Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Peter Galbraith, The Victor?, TomDispatch, 9/18/2007, and NYRB, Oct. 11, 2007

In his continuing effort to bolster support for the Iraq war, President Bush traveled to Reno, Nevada, on August 28 to speak to the annual convention of the American Legion. He emphatically warned of the Iranian threat should the United States withdraw from Iraq. Said the President, “For all those who ask whether the fight in Iraq is worth it, imagine an Iraq where militia groups backed by Iran control large parts of the country.”

On the same day, in the southern Iraqi city of Karbala, the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, battled government security forces around the shrine of Imam Hussein, one of Shiite Islam’s holiest places. A million pilgrims were in the city and fifty-one died.

The U.S. did not directly intervene, but American jets flew overhead in support of the government security forces. As elsewhere in the south, those Iraqi forces are dominated by the Badr Organization, a militia founded, trained, armed, and financed by Iran. When U.S. forces ousted Saddam’s regime from the south in early April 2003, the Badr Organization infiltrated from Iran to fill the void left by the Bush administration’s failure to plan for security and governance in post-invasion Iraq.

Munson, International Election Monitoring: A Critique Based on One Monitor’s Experience in Morocco Middle East Report, 1998

Since the early 1980s, countless teams of “international observers” have monitored elections in countries ostensibly becoming more democratic. Most monitors typically arrive shortly before voting begins and leave shortly after it ends. Foreign election observers usually visit only a small fraction of the polling sites and electoral districts. The capital and easily accessible cities tend to receive more attention than the countryside.

Most foreign observers know little about the political context of the elections they are observing. Too often they focus on the technical mechanics of elections while ignoring basic questions such as the role of voting in any real distribution of power. To term a technically flawless election to a parliament lacking effective power “free and fair” is misleading.

Munson, Fundamentalism — Britannica Online Encyclopedia

Although the terms fundamentalism and fundamentalist have entered common parlance and are now broadly applied, it should not be forgotten that the myriad movements so designated vary greatly in their origins, character, and outlook.

Munson, Fundamentalism Around the World–What’s Really Behind It? -Britannica Blog, Nov. 17, 2006

Fundamentalism reflects moral outrage at the violation of traditional religious values, but can it also articulate nationalistic and social grievances as well?

Fundamentalism, as I discuss in my new entry on the subject for Encyclopaedia Britannica, is a type of militantly conservative religious movement characterized by the advocacy of strict conformity to sacred texts and a moral code ostensibly based on them. It existed long before the word did. One could speak of the Maccabean revolt of the second century B.C.E. as having a fundamentalist impulse insofar as it insisted on strict conformity to the Torah and Jewish religious law. Similarly, Calvin’s 16th-century Genevan polity and 17-century Puritanism could be called fundamentalist insofar as they insisted on strict conformity to the Bible and a moral code based on it.

Munson, Lifting the Veil: Understanding the Roots of Islamic Militancy, Harvard International Review, 2004

Public opinion polls taken in the Islamic world in recent years provide considerable insight into the roots of Muslim hostility toward the United States, indicating that for the most part, this hostility has less to do with cultural or religious differences than with US policies in the Arab world.

Al Qaeda leaders release new videos | csmonitor.com, 9/21/2007

Al Qaeda intensified its propaganda campaign Thursday by issuing its third video since the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. In a lengthy commentary, Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri urged Muslims to fight the United States and its allies, targeting the prospect of African Union and United Nations peacekeepers in Darfur. Later on Thursday, Al Qaeda released a new recording of Osama bin Laden declaring war on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan’s Army.

Munson, More Americans to Die for Iraq’s Pro-Iranian Theocracy -Britannica Blog, Jan. 11, 2007

Just as American governments failed to see the local social and nationalistic dimensions of communist movements during the Cold War, so too have they failed to see the local social and nationalistic dimensions of militant Islamist movements in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. (See my Britannica Blog on fundamentalism.) A “global war on terror” has now replaced the global war on communism as the paradigm shaping American foreign policy. The various local grievances that fuel militant Islamic movements are ignored. Armed force is seen as the key to defeating Islamic militancy when in fact this approach strengthens the very forces it is supposed to weaken. The totally unnecessary fiasco in Iraq is a case in point.

Plan for Sea Canal Puts Hindu Belief In Sharp Relief - washingtonpost.com, September 18, 2007

“Millions of Hindus believe that Ram built that bridge across the sea. Our scriptures and epics mention it,” said Surendra Jain, a leader of the World Hindu Council, a hard-line Hindu group. “We will not let them destroy our religious heritage.”