression of pure human
intelligence, owing nothing to culture. Whereas religious and social
mores are cultural products, reason is presumed to transcend culture
to become the bridge by which humanity finally achieves the unity
previously frustrated by religious and nationalist conflict. One
might say, ironically, that secular rationalists see themselves as
being on the side of the angels. Secular rationalism (incorporating
the politics of liberalism) thus becomes the appropriate
meta-religion for humanity as a whole.
Phillip Jenkins has told us a great deal about the various forms of
salvation and redemption that many people thought had been superseded
7
by enlightenment. The real situation, however, is not merely that
religion is alive and kicking and that Christianity itself is far
from dead, but that there is a Western, secular, post-Christian
version of redemption also seeking to dominate the world.
Christianity thus finds itself assailed not only by competing
religions in the wider world, but from secular rationalism arisen
within its own camp. The 21st century will be about this clash, too.