The Role of Religion
by
W B (Ben) Vosloo
2013
The Role of Religion W B (Ben) Vosloo ------INDEX Page Foreword i
Introduction 1 Religion Defined 1 Religion’s Origins 2 The World’s Religious Make-up 4 Religion as Source of Values 5 Religion and Art 5 Religion and Cleavage 7 Perceptions of Deity, Heaven and Hell 8 Religiosity, Atheism and Secularism 10
1. The World of Judaism 11 Roots of Monotheism 11 Doctrinal Foundations 12 Impact of Anti-Semitism 20 Judaism and Jews Today 32
2. The World of Christianity 38 Christianity and the Bible 38 Christianity and Western Civilisation 40 Christianity and Islam 41 The Catholic-Protestant Cleavage 43 Major Transformations Since the 16th Century 45 Religious Tolerance in the West 50 Christianity and Science 51 Atheism and Agnosticism 55 Christian Ethics and Political-Economic Life 56 Political-Economic Problem Areas 61
3. The World of Islam 76 The Islamic Religion 76 Trends in Islamic Doctrine 78 20th Century Developments 80 The Arab World in the 21st Century 82 The Non-Arab Muslim World 90 Islamic Statehood 102 Islamic Finance 103 Islamic Politics 105 Islam’s Global Networks 107 Islam and the West 109 Prospects 112
INDEX (continued) Page
4. The World of Hinduism 115 Essence of Hinduism 117 The Mogul Conquest 118 The British Conquest 118 Hindu-Muslim Cleavage and Partitioning 120 Hinduism and Cultural Diversity 122 The Fractious Nature of Hindu Politics 123 Democracy’s Drawbacks 124 Chronic Intergroup Conflict 125 International Perspective 127 Prospects 127
5. The World of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism 129 The Teachings of Buddha 129 Branches of Buddhism 131 Buddhism in China 132 Buddhism in Japan 133 Taoism 134 Confucianism 137 The Growth Momentum of East Asia 142 Effective Business Networking 148 Reconstruction Singapore Style 151 China’s Pragmatic Communism 155 Prospects 168
6. Religion’s Footprints in Retrospect 171 Judaism and Jewry 171 Christianity and the Rise and Decline of Religiosity 176 The Ascendancy of Islam 182 Hinduism’s Renunciation of Worldly Things 185 East Asian Modernisation and Confucian Capitalism 188
7. Key Determinants of Human Affairs 200 Natures Endowments 200 Human Action 202 The Question of Providential or Divine Reality 206
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Foreword
Writing about religion is always fraught with pitfalls, because religion does not lend itself to casual rational analysis or discourse. It is based on what people believe about matters on which people hold strong convictions. History has only a few examples of people sacrificing their lives for the sake of a rational conclusion, but millions and millions of people have offered their lives on the altar of the beliefs they have held.
The text of this manuscript has been written with careful consideration for the sensibilities and beliefs of the faiths concerned. Despite the caution taken, it is possible that specific depictions are influenced by the convictions of the author. As such it may not always accord with the understanding of each and every reader. No offence is hereby intended.
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Introduction
At the outset it must be clearly understood that in this presentation, religion is regarded as a socio- cultural phenomenon that can be treated as the subject matter of scientific inquiry and objective analysis. This presentation is further based on the assumption that religion can be studied in a dispassionate way. In today’s world there is a huge range of intellectual tools which can be used to better understand the phenomenon of religion, archaeology, history, philosophy, psychology and even neuro-science.
Describing and analysing the role of religion is not meant to place religion in general or any specific religious belief under scrutiny. There are many arguments to be had over religions: whether supreme reality is a God, or not; the origins of “sacred texts”; the finer points of scripture interpretation; conceptions of the nature of God; the binding nature of religious commandments; is God’s creation a work in progress?; can a harmony be found between reason and faith?; what are the limitations of naturalism?; are mystical experiences hallucinations?: can practical reason, or scientific reason, or pure reason rule out faith as unreasonable? There are no atheological shortcuts to ending debate about faith. These issues, though important, are better dealt with in philosophy of religion texts.
Religion Defined
By “religion” is meant any belief system based on the idea that there is an omniscient, supreme (supra-human) deity or intelligence or force equipped with the capability to act as the designer, creator and mover of the entire universe, including everything in it – all natural and moral phenomena. It is necessary to realise that belief systems sometimes hold tenets which contradict one another. In addition, divisions within and between religious groups often lead to violent conflict and bloodshed.
Most religions are characterised by both dogmatic and ritualistic aspects. The dogmatic refers to perceptions of divine revelations and the ritualistic to the rites or ceremonies embedded in historical tradition but symbolically related to the beliefs held. Religions the world over show great dogmatic variation in the beliefs held and in the relative emphasis upon the ritual. The dogmatic and ritualistic elements of religion normally find expression in organisational structures such as churches, shrines and priesthoods. The interaction of followers and priesthoods normally become the conduit of the revelations of the founder. The priesthoods pass it on by some process of ritualistically sanctioned endowment involving training both of character and mind. Because the priesthood is a holy estate, it is characterised by certain taboos, such as the celibacy rule of Catholic priesthood and other monkish orders and by rituals such as sacramental worshipping ceremonies.
The major religions still active in today’s world made their appearance during the past 3000 years. Judaism became monotheistic; Zoroastrianism enveloped the Persian empire; Hinduism penetrated India; Buddhism arose to challenge Hinduism; Taoism and Confucianism was founded in China; Christianity spread from the Roman Empire into Europe; and Islam took root in the Middle East, North Africa and South East Asia.
We know that since ancient times, religion has played a prominent role in the formation and development of communities and societies. The most important of these roles are the following:
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- offering an account of the origins and nature of reality and humanity’s relationship with it; - offering a basis for communal identity, social affiliation, cultural cohesion and territorial attachment; - offering a foundation for moral values such as thinking and feeling about what is right, just, fair, preferable, true and universally compelling; - offering a sense of sacred mission exerting a profound hold upon people’s emotions and imagination while providing a fertile source of social and political cleavage driven by assumptions of a divine or supernatural imperative.
Religion’s Origins
Speculative curiosity is a universal characteristic of human nature. Since ancient times human beings have tended to speculate about things unknown to them. But the methods of inquiry and the body of accumulated knowledge only advanced slowly and ambiguously. The scientific method of inquiry only emerged in the middle of the second millennium of the Christian era. Before that time, people had to rely on other sources of knowledge: their imaginations or illusions, their observations or experiences and the utterings or teachings of persuasive individuals among them.
Edward Tylor, a pioneer of social anthropology claims that the primordial form of religion was “animism” – the attribution of life to the inanimate. It means considering rivers, clouds or stars as living things and seeing living and “non-living” things alike as inhabited by (animated by) a soul or spirit. This “ghost-soul” or vaporous force infuses everything – rivers, clouds, birds, animals and people too – with animated life. Tylor’s theory rested on the view that the primitive mind is imbued with the “psychic unity of mankind” which is embedded in the universal human nature. He saw animism not as bizarrely inconsistent with modern thoughts, but as a natural early product of the same speculative curiosity that had led modern thought. Animism had been the “infant philosophy of mankind” assembled by “ancient savage philosophers”. It did what good theories are supposed to do: explain otherwise mysterious facts adequately.
In Tylor’s view, the hypothesis that humans have a “ghost-soul” handily answers some questions that must have occurred to early humans, such as: what happens when you dream? In many primitive societies people still believe that when people sleep, a dreamer’s “ghost-soul” wanders and has adventures the dreamer later recalls. The idea that the souls of dead people return to visit via dreams is widespread in primitive societies, even today. Animism also handles another enigma that confronts human beings: death. Death is what happens when the soul leaves the body permanently.
Tylor claimed that once early humans had conceived the idea of the soul, extending it beyond our species was a short logical step. They recognised the phenomena of life and death, health and sickness, will and judgment in plants and animals and, not unnaturally, ascribed some kind of soul to them. Once a broad animistic worldview had taken shape, Tylor believed, it started to evolve. The notion of each tree having a spirit gave way to the notion of trees being collectively governed by “the god of the forest”. This incipient polytheism then matured and eventually got streamlined into monotheism: “Upwards from the simplest theory which attributes life and personality to animal, vegetable and mineral alike ... up to that which sees in each department of the world the protecting and fostering care of an appropriate divinity, and at last of one Supreme Being ordering and controlling the lower hierarchy.”
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(Tylor, 1866, quoted by Robert Wright, The Evolution of God – the Origins of our Beliefs, Little Brown, London, 2009, p.14)
Robert Wright maintains that Tylor’s theories recently lost some stature on the grounds that it makes the evolution of gods sound like an exercise in pure reason, when in fact religion has been deeply shaped by many factors, ranging from politics to economics to the human infrastructure. Modern cultural evolutionism places more emphasis on the various ways that rituals, beliefs and other elements of culture tend to spread and expand by appealing to non-rational parts of human behaviour.
But Tylor’s views still hold up well today in that it explains how early humans developed religious precepts out of their efforts to make sense of the world. Early humans did not have the benefit of the insights of modern science to give them a head start. They had to rely on their own pre-scientific insights and conclusions. Subsequently, religion has been shaped by a diversity of forces. As understanding of the world grew – especially as it grew via scientific discovery – religion also evolved in reaction. Thus, Tylor wrote, does “an unbroken line of mental connection” unite “the savage fetish-worshipper and the civilized Christian”.
Robert Wright maintains that at this level of generality, Tylor’s worldview has not just survived the scrutiny of modern scholarship, but drawn strength from it. Wright says that evolutionary psychology “... has shown that, bizarre as some “primitive” beliefs may sound - and bizarre as some “modern” religious beliefs may sound to atheists and agnostics – they are natural outgrowths of humanity, natural products of a brain built by natural selection to make sense of the world with a hodgepodge of tools whose collective output is not wholly rational”. (See Robert Wright, op.cit. p.15)
To understand Tylor’s animism-to-monotheism scenario, we have to imagine how the world looked to people living many millennia ago, not just before science, but before writing or even agriculture. There are no detailed records of beliefs that existed before writing. All that is left are the objects that archaeologists uncover: tools and trinkets and, here and there, a cave painting. The vast blank left by humanity’s preliterate phase, is today filled by the literature on hunter-gatherer societies.
Using hunter-gatherers as windows on the past has its limits. The anthropological record contains no “pristine” hunter-gatherer cultures that were wholly uncorrupted by contact with more technologically advanced societies. The process of observing a culture involves contact with it and it is well-known that many existing hunter-gatherer societies had been contacted by missionaries or explorers before anyone started documenting their religions.
Although observed hunter-gatherers are no crystalline examples of religion at its moment of origin tens of thousands of years ago, they are the best clues available to generic religious beliefs for the period before around five thousand years ago. The anthropological record reveals at least five different kinds of hunter-gatherer supernatural beings: - Elemental spirits where parts of nature are considered to be alive, possessing intelligence and personality and a soul; - Puppeteers where parts of nature are controlled by beings distinct from parts of nature themselves; - Organic spirits where natural phenomena are considered to have supernatural powers such as snow-making birds, evil-predicting coyotes, etc;
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- Ancestral spirits where the spirits of the deceased are omnipresent and can do as much bad as good; - Supreme gods where some godly being is in some vague sense more important than other supernatural beings or forces and is often a creator god.
The common element in all of these primitive perceptions of “gods” or “spirits” is that they purport to explain the otherwise mysterious workings of nature: why it snows, why wind blows, why thunder crashes, why dreams occur, etc. The dynamics of nature are explained in supernatural terms – at least in terms that today’s scientific world would consider as supernatural.
The irony is that hunter-gatherers would not label their beliefs and rituals as “religious” or “supernatural”. The use of this terminology is a modern phenomenon. Ancient Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, also had no word for “religion”. (See Robert Wright, op.cit. pp.17-20)
The World’s Religious Make-up
The predominant religions in today’s world are Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. These religions have crossed national boundaries and their followers add up to millions of people and, in the case of Islam and Christianity, more than a billion. Other religions, such as Zoroastrianism, Shintoism, Taoism and Sikhism, are largely local and are inseparably related to small-scale traditional societies.
Although hard numbers in questions of faith are scarce, the Pew Research Centre, a “fact tank” in Washington D.C., issued a report in 2010 on the state of religious belief around the world. It estimates that around 5.9 billion adults and children – approximately 84 percent of the world population in 2010 – have some kind of religious affiliation. Even of the over 1 billion persons who are unaffiliated, many profess some belief in a higher power. Asia has by far the largest number of people who claim to have no religion, most of whom are Chinese – living in an officially atheist country. But 44 percent of Chinese respondents in the Pew survey claimed that they have worshipped at a gravesite or tomb in the past year. China also has the world’s seventh-largest Christian population, estimated at 68 million persons.
The report of the Pew Research Centre states that in 2010 of the 5.9 billion religious believers the distribution of religious affiliation was as follows: Christian 31.5 percent, Muslim 23.2 percent, Hindu 15 percent, Buddhist 7.1 percent, Folk/Traditional 5.9 percent, Jewish 0.2 percent. Other (including Sikh, Shintoist, Taoist, Janoist) 0.8 percent. The median age of religious groups was highest (between 30-40 years of age) for Jews, Buddhist, Folk/Traditional and “other” categories. For Christians the median age was 30 years of age, for Hindu around 25 and for Muslims around 22 years of age. Around 405 million persons adhere to folk religions (i.e. not to Abrahamic religions or to Hinduism or Buddhism). Around one quarter of the world’s believers live as religious minorities. (See The Economist, December 22nd, 2012, to January 4th, 2013, p.96)
Religion as Source of Values
We consider things as “valuable” or “desirable” as instrumental values when they are conducive to achieve some purpose which we pursue. But if values are sought or appreciated for their own sake, as ultimate ends, irrespective of any purpose, they are intrinsic values. When it comes to the
5 question which ultimate evaluations are right and which are wrong, which are laudable and which are reprehensible, we are faced with a conundrum. Science, per se, cannot take a stand beyond describing the consequences. The scientific method cannot help us to take an unconditional stand in matters of value judgements.
Some philosophers, such as Kant, thought that values must rest ultimately on natural laws, knowledge of which can be acquired through reasoning. Existentialists like Sartre and Camus argued that values simply rest on preferences and reject any form of ultimate anchoring outside personal preferences. Others, like the German philosopher, Arnold Brecht, also supported the view that ultimate values are based on preferences, but argued that certain kinds of preferences are universal, invariant “inescapable” elements in the human way of thinking about ethical issues, particularly about “justice”. Followers of various religions, anchor their values – distinguishing between right and wrong – in their religion: God’s will as expressed through one or other form of revelation. Variants of this view are found among Christian and Islamitic theologians. They derive their doctrines of “what ought to be” from religious sources. This source of values applies to the majority of people living on planet earth.
Religion and Art
Since ancient times religions have inspired man to express their feelings in artistic ways: in architecture, sculpture, painting, music and in poetry. Each form of artistic expression has created works of genius depicting religious themes and representations of religious events, symbols and figures. All over the world there are imposing edifices, mostly in the form of monuments, temples, cathedrals or churches, reflecting the creative designs of specific cultures and periods. Some of the earliest examples are the temples of Mesopotamia, the Hindu temples in South India and the geometric art of the ancient Greeks.
The great number of gods and goddesses in the Hindu world provided multiple pathways for Hindus to Brahma, the architect of many worlds. Hindu representations provide a rich tapestry of art in the form of architecture and sculpture. Temples abound like wayside shrines and Hindus invest much in their elaborate decoration. Hindus believe you can’t take wealth with you. Hence, letting go of things lies at the heart of Hinduism. Temples and shrines are monuments to renunciation – giving up of worldly things. Hindu art reflects their belief that everything is symbolism.
The Romans developed the arch, vault and dome, but also pioneered the creative use of concrete, allowing them to cover immense interior spaces without inner supports to build landmark cathedrals like St. Peters in Rome and the “Hagia Sophia” in Constantinople. The Roman Catholic Church established a wave of cathedral construction throughout feudal Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period. Many examples exist of Romanesque and Gothic styled cathedrals: St. Trophime at Arles, Reims Cathedral, Sainte-Chapelle, Chartres Cathedral and the Cologne Cathedral. Medieval theologians believed a church’s beauty could inspire parishioners to meditation and belief. As a result, churches were much more than just assembly halls. The chief forms of inspirational decoration in Gothic cathedrals were sculptures, stained glass and tapestries. The Baroque period of the 17th and 18th centuries produced numerous churches, designed to overwhelm the senses and emotions with architecture of unprecedented grandeur. (See C. Strickland, The Annotated Mona Lisa – Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern, Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City, 1992, p.30)
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One of the most talked about, exotic church designs in the world is the Sagrada Familia by the famous Barcelona architect Gaudi. His version of primitivism combined with Art Nouveau astonishes from whatever angle it is viewed. Initially it was intended to be a conventional building in the Gothic Revival style, but it became more exotic as it grew, and after many decades it is still under construction. In the chronology of tall buildings it is noteworthy that the cathedrals of Cologne and Rouen were the tallest buildings in Europe in 1880. Today the tallest church spire is dwarfed when seen from the rooftops of modern skyscrapers.
Sculpture also represents an age-old form of religious artistic expression. There are many examples all over the world: the Venus of Willendorf, the monoliths of Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean, the statuesque figures in the Greek temples, the revival of the Greek tradition in the sculptural masterpieces created by Michelangelo: the “David”, the “Moses” and the “Pieta”.
The Renaissance period saw a revival in the use of paintings in a religious context. By the use of the techniques of perspective and light and shadow depiction, artists were now able to create the illusion of depth and reality on flat surfaces. It enabled artists to tell stories in their paintings covering religious themes that were in popular demand. Italy produced a number of exceptionally gifted painters who left a wealth of paintings with religious themes: Michelangelo’s paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, depicting the biblical story of Genesis, Raphael’s Stanza, depicting a range of religious themes, Leonardo’s “Last Supper” depicting Jesus Christ and his apostles, Michelangelo’s depiction of “The Last Judgment” on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. This tradition was carried forward by Spanish, German and Dutch artists. Of particular relevance is the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch who deviated from telling biblical stories to depicting the evil consequences of sinful behaviour. His “Garden of Earthly Delights” which is displayed in the Prado, Madrid, is one of the most remarkable paintings of the Renaissance period.
All the ancient civilisations – Chinese, Indian, Inca, Aztec, Egyptian, Greek, Roman – had more or less the ability to divide the different sounds they could make into higher and lower pitches, so tunes could go up or down. Modern music derives a good deal of its basic theory from the Greeks, calling the notes by letters of the alphabet in a primitive form of notation. But it was the Roman Catholic Church that set about codifying music systematically in the early Middle Ages. Up to that stage, virtually all music was part of a handed-down, oral tradition – most of which was improvised and never heard of again. Pope Gregory (540-604) was the first to order a compilation of and standardisation of the entire chant repertoire, but they could only write down the words, and the tunes had to be memorised by the monks. Then a Catholic monk, Guido of Arezzo came along in the 11th century and provided a map for musical notes – a virtual representation of sound – suitable for instant recognition of the relative pitches of notes by using his “sol-fa” system. He offered a model for the modern “scale” or musical ladder and his clear stave notation changed the course of musical history. It was now possible to write down a sophisticated variety of music and paved the way for the emergence of a new, distinct species of musician, the composer: Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, Brahms and many others. The great composers of the baroque period were all closely associated with church life. They composed biblical oratorios that have remained monumental standards of classical music ever since. It is also claimed that the biblical oratorio paved the way for the emergence of the art of opera. Bach’s collection of keyboard compositions in the form of preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys was an amazing feat and a landmark of European music history and among the most important pieces of music ever composed. Bach spent most of his adult career as music director of the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig.
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Much of Western music written since the time of Bach, follow the lead of the “Equal Temperament” of voices and instruments he pioneered. Without it even popular music could not function.
Religion as Source of Cleavage
Since ancient times religion has served as a binding force within communities – binding together people with the same values and aversions. Simultaneously religion served throughout history as a mark of distinction, giving rise to tensions and hostilities. The profound hold which religion is capable of exerting upon people’s emotions and imagination render these cleavages especially intractable. A common religion can produce both a militant cultural identity and a sense of sacred mission. Where religion regards sacred and secular issues as inseparable, co-existence of different religious communities within the same area or state becomes peculiarly difficult.
Often certain aspects of religious membership are of high visibility to the community at large. The Sikhs in India are identifiable by their uncut hair, bound up in a turban. This distinctiveness assures a consistent reinforcement of both a sense of identity with their group and its uniqueness with regard to other groups. The same applies to the head scarves, burkas, hijabs or other veils used by Islamic women. They act as conspicuous differentiating factors which also could act as annoyance to other groups. Religious taboos, especially dietary, may also provide a mark of differentiation. Throughout history, the most violent religious conflicts were those between Christian factions such as the Catholic-Protestant cleavage, the Muslim-Christian cleavage such as during the Crusades in the Middle Ages, the cleavage between Shiite and Sunni Muslims and the Muslim versus non-Muslim conflicts in the Sudan and Indonesia.
There are many examples around the world where cleavages within the population (religious or other) threaten the breakdown of the state as an integrated political system. The breakdown of the political system could occur through the withdrawal of a segment of it, either to become independent or to join another territory – such as the break-up of India to create East and West Pakistan and, subsequently, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In most instances, such breakdowns occurred as part of post-colonial separatist drives or secession movements. In a few instances, irredentism, served as a drive to combine or unite areas to create a “homeland” for a religious or cultural community. The Malaysian Federation was split up to accommodate the separatist sentiments of Malay Muslims and Singapore Chinese. The Armenian cultural group pressed for the creation of an Armenian state to combine the Armenians living in Turkey, Iran and the USSR. The Kurds are still pressing for the establishment of a Kurdistan to combine Kurds scattered in Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. In each of these instances, religious affiliation plays an important part.
The Middle East inherited the demarcation of several artificial or arbitrary political units which underlies endemic political rivalry and conflict. In Libya, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, the most salient identity has been supra-national rather than sub-national. The result is that cleavages cannot be easily solved by sub-national partitioning. In Lebanon, one of the world’s most culturally (and religiously) divided states, the cleavages are not geographical and therefore cannot be resolved by the simple expedient of fragmenting the state. The cleavages between Sunnite, Shiite, Druze Muslims, Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Armenian Orthodox Christians are not geographical. Re-creating an Arab Palestine distinct from Israel is an equally complex challenge with part of former Palestine precariously glued to Jordan and another part, the Gaza-strip, attached to Egypt on the opposite side of the artificially created state of Israel.
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Although Buddhism is also divided into major rites such as the Hinayana (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Burma) and the Mahayana (Ceylon, Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia, Japan), these divisions did not occur within territorial boundaries and do not lead to domestic conflict. However, where sects existed within Buddhism inside countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Ceylon, it became the source of violent social cleavage.
Perceptions of Deity, Heaven and Hell
In Judaism, God is called Yah-weh, but also other names, Jehovah, Adonai, El or Elohim. The fact of being without beginning or end, God is the Creator of everything from nothing, but also the Saviour at the end of time, and the omnipresent actor in history. Despite the omnipotence and omniscience of God, people are responsible for their actions. They have the responsibility and capacity to make choices. They also have the power of reason, the ability to understand the ethical order of the world and to direct their actions in accordance with its laws. Since all people are made in the image of God and are God’s creatures, the rights of the individual are limited by the rights of others. Mankind’s task is to actively shape the world according to God’s laws. Sin is rebellion against God’s law and the Divine order. Suffering, however, is a mystery in Jewish faith. It can be experienced in three ways: as punishment, as a test of faith or as the atonement suffering of the righteous.
For Christians, God is conceived as a trinity: God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit – all aspects of the divine. God the Father is seen, similar to Judaism, as the creator of all things and is the Lord of history and of judgment. God the Son (Jesus Christ) is the centre of Christianity and is connected with the salvation of creation and the redemption of humankind. The Holy Spirit, the most difficult to comprehend, can be recognised through its actions and it is the source of the power of the church and its sacraments. The paradox of theology is how and to what extent a good and just and omnipotent God is responsible for evil in the world. Evil personified, is depicted as having been created by God in the form of the fallen angel Lucifer, who fell from grace as a result of arrogance. Lucifer, or Satan, is God’s opponent or rival in designing the order of salvation. Satan takes advantage of human freedom, tempting an individual to turn away from God and to do evil.
In Islam God is called Allah, but is shared with Judaism and Christianity. Islam believes in the original revelation and covenant between God and Adam to send prophets to all peoples. Mohammed was chosen as Allah’s messenger and the last link in a long line of prophets such as Ebrahim (Abraham), Mosu (Moses) and Issa (Jesus). God is one and has no “son”, but Jesus will come again as a perfected Muslim and rule as the righteous King over a unified world. Everything that happens to humans is predetermined by God. This predestination has made the problem of human free will a controversial issue in Islam. Why does God lead some persons to the correct faith and thus to salvation and lets others perish through their lack of faith? The Day of Judgment is a central element of Islam. Death is a separation of body and soul. Similar to the Apocalypse in Christianity, Allah’s severe judgment is a supreme disaster. Allah then separates the saved from the damned. Both the joys of Paradise and the tortures of Hell are depicted in extreme and sensory terms in the Koran. It is not simply faith that counts, but the practical expression of that faith. There is a super abundance of food and the pleasures of the senses in Paradise.
Hinduism allows its believers much freedom in metaphysical and philosophical questions since it is up to the individual to choose between a theist, pantheist or atheist pathway to the sphere of the deities. Hence there are almost countless deities in Hinduism. The philosophical views set out in the Sutras (scriptures), Sustras (teaching books) and systems of thought known in Sanskrit as darshana,
9 are literally different ways of seeing the truth (drishti) and are merely non-binding guidelines. Other religions are seen as merely alternative pathways to the diversity of deistic spheres designed by Brahma, the architect of the numerous deistic spheres. The principle of Dharma, the law of the world, is that all living things are strictly different from one another and consequently have different tasks, obligations, rights and abilities. Hence among human beings there are different classes (castes) that are strictly separate from one another. The Dharma is the one eternal law for all living things, but it is expressed differently for the different castes and stages of life (ashramas). The diversity and similarity of living things result from the diversity of deeds in a formal life that need to be rewarded or punished. The circular process of dying and being reborn is without beginning or end and continues eternally. But the moral order of retribution for deeds carries within itself the possibility of living things gradually perfecting themselves and ultimately experiencing salvation.
Since ancient times, all religions have imagined conditions in Heaven and Hell. Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Christians and Judaists all maintain theological depictions of Heaven and Hell – and those followers who are devout still believe in it. Atheists do not believe in it and agnostics are uncertain. Until the Renaissance period Christian artists depicted Hell to be like Dante’s inferno: devils and pitchforks, lakes of fire with brimstone clouds and wailing souls. Heaven, in contrast, was visualised as an ideal paradisiacal existence of pleasant meadows and the everlasting happiness of all the saved souls. The Hindu Hell, or Yama Pura, is the oldest known with its subdivisions of heated kettles and spikes. At the end of the torments of the Buddhist Hell, the purged soul returns to Earth as an insect or a reptile, entering the cycle again. From the Muslim Hell, purged souls eventually return to Earth. Judaism introduced the idea that good and bad should not both go to Sheol. The wicked should receive punishment as they deserved – especially if they have prospered from their wickedness on Earth. Conditions in Heaven were less clear-cut because the virtuous, like Job, had been struck with disasters and sores, commensurate with his deficiencies.
The shape of Hell is visualised differently by the various religious faiths. In most cultures it meant a hidden place or hole of fire. Dante described Hell as an inverted funnel of several layers, with each layer deeper and narrower than the last. The Buddhist Hell is similar but in Hinduism it has several mansions, large and small depending on the religious offences. Buddhism also provides different places for each particular sin. For all religions there is a perception of a trial of some nature at the entrance to the Underworld: the damned are separated from the not-so-bad. Then comes the long fall and the fire.
Modern biblical scholars have gone a long way to adjust the perceptions of Heaven and Hell. Jesus himself made no reference to “Hell” or “damnation” in the New Testament. St. Paul said that God would have mercy on everyone. The idea of a topographical Hell gradually faded out of Christian theology. Thomas of Aquinas in Summa Theologiae wrote that the anguish of the damned stemmed from the knowledge that they could never reach happiness. Hell meant ceasing to hope, or hopelessness. Milton, in Paradise Lost, said that: “The mind is its own place, and in it self Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n” (See www.dartmouth.edu/Milton/readingroom/p1/book1)
In modern times perceptions of Heaven and Hell became less literally understood. Jean-Paul Sartre spread the idea that Hell is other people and the things they do. The Vatican also relented and redefined Hell as “a state of exile from the love of God”. For some Christian Fundamentalists in the American South, Hell is still a real place, as real as any specific place on the planet. Behind all the
10 various perceptions of Heaven and Hell lie more fundamental questions. How can fear of Hell and hope in Heaven be reconciled? Can you have Heaven without Hell? Does the experience of pleasure or joy depend on escape from omnifarious pain or horror? Can people be inspired to do better without some threat of the severe consequences of failure?
Religiosity, Atheism and Secularism
As explained by John R. Shook, op.cit. pp.1-2, “Religion promises a rewarding relationship with the supreme reality. Religions offer views about what supreme reality is like, how best to relate to it, and why believers benefit from that relationship. Non-believers don’t deny that reality is impressive, but they doubt that any religion knows best about reality or how to relate to it. Non- believers instead use some non-religious world view, some account of reality and humanity’s relationship with it, that lacks any role for a god ... Respectful and rational dialogue among believers and non-believers, and everyone in between, holds great promise ... (and) could hardly be a waste of time.”
Atheism (and agnosticism) is associated with an optimistic world view expecting reason and science to explain everything and make life better for people everywhere. They argue that the lack of religious belief does not necessarily cause moral and social deterioration since most of the advanced, healthy and peaceful countries in the world are amongst the least religious. But what are the sources of their civility? The truth is that most people around the world still harbour some belief in deity and argue that there will always be wicked deviants in any society.
Atheists often get blamed for secularisation, yet, the process of secularisation was well under way in the West long before atheists were strong enough to achieve the separation of church and state. Secularisation is not the same as atheism. It has to do with religion’s control over society’s institutions and events. Secularisation has been involved in the removal of direct religious control over major political and social institutions. It prevents governments from favouring a specific religion and it also protects religions from government interference.
Is supreme reality a deity, or not? Having an answer to that question would reveal the true nature of religiosity and what its role could be.
Bibliography
Goudall, H. (2001) Big Bangs – The Story of Five Discoveries that Changed Musical History, Vintage, London Hattstein, M. (1998) World Religions, Krönemann, Cologne Strickland, C. (1992) The Annotated Mona Lisa – Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern, Andrews & McMeel, Kansas City Shook, J.R. (2010) The God Debates – A 21st Century Guide for Atheists and Believers, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester Wright, R. (2009) The Evolution of God – The Origins of Our Beliefs, Little Brown, London Zaehner, R.C. (ed.) (1998) Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions, Barnes & Noble New York
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1. The World of Judaism
Of the three monotheistic religions Judaism is the oldest but numerically the smallest because its devotees are limited to Jews. It is historically significant as the origin of both Christianity and Islam. For the Jewish religious consciousness there is a straight historical line running from the Israelites of the Old Testament to the Scribes, Pharisees, Rabbis and later teachers of Judaism in many parts of the world if the footprints of the diaspora are followed.
Much has been written about Judaism and about the persecution and suffering of the Jews since ancient times. As a highly accessible source that covers the entire Jewish phenomenon with all of its strengths, contradictions and darker sides, Paul Johnson’s A History of the Jews, Phoenix Press, London, 1987, provides a thought provoking introduction. It is an acclaimed description of the 4000-year history of the Hews: its awe-inspiring endurance, its steadfast homogeneity and group loyalty and their belief that their history has a purpose within the realm of humanity’s destiny. His remarkable 640 page tome covers seven parts: Israelites, Judaism, Cathedocracy (ex cathedra rule), Ghetto, Emancipation, Holocaust and Zion. However, it is essential to realise that Johnson writes from the perspective of a strong believer in the divine inspiration of the Biblical text and the status of the Israelites as “God’s chosen people”. It is also noteworthy that his research project was sponsored by Lord Weidenfeld of the publishing firm Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
In this summary we will first look at the roots of monotheism, the doctrinal foundations of Judaism, then the historical emergence of anti-Semitism, followed by the reformist trends in Judaism in the Modern Era and then survey the position of Judaism and the Jews in today’s world.
The Roots of Monotheism
The early written records of religion in Mesopotamia are fragmentary in the form of clay tablets. Similarly, the records of ancient China are also sketchy, engraved on cattle bones and turtle shells. During the third and second millennia before the Christian era, very few people were literate and script was little more than hordes of complex symbols that stood for whole words or concepts. Early Mesopotamia was a collection of city states interacting through some combination of trade and war. These people were polytheists often inclined to contest each other on religious grounds. Hence war was a big part of life in the ancient world. Sargon became Mesopotamia’s first great conqueror around 2350BC. He spoke a Semitic tongue from which both Arabic and Hebrew languages evolved.
Hammurabi entered the Mesopotamian scene in the early second millennium BC, centuries after Sargon’s empire had passed. Hammurabi was famous for producing one of the first legal codes of the ancient world. It drew strength from the gods in the sense that Hammurabi claimed to have been divinely authorised to make laws by Marduk, the god of the city of Babylon.
The trend towards monotheism was enhanced by development in Egypt in the 14th century BC under Pharaoh Amenhotep IV. He acquired his position of power under the auspices of the single god Amun, but he later replaced Amun with Aten as the “king of gods” – foreshadowing the Hebrew god, Yahweh. Aten was believed to have created all human beings and to take care of all of them – with their peculiar tongues and distinct skins. Sigmund Freud, in his book Moses and Monotheism, suggested the Moses was in Egypt during Aten’s reign and then carried this idea of monotheism towards Canaan, where it would launch the Judaic religion.
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However, since the time of Sigmund Freud, archaeological and biblical scholarship has uncovered several alternative historical strands in the emergence of the Israelitic monotheism. Some historians claim that the bulk of Israelite tribes never migrated to Egypt and even express doubts that Moses ever existed. Biblical accounts of Moses were written down centuries after the events they describe and were edited later still. It is claimed that most early Israelites descended from a long line of Canaanites who never left the area. However, this claim does not exclude the possibility of a tribe of exiles returning from Egypt having been absorbed.
What other forces pushed Israelites toward monotheism? Modern biblical scholars and historians claim that the Israelites throughout their early history tended to worship several other deities (like Baal). According to the Bible they were constantly punished by Yahweh for their idolatry. In around 580BC several tribes of Israel were taken into exile to Babylonia, signifying Yahweh’s humiliation by the Babylonian god Marduk. They spent about half a century in exile before the Persians, having conquered the Babylonians, allowed the exiles to return to Jerusalem where many Israelites had remained all along. The magnitude of the catastrophe that had befallen the Israelites resulted in soul searching and psychological trauma which nourished their monotheistic sentiments. Monotheism was further pushed along by the influence of Zoroastrianism, the monotheistic Persian religion. The combination of these influences enabled the Israelites to strengthen their own concept of monotheism. (See Robert Wright, The Evolution of God, Little Brown, London, 2009, pp.90-187)
Doctrinal Foundations
The doctrinal foundations of Judaism as the religion of the Jews crystallised over a period of more than two millennia. It started during the Old Testament Biblical period, was then consolidated by Rabbinic councils and enshrined in the Talmud, was subjected to several destructive forces in the Middle Ages, returned to Orthodoxy in the late 18th century and then faced several reformist trends in the Modern Era.
The Old Testament Biblical Period
The part of the Scripture that is commonly known as the Old Testament of the Hebrew Bible is the cornerstone of Judaism. Particularly the Five Books of Moses (the Torah or Pentateuch) which form the first part of the Bible, are considered by the Jews to be a direct and most fundamental divine revelation as delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai. Every letter of the contents of the Pentateuch is hallowed by traditional Judaism. This tradition of Jewish orthodoxy makes it difficult for its devotees to come to terms with modern critical Biblical scholarship. In today’s world it is necessary to provide answers to questions relating to the authenticity of historical claims. What is fact and what is fiction? Who wrote the Bible? When was it written? Of the several historical accounts that are available, which are accurate?
According to Paul Johnson, the Old Testament Bible itself, as a written record of the religious experience of the Israelites, began to emerge as canon after the first five books, the Mosaic texts reached written form. Johnson claims that the form in which it is available today, is a compilation of five and possibly more “sources” and “codes”. This compilation took place after the return from exile in Babylon and was done by “families of scribes” who transcribed the ancient texts “with veneration and the highest possible standards of accuracy”. Their most honourable duty was to preserve the canon in all its holy integrity. They began with the Mosaic texts which were transcribed onto five separate scrolls (hence the Greek name Pentateuch, as are the individual names of the books). To
13 these were added the second division of the Bible: “Prophets”. These, in turn, consist of “Former Prophets” and “Later Prophets”. The former consist of the mainly narrative and historical works, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. The latter consist of the writings of the prophetic orators Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micab, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zachariah and Malachi. Then there are the works of the third division, the “writings” or “Hagiographa”, the Psalms, the Proverbs, the Book of Job, the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah and the two books of Chronicles.
The Hebrew Bible took shape slowly over several centuries, and the order in which it was written is not the order in which it now appears. Archaeology has supplemented the research by biblical scholars and created a more comprehensive picture of the Abrahamic god. Paul Johnson states that the Pentateuch (Torah) could have been canonised as early as 600BC. The other books were added gradually, the process being complete by around 300BC. We do not know the criteria by which the canon was completed, but popular taste, as well as priestly and scholarly judgment, appears to have played a part. Inclusion in the canon was the only certain way of ensuring that a work of literature survived, for in antiquity, unless a manuscript was constantly recopied, it tended to vanish without trace within a generation or so. The families of the scribes ensured the survival of the Bible texts. Scribal scholars, who specialised in the writing, spelling and accenting of Bible texts, ultimately produced the official Jewish canonical version known as the Masoretic text which took shape in the early Middle Ages. There is however, more than one canon and therefore more than one ancient text: the Samaritan version (Septuagint), the Greek version and the Dead Sea Scrolls copied by the Qumian sect.
It must be noted that Johnson’s own account is not beyond reproach as an objective guide into the history of the Jews. He writes that “... the Jews were the first to create consequential, substantial and interpretative history ... but they were fascinated by their past from very early times, they knew they were a special people who had not simply evolved from an unrecorded past but had been brought into existence, for certain definite purposes, by a specific series of divine acts ...” (See Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, op.cit. pp.88-92)
Today, the Bible serves as a key document to reconstruct most of the Israelite religious history. But it is a religious interpretation of their historical experience. Hence it cannot qualify as a reliable record of actual history. It tells us about the religious interpretation of the Israelites’ experience and their perceptions of their interaction with their God. Judaism has remained an ethnic religion, related to the Jewish people in a more exclusive and intimate way than did the Christian religion to the Italians or English peoples, or to Western civilisation as a whole. Christianity became a missionary religion, whereas Judaism remained ethnically exclusive. It made no distinction between the spiritual and secular spheres and remained integrated in and intertwined with the concrete history of the historic Jewish people.
Scholarly opinion is divided not only on the correct interpretation of Biblical texts, but also on questions relating to the origin and composition of the Biblical texts. It is not clear to what extent the Biblical text reflects actual events and developments such as the migrations of “Hebrew” tribes from Mesopotamia to Canaan and thence to Egypt – as well as the actual linkages between the promised land and the names of the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and with those of Moses and Joshua, or how many Hebrew tribes migrated to Egypt and went back from there. The exodus from Egypt around the middle of the 13th century BC is considered a decisive and central event for the merging of tribes to become the nation of Israel. The figure of Abraham dominates the Biblical
14 account of the beginnings of the Israelite religion. The figure of Moses predominates the traditions connected with the next major stage of Jewish history. These traditions cover the basic notions of faith, the law (Torah) and the commandments that were subsequently to become the normative rules of Judaism. The Law of Moses and the Covenant he made between the people and God, became the cornerstone of Israel’s existence. (See R.J.Z. Werblowsky’s “Judaism, or the Religion of Israel” in R.C. Zaehner (ed.), Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions, Barnes & Noble, New York, 1988, p.6-8)
The gist of the Judaist conception of Yahweh is that Yahweh, as creator of heaven and earth, transcendent and free in absolute sovereign mastery, took Israel unto himself as his chosen people. The covenant between the people and Yahweh did not mean more privileges for Israel, but more responsibilities and an existence that was constantly exposed to divine judgment. This led to a direct connection between sinfulness and disaster as punishment. But equally important is the promise of deliverance and redemption.
The Israelite monotheism, though universalist in its conception of God, was ethnocentric in its demand for His worship. Israel alone was required to serve this one God in absolute fidelity, whilst the gentiles were not held to be punishable for their idolatry. But the universalistic and ethnocentric aspects of the Bible remain intertwined throughout the Pentateuch. The book of Genesis provides an account of the beginnings of the human race as part of the whole creation, but it is essentially about the Jews. It is an ethno-centric description of the Israelites, set in a wider perspective.
The concept of Covenant is central to the Israelite understanding of both the world (nature) and man (history). They experienced the Divine as a very personal God who presided over the destinies of the group with an extraordinary intensity. His “Word” was his chief manifestation. Every practicing Jew is bound to repeat every morning and every evening the words of the central Judaic confession: “Hear O Israel: Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is One”.
The perennial struggle of the Israelites with their neighbouring Philistines is recorded in the Old Testament books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, as well as in the collections of prophetic speeches. Inordinate stress was laid by the writers of Kings and Chronicles on the centralisation of worship in Jerusalem as the hallmark of true religion. But the formal concepts like Covenant, Election and Law, and the existence of prophets, priests and a Temple ritual are merely the skeleton of Judaism. Its flesh and blood consist of a host of ideas and concrete beliefs. It enjoins all the actions which it commands and prohibits. Some are symbolic acts like the institution of the Sabbath. Others are rites that regulate the relation of the group and its individual members to God, such as the annual ritual of Atonement. The people hold their land from their liege lord, which is God. Feasts and fasts revitalise the consciousness of historic solidarity with past and future, such as the annual Passover celebration of the Exodus. On Passover, the Jew relives the beginnings of his people as the revelation of the ultimate meaning of history as such.
Judaists believe that freedom is a gift of Yahweh and a calling by Yahweh. There is only one road from Egypt to the Promised Land: the road past Sinai. Commands and prohibitions are meant to prevent a lowering of the moral and spiritual level. The purpose of the many food laws is to submit the whole of life to the discipline of sanctification. Every part of the Jew’s life and body is under a divine charge. Other Biblical laws or commands are more directly concerned with other objectives of the Covenant such as social justice and the love of one’s fellow man.
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Jerusalem city and the Temple of Solomon were destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586BC. The Jewish people were taken into captivity to Babylon. Henceforth the Jewish people lived under alien rule and alien law in diaspora. Jewish life was that of a scattered minority enjoying greater or lesser autonomy. In practice Caesar’s will ruled the world and the traditional law of God could operate only as a private norm of a minority, which increasingly conceived of itself as a religious community.
Rabbinic Judaism
Rabbinic Judaism took its beginnings at the time of the Babylonian exile. It involved a doctrine of last things (an eschatology). Ideas and hopes were current about a national restoration under a victorious military leader or through a miraculous intervention from above. The ideal redeemer would be a Davidic king or a heavenly being referred to as “Son of Man”. Redemption could thus mean a better and more peaceful world - ushering in of a new era.
The spiritual leaders or theologians of Judaism, the Rabbis, are essentially lawyers. They were focussed on the formulation of norms and rules that enable the alignment of human action to the revealed will of the Creator. The old institution known as the Sanhedrin was a legislative and judicial body halfway between a parliament and a supreme court. The main emphasis of Rabbinic Judaism was on “right action” rather than “right faith”: orthopraxis rather than orthodoxy. Talmud Torah (the study of the Law) became the ideal business of life and of supreme religious value in itself. Study of the Law tended to become a sacramental activity to the Jew who saw in the Torah the revealed word and logos of God. The negative side of this tendency was the enlargement of Rabbinic casuistry about legal and ritual minutiae which could border on the absurd. (See Werblowsky, op.cit. p.18)
The word mitzvah in Hebrew means “good deed” or “religious act” – or literally “commandment”. The Rabbis counted 613 positive and negative commandments (not counting sub-divisions and casuistic ramifications) which they related to the 613 parts of the body which their anatomy recognised. Rabbis generated ordained blessings for a large variety of occasions: when eating, putting on new clothes, receiving sad news, etc. This huge expansion of Rabbinic law and its decisive role for the practice of Judaism was made possible by the respectful treatment of the Rabbinic profession by devotees of Judaism, their deep-rooted acceptance of the Biblical tradition and their unquestioning conviction that the divine word was an eternally valid guide to action. The Sadducees and Pharisees represented sects who disagreed with mainstream Rabbinic interpretations. Rabbis tended to claim that their views were anchored in tradition going back to Moses on Sinai, the so- called Oral Law which was concurrent with and supplementary to scripture. Their rules of interpretation (hermeneutics) gave rise in Rabbinic Judaism to the theory of tradition as a second vehicle of revelation parallel to scripture.
