Religion and World Politics Today

I know I've been lax in my posting duties recently but things have been rather hectic around these parts. I don't have much time, even today, to write but I had something really worth mentioning and so here it is:

Matthias Kuentzel wrote an excellent piece last autumn that I just became aware of.  It's a piece on the clash between Muslims and Jews in the middle east, but it's also much more than that.  It's called HITLER'S LEGACY: ISLAMIC ANTISEMITISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST and if I was teaching a course on just about anything I would make it required reading for the class.  Unless it was science or math.  Or Comedy/Satire, although the piece is filled with observations of irony elsewhere in time and space.  What was I talking about?  Oh yeah, anyway read it and pass it along.

In a nutshell, and this does not nearly do justice to summing the piece up, Jews and Muslim Arabs got along just fine 100 years ago.  Keep in mind that the Muslims faced off doggedly with the Christians in the Crusades back in the Dark Ages, so it's not like there are different people there today than a century past.  It's just that they lived in harmony with Jews — and even the Zionist movement — and now they don't.  In fact, now it seems no matter what actions of peace Israel takes, it just encourages the attacks to grow in intensity.

Case in point: Israel pulled out of Lebanon and Hizballah took over the former occupied territories and used them to set up military operations against Israel.  When the Israeli army withdrew from the West Bank much the same thing was done by Hamas.  It's been made quite clear that Israel could meet every demand met of them and certain groups still wouldn't be pleased until it was eradicated and all Jews killed.

What isn't in the article that worries me is how some of these things seem to mirror events in the Christian community in the United States.  If the Muslims of Egypt could go from living in harmony with Jews to rabidly opposing their very existence between 1933 (when the Nazi party could find little support for their anti-semitic views) and today, perhaps we need to take the radical Christian movement more seriously before they gain any more ground.

There has always been a little bit of religion in U.S. government (e.g. how many times have we heard, "God bless America") and a little bit has never been a problem, but now with the Neo-Conservative movement religion seems to be pervasive throughout the executive branch.  Characters like Bush Jr. and Cheney seem to embody a magnification of all of Ronald Reagan's worst traits while ignoring the very aspects of the man which made him great.

In this day and age there shouldn't be a continuing struggle over teaching evolution in schools.  But there is.  And whether it be violence, hatred or mere intolerant disdain for Jews, gays, blacks, or just about any group that can be easily described, there just isn't anything quite like religion when it comes to creating some real, quality long-term problems between different groups of people.  Nothing quite like it when it comes to taking a functioning society and singling out individuals as different, making them into outsiders or even enemies.

On the one hand, most religions preach peace.  On the other hand, a lot of people just can't handle the fact that other religions exist besides their own.  Some of them deal with that by trying to convert the unbelievers (Have you considered taking Jesus as your personal savior?) and others by trying to kill them. 

Karl Marx once called religion "The Opiate of the Masses" and though many interpret this as meaning religion makes citizens docile and dopey I take it one step further.  When a heroin addict can't get their fix they become discomfited, possibly violent and in some cases will kill for heroin.  Replace the word heroin with religion and suddenly the suicide bombing of a Jewish wedding or the car bomb outside a Shi'ia Mosque make a whole lot more sense.

Not that this is news to anyone, but I think it's important to keep it at the forefront.  If all we do it say, "Oh that's terrible" and go on with our lives this problem isn't going to get any better.  It's going to get worse and it's going to inch closer and closer to our own homes.

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