Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Mahmud Hams - AFP/Getty Images

Gazans Stream Into Egypt As Border Wall Is Breached - washingtonpost.com, January 24, 2008

RAFAH, Gaza Strip, Jan. 23 — Gunmen destroyed vast sections of the seven-mile-long barricade that divides the Gaza Strip and Egypt on Wednesday, allowing tens of thousands of Palestinians to stream across the border and revel in a day away from a territory where Israeli restrictions have stifled the economy and caused blackouts and food shortages.

Jubilant Gazans flooded unhindered into Egypt, then hauled back purchases ranging from cigarettes and diesel fuel to goats, cows and camels. Other Palestinians walked for miles along Egyptian roads until their enthusiasm subsided and they sank, exhausted, onto curbs to rest.

“We were not able to go out!” Amial Tarazi, a 28-year-old office worker in Gaza City, said after clambering over broken stubs of the border wall in heels and a dress. She stepped into Egypt alongside two co-workers who had scaled the rubble in jackets and ties.

“We don’t care about buying anything,” Tarazi said. “We just wanted to see Egypt. We just wanted to get out.”

War in Congo kills 45,000 people each month, Guardian, January 23, 2008

A decade of fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo is continuing to kill about 45,000 people each month - half of them small children - in the deadliest conflict since the second world war, according to a new survey.

The International Rescue Committee said preventable diseases and starvation aggravated by conflict have claimed 5.4 million lives since the beginning of the second Congo war in 1998, equivalent to the population of Denmark. Although the war officially ended in 2002, malaria, diarrhoea, pneumonia and malnutrition continue to claim thousands of lives.

The study of 14,000 households across Congo between January 2006 and April 2007 found that nearly half of all the deaths were of children under the age of five, who make up only 19% of the population.

“The majority of deaths have been due to infectious diseases, malnutrition and neonatal- and pregnancy-related conditions. Increased rates of disease are likely related to the social and economic disturbances caused by conflict, including disruption of health services, poor food security, deterioration of infrastructure and population displacement. Children … are particularly susceptible to these easily preventable and treatable conditions,” the IRC survey says.

Congo has endured two foreign invasions and protracted civil war since the aftermath of Rwanda’s genocide spilled across the border in 1994 with an influx of more than a million Rwandan Hutu refugees. The years of conflict resulted in millions of people fleeing their homes, sometimes to live for years in forests where many died, and the collapse of what infrastructure still remained after decades of neglect under Mobutu Sese Seko.

Hamas takes control at frontier as 200,000 Gazans enter Egypt - Haaretz, January 23, 2008

Some 200,000 Palestinians poured out of Gaza and into Egypt early Wednesday, after masked gunmen blew dozens of holes in the wall delineating the border.

The Gazans rushed to purchase food, fuel, and other supplies made scarce by Israel’s blockade of the Strip, after militants detonated 17 bombs in the early morning hours, destroying some two-thirds of the metal wall separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt.

Hamas did not take responsibility for knocking the border wall down, but Hamas militants quickly took control of the frontier, as Egyptian border guards took no action.
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Israel said in response to the chaos that it expects Egypt to solve the crisis.

The destruction of the border continued later Wednesday morning. Palestinians driving a Caterpillar bulldozer arrived at a point where the frontier is marked by a low concrete wall topped with barbed wire, tearing down the wall and opening a gap to allow easier access for cars.

Earlier Wednesday, the United Nations estimated the number of Gazans who had crossed into Egypt at 350,000.

Andrew Fiala, Toleration [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy], 2006

When we tolerate something we deliberately refrain from negating that thing. More abstractly, toleration can be understood as a political practice aiming at neutrality, objectivity, or fairness on the part of political agents. These ideas are related in that the goal of political neutrality is deliberate restraint of the power that political authorities have to negate the life activities of citizens and subjects. Related to toleration is the virtue of tolerance, which can be defined as a tendency toward toleration. Toleration is usually grounded upon an assumption about the importance of the autonomy of individuals. This assumption and the idea of toleration are central ideas in modern liberal theory and practice. The present article will discuss toleration as found in the works of John Locke, Baruch de Spinoza, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, John Rawls and other contemporary philosophers.