The phase of expansive Rabbinic interpretation came to an end upon the destruction of the Temple and the sack of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD70. Thereafter the analyses and detailed elaboration of Rabbinic interpretation were embodied in the Talmud. It was a compilation of Rabbinic lore made in the Academies of Palestine as well as Babylonia. The Talmud as “Oral Law” is only second to the Bible and is often used to interpret Bible texts.
An example of Rabbinic Talmud Law is the prohibition to eat anything “with blood”. Blood is considered as the seat of life, hence the taboo on consuming blood in any form. For this reason the Jewish method of slaughter is designed to drain the animal body as effectively as possible of blood.
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Connected with this prohibition is the law against eating certain parts of animals. Rabbis also established the duty of praying first thing every morning, before breakfast.
The Middle Ages
During the Biblical and Rabbinic periods Judaism was given its shape and content while it was given its substantive meaning in the Middle Ages. A distinctive mark of medieval Judaism is its theology or philosophy of religion. This philosophical effort was indebted to various influences. First of all was the rediscovery and development of Greek philosophy by the Arabs. As Muslim thinkers examined their own faith in the light of the new philosophy, the Jewish theologians too began to discuss fundamental Jewish beliefs in the light of Aristotelian and Platonic thinking and with the rigorous discipline of philosophical logic. Devotees of each faith were stimulated to uphold their own faith against competing religions, such as Christianity, that claimed equally divine and authoritative revelations as their basis. The only common ground on which the discussion could move was the neutral sphere of rational thinking and rational proof.
Several questions posed by Aristotelian philosophy forced Jewish philosophers to find answers to issues not normally raised in their own circles. What is the nature of revelation, knowledge and faith and their relation to each other? What is the nature of the human personality and its relation to God? What are the rational proofs of the existence of God? What are the attributes of God, of eternity and providence? These issues had to be confronted with a profound seriousness as a religious duty. It was argued that reason was man’s noblest part and that through reason man could communicate with each other and with his “Creator”. The essentials of the Jewish faith had to be formulated with intellectual precision. These discussions went on between philosophers and not between official theologians authorised to proclaim the “truth” or to pronounce anathemas. Hence the formulations or interpretations expressed by the philosophers did not attain the Talmudic authority that would Rabbinic confirmation allow.
Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) was the most influential of Jewish medieval philosophers. His magnum opus, The Guide to the Perplexed, explained the thirteen articles of faith which are usually held to comprise the essential dogmas of Jewish religion. Since they are articles of faith, they are not capable of logical demonstration. Examples of the articles of faith are the immutability of the Torah, the coming of Christ, reward and punishment according to one’s deeds, the resurrection of the dead, etc. These are matters to be “believed”, not “known”. It illustrates an almost unbridgeable gulf between the philosopher’s God and the God of the devout believer.
Yehudah Halevi (1080-1141) was more famous as a poet than as a philosopher-theologian. He expressed a mystic, intensely personal love of God in the form of a personal longing for divine communion: “Lord where shall I find Thee? Where shall I not find Thee?” He claimed that just as God has chosen one particular people as the focus of his purpose with mankind, so has he chosen one particular country, the Holy Land, to be the territory of his people’s religious fulfilment.
The Cabbalist movement represents a bizarrely exotic “theosophic” group that distinguished two aspects of the divine: the hidden and unknowable in contrast to the manifest, self revealing, accessible God of religious experience. The former was called by the Cabbalists En Sof (“Infinite”) which is totally hidden in mystery and not accessible in contemplation. The bible, God’s Word, is per definition nothing but the revelation or self manifestation of God. The Zohar is the most important Cabbalistic text. It explains the unification of the aspects of the divine – the unification of God. This
17 union is symbolic of the union between male and female of which perfection was only possible in the married state. Cabbalism was the dominant form of Jewish piety since the 16th century, but in the 18th century a mystic movement called Hasidism emerged in Eastern Europe which introduced degenerate elements of ecstatic mystical communion. In modern rationalist Jewry, the Cabbalistic heritage is dismissed as medieval superstition.
The Return to Orthodoxy
By the 18th century, Rabbinic Judaism once again returned its focus on the orthodox interpretation of the basic elements of their faith in response to the thirteen basic articles set out by Maimonides.
The first dealt with the existence of God and the faith in divine Providence and God’s sovereignty over his creation. Orthodoxy reasserted their acceptance of the traditional Jewish chronology with BC1971 (5731 according to the Jewish calendar) as the year of creation. The assumption of geological ages, evolution and other cosmological assumptions of modern science are still considered heretical by the orthodox. The modern theologists who accept the relevance of the natural sciences argue that dates are unimportant. Hence they simply cling to their faith in creation and the Creator.
The second article dealt with the unity of God. It rejects all types of polytheistic, dualistic and trinitarian beliefs. God’s unity is an absolutely unique unity which is defined to exclude all forms of mediation.
The third and fourth articles deal with the incorporeality and eternity of God. God has no form and is beyond time and space. God is “theomorphic” and can only be described in words by way of analogy.
The fifth article refers to the duty to worship God alone. It embodies the practical implication of monotheism. It excludes other divinities and forbids the appeal to other powers, forces and intermediaries. God is the only object of prayer, irrespective of the nature, meaning, value or efficacy of prayer. Rabbinic tradition sees in prayer a divine mitzvah, a commandment. Jewish tradition also insists on the value of public worship with full liturgical proceedings.
The sixth article dealing with prophesy is based on the premise that God communicates with man. It does not raise the question by what criteria true prophesy can be distinguished from false.
The seventh article deals with the superiority of the prophesy of Moses. It flows from the centrality which the Pentateuch occupies in Judaism in relation to the other books of the Old Testament Bible. Whereas the prophetic books are “inspired”, the Pentateuch is God’s very Word, literally spoken or dictated to his servant, Moses. God spoke to Moses “mouth to mouth”, not in a vision of a dream.
The eighth article refers to the Torah as God’s revelation to Moses. Jewish orthodoxy has always upheld the theory of verbal inspiration in its extremist form. The whole fabric of traditional Judaism rests on the notion of the divine nature of Mosaic Law. Liberal and Reform Judaism accepts the questioning of the sacred text of the Law and would substitute for it a purely ethical Judaism.
The ninth article holds that the Torah is immutable. It asserts the continued validity of Judaism in the face of other religions, Christianity in particular, which have brought final and fuller revelations to the fore as superseding or “fulfilling” the Jewish religion. The orthodox Judaism sees the Torah as
18 the divine logos. As the expression of God’s eternal wisdom, the Torah shares the immutability of God. Its theology does not depend upon rational evaluation, it is a matter of belief.
The tenth article deals with God’s omniscience as part of His complex of powers such as omnipotence and omnipresence. These powers condition the belief in a Special Prudence and also in individual reward and punishment. Since God knows everything including all innermost thoughts, purity of heart and holiness of thoughts are as significant as physical acts. The love of God, fear of God and practice of the presence of God is based on personal relationships - not merely reactions to certain “attributes” of God.
The eleventh article is based on the belief that individual reward and punishment is self explanatory. It refers to the soul as the immortal part of the individual and to its fate in the hereafter. It does not refer to material prosperity or misfortune in this life, nor to a belief in a national or a collective justice. The traditional doctrine is that most souls are purged from their sins during one year of Purgatory. Thereafter they are removed to paradise.
The twelfth article deals with the meaning of Messianism – the coming of the Messiah. Redemption, whatever else it may have meant, has always meant the actual, physical liberation of Israel from persecution and humiliation and its return to its ancient homeland, the restoration of the Davidic dynasty, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and the recognition by all nations of Israel’s election and calling.
The thirteenth article deals with the orthodox official doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Rabbinic orthodoxy insists on it as an essential dogma. Modernism has found this doctrine as one of the most unpalatable. The Reform Prayer book has deleted all references to the resurrection of the body and substituted the more “refined” expression “life eternal”.
These thirteen articles identified certain fundamental presuppositions of Judaism. But its essence must be found in the original sources and from the meaning that can be derived from its laws, ethics and rituals. It requires close attention to the description and analysis of its “law” and practices. (See Werblowsky, op.cit. pp.31-36)
Reformist Trends in the Modern Period
For centuries many Jews lived as social outcasts in ghettos and under special laws in many parts of the world – particularly in countries around the Mediterranean Ocean, Eastern Europe as well as Mid- and North-western Europe. They faced spasmodic persecution wherever they settled in diaspora. As a group they were held together by their religious tradition and by their faith in a common calling and destiny. Each local group was aware of its identity with similar groups scattered all over the four corners of the earth. This cohesion and isolation produced a community that was national and international at the same time. As described by Werblowsky: “Israel knew itself to be the chosen people, at home everywhere and nowhere, living in a world of nations and political states but not of them.” (See Werblowsky, op.cit., p.36)
The Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, with its secular human values, together with its emphasis on man as a “citizen”, created new opportunities for Jews living in the Western world. The price to be paid for the right to human dignity, equality and emancipation was to cease to be different and to share in the cultural and civic values of society. Western Jewry accepted and
19 embraced this opportunity while Eastern Jewry, living under more despotic conditions, had to fight for it. Emancipation appeared to be a more attractive choice as its ideals of equality and social justice seemed to accord well with the ethical, universalistic parts of Biblical Judaism. But the progressive temper of the age rejected the ritual, irrational and particularistic parts of Biblical Judaism. The orthodox Rabbis opposed this kind of emancipation because they thought that the anti-Semitic pogroms and ghettos, horrible as they were, were merely the other side of “election”. But, according to Werblowsky, modern Jewry desired neither the one nor the other.
The Reform Judaism movement, rejecting orthodox ritualism and particularism, desired to formulate a Judaism that would be acceptable to the emancipated Jew trying to be the equal of his Gentile neighbour. They embraced the new critical methods of historical research as these could be used as weapons against orthodoxy. They wanted to show that traditional religion, particularly the Talmud and Rabbinical Law was essentially a human creation. The new liturgy was modelled on the pattern of the German church service: organ, mixed choir and prayer in the vernacular. Ritual laws which hindered free social intercourse were declared to be no longer binding. Particularistic or nationalist elements such as the hope of a return to Zion were deleted from the prayer book and creed.
However, orthodoxy managed to reassert itself. While developing an understanding of the problems and challenges of the new age, orthodox Judaism defended the validity and unbroken authority of the traditional way of life. Whereas the champions of the extreme views are in the minority, the bulk of 20th century Judaism, particularly in America, take a large variety of intermediary positions. Reform Judaism shows signs of returning to a more positive appreciation of the halakhah and attempts to revive traditional symbols and rituals. At the same time, the orthodox wing also shows a growing awareness that neither all traditional ideas (eg. that the whole Pentateuch was verbally dictated to Moses), nor all the traditional rules (such as not riding in a car on the Sabbath) are essential for a virile and authentic Jewish faith.
Zionism
The most decisive of all modern developments was Zionism as a secular movement inspired by 19th century nationalisms. Reformers as individuals entertained a desire for Jewish emancipation. Whereas the assimilationist believed that he was neither “chosen” nor different from other citizens of his country, the Zionist affirmed that the Jewish people as a whole was a nation like all others. The Zionists stressed nationhood and eagerly responded to the nationalist spirit and interpreted it as a Messianic chance by which Providence challenged Israelites to live as a chosen people, no longer in exile and dispersion, but as a body politic in the “promised land”.
Paradoxically, present-day Israel also has a group of orthodox extremists who ignore the “ungodly” secular state of Israel and refuse their loyalty to it. To them the arrogation of the name “Israel” by a secular state is sheer blasphemy. But the secularist and nationalist majority hold a sentimental and social attachment to the “national” religion. Secular Zionism has its roots in sentiments that are unconsciously religious, near religious, pseudo-religious or even expedient or based on rational grounds. Hence this kind of Zionism exhibits characteristics that are found in other “secular religions”. It refuses to relate its basic Messianic drive to the total pattern of Jewish theology.
When he wrote his observations on the religious life of mid-20th century Jewry, Werblowsky identified two major historical events as crucial determinants. One was the greatest “pogrom” in
20 history – Hitler’s systematic and cold-blooded extermination of around six million Jews “under the eyes of a passive Christian civilisation”. The other was the emergence of the state of Israel amid toil, sweat and blood and in a confused tangle of justice, injustice and heroism. In the words of Werblowsky the dangers were obvious: “Suffering may lead to self-righteousness and to injustice, faith in providence to arrogance, and Messianism to Chauvinism. Even religious Zionism is tempted to mistake for fulfilment what is really a trial and for accomplishment what is essentially another stage on the long road of Israel’s Messianic destiny.” (See Werblowsky, op.cit. p.38)
Werblowsky maintained that Jewry was polarised in two centres, Israel and America. The two centres represent the two classical forms of Jewish life – the Judaism of the Diaspora and the Judaism of the nation in its homeland. These two forces exist side by side in “dialectical tension”. Today Israel is the name of a state and of a minority religion. It is both in the world and of it, both national and international. The paradox of Judaism is its universalism and particularism. There is a Jewish state which is obliged to include Muslims, Christians and others as “Israeli” citizens. There is also a minority religion of Israelites which consists of citizens of France, Great Britain, the United States and other Anglophone countries where the Bible is read by a majority of citizens under the umbrella of a variety of Christian religions.
The Impact of Anti-Semitism
From ancient times Judaism was regarded by many observers as strange, narrow, exclusive and anti-social. As early as the 4th century BC, Moses was accused by Egyptian historians of secluding his people from other men and encouraging xenophobia. Anti-Judaistic sentiments were enhanced during the process of bifurcation of Christianity and Judaism as a result of the rigorous enforcement of Mosaic law. Judaic rigorism led to a head-on collision with the Greco-Roman world after 66-70AD when the Christian branch of Judaism finally severed from its Jewish trunk. The tendency among Jews to regard other religions with disrespect made them unpopular. Not only did circumcision set them apart, but the practice was regarded as barbarous and distasteful by the Greco-Roman world. They came in conflict with Greek ideas about the unity of humanity so that the Jewish tendency to keep themselves apart was resented as anti-humanitarian and “misanthropic”.
The Greco-Roman Period
Israel was ruined by the 65-72AD war against Rome and destroyed as a Jewish state in 135AD. During the 4th to 5th centuries, Jews living in Christian societies had most of their communal rights and privileges withdrawn. Intermarriage with Christians was prohibited. Only St. Augustine, most influential among the Latin theologians, supported toleration of Jews, since they were part of God’s design. As a result of his influence small Jewish communities were tolerated in the Roman world.
The Greek Church, however, continued to uphold an emotional hostility against the Jews. Influential Greek theologians, led anti-Jewish campaigns, presenting the Jews as murderers of Christ, putting Jewish communities in Greek cities at risk. Jerusalem and other cities in Palestine were increasingly Christianised. But the Christian control of Palestine ended when the Byzantines were defeated by Mohammed’s forces in 636AD and the Muslims occupied all of Palestine and most of Syria.
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The Crime of Killing Christ
Towards the end of the first millennium, Catholic Christian theologians en force started to spread the idea that Jews should be punished for the crime of their ancestors in killing Christ. They were constantly concealing the truth and suppressing the evidence. They served the devil and communed with him at their secret ceremonies. They were treacherous auxiliaries to the ill-treatment of Christians in the Holy Land. After the Crusades started in 1095, Jews became the victims of persecution and massacres in France and in Rhineland cities. Some of these attacks were fuelled by anti-Semitic ideology and folklore. Often it was directed at the money-lending activities of the Jews and this hostility also spread to England where the Jewish population stood at 5,000 in the 12th century. Many Jews converted to Christianity to avoid persecution. Various pogroms were carried out in English towns and cities during the 12th century. Wealthy Jewish families and communities were particularly vulnerable.
During the 12th century the Papacy looked with suspicion on any non-orthodox form of religious activity, including Judaism. The Dominican and Franciscan orders were specifically charged with consolidating orthodox Christian faith in the cities.
Crimes of Money Lending
Since the 13th century Jewish money lending became the major stimulant for anti-Jewish sentiments. It affected a very wide social spectrum. Accusations were rife about exorbitant interest rates charged, leading to accusations of usury and robbery. In England there was a special exchequer for Jews, which was run by two Jews and two Christians, who kept records of all debt- bonds. At headquarters there were Jewish and Christian judges, and a rabbi to advise. When Aaron of Lincoln, the most successful Jewish financier in Medieval England died in 1186, a special exchequer was set up to deal with his estate. In the 1190s there were several major anti-Semitic outbreaks which destroyed the Jewish communities in York and several other places. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, one of the architects of the Magna Carta, which itself had an anti-Jewish clause, took the initiative to organise an anti-Jewish boycott. The scope for Jewish lenders was reduced by the rise of the Knights Templar of Jerusalem and their European Commanderies, the first Christian bankers. In 1275 usury was made illegal in England. Three years later 300 Jews were hanged in the Tower of London for blasphemy, then a further dozen for coin- clipping. Christian governments all over Europe started to expel Jews for usury: from France, from the Rhineland, from Bavaria and from England. Governments were under constant pressure to take anti-Jewish measures. The people believed free Christians had become Jewish slaves and banned Jews from universities.
In 1236 Pope Gregory IX was persuaded to condemn the Talmud, reversing the Augustinian tolerance of the Catholic Church. When the Black Death plague spread across Europe, killing one- third of the population, stories were spread that it was a pestis manufacta (human malice) caused by the Jews spreading poison. Some Jews were forced to confess under torture and in 1348 thousands were killed in over 300 communities in Germany, Austria, France and Spain.
The Spanish Inquisition
Up to the early 14th century Spain was relatively safe for Jews. During the 1400s the pressure on Jewish communities increased as they were now seen as a racial danger. Large numbers of Jews
22 became converts (conversos), but the local populace called them marranos (swine) and considered them interlopers in trade and craft. The concealed or “secret Jews” were seen as even more dangerous. It was decided to introduce a new solution: isolation and segregation. That meant imposing physical barriers between them and the true Christian population. Segregation was decreed by the Cortes at Toledo in 1480. At the same time a special Spanish Inquisition was being created. Run from Seville, the first inquisition for Andalusia started operating in 1481 and in the next 8 years burned over 700 at the stake there. Inquisitions were also set up in other areas and placed under central control during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1479. By 1500 a total of around 341,000 had been prosecuted. Of these 32,000 were killed by burning, 17,659 burned in effigy and 291,000 given lesser punishments. If a converso was rich, his punishment could be commuted into a large fine, but he had to wear a sackcloth garment with two yellow crosses for at least one year.
The intensive ferocious persecution lasted around twelve years and spread to every corner of Spain. It coincided with the final phase of the conquest of the old Moorish kingdom of Granada. This conquest added additional numbers of Jewish communities to deal with. All the gaols were full and tens of thousands were under house arrest. The reyos catholicos, despairing of ending the problem of the Jews with conventional inquisitorial investigation, decided on a gigantic act of will to produce a “final solution”. On 31 March 1492 the “Edict of Expulsion” was signed. It mandated physically driving from Spain any Jew who would not accept immediate conversion.
At the time there were still around 200,000 Jews in Spain. Many thousands chose conversion, but about 100,000 trudged across to Portugal from where they were pushed across the straits into North Africa or by ship to Turkey, North-West Europe and the Americas. At the time, the persecution of Spanish Jewry was the most momentous event in Jewish history since the fall of Jerusalem in the mid-second century AD.
From the 14th century it became general practice to distinguish between Sephardi Jews (Spanish) and Ashkenazi Jews (German). The Sephardi created their own language, called Ladino or Judezmo as opposed to the originally Ashkenazi Yiddish.
Expulsions
The Spanish expulsions were preceded by many others. Jews were expelled from Vienna and Linz in 1421, from Cologne in 1424, Augsburg in 1439, Bavaria in 1442 and in 1450, from the cities of Moravia in 1454, Perugia in 1485, Vicenza in 1486, Parma 1488, Milan and Lucca in 1489, and from Florence and all of Tuscany in 1494.
One expulsion provoked another, as refugees streamed into cities that housed already more Jews than their rulers were prepared to tolerate. In Italy, their main activity at the end of the 15th century was pawn broking and making small loans to the poor. Christian bankers and craftsmen got the Jews banned as soon as their guilds were powerful enough. In Italy, Provence and in Germany, the Jews had been virtually marginalised by the year 1500. Hence they moved into less developed territories further east: Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Poland (Warsaw and Cracow), Brest- Litovsk and to Lithuania. But Poland was regarded as the safest country in Europe for Jews and it soon became known as Ashkenazi heartland.
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Hatred of Jews in Germany
In many parts of Europe Jews became the butt of popular iconography. In Germany it was called Juden sau, depicting Jews in association with pig sows. The impact of the demeaning iconography pictures and sculptures was to depict Jews as usurers and diabolic creatures who poisoned wells and murdered Christian youth. Jews came to symbolise all unclean persons, sinners and heretics. In the words of Paul Johnson: “It assumed an infinite variety of repellent forms. Jews were portrayed venerating the sow, sucking its teats, embracing its hindquarters, devouring its excrement. It offered rich opportunities to the coarser type of popular artist, presented with a target where none of the rules of taste and decorum applied and where the crudest obscenity was not merely acceptable but positively meritorious.” (See Paul Johnson, op.cit. p.232). In Germany these images became so ubiquitous that its endless repetition helped on a process which became the dehumanisation of Jews. Once the Jews were stereotyped as working with the forces of darkness, it was easier to herd them into ghettos.
In 1543 Luther published the first major anti-Semitic pamphlet called Von den Juden und ihren Lügen (On the Jews and their Lies) which Paul Johnson describes as “... a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust.” He said their synagogues should be set on fire, prayer books should be destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, banned from the roads and markets, homes destroyed, property seized and then these poisonous worms should be drafted into forced labour and made to earn their bread or kicked out for all time. He concentrated on their role as moneylenders and said their wealth had been extorted usuriously. About all usurers Luther said: “There is on earth no greater enemy of man, after the Devil, than a gripe-money and usurer, for he wants to be God over all men ...” (See Paul Johnson, op.cit. p.242)
Italy’s Ghettos
The Counter-Reformation, when it came in the 16th century, dealt harshly with Protestants as well as Jews. In most parts of Italy a total of 50,000 Jews were tolerated – many refugees from the Spanish Inquisition. When Cardinal Caraffa, the Grand Inquisitor, became Pope as Paul IV, he took the view that Judaism was a mortal threat to the Christian faith. With the papal bull Cum nimis absurdum he drove Rome’s Jews into a walled ghetto and started to purge refugee Spanish marranos. From 1562 the ghetto policy was extended to all papal cities. His successor, Pius V (1566- 72) was even fiercer in expelling Jewish communities. The Jews, especially marannos were seen as a disturbing element to be persecuted.
Into Central and Eastern Europe
The Jews have been active in the Russian border territories, especially the shores of the Black Sea, since Hellenistic times. Legends connect the arrival of Jews in Armenia and Georgia with the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. From medieval times, Jews had been active as traders over vast areas in southern Euro-Asia. In the 1470s they were active as a semi-secret sect in the Moscow area. Tsar “Ivan the Terrible” (1530-84) ordered Jews who refused to embrace Christianity to be drowned. Jews were officially excluded from Russian territory until the late 18th century.
The Russian barrier to further eastern penetration led to intensive Jewish settlement in Poland, Lithuania and the Ukraine. In about 1500 there were only 20,000 to 30,000 Jews living in Poland out of a population of about 5 million. By 1575 the Jewish population had risen to 150,000. The Polish
24 monarchy, in 1503, allowed the Jews to practice a form of limited self-government. The rabbinate had wide powers over law and finances and appointing judges and other officials. This led to hostility towards the Jews on the part of the Polish people. The crown gave protection to the Jews in exchange for money.
The Jewish communities themselves developed elaborate inter-Jewish credit instruments linking them with Jewish family firms in the Netherlands and Germany. With access to easy credit, Jewish pioneers played a leading role in developing eastern Poland, Lithuania and the Ukraine. The Jews acting as middlemen, ran the tolls, the mills, distilleries, shops, taverns and established townships (shtetls) where they lived in the centre. Every Polish magnate had his own “Joseph” keeping the books, running the administration.
By the late 16th century, Jews were again allowed in German-speaking towns and principalities and the Habsburg Emperor Maximillian II allowed their return into Bohemia. His son Rudolph II allowed Jews to return to Prague and to Vienna. They soon took advantage of the new opportunities as financiers and as jewel smiths. Rudolph brought a Jew called Meisel into his court as financial advisor and thus created the position of Judenfürst (princely court Jew) which became a sought after connection. Meisel supplied Rudolph with objets d’art but his main function was to help raising finance for the war against Turkey. Loan money was raised by Meisel against promissory notes, land, tax immunity and other privileges or charters. The relationship was probably exploitative on both sides, according to Paul Johnson’s research. (Op.cit. p.253). When Meisel died, the state seized his estate on the grounds that his transactions were illegal, but by then most of Meisel’s funds were squirreled away in other hiding places.
When the Thirty Years War between the Protestants and the Catholics broke out in 1618, the Jews were not directly involved, but they were tightly entangled in the network of relationships between the various princes, principalities and military leaders. This terrible conflict wiped out almost one- third of the German population and left devastating ruin in its wake. But it elevated the Jews into the centre of the European economy. Huge armies had to be kept in the field, supplied with food, munitions, horses and fodder. Jewish distribution networks provided the funding and the logistical support, making themselves indispensable to all sides. They were paid in credit, protection and privileges. As more European powers intervened in the struggle, the Jews of the Rhineland, Alsace, Bohemia and Vienna supplied them all. In the words of Paul Johnson, “... while Germany underwent the worst harrowing in its history, the Jews survived and even prospered.” In the closing stages of the war, court Jews were acting as provision-contractors for entire armies. They became a permanent part of the absolutist princely state, raising the money for the gigantic baroque palaces and launching the mercantilist policies that kept it afloat. These included the Karlskirche and Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna as well as the monuments left by the principalities of Hanover, Munster, Schleswig-Holstein, Saxony and Mecklenburg. Jews were also active in the Scandinavian courts of the Danes and the Swedes, the Kings of Poland, Portugal and Spain.
Jewish financial skills also played a key role in the great military confrontations of the second half of the 17th century: the Habsburgs; successful resistance to the advance of the Ottoman Turks into Europe and the great coalition which halted Louis XIV’s attempt to dominate the Continent. Samuel Oppenheimer (1630-1703) played a key role in both as Imperial War Purveyor to the Austrian monarchy in their struggle against France (1673-79) and struggle against France (1673-79) and in Austria’s struggle against Turkey (1682). He produced uniforms, rations, wages, fodder, rafts to transport logistic supplies and soldiers down the river systems – even hospital care for the
25 wounded. He was running the finances of a two-front war, marshalling the resources of a vast network of Jewish financial families, throughout Germany and the Netherlands.
The Polish and Ukraine peasants carried much of the workload and pressure of the food-exporting businesses ran by the Jewish suppliers to the armies during the thirty Years War. The Ukrainian peasants rose in arms in 1648. They were assisted by Dneipert Cossacks and Tarters from the Crimea. The principle animus was directed against Jews. Thousands of Jews fled from their villages to the safety of big fortified towns. The Polish troops were unable or unwilling to protect them. Thousands of Jews were killed and saw their synagogues burned down. As many as 100,000 Jews were killed and 300 communities destroyed.
Ill-treatment of Jews in Tsarist Russia
The Tsarist regime in Russia epitomised the systematic ill-treatment of Jews. Whereas other autocracies in Austria and Russia, even in Rome, preserved an ambivalent attitude – protecting and exploiting the Hews as well as persecuting them from time to time – the Russians always treated Jews as unacceptable aliens. Until the partition of Poland, 1772-95, they had more or less succeeded in keeping Jews out of their territories. However, their greed for Polish territory brought them a large Jewish population. They sought to solve “the Jewish problem” either by assimilation or expulsion.
The Russians engaged in the first modern exercise in social engineering by moving Jews around. First, they confined Jews to the “Pale of Settlement” in 1812, which consisted of twenty-five western provinces stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Jews could not travel, let alone live, outside the “Pale” except with special legal authority. Next, a series of statutes, beginning in 1804, determined where Jews could live inside the Pale and what they were allowed to do there. They were not allowed to live or work in certain villages or sell alcohol to peasants. This destroyed the livelihood of many Jews. In theory the object was to push Jews to “productive labour” on the land. The real objective was to drive Jews into accepting baptism, or getting out altogether.
The next turn of the screw came in 1827 when Nicholas I, issued the “Cantonist Decree” which conscripted all male Jews from 12 to 25 years of age, placing the boys in schools at military depots and forcing them into baptism. Anxious to destroy Jewish schools, the authorities tried to force Jewish children into state schools where the languages of instruction were Russian, Polish and German only. A special committee was established in 1840 to promote the “moral education” of the undesirable, semi-criminal Jewish community. Jews were forbidden to wear traditional garments such as the skullcap and the kapota. It divided them into “useful” and “useless” Jews, subjecting the latter to triple conscription quotas.
Legislation discriminating against Jews and regulating their activities, gradually accumulated. Much of it was frustrated by bribery within the corrupt Tsarist bureaucracy. Government policy oscillated between liberalism and repression. In 1856, Alexander II introduced a liberal phase, granting privileged rights to “useful” Jews. There was another in the 1870s which ended when Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. Thereafter the position of Jews deteriorated sharply.
During the last half-century of imperial Russia, the regulation of Jewish life was pushed to extreme levels. The Jews formed around 4 percent of the population, trapped in the Pale towns and shtetis (“group areas”), limited to certain occupations (“job reservation”), Jews wishing to use the
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Caucasian mineral springs had to pass an examination conducted by an army officer (“separate amenities”). Some resorts were entirely banned to Jews. There were anti-Jewish quota restrictions at Russian universities. Night raids were made by police to track residents without “Law of Settlement” documentation. Occasionally police organised massive “Jew Hunts”. Jewish communities had to provide “fixed quotas” of conscripts, but were banned from strategic divisions such as guards, the navy, quarantine services, the gendarmeries, military bands, the commissariat and from becoming officers. All Jews were banned from any kind of state service in St. Petersburg or Moscow. There were no Jewish teachers in the state schools, nor any Jewish university professors. They were not allowed to vote in municipal elections, excluded from juries, or to practice as notaries. They were not allowed to practice as barristers and solicitors without special permission. Jews were excluded from top training institutions and their attendance at high schools was limited by quotas.
These measures radicalised the Jewish population, but more Jews prospered by getting themselves baptised. Anton Rubinstein and his brother Nikolay ran the St. Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories and even non-Christian Jews flourished in industries such as brewing, tobacco, textiles, grain shipping, railways, oil mining and, of course, banking.
Anti-Semitism had been the official policy of the government for many decades. It took many forms, from tolerating pogroms to publishing the Protocols of Zion. Pogrom is a Russian word for “round up” or “lynching”. After 1881 it gained the special meaning of assaults on Jews. The first pogrom came in 1871 in Odessa, instigated by Greek merchants. Then in 1881 it spread over one hundred centres and involved huge mobs, ethnic groups and police plundering and killing Jewish communities. These events were cited as illustration of the extent of popular indignation against this anti-social minority. The Jews claimed that the government inspired and permitted the mob action in the first place. Jews were robbed and killed on a large scale.
The pogroms led to a panic flight of Jews from Russia to the West. The year 1881 was the most important in Jewish history since the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. After the first rush, the Jews left at a rate of 50,000 to 60,000 a year. In 1891 a total of 110,000 Russian Jews had emigrated and 137,000 a year later. In the pogrom year 1905-06, over 200,000 left. The exodus also involved neighbouring countries. Between 1881 and 1914 more than 350,000 Jews left Austrian Galicia. Many thousands also left Rumania. At the end of 1914 there were still five-and-a-half million Jews in Russia and two-and-a-half million in the Austrian Empire. Of these emigrants more than two million went to the United States where it created a mass of American urban Jewry. In time it changed the whole balance of Jewish power and influence in the USA and elsewhere. Many Jews settled in New York City, Albany, Syracuse, Buffalo, Rochester, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Louisville, New Orleans, Philadelphia and California. In the USA they acquired a disproportionate amount of financial and political power compared to other ethnic communities.
Anti-Semitism under Communism
Jewish socialists like Karl Marx and Rosa Luxumburg (both with privileged backgrounds) thought of Judaism as nothing but the “spirit of hucksterism and swindle” which appears in every society where exploitation reigns. Thus Marx removed the Jewish question from the racial and religious sphere and gave it a social foundation. Marx accepted the Lepsius historian’s narrative that Moses was a renegade Egyptian priest, leading a revolt of outcasts including lepers and negroes who derived his ideas from the monotheistic sun-cult of Akhenatan mixed up with pseudo-factual nonsense of his own. He maintained that the profane base of Judaism was self interest, its cult was
27 hucksterism and his worldly god was money. For the Jewish slaves of Mammon, the world is a stock exchange. But the Jews are only the symptoms of a disease. This disease is the religion of money and its modern form is capitalism. The conspiracy of Judaism is but an element of the entire bourgeois capitalist class. The making of money through trade and finance is essentially a parasitical and anti- social activity. Thus Marx superimposed his concept of class on top of race and religion. It expands the scope and multiplies the number of those to be treated as conspirators (capitalists) and as victims (proletariat).
Marx’s paradoxical combination of Jewishness with anti-Semitism appealed to a growing coterie of Jewish intelligentsia. According to Paul Johnson (op.cit. pp.353-355), Das Kapital became a new kind of Torah for the radical left Jewish intelligentsia. They turned against the unequal distribution of wealth produced by liberal, laissez-faire capitalism. They hated their own Jewishness and to fight for the “revolutionary struggle”, was a morally acceptable means to escape from it: a personal escape from their Jewish burden. Such non-Jewish Jews were prominent in every revolutionary party in every European country, just before and after the First World War. They took a leading role in insurrections which followed the defeat of Germany.
In Russia Jews were most prominently associated with revolutionary violence. The architect of the putch which placed the Bolshevik government in dictatorial power in October 1917 was a non-Jew, Lenin. But the executive agent was Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronstein and a product of Odessa. Trotsky led the armed uprising which overthrew the provisional government and commanded the Communist forces during the Civil War that followed. The consequences for the Jews were appalling. The White Russian armies, seeking to destroy the Soviet regime, treated all Jews as enemies. In Ukraine, the Civil War developed into the most extensive pogrom in Jewish history. There were more than 1000 separate incidents involving the killing of Jews. Between 60,000 and 70,000 Jews were murdered. In other parts of eastern Europe, a similar identification of Jews with Bolshevism led directly to murderous attacks on Jewish communities – particularly in Poland, Hungary and Rumania, where the Communist Parties were run by non-Jewish Jews. The traditional observant Jews of the ghettos paid the penalty.
Since Marxism itself was rooted in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, the Soviet regime set about its business by identifying whole categories of people as “class enemies” and then persecuting them. Jews were branded as “exploiters and profiteers” or “bagmen” which were to be eliminated as anti-social” groups. Thousands were liquidated, others, perhaps 300,000 slipped across the borders into Poland, the Baltic States, Turkey and the Balkans.
But Jews were also prominent in the Bolshevik Party, in the top echelons as well as among the rank and file. Around 20 percent of delegates at party congresses were Jewish, particularly non-Jewish Jews. They were also active in the Cheka (secret police) as commissars, tax inspectors and bureaucrats. So Jews were “bagmen” as well as “Bolsheviki”.
In August 1919 all Jewish religious communities were dissolved, their property confiscated and the majority of synagogues were closed. The study of Hebrew and the publication of secular works in Hebrew were banned. Non-Jewish Jews, in charge of Yevsektsiya, set up within the Communist Party, were tasked to eradicate “Jewish cultural particularism”. They set about destroying Russian Zionism with its 300,000 members and 1,200 branches. Cheka units were used to round up Jews to be sent to camps from which they never returned.
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Once Stalin took power, the pressure on Jews increased in intensity. He persecuted not only Jews but also the Non-Jewish Jews. He strove to eliminate them from all senior posts in the regime. The destruction of Jewish institutions increased as did the physical threat to Jews and Non-Jewish Jews. The distinction between the two categories was seen as a mere camouflage for an underlying identity of aim. It was believed that they worked together behind the scenes.
Stalin made non-Jewish Jews the agents of his anti-Semitism. For tactical reasons, he supported the creation of the state of Israel, thinking it would be a socialist state. But his anti-Semitism endured – despite the fact that his daughter, Svetlana, was married to a Jew. Under Stalin, thousands of Jewish intellectuals and writers were executed by his secret police. This campaign was extended to other East-Bloc countries. In 1953, nine medical doctors, six of them Jews, were accused of seeking to poison Stalin in conjunction with US, British and Zionist agents. A show-trial was organised as prelude to the mass deportation of Jews to Siberia. Stalin died before the doctors came to trial and proceedings were quashed by his successors.
For several decades since Stalin the Soviet campaign against the Jews was conducted under the code name of anti-Zionism. Zionism, of which the state of Israel is but an outpost, is seen as a form of Jewish Imperialism. Judaism and Zionism are seen as inseparably linked, both rooted in the idea of the exclusiveness of the Jewish people. Zionists and Judaist leaders are engaged in a world-wide conspiracy along the lines of the old Protocols of Zion. It is like an “international Cosa Nostra” with “... a common centre, a common programme and common funds”. (See Johnson, op.cit. p.575)
Behind Zionism, it is believed, lies the idea of the “God-chosen” status of the Jewish people, the propaganda of messianism and the idea of ruling over the people of the world. Today, anti-Zionist material continues to flow from the Russian Federation and the Arab World.
The Holocaust
The assault of the Nazis on the Jews from 1933 to 1945, the central event of modern Jewish history, is known as the “Holocaust” (in Hebrew, the Shoah). It involved first the persecution of Jews in all walks of life and then what was labelled “the Final solution to the Jewish Question”. This involved the use of industrial technology in an effort to kill every Jewish man, woman and child in Europe, simply for being Jewish.
As a writer of interpretative history, Paul Johnson made a major effort to find answers to the question why this highly civilised nation, the world’s best educated, found it necessary or possible to turn with such colossal, organised brutality on the Jews? Attempts to find answers have filled whole libraries, but many questions remain.
The chief components of an explanation could be found in the following: - the impact of the First World War and the conditions imposed on Germany by Allied Powers in the Treaty of Versailles; - the impact of the post-war economic conditions, the hyper-inflation and the Great Depression; - the impact of conventional elements of anti-Semitism in Germany ranging from Christian Judensan to pseudo-scientific race theories of the Aryan herrenvolk;
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- the impact of German perceptions of the corrupting influences of Jewish promiscuity and moral degradation (based on Freudian-Jewish psychiatry) on German culture – particularly around decadent Berlin; - the impact of the growing fear of “Jewish-Bolshevik Russia” and the proliferating mythology of the Protocols of Zion stressing the Jewish-Bolshevist connection and the dangers of infiltration of Germany by Ostjuden, a dark and inferior race corrupting German culture and blood; - the impact of the emergence of the totalitarian political party structure which Hitler was able to bring to life with his exceptional organisational skills and demagogic oratory combining a socialist group, the German Workers Party with strong-arm ex-servicemen.
In time, Hitler’s small band of supporters in the Nazi Party morphed into the National Socialist (NSDAP) Democratic Labour Party which built its support on the basis of the German’s need for a scapegoat – something to blame for the hard times suffering of the Germans. Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, described his own experience as a German soldier fighting in the World War I trenches and his own discovery of his German soul. Hitler was an Austrian by birth – albeit of uncertain heritage – but a Pan-German by conviction. He wrote in Mein Kampf that “... if at the beginning of the war, and during the war, 12,000 or 15,000 of these Hebrew defilers had been put under poison gas as hundreds of thousands of our best workers from all walks of life had to endure at the front, then the sacrifice of millions would not have been in vain”. (Quoted by Paul Johnson, op.cit. p.472)
German politics were especially vulnerable to the effects of the depression. German leaders were mercilessly squeezed by both Allied Powers and by voters’ concerns. The German economy had been tortured for a decade, first by reparation payments and then by hyperinflation. By the end of the 1920s, it was exceptionally dependent on Wall Street loans. The infant Weimar Republic was extremely fragile. Parts of Germany were excluded from the Reich. On the Ostfront, Soviet Russia was flexing its muscles. The violent hostility of the German left and the German right stalked the land. Radical nationalists fed on the humiliation of the war guilt clauses, on resistance to reparations and on the ongoing Allied occupation of the Rhineland. Radical socialists fed on mass unemployment and the dire effects of hyperinflation. Hitler’s NSDAP fed on fusing the grievances of both Left and Right.
Confusion reigned in the field of international finance. The Allied Powers sought to make Germany pay for the entire costs of the war so that the Allied Powers could then pay off their own war debts. The Soviet Regime refused to recognise the debts of the Tsar. Germany refused full payment. The plan proved to be unworkable. It was clear that the recovery of Germany was essential for the recovery of Europe as a whole.
The total German reparation debts amounted to 269 million German Goldmarks payable over 42 years. When the German marks were heavily reduced in value by hyperinflation, the French occupied the Rhineland area in 1923. Various plans were subsequently designed (the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan, et.al.) to adjust the German repayment schedule, stretching up to 1988, on a mortgage secured against the German state railways. By 24 October, 1929, the day of the Great Crash on the New York Exchange, the world economy was moving into depression and the question of German war reparations became irrelevant. Dictatorships or authoritarian governments were in ascendance in various shapes and sizes. (See Norman Davies, Europe – A History, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp.934-1088)
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To comprehend the ascendance of the Nazis from the early 1930s in Germany, it is necessary to understand the essential characteristics of totalitarianism as it developed in the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany as set out by Carl Friedrich, et.al, Totalitarianism in Perspective: Three Views, New York, 1969): - Central Ideology. All totalitarian systems are based on a central ideology that dominates all public discourse. The Soviet Union embraced “National Bolshevism” in contrast to the “National Socialism” of the Nazis. Where the Communists turned to Marx’s “scientific socialism”, the Nazis based their theories on eugenics and racial science. In both cases it proved to be pseudo-science. - Utopian Goals. Totalitarian movements find it necessary to set up Utopian goals to mobilise society, hoping to reach a New Order cleansed of all present impurities. In the Soviet Union they sought to cleanse their state from bourgeois impurities. In Italy it was the ideal of the restoration of a pseudo-historical fascist Roman Empire. In Nazi Germany they sought a Jew-free Aryan paradise lasting a thousand years. - Overriding Party-State. Once in power the totalitarian party used its own organs or personnel to oversee all existing government positions or institutions. State structures became subservient conveyor belts for executing the party’s dictates. - Leader Principle. The Fascists in Italy believed “Mussolini ha sempre ragione”, meaning the leader is always right. In Nazi Germany it was called the Führerprinzip, exacting slavish unquestioning obedience from underlings. It was the centrepiece of both Stalinism and Hitlerism. - Gangsterism. Just as professional criminal confraternities do, totalitarian elites habitually terrorise both their own members and their victims in order to eliminate rivals. They manipulate the law and use blackmail and extortion to take control of everything around them. - Bureaucracy. All totalitarian regimes required a vast army of bureaucrats, made up of droves of opportunistic individuals who were seeking rapid advancement of their own interests and standing by exploiting the platforms provided by the governmental structures. - Propaganda. Totalitarian propaganda owed much to the techniques of modern mass media advertising – employing emotive symbols and shameless demagoguery directed at the vulnerable elements of society. - Aesthetics of Power. Totalitarian regimes enforced a virtual monopoly in propagating an aesthetic environment which glorified the ruling regime and the heroic images of national myths and fantasies. - The Dialectical Enemy. Totalitarian regimes need to justify and legitimise their own policies and actions by setting up a dialectical enemy as a permanent and ubiquitous adversary to contend with. It serves the purpose of having a scapegoat to blame for everything that is wrong or irksome. - The Psychology of Hatred. To raise the national emotional temperature, totalitarian regimes constantly beat the drum of hatred against enemies within or without society. In Nazi Germany Communists and Jews headed the bill and alleged saboteurs were mercilessly pursued. - Censorship. Totalitarian ideology can only operate under the shield of pre-emptive censorship. Controlling all sources of information, unwanted opinions and facts are suppressed. Information that needs to be circulated is carefully prefabricated. - Coercion and Genocide. Totalitarian regimes have pushed political violence beyond all previous limits with an elaborate network of political police and security agencies to keep opponents and undesirables under control. Where considered necessary, these elements are eliminated altogether. Mass arrests, shootings, concentration camps are the instruments used to eliminate enemies or to keep potential adversaries in a state of fear. - Collectivism. Social discipline and conformist behaviour are both cemented by all sorts of activity that strengthen collective bonds and weaken individual identity. Hence totalitarian regimes
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promote state run nurseries, youth movements, party rituals, military parades and group uniforms. - Militarism. Totalitarian regimes habitually magnified “external threats”, or invented them to rally citizens to the fatherland’s defence. Armed forces enjoyed high social prestige. - Universalism. Marxism-Leninism was always universally orientated, intending to spread its ideas and institutions around the world. The German Nazis also marched to the call of the world – morgen die ganze Welt. - Moral Neutrality. All totalitarian regimes shared the view that their goals justified their means.
