It is certainly true that secularization has, in many places and times, accompanied a growing concern with trade, industry, and the pursuit of wordly enterprises. Some historians attribute the decline of Puritan faith in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century America to these very things.
But i wonder whether you want to be so unequivocal in asserting a link between modernization and secularization? After all, how then would you explain the persistence (indeed, the resurgence) of fundamentalist Christianity in many parts of the United States—arguably the most modern and industrialized nation in the world?
The reason why I love history is that you can use it to predict the future. Looking back, I see surges of conservatism, and then backlashes of liberalism repeated ad nauseum, not only in politics, but in religious fervor. It seems to be a natural part of human society.
Only a small percent of Christians are fundamentalists. All I can say to account for it is that, throughout time, there has been a constant “Loony Factor”. There has always been a small number of people devoted to religious extremism. In the Middle Ages, they walked around whipping themselves. Today, they build bombs.
Even after those areas secularize, you will still have Loony Factor Muslims. There are Loony Factor Christians, and Loony Factor Hindus . . . every faith has them. It’s not the religion that produces them. They exist because humans love to hate. The people who go Loony are people* looking* for a fight. Religion just gives them a target.
You’re much more optimistic about the uses of history than i am.
I’m a history PhD student, and i spend half my life hanging out with history professors and students, and almost none of them—save, perhaps, a few unreconstructed Marxists—would argue that history can be used to predict the future.
Sure, a knowledge of history can help us think about likely outcomes, and can help us determine what actions might be likely to bring about certain outcomes. But history, in my opinion at least, does not have the sort of predictive capabilities that you seem to ascribe to it.
Also, on the specific issue, i’m not prepared merely to consign fundamentalist Christians to some sort of “Loony Factor” category. That, in my opinion, removes them from history and treats them as simply ahistorical aberrations that can’t be explained with any coherence. It also underestimates their numbers, their theological importance, their political and social power, and their capacity for rational thought and action.
Well, I’m sure you’ve seen in your studies that we tend to make the same mistakes over and over and over again, and you’ve probably also seen the cycles of conservatism/liberalism to which I referred. Sure, I can’t use history to tell you exactly what will happen next year, but, as you say, it can give us a really good idea of a likely outcome.
And I ain’t no Commie, son!
I don’t see them as abberations at all. As I said, that percentage of the population-- that* factor*, if you will, has been present all along. At times, they have had more power and influence than other times-- it depends on numerous factors, but one factor is uncertainty. When people are afraid, they tend to gravitate toward those who appear to have answers and who promise action. When it gradually becomes clear that those solutions were not effective, people gravitate towards other concerns-- generally, by then, the cause of the fear has dissipated. (You gotta love the human race if only for their endearingly short attention span.)
Because that kind of sloppy use of the term “intrinsic” makes it pretty much meaningless. A practice is an “intrinsic” part of a particular religion if it is an essential, inevitable part of it.
If you consider modern Christianity to be in some essential way the same religion as the Christianity of 500 years ago, then obviously “such practices” were not “intrinsic” to Christianity, because Christianity can exist without them.
We can use lots of meaningful words to describe oppressive violence in modern Islam: e.g., “endemic”, “widespread”, “culturally sanctioned”, “theocratic”, etc. But we cannot say that it’s intrinsic to Islam without implying that Islam can’t evolve out of it, that there cannot be an Islamic religion without oppressive violence. And I think that claim is completely unjustified.
As far as I can tell, so do you, because you recognize the movement for Islamic liberalization, for example. You believe that the current cultural manifestation of Islam in much of the world can “grow out of” its violent practices. Fine. But in that case, you can’t meaningfully claim that such practices are intrinsic to Islam as a religion.
Such practices are intrinsic to the practice of Islam in many countries today. Christianity isn’t practiced today the same way it was practiced 500 years ago, and if you brought a Christian from that time period forward to tody, he’d probably say that the religion we practace today under the label “Christianity” isn’t the same one he follows at all.
You are assuming there is some pure form of Christianity or Islam, that, if we could just get to the heart of it and read the holy texts correct, all things would be cleared up. This is a very dogmatic approach to religion. There is nothing intrinsic to Christianity or Islam or any other religion other that what those practising it make of it. So if there is a guy in Saudia Arabia who beats his wife and use religion to justify it (or an Imam in Spain telling him to beat his wife properly) you can’t say he isn’t acting out of his religion, or merely using religion as a bad excuse, just because his reasons don’t square with your, or someones else, reading of the same religion. Like you can’t say Mohammed Atta wasn’t a pious Muslim when he flow those planes on 9/11, or your Phelps is not a pious Christian when it does whatever it is he does.
All right, but that’s a different statement. (In fact, almost a tautological one: the practices of particular contemporary Islamic cultures are intrinsic to its practice in those cultures. Can’t argue with that.)
But that is exactly the claim that some people are making when they claim that violence or sexism is intrinsic to Islam. They are the ones arguing that Islam is in its very essence a violent or sexist religion and that there’s no way to reform it to change those practices. They are the ones who use “True Scotsman” reasoning to discount the actual practice of hundreds of millions of Muslims who don’t oppress women or advocate violence, saying that that’s irrelevant to the “essential tenets” or fundamental nature of Islam.
I am not claiming that there is any “pure form” of any religion which intrinsically promotes peace and equality. I’m simply denying that there is any “pure form” of it which intrinsically promotes oppression and violence either.
The whole “pure forms” business is a red herring. You’re saying that people who say Islam and sexism are linked are wrong if it can be demonstrated that some harge portion of Muslims treat the women in their lives well.
I would say more that there are certain elements of Muslim mythology that lend themselves to sexist cultural practices, and indeed exist because Islam arose from deeply sexist societies (as is also the case with Christianity). But because many of the societies that are Islamic in nature have been slower to drop archaic elements from their societies (especially Saudi Arabia, as many Saudis will tell you) the archaic sexism has lingered on, and in a much more primitive form than is evident in Western societies, though we do have our backsliding on occasion. (Frex, the Southern Baptists Conference with their assertion that women should be submissive to their husband as he is submissive to God.)
But the thing that creeps me out most about the Saudis and to a lesser extent some other Islamic cultures is the way they hide their women away. It as if their cultures were designed by domestic abusers for the express purpose of concealing the extent of their abuse. I am sure there are many nice guy Saudis who would never harm the women in their lives, but the way women are concealed and the onus is put on them if they protest violence means that if a Saudi male has the least interest in doing violence to his spouse, it will be very, very easy for him to.
So often Muslims, confronted with evidence of violence toward women, will trot out some Muslim woman who explains that she is not mistreated in any way, but that’s not at all convincing, because I already think there are plenty of decent Muslim guys around who haven’t taken full advantage of the Islamic cultural elements that make domestic violence/sexism so easy. It doesn’t mean those elements don’t exist.
Horseshit. I’m not saying that Islam in many contemporary cultures is not linked to sexism. Indeed it is, and for a variety of reasons, including the ones you mention.
I’m just saying that sexism is obviously not INTRINSIC to Islam because Islam can exist without it, as the existence of many non-sexist Muslim groups demonstrates. Muhammad on a pogo stick, learn to read, and learn the difference between “linked” and “intrinsic”.