Rainer Forst, Toleration (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), 2007

The term “toleration” — from the Latin tolerare: to put up with, countenance or suffer — generally refers to the conditional acceptance of or non-interference with beliefs, actions or practices that one considers to be wrong but still “tolerable,” such that they should not be prohibited or constrained. There are many contexts in which we speak of a person or an institution as being tolerant: parents tolerate certain behavior of their children, a friend tolerates the weaknesses of another, a monarch tolerates dissent, a church tolerates homosexuality, a state tolerates a minority religion, a society tolerates deviant behavior. Thus for any analysis of the motives and reasons for toleration, the relevant contexts need to be taken into account.

* 1. The Concept of Toleration and its Paradoxes
* 2. Four Conceptions of Toleration
* 3. The History of Toleration
* 4. Justifying Toleration
* Bibliography
* Other Internet Resources
* Related Entries

Fawaz Gerges, Iraq War Fuels Global Jihad, Yaleglobal, December 21, 2007

Ordinary Muslims, not just Islamists and jihadists, view the “war on terror” as a war against their religion and values. Many Muslims who had initially condemned Al Qaeda and 9/11 are having second thoughts about bin Laden’s fight against the Americans and their allies. Bin Laden has gained credibility in their eyes. “Now he is defending the Ummah,” confided a young rising poet, Massoud Hamed.

Top American policymakers – as opposed to intelligence officers – have little appreciation for how their military involvement in Iraq, as well as their staunch support of Israel, is radicalizing mainstream Muslim opinion and legitimizing radical groups that wage armed struggle in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere. “Al-Muqawama,” or resistance, is the most popular slogan in the Muslim world today, resonating deeply among men and women of all ages with religious and nationalist orientation alike. The plight of the Palestinians and Iraqis, in particular, echoes widely.

I have yet to hear a Friday sermon in which believers are not reminded to lend a helping hand to their beleaguered Palestinian and Iraqi counterparts.

Shragai, Hilltop youth say they no longer believe in ‘the rule of heretics’ - Haaretz, January 20, 2008

The past three weeks have further exacerbated the recourse to isolation and feelings of alienation from the institutions of the state, which part of the National-Religious youth have felt ever since the evacuation of Gush Katif [in 2005], and all the more forcefully following the major clash over Amona, some two years ago.

It was enough to view a few days ago the dozens of girls, most students at religious girl’s high schools in the West Bank’s Benjamin region, who protested outside the Jerusalem Magistrates Court and sang with hoarse voices - almost unbelievably - the anthem of anti-Zionist Haredi sect Neturei Karta:

“In the rule of heretics we don’t believe, and their constitution we don’t acknowledge. In the way of the Torah we will go, in fire and in water. In the way of the Torah we will go sanctify the name of the heavens.”

Andrew Bacevich, Surge to Nowhere, washingtonpost.com, January 20, 2008

As the violence in Baghdad and Anbar province abates, the political and economic dysfunction enveloping Iraq has become all the more apparent. The recent agreement to rehabilitate some former Baathists notwithstand ing, signs of lasting Sunni-Shiite reconciliation are scant. The United States has acquired a ramshackle, ungovernable and unresponsive dependency that is incapable of securing its own borders or managing its own affairs. More than three years after then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice handed President Bush a note announcing that “Iraq is sovereign,” that sovereignty remains a fiction.