In the early 1930s the Nazi Party established themselves as the largest single party in the Reichstag. After endless Cabinet crises Hitler became Chancellor in December 1932 under President Hindenburg, hoping by this action to stem the rising influence of the Communist Party. A month later a mysterious fire destroyed the Reichstag building. The Nazis blamed the Communists and won 44 percent of the popular vote at the next election. They passed an Enabling Act granting the Chancellor dictatorial powers for four years. He organised a plebiscite to approve Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations, receiving 96 percent support. In August 1934, following Hindenburg’s death, he called another plebiscite to approve his own elevation to the new party- state position of “Führer and Reich Chancellor” with full emergency powers. This time he received 90 percent support. Hitler was now in control. The democratic process now produced a dictator who used his party’s elite guard, the SS (Black shirts) to wipe out the Party’s older formation of storm troopers, the SA (Brown shirts). He banned the Communist Party and then dissolved all the other parties.
His economic policy was based on a combination of Keynesian financial management with complete state direction of industry and agriculture. The trade unions were replaced by a Nazi labour front and strikes were outlawed. A state-funded work creation programme ensured full employment: building the autobahns, the launching of Volkswagen and, above all, rearmament. In 1936 he introduced a Four-Year-Plan including a state-owned steel corporation. In 1935 Hitler reintroduced conscription.
In Mein Kampf Hitler set out his ideas about the German herrenvolk (master race) and Germany’s right to seek Lebensraum in the East. He divided mankind into a hierarchy of races: culture founders, culture bearers and culture destroyers. All great cultures from the past perished from blood- poisoning. Each healthy nation needs its own soil. He also believed in the “iron logic” of “racial purity”. Jews ought to be excluded from German citizenship and from state employment. Jewish traders should be boycotted and marriage and sexual intercourse between Jews and non-Jews forbidden. These measures were clearly defined in the Nurnberg Laws of 1935. The Nazis approved euthanasia for mentally and genetically handicapped. Nazi propaganda peddled strange notions about Teutonic Knights and created a Hitler personality cult of all that is wise and good. The Party Guard, the Schutzstaffeln and the Gestapo (Secret State Police) were used to supplement existing military and police forces. Nazi-run People’s Courts and People’s Judges increasingly absorbed the work of the traditional judiciary.
Starting in 1936 some 500,000 German Jews were persecuted and expelled. Apprehension really mounted after the Kristallnacht of 1938 when Jewish synagogues and shops were damaged or smashed.
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In 1938 Hitler started to reach across the German borders when he engineered the Anschluss or merger with Austria. In 1939 he reclaimed Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia and then Danzig from the Poles after organising a rapprochement with Stalin. On September 1st, 1939, Hitler’s army invaded Poland and started the Second World War, facing a rather impotent array of Western Powers wracked by the fallout of the Depression years.
After the fall of Poland, 13 European countries were due to be overrun: 8 by Hitler and 5 by Stalin. In the summer of 1940, first the Low Countries and then France fell in a matter of weeks under the onslaught of Hitler’s Blitzkrieg. The British Expeditionary Force was soon beaten on the dunes of Dunkirk. Then followed a costly failure when the Nazi air offensive against Britain failed. Hitler then switched to this fatal Russian offensive.
The wholesale onslaught on the Jews in Germany and in the occupied territories in the form of the “Final solution” was started under the signature of Göring on 31 July, 1941. The policy was annihilation under the official euphemism of “resettlement”. As the German armies advanced into the heart of the former Tsarist “Pale” territories, the notorious Einsatzgruppen rounded up Jews by the thousands, driving them to pits and gulleys to be shot en masse. At one such action near Kiev around 70,000 Jews were killed.
Adolf Eichmann was head of the section tasked with the Jewish action. Decisions were taken to proceed with experiments to use Zyklon-B gas to create a number of dedicated death camps at Chelmno, Belzec and Treblinka, to expand Nazi concentration camps in Poland, notably Auschwitz and Birkenau, to consult the best German firms regarding crematorium design, to draw up timetables and rolling-stock arrangements for international railway transports and to recruit auxiliary formations.
The ultimate death-toll will never be known, but at the Nurnberg Trials after the war, an estimate was made of 5.85 million. But although no accurate figures could be obtained, no responsible estimates have brought the figure down below 5 million. (See Norman Davies, op.cit. p.1023)
Judaism and the Jews Today
In its issue of July 28th, 2012, The Economist, a financial newspaper owned by Jewish interests, published a Special Report entitled Judaism and the Jews. Its subtitle read “Alive and Well”. It says that Judaism is flourishing, both in Israel where 43 percent of the world’s Jews now live, and throughout the Jewish diaspora. In the diaspora, Jewish life has never been so free, so prosperous, so unthreatened. Jewish is cool in America. Barmitzva (the coming-of-age ceremony) has become stylish too. Also in smaller diaspora countries such as France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and South Africa. Jews are prospering too. Even in Russia and Ukraine, where Judaism and Zionism were repressed in communist times, Jews are prominent in business. The Economist did not provide comparative figures of Jewish per capita income levels, but in practice it is likely to be higher than any other ethnic group, anywhere in the world.
Although Hitler had wiped out close to one-third of Jewish people in central and eastern Europe, the “final solution” of the Nazis had been preceded by a flurry of pogroms across the then tsarist empire that started 60 years earlier, sending waves of mass Jewish emigration westward. By the time Hitler struck, some 6 million Jews were safe in North and South America and in Britain, with 3 million more living in the Soviet Union. The Sephardic communities of north Africa and the Levant, long a
33 minority within Jewry, together with survivors of Nazi-occupied Europe who were not welcomed elsewhere, became the core population of the new state of Israel.
According to Paul Johnson’s research in the period 1800-80 the Sephardic percentage of Jewry fell from 20 to 10 percent, most of whom were concentrated in the Afro-Asian Mediterranean area. In Africa and Asia as a whole, the number of Jews in this area did rise from 500,000 to 750,000. In Europe, during the same period, the total leapt from two million to seven million. Jews married younger and lived longer than their compatriots. The Ashkenazi Jews were concentrated in big cities like Warsaw, Vienna, Budapest, Odessa, Berlin, Paris and New York. But by 1914, there were around eight million Jews in the two great empires of east-central Europe, Russia and Austria, nearly all of them in towns and cities. In modern times, Jews flourished in Anglophone countries where they enjoyed constitutionally protected civil rights and flexible economic opportunities.
The Economist’s Special Report supplied the distribution of the world’s total Jewish population of 13,580,000 by country for 2010:
Israel 5,703,700 United States 5,275,000 France 483,500 Canada 375,000 Britain 292,000 Russia 205,000 Argentina 182,300 Germany 119,000 Australia 107,500 Brazil 95,600 Ukraine 71,500 South Africa 70,800 Hungary 48,600 Mexico 39,400 Belgium 30,300 Netherlands 30,000 Italy 28,400 Chile 20,500
Orthodox vs Non-Orthodox
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was a socialist-Zionist who believed that the 2000 years of diasporic Judaism was a deviation from the true Jewish ethos. He thought the Talmud as Judaism’s body of law and lore was too casuistic. He thought the new state ought to return to pure Biblical guidelines.
The new state of Israel also had to mobilise support amongst the millions of standoffish assimilationist Jews, especially those who found refuge in America. But after the Six-Day War against the Arabs in 1967, support for Israel increased. Fundraising and lobbying on behalf of Israel became American Jewry’s “secular religion”. A grassroots campaign was also launched among younger Jews to support campaigns to promote emigration to Israel from all quarters, particularly for Soviet Jewry.
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By the turn of the 21st century the question of what defines Jewishness became a matter of strong debate. Many diaspora Jews continued to drift out of Judaism or even out of Jewishness and chose assimilation. But many consciously decided to remain Jewish, choosing one of several ways to express their commitment. Jewish Orthodoxy has come surging back, even producing a demographic explosion among the ultra-Orthodox, the haredim (God-fearers), compensating for the outflow from active Judaism caused by assimilation. The overall total of Jews world-wide is now somewhat higher than it was 40 years ago. According to David Landau (The Economist, op.cit.) one in ten Jews is now haredi and the modern-Orthodox account for another 10 percent.
The Main Jewish Denominations
Modern Ultra-Orthodox Conservative Reform Orthodox Inspired by Source of Dictated by Moses do. God/Interpreted do. the Torah by humans Authority of Only ethical God inspired, do., but more Binding but Religious aspects are immutable flexible changed by Rabbis Law binding Do. but pushing Minutely regulated Modernised for Restoration of Ritual and for change by halacha and women and gay some rituals and Practice regarding unchanging Rabbis practices women Divine Support Zionism Support Zionism Zionism and Accept Israel and manifestation but not much but not much Israel immigration to Israel and support immigration immigration immigration - Jewish mother - Jewish mother - converted by ritual or father do. but mitzvot Definition of conversion, - Converts by interpreted do. Jewishness circumcision immersion and more flexibly - accepting mitzvot circumcision (religious precepts) but not mitzvot
Source: The Economist Special Report
Many Israelis like to think of themselves as “traditional”, but even the avowedly secular live Jewish lives – including religious lives. Israel increasingly radiates its national, cultural and religious Jewishness into diaspora communities. Landau states that although Israel’s mainstream parties are committed to a “two-state solution”, in practice, the growing modern-Orthodox settler movement in the West Bank spearheads a government policy of “occupation without end”. To sustain and justify that policy, a stridently nationalistic Zeitgeist is evolving and it is winning the soul of the diaspora Jewry. (See Landau’s Special Report, op.cit. p.4)
The prevailing political sentiment is described by Landau as “aggressive defensiveness”, a curious amalgam of victimhood and intolerance. Dissent about Israel is discouraged. In America discussion about Israel is largely shut down, a disinclination to argue about Israel. But Jews find themselves out of step with most world opinion about Israel. Diaspora Jewish leaders insist that Israel is
35 misunderstood. They attribute criticism to anti-Semitism. Israeli hawkishness vis-a-vis Iran and militant Palestinians turn young diaspora Jews away from Judaism. As their attachment to Judaism weakens, so does their commitment to Israel.
Conservatists vs Reformists in America
The Conservative and Reform Judaist camps are the two largest Judaist denominations in the USA. The Conservatists accounted for more than half of all synagogue-affiliated Jews only a few decades ago. Now their numbers are on the decline. The Reform camp with some 1.1 million fee-paying members and another million-odd who identify themselves as such deny that they are losing ground. They have changed their rules by accepting those born of a Jewish father and a Gentile mother as full-fledged Jews and welcome Jewish-Gentile couples into their congregations.
Both movements had their roots in 19th century Germany. The Conservative movement became the bridge for millions of immigrants who moved from traditional orthodoxy in eastern Europe to the USA. Men and women prayed together and liturgy was revised. They could drive to synagogue on the Sabbath. They still insist that their Conservatism is based on halacha, the system of Jewish law based on the Talmud.
The Reform camp was in favour of ditching halacha and even moved their Sabbath to Sunday to fit in with the Christian world around them. Yet Reform has gone a long way back on itself. It embraced Zionism but introduced modern practices into its synagogue services. Both branches of Judaism are facing a slide away from religion. The largest denomination among American Jews is “none”, and getting larger. The same is true among Christians. The “unchurched” are growing as the mood is changing towards secularism, especially in the Blue (Democratic) states where most of the Jews live.
Sociologists have recorded a steep increase in Jewish-Gentile intermarriage in recent decades. Intermarried couples are less likely to bring up their children as Jews. Their commitment to the synagogue is more tenuous and most of them are less actively Jewish. They reflect the age of “pick- and-choose”. The Orthodox say Judaism is not a buffet. Jewish studies programmes are now on offer at almost every university in the USA. Of some 350,000 Jewish students on American campuses about 25 percent take Jewish studies courses. American Jews appear to be largely ignorant of Judaism. For the majority, Jewish education is confined to a few hours a week and ends at the age of 13, after bar- (or bat- for girls) mitzvah. Orthodox children almost all attend Jewish day schools, at least at the elementary level. Many liberal Jews still see sectarian day schools as somehow un- American. The majority of those who intermarry are persons who did not attend Jewish day schools. In Australia and South Africa where day schools are the norm in Jewish communities, intermarriage rates are significantly lower than in America.
Judaism in Israel
In a survey of religious beliefs and practices among Jewish Israelis conducted in 2009, 46 percent defined themselves as secular, but only 16 percent said they did not observe tradition at all. Only 6 percent said that circumcision is not important to them and only 10 percent had no time for the Passover Seder. Around 70 percent of respondents said they only eat kosher food. Most observe the Sabbath, but only a third of the total “meticulously”, and most do not favour imposing those restrictions on others. No less than 20 percent said they attended all-night study sessions on Shavuot.
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Most of the Russian-Israeli community, now more than 1 million strong, arrived in the 1990s, after the collapse of communism. The Russian immigrants are purposefully assimilating into Israeli society and tradition-based behaviour is part of that assimilation. That also applies to some 300,000 who are not recognised as Jewish under Israeli law. The law is based on the orthodox definition of a Jew as someone born of a Jewish mother, or converted to Judaism. Some of the younger ones go through conversion during their army service. They are prevented from marrying full-fledged Jews in Israel, because the Rabbinate has a monopoly over marriages. In response they hop over to Cyprus for a civil marriage, which is legally acceptable. But hating rabbis is an integral part of Israeli Jewish culture.
The biggest reason for hating rabbis is the draft. The 400 Talmud students whom Ben-Gurion exempted from army service have grown to 110,000 able-bodied haredi men who have served neither in the regular army nor in the reserves. Each year another 6000 haredi yeshiva (Talmudic seminary) students reach the age of 18 and join the ranks of the draft dodgers. That figure already represents 13 percent of the Jewish male age group (Arab-Israelis are also exempt from the draft) and is set to grow fast. Among Jewish schoolchildren, 26 percent of first-graders are haredi. Their schools focus on religious learning as basic subjects such as maths and English get short shrift.
Under the present law draft-dodging becomes a way of life because the dodger must remain full- time in his Yeshiva. Unemployment among haredi men exceeds 60 percent. The rest of the population shoulders the tax burden of supporting the increasingly impoverished haredi community. But the High Court of Justice has ruled that the draft discrimination is unconstitutional. Netanyahu has a long association with the haredi establishment and is not keen to alienate this support group. But a community of around 900,000 cannot expect to continue not pulling its weight.
Israeli Politics
The Revisionist-Zionist Party, the Russian Immigrant Party and the Orthodox Zionist Party have given Binyamin Netanyahu the power to govern Israel for several years. Netanyahu calls his tripartite alliance the “national camp” and the opposition the “peace camp”. His allies have developed a messianic theology based on a fundamentalist reading of the Bible which sets the conquest and settlement of the land above all else. These teachings have penetrated and influenced much broader swathes of Israel’s politics and culture.
The conflation of hawkishness and Jewishness is also in evidence in the diaspora where it blurs criticism of Israel’s occupation policy with anti-Semitism. If “anti-Israel” equals anti-Semitic (i.e. anti-Jewish), then Israel, and especially the occupation policy being criticised, equals Jewish. A consequence of this trend is the possibility of the rise of anti-Semitism. In the Muslim world anti- Semitism and anti-Israelism coincides.
Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is both anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. His government is working hard to obtain the means to implement his threats to annihilate the Jewish state. Netanyahu brands this as a campaign for the “deligitimisation” of Israel. This implies that any critic of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land is branded as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. But how can building settlements on Palestinian land be acceptable simply by claiming a mitzvah (a Judaist religious precept) to occupy the land? The creation of Israel should rather be seen as an opportunity to create a viable and sustainable Jewish society that is not based on pushing Palestinians from their
37 place of birth and where they have been living for many generations. The Israelis cannot escape sharing the land with the Palestinians – either as one state or a negotiated two or more.
Ideological Divisions
Judaic Reform movements outside Israel have long fought against Orthodoxy’s monopoly on Judaism in Israel. Non-Orthodox rabbis in Israel are not allowed to conduct marriages and conversions. Many Israelis are uncomfortable with the notion of a state religion in Israel; they insist the state’s religion should at least be Judaism and not Orthodox Judaism. Many American Jews are opposed to Netanyahu’s pandering to the Orthodox factions in Israel.
The big divide between the Conservative and the Reform movements involve primarily, the question of “who is a Jew?” and “who decides?”. Reform Judaism recognises patrilinial Jews (Jewish father, Gentile mother) as full Jews, provided they choose to live Jewish lives. Conservative Judaism has stuck with the traditional matrilineal criterion. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who are accepted as Jews by Reform synagogues are not considered Jewish by Conservative rabbis.
A further problem is the turf war that is waged by the two non-Orthodox movements against Israeli Orthodoxy. The solution to the problem seems to be the realisation that Judaism is on the path of change and adjustment between traditional religiosity and secularism. Apathy, alienation and assimilation inevitably weaken Jewish solidarity in the diaspora.
Bibliography
Davies, N. (1996) Europe – A History, Oxford University Press, Oxford Ferguson, N. (2008) The Ascent of Money – A Financial History of the World, Allen Lane, London Hattstein, M. (2006) World Religions, Krönemann, Cologne Johnson, P. (1987) A History of the Jews, Phoenix Press, London Landau, D. (2012) “Judaism and the Jews” in The Economist, Special Report, July 28th, 2012, pp.1-12 Werblowsky, R.J.Z. (1997) “Judaism, the Religion of Israel” in Zaehner (ed) Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions, Barnes & Noble, New York
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2. The World of Christianity
Christianity is today the largest religion in the world, but it is essentially associated with Western civilisation. Together, the Greek philosophy of rationalism, the Roman doctrine of the supremacy of law and Christian ethics, form the three pillars of Western civilisation. Christian ethics, by assigning a central role to the sovereign and inviolable individual conscience, provided the foundation of the Western concept of what is right and desirable as distinct from what is not.
Christianity and the Bible
The basic theme of the Old Testament is that of God’s dealings with Israel from the time when the twelve tribes were united under Moses to form a nation. This story is set within a universal context by the opening chapter of Genesis which recounts God’s creation of heaven and earth and of man “in his own image”. Abraham’s descendants, out of the fallen mass of mankind, were chosen to form the nucleus of faithful people and to be both the recipients of the divine blessing and the source of its mediation to all men. These descendants, who were delivered by God from bondage in Egypt, were united to him in a Covenant and led into the promised land and provided with a King which was at the same time the Messiah (the Lord’s Anointed). Israelites did not persevere on the way of righteousness, so they were brought to the suffering of exile in Babylonia. After their return from Babylon a succession of foreign powers held them in submission: first the Persians, then the Romans in the latter half of the 1st century BC.
The hope that a promised Messiah and a New Covenant would be fulfilled through the mission of Jesus of Nazareth gave rise to the birth of Christianity. Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God and saying that the time was fulfilled and the kingdom of God was at hand. Did Jesus believe himself to be the Messiah?
There is no recorded instance in the first three Gospels of Jesus making an explicit affirmation of Messiahship. It appears that Jesus considered himself Messias Designatus (Messiah designate). Only when he had accomplished his mission was he to be enthroned as Messiah. In the preachings of Jesus he indicated that he thought of men being in bondage to evil and of his own death as the means of securing their release. He did not publicly indulge in theological reflection with regard to his own person, but he did believe himself to stand in a unique relationship to God – as indeed the “Son of God” who, as “divine agent”, was to become through death, the glorified “Son of Man”. His own death he interpreted as a means by which the barrier of sin between God and man would be removed – a victorious struggle over the powers of evil. Thus would be established the moral conditions in which the Rule of God could be perfected.
The Apostolic Preaching
The preachings of the apostles of Jesus of Nazareth consist mainly of the proclamation of the events surrounding his death and “resurrection” in an eschatological setting. It was affirmed that the age of the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies had dawned and that this had taken place through the ministry of Jesus, whose death was according to the determinate council and foreknowledge of God. But death could not hold him and God had both raised him and exalted him, thereby making him both “Christ and Lord” – that is, the promised Messiah. The sign of his present power and glory is the Holy Spirit, now dwelling in the Christian community. He himself, in due course, would return for the final act of consummation.
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As the first disciples of Jesus were Jews, potential Gentile converts faced uncertainty about the significance of the Old Testament, and the relation of Israel to the Christian community. The role of Paul of Tarsus (the later St. Paul), converted from being a persecutor of Christians to a believer, was to find acceptable answers to these questions. Paul of Tarsus answered the first question by saying that the Old Testament was a preparatory discipline to tutor people on the path to Christ. Having served its purpose, it was no longer authoritative. To the second question Paul of Tarsus answered that the Christian community had now taken the role of the true Israel and that the Jews, who had failed to understand their role of preparing the way, had been replaced by the “righteous remnant”, the New Israel, which is the Christian Church. So the Christian community, composed of Jew and Gentile alike, may appropriate the Jewish hope. It is to the Church that the Jewish scriptures belong by right, since its members are Abraham’s heirs. So the divine purpose, which ran through all the history of Israel, had entered upon the final stages of its fulfilment. This, according to St. Paul, was the outcome of the mission of Jesus Christ, whose Gospel he had been commissioned to preach.
The Canon of Scripture
The Bible of the early church was the Old Testament in its Greek form, which consisted of what is now the Protestant Old Testament. This, it was believed, was “God’s Book”, the record of his ordering of history. To the body of Jewish scriptures was added Christian writings – including the Epistles of St. Paul and the four Gospels. Lists of “canons” were drawn up and by the 4th century, New Testament writings were divided into three classes: acknowledged books, disputed writings and the spurious. The combination of the first two produced the 27 books of today’s New Testament as endorsed by several scholars and synods.
The Christian Creed
From the earliest times of the Christian Church, efforts were made to identify the fundamentals of the Christian belief – essential to all who profess themselves Christian – distinct from speculative items concerning which difference of opinion was not only legitimate, but to be expected. These formulae came to be expressed in succinctly formulated Creeds.
In essence, a Christian Creed involves the following components: - a belief in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible; - a belief in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, who came down from heaven, and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried, and rose again on the third day and ascended to heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come again with glory to judge living and dead, of whose kingdom there will be no end; - a belief in the Holy Spirit, the life-giver, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and co- glorified, who spoke through the prophets; and in one holy all-embracing Christian Church; - confession in one Baptism for the remission of sins, looking forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.
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Christianity and Western Civilisation
Christianity is historically the single most important characteristic of Western civilisation. During the most of its first millennium, Western civilisation was known as Western Christendom. There existed among Western Christian peoples a sense of community that they were distinct from Turks, Moors, Byzantines and others. These feelings provided a fertile seedbed for the Crusade campaigns of the Middle Ages. Similarly the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation and the division of Western Christendom into a Protestant north and a Catholic south are also distinctive features of Western history.
Viewed in historical perspective, Christianity has given the Western world much of its character and coherence, permeating human behaviour in various ways, either directly or, through codes of morals and through customs shaped under religious influences, indirectly. Despite the great secularising process that took place during the last four centuries, belief in God has continued to play a predominant role in Western political ideas, motivations and institutions. Historically speaking, the rise of modern democracy was strongly influenced by the interaction of Greek rationalism, Roman Law and Judaic-Christian ethics. Even Karl Marx, no friend of religious dogma and inclined to trace historical events to economic rather than religious concepts, acknowledged that democracy is based on the principle of the sovereign worth of the individual, which, in turn, is based on the belief of Christianity that man has an immortal soul. This interpretation is in line with the general findings of many historians on the role actually played by Christianity in the genesis of democracy.
It is indeed an open question whether modern democracy with its emphasis on the dignity of the individual person could ever have arisen without religious impulses. It is also a legitimate question to ask whether, even today, the formal devices of democratic government alone could hold society together without the cement of a common religious belief. (See Arnold Brecht, Political Theory – the Foundations of Twentieth-Century Political Thought, Princeton University Press, 1959, pp.456-457)
E.S. Griffith, in a symposium published in 1956 on the “Cultural Prerequisites to a Successfully Functioning Democracy” (American Political Science Review, Vol.50, March 1956, p.101), enumerated seven “attitudes” which he held were necessary to sustain democratic institutions. These are: love for and belief in freedom; participation in community life; integrity of discussion; freely assumed obligation of economic groups to serve society; leadership and office holding regarded as public trusts; passions to be channelled to constructive ends; and friendliness and co- operation among nations. Each of these seven “necessary attitudes”, he considered, were best based upon the fundamental elements of religion in the Judaic-Christian tradition. These attitudes were considered to be necessary, though not sufficient. According to E.S. Griffith, democracy would be doomed if reverence for God’s will ceased to animate the great majority of the people.
Two other discussants in the symposium, John Plamenatz of Oxford University and J.R. Pennock of Swarthmore College, while fully recognising the role played by Christianity in the historical evolution and as a stimulating force, doubted that religion was indispensable for the functioning of a democracy. They argued that institutions, per se, may survive their moral and cultural conditions for a considerable time if supported by attitudinal and socio-economic conditions. They also added further prerequisites to the proper functioning of modern democracy, such as: the desire to be self- governing; respect for the rights of others and for privacy and personal independence; lack of
41 servility; a sense of justice; a consensus and community of values; a respect for rules and procedures; and, willingness to peaceful settlement.
What can be said with confidence however is that the evidence is substantial that the proper functioning of democracy requires a constant injection of ethical impulses and that these impulses have in the past been supplied chiefly by religious feelings. However, other potential sources of ethical support cannot be ruled out as “impossible”. But the question remains: how likely is it to happen?
Christianity and Islam
Muhammed was born in Arabia in AD570. Familiar with both Christians and Jews he absorbed many of their precepts and gradually formed his own distinctive Islamic theology. He captured Mecca in AD630 and died two years later. He was succeeded by Omar who proved to be a brilliant military leader. He captured Beirut and Damascus and surrounded Jerusalem until its inhabitants surrendered in AD638. An Islamic mosque, the Dome of the Rock, was built on the vacant site of the temple of the Jews. The Arab forces had also captured Antioch and most of Egypt and the long coast of North Africa by AD675. By AD711 the Muslim armies had captured Gibraltar and soon occupied the cities along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts. This corner of Europe remained under Muslim control for another 700 years. Wherever the Arab armies went, they carried with them the Koran, the sacred book of Islam. Eventually in 1453, Constantinople, the largest of the Christian cities, was captured by Islam. Islam’s advance also swallowed the major islands of the Mediterranean: Crete, Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Minorca, Majorca and the ports along the heel of Italy. In Asia Minor the Arab armies won more territory as Persia fell: the present Iraq, eastern Turkey and Armenia. Further east, most of Pakistan and even parts of India were occupied by Muslims.
Like Christians and Jews, Muslim also believed in one God and that he had no rivals or equals. Islam recognised no equivalent to Christ and depicted Jesus, the Nazarene, as a distinguished prophet, but not as wise as Muhammed. Christ could not have been the son of God because there was only one God, Allah, and he was too exalted for anyone to become a son to Him. Like the Christians, the Muslims warned of a “Day of Judgement” with one road leading to hell and another to paradise. The road leading to paradise was lined with duties. One duty, if called upon, was to fight in a holy war.
Islam demands from its worshippers to pray to Allah five times a day, to refrain from taking food and drink between sunrise and sunset during the holy month of Ramadan, to keep Friday as their holy day, to avoid sacrilegious music and art, to spend much time sitting or crouching on the floor when they worship. Islam is less liberal than Christianity towards women and allows men several wives or mistresses and insists that they be veiled when appearing in public places. The teachings of Muhammed, assembled after his death, are less complicated than the Christian’s Bible and gave rise to less theological disputes.
Christians and Jews suffered under Muslim rule for they had to provide, through taxation, the revenue required by the Muslim ruler. Conversion to Islam did not cancel their taxability. In Spain and Portugal, Christians accepted parts of their Muslim invaders’ culture, including using Arabic in their monasteries. By AD700, about half of all Christians were living under Muslim rule. Muslims confiscated the grander Christian churches and converted them into mosques. (See Blainey, Christianity – A Short History, pp.112-120)
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In 1095, Pope Urbanus II, delivered a sermon that changed the history of Europe. His message reverberated across the West. It started the age of the Crusades. The Pope proclaimed a “Holy War” against Islam, for control of the sacred city of Jerusalem. The Urbanus call to arms unleashed a fanatical war that lasted for two centuries. At the time of the Urbanus call to arms, the Catholic Church itself was embroiled in an internal conflict between the Greek East and the Latin West. Pope Urbanus launched the First Crusade in France, telling the Christians that an alien enemy had invaded the Holy Land and destroyed the symbols of Christianity. It ignited a fire of vengeful passion. In exchange for the sacrifice of hardship or life on the part of the Crusaders, the Pope offered eternal salvation. Thousands of Christians responded: warlords, knights, Christian warriors and ordinary people. People joined the expedition looking for personal salvation.
As described by Norman Davies in his monumental work, Europe – A History (Oxford University Press, 1996, p.358): “The obsession with the recovery of the Holy Land lasted for 200 years and ended in failure.” Between 1096 and 1291 there were seven major Crusades and numerous minor ones. The First Crusade, led by French Warlords, succeeded in capturing Jerusalem, massacring its inhabitants and establishing a Latin kingdom in Palestine. The Second Crusade achieved little. The Third Crusade, led by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Philippe August of France and Richard Coeur de Lion of England, failed to retake Jerusalem. The Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople. The Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Crusades ended up in Egypt and Tunis. When the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land fell at Acre in 1291, there was no coherent response from the West. The conduct of the Crusaders was described as “shocking”. They ravaged the countries through which they marched, they devastated Mediterranean ports and they fought amongst themselves “... no less than against the Infidel”. The cost in wasted lives and effort was incalculable. Norman Davies writes that “murder and massacre in the service of the Gospel were commonplace... Seventy thousand civilians were said to have been butchered in cold blood in the initial sack of Jerusalem.... The lives and labours of millions who were buried in the East would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country.” (ibid.)
On balance, the Crusades reinforced the barriers between Christianity and Islam, poisoning relations in which Westerners were cast in the role both of aggressors and of losers. In short, the Crusaders brought Christianity into disrepute. After the Christians lost their foothold in the Holy Land in 1271, the Ottoman Turks conquered much of the Balkans, North Africa, and Constantinople and besieged Vienna. Thereafter Islam kept Europe under threat for hundreds of years and in the process even managed to put the survival of the West in doubt.
By the 15th century the tide began to turn. The Christians recovered Iberia in 1492. European ocean navigators enabled the Portuguese and others to circumvent the Muslim heartland and penetrate into the Indian Ocean and beyond. After the Ottomans were driven back from Vienna for a second time in 1683, the Habsburg Empire combined with the advance of the Russians to the Black Sea and the Caucasus, drove the Ottomans back from the Balkans. At the end of World War I, the Western Allied Powers established their control throughout the remaining Ottoman territory except for the Turkish Republic. By 1920 only four Muslim countries – Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey – remained independent of some form of non-Muslim rule.
The retreat of Western colonialism started during the 1920s and dramatically accelerated in the aftermath of World War II. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought independence to additional Muslim societies in Central Asia. The violent nature of these shifting relationships is reflected in the fact that most of the wars involved Muslims and Christians.
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According to Samuel Huntington’s groundbreaking analysis in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996, pp.210-211) the causes of this ongoing pattern of conflict lie not in transitory phenomena such as twelfth-century Muslim fundamentalism. “They flow from the nature of the two religions and the civilizations based on them. Conflict was, on the one hand, a product of difference, particularly the Muslim concept of Islam as a way of life transcending and uniting religion and politics versus the Western Christian concept of the separate realms of God and Caesar ... conflict also stemmed, however, from their similarities. Both are monotheistic religions, which unlike polytheistic ones, cannot easily assimilate additional deities, and which see the world in dualistic, us-and-them terms. Both are universalistic, claiming to be the one true faith to which all humans can adhere. Both are missionary religions believing that their adherents have an obligation to convert non-believers to that one true faith. From its origins Islam expanded by conquest and when the opportunity existed Christianity did also. The parallel concepts of ‘jihad’ and ‘crusade’ not only resemble each other but distinguish these two faiths from other major world religions. Islam and Christianity, along with Judaism, also have teleological views of history in contrast to the cyclical or static views prevalent in other civilizations.”
The Catholic-Protestant Cleavage
Although the Renaissance and the Reformation shared common well springs, each movement was driven by its own objectives. The Reformation was a grassroots movement directed against fossilised clerical attitudes and practices. It rode on a wave of religious revival affecting both scholars and masses – largely driven by popular disgust at the decadence of the Roman Catholic Church. Europe was full of tales of nepotistic popes, promiscuous priests, idle monks and the sheer worldly wealth of the Church. Pope Julius II was known as the Pope who rebuilt St. Peter’s through the sale in Germany of “indulgences” – paper certificates guaranteeing relief from punishment in Purgatory. Martin Luther, a young Augustinian monk from Wittenberg in Saxony was shocked by what he saw in Rome. Within ten years Luther found himself at the head of the first “Protestant” revolt. He spread the doctrine of “justification by faith alone”. Rome, to him, was the seat of sodomy. In 1517 he nailed his sheet of 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg’s castle church. From that famous act of defiance many consequences flowed: a series of public disputations, his formal excommunication, and religious protest turning into political upheaval. By 1530 the Catholic and Protestant camps were clearly defined.
The Lutheran protest movement was swelled by a series of parallel events which widened the nature of Protestantism. Zwingli in Switzerland, Henry VIII in England, Jean Calvin in Geneva – all represented Reformist movements against the hegemony of the Catholic Church and led to the rise of Lutheranism and Calvinism as theological foundations of Protestant Church movements. In 1529 King Henry VIII of England initiated the policy which was to separate the Church of England from Rome. Lutheranism spread to most northern principalities in Germany and subsequently also to Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Calvinism spread to the Netherlands, Scotland in the form of Presbyterianism and to England where Anglicanism provided an umbrella for “Low Church” Calvinist evangelicals.
To meet the Protestant challenge, the Roman Catholic Church mounted a Counter-Reformation movement which led to the Council of Trent which met in several sessions. It confirmed that the Church alone could interpret the scriptures but failed to give Catholics a moral code to match that of
44 the Protestants. The Counter-Reformation managed to restore the power of the Church in Italy, Spain, France, Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium) and Ireland. In Germany an uneasy modus vivendi between Catholics and Protestants had been reached in 1555 at the Peace of Augsburg. Each principality could decide on its own official religion. Germany was turned into an uneasy religious patchwork.
During the 16th and 17th centuries religious fervour led to various wars across Europe. Passions and hatreds previously reserved for the campaigns against Islam, now fired the conflicts between Christians. Examples are the Wars of the Schmalkaldic League in Germany, 1531-48; the French Wars of Religion, 1562-98; the Swedish Civil War, 1592-1604; the Thirty Years War, 1618-48. Religious fanaticism inspired the psalm-singing troopers of Gustaphus Adolphus and of Cromwell. In France the Edict of Nantes in 1598 prescribed the scope of Huguenot religious practices. Huguenots were considered as religious heretics and severely persecuted after 1685.
The British Isles were the scene of violent conflicts throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. It involved the Irish Catholics, the Scottish Presbyterians, the Catholic “High Church” and Protestant “Low Church” divisions of the Church of England – all parties participating in a Civil War intent on persecuting their opponents in the hope of imposing a single religion. As described by Conrad Russell in his The Causes of the English Civil War (London, 1990), “the war was not fought for religious liberty, but between rival groups of persecutors”. In the end, it was found that absolute uniformity could not be enforced – despite the use of horrific violence. Although religious pluralism persisted in Britain, France, the Netherlands and Poland-Lithuania, much of Europe was characterised by a “Protestant North” and a “Catholic South”. In Central Europe and in Germany in particular, the Protestant-Catholic divide predominated. Senseless bloodletting in the name of religion became the order of the day during the Wars of Religion.
The Thirty Years War (1618-48) was an extension of the international wars of religion between Catholic and Protestant superimposed upon the age-old German conflict between Emperor and princes. Initially it involved Bohemian squabbles between Archduke Ferdinand and Protestant Czech nobles. It spread to Bavaria when Maximilian, Elector of Bavaria was confronted by Lutheran princes. The Bohemian rebels raided Vienna and when Ferdinand succeeded to the Empire, he was deposed as King of Bohemia and replaced with a Calvinist Elector Palatine. The Bohemian rebels were crushed by the imperialists in a terrible revenge action. Bohemia’s native nobility was crushed by execution and confiscation. The Calvinists were expelled. The imperial general, Count Tilly, victor of Prague, stormed Heidelberg (1622) and criss-crossed northern Germany in pursuit of Protestant forces led by Count von Mansfeld. The unprovisioned armies lived off the land like hordes of locusts.
A Danish phase (1625-29) followed when Christian IV of Denmark, Superior of the Imperial Circle of Lower Saxony, entered the fray in support of his Protestant confreres – assisted by English, French and Dutch subsidies. He faced the imperialist army raised by Catholic noblemen from Bohemia. Catholic forces under Tilly attacked the Netherlands with the help of the Spaniards. A Catholic nobleman from Bohemia, Albrecht von Waldstein (or Wallenstein) overran Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg, Schleswig, Holstein, Jutland and the Baltic Coast. The Swedish phase (1628-35) began when Gustavus Adolphus sent a contingent to hold Stralsund and proceeded to restore Protestant fortunes, he crushed Tilly’s forces and moved into Palatinate and Bavaria. When Gustavus fell in battle near Leipzig, the Protestant cause faltered. The French phase (1635-48) began when Richelieu declared war on Spain, took Swedes into his pay and invaded Alsace. In 1637 Emperor
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Ferdinand died and Richelieu’s fortunes started to grow. In 1643 the French forces under Prince de Conde defeated the Spanish at Rocroi in the Ardennes. The French then ravaged Bavaria.
The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) set the ground plan of the international order in central Europe for more than a century. It confirmed the ascendancy of France and the subordination of the Habsburgs to the German princes. It ended the religious strife in Germany by granting the same rights to the Calvinists as to Catholics and Lutherans. Switzerland and the United Provinces of the Netherlands both received their independence. France received the lion’s share in the form of most of the Alsace territory.
In the wake of the Thirty Years War, Germany lay desolate. The population had fallen from 21 million to around 13 million. Between a third and a half of the population were dead. Whole cities, like Magdeburg, stood in ruins while districts lay stripped of their livestock. A whole generation of pillage, famine, disease and social disruption had wreaked havoc. The exploits of Spanish, Swedish, Italian, Croat, Flemish and French soldiers had changed the racial composition of the people. German culture was so traumatised that art and literature passed entirely under the spell of foreign fashions. Germany’s strategic position was weakened. The French controlled the middle Rhine and the mouths of Germany’s great rivers – the Rhine, Elbe and Oder – were respectively held by the Dutch, Danes and Swedes. Destitution was accompanied by humiliation.
(See Norman Davies, op.cit. pp.563-568)
Major Transformations Since the 16th Century
The 16th century was the era of the “Christianising” of the map of the world after, in 1492, Columbus was the first to sail from Spain to the coastline of the “New World”. Columbus thought that it was part of the Asian mainland – the land of the Magi. When he found the mouth of the Orinoco River on his third visit to the West Indies in 1498, Columbus convinced himself that the river flowed all the way from the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve had first lived. During the next century the Spanish Franciscans and Dominicans baptised thousands of converts and built 15,000 chapels and churches in what they called “the Indies”. Although they gave sermons against the practice of slavery, the slave trade flourished. In 1494 the newly discovered world was divided by the Treaty of Tordesilhas into two spheres of influence under Pope Alexander VI: in effect granting the Caribbean region to Spain and Brazil, Africa and Asia to the Portuguese. The Portuguese explored the East coast of South America, the West coast of Africa until Bartholomew Diaz sailed around the Cape as far as Mossel Bay in 1488. Vasco da Gama reached India in 1500 and thus opened the trading route between the Far East and Europe. By 1571 a string of Portuguese outposts connected Lisbon to Nagasaki. The Portuguese trading network extended to Malaysia, Java, China and Japan. Jesuit missionaries followed the Portuguese traders to spread the Roman Catholic religion but without much success. The Dutch followed in the Portuguese train and finally dismantled the Portuguese monopoly in East India: the Spice Islands, Malacca, Colombo and India. But Portugal hung on to Brazil, which became a spectacular growth point for the slave trade which also aroused the interest of British traders and pirates.
In the early 17th century on the Atlantic coast of North America, the pilgrims were mostly Protestants from North-Western Europe and the British Isles. They were followed by shiploads of other migrants, sometimes entire congregations complete with pastors who set up their own towns
46 and church-dominated government structures. They settled in areas known as New England, New Amsterdam and Virginia. The Catholics settled in Maryland.
The Reformation and the Wars of Religion
Geoffrey Blainey, in Christianity – A Short History, Penguin Books, 2011, writes that “The Reformation sowed some of the seeds of modern democracy ... Whereas the Catholic tradition was based on hierarchy – in the authority of the popes, cardinals and bishops – the Protestant emphasis was on reading the Bible and on the individual’s personal relationship with God ... they needed no middleman in the form of a priest of bishop in order to approach God.” (Op.cit. pp.335-336)
Luther called this the “priesthood of all believers” and this democratic spirit coloured most of the Protestant sects that came after him. Moreover, various Calvinist congregations – Baptist, Unitarian, Presbyterian and others – ran their own churches and selected their own clergymen. This form of organisation depended on small governing committees composed of leading members of the church and the clergyman himself. Protestantism, once the Bible was freely available in a homeland language, tended to foster the kind of debate and discussion which is the core of democracy. The Bible was after all a cluster of books open to many interpretations so that worshippers could debate theological questions privately among themselves. The Reformation discouraged Latin, the international language of the day, and fostered the national languages into which the Bible had been translated. Not only did the Protestant practices foster nationalism, but it also fostered education, because the one book they had to read was the Bible. The various church congregations tended to promote education vigorously and countries like Scotland, the Netherlands and Prussia attained levels of literacy that few other parts of the world could equal. The arrival of popular democracy in the second half of the 19th century depended heavily on the spread of literacy. In the 17th century, Melchior Inchofer, a Viennese Jesuit, claimed that Jesus must have spoken Latin, but he was later corrected by another biblical scholar saying that “... the Lord cannot have used any other language upon earth since this is the language of the saints in heaven”. (Blainey, op.cit. p.337)
Despite the venerated position of the Virgin Mary in Christian theology, during the Reformation women were more likely to be denounced as witches than men. The accusations of witchcraft often arose from domestic quarrels and disputes but more often from religious conflict. Between 1580 and 1640, the search for witches became a frenzy. Witches were said to be influenced by Satan in his clever warfare against individual Christians. After trials in religious or secular courts, about 40,000 or 50,000 “witches” were executed. (See Blainey, op.cit. p.338)
The “Wars of Religion” that followed the Reformation were not entirely caused by religion. The Catholic monarchs and princes were as much intent on fighting their own turf wars than on suppressing the new Protestant movement. The outcome of the warfare was also affected by new weaponry such as the cannon and the musket. Religion might have been a cloak for other motives on the part of monarchs and their financiers. The Reformation nevertheless displayed intense religious rivalries and hatreds amongst Christians. Each camp demanded absolute allegiance, loyalty and cohesion. The Catholic Church, faced with rebellion, continued to demand uniformity and obedience. The Church had no hesitation to interfere in any kind of intellectual activity. Giordano Bruno was burnt to death in 1600 for heresy after he claimed that the number of physical worlds was not one but multiple. Galileo Galilei was forced, in 1633, to kneel in Rome and seek forgiveness for his heresy that the earth was not the hub of the solar system. Toleration was not a goal in the Christian world until much later, beginning late in the 18th century. The right to be free in matters of
47 conscience was a precept that slowly emerged after the acute tensions aroused by the Reformation. Today the Western trend is to devalue the merits of religion and to celebrate the virtues of toleration. Religion is no longer seen as all-important.
Religious Refugees, Sects and Doubters
After the Treaty of Utrecht of 1579, the Netherlands became a place of refuge for religious refugees. The Dutch prosperity attracted persecuted religious groups from many countries, particularly French Huguenots and Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Rotterdam and Amsterdam became the largest Jewish cities in Western Europe and synagogues flourished. Baruch Spinoza, who was a child of Marrano parents, believed that God did not interfere in running the world. Having studied physics and astronomy, he believed Natural laws made the world go round. He was expelled by the rabbis on 27 July 1656. He was one of the first “virtuous unbelievers”. He lived a good life and made his living in a useful way in The Hague – grinding and polishing lenses. He wrote his rebellious Short Treatise on God but remained virtually unknown until Wilhelm Goethe, the German literary scholar, revived an interest in Spinoza almost a century later.
