Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Poll: Bin Laden tops Musharraf in Pakistan - CNN.com, September 11, 2007

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf — a key U.S. ally — is less popular in his own country than al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, according to a poll of Pakistanis conducted last month by an anti-terrorism organization….

According to poll results, bin Laden has a 46 percent approval rating. Musharraf’s support is 38 percent. U.S. President George W. Bush’s approval: 9 percent.

Asked their opinion on the real purpose of the U.S.-led war on terror, 66 percent of poll respondents said they believe the United States is acting against Islam or has anti-Muslim motivation.

New Video Raises Questions on Bin Laden | World Latest, AP, September 12, 2007

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Two messages from Osama bin Laden in a matter of days have revived the game of questions over his health and whereabouts, but they also made clear he is al-Qaida’s propaganda “top gun,” able to draw attention in the West and strike a chord among sympathizers.

In a new video released Tuesday, bin Laden’s voice was heard commemorating one of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers and calling on young Muslims to follow his example in martyring themselves in attacks.

It came on the heels of a video released Saturday containing the first new images of the terror movement’s leader in nearly three years. It showed him urging Americans to convert to Islam and railing against capitalism, globalization and democracy as failed philosophies.

Bin Laden’s new image: younger, more Marxist | csmonitor.com, September 13, 2007

AFTER A THREE-YEAR absence, Osama bin Laden has resurfaced in another of his rousing videotapes, only this time with a new image and a new message. Projecting a younger look, Mr. bin Laden gives his most ideological address since the early 1990s with an assault on capitalism and liberal democracy loaded with Marxist and socialist terms. Indeed, this new bin Laden sounds more like Che Guevara, the Marxist revolutionary, than some of his rifle-toting Al Qaeda cohorts.

Scheuer’s Analysis of Osama bin Laden’s September 7 Video Statement, Jamestown Foundation, September 11, 2007

Some of the substance of bin Laden’s speech was partially new to him specifically, but the West’s failure to analyze what he and his lieutenants have been talking about for the past few years was repeatedly displayed by such foreign policy experts as a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and New York Times journalist David Brooks, both of whom suggested that bin Laden sounded like a left-wing, 1960s Marxist blogger.

Dawkins, like Hitchens, fails to address the crucial point that people have slaughtered millions of their fellow human beings for reasons that have nothing to do with religion. Even if religion were to be eradicated from the human imagination, humans would still slaughter humans.

Bible belter - TLS Highlights - Times Online, September 5, 2007

Hitchens is especially good on the idiotic challenge “Stalin and Hitler were atheists, what d’you say to that?” – doubtless after plenty of practice. Stalin, Hitler and the others may not have been religious themselves, but they understood the ingrained religiosity of their subjects, and exploited it gratefully. Hitchens makes the point only briefly in the book, but he has enlarged upon it in later speeches and interviews:

The Reality Club: MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF RELIGION, Edge, September, 2007

Michael Shermer:

Is religion a force for good or evil? Yes. And with the confirmation bias firmly ensconced in our brains—where we look for and find confirmatory evidence for what we already believe and ignore disconfirmatory evidence—it is simply a matter of scanning the social landscape and picking out examples to support whatever answer you have already formulated to this question.

On the good side, there is Arthur C. Brooks data in his 2006 book Who Really Cares, showing that religious conservatives donate 30 percent more money than liberals and nonreligious people even when controlled for income, they give more blood and log more volunteer hours; religious people are four times more generous than secularists to all charities, 10 percent more munificent to non-religious charities, and 57 percent more likely than a secularist to help a homeless person. Those raised in intact and religious families are more charitable than those who are not. In terms of societal health, charitable givers are 43 percent more likely to say they are “very happy” than nongivers, and 25 percent more likely than nongivers to say their health is “excellent” or “very good.”

On the evil side, there is Gregory Paul’s 2005 data published in the Journal of Religion and Society demonstrating an inverse correlation between religiosity measured by belief in God, biblical literalism, and frequency of prayer and service attendance and societal health measured by rates of homicide, suicide, childhood mortality, life expectancy, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion, and teen pregnancy in 18 developed democracies, where the U.S. scores the highest in religiosity and the highest by far in homicides, STDs, abortions, and teen pregnancies.

In his thoughtful Edge essay Jonathan Haidt wrestles with this problem, correctly demonstrating that the response by atheists and secularists toward the insurgence of extreme religionists in American politics is more emotional than it is rational. Although I have been actively and emotionally involved in combating some of these religious intrusions into social life e.g., the teaching of intelligent design creationism in public school science classes, I find myself in agreement with Haidt in his conclusion that “every longstanding ideology and way of life contains some wisdom, some insights into ways of suppressing selfishness, enhancing cooperation, and ultimately enhancing human flourishing.”