A nation-building project launched in the confident expectation that the United States would repeat in Iraq the successes it had achieved in Germany and Japan after 1945 instead compares unfavorably with the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina. Even today, Iraqi electrical generation meets barely half the daily national requirements. Baghdad households now receive power an average of 12 hours each day — six hours fewer than when Saddam Hussein ruled. Oil production still has not returned to pre-invasion levels. Reports of widespread fraud, waste and sheer ineptitude in the administration of U.S. aid have become so commonplace that they barely last a news cycle. (Recall, for example, the 110,000 AK-47s, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor and 115,000 helmets intended for Iraqi security forces that, according to the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon cannot account for.) U.S. officials repeatedly complain, to little avail, about the paralyzing squabbling inside the Iraqi parliament and the rampant corruption within Iraqi ministries. If a primary function of government is to provide services, then the government of Iraq can hardly be said to exist.

Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times
A prayer circle formed in the room where the Huckabee campaign holds a Caucus watch party.

Evangelicals not on same page - Los Angeles Times, Jan 18, 2008

GREENVILLE, S.C — The Christian heart of the Republican Party beats fiercely on the broad boulevard where one finds both the gated entrance to Bob Jones University and the headquartersof His Radio network, home to an AM Christian station and a sister music station, “FM With Love From Jesus.”

But the two bastions of Southern evangelism mirrored the split in the ranks of conservative voters before the state’s Republican primary Saturday.

Host Tony Beam of the network’s “Christian Talk” became a warrior for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee from the moment he turned on his microphone at 6 a.m. Thursday.”We need a leader in America who has the core value system that’s built on the eternal truths of the Bible,” Beam told listeners. “We need a lighthouse, a guiding force to get us in the right direction.”

Prominent conservative and Bob Jones University dean Robert Taylor made an opposing pitch on the university’s radio station earlier in the week.”Mitt Romney is the only candidate who shares our values and can win in November,” Taylor said. “That’s why it’s so important that conservatives rally around him.”

Nicholas Kristof, A Modest Proposal for a Truce on Religion, New York Times, December 3, 2006

If God is omniscient and omnipotent, you can’t help wondering why she doesn’t pull out a thunderbolt and strike down Richard Dawkins.

Or, at least, crash the Web site of www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com. That’s a snarky site that notes that while people regularly credit God for curing cancer or other ailments, amputees never seem to enjoy divine intervention.

“If God were answering the prayers of amputees to regenerate their lost limbs, we would be seeing amputated legs growing back every day,” the Web site declares, adding: “It would appear, to an unbiased observer, that God is singling out amputees and purposefully ignoring them.”

That site is part of an increasingly assertive, often obnoxious atheist offensive led in part by Professor Dawkins — the Oxford scientist who is author of the new best seller “The God Delusion.” It’s a militant, in-your-face brand of atheism that he and others are proselytizing for.

He counsels readers to imagine a world without religion and conjures his own glimpse: “Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as ‘Christ-killers,’ no Northern Ireland ‘troubles,’ no ‘honor killings,’ no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money.”

Look elsewhere on the best-seller list and you find an equally acerbic assault on faith: Sam Harris’s “Letter to a Christian Nation.” Mr. Harris mocks conservative Christians for opposing abortion, writing: “20 percent of all recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage. There is an obvious truth here that cries out for acknowledgment: if God exists, He is the most prolific abortionist of all.”

The number of avowed atheists is tiny, with only 1 to 2 percent of Americans describing themselves in polls as atheists. But about 15 percent now say that they are not affiliated with any religion, and this vague category is sometimes described as the fastest-growing “religious group” in America today (some surveys back that contention, while others don’t).

Irreligion - John Allen Paulos - Book Review - New York Times, January 13, 2008

A physicist, a biologist and a mathematician walk into a bar. Bartender says, “Any of you believe in God?” Which of the three is most likely to say yes? Answer: the mathematician. Mathematicians believe in God at a rate two and a half times that of biologists, a survey of members of the National Academy of Sciences a decade ago revealed. Admittedly, this rate is not very high in absolute terms. Only 14.6 percent of the mathematicians embraced the God hypothesis (versus 5.5 percent of the biologists).

Religion and Violence: A Bibliography (Last updated: October 12, 2006)
Compiled by Charles K. Bellinger

[This is an expanded version of a bibliography published in The Hedgehog Review 6/1 (2004): 111-119.]