The Reformation produced powerful sects: some rose in a European city or province, some in the British Isles and some crossed the Atlantic to North America. The Anabaptists (literally rebaptised) appeared in Wittenberg, Moravia and Zurich. They believed that baptism was a central ceremony not to be wasted on infants because babies were incapable of understanding it. To be a real Christian one had to be “born again” and baptism was the ceremony confirming rebirth – a sacred pledge. However Luther, Zwingli and Calvin held to the orthodox ideas on baptism and Anabaptists were seen as a threat to the Reformation. Many of their leaders were persecuted, imprisoned, whipped or even executed. Many fled to safe towns like Augsburg, Strasbourg or Moravia. Some became Mennonites under the leadership of Menno Simons and fled to the Netherlands from where they emigrated to North America and formed the exclusive Amish sect. English Protestants came under the influence of the Mennonites and set up their first Baptist congregation in London in 1612. John Bunyan, a soldier on Cromwell’s side, became a persuasive Baptist preacher. When Charles II became king of England in 1660, the Baptists and other sects fell from favour and John Bunyan was imprisoned. In 1672 he was licensed to preach and set up his own church at Bedford. While in prison he wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress which began with a dream of a man clothed with rags setting out into the world with the Bible. On the long pilgrim’s way he finally crossed a big river and all the trumpets sounded for him at the other side. John Bunyan’s book was translated into several languages and was given by many generations of parents to their children.
The Quakers were named after stormbirds which flew over England making loud cries. Their founder, George Fox, was a shoemaker’s apprentice who began preaching outdoors attracting many converts. He gatecrashed into church sermons, interrupting and delivering his own preachings. As he gathered followers they called themselves the “Society of Friends” but to the public they were known as “Quakers”. George Fox proved to be an arresting preacher and he soon had followers in Oxford and Cambridge but his group was generally regarded as “despicable fanatics” – people turned on by their religion into a frenzy of enthusiasm. After 1660 the Quakers and other Puritans were severely persecuted. Thousands died in prison until the Toleration Act was passed in 1689. Many Quakers emigrated to America in the 1650s where they soon came into conflict with other Puritans. In 1667 the Quakers found a prize recruit, William Penn, owner of large estates. In 1681 he received from King Charles II the right to set up a colony in North America, south of New York harbour, called Pennsylvania with Philadelphia as its capital. Pennsylvania became a permanent
48 home for Quakers and other persecuted sects. It promised to give every male citizen a share in the government and individuals could buy land entitlements. Many shiploads of colonists arrived, buying land and building towns. German and Swedish Lutherans also arrived and soon outnumbered the Quakers. The Quakers took the lead in the independence movement of the United States of America and also in the movement to free the slaves and to end slavery.
In England the Anglican Church presided over the religious life of the nation, holding all the important offices, dominating the nobility, the universities, the courts and the navy and the army. Except in Scotland, the Anglicans were the established church, their activities financed by the public purse and their clergy present in nearly every village in England and Wales and many in Ireland. During the 18th century the Anglican Church was given a boost by the introduction of singing and evangelical preaching by John Wesley. Son of a rural clergyman he studied at Oxford University and later became a fellow of Lincoln College teaching classical Greek. On Sundays he preached in village churches. After spending a few years in Georgia (USA) he spent some time with the Moravian church in Germany. He decided to rejuvenate the Anglican Church with special Bible study sessions and by producing a hymn book to augment church ceremonies. He translated some hymns from Germany as vehicles for his theology. His brother Charles also became a prodigious hymn composer. John Wesley also introduced organ and violin music into church ceremonies. By 1800 pipe organs had become common in many churches. In time popular singing and off the cuff praying became the hallmark of Sunday services conducted by Wesley and other revivalists. Wesley’s creed and methods eventually led to a separate “sect” that became worldwide: the Methodist Church which became the second largest in England and Wales and the largest in the USA.
In France in the 1780s just before the start of the French Revolution, more Christians lived in the country than any other country – mostly Roman Catholics with 30,000 parish priests and 130 bishops. Each bishop was served by two valets, a surgeon, a private chaplain, a palace manager, a horse carer, a cellar master, table waiters, skilled cooks and a carpenter. Above the bishops there were 28 archbishops and a cardinal at the very top. Some cardinals acted as prime ministers, such as Cardinal Richelieu. The Catholic Church owned one-sixth of the land in France. Paris was the most glamorous city in the world. The laws kept the few Protestants who lived in the South in submission. They were not allowed to meet in public for religious purposes, could only marry in a Catholic Church. The position of the Church was strongly defended by the Jesuits, who provided the most learned debaters on religious topics. The Jesuits maintained 89 colleges in France, 133 in Italy and 105 in Spain where they taught the elite and the sons of the nobility and high officials.
The Reformation paved the way for doubters, atheists and philosophers to enter into debate about the core principle of Christianity. Deism, a doctrine formulated by doubters gained influence in France, Prussia and England. It held that God existed, but presided over the universe rather than interfered. They dispensed with a personal God. The discovery of important Natural laws by Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Descartes and Huygens helped to underwrite deism. These discoveries suggested that the natural world followed its own laws and rhythms and had no need for God’s intervention. Such concepts of deism shaped important parts of the intellectual world and also some political leaders such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. Even James Cook was said to be a deist. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, originally a Calvinist from Geneva, also questioned the idea of original sin. He thought mankind was originally good but had been corrupted by civilisation. “Man was born free” wrote Rousseau in 1762, “and everywhere he is in chains”. Voltaire also spread radical ideas but accepted the need for the fear of God in a disorderly world: “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”.
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In the second half of the 18th century a few talented authors in England also started to interpret history in new ways, stating that human, geographical and other factors were the main shapers of the past. In 1754 David Hume published the first of six volumes on the history of England. He implied that if God did exist, he was impotent in the face of the current upheavals in Europe. Hume also saw religious enthusiasm as a dangerous passion. He was particularly critical of people trusting in miracles. He was accused of deism, heresy, scepticism and atheism. He gave Edinburgh a reputation as a haven for atheism.
Impact of the French and the Industrial Revolutions
The French Revolution began in 1789. New laws and edicts were made reshaping the Catholic Church affecting the King and the Pope. Bishops were to be elected but their status and income reduced – one for each civil department in France. The vast properties of the Catholic Church were confiscated. In 1792 three ships carrying 550 convicted priests were exiled to a desolate place on the African coast. The King tried to flee from France but was captured and beheaded in January 1793. The Pope blamed the rationalists and the Calvinistic men for the upheaval. Secular symbols now replaced the cross in revolutionary France of the 1790s. Marriage was no longer a religious event, Sunday was abolished, monasteries and convents were taken over. Where the Reformation virtually drowned the Pope elsewhere in Europe, the French Revolution disowned Christianity in Europe’s most powerful country. In 1801 Napoleon Bonaparte resolved to restore the Church, but the confiscated lands were not returned. After he signed a Concordat with Pope Pius VII, Napoleon, at the grand crowning ceremony, took the jewelled crown from the hands of the Pope and then crowned himself.
The 19th century saw major mental and material transformations in the Christian world in the wake of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. A new mental climate based on materialist progress and new discoveries in the fields of science and technology heralded in a period of dynamic change. In Europe and America a plethora of new evangelical sects sprang up focusing on the “Lord’s Second Coming”: the Catholic Apostolic Church, the Free Church of Scotland, the Oxford Movement, the Seventh-Day Adventists and the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons).
In the wake of the spread of Christian influence came two typical cultural practices” the celebration of Christmas and the observance of Sunday. The practice of decorating a pine tree, exchanging presents and performing sacred oratorios like Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio were originated by the German Lutherans. In time “Christ’s birthday” changed into a free-spending, semi-secular celebration with Santa Claus, a jolly bearded man in a red tunic arriving secretly with a sleigh and a sack of toys. Christmas cards were a British invention. Sabbath observance started as a serious day of rest which involved church attendance and Sunday school for children. Business activities came to a standstill and in some cases people refrained from travelling. But Sabbatarianism’s respect for Sunday as a holy day gradually lost its grip. In the second half of the 20th century, Sunday was reshaped as a day of entertainment, sport and recreation.
Geoffrey Blainey eloquently describes the state of Christianity in the modern Western world under the heading “The Unseen Guest”: “The history of Christianity does not simply encompass the lives of those who became known for preaching new doctrines. It is primarily about the everyday life of the people who practiced – or neglected – their religion. Tens of millions found comfort, inspiration or rejuvenation in Christianity
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... Hosts of others called themselves Christians and rarely visited a church, but from time to time their lives were uplifted or their fears calmed by Christian doctrine or snippets of it ... On the other hand, many millions living in Christian countries, whether in remote farmlands or smoky industrial towns, knew almost nothing about religion. In the early 1840s, in the new cities of northern England, a public investigation revealed the width of their ignorance. James Taylor, aged eleven, in reply to questioning, vowed that he had never heard the name of God, except when coalminers used it as a swear word. An eighteen-year-old woman said that she ‘never heard of Christ at all’. Children who had been instructed to say the Lord’s Prayer before they went to sleep were able to remember only the two words ‘Our Father’. Many children did not know that Christ was part of Christmas. It was widely believed in the 19th century that Christianity was still at the heart of civilisation. What was new was the growing idea that a specific brand of Christianity was no longer crucial.” (See Blainey, op.cit. pp.423-426)
Religious Tolerance in the West
Geoffrey Blainey states that: “A high level of religious toleration is almost a modern invention. A few centuries ago it was almost unthinkable. Then it was important to hold the correct religious views rather than hold the freedom to reject them. The right to disobey the government and the Church, the right to be free in matters of conscience, was a concept that slowly emerged after the acute tensions aroused by the reformation. Today the western trend is to devalue the merits of religion and to enthrone the virtues of toleration. In western civilisation we view religious deviance or heresy as a minor matter because religion is no longer seen as all-important.” (Geoffrey Blainey, Christianity – A Short History, Penguin Group, Victoria, 2011, p.341)
The first declaration of religious tolerance in the Western World was the Edict of Milan, AD313, when Constantine took the initiative to grant liberty to Christians to practice their religion in the Roman Empire. Then in AD321, Christianity became the preferred religion when Constantine declared that Rome recognised Sunday as a special day of rest. By AD324, Constantine had promoted Christianity by approving a site for the building of the Basilica of St. Peter just outside Rome and giving one of his own palaces to the Church as a residence for the Pope. Constantine became its financial patron and protector. By AD330 he had transformed the old city of Byzantium to become Constantinople as the capital of the Roman Empire. With the invasion of Barbarians into the western half of the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries, the Roman Empire’s military power diminished. It continued precariously in the eastern half where the Emperors maintained control over an ever-diminishing area around Constantinople. When increasingly out of touch with Western Europe, it finally fell prey to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
The Holy Roman Empire was founded by Charles the Great (Charlemagne) around AD800. It was based on the legal theory of the universality of Roman Laws, but it was an Empire modified territorially, racially, socially, politically and spiritually by the growing influx of Teutonic elements. Charles the Great’s Empire fell apart among his successors according to the Frankish laws of inheritance and then gradually disintegrated in the face of continuous Norse invasions. It came to be confined to parts of Germany and a loose hold on the sovereignty of Italy.
England was never included within the limits of the Holy Roman Empire, nor was France after the break-up of Charlemagne’s dominions. Both countries developed an independence from the Papal authority, sufficiently vigorous to establish their own national church movements. In England the first Parliament appeared in 1265, which included Knights of the Shire and representatives of
51 towns. In France the first such Assembly appeared in 1302 when the Pope tried to exempt the clergy from civil taxation.
In Germany and Italy where the conception of a Holy Roman Empire continued to be more generally accepted, the situation was complicated by perpetual conflicts between Imperial and Papal authorities, which grew in intensity from the middle of the 11th century. The Investiture Contest and schisms caused by rival claims of succession to the throne of the Empire and to the office of the Papacy. These two great medieval institutions were so weakened by the end of the 13th century that they were never able to regain their former power.
The Great Schism (1378-1417) divided Western Europe into two religious allegiances under different Popes. Efforts were made to revive an earlier institution for the government of the Church, called the General Council, to which the Pope was to be forced to submit. The Council of Pisa (1409) was followed by the Council of Constance (1414-18) and then by the Council of Basil (1431-49). These Consiliums, attended by both clerical and lay representatives, laid down the principle of permanent Conciliar control of the Pope. But the Conciliar system failed and disappeared as a method of Catholic Church government. This failure paved the way to the Reformation.
It was only after the Reformation during the age of Enlightenment that the separation of church and state became a pre-condition for religious freedom. In representative democracies today, the separation of church and state has become the norm of religious freedom. Freedom of religion in a democracy implies the absence of any governmental pressure to uphold any specific religious views – including any religious views at all.
In the UK the Queen (or King) is the formal head of the Church of England, but it should be realised that the Queen (or King) is only the ceremonial “Head of State”. The role of the “Crown” is symbolic and ceremonial. The executive power in the UK lies with the Cabinet. The monarch is constitutionally obliged to act through a Cabinet of Ministers responsible to Parliament. The same principle applies to the monarchies of the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. (See C.F. Strong, Modern Political Constitutions, London, 1963, p.74)
The United States was the first modern democracy to protect the separation of church and state in its constitution. The American Bill of Rights begins with the celebrated First Amendment which guarantees against abridgement of religious freedom and of freedom of speech, press, or assembly; continues with specific guarantees against arbitrary governmental acts, particularly in respect to due process of law; and concludes by “reserving” to the states or the people all powers not constitutionally granted to the federal government. Jefferson hailed the Bill of Rights as a safeguard “the people are entitled to against every government on earth”.
There is not a single Muslim country that qualifies as a democracy where basic human rights are recognised. In Islam, God is Caesar and the Koran and the shari’a constitute basic law. Individualism is overruled by religious collectivism. Hence the area of choice available to the individual is not only subordinated to collective prerogatives, but prescribed by shari’a law. Islam fundamentalism and the way of life based on it leaves little scope for deviant religious convictions. The Muslim concept of Islam is that it is a way of life transcending and uniting religion and politics. With a mindset based on religious exclusivity, there is no scope for religious toleration – let alone any form of atheism.
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Christianity and Science
For many centuries followers of the various religions tended to consider their own sacred scriptures such as the Bible and the Koran as the primary source of knowledge. In the 17th century a new scientific movement emerged that challenged the Christian view of the world. People started to look at a new way of understanding the world. During the Renaissance the rising power of science forced the Catholic Church to silence the rebellious scientists by burning them at the stake. By the 19th century the Enlightenment had given rise to a new generation of scientists that pushed Christianity into retreat. Scientists like Darwin made discoveries that conflicted with religious doctrine. The scientific evolution placed individual curiosity and new ways of discovery above religious dogma. Science became the biggest challenge Christianity ever had to face. Science makes progress by challenging orthodoxy. Hence it tends to come into conflict with conventional wisdom. Often the orthodoxy challenged, is fundamentally religious.
Aristotle was the first philosopher to argue that the universe is eternal, hence rejecting the idea of a theistic creation. Rational thinkers continued to challenge the religious concept of a creation. In the 5th century St. Augustine confronted the discrepancy between the Biblical cosmology and the findings of natural philosophy by arguing that whenever solid findings seem to contradict a piece of scripture, the contradictory passage should be interpreted figuratively, not literally. Hence Augustine, in theory, would have had no problem reconciling Copernicus or Galileo with the story of creation set out in the book of Genesis. Centuries later, the Dutch-Jewish philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, also made the claim that the best way to find out what the Bible means is to drop the idea that everything it says is the literal truth. He suggested that the Bible should be investigated as if it were any other historical document written by people affected by the outlook of their time and place.
For many centuries the Church dominated the intellectual world until the start of the scientific revolution generated by the Renaissance and the age of Enlightenment. The first major breakthrough did not occur in Rome, but in Fromburg, a remote town on the Baltic coast of Poland in 1553. Copernicus made the discovery that the earth was one of the planets circulating around the sun and not stationery at the centre of the universe. Many others followed the scientific evidence- based method of Copernicus and soon came into conflict with Catholic doctrine.
So began science’s darkest hour. The “Inquisition” was set up to defend the church against heresy. Scholars who speculated about the nature of the world found themselves branded as “heretics”. In 1600 when Bruno was burnt at the stake his death was a devastating blow against science. It started a battle between faith and reason.
Galileo Galilei in 1609 introduced a new telescope at a Jesuit College. But because he supported the “heretical” views of Copernicus, he was prosecuted. By a vote of 7 to 3 he was found guilty. After the 69-year old Galileo was shown the instruments of torture he agreed to confess his error. But Galileo showed that science progresses by experimenting and that by testing ideas, facts can be produced.
While the Inquisition of the Catholic Church was stifling scientific progress in Italy, the England of the 17th century provided a more tolerant seedbed for scientific expansion. William Harvey, having studied in Italy, set up a research institute in England focussing on the human anatomy and physiology. Harvey brought back from Italy a basic understanding of scientific methodology: making observations, measuring results, confirming or rejecting hypotheses and so advancing verifiable
53 solid knowledge. Scientists were given the methodology to challenge the written words – whether those of Aristotle or those written in the Scriptures.
During the 18th century, the scientific movement swept through the Western world. Isaac Newton and John Locke found that the laws of nature were there to be discovered, not only read about in the published word. It was the age of Enlightenment, the age of Reason. Ideas about freedom, democracy and science replaced religion at the heart of society. In 1750 Benjamin Franklin, son of a Puritan, suggested that lightning was just a form of electricity – not the wrath of God. He also played a crucial role in founding the United States of America as a secular state – as one of the founding fathers.
Modern science provided the biggest challenge to Christianity in the form of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. It suggested that life on Earth evolved through a process of evolution by way of natural selection. Darwin, well aware of the challenge to religion posed by his theory of evolution, was very cautious in releasing it. He delayed publication for almost 20 years after writing it down. Darwin’s theory challenged the Christian belief that man was created in God’s image. Darwin removed the main argument for God’s existence because his explanation removed the need for some kind of divine intervention. The overwhelming evidence advanced by Darwin’s theory led the main Churches to concede that the world was not literally made by God, but they cling to the idea that God made evolution possible. It is based on the idea of a plasticine deity that could accommodate a variety of foundational explanations. This implies that the theology of modern Christianity is now fundamentally different from what it was four hundred years ago.
There are millions of Christians who still believe that the Biblical story of creation is literally true. They are the “fundamentalists”. In the USA, some fundamentalists came up with their own version of evolution, “Creationism”. A museum of creationist evolution was set up in Kentucky in 2007 to provide an exhibition of the evolution of the natural world according to the time-scale set out in the Bible – humans and dinosaurs living at the same time. Where science contradicts faith, in the eyes of the fundamentalists, faith prevails. But today a growing proportion of Christians do not believe in the literal truth of the Bible. Like Augustine and Spinoza they prefer to explore what the Bible has to offer on a broader level: the wisdom of its commandments and the beatification in the teachings of Christ.
For hundreds of years, the Bible was not seen as sacrosanct – verse by verse – by orthodox theologians. The meaning of individual texts had been disputed over many centuries. St. Augustine challenged the books of Genesis and its sequence of events. The Reformation itself was such a dispute. Chapters of the New Testament had been weighed one against the other in interpreting events in the life of Jesus Christ. Over the centuries of European history, more mental effort had been devoted to detailed debates about facets of Christianity than any other topic. There can be no doubt that the chronology of events in the creation myth of the Old Testament does not stand up to scrutiny. But emanent scientists themselves have been woefully mistaken in their own chronology of the evolution of all things in heaven and on earth. Scientists are equally confused about future trends about life on earth. Is it growing colder or warmer and what are the critical determinants? Scientists should rather cling to the Socratic docta ignorantia than the over-confidence of half- trained, dogmatic dillitantes.
Epistemologically speaking it is generally agreed that the scientific method is unable to establish the validity of value judgments. We cannot intersubjectively prove any proposition of faith or belief to
54 be true or correct. It is not denied that individual persons may have intuitional knowledge of ideas that may have plausible validity. But the point is that the truth or validity of such claims cannot be considered scientifically verifiable. Hence, religious references cannot be scientifically verified: the scientific method is unable to present proof for God’s existence. Those who continue to consider God’s existence scientifically verifiable, can do so only by using the term “science” in a broad sense which admits evidence of a type that, however convincing it may appear subjectively, is intersubjectively inconclusive – scientia sive vera sive putative, sed non transmissibilis. Today, theologians tend to refrain from attempts to offer “scientific” proof for God’s reality, focussing attention instead on the inner experiences that cause men to choose God.
(See Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol.1, Chicago, 1951, and vol.2, 1957)
Another Protestant Christian theorist, John Hallowell, argued that Christianity explains the facts of human nature and existence better than any other theory, and that its fruits, i.e. its consequences, testify to its truth. He argues that Christianity regards man as a rational creature, endowed by his Creator with reason, of being capable of distinguishing good from bad, justice from injustice. Reason, as a supernatural faculty, enables man to distinguish good from evil, to recognise evil in the world as the perversion of human will. Human freedom is rational choice. The truthfulness of Christianity lies in its correspondence to reality and derives from the inadequacy of all rival explanations of life. It enables us to live in the present without either complacent optimism or helpless despair.
Although these thoughts may have played a role in converting men and women to religion, there is still a gulf separating these claims from an intersubjectively conclusive scientific proof. Religious belief always leaves room for scientific doubt, though not for scientific refutation. Roman Catholic thinking has never abandoned the claim that God’s existence can be scientifically verified. Pope Pius XII’s address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences of November 22nd, 1951, specifically maintained the claim despite advances, fully accepted by him, of astronomy and nuclear physics. Extended excerpts of his address were published by the New York Times, November 23rd, 1951, p.6. Many Catholic philosophers of the 20th century, including Jacques Maritain, continued to base their scientific teaching on God’s reality. Over the past 400 years it was found that the evidence of science often contradicts the Bible. Since the 18th century it was scientific reasoning that provided the driving force of civilised life. Will further scientific development make religion redundant? No one knows with certainty.
In recent years billions have been spent by the European particles-physics laboratory (CERN) at Geneva. The first task of CERN’s new machine, the Large Hadron Collider, is to search for the Higgs boson – an object that has been dubbed with a certain amount of hyperbole, the “God” particle. Exactly what scientific contribution will flow from this huge investment is not clear.
In 2008 a further multi-million scientific study combining scholars from 14 universities was launched with the object of “explaining religion”. A range of disciplines from psychology to economics are involved. This ambitious attempt will last several years and will look at the mental mechanisms involved in sustaining belief systems, how religious beliefs may influence character development and collective benefits. It includes neurochemical research to find out how religious activity is spread across different parts of the brain and how the brain generates and processes religious experiences. Others focus on the links between religion and altruistic behaviour, collaborative activities, family planning, avoidance of smoking and drinking, healthier lifestyles and
55 work ethic. Evolutionary biologists tend to be atheists. If the propensity to religious behaviour is an evolved trait, then atheists are not likely to benefit from its potentially beneficial effects!
Atheism and Agnosticism in the West
Both terms are derivatives of “theology” which comes from a Greek combination of the words theos, meaning god, and logos, meaning reason. Theology then is meant to explain a theistic worldview. Adding the prefix “a” forms another word for its contrary: a-theos or “not godly”. Just as “atheism” is the contrary of “theism”, theology has a contrary in “atheology”. Atheology is the intellectual effort to explain why a worldview should not include a god – it sceptically denies God’s existence – or anything divine or supernatural. (See J.R. Shook, The God Debates, Wiley Blackwell, 2010, p.13)
Pollsters around the world find that few non-believers prefer to label themselves as “atheists”. This reluctance probably has to do with the negative connotations attached to “atheism” as a dogma. As a result the term “agnostic” was proposed in the 1860s by Thomas Henry Huxley as the contrary of “gnostic” – a Greek term for knowledge. Hence the term “agnostic” denotes a lack of knowledge about any ultimate reality such as a “supreme being”. Huxley offered agnosticism as a reasonable stance towards the overconfident dogmatic certainty of a religion or any overreaching conclusions of any other philosophy. The agnostic is sceptical towards both theology and metaphysics.
Agnostics and atheists are sometimes confused because both camps are similarly sceptical about supernaturalism. But despite the obvious overlap between agnosticism and atheism, there are important differences in their philosophical positions. The “atheist” clearly professes his/her disbelief in God and denies that God exists. The agnostic, in contrast, does not support such a dogmatic denial on the grounds of being an ignorant sceptic about the divine. Agnosticism has emerged as a non-belief alternative to atheism’s dogmas and religion’s faith.
Richard Dawkins has gained international notoriety as the “archbishop of atheism”. His major tome The God Delusion, is an irreverent book, accusing Jesus of having “dodgy family ties” and describing the God of the Old Testament “as arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist; infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sodomistic, capriciously malevolent bully”. (The God Delusion, Bantam Press, London, 2006, p.31)
Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and a popular communicator about science. He maintains that religious moderates make the world safe for fundamentalists and Jihadists by promoting faith as a virtue and by furthering an overly pious respect for religion. He believes any positive aspects of religion can be replaced by equally beneficial non-religious substitutes.
Dawkins examines the question why religion is so widespread. It is found in all cultures despite the fact that worshipping deities is such an “irrational and wasteful habit”. Dawkins concludes that religion is a by-product of mental abilities that evolved for other purposes – such as the way children are “programmed” to believe anything their parents tell them, which is quite useful in the light of all the useful information parents can share. But according to Dawkins, this transmission is vulnerable to becoming a conduit for worthless information that is passed on for no other reason than tradition.
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Dawkins argues that the special appeal of religious ideas is based on its special compatibility with human psychology. Religion has at one time or another been thought to fill four main roles in human life: explanation, exhortation, consolation and inspiration. These are the areas, Dawkins argues, that should be the targets of attack by logical firepower.
As for exhortation, Dawkins argues that religion is not a legitimate source of morality. But Dawkins is less clear on what he considers as a proper source of morality. He suggests as source a combination of genetic instincts which evolved because morals allowed humans to benefit more efficiently from co-operation and a cultural Zeitgeist.
Dawkins concedes that for some people consolation and inspiration are genuine benefits of religion. But these functions, he believes, can and should be fulfilled by other means. Dawkins argues that contemplation of the natural world can do the job as illustrated by the perspective-altering discoveries of modern physics. But how many people can find consolation in quantum physics?
Dawkins proposes two strategies to expunge religion. First he wants to subvert the mode of transmission between parent and child. He considers religious upbringing as a form of indoctrination that he equates to child abuse. Second, he wants to energise atheists to become less stigmatised and more electable to public office.
Christian Ethics and Political-Economic Life
The ideas, ideals and objectives that have come to orient the actions of Western nations are rooted in 25 centuries of Western history. They have been based on certain fundamental notions such as the originally Greco-Roman belief in the sovereignty of man’s rational intellect, but also on man’s spiritual relationship with a perceived omnipotent Providential Power that first arose amongst the ancient Hebrews and continued by the early Christians. The ancient pre-Christian world had at its heart the assumption of natural inequality. It is in Christianity that the individual moral agency and the inherent equality of all human beings has its roots. The teachings of Christianity from the earliest times proclaimed the supreme moral attribute of humans as beings created in the image of God. Thus Christianity invested all human beings with a God-given capacity for moral behaviour, individual liberty and an egalitarian basis for their human identity.
The dominant pre-occupation of Europeans in the era of the feudal system in medieval Europe was with man’s spirituality as inspired by the scriptures and administered by the Catholic Church. Though the Greco-Roman valuation of man’s rational intellect was not repudiated, it was assigned subordinate significance. As commanded by the pervasive Church, man was to seek his ultimate happiness in salvation in the world beyond and to exercise his rationality not for its own sake but as an instrument for the glorification of God. Since the end of the Middle Ages this earlier subordination of rationality to other-worldly spirituality has been progressively reversed. The view that man’s fulfilment should be “here and now” gradually gained ground. While it does not deny man’s spirituality, it sees it more as an ethical consciousness directing the use of his rationality in the service of his fellow man. The guiding inspiration of this modern Western world view is the ideal of maximised welfare here on earth. Its most insistent moral principle is the imperative that nature, human institutions, and even man himself be made to serve this ideal as efficiently and as fully as possible.
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The Emergence of European Social-Democratic Economies
The period since 1950 can be described as the golden era of social-democracy in the Western World. Much of this progress took place under the auspices of the interventionist “welfare state” which entered the Western political arena during the years of the Great Depression and the Second World War. It combined elements of “socialist” thought with the dynamic market forces of “capitalism”. It held that public influence on (and sometimes control of) key economic decisions was to the common good and necessary to maintain the basic socio-economic fabric of society to the extent that the market forces do not provide. It generally entailed a situation in which government provide all its citizens with certain guaranteed minimum services such as physical infrastructure, formal education, medical care, old age care, housing and protection against loss of employment. Governments, in response to public demand, have in the course of time steadily gained more and more control over the production, jobs and wealth of society. In many ways the enlarged state role was undertaken in an attempt to create a recession proof economy by such Keynesian style measures as temporary tax cuts and spending increases during downturns. In the decades following the Second World War, such measures achieved significant success in fostering economic growth and job creation.
Although advocates of the welfare state promoted the idea that every citizen ought to have the minimum conditions of the good life as a matter of right, they do not agree on the exact minima that ought to be guaranteed by collective provision or to what degree they ought to be guaranteed. They do agree, however, that it is the proper function of government to provide every citizen with some degree of formal education, medical care, social security and employment protection and that the rich be taxed to provide for the poor. In most Western nations the idea of “laissez faire” has lost most of its support, although many people still speak strongly in favour of “free enterprise” and against government “regimentation”. At the same time parties with “socialist” leanings have espoused programmes entailing public ownership and operation of railroads, electricity and gas services, postal services, telecommunications, airlines and coal mines without thereby advocating communist totalitarianism, the most repressive variant of socialism. Politically as well as economically both extremes have been shown to have grave imperfections. Most Western countries have become accustomed to the intervention of government in its ascribed role as the main gap- bridger, as a redistribution agency as well as a provider of public goods, collective goods and social insurance. This form of mixed economy is usually described as the “Social Democratic Market Model” or the “Social Market Model”.
Doctrinal Foundations of Socialist Welfarism
Socialist welfarism originated in an amalgam of the Christian ethics of caring for the poor and the deprived with the Socialist theory of collectivist provision. In the Western World it emerged in the wake of the gradual extension of universal political suffrage.
Social democracy is the most liberal form of socialism. Although there is no universal model of social democracy, it emphasizes egalitarianism rather than individual freedom, collective responsibility rather than free market liberalism, government intervention rather than market forces. However, one great objective of socialism, the welfare state – the collective responsibility of the community for a minimum standard of social and economic security for every person – is no longer a monopoly of socialist parties. All major parties in democratic nations accept the need for a certain minimum of welfare state services.
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Social-democratic party leaders (alone or in coalitions) have been in power during much of the post World War II years in Western Europe: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. During this period the “welfare state” became the economic, social, cultural and organisational expression of the desire to promote equality. Some parties are stronger supporters of it than others, and some parties favour more benefits than others, but the principle that every citizen is entitled to a minimum standard of living is no longer a matter of partisan controversy.
Social democracy accepts a multi-party political system and believes in gradual, peaceful means of reaching its socialist goals. In practical terms this has meant that social democrats have concentrated more on alleviating what they regard as hardships created by capitalist economies (unemployment, salary and wage inequities) than on directly restructuring societies according to a collectivist blueprint.
Mixed Economies
States ruled by social democrats are generally mixed economies, combining elements of free enterprise competition with state ownership or direction of key industries. Germany is more free enterprise orientated than its Scandinavian neighbours or France. But in most social democracies, the nature of the mix of their economies, depends on the party in power.
Some parties, like the Gaullist Party in France and the Christian Democratic Party in Germany occupy a right-of-centre political posture advocating classically liberal ideas based on a free-market approach. Others, like the Socialist Party in France and the Social Democratic Parties in Germany and Sweden are left-of-centre parties in favour of government intervention to achieve socialist objectives.
In most Western countries, however, socialist regimes remained within the context of moderation. Only key industries or utilities were placed under direct government ownership and control, and the rest were left in private hands. Even in those nations which have had socialist regimes for generations (e.g. Scandinavia), a large sphere of production is left to free enterprise. Thus market forces can still prevail in a capitalist-socialist “mix” in countries such as Sweden and France. Some ventures – power generation, railroads, communications, certain “basic” industries like motor manufacturing, iron and steel – have undergone partial nationalisation, e.g. in France. But socialists had to moderate their demands on account of the failure of nationalised industries to perform according to expectations.
Social democratic planning never took the form of total, blueprinting, rigid dirigisme. Ostensibly it sought to have community interest replace “selfish” production decisions, to set an “ethical” rather than a monetary standard regarding production priorities. But these claims are more rhetorical than real. Democratic socialists by and large refrained from eliminating the market function. They tried to impose a “standard of social value” on the market rather than to replace it. State plans are used as much to guide and supplement the private market as they are to lay out government goals. Representatives of labour and management as well as bureaucratic officials are consulted in the planning process.
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Great pains are taken to avoid direct physical controls and to work with the more subtle techniques of monetary incentive, subsidies and penalties. Numerous techniques are applied to break up concentrations of economic power and to redistribute incomes. Business regulation, welfare programmes and taxation have been directed toward achieving these ends. Efforts have been made to equalize educational opportunities, to widen the chances for broadening the education of children coming from lower class families. Much attention has also been given to improve housing for the poor so that current disparities might not breed feelings of class conflict and hostility. Hence, the economies of social democracies are justifiably called “mixed”.
Comprehensive Social Security Schemes
The most distinctive achievement of social-democratic rule, is its provision of an extensive network of social services. These are provided through public sector delivery systems – either free of charge or at a modest cost. A variety of schemes are in place in the different countries to organise such functions as health care, old age care, assistance to the handicapped, child care, education, research, social work, family and individual counselling, etc. As various social security schemes spread across Europe over the years prior to 1940, three dominant systems emerged: the Bismarckian, the Beveridgean and the Scandinavian. Most countries adopted the principles of Bismarck’s “workmen’s insurance” as their basic model for benefits including sickness and unemployment allowances, pensions and public assistance as a subsidiary element. Thus the main instrument in the organisation of compensation for loss of income has been the system of “social insurance”, which is largely an imitation of private, voluntary insurance systems. There is a clear connection between contributions (by insured persons or employers) and eligibility for benefits. The Beveridge system is a modification of this scheme also using contributions by beneficiaries as a condition for eligibility of social benefits but involving the state in a tripartite arrangement. The Scandinavian scheme, however, is characterised by being run by public agencies, financed primarily through the revenue of general taxation and providing benefits conditioned on citizenship, not on previous occupation, income or contributions. It is often called “people’s insurance” in contrast to “workmen’s insurance”. Down the years these divergent schemes and approaches tended to converge although the main features of the various systems are clearly visible in social legislation in terms of the efforts made to maintain a balance between public and private responsibilities.
Scandinavians, in particular, strongly believe in the justice of equality and have introduced cradle- to-grave welfare services. Their public health systems provide free hospitalisation, surgery, medicine and dental care. The “people’s security” laws grant everyone disability, old age and unemployment benefits. Every worker is guaranteed at least four weeks paid vacation. They receive allowances for children, tuition-free education through university, sick pay, amounting to 90 percent of normal wages and a retirement pension equal to 60 percent of the average income of a worker’s fifteen highest paid years. Home-nurses and day centres for children are free. There is, generally, a relaxed attitude towards government and the public sector.
Socialism has always based its appeal on two main issues: social equality and the abolition of poverty. Most social-democracies in Western countries have gone a long way towards reaching these objectives. The limits of the welfare state are only set by the ability of these countries to pay for their benefits rather than by differences of ideology amongst its major political parties. In most instances their inability to pay for the heavy load of government hand-outs has landed social democracies with mountains of public debt and stagnant economies.
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Taxation Rather than Nationalisation
Because social democrats have mostly come into power in industrially advanced and politically democratic nations, they have been cautious in their efforts to change existing systems. They have largely refrained from nationalising their industries.
During the early post-World War II days, the most comprehensive nationalisation strategy was followed by the British Labour Party which came to power in 1945. In its election campaign the Labour Party undertook to nationalise certain listed industries and services. In each case, it tried to explain why nationalisation was necessary. For gas and light, water, telephone and telegraph, and other utilities, the criterion of nationalisation was the existence of a natural monopoly. The coal, iron and steel industries were considered to be so sick and inefficient that they could not be put on their feet except through nationalisation. The nationalisation of all inland transport by rail, road and air was proposed on the ground that wasteful competition would best be avoided by a co-ordinated scheme owned and managed by public authorities. The Bank of England was also proposed for nationalisation on the ground that its purpose was so obviously public. After its electoral triumph in 1945 the Labour Party methodically carried out its programme.
The Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland) have had the most impressive record of social reforms, both in the inter-war years and after World War II. From the early 1930s onward, they have been governed by socialist governments based on parliamentary majorities. As a result communism has been kept down to minor proportions as political forces in these countries. The Scandinavian socialist movements have emphasized economic development and social security rather than nationalisation and their economic policies have been centred on monetary measures (such as low interest rates) and taxation rather than public ownership.
In all social-democracies taxation acted as the greatest leveller. As a result of high income and estate taxes there has been a significant shift in the distribution of wealth. While the share of high incomes in terms of the national income has declined, there has been a sharp increase of the middle-income groups, particularly skilled workers. The trend toward more social equality can also be seen in the fact that the proportion of the national income paid in wages and salaries increased significantly. These policies went a long way toward eliminating extremes of inequality.
Industrial Democracy
A basic belief among socialists of whatever stripe is that if the means of production remain under the complete control of private owners, the worker will be exploited. All socialists owe some debt to Karl Marx, who framed the classic socialist indictment of capitalism, accusing it of turning labour into a commodity and thus exploiting and dehumanising workers while it enriches bourgeois owners. Karl Marx claimed that he discovered certain “scientific” laws of history which hold that capitalism, by creating an increasingly numerous and impoverished working class, produces the forces that would eventually destroy it by way of a violent revolution. This prediction inspired many socialists for more than a century with the certainty of inevitable triumph. But rather than pushing workers deeper into poverty, as Marx predicted, capitalism has lifted the vast majority of labourers in Western Europe into the middle class. Modern unions have given employees a counterforce to management’s power – and more often, more than a counterforce. An economic downturn now hits harder at corporate profits than at wages, which are usually fixed by contract or legislation. Today there is grave concern that trade unions have become too powerful and that the general public
61 interest is not adequately protected against the abuse of trade union power – particularly by public sector unions.
Social-democratic governments all over Western Europe have given workers a major voice in management. Today employee representatives sit on boards of directors and management committees in Denmark, Germany, Sweden and other Western European States. In practice employees have a voice in setting wage levels, dividing profits, planning investments and firing executives.
Employment Participation
The West European social democracies have undergone some striking demographic changes in the post World War II period which are likely to have an important impact on future trends. The most striking changes are in the lives of women. At the beginning of the 1980s the proportion of women aged between 25 and 34 in the labour force was 42 percent in France and 49 percent in Germany. By 1988 these figures had risen, respectively to 67 percent, 75 percent and 87 percent. As the women went out to work, the fertility rate has fallen, which in turn, impacts on the age distribution of the population. By the end of the century, youngsters aged 14 or under made up a fifth of Europe’s population. In 1950 they accounted for a quarter. The first Europeans who started to have fewer babies were the rich Northerners – in Protestant Scandinavia, Germany and also Britain. Then followed France and then the Catholic Italians and Spaniards. Italian women now have the lowest fertility in Europe.
Ageing Populations
In Europe as a whole half of the citizens are older than 34. Within a generation, in most European countries a quarter of the population will be over 60. Across Europe, the rise in the ratio of pensioners to those of working age is striking. In 1950 this “dependency ratio” in European countries was commonly under 20 percent. By 2040, on present trends, this ratio is expected to rise to 30 percent. With a lower birth rate, lower immigration and an ageing population, Europe’s labour force will start to shrink as a share of the population. Without faster growth, Europe will be unable to afford its welfare system. The general growth in life expectancy will put more pressures on health and welfare services, state-run pension schemes as well as the pay-as-you-go retirement schemes. The latter pay pensions to retirees out of the contributions from current workers. As the proportion of old people rises across Europe, such schemes are running out of money. Recently the German government tackled its pensions problem by increasing workers’ contributions, raising the retirement age and reducing the value of pensions. Governments in most European countries are finding it difficult to push through such unpopular reforms.
Political-Economic Problem Areas
During the 20th century, most of the world’s social democracies experienced deep troughs of hardships and high peaks of prosperity. Today, they are caught in the grips of a persistent economic decline and they are facing a future that is more uncertain than is commonly realised.
The average economic growth rate of every major industrial country in the Western World has been on the decline for several decades. The major economic growth locomotive in Western Europe, Germany, is a good example of declining growth trends. In the 1950s West Germany’s output
62 doubled. It then grew by 70 percent in the 1960s, 35 percent in the 1970s, 20 percent in the 1980s, 15 percent in the 1990s and 5 percent in the period 2000-2010.
The economic sclerosis afflicting the rich Western economies manifests itself in many symptoms. Some examples are unemployment rates above 10 percent, chronic budget deficits with levels of government expenditure approaching in some cases and exceeding in several cases 50 percent of national output, social welfare systems placing a heavy burden on society, public debt levels creating debt traps where government cannot service the public debt.
High Labour Costs
A major problem in Europe is the high cost of labour. In Europe workers enjoy five to six weeks off every year; its companies are obliged to make large payments to the fringe benefits and social- security system for every worker on their payrolls and its unions hold sway over major corporate decisions. As a result, European manufacturing wages are significantly higher than those of its competitors – even before “social costs” like pension, unemployment insurance and severance packages are added. The fact that European companies are saddled with much higher costs than their competitors means that they are at a disadvantage. In the past the economies of the West were less exposed to the international competition that is today provided not only by China, but a vast array of newly industrialised countries in the Pacific Rim. The competitive strength of these countries is enhanced by a well-trained workforce, an environment where work is a virtue and being idle is a vice, where labour relations are non-disruptive and trade union power less exploitative.
Most governments in Europe are not only sympathetic to labour, but are beholden to it for electoral support. As a result they are reluctant to challenge the status quo. It would take a brave set of politicians to challenge the operating systems of wage indexation or to call for a rollback in worker benefits. European economies are permeated by laws and regulations, arguments and customs that many workers and their political camp followers hold dear. The benefits are regarded as rights rather than privileges and it is virtually impossible to get rid of employees without payment of exorbitant severance costs. These “turnover costs” not only raise labour costs for ongoing businesses, they also discourage new investments because of exorbitant start-up costs. Would-be entrepreneurs are scared off by the high price of failure and even large companies hesitate to hire people they may not be able to use later. In this way the existing system actually contributes to high unemployment and the dearth of investment in business creation and expansion.
Open-ended Expansive Government
Most European governments seem to have lost the battle of curbing and bringing their budgets into balance. Large and growing deficits are the order of the day. A negative correlation has emerged between the size of government and the rate of economic growth. Politicians and bureaucrats do not seem able to abandon policies that favour healthcare spending, shorter work weeks, higher pensions for the elderly and other forms of unproductive consumption spending. The political courage seems to be lacking to clear the way for activities that would guarantee economic growth; tax cuts to stimulate private initiative and investment; research and development to promote technological innovation; on-the-job training to raise productivity; the inculcation of self-reliance to reduce the current dependency on government provision.
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The underlying problem faced by all social democracies concerns the role of government. What should it do? What can it do? What are government’s limits? The expansion of government can only be checked by a clear understanding of the limitations of government’s capabilities. Too often government has been regarded as the ultimate answer to most social problems. This expansive philosophy lies at the root of huge budget deficits. Deficits won’t be controlled unless societies become more discriminating in their use of government.
But the much larger truth is that once established, programmes achieve virtual immortality. They are protected by affected constituencies and lobbies. Programmes survive long after their public justification has vanished. Thus the momentum of government activity becomes open-ended. Pressure groups portray their own interests as pressing public concerns that demand national action. In this way anything with public support becomes an integral part of the government agenda.
The Welfare Mentality
An inherent danger of a “welfare state mentality” is the emergence of a population of welfare clients who are dependent on income transfers and social security measures – a “hand-out society”. A mentality of dependency is not conducive to the inculcation of positive cultural or human values such as a strong work ethic, self-reliance and creativity. It creates a society with a frame of mind of people who live on “hand-outs” as “free riders”.
