Karen Armstrong talk (MUIS lecture 2007)
The Role of Religion in the New Millennium
Part 1

This talk was co-organised by the Muslim Converts' Association of Singapore. I suggested to someone that he start the Murtads' Association of Singapore and he said I was crazy and he didn't want to be blown up.

Response was supposedly overwhelming, but I saw many empty seats.

At least one of Karen Armstrong's critics has been attacked as having "no academic training in Islamic studies whatsoever". Yet, I note that she suffers from the same lack of qualifications, yet has escaped attack. As Dawkins comments (about a study about prayer and recovery from illness), if science refutes religion everyone claims that they work in different realms, yet if science ever supported religion it'd be eagerly seized upon by these very same people as "proof" of its veracity.


The session opened with multiple blessings (I hope any reciprocity would be welcomed, but doubt it) and the obligatory platitudes. Among other things, last year's MUIS lecture had the highest ranking Sunni Mufti in the modern world coming to speak. Perhaps next year they'll invite a Jew (or we can hope, anyway).

There were then some remarks from Yaacob Ibrahim, who claimed that the traditional thinking that religion was good and encouraged good values was being questioned because of terrorism. Of course, this isn't true, for even the Greek philosophers were questioning the veracity, utility and consequences of religion, such Enlightenment luminaries as Voltaire roundly criticised it and many Founding Fathers of the USA had scathing words about it. He then claimed that we were bombarded by misleading images from the media, wondered if the journalists had gotten it wrong and Karen would give us a reality check on religion, ignoring the fact that the Singaporean media overwhelmingly propagates a discourse favorable to a 'desirable' point of view.

Finally, the talk started (and I shall switch to paraphrasing of what she said, with "I noted" or "I thought" to mark my interjections).

Religion is often seen as an absolute claw to progress. London cabbies always tell me that religion is bad, is violent and has caused all the major wars in history; it has also dragged people into the past and is intolerant and unwelcome of change. I would say that it's not religion per se, but it definitely plays a role, depending on the religion involved.

There's a lot of bad religion about, or as the Buddhists put it, there is a lot of 'unskilful' religion. Terrorism is a form of religiously articulated nationalism, like what brought Europe World War I and II. Hamas is an example of a resistance movement finding expression in religious terms, due to an asymmetric world with an unequal distribution of power, and that terrorism is a way of fighting back.

The modern economy had a domino effect - living in proximity to strangers polarises us because we have to live with strangers, but religion can help in smoothing a rocky century.

There is widespread religious disquiet with modernity. Modern, secular Western style governments all separate religion and poltics, and there is thus a reaction by religiosity which feels itself under siege: a turn to fundamentalism (a term she deemed unsatisfactory, especially to Muslims, since it was a term specific to American Protestants in the 1920s and had no easy translation into Arabic but was foisted onto them). Even fundamentalists aren't monolithic.

Fundamentalists drag their gods and religions from the sidelines to centre stage. In the mid-20th century, secularism was thought of as an up and coming philosophy to kill religiosity but this has been proven wrong. Fundamentalism is not an atavistic reaction to modernity, but an attempt ro recast old religious tradition in terms of the 20th and 21st centuries. All fundamentalism is rooted in fear, a conviction that the secular/liberal establishment wants to wipe out religion. When fundamentalists feel threatened and colonised by the ethos of Harvard, Yale and Washington DC they feel they need to fight for survival and push up the barricades.

Religion has a symbiotic relationship with aggressive secularism. For example in the Scopes trial, they won the case but lost the war, since US fundies withdrew from the mainstream, created their own media and educational institutions and planned a counter-offensive, emerging in the late 70s. Before the Scopes trial, US fundies were on the left of the political spectrum, willing to work with socialists and liberal Christians but after Scopes they swung to the right where they remain. When under attack they became more extremist.

I was flabbergasted at this. It is important to note that feeling under siege is not the same as being under siege. Evolution being an 'attack' is bad enough, but religious tolerance (eg Not displaying the Ten Commandments in a public courthouse) is often seen as an attack on religion. Accommodating intolerance, bigotry and condemning generations to wallow in ignorance in the name of tolerance is preposterous. Even in the name of realpolitik (stopping fundies from going on a rampage) its merits are questionable - as Lyndon Johnson said on signing the 1964 civil rights act: "We have lost the south for a generation." (one might also think about the merits of Emancipation)

Muslims feel attacked by modernity and colonisation. Secularism developed slowly in the West over 300 years, but in Muslim countries it is being imposed too fast. The elite accept it, but a large majority are stuck in their primal ethos. Ataturk closed madrasahs, forced Sufis underground and forced people to wear Western dress. The Turks looked modern but didn't grok modernity. Secularism was not liberating but seen as an assault on the faith. Similarly, the Shah of Iran made his soldiers rip veils of women off with bayonets. In 1935 his soldiers shot hundreds of demonstrators in a holy shrine, so Secularism was seen as lethal.

Sunni fundamentalism developed in Nasser's concentration camps. He imprisoned Muslim Brotherhood people in them and they underwent mental and physical torture, so moderate/liberal people became fundies.

There is much talk about a clash of civilisations, and US politicians use this concept to formulate policies [Ed: Wth?! Most of them stick with palatable talk - she is engendering a clash of civilisations herself by creating a false impression of the US]. It is wrong to think the Muslims recoil at the Modern World - when they first encountered it in the early 20th century they recognised it as deeply congenial to their traditions and they liked modernity, European customs and European countries. One religious figure said: "In France, I saw Islam but no Muslims. In Cairo, I see Muslims but no Islam". This was because Europe had social equality/justice and was closer to the spirit of the Koran than the Muslim countries.

Iran Shiite clerics campaigned with secular intellectuals to demand democratic reforms of the Shah. They won concessions in 1906 but in 1908 oil was discovered so the British didn't let Parliament function freely. The top Shiite cleric said that the new constitution was the next best thing to the coming of the Shiite prophet because it curbed the Shah's tyranny. Western hypocrisy in having democracy at home but imposing the Shah on Iranians was bad.

So Muslims are not inherently against progressive politics. With asymmetry, religion is a way of articulating distress. Islamic civilisation does not endemically oppose modernity. I noted that the Middle Ages was a flourishing period of Islamic modernity.

Religiosity turns you from violence, and violent devotees have lost the plot. All world religions began with a recoil against violence. The catalyst for religious change is horror at the violence going on, with societies filled with violence on an unprecedented scale (like the world today). I contest this hotly, but don't have the time or energy to expound on this so interested readers can read up on religious origins on Wikipedia.

Hindu priests in the 9th century BC took the violence out of the Indian liturgy which hitherto was filled with mock battles and sacred raids. It took 2 centuries but the warriors were persuaded to abandon sacred wargames and take up a more anodyne form of religion, to look within for the cause of violence in the human psyche.

In the Classical Period, Yoga needed you to purify yourself and practise ahimsa. You couldn't even swat an insect, get angry or be impatient. You had to persuade your guru of your serenity and affability to all.

Jesus practised ahimsa [Ed: Not all the time] and Mohammad, though depicted in the West as a Warlord, lived in a very violent period with trival violence [Ed: A tacit admission that he didn't either]. Mohammad was against 'ignorance' (more properly translated as 'irascibility' and 'aggression') - the chauvinism of the desert Arabs.