The literature on religion and violence was already substantial before the Sept. 11 attacks, and it has swelled at an increased pace since then. I have not seen abundant evidence, however, that the serious reflections on violence expressed in these books has made a noticeable impact on the shape of higher education, on news media reporting, or on the thinking of government officials around the world. This is unfortunate.

Popular opinion doesn’t reflect on the complexity of violence. We assume that violence (that is, the violence done by others) is evil, but we don’t understand it and seem to have little interest in understanding it. The authors listed below are trying to change that situation in both respects. They invite us to develop an interest in reflecting on violence and offer substantive understandings of it from their own perspectives. I foresee a time in the future when their efforts will bear fruit as a “critical mass” of interest develops and overcomes the apathy of our current situation. At that point, the ideas contained in these books will begin to have a significant impact on higher education, the media, and governmental and military decision-making.

I will append to each subsection below a short list of Library of Congress Subject Headings that will enable the reader to explore the topic further. The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of books that have been assigned that subject heading that fit the following parameters as of December, 2005: English language, published from 1980 to 2005, held by at least 50 libraries (according to WorldCat).

Evolution Book Sees No Science-Religion Gap - New York Times, January 4, 2008

In 1984 and again in 1999, the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most eminent scientific organization, produced books on the evidence supporting the theory of evolution and arguing against the introduction of creationism or other religious alternatives in public school science classes.

On Thursday, it produced a third. But this volume is unusual, people who worked on it say, because it is intended specifically for the lay public and because it devotes much of its space to explaining the differences between science and religion, and asserting that acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God.

“We wanted to produce a report that would be valuable and accessible to school board members and teachers and clergy,” said Barbara A. Schaal, a vice president of the academy, an evolutionary biologist at Washington University and a member of the panel that produced the book.

The panel, convened by the academy and the Institute of Medicine, its medical arm, was headed by Francisco Ayala, a biologist at the University of California, Irvine, and a former Dominican priest.

The 70-page book, “Science, Evolution and Creationism,” says, among other things, that “attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.” And it offers statements from several eminent biologists and members of the clergy to support the view.

In the book, which will be available on the Web site of the National Academies (www.nas.edu), the panel reports that evidence for the theory of evolution is overwhelming and growing. It cites findings from DNA research, fossil discoveries and the observations scientists have made about emerging diseases, like SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

The Trial of Socrates, by Douglas Linder (c) 2002

The trial and execution of of Socrates in Athens in 399 B.C.E. puzzles historians. Why, in a society enjoying more freedom and democracy than any the world had ever seen, would a seventy-year-old philosopher be put to death for what he was teaching? The puzzle is all the greater because Socrates had taught–without molestation–all of his adult life. What could Socrates have said or done than prompted a jury of 500 Athenians to send him to his death just a few years before he would have died naturally?

Finding an answer to the mystery of the trial of Socrates is complicated by the fact that the two surviving accounts of the defense (or apology) of Socrates both come from disciples of his, Plato and Xenophon. Historians suspect that Plato and Xenophon, intent on showing their master in a favorable light, failed to present in their accounts the most damning evidence against Socrates.

Libby Purves, God rest you merry atheist, Times Online, December 18, 2007

But the really fabulous news I mentioned is that Richard Dawkins, Prophet of Atheism, has said in a BBC interview that he is not against “cultural” Christianity and “Yes, I like singing carols along with everyone else”. Which raises enough tantalising philosophical and ethical questions to keep us going till Christmas Eve. Dawkins sings carols? Does he sing all the words? Does he boom out lines about herald angels, holy nights, the tender Lamb promised from eternal years? Does he croon: “What can I give Him, poor as I am?” Does the polemicist who gave three eloquent pages to deconstructing the story of St Luke’s Gospel happily warble O Little Town of Bethlehem and Once in Royal David’s City? Does the man who says that religious education is tantamount to “child abuse” feel wholly comfortable crooning Away in a Manger?