There is also the additional danger that the taking over by the public sector of the functions formerly performed by social networks such as the family, the community and the church, will redefine and restructure such functions in such a way that important features can get lost. Public institutions such as schools, hospitals, old-age centres, etc., can augment and support family care – but should not replace it or become substitutes for community based social structures.
There is an important psychological difference between receiving economic, practical and emotional support directly from a spouse, a relative, a friend or a neighbour in contrast to receiving such assistance from an anonymous public institution. In the first instance the tie between resource input and the provision of help is obvious. There are clear constraints on incentives to abuse assistance or to manipulate the maximisation of individuals’ share of the common cake. Similarly, there is a vast difference between the provision of help to somebody whom you know and care for, in contrast to paying taxes to finance a bottomless well of social services. The broader and more anonymous the system, the bigger the incentives to exploit the system. Whenever a group attempts to secure collective goods for its members, there seems to be a tendency for some group members to sit back and let others bear the effort. After all, collective goods are enjoyed by all members of the group if they are provided for any member of the group regardless of whether that member helped secure the collective good or was a free rider.
It is a source of great vulnerability in the Scandinavian welfare systems that in its search for universal coverage, flexibility and internal rationality, they have removed some of the characteristics which would remind the consumer of the fact that the provisions are not paid out of a bottomless well, but paid by citizens as taxpayers. They have enlarged the problems of the “free- rider”. The connection between costs and benefits – factors which economically belong together and which should be psychologically connected, are systematically kept apart by the welfare system itself.
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The “Parasite Economy”
A major factor that is easily overlooked is the burden imposed on “post-industrial” societies by “rent seekers”. Jonathan Rauch of the National Journal described this phenomenon as the “parasite economy”. This sector includes the activities of a wide array of professionals, lobbyists, unions, associations, consultants, bureaucrats who are operating as “rent collectors” in advanced societies and they generate what is euphemistically called “transaction costs”. In effect they are constantly pushing up costs of production without increasing productive output. They are overwhelmingly orientated towards gaining a share of existing income and wealth, rather than towards the production of additional output. The great majority of people involved in the parasite economy redistribute income rather than create it and in ways that reduce economic efficiency and output. Mancur Olson in The Rise and Decline of Nations described the special-interest organisations as “distributional coalitions” (rent seekers) who increase regulation, bureaucracy and political intervention in markets and, by the barriers they impose, reduce an economy’s dynamism and capacity to grow. (See Olson, 1982, pp.41-47)
The Weight of Public Debt
A major headache in all Western social democracies is that the growth of public debt is constantly enlarging the share which interest on public debt will require of future taxes. The inherent danger in this trend is that a position might be reached where the interest that has to be paid on public debt per annum, exceeds the total annual spending on welfare benefits such as pensions and unemployment allowances. Carrying a huge public debt is not sustainable.
The real crucial issue of the welfare state is the question of financing. The simple truth is that in most instances its services and benefits have become too excessive to be affordable. It led to confiscatory tax levels, budget deficits, excessive public debt levels, inflation, overgrown public sectors and persistently declining growth rates coupled with rising unemployment.
An important answer lies in the restoration of a clear connection between rights and duties and between contributions and eligibility. Contributors and recipients of benefits should not be obscured by a cloak of anonymity. Governments should be forced to cut their cloaks according to their cloths. Financial responsibility for the expenditure side depends on the corresponding financial responsibility for the revenue side.
Creeping Bureaucracy
Like all governments, social democracies have to function through their civil service. The civil service bureaucracy may well be the most prominent part of any political system because it endures while political leaders come and go like passage birds. As permanent appointees bureaucrats may provide stability when the political apparatus seems to flounder from time to time. But there is an ominous downside. Like any other organisation that provides its members with a livelihood and status, the bureaucracy is self-protective. It is to a considerable extent governed from within, and it uses its resources to strengthen itself. It gladly undertakes programmes that enhance its role, but it resists liquidation of old functions. Officials remain in place whether or not they have real work to do. The possibility of dismissal for economic reasons is virtually unknown in Western democracies. Dismissal for incompetence requires such cumbersome procedures that it is seldom tried.
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Most bureaucracies lack an adequate criterion of efficiency such as profitability or some other objective standard to measure quality of performance. A business has to retreat from areas of unprofitability in order to survive. But a bureaucracy can even expand to cover failures. Bureaucracies in social democracies normally favour socialist measures because they involve governmental controls and greater bureaucratic power. Hence the drive for socialism and welfare services amounts to an idealisation of the bureaucratic order. There is constant pressure for more responsibilities, bigger budgets and larger staff. Much of the blame for the unmanageable bureaucracy falls on the public, which clamours for more protection, regulation, services, support, etc. As a result demands on government outpace its capacity. Expenditure chronically outpaces income.
One of the gravest problems of modern social-democracy is how to contain public bureaucracy in order to keep it responsible and efficient – to ensure that they serve the public interest and not their own. In most Western countries, the public sector is now the power base of the trade union movement. Increasing government intervention and the resultant high costs of government spending “crowds out” private sector incentives to produce and lead to a declining rate of economic growth. Only value adding productive enterprise creates taxable income – everything else consumes tax.
Excessive Trade-Union Power
There is an old-fashioned view that the trade union movement is justified as representative of the interests of the low-paid workers of highly profitable companies. Membership dues are paid to union officials to negotiate, through collective bargaining, the pay, working conditions and protections individual workers might not be able to achieve. In the real world unions are increasingly used to hold companies at ransom to pay workers more than their productive output deserves. Moreover, unions are increasingly used as unaccountable and lucrative vehicles for personal aggrandisement and political patronage. Organisations that were designed to protect workers are instead used by an exploitative political class that feeds on the workers.
The UK is a prime example of the impact of trade union power on a country’s growth pattern. During the period between 1913, when the Trade Unions Act was passed, and the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher introduced curtailments of union privileges in the Employment Acts of 1980 and 1982, British trade unions exercised excessive power and enjoyed excessive privileges. They eventually brought the British economy to a standstill. They changed Britain from a prosperous minimum- government state to a country where public expenditure accounted for around 60 percent of GDP in 1980. The burden of union domination destroyed Britain’s growth potential in three ways: first, its restrictive practices inhibited growth of productivity and discouraged investments; second, it increased the pressure of wage inflation on the back of inflation-indexed collective bargaining (where the index is calculated by public sector agencies); and thirdly, trade union demands on government had a cumulative tendency to increase the size of the public sector and government’s share of the GDP.
In several social-democracies the collective bargaining muscle of public-sector unions has created what investor Warren Buffett called “a time bomb with a long fuse”. He referred to the hugely unfunded pension fund obligations on local, regional and national government levels in the USA. For decades the contributions of public-sector employees have been systematically reduced while at the same time increasing their benefits. As a result many local and regional governments are driven to
66 the brink of bankruptcy by their pension obligations. The gap between the promised benefits and the money set aside for them has increased as a result of a substantial decline in the rate of return on pension fund investments – a rate much lower than the underlying actuarial assumptions. In the private sector this problem has been reduced by the introduction of defined-contribution schemes where the pension levels depend on the rate of return earned on the combined contributions made by employees and employers to their pension funds. In the public sector, the unions have insisted on “defined-benefit schemes” which depend essentially on final salary levels – not on affordability by the pension fund. These benefits are usually enshrined in law.
In Australia public-sector pension funding obligations were handled by the creation of a multi- billion “Future Fund” under the Howard government. This fund underwrites the pension obligations vis-a-vis public-sector workers and politicians. It is not a “rainy day” fund for old-age pensioners. The legislation which created this fund passed through both houses of Parliament totally uncontested. In the USA the under-funded position of public-sector pension plans has taken on serious proportions in several municipalities and states. The Economist of June 23rd, 2012, reports that in 2010 only one state out of 50 was adequately funded. The others were funded under the 80 percent level recommended by the Government Accountability Office. The majority of states and municipalities are now grappling with the challenge of either increasing employee contributions and retirement age requirements, or cutting benefits. The funding gap in 2012 was estimated to be in excess of $4 trillion.
In today’s world the “trade union movement” is dominated by “public sector employees” who are well placed to dominate the collective bargaining process. Many political leaders who are supposed to represent taxpaying electorates, are also in effect beneficiaries, or ex-employees of the government sector or ex-executives of the trade unions. The beneficiaries – public sector employees and their families – form around 25 percent of the total electorate. This stranglehold does not bode well for the future of both representative democracies and free-enterprise economies. A self-serving bureaucracy could destroy the creative potential of society.
The Deeply Flawed and Manipulated Financial System
Although much of today’s financial system was already present in embryonic form in Renaissance Italy, Niall Ferguson, in The Ascent of Money, identifies three innovations that played key roles in the evolution of banking. The first was exchange banks set up in the Netherlands in the 17th century which pioneered the system of cheques and direct debits or transfers to allow commercial transactions to take place without the need for coins. One merchant could make payment to another simply by arranging for his account at the bank to be debited and the counterparty’s account to be credited, i.e. cashless intra-bank and interbank transactions. The second innovation was initiated in Sweden in 1656 with the introduction of “fractional reserve banking”, which meant that banks could advance loans in excess of the deposits kept in their reserves. It is based on the assumption that depositors were highly unlikely to reclaim their deposits en masse. The bank could profitably grant multiples of the money kept on deposit as interest-bearing loans to others. The third innovation occurred in London when the Bank of England was created in 1694 to assist the government with war finance. It purchased government debt in exchange for the issue of promissory notes (banknotes).
Jointly these innovations became the essential building blocks of the much more elaborate modern financing system. In time fractional reserve banking became a cornerstone of financial credit on the
67 commercial retail level. Central banking became the cornerstone of the public financial system. Money, now invisible, represented the sum total of specific liabilities (deposits and reserves) incurred by banks as reflected in account statements. Relationships between debtors and creditors were brokered or “intermediated” by increasingly numerous and complex banking institutions – all trying to maximise the difference between the cost of their liabilities and the earnings on their assets. Underlying all of these relationships is a crucially important element of confidence – in the ability of all the banking institutions to satisfy their clients (depositors, investors and lenders) that they can meet their liabilities.
The next important component of the modern financial world was the evolution of the bond market. It is based on the securities (paper assets) issued by governments, large corporations or financial institutions undertaking to make payment of a certain amount at a certain interest rate to its certified owners at maturity. Redemption periods may vary and interest rates may be fixed, variable with notice or linked to some financial index. Government bonds, as well as those of well- established firms, are normally regarded as safe, while financially adventurous firms issue “junk bonds” where it is recognised that the borrower may default. The market price of a security is sensitive to changes in current and expected interest rates. Bond-rating agencies specialise in assessing the creditworthiness of governments, municipalities and corporations issuing bonds.
Over several centuries, bond markets have become important sources of finance for governments for bridging as well as longer term finance, e.g. for short and medium term deficit budgeting as well as the financing of long term capital projects. Large corporations and banks are also regular users of bond market financing. The total value of internationally traded bonds is difficult to establish with accuracy, but probably exceeds US$30 trillion – bigger than the world’s stock markets put together.
Bond markets are also important determinants of the availability and cost of credit to governments as well as business corporations. They are in a position to pass daily judgement on the credibility of every government’s fiscal and monetary policies. Its real power lies in its ability to facilitate government borrowing, to punish a government with higher borrowing costs and even to dictate policy direction. Information on the structure and identity of the bond-holders is not readily available. The price-setting mechanisms of bond markets are as opaque as “the dark pools” of stock markets. Big investors shop for bonds by placing calls to a handful of large dealers. Bonds come in many forms, with varying coupons, maturity dates and covenants. The business of bond markets has been orchestrated over many years by a select few banks with big inventories and opaque pricing has been the rule for generations. Although opacity is under attack from governments and clients alike, little progress has been made to bring “the scarlet pimpernels” of bond trading into the bright daylight.
The investors in bond markets include several governments of Asian emerging economies as well as oil exporters in the Persian Gulf who have been running current-account surpluses. These assets are kept in currency reserves or in sovereign wealth funds. It made government controlled wealth funds a considerable force in global capital markets. The rest is made up of global insurance companies, global wealth funds, money-market funds and large pension funds. Concentrated ownership of large wealth funds by authoritarian governments or closed-membership ethnic groups is a serious strategic and economic concern – particularly in view of the general lack of transparency. Interactions are highly secretive and not subject to public responsibility or accountability. Total assets in the hands of “investors” in the bond markets world wide could exceed US$100 trillion. Jointly they are the main creditors of governments, business corporations and banks.
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The Global Financial Crisis of 2008/09 and its aftermath exposed many dark spots in our knowledge about and understanding of the global financial system. A bewildering list of financial exotica, emanating from Wall Street, played a significant role in the meltdown and subsequent contraction. Regulatory bodies normally have national footprints whereas investment banks and other financial operators work on a supra-national scale – beyond national borders. Without reliable data, regulators cannot exercise “macro prudential” oversight over the quantity, quality and maturity dates of the financial assets kept by banking institutions to cover the loans they grant. Many questions have been asked about the “shadow banking system” which refers to non-bank financial firms that operate outside the regulatory perimeters. Then there are questions relating to off- balance-sheet positions, untamed derivatives trading, cross-border trading and lending exposures and securitised lending. The constant evolution and footloose nature of the international financial system not only complexifies matters, it complicates the interpretation of trends and the choice of remedial action. Private equity firms and hedge funds are mostly funded by banks to finance their deals. Yet they operate mostly in the shadows. The catastrophic crash in 1998 of the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund showed that failure in their ranks can inflict major damage, not only on capital markets but also on the economies of nations. The use of subsidiaries, offshore deposits and tax havens make it impossible to quantify debt levels and risk – eg. the scope of hedge funds trading in exotic derivatives.
A major deficiency of the bond market as it functions today is what has been called the “scarlet pimpernel” roll of bondholders. They normally end up as privileged creditors whenever the losses on defaulting debtors (eg. countries, banks or corporations) are allocated. Shareholders and unsecured debt holders (including bank depositors) are the first creditors to take a “haircut”. Bondholders usually own “secured” debt – in the form of “covered bonds”, derivatives or contractual loans. They are “secured” in the sense that they have prioritised calls on the available assets to be divided up amongst the creditors. In the aftermath of the GFC it was left to taxpayers to provide “bail-out” money to the failing banks or corporations. This plunged the respective countries into debt in order to repay the banking system’s bondholders. Regulators did not impose the losses on bondholders in order to avoid a wave of panic in financial markets. It was also feared that imposing losses on bondholders would spook financial markets and drive up the cost of bank debt and hence the level of interest rates charged to their borrowers.
Stock markets which are supposed to be the major source for financing business expansion and a marketplace where business entrepreneurs can sell their assets to the investing public at large have degenerated into a casino for algorithmic day-traders and speculators. Market volatility seems to be driven by rumours, gossip, media comments, sentiments and herd instincts that are often far removed from the underlying fundamentals of real business economics. It is not clear what proportion of the scores of commentators in the printed and electronic media are at least able to interpret a company balance sheet!
A further complication arises from the interpretation of official statistical and economic information. The problem with statistical and economic projections by public sector institutions is that it is hard to judge their credibility. Large elements of self interest and political spin have to be factored in. This makes any calculation or projection more art than science.
The malaise afflicting the West’s financial system has largely been left untreated. New rules forcing banks to set aside more capital against losses in their trading business and bigger pools of liquid
69 assets (Basel III) are only to be phased in by 2019. For all their might, banks are surprisingly fragile entities. The mismatch between liquid debt and illiquid assets or the maturity mismatch where banks use short-term funding to buy long-term assets makes banks susceptible to sudden losses of funding. Investors in interbank loans are retreating because they do not trust the value banks ascribe to their assets. The potential loss that many European banks face on their holdings of sovereign debt is a major concern and spreads uncertainty to interbank transactions – thereby limiting Europe’s capacity to finance growth.
The euro-zone’s financial world is particularly volatile because the European Union was not designed to deal decisively with crises. It is run by a cast of technocrats operating in a vacuum where there is no direct political responsibility and accountability for the outcomes achieved. The political decision makers are passage birds who are accountable to their own parliaments who, in turn, are not inclined to share their sovereignty or their purses.
In recent times the concept of “moral hazard” has often been used to describe the problem of stepping in by collective action to save failing institutions such as large banks or even debt-ridden countries that are “too big to fail”. That means monetary or fiscal rigour must be sacrificed to stave off a country’s default or a global depression. The problem with this approach is that it expands the “moral hazard” and allows the opaque world of financial engineering to thrive, perfectly ring-fenced to continue on its exploitative path being “too complex to be understood” by ordinary folks.
A strong case can be made for the tighter regulation of banking, financing and trading. All free- market advocates (like this author) must concede that a financial system that has become too complex to be understood and any business enterprise that becomes too powerful should be curtailed. Others should be regulated when their proper functioning is a sine qua non for protecting the public interest. Commercial banks are examples of institutions playing a central role in the proper functioning of a country’s financial system. They are examples of an unusual mix of hazardous might and fragility. It makes them candidates for proper regulatory oversight to ensure that their capital and access to liquidity providers are sufficient to meet a cash squeeze. Banking regulation needs to put as much emphasis on banks’ liquidity as on their solvency.
Policy Indecision and Drift in the EU-zone
The Treaty of Rome which was concluded between Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg in March 1957, paved the way for the formation of the European Economic Community (EEC) which ultimately transformed into today’s European Union (EU) with 27 members. The underlying purposes were to prevent the recurrence of Europe’s internecine conflict, to promote cross-border trade and investment, adoption of a single currency, a common foreign policy, a passport-free travel zone, common policies on justice and social welfare and a defence alliance.
The “Euro” was introduced on 16 December 1999 as official currency of 17 out of 27 EU members: Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Finland and Cyprus. The currency is also used by a further five smaller European countries. It is currently used by some 332 million Europeans and an additional 174 million people worldwide use currencies which are pegged to the Euro, including 150 million people in Africa. The Euro is the second largest reserve currency as well as the second
70 most traded after the US dollar. The euro-zone as a whole is today the second largest economy in the world.
At the heart of the EU, is the European Commission to which each national government appoints one commissioner for a five-year term, a 30,000 strong bureaucracy, a European Council made up of the 27 heads of government which meets four times per year and also nominates the Commission’s president. The European Council is supported by the Council of Ministers, the main law and budget- making body which assembles national ministers (eg. finance, foreign affairs, agriculture, etc.). The presidency of the Council rotates every six months. The Council makes decisions by qualified majority voting (a weighted system), but on some issues (eg. taxation) it has to be unanimous. Today it takes on the character of a confederation of sovereign states, but EU protagonists are working towards a closer federal association along the lines of the USA.
The implications of a closer bonding of EU members is a move towards a deeper “transfer union” to limit financial contagion. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) has been created to extend short-term loans to members, to recapitalise struggling banks and buy bonds of troubled sovereigns in the markets. Apparently this institution is intended to function as a “European Monetary Fund” which could provide long-term low interest bail-out loans to crippled members. It also implies an inexorable move towards a fiscal union which would oversee economic and budgetary policies and supervise the financial sector. It would mean that the strong members would be committed to stand behind the weak.
The economic downturn during the global financial crisis of 2008/09 starkly exposed the fiscal vulnerability of the EU members: they entered the crisis with limited fiscal ammunition because of their high accumulated levels of public debt. Governments have allowed their countries to live beyond their means: expanding entitlements and bureaucracies through deficit spending without proper regard for income constraints and the conditions required for job-creating economic growth. It was a crisis of their own making. It destroyed their capacity to deal with the unfolding economic crisis.
The “European social model” which served as the basis for prosperity and social peace for much of the post-war era now proves to be unsustainable. It failed to respond to the overriding policy challenge: how to reconcile incremental inflation-indexed expenditure rises with lagging income levels which resulted from poor business conditions. Expenditure on social benefits and public sector costs continued to outstrip available income. As taxable income sources declined, budget deficits piled up to create a mountain of public debt which became a sovereign debt crisis for the European Union as a whole.
Since the formation of the EU, a number of constraints arose which are seriously endangering the survival of the “European experiment”: - a “stability-and-growth-pact” (Maastricht Treaty) which is not effectively implemented to curb government over-spending (debt levels to be kept under 60% of GDP); - labour regulations protecting trade union privileges which stand in the way of job creation for the benefit of new entrants; - unrestrained and unsustainable income redistribution based on welfarism and over taxation; - the ratchet-effect of incremental inflation-indexed social and public sector benefits which are outstripping taxable income sources;
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- the creation of a single currency (the Euro) coupled with the imposition of a single interest rate (monetary policy) on diverse economies with different national governments.
Some analysts, cheered on by the bondholders, argue that the answer lies in a closer banking and fiscal union. It would involve placing banks under a single banking supervisor (thereby severing the link between national governments and banks), larger rescue funds in the form of common deposit- insurance and bank-resolution funds, as well as centralised control over banks’ ability to buy the debts of their own governments. A closer fiscal union would involve restraints by Brussels on the budgets of European members with the aim of disciplining spending. It also involves the creation of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which is intended as a permanent emergency lending mechanism for countries in trouble. The ultimate objective is the mutualisation of debt in the form of jointly issued Euro-bonds – collectively backed by all EU members. But the problem is too complex to be dealt with by simplistic “quick fixes”.
A closer union between the EU members per se would simply allow the profligate to free-ride on the backs of the virtuous. The answer clearly lies in the reduction of entitlements to affordable levels and systematic labour relations reform to promote job-creating economic growth. Pooling of debt by issuing joint bonds implies effective EU veto powers over national budgets and close supervision of all banks in the region. Transferring financial risks and responsibilities to the EU level would require changes to the EU treaties and also national constitutions. This would trigger referendums in several countries since it implies the surrender of national sovereignty. Such grassroots approval does not seem very likely and it is hard to see such vital reforms taking shape in the near future. In the long run however, the “European experiment” involves the gradual, but inexorable, transfer of sovereign powers into the hands of unrepresentative bureaucrats in Brussels.
Big Spending in English-Speaking Zones
The most active ideological rivalry affecting the policy debate in the USA, Britain and its former colonies Canada, Australia and New Zealand are the well-known dichotomies: “liberal” versus “conservative”, “capitalist” versus “socialist” and “left” versus “right”. At the heart of this rivalry lies the contest between free enterprise versus government intervention which inevitably became a question of smaller government versus bigger government or more market versus more government.
All English-speaking countries have vibrantly democratic political systems with bi-cameral legislatures, mostly single-member constituencies, usually with two dominant political parties who sometimes come into power in coalition with third parties. In all cases the major parties are either left of centre (like the Labour Parties of the UK and Australia, the Democratic Party in the USA and the Liberal Party in Canada), or right of centre (like the Conservative Parties in the UK and Canada, the Republican Party in the USA and the Liberal-National Party coalition in Australia).
The left-right spectrum is associated with the degree of state (government) intervention propagated by political parties. To the left are parties that support expansive state intervention in the economy: more regulation and control, increased welfare services, a progressive tax system, higher tax rates on the “top-end”, deficit spending and pro-union labour policies. To the right are parties in favour of deregulation, less welfare entitlements, lower taxes, less bureaucracy, more individual choice, supportive of free enterprise.
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Left-wing parties tend to derive support (in terms of voting and money) from working class members and trade unions, minority and immigrant groups, lower status and income persons, teachers and academics. Right-wing leaning parties normally draw support from higher income groups, business circles, rural constituencies, persons with a protestant religion affiliation and professionals. Professors teaching American Government 101 used to say about financial contributions to parties and candidates, that “copper comes from the rank-and-file, silver from those who hate the opposite side and gold from those who want something from the winner”.
During the past 100 years, Britain in particular played a trend-setting role in the emergence of the “welfare state” in theory and in practice, and also in the field of commerce and banking. In close association with the USA and its Commonwealth off-shoots, it faced off the onslaughts of Germany in two world wars.
After World War II, the centre of gravity shifted to the USA during the Cold War period. During the Reagan-Thatcher era towards the end of the 20th century it co-sponsored a brief revival of free- enterprise economics in the tradition of Adam Smith and later Friedrich von Hayek. It ended the period of stagflation which resulted from an overdose of the “Attlee consensus” interventionist welfarism.
Britain had traditionally been a minimum-government state. The census of 1851 registered less than 75,000 civil employees, mostly customs, excise and postal workers, with only 1,628 manning central departments of civil government – at a time when the corresponding figure for France (1846) was 932,000. In the century that followed, the proportion of the working population employed in the public sector rose from 2.4 percent to 24.3 percent in 1950. In the period when the Labour Party was in power, the proportion of the national income accounted for by public expenditure rose to 45 percent in 1965, 50 percent in 1967, 55 percent in 1974 and 59 percent in 1975.
After the Conservative Party won the election in 1979 public borrowing and spending was restrained under the Thatcher government. The political-economic culture of the country changed from Keynesian macroeconomics and the world of the “government-spending multiplier” to Hayek- style micro-economics and the world of the individual firm where value-adding wealth was actually created. During the 1980s, “Thatcherism” involved a combination of privatisation, patriotism, hostility to trade unionism and above all a belief in people taking responsibility for themselves. She maintained that government was doing too much and set out to replace the “nanny state” with its “cradle to grave coddling” with the rewards of an “enterprise culture”. Most of her policies were emulated throughout the world – particularly by left-wing governments at the time in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Her influence also extended to subsequent “Third Way” policies followed by Labour leader Tony Blair after he abandoned traditional interventionist Labour policies. Subsequently Labour policies of tax and spend were again restored under the Gordon Brown government.
The United States is one of the few modern nations in which the general ideology of favouring the free market commands strong support. Americans trace their mistrust of government to their historical roots. The Pilgrim Fathers relocated in America as refugees from state-sanctioned persecution and later revolted against English-imposed taxes – the first “tea party” movement. John Locke’s famous words that “... government is best that governs least” have found much resonance amongst Americans since the seedtime of their republic.
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For much of the first century of the USA’s existence, the federal government’s role was small. Thereafter it expanded steadily. The era between the 1890s and the 1920s brought anti-trust laws, regulation of interstate commerce, the regulation of food and drug quality and income tax. The Great Depression years in the 1930s and the two world wars pushed the ideological bias against government intervention into retreat. By the 1950s opinion leaders, political parties and the general public readily turned to government when they saw a problem they thought should be solved.
The Cold War Period (1946-1989) played a predominant role in the growth of the public sector and the rise in government spending in the USA. The USA assumed the core leadership of the Free World in its efforts to contain the expansion of the Communist World. A long list of military stand offs ensued: Berlin, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Hungary, Angola, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. These were accompanied, in addition, by a weapons development and space exploration contest that required astronomical amounts of government spending. The expansion of the US government’s role increased the public sector’s share of the GNP from 14 percent in 1940 to 26 percent in 1990. The annual budget of the US Department of Defence rose to a level that was claimed to be larger than the entire national income of the UK.
When Reagan became the President in 1981 he declared, “Government is not the solution to our problems: government is the problem.” Reagan’s legacy was to entrench lower taxes as part of a small-government philosophy. Reagan, however, did not succeed in shrinking the size of the government sector, he merely stopped it growing.
Before the onset of the GFC in 2008, the state was already on the march in much of the English- speaking world. In the UK public spending had gradually increased through much of the 13 years of Labour Party government. Public spending increased from 40,6 percent to 52 percent of GDP in 2008. During Labour’s government, two-thirds of all new jobs created were driven by the public sector. In addition, the salaries and pensions of public sector workers rose significantly faster and higher than those of the private sector.
In the USA, even the Bush administration presided over a period of increased government spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on homeland security, and on the dodgy mortgage finance underwriting experiments of the government sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He also increased entitlements under Medicare and Social Security. The number of Americans who will be eligible is expected to drive expenditure on such entitlements to grow from 9 percent of GDP in 2009 to 20 percent in 2025.
As global markets collapsed in 2008/09, governments intervened on an unprecedented scale injecting liquidity into their economies and taking over or rescuing banks and other companies considered “too big to fail”. In the USA the government bailed out the banks and took control of General Motors and Chrysler. The British government stepped in to run some of its largest banks and guaranteed deposits. Bank debt was added to mountains of public debt.
Economic Stagnation
The average growth rate of every major advanced country has been on the decline for several decades. Only resource-based economies like those in Australia and Canada have grown consistently. The economic sclerosis afflicting the advanced economies manifests itself in many symptoms: unemployment rates around 10 percent; chronic budget deficits with levels of
74 government spending approaching, and exceeding in several cases, 50 percent of national output; social welfare systems placing an unsustainable tax burden on society; public debt levels creating “debt traps” where a government has to pay more interest than it can service; and, inflationary expectations undermining confidence.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s it was believed that the economy could be stimulated significantly simply by redistributing income: taxing the upper-income, high-saving groups, while paying benefits to low income, low-saving groups. The resultant effect on spending was called the “redistribution multiplier”. But the practical possibilities of this approach proved to be limited because the amount of income available for redistribution is limited and not sustainable over extended periods; cash handouts boost short-term artificial consumer spending without adding to value-adding productive capacity; and, results in a bloated public sector which in turn institutionalises inflationary pressures since a large proportion (more than 50 percent) of all government spending is absorbed by the running costs of institutions (employees and bureaucrats) paid out of the public purse.
Extended periods of deficit spending in the past generated a disease that Keynes never anticipated – “stagflation”, i.e. stagnant growth, unemployment and rising prices at the same time. Reliance on the effect of the “automatic stabiliser” – as an exit strategy from chronic deficit spending and mounting public debt – is based on a national accounting delusion. It is the very source of stagflation. It assumes that the debt incurred during the downturn as a result of lower tax receipts and higher spending in the form of stimulatory “handouts” will be automatically reversed when the upswing takes effect. But in reality this “stabilising” process can only come into play if and when there is an upswing – which, in turn, depends on the nature and realistic value-adding effect of the deficit spending. If the spending fails to produce a macroeconomic turnaround, the whole deficit spending process will prove to be a gigantic Ponzi scheme financed by ballooning institutionalised inflation.
The “redistribution multiplier” approach, coupled with the presumption of an “automatic stabiliser” at work, tends to focus on abstract, immeasurable macroeconomic variables, away from the visible micro-economic world of the individual enterprise where real wealth creation and job creation takes place. Increasing “gravy train” handouts to promote short-term consumer spending by unemployed or under-employed persons can help as a welfare measure to alleviate poverty and hardship, but such measures are not likely to have a positive impact on business investment and expansion – the ultimate source of future growth, employment and the generation of taxable income.
During the 1950s and 1960s, many economists thought Keynesian deficit spending was costless. Governments thought they could fine-tune their economies out of recession. Eventually it was realised that the ultimate result of too much stimulus was higher inflation, mountains of government debt and excessive government involvement in the economy. Fiscal expansion was augmented with the “monetary approach” which involved lowering interest rates and pumping out liquidity by central banks by way of “quantitative easing”. The experience of recent years has demonstrated that such discretionary monetary measures had its costs too.
By keeping interest rates low, central banks usually intend to ease the granting of credit by banks with a view to encourage consumer spending and business investment. Yet credit balloons tend to finance asset bubbles and to increase inflationary pressures if gaps between expanding domestic demand and supply are not neutralised by rising exchange rates and/or increased imports. Much
75 depends on the way the credit boom is financed: by domestic savings, foreign capital inflows in the form of equity investments or by domestic or cross-border borrowing. It is important to keep a vigilant eye on the negative side-effects of permissive finance. Low or negative real interest rates, i.e. at or below inflation rates, can lead to the misallocation of capital in both the public and private sectors of the economy. On the level of the individual household, cheap credit can fuel over- exposure to debt-financing – living beyond your means – with dire consequences for household balance sheets. The same danger applies to the balance sheets of business enterprises – including banks becoming too optimistic about the ability of borrowers to repay and failing to make adequate provisions for bad debts. The public sector is particularly vulnerable to artificially low interest rates and the “quantitative easing” method of creating new money to buy bonds. Forcing down longer term interest rates can lead to a distortion of the borrowing costs of profligate governments resulting in a chronic addiction to deficit budgeting and rising debt levels. A flood of liquidity, per se, cannot ignite economic growth when business confidence is low. It is not clear what effective ammunition central banks have left when their monetary arsenals are depleted.
The interactions of reciprocal spill over effects unleashed by ad hoc interventionist fiscal and monetary policy measures have economic implications that are far reaching and potentially harmful. Pension liabilities which are usually linked to bond yields become unaffordable as yields fall. This deficit then requires employers or members of self-managed retirement funds to divert more money into their schemes. Without positive returns, the suppliers of capital (or savers) are discouraged to accumulate the capital required to finance investments. Without investments there can be no prospects of sustainable job-creating economic growth. It is deceptive to assume that deficit financing or the balance sheets of central bankers can be used to solve every economic or financial problem. With historically low near-zero or negative interest rates in the USA, Japan and the EU for an extended period and mountains of public debt resulting from years of deficit budgeting, economic growth prospects in the advanced economies remain sclerotic. This dismal scenario is likely to prevail as long as investors and entrepreneurs – both large and small – remain on the sidelines of the real economy.
Bibliography
Blainey, G. (2011) Christianity – A Short History, Penguin Group, Victoria Brecht, A. (1959) Political theory – the Foundations of Twentieth-Century Political Thought, Princeton University Press Davies, N. (1996) Europe – A History, Oxford University Press, Oxford Dawkins, R. (2006) The God Delusion, Transworld Publishers, London Ferguson, Niall (2011) Civilization – The West and the Rest, Allen Lane, London Huntington, S.P. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations – and the Remaking of World Order, Simon & Schuster, New York Russell, C. (1990) The Causes of the English Civil War, London Shook, J.R. (2010) The God Debates, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester Strong, C.F. (1963) Modern Political Constitutions, Clowes & Sons, London Zaehner, R.C. (1997) Encyclopaedia of the World’s Religions, Barnes & Noble, New York Tillich, P. (1951) Systematic Theology, Chicago
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3. The World of Islam
As applied in the Koran, the term “Islam” denotes “surrendering” or “committing” to the will of Allah (God) – which is the characteristic attitude expected of all adherents. The adherents themselves are called Muslims (Arabic Muslimūn) or “Believers” (Mu’minūn).
Islam, the proper name of the religion traditionally called Mohammedanism in the West, is based on the revelations uttered by the prophet Muhammad (Mohammed) who lived in Arabia around AD 570 to AD 632. His revelations were collected after his death in the volume called The Koran (Arabic Qu’ran). From the Koran, supplemented by statements and rulings traced back to Muhammad, a system of law and a theology were derived in the subsequent centuries. These combined with elements and precepts of Judaism and from other sources to form a distinctive Islamic civilisation which has continued to grow into modern times. The total number of adherents today is variously estimated to number between 1 billion and 1.4 billion, spread over more than 50 countries around the world.
The world of the Arabs is considered by themselves as the backbone of the Islamic world. It includes around 360 million people inhabiting some 22 countries from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and from the Saharan Desert to the foothills of Anatolia. Islam is the dominant religion of the Arab world, but most of the world’s Muslims are not Arabs. They live outside of what was traditionally called Arabia.
The non-Arabic Muslim world encompasses many countries where the majority of the population are followers of the Muslim religion. It includes countries such as Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, several sub-Saharan countries such as Mali, Nigeria, Niger and Tanzania and also former republics of the USSR such as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Altogether the Muslims in these countries add up to around 750 million. In addition there are millions of Muslims living in minority enclaves in many other countries such as India, China, Thailand, France, Germany, the UK, Canada and the USA.
The Islamic Religion
The religion of Islam was spread through the conquests by the Arabs in the 7th century AD over Western Asia and North Africa and in the 8th century AD into Central Asia as well as into Spain. From the 11th century AD, under Turkish leadership, it spread into Southern Russia, India and Asia Minor and under Negro leadership into the Niger basin. In the 14th century it became politically dominant in the Balkans under the Ottoman Sultans and in India under the Sultans of Delhi. It also spread, largely by missionary endeavour, into Indonesia and parts of China. By the end of the 15th century AD it was expelled from Spain and in the 19th and 20th centuries AD, it lost ground in the Balkans, where it survived only in local communities in Bosnia and Albania. It continued to advance in East and West Africa.
The history of Muhammad’s life is essentially known from the oral recollections of his followers which were subsequently collected in biographical works of the 8th and 9th centuries AD. According to these sources Muhammad was born in Mecca, then a prosperous centre of the caravan trade between southern Arabia and the Mediterranean countries. In mid-life he developed “contemplative habits” and proclaimed the worship of one God against the prevailing polytheism and idol-worship
77 of his fellow-Arabs. He succeeded in winning over the support of a few prominent citizens of Mecca, Abū Bakr and ’Umar, who later, after his death, launched Arab armies on expeditions that led to the expansion of Islam.
Although orthodox Islam rejected any kind of worship addressed to Muhammad himself as a human being, he gradually came to be regarded as an “eschatological” figure – a privileged intercessor for the whole community of Muslims – as a link between Allah and all creation. The human Muhammad came to be seen as the intermediary of Allah’s revelation to mankind: the messenger and recorder for Allah’s word.
An essential article of belief of all Muslims is the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the Koran. Its verses, when quoted, are introduced by the phrase “Allah has said”. The Prophet’s part is understood to have been wholly passive. The Koran is the source of the guidance and instructions required by all Muslims for their daily lives: the religious obligations of prayer, alms, fasting and pilgrimage; the definition of the basic institutions of marriage, divorce and inheritance; and, the outline of the general structure of law.
Muhammad preached that men and women are worthless unless they surrendered their will to Allah. In the manner of Christians, he preached that a day of judgment would come and that all must so order their daily life that they would not be judged unfavourably by Allah and thereafter be punished in hell with all its terrors. After the death of Muhammad, the Community of Islam was involved in a civil war over succession. The majority faction, is called “Sunnis” or followers of the Sunna (Practice) of the Community at large. Opposed to them were two dissident groups: one which maintained the sole legitimacy in the headship of Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali (and his descendants), which were called the Shī‘at ‘Ali (partisans of Ali) or “Shī‘a”; the other, which rejected both Sunni and Shia positions and maintained the right of the Community not only to elect its own head, but to depose him if found guilty of sin (these were called Kharijites). During subsequent centuries the Sunnis predominated, not only in the Arab world, but also amongst the numerically preponderant non-Arab converts. The Shia are largely limited to Iran. The Kharijites survive only in small enclaves in Oman, Zanzibar and Southern Algeria.
Each individual Muslim believer is subject to certain duties called the “Pillars of the Faith” (Shahada): 1. Confession of Faith by repetition of the Word of Witness “There is no God but the one God, Muhammad is the Apostle of God”. 2. Regular performance of the ritual of Prayer (salat) at the five appointed times and by performing certain prescribed ritual movements. 3. The giving of alms (Zakat), which is a certain percentage for the relief of the poor and needy. 4. Observance of the annual fast (Ramadan). 5. Once in a lifetime a Muslim should make a Pilgrimage to the Sacred Mosque at Mecca and participate in certain prescribed ceremonies.
In addition to these five duties, certain other obligations are laid on Muslims by the Koran: they are forbidden to drink wine, to eat swine’s flesh, to gamble, to practice usury and to refrain from unethical conduct such as perjury or slander. It is also obligatory to accept the Shari’a as both system of law and rule of life – setting out the ethical ideal. It is the Shari’a which confirms to each individual, as a Muslim citizen, those personal rights of liberty, prosperity and function awarded by
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God and which frees each person from capricious restrictions and classifications of a purely secular society.
The common interest of the Community of Muslims requires each believer to join with other members similarly aware of their responsibilities to “strive in God’s path” for its defence against external and internal enemies. This “Holy War” (jihād fi sabil Allāh) has taken different forms in different ages.
Holy War was waged vigorously against those who failed peacefully to submit to God’s will, though Jews and Christians were given special status as “protected peoples of the book” (dhimmis), since their scripture was believed to be based on the “partial revelation” of lesser prophets. As dhimmis they could continue to follow their own faiths, provided they paid a special “head tax” (jizya), about 6 percent of each individual’s total monetary worth, to their Muslim rulers. Pagans, however, were offered only the options of Islam or death.
The conquest of Mecca in the Prophet’s own lifetime gave Muslims a solid core of Arab power around which to expand their brotherhood in the decades following Muhammad’s death. Within a single century, Islam burst explosively across North Africa, Spain and over the Tigris and Euphrates to Persia and India.
Never before in world history had an idea proved so contagious and politically potent. Martial fervour, combined with the ethic of social unity that replaced Arab intertribal conflict, made Muslim forces virtually invincible during the first century of their zealous expansion. The last judgment day, when all dead would be raised to head Allah’s eternal decisions, was a concept vividly articulated by Muhammad. None were promised better prospects in Allah’s paradise than those valiant warriors who died in righteous battle. (See H.A.R. Gibb A (1977) “Islam” in Encyclopaedia of the World’s Religions, Barnes & Noble, pp.166-199 for a detailed analysis of Islamic theology and dogmatics)
Trends in Islamic Doctrine
The elaboration of doctrine and scholastic theology was a relatively late development in Islam. The earlier generations were satisfied with simple unspeculative piety and fear of God (taqurā), together with the performance of the ritual obligations. Influential religious teachers generally disapproved of speculative scholastic theology. What is explicitly stated in the Koran was to be accepted without asking questions. The “madrasas” served as the main depositories of stereotypical orthodox scholasticism.
The first challenge to orthodoxy came in the 1100s with the spread of Sufism. For centuries the sufis propagated a spiritual and mystical form of Islam. Sufism was influenced by the traditions of monastic asceticism and mysticism found in Buddhism, as well as in Gnostic, Hermetic and Christian religions. Richly endowed convents, madrasas or lodges were set up in various centres such as Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Istanbul and North India where the sufis could engage in the pursuit of spiritual experience, the bodily discipline of celibacy and mystical intuition. Unlike orthodox Islam which sets all believers on the same level, Sufism isolated its practitioners from the general body of the Islamic community. Each Sufi group constituted an “ekklesia” in the form of a “church” or “order” with “shaikhs” at the top and a hierarchy of disciples and underlings.
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The next phase saw a return to Islamic fundamentalism in the 1700s with the emergence of Wahhabism under the influence of an Arab sheikh named Muhammad ibu ’abd al-Wahhab. The Wahhabis called for a return to the doctrines and practices of early Islam. Their hostility towards Sufism led to a “purification of Islam” from Western influences. It also led to the development of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928.
The Muslim Brotherhood grew from a grassroots organisation that interpreted Islam as a system of government, into a mass movement that provided key popular support for the 1952 Revolution of the Free Officers, a military coup led by Col. Gamal Abdul Nasser that ousted the Egyptian monarchy. Similar movements in Palestine, Jordan and North Africa later emerged as significant actors in the political sphere. Many branches of the Brotherhood based on orthodox revivalism were directed towards missionary activities in Africa, India and Indonesia.
Wahhabism is now deeply entrenched in Saudi Arabia where they have a stranglehold on the Al Saud royal family. In a Special Report on Saudi Arabia, written by Max Rodenbeck for The Economist of January 7th 2006, it is reported that at a giant state-run press outside Medina, some 10 million beautifully printed Korans a year are produced in 40 languages and distributed free. These editions of the Koran are annotated by Wahhabist scholars, who pronounce, among other things, that jihad is one of the “pillars” of Islam in addition to the well-known five “pillars”. One footnote says “Jihad is an obligatory duty”. Some estimates put the number of Saudi volunteers for jihadist campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere at around 30,000. Generous funding also flowed to jihadist causes, often without the knowledge of the Saudi donors. The Wahhabist establishment has been given control of the Saudi kingdom’s mosques and schools. Wahhabist schools and sharia courts have supplanted older institutions across the kingdom. The powers of the mutawaa (religious police) have gradually been widened and rules on such things as female dress more rigidly enforced. Huge sums went to religious causes around the world, from the founding of Islamic universities to the building of mosques and pilgrimage assistance. Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, the founders of al-Qaeda, are both alumni of the Wahhabist school. The country’s main universities also remain steeped in Wahhabist thoughts.
In the 19th century, social institutions began to undergo major changes with the setting up of new Civil Courts and their gradual assumption of the power of Shari’a courts, whose jurisdiction became limited to the area of family law. Turkey was the only Muslim country to completely abolish the jurisdiction of the Shari’a law. In other Muslim countries, the increasing tendency is for a substitution of new legislated codes for traditional rulings of the orthodox courts. Their new codes, while deriving rules from the Koran, the traditions of the Prophet and decisions reported on the authority of early jurists, leave the legislators a free hand to disregard all “school” decisions.
Although the rules applied in different countries vary, the new codes introduce restrictions in the contracting of marriage, lay down minimum ages for legal marriages, restrict the ability of husbands to divorce their wives and make provision for wives to seek annulment or dissolution of marriage, Polygamy is also restricted, but only prohibited outright in one or two countries. This transformation brought into question two basic principles upon which the unity of the Muslim community was built.
