Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Roman Vishniac, A farmer of Vrchni Apsa, ca. 1935-38

International Center of Photography, eMuseum

Trudy Rubin, Now Iraq needs a surge of political will for reconciliation — baltimoresun.com, December 25, 2007

Now people have the breathing room to assess their sectarian parties that have failed to deliver services or safety while indulging in astounding levels of corruption. The judgments I heard from every Iraqi I spoke with were unremittingly harsh.

Even the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has had to pay attention to popular dissatisfaction with the shakedowns and murders carried out by thugs in his Mahdi Army militia. He has dispersed hit men to try to eliminate some of the more egregious violators in Baghdad neighborhoods. I spoke to one, a hard-faced, middle-aged tough named Abu Ali, who was limping from a gunshot wound to the leg; he told me his men had killed 17 “criminals” in Baghdad’s Hurriyah district on Mr. al-Sadr’s orders. The Shiite mafiosi are cleaning house.

Iraq’s Shiite religious leaders, too, are weighing in on the government’s failures. The leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, sent word through his spokesmen of his dissatisfaction with the fact that much of the parliament had decamped to Saudi Arabia for the Muslim pilgrimage at government expense. This at a time when crucial laws on oil and provincial elections are languishing in committees. Ayatollah al-Sistani said that parliamentarians would get no religious credit for the hajj because they had abandoned their duty.

The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912)
[Excerpt from Robert Alun Jones. Emile Durkheim: An Introduction to Four Major Works. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1986. Pp. 115-155.]
Outline of Topics

1. Durkheim’s Two Problems
2. Defining Religion
3. The Most Primitive Religion
4. Totemic Beliefs: Their Nature, Causes, and Consequences
5. Totemic Rites: Their Nature and Causes
6. The Social Origins of Religion and Science
7. Critical Remarks

Magic, Science and Religion, by B. Malinowski

[MB 17] There are no peoples however primitive without religion and magic. Nor are there, it must be added at once, any savage races lacking either in the scientific attitude or in science, though this lack has been frequently attributed to them. In every primitive community, studied by trustworthy and competent observers, there have been found two clearly distinguishable domains, the Sacred and the Profane; in other words, the domain of Magic and Religion and that of Science.

On the one hand there are the traditional acts and observances, regarded by the natives as sacred, carried out with reverence and awe, hedged around with prohibitions and special rules of behavior. Such acts and observances are always associated with beliefs in supernatural forces, especially those of magic, or with ideas about beings, spirits, ghosts, dead ancestors, or gods. On the other hand, a moment’s reflection is sufficient to show that no art or craft however primitive could have been invented or maintained, no organized form of hunting, fishing, tilling, or search for food could be carried out without the careful observation [MB 18] of natural process and a firm belief in its regularity, without the power of reasoning and without confidence in the power of reason; that is, without the rudiments of science.

David Hume, The Natural History of Religion

Hume’s The Natural History of Religion was first published in 1757. It was among the first attempts to account for the origins of theism in naturalistic terms. It can therefore be seen as a response to the argument that the sophistication of monotheism is such that it must have been handed down to men by God; Hume disputes this, giving a psychological explanation of the rise of refined monotheism, in just the same way as modern Darwinists give naturalistic explanations of the apparent teleology in nature that theists say can only be explained with reference to God.

Radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is battling his Shiite rival along lines of personality, class and ideology. (By Alaa Al-marjani — Associated Press)

Sudarsan Raghavan, Shiite Contest Sharpens In Iraq - washingtonpost.com, December 26, 2007

KARBALA, Iraq — Posted at the door of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s office recently, a flier denounced the arrests of his followers. Up and down the barricaded street, soldiers and policemen loyal to his Shiite rivals stood sentry, some in tan armored personnel carriers, questioning anyone they suspected of links to the populist cleric.

Inside the shuttered office, five guards spoke frankly of their sense of vulnerability and weakness. Once in control of the streets of this southern city of holy sites, the Sadrists said they have been chased underground, their rivals at their heels.

The arrests of Sadr’s loyalists are part of a broader power struggle between the two most powerful Shiite factions seeking to lead Iraq: the Sadrists, who are pushing for U.S. troops to withdraw, and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the Bush administration’s main Shiite ally. Given the nation’s majority-Shiite population, this intensifying confrontation could play a major role in deciding Iraq’s future.

Tom Segev, Apology in Kafr Qasem - Haaretz, December 26, 2007

The Kafr Qasem massacre shocked the country and gave rise to a public debate on basic questions of morality and democracy. Twelve years after the end of World War II this discussion took place against the backdrop of the Holocaust. The murderers were put on public trial. Benjamin Halevi, who was later one of the judges in Adolf Eichmann’s trial, asked one of the accused whether he would also justify a Nazi soldier who obeyed orders. The trial gave rise to every Israel Defense Forces soldier’s obligation to refuse to obey a “blatantly illegal” order such as one to murder civilians.

However, not long after they were convicted and sentenced to prison, the murderers were released, and a few years later the military government was revoked. The IDF is not doing enough to instill in its soldiers the obligation to refuse to obey a blatantly illegal order; it is acting with determination against conscientious objection.

In the decades since the Kafr Qasem massacre, IDF soldiers have killed thousands of innocent Palestinians, the vast majority of them in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. From time to time they have also killed Arab demonstrators, citizens of Israel. To this day the Arabs of Israel are not citizens with equal rights, and Israel insists that it does not want to be a state of all its citizens but rather a “Jewish and democratic” state. Government representatives do not participate in the annual memorial service for the Kafr Qasem massacre, but the president’s apology is likely to be mentioned one day as a first step toward a historic declaration of reconciliation between the Jews and Palestinians.

Most Israelis still find it hard to acknowledge that they bear historical responsibility for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. The Zionist vision is based, among other things, on the assumption that its fulfillment need not cause injustice to anyone: If only the Arabs would relinquish their nationalist yearnings and agree to the fulfillment of our dream, it would be good for everyone, including them.