The first was rejecting the principle that every ruling, to become valid, must be endorsed by a general consensus (ijma’) and resorting instead to an eclectic choice of rulings. This change challenged the “catholic” structure of traditional Islam by introducing an element of “protestantism”.
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It brought a diversity of interpretations of Islam’s constitutional documents – the Koran and the Traditions of the Prophet. The resultant diversity of interpretations challenged the inner function of the ijma’ as the instrument by which the Community regulates its spiritual life. Traditionally, the function of the ijma’ is to secure and to preserve the integral spiritual unity of all Muslims as a spiritually governed society.
The second implication of the transformation represents the emergence of the state’s assertion of its independent legislative authority. Instead of being content to remain as a parallel system of rulings and jurisdictions in the field of public administration, the state now claimed an exclusive right of legislation, overriding the Sharia – even in the face of established ijma’ – and binding upon all Muslims under its jurisdiction, irrespective of the legal schools to which they individually adhere.
It meant that the true character and function of the ijma’ was now challenged by the principle of ijtihad – the formulation of rulings based on a critical study of the sources. It raised the possibility of a secular power usurping the “spiritual rights” of Muslims and carries with it the possibility of disrupting the Sharia and consequently of destroying the peculiar and divinely ordained constitution of the Muslim Community. (See, Gibb, op.cit., pp.195-197)
Twentieth Century Developments in Islam
One of the major debates within Islam in the 20th century has been on the relationship between religion and the state. The principle issues in this debate encompassed national unity versus Islamic unity; the response of Islam to socialism and capitalism; and the role of Islam in a secular state.
Pan-Islamism
The concept of Pan-Islam was first advocated by Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897), a Persian Shi’ite, as a necessary response to what he perceived as the threat posed by the West to Islam. He also insisted that Islam should be rebuilt on its classical foundations. In the 20th century, the idea of Arab unity became prevalent. The common cultural, linguistic, historical and religious links between the Arab countries were emphasized and the Arabs held up as the backbone of Islam. Al Bazzaz maintained that there was no immediate possibility of unity of all Muslims for a variety of political and social reasons. Hence it was argued that Pan-Arabism was a necessary prerequisite of any future Muslim unity. These ideas were also supported by Sati al-Husri (1880-1964) who believed that modern world conditions militated against Pan-Islamism, but that Arabic unity was a feasible goal for the foreseeable future.
In Egypt Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid (1872-1963), the founder of the People’s Party, was a sceptic of Pan- Arabism and rather propagated sentiments of nationalism. The idea of Islamic nationalism featured prominently in the birth of Pakistan and its subsequent development. The main intellectual force behind the creation of Pakistan was the poet, mystic and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (1875- 1938) who perceived the creation of a separate Muslim state in India as a step towards the realisation of an ideal Islamic state and also as a means of freeing Islam from the influence of Arab imperialism.
The founding of Pakistan was originally opposed by Sayyid Abu I Ala Mandudi (1903-1979), founder of Jamaat-i-Islami, a militant movement whose purpose was to establish an Islamic world order.
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Mandudi argued that any form of nationalism was contrary to Islamic ideals. At a later stage he accepted the reality of Pakistan and spearheaded a movement to transform the country from a Muslim homeland to an Islamic state. This change of opinion highlights the inherent dichotomy in Muslim thought between the ideal of Islamic unity and the practical realities of loyalty to the individual state. The latter bears the danger of delegating the sovereignty which belongs to God, to a human ruler or to the people.
Islam and Socialism
The relationship between Islam and conceptions of socialism and capitalism is complex. Capitalism has been associated with the corruption and decadence of the Western World and with Western Imperialism. It thus aroused strong feelings amongst Muslims of nationalism and a sense of religious morality. But socialism, which is also considered to be materialistic at its roots, was not readily accepted as an alternative. As a result, a division arose between Muslim countries committed to socialism and those which were not. There was also a broad spectrum of socialist stances amongst Muslims, ranging from Marxism to Islamic socialism. The Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party, which came to power in Syria and Iraq in the latter half of the 20th century, combined the ideas of socialism with those of Pan-Arabism. The Algerian Popular Democratic Republic in its 1976 charter described social revolution as the only hope for a declining Muslim world.
Several Islamic intellectuals such as Mustafa Mahmud attempted to show that Islam can provide a system far superior to both Marxism and capitalism. By building on the principles of the Koran and the Sunna, the needs and desires of the individual and the group could be accommodated in balance. This view of Islam as the middle path between capitalism and socialism was also reflected in the ideas of Ayatollah Mahmud Taligani, a principal leader of the Iranian revolution. He argued that Islamic economics, based on the right of ownership by individuals of the fruits of their labour, were in fact the inevitable end of any economic system.
Islamising the State
In Egypt, political activity by the Muslim Brotherhood, an activist group founded by Hassan al Banna (1906-1949), began with their campaign in 1928 to create an Islamic state by direct action. They tried to work within the framework of the existing state. After initial successes which included the forced abdication of King Farouk in 1952, the Brotherhood formed an alliance with the then ruling Revolutionary Command Council. Disagreements between the two groups led to an assassination attempt on Nasser, leader of the Free Officers who put the Revolutionary Command Council in power, and the majority of the Brotherhood were imprisoned or executed. In the 1970s the Brotherhood were again active in opposition and continued their campaign to introduce more Shari’a law as a means towards Islamising the state.
In Iran the reformist and inept policies of the Shah in the 1960s and early 1970s engendered widespread hostility. The Shah antagonised the mullahs by encroaching on the autonomy of the religious establishment. He also alienated conservative Muslims by banning the chador from universities and government offices. A broadly based movement backed the revolution and brought the exiled Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini into power to establish the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.
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Reactionary Trends
The role of women in modern Islam has also been affected by the reaction against Western culture in many Muslim countries. Increased freedom of activity for women and the abandonment of traditional dress have been seen by many as the result of corruption by Western decadence. The Muslim Brotherhood, in particular, has striven to encourage traditional Islamic values such as polygamy, which is seen as a protection from the evils of adultery and prostitution which are encouraged by enforced monogamy.
As a result of the fast changing world, many Muslim groups are placing a growing emphasis on a return to Islamic values. But the situations created by the increasingly complex world, confronts Muslims with ever-changing challenges to interpret the ethical and social values of Islam in a meaningful way.
The 1990s saw the formation of al-Qaeda. It is composed of loosely affiliated terrorist cells and its activities have fuelled a resurgence in Islamic fundamentalism. Founded by Osama bin Laden, it operates in around 80 countries acting more or less like an “ideological franchise” coupled with a “terrorism central”. It supports jihadi groups who draw their strength from a common pool of self- righteous anger at what they see as the humiliation of Muslims at the hands of Western “infidels”. America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with its support for Israel are interpreted as a war on Islam.
The Arab World in the Twenty-first Century
The 22 countries that belong to the Arab League are not as homogenous as is generally assumed. Apart from pockets of Kurds, Maronites, Copts, Berbers and Africans and apart from the fact that Arabic is widely spoken and understood, there are many Arab dialects that are not commonly understood. The Islamic religion provides some glue, but in a few cases is a divisive force. The only source of consensus is their mutual hatred for Israel.
Within the borders of some Arab countries the problem is the missing glue of nationhood. Iraq is saddled with the perennial sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia factions and the separatist striving of the Kurds. Lebanon is notoriously fragile as a result of its religious factions. Sudan has been plagued by civil wars between its Arab-dominated centre and the non-Arab minorities in its south and west.
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Demographic Trends
Total Muslim Country Population Percentage
Algeria 34,178,188 99.0 Bahrain 727,785 82.0 Comoros 752,438 98.0 Djibouti 516,055 94.0 Egypt 83,082,869 90.0 Iraq 28,945,657 97.0 Jordan 6,342,948 95.0 Kuwait 2,691,158 85.0 Lebanon 4,017,095 60.0 Libya 6,310,434 100.0 Mauritania 3,129,486 100.0 Morocco 34,859,364 98.7 Oman 3,418,085 100.0 Palestinian Territories 4,000,000 100.0 Qatar 833,285 100.0 Saudi Arabia 28,686,633 100.0 Somalia 9,832,017 100.0 Sudan 41,087,825 70.0 Syria 20,178,485 74.0 Tunisia 10,486,339 98.0 United Arab Emirates 4,798,491 96.0 Yemen 23,822,783 99.0
Source: Pop. Data – 2009 CIA World Fact Book
The region’s population has doubled over the past 30 years to around 360 million. The majority of Arabs are under 25 years old. The rapid population growth has coincided with a massive influx into the cities. Cairo burgeoned from 9 million in 1976 to 18 million in 2006. Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, hardly a noteworthy town 50 years ago, is a city of 5 million people today. Around 90 percent of Lebanese and Jordanians live in cities.
The Arab population is expected to surge by 40 percent over the next two decades. That amounts to 150 million additional people – the equivalent of two Egypts. With low employment rates and particularly high youth unemployment (around one person in five are out of work), the Arab world faces looming problems. Particularly in the most populous states (Egypt, Algeria and Morocco), the prospects of creating enough job opportunities seem remote.
Authoritarian Regimes
Throughout the Arab world, authoritarian rule is the order of the day. Hardly any of the 21 actual states can plausibly claim to be a genuine democracy. The cartel of authoritarian regimes is well
84 practised in the arts of repression in order to stay in power. In Egypt radical Islamist movements such as Islamic Jihad and the Jamaat Islamiya continue to claim lives. One of Egypt’s jihadists, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s number two, founded and led al-Qaeda.
The stubborn conflict in Palestine has created a deadly international stalemate – despite continued efforts by American presidents – or, perhaps on account of continued American support of Israel. Much of Arab opinion remained fixated on the struggle with Israel.
After the 9/11 attack George W. Bush sent in the American Army to destroy the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in Iraq – ostensibly to rid America of an unpredictable enemy suspected plausibly of weapons of mass destruction. The weapons were not found (despite the fact that Saddam Hussein found it necessary to expel the UN’s weapons inspectors). President George W. Bush pressed on with his “Freedom Agenda” to spread democracy in the region – perhaps naively, not realising that if he had been more successful in his campaign, several of the Arab kings, emirs and presidents (who depended on American markets, aid and military protection) would be thrown out of their positions in the advent of real democracy in their countries. The “Freedom Agenda” of the Bush administration failed and the Obama Administration decided to bow out respectfully. The fundamental problems relating to the political stagnation of the Arab world was left unresolved.
Although the local details vary, most Arab regimes maintain their power in remarkably similar ways. At the top of the system sits either a single authoritarian ruler (a monarch or a president), or an ever-ruling party or royal family. The ruler is shored up by an extensive makhabarat (intelligence service) employing a vast network of informers. Some estimates of the Egyptian internal security apparatus are as high as 2 million people. The second instrument of control is the government bureaucracy. With rotation of power, Arab countries have blurred the distinction between the ruler and the state. Bloated civil services provide the regimes with a way to dispense patronage and “pretend jobs” to mop up new university graduates. The size of these administrative armies is staggering. In 2007, Egypt’s civil service was about 7 million (population 83 million). As a proportion of their population, the Gulf oil producers’ public sector payroll is higher still.
The most effective instrument of control used by the Arab regimes is “sham democracy”. Most Arab countries have parliaments and they hold formal elections, but parliaments have few powers and elections are rigged to ensure that the ruler or his party cannot be unseated. News media are government controlled.
Hosni Mubarak remained President of Egypt for around 30 years until he was deposed in 2012. In 2007 a new constitutional amendment banned political parties with a religious orientation and increased the extensive powers of the president – including the emergency laws under which Egypt has been governed for most of the past half-century. The government has stopped broadcasting of parliamentary debates or reporting them in newspapers. Members of the opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood claim that they are repeatedly harassed by the police.
Elsewhere in the Arab world the democratic outlook is equally bleak. In Syria, Hafez Assad died after 30 years as the country’s ruler, but his son Bashar Assad took his place. Ali Abdullah Saleh was president of Yemen for more than 30 years until he was deposed in 2012. Jordan is still run by the Hashemite family and Morocco by the Alouite family, Saudi Arabia by the al-Sauds and Kuwait by the al-Subahs. Muammar Qaddafi had been imposing his unique brand of “Islamic Socialism” on
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Libyans since 1969 but was eventually deposed during the Arab Spring of 2011-12 with the assistance of Western military intervention.
It is clear that for the Arab world the reality of government of the people, by the people and for the people still largely depends on changes coming from within. One possibility is that the impetus for change might grow as power passes down the generations, bringing to the fore a brand of leaders (and followers) with a more modern outlook. Morocco’s King Muhammad is more of a moderniser than was his father, King Hassan. Saudi Arabia’s Abdullah, who eventually ascended to the throne in 2005 at the sprightly age of 80, has cautiously accelerated the careful reforms he initiated during his time as crown prince when his older half-brother Fahd was king. Jordan has not advanced since Abdullah took over from Hussein. It seems that real change will have to come from below when societies acquire the cultural capability to enforce responsible and representative governments.
Economic Stagnation
With the exception of the oil-rich areas such as Libya and the Gulf States, the economic statistics of the Arab world paint a bleak picture. The broad pattern is one of under-performance in investment, productivity, trade, education and social development. The total manufacturing exports of the entire Arab world is lower than those of the Philippines (with less than one-third the population) or Israel (with a population the size of the Saudi city of Riyadh).
In the booming Gulf States, much of the migrant workers are drawn from Asia, but they are also sucked in from poorer Arab countries. Many Arabs serve as migrant workers in Europe. The remittances of migrant workers are estimated to make up around 20 percent of the GDP in Lebanon and Jordan. Millions of Egyptians work abroad, many of them in the Gulf. Some of the countries that lack oil, but are close to European markets and influence, such as Morocco and Tunisia, have begun to create diversified economies. It is clear that all the Arab countries, both oil and non-oil states, are disproportionately dependent on collecting rents – if not from oil from some other form such as remittances or foreign aid or loans.
The Arab countries need to address the imbalances in their economies: skills shortages, rigid labour markets, over-sized bureaucracies and an over-dependence on rent collection. They are hampered by chronic weaknesses in their government bureaucracies, defective judicial systems, a lack of political transparency or accountability and exploitative vested interests.
Over the last quarter of a century, real GDP per capita has fallen throughout the Arab world. In 1999, the GDP of all the Arab countries combined stood at $531.2 billion, less than that of Spain. Today, the total non-oil exports of the Arab world (which has a population of around 360 million people) amount to less than those of Finland (a country with only 5 million inhabitants). The situation regarding science and technology is as bad or worse. The number of patents registered in the USA between 1980 and 2000 coming from the Arab world totalled 867 – compared with 16,328 from South Korea and 7,652 from Israel. The Arab countries also have the highest illiteracy rates. Only sub-Saharan Africa has a lower average standard of living.
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The Gulf States and the Oil Bonanza
Barely eight decades ago, all six desert monarchies that make up the Gulf Co-operation Council (Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait) were wretchedly poor, thinly populated and so loosely governed that they could barely claim the status of nation-states. All were catapulted into modernity by the discovery of 45 percent of the world’s known oil reserves by American prospectors in 1932 and its subsequent extraction and marketing around the world. In 2006 oil revenues contributed 80 percent of government revenue in the abovementioned GCC countries with their combined population of around 40 million people.
The oil bonanza brought many benefits to the GCC countries. In a special report on the Gulf States in 2002, The Economist noted that the six desert monarchies since 1970 had trebled literacy levels to 75 percent, added 20 years to average life expectancy and created a world-class infrastructure by spending a total of $2 trillion. Dubai, with relatively little oil and gas, has become a successful business, shopping and tourism hub along the lines of Singapore and Hong Kong. Kuwait pioneered the idea of safeguarding its own future by becoming a long-term investor in the economies of others. Huge sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf States have turned the Arab countries into a big force in the world economy as strategic investors.
A quick glance at the demographic trends in the Gulf States shows that there is huge scope for investment in the development of the home region. With 60 percent of the Gulf’s native population under the age of 25 and with more of its citizens in school than in the workforce, the region faces at least a generation of rocketing demand for employment. In every single GCC country the native workforce will double by 2020. In Saudi Arabia it will grow from 3.3 million in 2002 to 8 million. This challenge is particularly daunting for the Gulf region for several reasons. The first is its lopsided labour structure which was caused by importing millions of foreign workers to do the heavy lifting and to dispense cosy jobs to locals. The result is a two-tier workforce, with outsiders working mostly in the private sector and locals monopolising the public bureaucracy. In 2002 in Kuwait, for example, 93 percent of the natives who have jobs were employed by the government, whereas 98 percent of the 900,000 people working in the private sector were foreigners. Private sector workers were found to be productive, whereas government workers were found to be worth only a quarter of what they were paid. The second is the poor quality of their education systems which were largely based on outdated Egyptian models – largely designed to instil patriotism and religious values. The system discourages intellectual curiosity and channels students to prestige certificates rather than gaining marketable skills. Of the 120,000 graduates that Saudi universities produced in the period 1995 to 2000, only 10,000 had studied technical subjects. They accounted for only 2 percent of Saudis entering the job market.
Government largesse tended to spoil Gulf-state citizens. Jobless youths do not bother to find work because their families are wealthy and willing to keep them in comfort until “appropriate” positions arise. Years of easy money and state coddling seem to have weakened the work ethic. Businesses are said to be reluctant to hire locals because they “won’t show up, won’t care and can’t be fired”. Indians form the largest proportion of foreign workers. They work long hours for low wages. Their wages are determined by the marginal productivity of labour – not determined by the levels in the Gulf States, but the levels in Bangladesh where many come from. Non-residents cannot acquire citizenship, nor have they been allowed to own property – unless they form a minority partnership with a local.
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The security of the oil-rich Gulf States has long been a strategic problem for the oil-dependent world. Saddam Hussein, as Iraq’s leader, invaded Iran, gassed Kurds, invaded Kuwait, lobbed ordnance at the Saudis and developed (concealed?) chemical weapons. Iran also tends towards erratic behaviour, is armed with missiles and harbours nuclear ambitions. As a result of its volatility, the Gulf States have enlisted American military protection. Although the USA tends to keep a low profile, it keeps upwards of 30,000 troops in the region at Kuwait and at the Prince Sultan air base near Riyadh. America’s 5th fleet is headquartered at Bahrain. The USA also keeps military facilities at Qatar, Oman and the UAE. These facilities are crucial to the American campaign in Afghanistan.
Family Dynasties
A remarkable characteristic of the Arab world is the resilience of the family dynasties. The archetypical example is the Al Sauds. Several observers have commented on the surprising degree of acceptance enjoyed by the ruling dynasties. Saudi Arabia (population 29 million) is the site of the holiest places in Islam, which carries with it both heavy responsibilities and wide influence among the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims. It has been created by holy war (jihad). Its present territory was captured between 1902 and 1925 by a crusading puritan army under Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, who declared himself king in 1932 – the same year that oil was discovered in the east of the kingdom.
Oil and Islam define Saudi Arabia in many ways: the relationship between citizen and state, between effort and reward in the workplace. The immense wealth and continuous patronage financed by the income stream derived from oil and its strategic importance to the oil-hungry world at large. The sheer size of the Al Saud clan is quite remarkable. There have been eight generations of Saudi rulers dating back to 18th century sheikhs who held sway in a few oasis towns near the present Riyadh. Many have been prolific. Abdul Aziz himself sired some 36 sons and even more daughters. The first son to succeed him, King Saud, fathered 107 children. King Abdullah is believed to have 20 daughters and 14 sons. The extended Al Saud family is now estimated to number some 30,000, with around 7,000 regarded as princes. Of these around 500 occupy government positions, perhaps 60 in important decision-making roles. Tribal links are maintained through strategic marriages and the selective manning of key institutions such as the Saudi National Guard.
Forty years ago, King Feisal decreed that the royal family’s take from oil exports should be capped at 18 percent. But state budgets are too opaque to audit the current percentages, but the combined wealth of the family is estimated to add up to hundreds of billions of dollars. The Al Sauds and their loyalists control all of the dozen Saudi daily newspapers. The two most respected pan-Arab dailies, as well as four out of five of the most popular Arab satellite TV channels (al-Jazeera excluded).
Despite the lack of any constitutional constraints, the Saudi King is restrained by the Wahhabist religious establishment. Although kings appoint senior members of the clergy, they have no direct oversight over the 700 judges who run the sharia courts, the backbone of the Saudi legal system. The king must also answer to his own enormous family. By tradition, succession is not vertical, passing to sons, but horizontal, passing to brothers in order of age. The king’s sons, of whom dozens are still in line for succession, have used their long wait to create their own powerful fiefs. All have appointed their sons to top positions.
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The Condition of Women
In most Arab countries women have no political power. The depressed and down-trodden status of women is one of the main reasons for the under-development of their society as compared with the West and the rapidly developing East. Some countries such as Iraq and Tunisia have made significant progress towards the emancipation of women by increasing opportunities for them: access to higher education and a widening range of professions. The spectacle of women peeping out of small holes in burkas is still a familiar sight. It symbolises the perspective on the world accorded to female Arabs.
How can a society prosper when it stifles half its productive potential? Despite development initiatives over the recent few decades, one in every two Arab women still cannot read or write. In nearly all Arab countries women suffer from unequal citizenship and legal entitlements.
Stirrings of Social Change
Apart from the plutocratic cliques at the heart of the various Islamic regimes, there are several positive signs of stirrings: scattered street demonstrations, protesting voices in the social- networking sites of the blogosphere, some courageous newspapers nibbling at sensitive subjects such as bureaucratic excesses and corruption. These stirrings have manifested themselves with important breakthroughs in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, where the old regimes were violently overturned. In Yemen and Syria that process was still under way by the end of 2012.
Satellite television plays an important part to spread information about the world, private investors and entrepreneurs are playing a growing role in economies that used to be dominated by the state, business associations and chambers of commerce are increasingly involved in public policy making in several countries. Although most businessmen avoid “politics”, they press the need for “modernisation” – of procedures, regulations, education and training. The expanding role of business means that the circle of consultation and decision making has grown beyond the theocratic and plutocratic elite.
Arabs today enjoy unprecedented access to information and divergent opinions. After 1996 the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa, established the al-Jazeera television station in his capital, Doha. The new station was allowed to broadcast news from across the Arab world. Although al Jazeera chose not to dwell much on the blemishes of Qatar itself, its many Palestinian journalists tackled sensitive issued elsewhere in the region and soon spawned imitators and competitors. Leaders were obliged to explain and justify themselves as never before.
The Saudi-sponsored al-Arabiya subsequently also entered the terrain. Both stations pay a lot of attention to the plight of the Palestinians and take a strong stand against the American support for Israel and its involvement in Iraq. Both al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya have been careful not to antagonise their respective Qatari and Saudi sponsors, but they have created platforms for debating Arabic issues and for exposing problem areas. (See The Economist, “Special Report on the Arab World”, July 25th, 2009, pp.11-13)
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The Battle of Ideas
Although the Arab world has produced few critical minds from within, the growing platforms for public debate have encouraged the level of participation: from liberals as well as conservatives. Radical imams as well as milder clerics are active bloggers. The overwhelming messages pumped into the airwaves are by no means all congenial to the West. In recent times reactionary conservatives seem to have gained ground across the region promoting extreme piety and an apolitical stance – sometimes called Salafism.
The Salafist movement champions a return to the pure Islamic traditions practiced by Muhammad and his contemporaries. They adhere to a utopian vision of Islam mastering the world. They do not pursue jihad against the West nor do they attack the legitimacy of Arab regimes. They do not promote specific political agendas, but are still well organised. They are well funded from sources in Saudi Arabia. They are unfriendly to liberal causes such as female emancipation. They consider those Muslims whose practice of the faith falls short of their own exacting standards as takfir – unbelievers or even apostates.
Peter David writes in his article “Waking from its sleep” that “Religious fervour is growing among Arabs ... Access to the airwaves and the internet has democratised Islam, forcing rival interpreters of the faith to compete on their own merits for an audience that crosses sects and borders. And this cacophony inside Islam is itself part of a wider, and surprising, paradox of today’s Arab world, which is that, behind the stagnation of its formal politics, it is engaged in a fierce and potentially history- altering battle of ideas.” (See The Economist, July 25th, 2009, p.14)
The Economist’s analyst contends that the causes of conflict in the Arab world are self-reinforcing: the competition for energy, the conflict with Israel, the weakness of statehood and the stagnation of politics. The USA is deeply involved in the Arab world as a consequence of its association with Israel, its strong military presence in the Gulf States and its vital interests in the region’s oil. The American presence is strongly challenged by Iran with its close ties with Russia, China and Latin American allies and its export brand of theocratic domination strongly buttressed by Hamas, Hezbollah and its Shia militant allies. In Iraq, the only large Arab country where Shias outnumber Sunnis, the Shia religious establishment has not embraced the Iranian idea invented by Ayatollah Khomeini of setting up a supreme Islamist jurist above the elected leadership of the state.
The political debate in the Arab world is overshadowed by the issue of Israel. It looms larger than anything else in Arab minds and distorts the internal Arab debate about politics and government. Iran has turned the Palestinian conflict into a tool against America’s Arab allies, arousing anti- American passions on Arab street. Pro-American regimes lack democratic legitimacy and are presented as lackeys of a resented superpower. Many Arabs reject the idea of peaceful coexistence with Israel. This conflict tends to override internal quarrels between secular and religious, Sunni and Shia, or left and right. Their hatred for Israel is an intoxicating way to ignore their own failings and to blame someone else. It enables the plutocratic regimes to maintain states of emergency at home and to postpone reform. There will be no spring or new dawn without solving the Palestinian problem.
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The Non-Arab Muslim World
Along the borders of the Arab world and further away are a number of outlying states with predominantly Muslim populations. To the north of the Arab world lies Turkey (99.6 percent out of 76.8 million) and north-east lies Iran (99 percent out of 66.4 million). In South-Central Asia lie Afghanistan (99 percent out of 33.6 million), Pakistan (97 percent out of 154 million) and Bangladesh (83 percent out of 156 million). Further east lies the most populous Muslim state, Indonesia (86 percent out of 232 million) and Malaysia (52 percent out of 25.7 million). Towards Central Asia lie the former Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan (90 percent out of 53.6 million). In Africa these include Chad (54 percent out of 10.3 million), Mali (90 percent out of 12.6 million), Niger (80 percent out of 15.3 million), Nigeria (75 percent out of 149 million), Sierra Leone (60 percent out of 6.4 million), Tanzania (65 percent out of 41 million) and Western Sahara (100 percent out of 405,000). Together these countries have a combined population of around 1 billion people of which around 75 percent are Muslim.
As the spearheads of Islam continued to probe in all directions it soon reached the Strait of Gibraltar in the west. Far to the east they reached the mouth of the Indus on the Indian Ocean, the areas north of the Ganges as well as the banks of the Brahmaputra above the Bay of Bengal. After conquering the lands of the Persians they penetrated Central Asia all the way to Samarkand and the areas west of the Chinese Walls.
In many of the captured areas, Arab warriors were actually welcomed by local inhabitants who had long resented the previous rulers. The Muslim invaders required armies that were capably led, high in morale and skilled in using horses. Jews and Christians in conquered areas were usually both treated as second-class citizens and forced to pay high taxes.
Penetrating into Africa, Islam extended beyond the outer reaches of the Roman Empire. From the 8th century the first mosques appeared in the ports of East Africa. South of the Sahara Desert, a long stretch of dry territory extending to the Atlantic coast in Mauritania was visited by Islamic merchants. The Islamic religion gave meaning to the wandering nomads of the desert regions – requiring no priest and no church – not even for a burial. The language of the Koran was Arabic, but converts could learn passages by heart. Islamic traders did business as far apart as Mombasa, Canton and Timbuktu. Although Islam proclaimed the kinship of all peoples, the idea did not extend to slaves. In the course of centuries, Islamic merchants served as major slave traders from the upper reaches of the Niger River to Central Asia and Northern India.
Turkey
The Turks originated in the Turkestan region of Central Asia. As a warrior tribe they moved west in stages in the wake of the Mongols’ advance. Ottoman I, a commander of the Ottoman Turks and founder of the Ottoman dynasty, established a base in the Anatolian interior. From that base they raided far and wide, chipping away at the Byzantine frontier. A succession of Ottoman rulers, styling themselves as “Sultan” conducted the conquest of Asia Minor, overwhelming the Christian Greek settlements with Muslim Turkish colonists. The Ottoman Sultans led a supreme nation of warriors, calling themselves ghazis (“warriors of Islam”).
By 1400 the Ottoman Turks held nearly all of the territory of the present Turkey and extended their rule far into Christian Europe. They occupied long reaches of the Danube River and large parts of
91 what are now Albania, Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Romania. Many peasants accepted the religion of the Turks and joined their army as mercenaries.
In 1453 the Turks conquered Constantinople then moved into Greece and the south of Italy. In the 16th century they captured Damascus and Cairo. As the Europeans were establishing their empires in America and Asia, the Ottoman Turks from Asia were forcing their way into Europe.
In the late 1680s, the Turks were driven back first from the outskirts of Vienna and then from Buda, Belgrade and finally also from Athens. But the Turks clung to the Holy Land and much of the Middle East until they lost control in the First World War (1914-1918).
By 1918 Mustafa Kemal, the Turkish general who earlier became the hero of Gallipoli when he routed the Allied Powers from Turkish soil, surfaced at the head of a Turkish national movement dedicated to the creation of a national republic based on a modern secular society. With his headquarters in Ankara, the Turkish-speaking heartland, he was a sworn enemy of the Sultan, the mosque and the veil.
Mustafa Kemal’s movement played a central role to consolidate the remnants of the Ottoman state after the Armistice of Mudros which ended Ottoman involvement in World War I. He had to deal with local uprisings of irregular forces, remnant Ottoman forces and Greek military encroachment. The first step in establishing a legitimate basis of action was to convene a parliament, the Grand National Assembly, at Ankara in 1920. In the Fundamental Law of January 20th, 1921, the assembly declared that sovereignty belonged to the nation, that the assembly acted as the true and only representative of the nation, that the name of the state was declared to be Turkey and that executive power was entrusted to an executive council headed by Mustafa Kemal.
After he drove out foreign forces from Turkish soil and brought irregular forces including remnants of the sultanate under control, a comprehensive settlement was achieved via the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). A compulsory exchange of populations was arranged as a result of which 1.3 million Greeks left Turkey and 400,000 Turks were repatriated from Northern Greece. The city of Mosul was allocated by the League of Nations to become part of the new state of Iraq. Turkey only regained control of the Straits in 1936.
Construction of a new political system began with the abolition of the sultanate and the assembly’s declaration of the Republic of Turkey on October 23rd, 1923, with Mustafa Kemal elected as president. All members of the Ottoman dynasty were expelled from Turkey and a full republican constitution was adopted on April 20th, 1924. It retained Islam as the state religion, but in 1928 this clause was removed and Turkey became a purely secular republic.
Mustafa Kemal came to be known as “Ataturk” (Father of the Nation). He is said to have been an autocratic, dominating and inspiring personality. He died in 1938. His policies were based on six fundamental principles: republicanism, populism, nationalism, statism, secularism and revolution. These concepts were given specific content within the context of Kemalism.
The secularism of Ataturk played a major role in pushing Turkey into a process of modernisation. Under his leadership the caliphate – the supreme politico-religious office of Islam – was abolished. The secular power of all religious authoritarians and functionaries was reduced and eventually eliminated. The various religious foundations were nationalised and religious education was
92 restricted. The influential and popular mystical orders of the dervish brotherhoods (tarika) were also suppressed.
Although secularised at the official level, religion remained a strong force at the popular level. Kemalist secularism did not merely mean separation of state and religion, but also the separation of religion from educational, cultural and legal affairs. It meant independence of thought and independence of institutions from the dominance of religious institutions and religious thought. The Kemalist principle of secularism did not advocate atheism – it was not an anti-God campaign. It was a rationalist, anti-clerical secularism. Kemalist secularism was not against an enlightened Islam, but against an Islam that was opposed to modernisation.
Ataturk replaced traditional Islamic institutions with modern, nation-based, anti-imperialist institutions focused on economic and technological development. His concept of “statism” was based on the principle that the state had a legitimate role to regulate the economy, to promote the national interest, to engage in areas where private enterprise was inactive, or where private enterprise proved to be inadequate. Under his influence, the state emerged not only as the principle source of economic activity, but also as the owner of the major industries of the country.
The Kemalist reforms brought about a revolutionary change in the status of women through the adoption of Western codes of law, in particular the Swiss Civil Code. In 1934 women received the right to vote. Kemalism opposed class privileges and distinctions and considered Turkish citizenship as the supreme value to spur people to work hard and to achieve a sense of unity and national identity. Kemalist nationalism exulted citizens to accept the principle that the Turkish state is an indivisible whole comprising its territory and people. Hence, Kurdish separatism was considered unacceptable.
Secularisation involved the abolition of religious courts and schools, the adoption of a purely secular system of family law, the substitution of the Latin alphabet for the Arabic in writing Turkish, the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, the replacement of Friday by Sunday as the weekly holiday, the adoption of surnames, the abolition of the wearing of the fez or the veil and the wearing of clerical garb outside places of worship. After the death of Ataturk in 1938, his closest associate Ismet Inönü was elected president. During World War II, Turkey clung to neutrality and only joined forces with the Allied Powers towards the end of the war. After 1947, it received extensive military aid and economic assistance from the USA.
During the post-Ataturk period the conservative Islamic institutions gradually clawed back special privileges and status, religious schools, reinstatement of Arabic and radio readings of the Koran. Under continued pressure the government gradually relaxed the secularist policies of pure Kemalism. The years 1958-60 saw the economy rapidly worsening and unemployment rising. This led to a bloodless coup carried out by officers and cadets from the Ankara and Istanbul war colleges. A 38-member National Unity Committee was established.
After the military coup of 1960, a new constitution was drafted and approved in a referendum in 1961. It provided for a bi-cameral parliament, proportional representation, a constitutional court and a president elected jointly by the Senate and National Assembly. In 1971, Martial Law was required to restore order and in 1973 the army retreated to their barracks again. But governments continued to depend on minor party coalitions and in 1980 military intervention was again required
93 to restore order in the form of a bloodless coup. The army feared an Islamic revolution along the lines of the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 and the possible spread of a Kurdish uprising.
A new constitution was drafted based on the 1958 French constitution: a strong president (7 year term) who appoints a prime minister, senior judges and a unicameral parliament that could be dismissed by the president. The political parties, the press and trade unions were subjected to stringent control. During the next decade the country flourished under free-market policies and growing foreign trade.
After the 1980s, Turkey experienced growing tension around the position of its Kurdish minority. Several groups emerged espousing demands ranging from freedom of cultural expression to outright independence. The most important of these groups was the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan – PKK). The PKK sought an independent Kurdish state with full autonomy. The PKK received support from Kurds living abroad and in neighbouring countries (Iran, Iraq and Syria). Kurdish political parties remained forbidden and the government relied on military suppression and martial law. Thousands of persons were killed and Turkish troops attacked Kurdish safe havens in Iraq.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Islamic groups increased their influence in Turkish public life: changes in dress, segregation of sexes, growth of Islamic schools and banks and support for Sufi orders. This upsurge was also reflected in the first decade of the 21st century when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by Erdogan swept into power. Turkey refused to grant transit through its territory to the US military during the Iraq War.
A major source of tension between Turkish and Armenian communities (and sympathisers of the latter elsewhere in the world) is the early 20th century treatment of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. Thousands of secularist protesters also showed unease about Erdogan’s Islamic roots and his wife opting to wear the headscarf. The military also issued a memorandum on the internet criticising the rising role of Islamists in the government.
In 2008 the parliament voted to amend Turkey’s constitution eliminating a ban barring the headscarf from being worn on university campuses. Thereby a long-standing fault line within Turkish society was aggravated. It is clear that the pendulum has swung back in favour of the Islamist fundamentalists. By the beginning of 2013 the AKP government of Erdogan had imprisoned more than half of the army’s generals and officers on counts of conspiracy to topple the government. It appears that Turkey is steadily retreating into the fold of orthodox Islam.
Iran
Human habitation in Iran dates back to some 100,000 years ago, but recorded history began with the Elamites about 3000 BC. The Medes who flourished from 728 BC were overthrown in 550 BC by the Persians who were in turn conquered by Alexander the Great in the 4th Century BC. Muslim dynasties appeared in the Sassanid (Persian Empire) in the mid-7th century. Subsequently the area was governed by a succession of Safavid and Qajar dynasties until the 19th century when the country was first controlled by the Russians and then by the British. Reza Kahn seized power in a coup in 1921. His son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi alienated religious leaders with a programme of modernisation and Westernisation and was overthrown in 1979. Shi’ite cleric Ruhallah Khomeini set up an Islamic Republic in 1979 and started a process of suppressing Western influence.
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Today Iran is an Islamic republic with one legislative house. The head of state and government is an elected president, but supreme authority rests with the rahbar, a ranking cleric jurist. The capital is Teheran and the 2008 population estimate stood at 72,269,000. Persians constitute the largest ethnic group. Other ethnic groups include Azerbaijans, Kurds, Lurs, Bakhtyari and Buloch. The predominant religion is the Shi’ite version of Islam with small pockets of Zoroastrianism.
Most of Iran’s surface area consists of salt deserts and other wasteland. Only about 10 percent of the country is arable and about 25 percent suitable for grazing. Its rich petroleum reserves account for about 10 percent of the world’s known reserves and are today the mainstay of its economy. When Islamic forces combined in 1979 to overthrow the regime of the Shah, Iran appeared to return into the reactionary fold of the Shi’ite branch of Islam. The Shah, probably naively, tried to force his version of secular modernity on a complex, traditional and devout society. It took Iranian society another 30 years to 2009 to spawn a new eruption of popular reformist protest in Tehran. It ended with a crackdown of the forces of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with the blessing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Subsequently, hundreds of people including academics, journalists and former officials were incarcerated and accused of conspiracies to foment a secularist overthrow of the Islamic state. The possibility of a regime change from within remained as remote as ever.
The stability of the regime is based on the dominant role played by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a militia of 120,000 essentially focused on “internal threats”. Ahmadinejad himself an ex-guardsman, is strongly supported by the hard-line faction centred on the IRGC embracing a network of former officers and like-minded men in other security branches. Despite outrage over the post-electoral crackdown, this faction escalated its offensive against dissent and further consolidated its hold over Iran’s politics and economy.
Subsequent to the 2009 election, state television broadcasts showed a series of show trials of prominent reformists. With dramatic prosecutor’s accusations and defendants’ confessions, the outcome was to destroy the reformist opposition and to purge powerful centrists too. As actors in an alleged plot to discredit the June 2009 elections, they have been used as scapegoats to ban opposition parties outright and to jail their leaders.
The IRGC cronies fill most of the key cabinet posts (intelligence and oil ministries). The IRGC controls the 70 percent of Iran’s economy that is state run, with stakes in everything from dental and eye clinics to car factories and construction firms. Even “privatised” assets fall into the hands of ex-guardsmen or close friends. A special “privatisation” agency has been set up to “safeguard” the process. During his first term, Ahmadinejad steered billions in uncontested oil, gas and large-scale infrastructure contracts to the IRGC. In 2006 alone, the IRGC’s main construction firm, Khatam al- Anbya, received $7 billion to develop gas and oil fields and for the refurbishment of the Tehran metro system. The IRGC is also widely rumoured to control a near monopoly over the smuggling of alcohol, cigarettes and satellite dishes. They appear to have become a mafia abusing their access to key points of governmental decision making and to exploit their intelligence capabilities to spy on competitors. (See The Economist, August 29th, 2009. P.40)
On various platforms around the world, Ahmadinejad expressed his intention to provoke a “clash of civilisations” in which the Muslim world led by Iran takes on the “infidel” West led by the United States and defeats it in a protracted contest. In Ahmadinejad’s analysis, the rising “super power” has
95 decisive advantages over the infidel. Islam has four times as many young men of fighting age than the West with its ageing populations. Hundreds of millions of Muslim ghazis (holy raiders) are keen to become martyrs while the infidel youths, loving life and fearing death, hate to fight. Islam also has 80 percent of the world’s oil reserves and so controls the lifeblood of the infidel. The USA, the only infidel power still capable of fighting, is hated by many nations – albeit instigated by misinformation. According to Ahmadinejad’s strategy, Iran should wait out the USA’s decline and in the interim develop its own nuclear strategy, thus matching the only advantage the infidel enjoys. Further components in its strategy are to build its outer defences in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. These strategies should be supported with strengthening Iran’s network of Shia organisations in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Yemen. Close contact should also be resumed with Sunni fundamentalist groups in Turkey, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco. Shia boys should be taught to cultivate two qualities: the first is entezer, the capacity patiently to wait until the time for action is right. The second is taajil, devising actions needed to hasten the process. As soon as the infidel loses its nuclear advantage, it could be worn down in a long, low-intensity war at the end of which surrender to Islam would appear to be the least bad of options. He believes Americans are impatient and they run away at the first sight of a setback. Muslims, in contrast, know how to be patient. That is why they have been able to weave carpets for thousands of years.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has described the Iranian regime as a “... messianic apocalyptic cult”. In truth, Iran is not that easy to read. It is a self-proclaimed Islamic theocracy. They have repeatedly vowed to “wipe Israel off the map” and appear to be moving relentlessly closer to the point where it could build a nuclear bomb. Containment of a nuclear Iran seems to be a matter of strategic urgency. The mere possession of a nuclear capability might encourage its regime to adopt a more aggressive foreign policy in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and even in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (See The Economist, July 21st, 2007, “Special Report on Iran”, pp.2-16)
Afghanistan
The area that is today Afghanistan was originally part of the Persian Achaemenian Empire in the 6th century BC, ruled by the Darius and Xerxes dynasties. The Empire extended as far West as Macedonia and Libya, in the north to the Caucasus Mountains and the Aral Sea and to the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Desert in the south. In the 4th century BC it was conquered by Alexander the Great.
Islam entered around 870 AD. Subsequently the area that is today called Afghanistan was controlled by the Mughal Empire of India and then by the Safavid Empire of Persia. Its current boundaries were drawn after Britain conquered the area in the 19th century. From the 1930s the country had a reasonably stable monarchy but it was overthrown in the 1970s by Marxist revolutionaries. Marxist reforms sparked rebellion amongst the local tribes and Soviet troops were sent in to invade the area. Eventually the Afghan guerrillas prevailed and the Soviets withdrew in 1989 when their involvement became too costly.
In 1992 rebel factions overthrew the government and established an Islamic republic. In 1996 the Taliban militia took power in Kabul and enforced a harsh fundamentalist Islamic order. Osama bin Laden’s September 11 al-Qaeda attacks in 2001 led to military conflict with the USA and allied nations. It was followed by the overthrow of the Taliban and the establishment of a volatile interim government under Hamid Karzai.
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Afghanistan has three distinctive regions. The northern plains are the major agricultural area. The south-western plateau consists primarily of desert and semi-arid landscape. The more densely populated highlands cover the central parts of the country. After fighting on the frontiers of British India against Afghan tribesmen, Winston Churchill wrote of the Pashtuns: “To the ferocity of the Zulu are added the craft of the Redskin and the marksmanship of the Boer”. Little seems to have changed.
Several problems stand in the way of creating a stable society in Afghanistan. The first is that the forces of local disintegration are greater than the forces of national integration. Tribal competition and conflict based on ethnic differences is a major source of internal cleavage. Real power lies with the “warlords”. Vengeance is justice. About 40 percent of the people belong to the Pashtun ethnic group. Other ethnic groups include Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara. The religion is mainly Sunni Muslim but Zoroastrianism is also present. The southern and south-eastern areas are the ideological heartlands of the Taliban. The second problem is the insecurity that prevents reconstruction efforts. Unless more secure conditions are created, nation-building activities such as road building and the provision of housing and school facilities cannot be undertaken. Thirdly, the poverty on the community level is overwhelming.
About 80 percent of the Afghans depend on what they can grow, but the country lacks water and cultivatable land. There are no noteworthy irrigation systems. Three-quarters of the world’s opium and nearly all of Europe’s heroin originate in Afghanistan. Pashtun traders move the opium. They lock in farmers by paying advances on next year’s harvest. Drug money (estimated at a third of GDP) appears to be funding the terrorism in southern Afghanistan. Planting poppies is the surest form of generating income. The only alternative source of income for the 23 million Afghans is foreign aid.
Afghanistan is a highly fractured and complicated country that verges on being a failed state. Without military and financial support from the USA and its allies ($32 billion since 2001), the current Afghanistan regime will revert back to Taliban control. To sustain a stable democratic regime would require much development in the social, economic and political spheres for generations.
Central Asian Republics
The central region of Asia extends from the Caspian Sea to the border of Western China in the east. In the north it is bounded by Russia and in the south by Iran, Afghanistan and China. The region consists of Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan and Turkmenistan with a total combined population of around 54 million of whom around 90 percent is Muslim.
About 60 percent of this area consists of desert land except for the vast grassy steppes along the margins above the mountain ranges to the south and east. The scarcity of water has led to a very uneven population distribution largely concentrated along the fertile river banks in the south east. The various ethnic groups (Uzbek, Kazak, Tajik, Turkmen and Kyrgyz) speak languages related to Turkish with the majority adherent to the Sunnite branch of Islam. Under Soviet rule the area was often used for nuclear weapons testing and it supplied most of the USSR’s cotton, coal and other minerals.
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Human occupation of Central Asia dates back 35,000 years to the late Pleistocene Epoch. The Uighurs were amongst the earliest Turkic peoples in the area. The region was gradually Islamised in the 11th-15th centuries. From the 13th century the area was ruled by the Mongols until it was conquered by the Russian tsars in the 17th century. After the Communist Revolution of 1917, the area was divided into five Soviet socialist republics of the USSR and brought under the Soviet system of central planning. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 they became sovereign independent nations.
Pakistan
The total population of Pakistan is estimated at around 154 million living in an area of around 800,000 square kilometres. The population is a complex mix of indigenous peoples who have been affected by successive waves of migrations of Aryans, Persians, Greeks, Pashtuns, Mughals and Arabs. The languages spoken are Urdu (official), Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Baluchi. The official religion is Sunni Muslim, but there are also pockets of Christians and Hindu.
The country is considered to consist of four regions: the northern mountains (Himalayas), the Baluchistan Plateau, the Indus Plain and the desert areas. The mixed economy is largely based on agriculture, light industries and services.
The first Muslim conquests started in the 8th century. Subsequently it was controlled by a long succession of Muslim dynasties, most notably the Mughal dynasty which started in 1526 and which lasted until British India started sidelining the Mughals after 1757.
Pakistan as a “nation state” was born of expediency. At the end of the Second World War, British colonialists were under pressure from their American allies to get out of India. The Muslim League, led by Mohomed Ali Jinnah, had co-operated with Hindu nationalists in the movement against Britain, but sought a separate Islamic state. The leaders of India’s Congress Party, despite the Ghandian ideal of a Hindu-Muslim brotherhood, were anxious to achieve Indian independence. The product of these diverse motivations was independence for India and a Muslim nation of Pakistan, divided into two territories separated by more than a thousand miles of Indian land. British India was partitioned into two independent “dominions” to be known respectively as India and Pakistan. Pakistan was to consist of two parts: West Pakistan and East Pakistan.
Although most of the people in East Pakistan and West Pakistan were Muslim, the population, language and levels of modernisation in the two divisions contrasted sharply. The East had 55 percent of the population but received less from national expenditures and less from foreign aid than the West. Easterners had a lower standard of living although the East created a major portion of Pakistan’s foreign currency earnings. By 1967-68 the average per capita income of East Pakistan was 62 percent of that of West Pakistan. People from the East were mostly Bengali, whereas the dominant group in the West was Punjabi. The Bengali-speaking East was led by the Awami League, whereas the Urdu-speaking West held sway in the military regime of Marshall Ayub Khan. Ethnic polarisation was pervasive and when in March 1971 West Pakistan troops descended upon the East to quash Bengali separatism, the estimated number of Bengalis killed exceeded 500,000. Millions fled into India.
On December 15th, 1971, Pakistan was formally split into two separate countries: East Pakistan became Bangladesh and West Pakistan continued to be called Pakistan. The Kashmir region
98 remained a disputed territory between Pakistan and India, with tensions resulting in sporadic military clashes.
Many Afghan refugees migrated to Pakistan during the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s and remained there during the Taliban and post-Taliban periods. Political instability led to an army coup in 1999. General Pervez Musharraf became Pakistan’s president. The strongest opposition to Musharraf was concentrated in the hands of Fazhur Rehman, head of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), Pakistan’s powerful coalition of Islamic parties.
Since 2001 Pakistan’s army has lost many soldiers hunting “terrorists” in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along the Afghan border. The USA provided billions of dollars in military aid to assist Musharraf’s efforts to improve his military capability to control militant insurgency. The boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan is based on the “Durand Line”. This line was drawn in British colonial times. This borderline cuts the Pashtun tribe in two: one part living in Afghanistan and the other in Baluchistan, a province of Pakistan. Tribesmen move freely across the border. Hence it is impossible to identify “insurgents”. Many tribesmen on both sides of the border are Taliban supporters.
The colonial-era model of governance on both sides of the border is based on malicks (tribal leaders) who mediate with the central administration through political agents. These interlocutors are often ulema (religious scholars) who are amongst the most active militants. Musharraf described these interlocutors as charasi (hashish-smoking) Taliban, i.e. thugs using the Taliban’s mantle. Most interlocutors run madrassas across the frontier enabling them to be used as Taliban recruitment centres. It would seem that the Pashtun-dominated Taliban has taken over the role of al-Qaeda and that they have taken root along the Durand Line frontier.
The potential instability along the border of Pakistan makes it the most dangerous hot-spot in South Asia.
Bangladesh
Bangladesh lies on the northern coast of the Bay of Bengal. It is surrounded by India with a small common border with Myanmar (Burma) in the south-east. The country is a low-lying riverine land traversed by the many branches and tributaries of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. Tropical monsoons and frequent floods and cyclones annually inflict heavy damage in the delta region.
The earliest reference to the region was to a kingdom called Banga (around 1000 BC). Buddhists ruled for centuries in the region but by the 10th century Bengal became part of the Moghul Empire and the majority of the East Bengalis converted to Islam. Bengal was ruled by British India from 1757 until Britain withdrew in 1947. Pakistan was then founded out of the two predominantly Muslim regions of the Indian sub-continent. The area that was East Bengal became the part of Pakistan called East Pakistan.
Tension between East and West Pakistan existed from the outset because of their vast geographical, economic and cultural differences. East Pakistan’s Awami League, a political party founded by the Bengali nationalist Sheik Mujibar Rahman in 1949, sought independence from West Pakistan. Although 56 percent of the population resided in East Pakistan, the West held the lion’s share of political and economic power. In 1970 the East Pakistanis secured a majority of the seats in the
99 national assembly. President Yahya Khan postponed the opening of the national assembly in an attempt to circumvent East Pakistan’s demand for greater autonomy. As a consequence, East Pakistan seceded and the independent state of Bangladesh was proclaimed on March 26th, 1971. Civil war erupted and with the help of Indian troops in the last few weeks of the war, East Pakistan defeated West Pakistan on December 16th, 1971. An estimated 1 million Bengalis were killed in the fighting or later slaughtered. Ten million more took refuge in India. In February 1974, Pakistan agreed to recognise the independent state of Bangladesh.
Founding President Sheikh Mujibur was assassinated in 1975, as was the next president Zia ur- Rahman. Subsequently the army chief took control in a bloodless coup, but was forced to resign. Thereafter a succession of prime ministers governed in the 1990s.
In 2009 the Bangladesh population was estimated at 156 million living on a land area of 133,911 square kilometres (just over half the size of the UK), giving it an extremely high density of 1,146 people per square kilometre. Its per capita income is amongst the lowest of all countries in the world.
Indonesia
Indonesia comprises some 17,500 islands of which 7,000 are uninhabited, covers 1,860,360 square kilometres and carries a population of around 232 million, divided into 300 ethnic groups speaking close to a similar number of languages. The predominant religion is Islam but there are also significant pockets of Christians, Hindus and traditional beliefs. The Indonesian archipelago stretches 5,100 kilometres from west to east. More than half of the population live on two major islands, Sumatra and Java. The other populated islands include Bali, Lombok, Surabaya, Borneo, Celebes, the Moluccas and the western portions of Timor and New Guinea. The islands are characterised by rugged volcanic mountains and tropical rainforests. The area is geologically unstable, 20 percent of the land is arable and rice is the staple crop. Petroleum, natural gas, coal, timber products, garments and rubber are major exports. Indonesia is a republic with a two- chamber legislature and an elected president.
Indian traders brought Islamic Hindu and Buddhist influences into the country. Today Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world. European influence began in the 16th century when the Dutch East India Company established a major trading post in Java. It held control until the Japanese invasion in 1942.
After World War II, Sukarno declared Indonesia’s independence in 1945, retaining a nominal union with the Netherlands until 1954. An alleged coup attempt in 1965 led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people claimed to be communists. By 1968 General Suharto took power and forcibly incorporated East Timor into Indonesia with much loss of life. In the 1990s the country was beset by political and economic turmoil. Suharto was deposed by the army in 1998. Since 1998, Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country and the largest with a Muslim majority, has undergone a profound political transition. Its political system has been overhauled and the foundations for a better system of governance have been put in place.
In the wake of ten years of dictatorship under President Sukarno and more than three decades of iron rule by President Suharto, the country’s political institutions were weak. Indonesia’s democratic transformation, known as Reformasi, began in 1998. A new national parliament was
100 chosen in 1999 in the first openly contested elections and Abdurrahman Wahid became president through an indirect vote. In mid-2001, Wahid was forced out of office because of his erratic leadership and Megawati Sukarnoputri – Sukarno’s eldest daughter – ascended to the presidency. On April 5th, 2003, the secular, Progressive Democratic Party (PD), led by former general Susilo Bambang Yudhyono (SBY) and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), an urban-based Islamic party campaigning on a platform of “clean government”, achieved the direct election of SBY as president for a five-year term. The outcome of these elections reaffirmed the potential strength of moderate Islam in Indonesia.
The keystone of Indonesia’s political system, rooted in the constitution of 1945, is a strong presidency. But in view of past experience, a set of constitutional amendments adopted between 1999 and 2003 injected critical checks and balances. The 1945 constitution previously allowed the president to govern by decree. The political life was dominated by the military. The parliament (DPR) routinely rubber-stamped legislation put forward by the president’s cabinet.
The 1998 and 2001 amendments to the constitution introduced a senate of 128 directly elected members representing each of Indonesia’s 32 provinces. The parliament and the senate, sitting jointly as MPR, are now empowered to amend the constitution, to swear in the president and vice- president and to dismiss them for specific violations. The amendments also created a constitutional court to review laws and resolve electoral disputes. It also provides for a “general election commission” and sets out basic human rights protections.
Public life in Indonesia is closely linked to its underlying “primordial” societal structure: the rural peasantry (abangan), the secular aristocracy (priyayi) and the Islamic clerics (santri). These structural elements represent influential “currents” or societal forces that permeate and underlie predominant trends. Every political movement relates to the “primordial” forces in its own peculiar way: exploiting its symbols, dispensing patronage, mobilising support. Gulkar, the centrist bureaucratic party nurtured by Suharto and embellished in the large military sector, dominates the political scene together with Megawati’s secular nationalist party (PDI-P). But the Reformasi introduced a trend towards election outcomes to be defined more by personalities than by issues.
The Indonesian armed forces (known by their acronym TNI), still cast a long shadow over the political life of Indonesia. It remains the dominant force in government policy making, with an effective veto over important decisions. It is given credit for its role in winning independence from the Netherlands in 1950 and for the stability and economic growth of the Suharto era, but as an institution it is said to be less prominent than two decades ago. Under Reformasi the police was separated from the armed forces.
According to Lex Rieffel, a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a large amount of off-budget funds goes to the military. An amount estimated to be twice as large as its formal budget allocation. Since independence the TNI has maintained a command structure that parallels the civilian government down to the village level. Although it stresses the importance of defence against external enemies, it deployed its forces in the past mainly to combat domestic insurgence, e.g. in Aceh and Papua. Since the birth of the nation, military units have operated a mix of legitimate and illegal businesses. In the 1970s and 1980s a sprawling network of military foundations and co- operatives sprang up, running a range of murky activities and drawing on questionable sources of funding.
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After the mid-1980s, the military’s economic power declined as the network of businesses owned and controlled by Suharto’s relatives and friends gained prominence. The vacuum in the economy resulting from the collapse of Suharto Inc. has been filled by thousands of small- and medium-sized enterprises, not by the military. Not a single successful military-operated business can be found in the top ranks of Indonesian companies. Hopefully a strong undercurrent of opposition to military domination represents a credible check on creeping militarism.
The 1997-98 financial crisis virtually shipwrecked the Indonesian economy. Relations with the IMF and the consortium of donor countries were strained. But since the “Dream Team” of economic ministers appointed by Megawati were less political and more technocratic than their predecessors, the turnaround has been remarkable. Co-ordinating Minister Dorodjatun Kuntjoro-jakti and Finance Minister Boediono managed to set the stage for a successful transition during 2004 out of IMF balance-of-payments financing and debt relief. This step signalled the end of the recovery from the 1997-98 financial crisis and a return to normal relations with official and private sources of external financing.
All of Indonesia’s macro-economic indicators improved from mid-2001 to 2004. Inflation declined from 12 percent to 5 percent, interest rates dropped from 17 percent to 7 percent, foreign exchange reserves rose while the rupiah appreciated in real effective terms. The ratio of government debt declined from 100 percent in 2000 to less than 70 percent in 2004. The key to success was fiscal discipline.
Indonesia faces several obstacles to realising its economic potential. First is the diverse array of ethnic groups scattered over 6,000 islands. The country needs to develop the social consensus to achieve reforms to produce sustained rapid growth. Second is the widespread resentment of the commercial power of the Indonesian-Chinese business community, although this community is the source of investment in job-creating economic growth. Third is escaping the “curse” of having abundant natural resources which hamper balanced growth of all economic sectors. Fourth is the high level of unemployment. At least 30 percent of the labour force (40 million people) remains under employed.
Indonesia needs to successfully overcome the various impediments to domestic and foreign investment. Most critical are the unreliable judicial system, a weak banking system and corruption. Indonesia needs to build on a vibrant press, dynamic non-governmental organisations and improved standards of public accountability to reinforce its reform process and business confidence.
Last, but not least, Indonesia needs to step up its own internal war on terrorism. It requires preventing foreign terrorist organisations from operating in Indonesia and keeping its own domestic Muslim fanatics under control. Hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians were slaughtered by ideologically driven mobs during the mayhem following the failed September 1965 coup that led to the demise of the Sukarno regime. The Bali bombings in 2002 and the hotel bombings in 2003 and 2009 may have been isolated incidents. But Jamaah Islamiyah is an example of religious fanaticism that can spread like a forest fire.
Indonesia’s first experiments with constitutional democracy failed. The second round of experiments that began with the Reformasi of 1998 is still in progress. It still needs to deliver more
102 employment opportunities; less corruption and to stamp out senseless violence to ensure that the political transformation is not stalled or allowed to slip into reverse. (See Lex Rieffel (2004), “Indonesia’s Quiet Revolution”, Foreign Affairs, Vol.83, No.5, pp.98-110)
Islamic Statehood
All the countries of the Islamic world mentioned in this survey are recognised as sovereign entities in which religion combined with other social characteristics such as race, language or culture are explicitly or implicitly recognised as the basis of the state.
Closed Societies
All Islamic states are closed societies. With the exception of Dubai, they do not readily allow or attract immigrants, but they do generate millions of emigrants to Western countries. Only three Islamic countries have in recent years experimented with constitutional democracy: Turkey, Indonesia and Lebanon. In both Turkey and Indonesia the preservation of a fair degree of secular civil rights depends heavily on the intervention of the military.
Lebanon is the one country in the entire Islamic world with a significant experience of democratic political life. It has suffered not for its fault but for its merits – the freedom and openness that external forces have exploited with devastating effect. Syria was finally induced to withdraw its forces in 2005 and the Palestinian leadership has been withdrawn. But Hezbollah, trained and financed by Iran, still retains a powerful presence. The stability of Lebanese democracy is likely to remain volatile as long as the country is surrounded by meddlesome Islamic authoritarian regimes.
Creations of the Colonial Era
In the case of Indonesia, the mere existence of the state as a political entity is a product of its colonial history: its pre-colonial political systems were much smaller in scale consisting of a number of traditional monarchies which were absorbed within the new political system. Some Islamic states are examples of traditional states which never fell under prolonged colonial occupation: Afghanistan, Iran and Yemen. In Iran there have been brief occupations and some border alteration but it did not involve the imposition of European colonial rule – which explains the delayed impact of social change upon customary institutions.
In some cases the Islamic states were created artificially following the break-up of colonial empires such as the Hashemite kingdoms of Jordan and Iraq – both more or less fabricated to reward those who rendered wartime services to the British Empire. Similarly petty monarchs were awarded (or permitted to seize) territory ranging beyond the ambit of any justifiable claims (Saudis in Saudi Arabia and Senussi leaders in Libya). In the cases of Pakistan and Bangladesh, religion combined with ethnic factors has been the organising foundation of the emerging political entities.
The colonial era left many Islamic states with territorial boundaries inchoately dissecting religious or ethnic communities. An obvious example of trans-territorial ethnicity is the case of the Kurds. They are situated as an ethnic-linguistic minority in each of four distinct states: Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Their aspiration of an independent Kurdish Republic has brought them into conflict with ruling groups in all four sovereignties. Kurdish self-consciousness has been stimulated by the development of militant nationalism among dominant groups in the four states. Kurdish cultural
103 pride is traced back 4200 years to the ancient Medes. The great majority of Kurds are Sunnite Muslims, particularly important for their members in Iran who confront a Shi’ite theocracy. Under Saddam Hussein the persecution of Kurds led to mass killings of many thousands. The Turkish army has often conducted raids into Kurd territory in Iraq. Thus religion, a shared sense of persecution and resentment at minority status, a sense of historic uniqueness and the impact of intensified nationalism in surrounding areas brought about the Kurdish dilemma.
Similarly the creation of the state of Israel with the support of the Western World (particularly the USA and the UK) led to the displacement of millions of Palestinians. The neglect of the legitimate territorial claims of the Palestinians has created one of the most volatile flashpoints in the modern world.
The British colonial office must take responsibility for drawing many arbitrary lines during the colonial era. The arbitrary territorial demarcation of Iraq, with its eastern boundary dissecting the Shia community, created an Iraqi political entity with a virtually unmanageable conflict potential. A similar artificial situation exists in Sudan. The inhabitants of the western region of Darfur as well as the “blacker-skinned” Christian and animist tribes in the south have little in common with the Muslim Arabs in the north. Since the British left, millions of westerners and southerners have been killed. An estimated 9 million people depended on food handouts from abroad by 2010. Also on the western boundary of Pakistan, the colonial-drawn Durand Line bisects the Pashtun tribes. Afghanistan’s poverty is exacerbated by Taliban fundamentalism coupled with the fluidity of the Pashtun tribes fluctuating across the Durand Line between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Islam’s Sacred Mission
Throughout modern history, religion has been a major foundation for identity and cohesion. The world’s great religions have all provided significant politically relevant affiliations: Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. The profound hold which religion is capable of exerting upon man’s emotions and imagination render these cleavages peculiarly intractable. The common bond of religion can produce both militant cultural identity and a sense of sacred mission.
The role of religion takes on an added importance where religion regards the sacred and secular realms as inseparable – as is the case in Islamic countries. Coexistence of different religious or secular communities within Islamic states is particularly difficult if not impossible. Religious parties see it as their sacred duty to suppress and crush what they see as anti-religious, anti-Islamic movements.
Islamic Finance
The roots of Islamic finance stretch back 14 centuries. It rests on the application of Islamic law, or sharia, whose primary sources are the Koran and the sayings of the prophet Muhammad. Sharia emphasises justice and partnership. In the world of finance that translates into a ban on speculation (gharar) and on the charging of interest (riba).
The idea of a lender levying a straight interest charge, regardless of how the underlying assets fare in an uncertain world, offends against these principles. Some Muslims dispute this, arguing that the literature of sharia covering business practices is small and that terms such as “usury” and “speculation” are open to interpretation.
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Companies that operate in immoral industries, such as gambling or pornography, are considered out of bounds. So too are companies that have too much borrowing defined as having debt totalling more than 33 percent of the firm’s stock-market value. Such criteria mean that sharia-compliant investors steer clear of highly leveraged conventional banks.
Islamic financiers are confident that they can create their own versions of the useful parts of conventional finance. What is allowed or not allowed under sharia is decided by boards of scholars. They act as a kind of spiritual rating agency working closely with lawyers and bankers to create instruments and to structure transactions that meet the needs of the market without offending the requirements of the Islamic faith.
The distinctions between conventional finance and Islamic finance may seem contrived. An options contract to buy a security at a set price at a date three months hence is frowned upon as speculation. But a contract to buy the same security at the same price, with 5 percent of the payment taken up front and the balance taken in three months upon delivery, is sharia compliant.
Who is the ultimate authority on sharia compliance? There are no simple answers and diverging interpretations. Malaysia has tackled the problem by creating a national sharia board. The Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) in Bahrain is attempting to lay down the ground rules for common standards. But differences between national jurisdictions, e.g. between pious Saudi Arabia and more liberal Malaysia, are likely to remain. Both countries feature in the top three markets for Islamic finance, measured by the quantity of sharia- compliant assets. In 2007 Iran stood at the top with $154.6 billion, Saudi Arabia with $69.4 billion and Malaysia with $65.1 billion. The Gulf States, awash with liquidity and a roster of huge infrastructure projects to finance are seen as the most dynamic markets. Britain is the most developed Western centre. France, with a much larger Muslim population, is working to close the gap.
Islamic banks are opening their doors across the Gulf and sharia-compliant hedge funds have been launched. Western law firms and banks are expanding their Islamic-finance teams.
Indonesia announced in 2008 that it would issue the nation’s first sukuk (sovereign wealth fund). The British government, keen on retaining its lead as the West’s front-running centre for Islamic finance, has also taken steps to issue a short-term sovereign sukuk.
Compared to the highly questionable American sub-prime lending, the Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds look attractive. They frown on speculation and support risk sharing. In 2008 the amount of Islamic assets under management stood at around $700 billion, with much scope to grow, provided that their ethical standards are met.
Sharia-compliant mortgages are structured in such a way that the lender itself buys the property and then leases it out to the borrower at a price that combines a rental charge and a capital payment. At the end of the mortgage term, when the price of the property has been fully repaid, the house is transferred to the borrower. The additional complexity adds to the direct transaction costs since the property changes hands twice – which makes it liable to double stamp duty. Britain, as can be expected, ironed out this complexity in order to get the business.
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It is argued that with increasing volumes, economies of scale would cut costs: recycling documentation, using standard templates, streamlining processes. Sharia-compliance is constantly redefined. An example is the use of hedge funds, which are essentially based on the principle of selling something that an investor does not actually own. After several years of cutting corners and redefining terms, the financial wizards developed a technique called arboon. This technique ensures that investors, in effect, take an equity position in shares before they sell them short!
Persons with a knowledge of Islamic law and Western finance, as well as fluency in Arabic and English, have become highly prized members on the boards of banks with Islamic clients.
Assets have also become a bottleneck. The ban on speculation means that Islamic transactions must be based on tangible assets, such as commodities, buildings or land. Exotic derivatives are frowned upon. This limits the scope for securitization that is not backed by sharia-compliant assets. Islamic financiers are concerned about a possible mismatch between the duration of a bank’s liabilities and their assets.
The flexibility imposed on Islamic finance by Western financial architects and manipulators holds the danger of sharia being twisted for short-term business purposes. Scholars are paid for their ingenuity to evade strict sharia standards instead of producing functionally sound innovations. Unscrupulous operators could harm the reputation of the entire industry.
(See Briefing called “Islamic Finance”, The Economist, September 6th, 2008, pp.72-74)
Islamic Politics
A specialist in Islamic Studies at Princeton University, Bernard Lewis, remarked early in 2009 that throughout the Islamic world there are two opposite trends competing for ascendancy: Islamic theocracy at one end of the spectrum and secular liberal democracy at the other end. The Islamic theocracy movement is currently by far the most prominent. The momentum of secular liberal democracy is sporadic and faces many severe obstacles.
The forces representing Islamic theocracy have several obvious advantages. Their messages are cast in religious rather than secular political terms. They express both their critiques and their aspirations in terms that are familiar and easily accepted, unlike those of Western-style democrats. They have access in the mosques to a communications network that bears the authentic stamp of Islam which therefore provides the tools to disseminate propaganda. Secular democratic opposition groups are required by their own ideologies to tolerate the propaganda of their opponents, whereas the religious parties have no such obligation. Rather, it is their sacred duty to crush the anti- religious, anti-Islamic movements. Their diagnosis of the ills of the Islamic world is all due to infidels and their local dupes and imitators. The remedy is to resume the millennial struggle against the infidels in the West and return to God-given laws and traditions.
At the opposite end of the political spectrum are the secular liberal democrats who argue that it is the old ways, represented by degenerate and corrupt power centres, that are crippling the Islamic world. For them the cure is openness and freedom in the economy, society and the state – in genuine democracy. But the road to democracy, and to freedom, is long and difficult with many obstacles along the way.
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The bulk of the Islamic populations find themselves somewhere between the opposite positions of the political spectrum, depending on the national political complexion where they live. Hence, Islam’s main political arms differ greatly in both tactics and aims: from jihadist militancy against infidels to pragmatic co-existential participation in the democratic process.
“Across the Muslim world, a new generation of activist bloggers and preachers is discovering ways to synthesize Islam and modernity”. This claim is made in an essay in Time Magazine (March 30th, 2009, pp.28-32) by Robin Wright. The title of the essay is “Islam’s Soft Revolution”. Is this wishful thinking or an empirically based factual description of current trends?
Wright contends that this revolutionary change is more vibrantly Islamic than ever. It is decidedly anti-jihadist and ambivalent about Islamist political parties. Culturally it is deeply conservative, but its aim is to adapt to the 21st century. Politically it rejects secularism and Westernisation, but craves changes compatible with modern global trends: it is more about groping for identity and direction than expressing piety.
According to Wright the new revolutionaries are synthesizing Koranic values with the ways of life spawned by the internet, satellite television and Facebook. For them Islam is a path to change rather than the goal itself: trying to mix modernity and religion.
The new Muslim activists are said to be part of a post 9/11 generation, disillusioned with extremists who fail to construct credible alternatives, to advance their aims. They seek answers within their own faith and community rather than in the outside world.
Wright claims that the “soft revolution” is to be found in hundreds of schools from Turkey to Pakistan. Its themes echo in Palestinian hip-hop, Egyptian Facebook and the flurry of Koranic verses text-messaged between students. Telephones are answered by young Egyptians saying “Salaam Alaikum” (Peace be upon you) instead of “Hello”. When discussing everything from weather to politics, they add the tagline “bi izn Allah” (if God permits). They watch satellite broadcasts of young preachers explaining that you could be a good Muslim and yet enjoy life – exploiting the middle ground between being devout or liberal.
Traditional clerics denounce the televangelists for preaching “easy Islam”, “yuppie Islam”, or even “Western Islam”. Elvis Presley is used as an example to illustrate that life without spirituality is empty.
In Egypt several bloggers have emerged within the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood who argue that Muslims should eschew both the Iranian-style theocracy and the Western-style democracy. They want a blend, with clerics playing an advisory role in societies, not ruling them. As a consequence Islamic parties are increasingly placed under intense scrutiny.
In Turkey a group of scholars at the Kocatepe Mosque in Ankara have initiated a “Hadith Project” to investigate the recorded actions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad in order to substantiate their validity and consistency within Koranic scripture, e.g. the stoning of adulterers, honour killings and the tradition which says that women are religiously and rationally not complete and of lesser mind.
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There is a growing awareness about dealing with reason, constitutionalism, science and other big issues that define modern society. The West is no longer the only world view to look up to.
Forty years ago, Islamic dress was rare in Egypt. Today more than 80 percent of women are estimated to wear the hijab. Piety alone is not offered as explanation for the change in dress. It is claimed that the veil is the mark of Egyptian women in their power struggle against the dictatorship of men. The veil gives women more power in a man’s world – it provides protective cover and legitimacy for her campaigns.
Many young Arabs are angry at the outside world’s support for corrupt and autocratic regimes such as the Gulf States and Libya. At the top of their gripe-list is the West’s support for Israel and its neglect of the suffering of the Palestinians.
Islam’s Global Networks
Since the 7th century, the word of the Prophet Muhammad was carried out of Arabia by invading Muslim armies and settlers joining their soldiering family members. In some instances local populations took to the road as refugees as the Arabs advanced, leaving their homes invitingly empty. In other instances, the invaders made treaties with townspeople whereby they promised to leave cities intact as long as half the properties were handed over as homes for Arabs and half the churches were handed over for conversion into mosques. In this way, Muslim custom and Arab populations took root in the new Islamic Empire.
After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, the Muslim heartlands were occupied by Britain and France. The Muslim shock at the advance of European colonialism gave rise to a movement called Salafism which reaffirmed the centrality of Muhammad’s spiritual guidance. Salafism, in turn, became allied with the Sunni Islam puritan school of thought known as Wahhabism, practised by Saudi clergy. The Muslim Brotherhood was formally established by Hassan al-Banna in 1928 and its nerve centre is believed to be located in Egypt. It is a global fraternity of Sunni Islamist groups with branches in some 70 countries. Although full details are not generally known, it is believed that on joining the Brotherhood, followers are required to take an oath which pledges them to “work for God’s message” and to “believe and trust” in the movement’s leaders. A Brotherhood member is expected, with his comrades’ help, to cultivate certain virtues, including bodily health, a sound mind and punctuality. The practice of working through other movements and fronts has had some spectacular success and has brought the Brotherhood and its proxies a high degree of influence.
The Muslim Brotherhood is said to have millions of adherents all over the world. It believes in participating in any democratic or other process that is available and in taking advantage of the freedom the Western World allows. In some countries the members of the Brotherhood operate under different names and they also work within different groups to spread their ideas. Much of their activities are financed out of Saudi Arabia.
An important offshoot of the Brotherhood is the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) set up in 1972. Young Muslims, invited from all over the world, have been mentored by this association before returning to countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Turkey. Other key institutions co- founded by Brotherhood members are the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and the Union of Islamic Organisations of France. The method and aims of the Brotherhood’s work vary with local circumstances.
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The stated aim of the Brotherhood is primarily to promote Islam. Introducing sharia law as laid down by the Koran cannot be questioned, but the Brotherhood’s policy is that the process should not be rushed. Sharia can come into being only when the people have freely convinced themselves of its virtues.
The Brotherhood is said to be shadowy but not secret. Its leader is an Egyptian, Mehdi Akef and its spiritual guide is Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, whose broadcasts and pronouncements on the internet are followed by Muslims around the world.
A prominent offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East is Hamas. After winning the Palestinian election contest, Hamas demonstrated its willingness to move beyond jihadist militancy by facing the reality of exercising governmental power and the day-to-day challenges of governmental administration. It had to water down its Islamist fervour by entering policy debates with its secularist, Palestinian-nationalist rivals in the Fatah movement. It may even face the challenge of deliberating the pros and cons of a tactical compromise with Israel. In the past the Brotherhood opposed the recognition of Israel’s existence.
Al-Qaeda shares common ideological origins with the Muslim Brotherhood. Both have their roots in the anti-secular opposition in Egypt, a conservative reading of Sunni Islam and the wealth and religious zeal of the Saudis. But they differ hugely over politics and tactics.
The ideologists of al-Qaeda reject the division of the world into modern states. To them, the only boundaries that matter are between Islam (of which they believe they are the only authentic representatives) and infidels. By contrast the Brotherhood thinking is pragmatic, accepting the reality of national boundaries. The founders of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri (an Egyptian doctor whose ideological roots lay in the Brotherhood) are focused jihadists intent on keeping the war against “crusaders” and “Jews” alive.
One of the most powerful and best connected of the networks that are competing to influence Muslims around the world – especially in places far from Islam’s heartland – is Fethullah Gulen’s Pennsylvania-based movement. As a global force, the Gulenists are especially active in education with more than 500 places of learning in 90 countries. The Gulen movement is rooted in Turkey and is particularly active in Central Asia on the crossroads between Turkey, Iran, Russia and China. The Gulenists claim that they embrace democracy, as a matter of principle, not merely for tactical purposes. Key assets of the Gulenist network in Turkey include a university, a newspaper, a raft of business enterprises and a chain of dormitories for students. The network also maintains a close association with the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party in Turkey.
Less well known are the complimentary organisations devoted not to direct action but to ideological struggle. Of these, the most important has been Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), or the Party of Liberation, a transnational movement that has served as radical Sunni Islamism’s ideological vanguard.
HT is not itself a terrorist organisation, but it can usefully be thought of as a conveyer belt for terrorists. It indoctrinates individuals with radical ideology, priming them for recruitment by more extreme organisations where they can take part in actual operations. By combining fascist rhetoric, Leninist strategy and Western sloganeering with Wahhabi theology, HT has made itself into a real and potent threat that is extremely difficult for liberal societies to counter.
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HT is composed of secretive cells with estimated membership in the hundreds in European countries such as Denmark and up to tens of thousands in Muslim countries. HT is banned in most of the Muslim world as well as in Russia and Germany but it has been allowed to operate freely elsewhere, most notably in the United Kingdom where it has played a major role in the radicalisation of disaffected Muslim youth.
After it was revealed that the bombers in the 7/7 bombing attacks in the UK were members of an HT splinter group, the British government announced a series of measures to address the threat of Islamist extremism. These included the compiling of lists of suspect web sites, bookshops and organisations as a prelude to the possible deportation of foreign nationals suspected of unacceptable activities. HT web sites offer easily accessible literature and news to Muslims living in Western countries to assist them to feel part of the global Muslim community.
In an article called “Fighting the War of Ideas” (Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec 2005, pp.68-78), Zeyno Baran, Director of International Security and Energy Programmes at the Nixon Centre in Washington D.C., had the following to say about the challenges facing the Western World: “Taking advantage of the West’s own freedoms of speech, assembly and the like, HT has spread hate-filled anti-Semitic and anti-constitutional ideas and created a fifth column of activists working to undermine the very systems under which they live”.
Western governments and societies must find ways to protect themselves not just from terrorism, but also from the indirect incitement by militant organisations. Many Westerners do not understand the ideological threat posed by radical Islam and fail to take sensible precautions.
Islam and the West
Muslims have lived in India for many centuries so that even after the partitioning of 1947, India still has a very large Muslim population of 156 million – around 13 percent of its total population and often a source of strife and conflict. Russia is another country with a large Muslim component of around 20 million or 14 percent of its population – after the central Asian republics broke away when the USSR collapsed in 1991. The remainder of the Muslims in Russia have been living there for many generations.
In the middle of the 20th century there were very few Muslims in Europe and North America. However, since the 1960s, growing waves of Muslims arrived in Western countries: some as migrant labourers from Turkey and North Africa, but many others as refugees from Arab countries, particularly Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, East Africa and North Africa.
European policy makers imported immigrants to fill job shortages and immigrant numbers continued to grow under “family reunion” rules. As a result of the influx of immigrants many West European societies became “multi-ethnic”. Today immigrants account for about 10 percent of the total population of most European countries and up to 30 percent in some cities such as Rotterdam and Brussels. For decades policy makers assumed that immigrants would quickly adopt the mores of their host societies and there are multiple examples of upward mobility and successful integration of immigrants. But a surprising number of immigrants have proved to be “unmeltable”. Muslims, in particular, failed to assimilate in large numbers.
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The Muslim component in selected Western countries is as follows (2008):
Country Number % of Total France 6,405,779 10.0 Netherlands (estimate) 1,000,000 6.0 Belgium 374,916 3.6 Italy 1,743,786 3.0 Germany 3,046,200 3.9 Austria 344,832 4.2 Canada 2,300,000 1.9 Denmark 110,010 2.0 Ireland 84,064 2.0 Macedonia 620,015 30.0 Sweden 280,849 3.1 Switzerland 235,738 4.6 United Kingdom 1,650,057 2.7 USA (estimate) 4,000,000 1.4 Source: Pop. Data – 2009 CIA World Fact Book
Today there are 15 to 17 million Muslims in Europe, making up about 50 percent of all new arrivals in Europe.
For the most part European countries have bent over backwards to accommodate the sensibilities of the newcomers. The British pensions department has a policy of recognising (with benefits included) “additional spouses”. Immigration departments in Scandinavia adopted flexible interpretations of “family” reunion and the residential requirements to qualify for social benefits.
Demographers estimate that the Muslim population of the European Union’s existing 25 members may, on present trends, double from around 15 to17 million to around 30 million by 2025. That leaves out EU-applicant Turkey, with an almost entirely Muslim population of around 70 million.
It is not clear how many Muslims there are in Europe – or for that matter Western countries at large. In France, for instance, secular authorities never ask a religious question on a census form. Current statistics are at best only educated guess work. Extrapolating from differences in birth rates, the figure for France might rise to 20 percent in 2020. But that estimate ignores the possibility that Muslim women may have fewer babies the longer they live in France.
The great majority of Muslims in Germany have their origin in Turkey. Several opinion surveys have shown that German Turks seem to be growing more fervent in their attachment to Islam. A rising number think women should cover their heads.
In the Netherlands, the Muslim community of around 1 million originated largely from Turkey and Morocco, mostly from the poorest parts of their countries. In both groups, young people usually take spouses from the home country. Thus both groups retain strong links with their homelands. Surveys found, however, that around 37 percent of second-generation Muslims attended mosques less frequently than their parents, but still preferred to marry within their own groups. During the electoral campaign of Pim Fortuyn, who was murdered in 2002, he argued that the rise of a
111 fundamentalist subculture in the Netherlands threatened the country’s democratic values and had to be seriously addressed before it was too late. He argued that immigrant communities that refuse to align their values to those of Western democracy are ticking time bombs – and that too much stress has been placed on accommodating different values and faiths.
Most of Britain’s Muslims come from Pakistan and Bangladesh. A small proportion of the women go to work which explains why, statistically, Muslims remain at the bottom of the economic pile – compared to British Hindus and Sikhs. Yet some Muslim sub-groups, such as Ismaelis who come from South Asia via East Africa, have soared ahead, showing that Islam itself is no barrier to economic advancement.
According to several surveys, there is a clear trend amongst European Muslims to see Islam increasingly as a symbol or badge of identity. Their faith, rather than their passport or skin colour, is seen as the main thing that defines them. Islam, rather than the country or city where they live, is their true home. European Muslims claim that their experience of the “Islamic diaspora” makes them feel that the umma – worldwide Islam – tugs hardest at their heartstrings.
For the same reason as in France, the USA statistical services do not ask questions about religion. Hence it is hard to estimate the size of its Muslim population. The guesses range between 3 million and 7 million. American Muslims do not see themselves as being radically at odds with American society. Freedom to practice and preach Islam is protected by the American system. Americans are used to exuberant displays of religiosity. So the daily prostrations of a devout Muslim are less shocking to an American than to a lukewarm, secular European Christian. Hence Americans are less gloomy about Islam than Europeans. America’s free speech culture offers many opportunities for Muslims to express their opinions. The right to say almost anything on most subjects is deeply entrenched in the American political culture – in contrast to European “political correctness”.
Europe’s Muslims are not a homogeneous group. In fact they fall into at least five categories: those from Eastern Europe (Bosnia, Albania and bits of Russia); first-generation immigrants; second- or third-generation Muslims born in Europe who speak only European languages and are indistinguishable from others; converts; and those who have become largely secular. It is not easy to quantify these categories, but the secularised group is probably the smallest. According to Olivier Roy, a French academic, when Muslims are torn from their traditional moorings – customs, family life and cuisine – they tend to become more fundamentalist and in some cases fanatical. Alienated from their parents’ way of life and their host societies, young European Muslims can be easily attracted by a simple, electronically disseminated, back-to-basics version of Islam that acknowledges no national boundaries and has been disseminated with the help of plenty of Saudi oil money. It is a simplistic solution to a complicated set of challenges: the proper status of Muslim women in modern society; the conflict between pluralistic, democratic Western Society and rigid, doctrinaire, authoritarian hierarchies; the differentiation between religion and politics in Western societies; accountability to the civic society in which they live in the face of subordination to the preachings and dictates of Muslim clerics; reconciliation of allegiance to Allah as an act of faith with obligatory duty to the state as an act of reason.
Another Islam expert, Antoine Sfeir, has identified relations between the sexes as a big factor in the re-Islamisation of second-generation Muslims in Europe. Because young Muslim women often do better than men at adapting to the host society, old patriarchal structures are upset and young men acquire a strong incentive to reassert the old order.
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British specialists say groups of young, disaffected Muslims goad one another down the path to extremism. They develop a common interest with suffering Muslims across the globe. Websites and satellite television channels then supply visual images and incendiary rhetoric from any place where Muslims are fighting non-Muslims. The favourite war used to be Chechnya, then it was Iraq and later still Afghanistan. The internet is a major source of training and inspiration for militant Muslims.
These patterns of self-recruitment and self-radicalisation are a headache for security services. The target groups are recent arrivals, second-generation members of immigrant communities and converts. As long as some people feel economically deprived or socially excluded, the pool of potential killers and bombers will grow.
Many countries are tightening their immigration laws, shifting to a skills-based immigration system and setting citizenship tests for would-be immigrants. The French have banned girls from wearing veils in schools. British politicians, such as Tony Blair and Jack Straw, have denounced the veil as a symbol of separation. The old welcome-mat has been removed.
Christopher Caldwell who writes for the Financial Times as well as the Weekly Standard, and who has spent more than a decade studying European immigration patterns, has expressed deep concerns about Western Europe’s naive and lax immigration policies. In a recent book entitled Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West, he states that Europe is no match for Islamic self-confidence: “When an insecure, malleable, relativistic culture meets a culture that is anchored, confident and strengthened by common doctrines, it is generally the former that changes to suit the latter.”
The strongest challenge facing Western democracies is how to respond to the dangers of terrorist enemies within their own borders. The 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre and the 7/7 bombings in London illustrate the possibility of a “clear and present danger”. In the first instance the atrocity was initiated by people in some distant war zone who then used Hamburg, Germany, as an easy platform to launch their attack on the USA. In the second instance, a small band of British-born malcontents travelled by train from Leeds to London in order to plant bombs killing themselves and many others. They were influenced by ideas, images and interpretations of Islam that circulate electronically on a continuous basis, even if every extremist who tried to enter Britain were intercepted.
The best terrorist-hunters in Britain and elsewhere in Europe can do is to trace how disaffected people from their own tranquil suburbs form connections with ideological mentors and ultimately terrorist sponsors who live overseas and how those godfathers find recruits in Western countries.
Prospects
Which trend will prevail among the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims: violent confrontation or peaceful coexistence? Will secular-minded middle-class democrats gain ground on Islamic fundamentalists? The answer is not clear.
When the Western World faced its previous epic ideological struggle during the Cold War, which lasted half a century, it was only able to prevail after coming up with a durable strategy based on thorough study of communist ideology and tactics. That strategy was to contain the enemy’s
113 military threat while offering a better ideological alternative, based on political and personal freedom combined with widespread economic prosperity based on free trade and integration into the global economy.
It is clear that another struggle is unfolding on the Islamic front and that it requires a comparably durable strategy. This time, however, close to 20 million Muslims live in Western democracies. Another 160 million live in India. In addition, the West is saddled with a perceived bias in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – which is a major binding factor in the Muslim world.
The Western world will have to deal with its disaffected Muslim minority problem. It will require an effective ideological campaign highlighting values common to the Western and Muslim worlds. It will require an even-handed treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian problem. It will require finding effective (not contra-productive) ways of helping moderates and reformists win the theological and ideological civil battles currently taking place within the World of Islam. It can assist them in developing school curricula that emphasize critical thinking, ethics and those Islamic values that are compatible with democracy and secularism. It will have to realise that any strategy would require patience and determination. Ideological and theological struggles can last many generations.
Bibliography
Bara, Z. (2005) “Fighting the War of Ideas”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84, No. 6, pp.68-78 Caldwell, C. (2008) Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West, Doubleday David, P. (2007) “Special Report on Iran”, The Economist, July 21st, 2007, pp.3-16 David, P. (2009) “Special Report on the Arab World”, The Economist, July 25th, 2009, pp.3-16 Gibb, H.A.R. (1997) “Islam”, Encyclopaedia of the World’s Religions, Barnes & Noble, pp.166-199 Greenstock, J. (2004) “What Must be Done in Iraq”, The Economist, May 8th, 2004, pp.23-26 Grimond, J. (2003) “A Survey of Iran”, The Economist, January 18th, 2003, pp.3-16 Kepel, G. (2004) The War for Muslim Minds, Belknap Press Lewis, B. (2009) “The Arab World in the Twenty-first Century”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 88, No. 2, pp.77-88 Lichfield, G. (2008) “Special Report on Israel”, The Economist, April 5th, 2008, pp.3-16 Nasr, V. (2009) Meccanomics: The March of the New Muslim Middle Class, One World Rieffel, Lex (2004) “Indonesia’s Quiet Revolution”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 83, No. 5, pp.98-110 Rodenbeck, M. (2002) “A Survey of the Gulf”, The Economist, March 23rd, 2002, pp.3-28 Rodenbeck, M (2006) “A Survey of Saudi Arabia”, The Economist, January 7th, 2006, pp.3-12 Roy, O. (2004) Globalised Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, Columbia University Press Wright, R. (2009) “Islam’s Soft Revolution”, Time Magazine, March 30th, 2009, pp.28-32 The Economist (2003) “Dealing with Iraq”, February 15th, 2003, pp.23-25
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The Economist (2003) “The United Nations and Iraq”, February 22nd, 2003, pp.25-27 The Economist (2005) “Special Report on Muslim Extremism in Europe” July 16th, 2005, pp.25-27 The Economist (2006) “Special Report on Political Islam”, February 4th, 2006, pp.21-24 The Economist (2006) “Special Report on Dubai”, December 16th, 2006 pp.73-75 The Economist (2007) “Briefing on Turkey”, July 21st, 2007, pp.24-26 The Economist (2008) “Briefing on Afghanistan”, May24th, 2008, pp.31-32 The Economist (2008) “Briefing on Islamic Finance”, September 6th, 2008, pp.72-74 The Economist (2009) “Egypt and Global Islam”, August 8th, 2009, pp.48-49
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4. The World of Hinduism
Around 2000 BC the original Indo-European speaking, semi-nomadic barbarians who lived in the region between the Caspian and the Black Seas, the Aryans, were driven from their homeland by some natural disaster or Mongol invasions. Some tribes moved west across Anatolia and some to the east across Persia (now Iran, a cognate of Aryan) and eventually advanced still further east across the Hindu Kush Mountains into India. From the Aryans’ religious “Books of Knowledge” (Vedas), particularly the Rig Veda (Verses of Knowledge), consisting of 1017 Sanskrit poems, the early Aryan Indo-European history has been pieced together. Unlike the pre-Aryan peoples of the Indus valley who lived in citadels, the Aryans lived in tribal villages with their migrant herds of cattle, sheep, goats and domestic horses. They wielded bronze axes as well as long bows and arrows and their literature describes how they conquered the Dasas (dark-skinned slaves). The term Aryan, while primarily a linguistic family designation, had also the secondary meaning of “highborn” and “noble”. The foremost Aryan tribe was called Bharata, probably the name of its first raja (king). Each Aryan tribe was ruled by an autocratic male raja and each family was controlled by its father – the origin of the patriarchal household. They occupied and settled in the catchment area and valley of the Indus River and its seven tributaries.
The tenth and final book of the Rig Veda explains that the four great “classes” (varna) of Aryan society emerged from different parts of the original cosmic man’s anatomy: the brahmans issuing forth first, from the mouth; the kshatriyas second, from the arms; the vaishyas third, from the thighs; and the shudras last, from the feet. All rajas, who were kshatriyas by birth, fell below all brahmans, who alone were associated with the cosmic “head”.
As they expanded eastwards toward Delhi and the Gangetic plain, the Rig Vedic Indians (descendants of the Aryans), developed a range of occupations: carpenters and wheelwrights, blacksmiths and tanners, weavers and spinners, farmers and herders, who settled down to the routine of village interdependence. Each varna (class), originally meaning “covering” associated with skin covering and its varying colours had its distinguishing colour: white for brahmans, red for kshatriyas, brown for vaishyas and black for shudras. Acute colour consciousness thus developed early during India’s Aryan age and has since remained a significant factor in reinforcing the hierarchical social attitudes that are so deeply embedded in Indian civilisation.
The religion of the early Aryans centred on the worship of a pantheon of nature gods, to whom sacrificial offerings were periodically made for the good things of life and for repose thereafter. To the seeming simplicity of the Aryan nature-worshipping was added the Vedic quest for an understanding of cosmic origins and control over cosmic forces. Sacrifice had as immediate purpose to secure some divine favour, but it also had cosmic meaning in that its proper performance helped maintain the balance of order in the universe.
By the sixth century BC there were around sixteen major kingdoms and tribal oligarchies in North India: from Kamboja in Afghanistan to Anga in Bengal. The most powerful of these mahajunapadas (tribal regions) were Magadha and Kosala south and north of the Ganges River artery. The Kosala region contained the epic city of Ayodhya and the thriving river city of Kasi (later called Varanasi and then Banaras, the capital of Hindu worship). Kosala’s capital was at Sravasti near the Himalayan foothills. Magadha’s capital, Rajgir, commanded the eastern Gangetic trade and the rich mineral resources of the Barabar Hills. It became the richest and most powerful kingdom of North India. Maghada also bequeathed to the world one of its great religious philosophies: Buddhism.
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As the Aryan tribes migrated eastwards, they took with them the secrets of “Aryan civilisation” such as the manufacture of iron weapons and tools and the use of ploughs, seed and irrigation to ensure a grain surplus all year round. Hostile tribes were subdued by the northern invaders who believed the gods were on their side.
As more of the different tribal peoples were absorbed within the spreading boundaries of Aryan society, a still lower class was added. It was one whose habits or occupations were so strange and “unclean” that even shudras did not wish to “touch” them. Hence the emergence of those beyond the pale of the four–varna system: the untouchables, also called “fifths” (panchamas), or outcasts. The actual pattern of social hierarchy that emerged varied greatly from region to region as a result of Aryan and pre-Aryan interaction, e.g. in South India and Bengal.
The first imperial unification of North India was completed under Mauryan rule around 326 BC. The Mauryan Empire was divided into japana (districts) which reflected tribal boundaries and were administered by the emperor’s closest relatives or most trusted generals. The army included infantry, cavalry, chariots and nine thousand elephants. It is estimated that there were close to fifty million people in South Asia by the third century BC.
After the collapse of the Mauryan Empire, India remained politically fragmented for around five centuries. The next dynasty was the Guptas. They also established their base in Magadha where they controlled the rich iron ore veins from the Barabar Hills. Ghandra Gupta I was crowned in 320 AD (Maharajadhiraja). The Guptas gradually expanded their frontiers to the Punjab, Bengal and Kashmir. The peak of their power was attained under Chandra Gupta II (ca. 375-415). During the Gupta reign, royal support was given to Hindu, Buddhist and Jain faiths and the Hindu temple emerged as India’s classic architectural form (e.g. at Deogarth in Central India and Aihole in the south). They are characterised by their imposing towers and extravagantly ornate structures.
Commerce and Buddhism stimulated Indian interaction with China and Southeast Asia. Indian ships carried cottons, ivory, brassware, monkeys, parrots and elephants to the Middle Kingdom and brought back from China musk, woven silk, tung oil and amber. Various centres of Hindu power were established in Bali, Vietnam, Sumatra and Java.
Indian agriculture blossomed in this period, providing a rich variety of succulent produce: mango, melons, coconut, pears, plums, peaches, apricots, grapes and oranges as well as such staples as rice, wheat and sugar cane. Though meat was not widely consumed, fish played a vital role. After Skanda Gupta’s death in 467, the Gupta dynasty rapidly declined. When the Punjab was wrested from Gupta control by 500 AD, India again reverted to fragmentation.
South India displayed its own kind of “multicentre power” through many centuries. It consisted of a series of nuclear areas of village-based agricultural clusters centred around the drainage basins of the major peninsular rivers. The upland and forest clusters retained their own tribal structures. The warrior families who asserted their authority over these areas were brahman and sat-shudra transmitters of Aryan culture and Hindu civilisation. The better-known ruling families were the Pallavas, the Cholas and the Pandyas. Kanchipuram served as a major seat of control for the Pallava kings and Mahabalipuram (south of Madras) served as a major port. Much of the art and architecture of Cambodia and Java (including Angkor Watt and Borobudur) were inspired and produced by Pallava artists and craftsmen.
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(See Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India, New York, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp.24-103)
The Essence of Hinduism
Hinduism had no single founding figure like Christianity or Islam. It is a very ancient religion in which many primitive aspects survive beside highly developed philosophical systems. Broadly speaking, it is a religion of an ethnic character, unlike the more recent missionary religions such as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. Like Judaism, Hinduism is the faith of a single cultural unit. It did not, in the past, make any special attempts to attract the support of people outside the cultural community. Generally speaking, Hinduism describes a person who chiefly bases his or her beliefs and way of life on the complex system of faith and practice which has grown organically on the Indian subcontinent over a period of at least three millennia.
Hinduism is the oldest and most enduring of the Eastern group which maintains that the soul inhabits many bodies in its journey through the cosmos, until it reaches its final goal, which is described in varying terms by different sects. The corollary of this doctrine is that all life, whether supernatural, human, animal, insect, or with some sects even vegetable, is governed by the same law.
Whereas Western religions generally teach that man is a special creation, possessing an immortal soul which is denied to lower animals, Hinduism maintains that all living things have souls, which are essentially equal and are only differentiated through karma, or the effect of previous deeds, which conditions successive re-births in different types of body. This doctrine of samsara has given a very distinctive character to much Hindu thought and philosophy.
For the religiously minded Indian, the main spiritual quest for at least 2500 years has been to rise above the cycle of transmigration and to achieve union or close contact with the ultimate Being. To many Hindi sages or philosophers this amounted to complete identification with a total loss of individual personality in the divine. It was generally agreed that sacrifices and good works were not enough, but would merely result in a very lengthy residence in one of the heavens. For the ordinary worshipper that would be a desirable goal, but not possessing that finality which the truly spiritual soul desired. Various schools of philosophy identified different means of achieving the supreme goal and gave diverging interpretations of the experiences of the mystics.
For a Hindu it is not a question of great concern in which god a person believes. What is really important is that he/she should believe in the Hindu way of life and follow it to the best of his/her ability. The whole life of a Hindu is punctuated by ritual acts, ceremonies, sacraments and social customs. These refer to marriage, cremation, animal sacrifices, the pouring of ghee, recitations of verses, the use of sacred images, initiation rites, patriarchal marriage relationships and ascetic widowhood.
Although many domestic rites, the caste system, pilgrims bathing in the Ganges and sacred cattle still survive in India, new trends have appeared in the last hundred years. In the new Hinduism there is a strong sense of social purpose. Many ancient prejudices have disappeared in respect of “untouchables”, divorce and widow re-marriage, forbidding polygamy, taboos and ideas of ritual impurity. Feeding the hungry and caring for the sick is part of the social conscience in Hinduism.
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Western missionary schools played an important role in sensitising communities to many aspects of modernisation.
The old Hinduism is still alive, but it is gradually giving way to new interpretations, not by a religious revolution, but by a steady process of adaptation. (See Bashan, A.L., “Hinduism” in Encyclopaedia of World Religions, Barnes & Noble, 1997, pp.217- 254)
The Mughal Conquest
Islam and Hinduism are two entirely divergent religious ways of life. The penetration of Islam into South Asia dates back to the early 8th century when Muslim ships started calling on the western coastline of India around the mouth of the Indus River. Islam’s major invasions were only launched by the end of the 10th century from the Afghan springboard of the Khyber Pass. By then Islam was established in Persia and carried south by Mamluks, who were Turkish armed slaves. Entire tribes of Turkish nomads were driven into Persia and Afghanistan by China’s expansion to the west. The first independent Turkish Islamic kingdom was founded by a Samanid warrior slave named Alptigin, who seized the Afghan fortress of Ghazni in 962 and established a dynasty that lasted two hundred years. His grandson, Mahmud, the “Sword of Islam” led many bloody forays into India from his Ghazni perch. He descended each winter into the Punjab plains, smashing Hindu temple idols considered as abominations to Allah and looting India’s cities of as many of their jewels, specie and women as his Turkish cavalry could carry across the Afghan mountain passes. Many thousands of Hindus were slain which left a legacy of bitter Hindu-Muslim antipathy.
The plundering waves of Turko-Afghan Muslims continued their invasion of North India, first in the Punjab, then further south and east, capturing Lahore in 1186 and Delhi in 1193. Indian Buddhists were driven to Nepal and Tibet and so exiled from the land of their birth. The founding of the Mamluk dynasty transformed North India into Dar-ul-Islam (Land of Submission). The Muslim sultanate of Delhi lasted 320 years, including five successive Turko-Afghan dynasties.
Bengal declared its independence from the Delhi sultanate in 1338 in order to establish its own strand of Islam, Sufism, which it retained until the 16th century Mughal conquest. The Bengali preferred to practice Sufism, the mystic form of Islam that was more peculiarly attuned to their cultural character, heritage and religious consciousness. It appealed to the mystical passionate yearnings experienced by many Hindus and Buddhists.
In April 1526, the king of Kabul, Babur – descended from Turkish and Mongol parents – founded the Mughal Empire with Delhi and Agra as twin capitals. The Mughal Empire lasted until the end of the 18th century when it was sidelined by the British Raj.
(See Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India, Oxford University Press, New York, 1993, pp.104-134)
The British Conquest
In the age of mercantilism, the British penetration of India was led by the East India Company which operated like a state-licensed monopoly. The merchants who founded the company pooled their resources for what were large and risky ventures under protection of government charters. Starting
119 in the 1630s, it established several trading posts on the Indian coast which later became the cities of Madras, Calcutta and Bombay.
Political power initially remained in the hands of the Mughals, but the company’s textile trade rapidly expanded. It was soon augmented by the “interloper” trade of the company’s officials in partnership with Indian businessmen. Alongside the official trade of the company an enormous private business operation was developing.
Pleasing the Mogul Emperor and his local subordinates required mercurial talents of wheeling and dealing as well as buying and selling – which the British had in ample supply. A fine specimen was Thomas Pitt who understood the importance of fortifying the trading posts and their surrounding European settlements. The East India Company began to raise its own regiments from among the local warrior castes, equipping them with European weapons and subordinating them to English officers. Having begun as a trading operation, the East India Company now had its own fortified settlements, its own diplomats and even its own private army.
During the subsequent century, Britain was engaged in intermittent warfare with France. Both countries were driven by a quest for universal dominion. While Britain’s Prussian ally contained the French in Europe, the British Navy carved up their empire on the high seas, leaving scattered British armies to drive out their remaining colonial forces in Canada, the Caribbean and in the East. Britain’s success depended on its pre-eminence in shipbuilding, metallurgy and gun founding. The new alliance between science and strategy enabled Britain to traverse the oceans and establish its naval superiority.
Its commercial foothold in India was gradually strengthened by exploiting the Indian feuds. The Indians allowed themselves to be divided and, ultimately, ruled by the British.
Under the Treaty of Allahabad, the Mogul Empire granted the East India Company the civil administration – known as the diwani – of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. It gave the company the right to tax over 20 million people – a stream of revenue larger than the trading profits. The East India Company had more than 100,000 men under arms and was in a state of near perpetual warfare. What had started as an informal security force to protect the company’s trade became a progression of new battles, conquering new territory to pay for previous battles. The ratcheting up of taxes on the Indian population coincided with local famine and poverty.
In 1785 a new India Act was passed aimed at cleaning up the East India Company and to bring to an end the freebooting “nabob”. Governor-Generals were no longer company officers, but appointees of the Crown. The Earl of Cornwallis (fresh from defeat in America) was appointed to introduce a new institution called the “Indian Civil Service”, English-style private property rights and fixed landowners’ tax obligations. The effect was to strengthen the position of a rising Bengali gentry.
British power in India continued to be based on the sword. War after war extended British rule beyond Bengal – against the Marathas, the Mysone, the Sikhs and finally the Mughal Emperor himself accepted British “protection”. By 1815 around 40 million Indians were under British rule. Nominally, it was still the East India Company that was in charge. It was now the heir to the Mughals and the Governor-General was the de facto Emperor of a subcontinent.
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Great Britain was now in charge of the largest empire the world had ever seen, encompassing 43 colonies on five continents. In the words of Niall Ferguson: “They had robbed the Spaniards, copied the Dutch, beaten the French and plundered the Indians.” Now they ruled supreme. (See Niall Ferguson, op.cit., pp.33-52)
Indian nationalists have long claimed that British rule of India was good for the Brits but not good for Indians: complaining that the wealth of India was systematically being drained into the pockets of foreigners. Between 1757 and 1947 British per capita gross domestic product increased in real terms by 347 percent, Indian by a mere 14 percent. A substantial share of the profits, which accrued as the Indian economy industrialised, went to British managing agencies, banks or shareholders. The free trade imposed on India in the 19th century exposed indigenous manufacturers to lethal European competition at a time when the USA sheltered its infant industries behind high tariff walls.
It is also argued that Indian indentured labourers supplied much of the cheap labour on which the British imperial economy depended. Between the 1820s and the 1920s, close to 1.6 million Indians left India to work in a variety of Caribbean, African, Indian Ocean and Pacific colonies, ranging from the rubber plantations of Malaysia to the sugar mills of Fiji. The conditions under which they travelled and worked were often similar to those inflicted on African slaves a century earlier.
On the other side of the balance sheet were the large British investments in Indian infrastructure: irrigation, industry, railways and roads. By the 1880s the British had invested £270 million in India, not much less than 20 percent of their entire investment overseas. By 1914 the figure had reached £400 million. They created the Indian coal industry from scratch and increased the number of jute spindles by a factor of 10. There were also marked improvements in public health which increased Indian average life expectancy by eleven years. The British introduced quinine as an anti-malarial prophylactic, carried out public programmes of vaccination against small pox and laboured to improve the quality of water supplies. The British also believed that there were some advantages in setting up an incorruptible bureaucracy to serve as the Indian Civil Service. The British had called into being an English-speaking, English-educated elite of Indians, a clan of civil service auxiliaries on whom their system of administration had come to depend.
(See Niall Ferguson, Empire – How Britain Made the Modern World, Penguin Books, 2003, pp.216- 220)
Hindu-Muslim Cleavage and Partitioning
The formal roots of Indian nationalism and partitioning sentiments can, inter alia, be traced to British India’s decision to partition the Province of Bengal between Muslim and Hindu regions. In 1909 the Morley-Minto reforms provided for a limited extension of Indian participation in government and introduced separate electorates for the country’s different religious communities.
After World War I, British trained lawyer, Mahatma Gandhi, emerged as the leader of the nationalist movement. Gandhi advocated extra-constitutional, but non-violent, methods of struggle. His first civil disobedience campaign began in 1920 but ended in 1922 when violence erupted. Gandhi and his Congress Party dominated the nationalist movement for the next 30 years, supported by lieutenants Vallabhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru. Throughout the next fifteen years sporadic civil disobedience campaigns were undertaken.
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In 1935 the colonial British government introduced elected responsible government at the provincial level, based on a narrow franchise. The Congress Party agreed to participate in the ensuing election and gained 8 out of 11 provincial governments. The Muslim League, led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, did poorly. It marked the beginning of a growing rivalry between the League and Congress.
In 1939 the Congress Party withdrew from the provincial administrations in protest at the British decision to declare India a party to World War II. The Muslim League, however, co-operated with the British administration during the war and called for “independent states” in Muslim majority areas. In August 1942 Gandhi launched the “Quit India” movement to force the British to leave. In an effort to contain mass civil disobedience, the administration imprisoned thousands of Congress Party supporters, including Gandhi and Nehru.
The end of World War II saw a major upsurge in nationalist sentiments. The British Labour Government began to prepare for Indian independence. In February 1947 the British government announced its intention to withdraw from India by June 1948 and appointed Lord Louis Mountbatten as Governor-General to oversee the process. In the face of escalating communal strife, particularly between Muslim and Hindu groups, Mountbatten, after widespread consultation, recommended partitioning: a Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan. A London lawyer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, was commissioned to determine the borders. The Punjab and Bengal provinces were to be partitioned between Muslim and Hindu majority areas.
On August 15th, 1947, British India was partitioned into two independent “dominions” to be known respectively as India and Pakistan. Pakistan was to consist of two parts: West Pakistan and East Pakistan with a thousand-mile stretch of India in between!
As the appointed day of partition approached, Hindus and Muslims in the Punjab region began to commit appalling atrocities against their neighbours. Mobs rampaged through villages, destroying property and murdering indiscriminately. Rape and mutilation was common. Men killed their own wives and daughters as “pre-emptive” steps. A usually peaceful population became militant and blood thirsty. The police and army were as partisan and factionalised as the population at large. Sikhs were targeted in the Punjab by Muslims. In turn the Sikhs formed militia groups to execute revenge attacks on Muslims. In a two-way migration, millions of people moved across the borders. An estimated ten million Sikhs and Hindus came to India from Pakistan territory and six million Muslims escaped Hindu violence by moving into Pakistan. This vast impromptu migration was not anticipated. Some travelled in buses or on bullock carts, but most went on foot. Marauders constantly attacked the columns. Sometimes entire trainloads of refugees were slaughtered.
Although the populations of East and West Pakistan were Muslim, the East was mostly Bengali and the West was Punjabi – each set aside by regional identity, cultural heritage and language. Many Bengalis continued to live just across the East’s frontier in the Indian federal state of West Bengal. When the conflict between East and West Pakistan boiled over in March 1971, millions of the East’s Bengalis took refuge across the border in India – many of them Hindu Bengalis. Pakistan’s inter- ethnic conflict became a full-scale international conflict. By the end of 1971, Indian troops and planes were fighting West Pakistan’s forces. The USSR supported India and East Pakistan and the USA and China found themselves backing Pakistan.
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With the help of Indian forces, the Bengalis regained control of the East’s capital, Dacca, and declared Bangladesh an independent nation. The dominant political grouping, the Awani League, had to come to terms with the militant Mukti Bahini guerrillas who had provided a major portion of the armed forces for the nationalist movement, as well as the Biharis, a major ethnic minority in the East, which showed sympathy with the West Pakistani forces.
On December 15th, 1971, Pakistan in turn was split in two: East Pakistan became Bangladesh and West Pakistan continued to be called Pakistan.
Hinduism and Cultural Diversity
India is a unique laboratory of diversity: linguistic, religious and caste. These cleavages have all played an important role in defining areas of conflict. In some areas caste and language have proved to have similar boundaries and have been mutually reinforcing. Religion divided the population along different lines and tended to overshadow linguistic differentiation.
Indian linguistic clusters have deep roots in Indian history. As early as the 12th century, the major regional languages had not only scripts, but also scholars and literatures. In the 13th century an alien language, Persian, was introduced by the Islamic conquerors as a language of administration to supplant Sanskrit. Under the Moguls as well as under the British, linguistic frontiers were ignored in the determination of administrative regions. The first evidence of the recognition of linguistic sentiments came in 1920 when the Congress Party introduced linguistic sections in its internal organisational structure.
Linguistic cleavages paled into insignificance when the Muslim League polarised India into two religious communities, culminating in the holocaust of 1947 with 500,000 dead and 12 million refugees. The influence of religion was so strong that the decision in 1947 to make Hindi the official language for all of residual India was met with little objection in non-Hindi areas.
The excision of Pakistan removed the Hindu-Islam conflict from the centre of domestic concerns. It also brought an end to linguistic tranquillity. A cry for linguistic self-determination and the redrawing of provincial frontiers along linguistic lines was raised from all corners. Since the language of the independence movement was English, it also became the lingua franca of the new Indian elite. Though the shared use of the English language and spirit of nationalism unified the elite at the top, a contrary process was underway at other levels – expressing a new social consciousness through their own languages. It created a new market for films, literature and newspapers – all in the regional languages. The bulk of schoolchildren received their education in their own regional language.
Although approximately 40 percent of the Indian population are Hindi speaking, the balance, especially in the Dravidian zone of southern India, have developed an intense antagonism towards Hindi. The problem is further complicated by the fact that there is no consensus over what Hindi is. Purists demand a return to the Sanskrit sources, others prefer a standardisation of the Hindi of the marketplace or varying degrees of Urdu admixture. Village Hindi is a diverse series of dialects, often mutually unintelligible and far removed from the Hindi of the towns. Beyond this, there are major sub-categories in Hindi such as Rajasthani, Bihari and Punjabi.
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In 1953 a States Reorganisation Commission was established to look into the merits of linguistic boundary claims. In 1956, on the basis of the Commission’s report, a major reshuffling of the provincial boundaries took place. In 1960 the last remaining bilingual state in Bombay collapsed with its partition into Gujarat and Maharashtra provinces. Assam declared itself a unilingual state.
Caste identity has been extended over broader areas by social change, but it halts at linguistic frontiers. Marriage or kinship across the language boundary remained relatively rare. Three castes, the Brahmans, Kayasthas and Banias, favoured by a literary tradition, were the first to take advantage of British education. This resulted in their domination in the services and professional sectors, where they tended to form closed preserves, excluding members from other castes. Individual failure and frustration tend to be translated into caste terms and result in increased tension and bitterness. Elections to village councils heighten caste feelings through electoral invocations of caste loyalty. Traditionally dominant castes struggle to preserve their hegemony, the others strive to overthrow their control.
India’s diversity has come into sharper focus since independence as a result of the emotional power of sub-national sentiments and feelings of solidarity. With linguistic states a reality, linguistic loyalties have become more firmly rooted.
Since inter-ethnic conflict in South Asia does not neatly confine itself within national boundaries, India itself has to accommodate its large Bengali population in the federal state of West Bengal. The state has long been plagued by severe poverty and has given rise to both Maoist and more orthodox Communist parties.
The Fractious Nature of Hindu Politics
In view of India’s poor and fractious society, patronage politics is virtually inevitable. As a result Indian politics had become much murkier in recent years because of two factors: the use of regional caste-based parties, nakedly dedicated to delivering patronage – and the mutinous coalitions engendered thereby.
When the Congress Party returned to power in 2004 after eight years in the wilderness, it only won 145 seats out of the 522. To form a government, for which 272 seats were required – Congress had to put together the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) with 12 other parties. Putting together a coherent support base under this arrangement would have been hard enough, but the UPA was still short of a majority. So Congress recruited “outside” support from another five parties, the most important of which was a coalition of Communist parties, the “Left Front”.
This absurdly complicated and unrepresentative coalition government turned out to be more enduring than expected. Much credit must be awarded to Prime Minister Singh, but his lone effort had its limitations. The Communists proved to be the most obvious blockage, opposing every liberal proposal on principle. Like India’s vast bureaucracy, the government was forced to expend far too much energy merely to sustain itself in power.
In 2007 the Communist contingency walked out over the civil nuclear co-operation pact with the USA. The government only survived after Mr. Singh threatened to resign and the government coalition survived by recruiting a new ally, the low-caste Samajwadi Party (SP) from Uttar Pradesh.
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It is a troubling fact is that the Indian government is forced to take risks and to make concessions to get support for any bold, but essential, policy initiatives. The fragmented polity makes reaching a consensus virtually impossible. Every government is bound to be a coalition.
The Congress Party ruled India for almost four decades by relying on three main groups for support: Muslims, high-caste Hindus and Hindu dalits (“untouchables”). The Congress Party also relies on a residual fondness for the Gandhi family. But Mrs. Gandhi’s son, 38-year-old Rahul Gandhi, does not appear to display obvious leadership qualities. The Congress Party does not have a clear-cut ideological base to unite its squabbling factions.
The BJP is the only major alternative source for coalition building. It is built on a base of about 15 percent of Indian voters – typically high-caste and from the north – who feel attracted to its Hindu- chauvinist creed, known as Hindutva, or “Hinduness”. It occupies the right-of-centre nationalist stance, but has recently relinquished overt stress on its Hindutva image in order to avoid offending potential Muslim support.
Indians are proud of their democracy. It has been interrupted only once, in 1975, by Indira Gandhi’s 21-month state of emergency. At the next opportunity India’s voters threw out Mrs. Gandhi and her Congress Party for the first time in its history. They thereby indicated the importance of timely elections. India’s Election Commission enjoys much status and effective power. It can, and does, remove any official suspected of undue bias. Every five years India holds a reasonably orderly and fair election. Its 29 states do the same, according to their own electoral calendars. These must be considered significant accomplishments.
The Indian political scene is a kaleidoscope of constantly shifting coalitions. It reflects the highly fragmented structure of the complex Indian society influenced by region, religion, caste, language, ideology, traditions, loyalties and constantly changing public opinion. It imposes very demanding challenges on its leaders to muster enough support to move the country forward.
Democracy’s Drawbacks
India’s major obstacles are well-known: a lousy infrastructure, bumbling and burdensome regulation and restrictive labour laws. But its reform efforts seem to be perpetually stalled in political recriminations and horse-trading.
Delicate coalition arrangements have kept Manmohan Singh in office as Prime Minister since 2004. A co-ordination committee was set up between the left-of-centre Congress Party and its coalition partners (the United Progressive Alliance or UPA) on the one side and the Left Front of Communists and other left-wing parties on the other.
As finance minister in the 1990s, Manmohan Singh pushed through the measures that kick-started reform in India. To succeed he needed the support of the Left Front. Hence, Singh introduced a measure that guaranteed 100 days’ employment to every household in India’s poorest districts to appease the Left Front. Much of the money, as much as 1 percent of GDP by some estimates, has been wasted or stolen. But the list of what Singh was prevented from doing is much longer. Progress in liberalising India’s notoriously rigid labour laws is a key political battleground. Any company with more than 100 employees cannot make redundancies without obtaining approval from local labour boards. According to the Left Front this protects workers from unscrupulous employers. In fact, it
125 makes employers wary of taking on new staff, opening new factories or growing beyond the threshold of 100. It protects unionised labour at the expense of those not in work. The Left Front benefits from the system in West Bengal and Kerala, the two biggest states where Communists are strong. Those who are losing out as a result of unreformed labour laws are hundreds of millions of people who are now marginally employed in the countryside – despite the booming labour-hungry textile industry.
India’s antiquated laws are preventing India from exploiting the textile boom – in contrast to China’s successful expansion of its textile industry. India is also losing out in terms of direct foreign investment. China attracted $60 billion in 2004 alone and benefited because of technology, expertise and marketing relationships that this money represents.
One chief reason for the discrepancy is that India imposes caps on Foreign Direct Investment in a host of economically important but politically sensitive sectors: insurance, aviation, coal mining, media, retailing, etc. Direct foreign ownership in retailing is banned, which explains why even Delhi’s smartest shopping areas are scruffy and chaotic. The Left Front is violently opposed to lifting the rules for FDI.
The recalcitrance of the Left Front and their pivotal position in the coalition severely tied Mr. Sing’s hands. The same applies to privatisation, or its younger sibling, disinvestment, involving the selling of minority stakes in state-controlled companies. The coalition was prevented by the Left Front from privatising nine so-called “crown jewels”, or leading state-owned companies – most of which are loss-making operations. Nothing could be done since 2004 to reduce the mountain of subsidies that distorts the Indian economy. These subsidies consume a shocking 14-15 percent of GDP.
Worst of all could be the heavy hand of bureaucracy. The “inspector raj”, the “licence raj” and the “permit raj” are kept alive by the left-wing members of the coalition. It lives on in the cascading excise and sales taxes, one of the biggest handicaps facing manufacturers. It is also reflected in the chronic budgetary deficits of around 8 percent per annum. Much of the deficit goes into interest payments (40 percent of recurrent spending), defence, subsidies and civil service wages and pensions. It leaves little scope for capital investments to reduce the infrastructure deficit.
Chronic Intergroup Conflict and Violence
India is a pluralistic country where sub-national solidarity patterns rival the commanding loyalty which the state itself is able to generate. These solidarity patterns have been produced by India’s convoluted history and are based upon shared religion, language, ethnic identity, race, caste or region. Historically, in some situations or regions of India, it led to the constitution of autonomous political communities such as Pakistan in 1947 and Bangladesh in 1971. Today India still faces the fall-out or remaining conflicting solidarity patterns in Kashmir, on its frontiers with Pakistan and on its north-eastern frontiers in Assam and Bihar. In many ways India remains a veritable compound where some of the most durable and persistent cleavages which cause men to rise up against other men are piled up within the confounds of a single political system. It produced a horde of peasant revolutionaries, regional separatists, low-caste champions and Muslim jihadists. India has a much larger conflict potential than is commonly supposed.
In the recent past several troubling “hot spots” erupted. Towards the end of November 2008 an outrageous terrorist attack was carried out in the commercial heart of Mumbai by Pakistan-based
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Islamist militants that indiscriminately killed 180 people, including foreign tourists and businessmen. India’s response was mercifully restrained – possibly because Indians have long been used to conflict and terror.
Even before the Mumbai terrorist attacks, 2008 had been a violent year. In Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Delhi, dozens of people were killed in summer bombings by a terrorist group. They seem to have sprung from a long campaign by Pakistan and Bangladeshi militants to stir revolt amongst India’s 150 million Muslims. Poor and often marginalised, they have many grievances. The Indian Mujahedeen circulated a list of allegedly state-sanctioned crimes against Muslims and went on to say: “If you still think that the arrests, expulsions, sufferings, trials and tribulations inflicted on us will not be answered back, then here we remind you ... those days are gone.”
Apart from Kashmir, which carries the threat of an international conflict, religious violence appears to be the most troublesome of India’s conflicts. The rise of the BJP is symptomatic of the rise of Hindu consciousness. It advanced from the Ayodhya mosque issue into a widespread sense of animosity against Muslims. Under Vajpayee, the BJP also became known for its liberal economic management and many of its leaders are less Hinduist than nationalist. But the Hindu fanatics are strongly based in BJP-ruled Gujarat, one of India’s most prosperous areas. Also in BJP-ruled Orissa there is an ongoing campaign against Christians, in which many Christian houses and churches have been torched by Hindu fanatics.
In most of India, Hindus, Muslims and Christians live together peacefully. Secular Indians also constitute a numerous category. But the conflict pattern seems to have been set: terrorism by aggrieved Muslims drawing a violent response from Hindus. Kashmir is India’s only Muslim majority state with an ever-present potential for pro-independence protests.
India’s north-eastern states are among India’s poorest and most rebellious. In Manipur, on the border with Myanmar, there are more than 20 tribally based separatist groups. The army’s counter- insurgency strategy in Manipur and across the north-east has been to bribe the insurgents to keep quiet and to quash those who refuse to co-operate. India has made major investments in the region’s road network to boost its economy.
The Maoist insurgency, known as the Naxalites in the West Bengal area, has formed the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Its influence has spread to 220 of India’s 611 districts of which 76 are considered “seriously affected”. The Naxalites’ stronghold is in the roadless forests of Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra where they hide an army of 12,000 ragged revolutionaries. They crop up wherever there are local grievances, thriving in poor and crowded parts of Uttar Pradesh (UP), Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, where the district administrations are weakest. They represent a law-and-order problem which can only be solved by the Chinese formula: rapid economic development.
Economic development has already lessened India’s caste divisions. Despised dalits have migrated to India’s cities where the caste system has diminished. It only survived in the marriage market and advertisements for a spouse. This centuries-old separation will not die soon, but the urban trend is against endogamy. Some observers predict that as caste stratification reduces with economic development, religious conflict may increase.
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International Perspective
What sort of rising power is India? Until recently India had little interest outside Asia. Its foreign service is still small, with around 600 diplomats. Its foreign trade, though rapidly growing is still relatively small. But like China, India is developing foreign policy to meet its economic needs: chiefly to access natural resources and foreign markets.
In April 2008 India held a summit in Delhi for 14 African leaders. Its trade with Africa is half the size of China’s, at around $30 billion. The summit was dominated by private companies which are leading India’s overseas investments. This helps to ensure that India escapes much of the opprobrium heaped on China for consorting with dictators. But India is as pragmatic as China. It trades with Myanmar, which has oil and gas that India needs. It also trades with Iran, with which it is negotiating to build a $7.5 billion gas pipeline.
India’s major foreign headache is its own messy regional environment, especially Pakistan which is one of the most worrisome power kegs in the world. India clearly is deeply concerned about Pakistan’s problems. After the Mumbai bombings, India did not accuse the Pakistan government. It did not threaten Pakistan with a military reprisal. It did not withdraw from a four-year diplomatic effort to “normalise” its relations with Pakistan. Kashmir remains a sticking point.
India and Pakistan both claim all of Kashmir. India controls the rich valley of Kashmir and Pakistan a poorer portion. On both sides leaders have mentioned the possibility of formalising the existing divide as a “soft border”.
But India also has a long history of meddling in Pakistan’s politics. Bangladesh is, to India, a semi- hostile nation of 153 million delta-dwellers under military rule. Illegal Bangladeshi migrants are a constant source of tension in India’s north-eastern state of Assam. During floods in the delta, millions of Bangladeshi seek refuge in India. But South Asia is the least integrated region in the world. Trade between its members accounted for less than 2 percent of their combined GDP in 2007.
Two-way trade between India and China climbed from $2 billion in 2002 to $38 billion in 2007. It represented a small portion of China’s trade, but formed an encouraging basis for a relationship between the two countries that fought a border war in 1962 and which are still claiming portions of each other’s territory.
India’s armed forces are, like its economic progress, at least a decade behind China’s. India also spends less than half of what China spends on defence. But India does have one important advantage over China. It is in the way much of the world perceives it: as well-intentioned and democratic; chaotic, but not inscrutable and malign. With its huge population, India has an important strategic role to play in the modern world. Hopefully that role would be a benevolent one to the interests of the free world.
Prospects
India’s main challenge in the next few decades lies on its domestic front. It has to lift the bulk of its huge population out of abject poverty and provide the necessary quality of public services and the enabling policy environment for its economy to grow.
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Nandan Nilekani, a prominent young Indian businessman (co-founder of Infosys, the country’s second largest IT company) recently wrote Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation – an interesting analysis of India’s prospects. The first part of the book explains why democratic, English- speaking India is starting to achieve its potential and how that could lead to a globally influential position for the country. The second catalogues the alarming reasons why the country could still fall apart.
Nilekani believes India now stands evenly balanced between the reluctance to change in the face of immense challenges on the one hand and the possibilities that could arise out of tackling these issues head-on. India will either become a country that greatly disappoints when compared with its potential, or one that surpasses all expectations.
India has already taken some steps to reduce the dead weight of bureaucracy with its near-infinite paperwork and corruption, to maintain its food security, to cut its patronage-based subsidy system, to build an integrated national gas grid to transport India’s growing supply of relatively clean natural gas, to deregulate its labour market, to strengthen its “deliberative democracy” and to bridge the yawning gap between rich and poor.
Unfortunately no outline has been provided of the steps to be taken to transform Indian politics into a reliable vehicle for reform. India’s economy is the vehicle required to transport its people to a better future with better schools, health services, housing, job opportunities and a higher standard of living. It requires a sustained high rate of economic growth. As long as that happens, India’s emergence will continue. Bibliography
Bashan, A.L. (1997) Hinduism, Encyclopaedia of the World’s Religions, Barnes & Noble Ferguson, Niall (2004) Empire – How Britain Made the Modern World, Penguin Books, New York Nilekani, N. (2009) Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation, Penguin Books, London Wolpert, S. (1993) A New History of India, Oxford University Press, New York
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5. The World of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism
The three belief systems predominating in South East Asia, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, differ fundamentally from the Abrahamic monotheistic religions. Their teachings resemble a philosophy more than a religion. However, much depends upon the way the underlying precepts are defined. Each of these belief systems has its own ontological explanations as a confirmation about the wisdom of its teachings on the nature of reality; its own cosmology in terms of which the origins or beginnings of reality or nature can be understood; its own teleological views of the destiny of all living things; and its own prescriptions of how the individual devotee can experience the revelations made by the belief system.
Buddhism is a name given comparatively recently by Westerners to the vast synthesis of teachings more than 2500 years old, attributed to a man called Siddhattha, a member of the Gotama family, who was to become the supreme Buddha. He lived among the Sakyan clan in the foothills of Nepal which was part of India. In his own days, the teachings of the “Sage of the Sakyans” were known as Dhamma (Sanskrit “Dharma”) meaning a description of what is right and what ought to be.
I.B. Horner, in his essay on “Buddhism: the Theravada” in the Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions, says that religion is perhaps not a very good term to use in connection with Buddhism since it recognises no God or godhead. Life here on earth is not regarded as a preparation for eternity, but as a discipline for governing man’s attitude to the here and now, the present conditions, and, if properly and diligently carried out, will lead gradually but surely to what is best, the highest good.
Over the centuries Buddhism split into several strands, the most important of which were the Therevada and the Mahayana branches. The former is the original format directly descended from the times of the Founder in India. Its basic precepts are closely related to the Indian cultural environment from where it spread into Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. These Buddhists regard the Pali Tipitaka as the source not only for a right and skilled method of the conduct of life but also for their spiritual aspirations. The Mahayana branch took firm root in China, Japan, Tibet and Mongolia. They have much in common with Theravada but differ in respect of the recognition of Bodhisattvas (beings set on Enlightenment) and Buddhas.
The Teachings of Buddha
The life of Siddhattha (Sanskrit Siddhartha) began as a member of a family of nobles and warriors. His mother died a week after he was born. He was brought up by his aunt (foster mother) Mahapajapati and lived in luxury until he was twenty nine. He married a beautiful Sakyan girl who bore him a son, Rahula (meaning “bond”). He abandoned his sense-pleasured environment to find his Nirvana – the sorrowless, undying, stainless, undecaying world of Enlightenment or Awakening. After several years of austerity and suffering Buddha Gotama found his Night of Enlightenment or Awakening and he became a sammasambuddha, a fully self-Awakened One, perfectly equipped to teach the eternal Dharma, setting out his precepts of right conduct, honourable, virtuous, just and good.
He delivered his teachings to those around him and soon found a growing following. His devotees were ordained by cutting their hair and beard and by wearing yellow robes. They set up monasteries where the teachings of the Buddha were recited: it is by denying oneself that self is
130 found. For about 45 years after the Night of Awakening, Buddha Gautama continued to teach an ever-increasing number of followers, men and women, lay and monastic, royal and common, while he toured North India. He spoke on many subjects, often illustrated by similes. He presented himself as a man, neither a god nor a creator, nor a myth or legend. The purpose of his quest was to find Nirvana. When he was over eighty years of age, he entered parinirvana, the final waning-out and ending. After his death, his place as Way-shower was taken not by any one monk, but by Dharma.
Buddha set his “wheel of the law” (dhamma) in motion in about 527 BC when he delivered his first sermon after achieving Enlightenment. That sermon on the four noble truths embodied his message and was to become the philosophical core of Therevada (Teaching of the Elders) Buddhism.
The first noble truth was “suffering” (Dukkha) and how all existence was inexorably bound up with it: from birth to death, through sickness and old age, sorrow was everywhere, gaining poignance in separation from those we love, intensified by proximity to those we hate; no facet of life could escape it. The second noble truth was “ignorance” (avidya), the basic cause of suffering. The root of suffering lies in ignorance of the fundamental nature of reality. Buddha spent much of his wandering years trying to understand the nature of reality. He explained in his sermon at Sarnath that had we the wisdom to understand reality’s soulless, transient misery, we would be able to elude or diminish suffering. Buddha suggested abandonment of the passions of sense organs and cravings which chain us to the wheel of cyclical suffering, reborn and redying. Buddha prescribed as his third noble truth that any “ill” which was understood could, in fact, be cured. The fourth and final of the Buddha’s truths was the noble eightfold path to the elimination of suffering: to hold, practice and follow right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right meditation. The difficulty, of course, was in properly defining “right”. But Buddha taught that if one followed the eightfold path without misstep, the goal of nirvana (which literally meant “the blowing out” as of a candle’s flame) could be achieved and the pain of suffering would finally be overcome. Nirvana was thus the Buddhist equivalent of moksha, a “paradise” of escape rather than pleasure.
The Buddha spent the next forty-five years of his life teaching these four noble truths to disciples who gathered around him in such numbers that he established a monastic “order” (sangha) which continued to grow and to spread throughout the world after his death. Initially only men could join the sangha and the vow of chastity (brahmcarya) was as important as those of non-violence (ahimsa) and poverty (aparigraha) – three vows that would become integral to Hindu concepts of piety (all three were taken by Gandhi during the latter half of his life). Nuns were also admitted to the sangha, but he warned against the nature of female influence upon men. His foremost disciple, Ananda, warned followers to “keep alert” in the company of women!
All members of the sangha are expected to pursue a rigorous course of “right discipline” (sila), yogic concentration and thoughtful study in their search for nirvana. Not only did they have to abandon all family bonds and prospects of progeny, but they were enjoined daily to beg for their food, bestowing “merit” upon those who placed rice in their bowls. With heads shaved, the saffron-robed, barefoot disciples of the Buddha marched the length and breadth of the Gangetic plains and beyond, teaching his message of moderation, non-violence and love for all creatures. The idea of monasticism achieved such popularity that it attracted religious leaders in other parts of the world, spreading to the West, to the Near East and to Europe, wandering north and east to China and Japan.
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The Buddha had never regarded his words as sacrosanct or held that his teachings must be believed as a whole, taken on trust or repeated faultlessly by his disciples on pain of incurring blame or ineffectualness. He advocated each person investigating and testing the Teachings for himself. But the Buddha still maintained that there is One Sole Way for the purification of beings and for overcoming that covetousness and dejection rooted in the world of the senses, which Buddhism teaches them how to break free of. Narrow and straight is the Way that must be followed for the escape into the undying and unchanging. Though Buddhas can point out the Way, each person must discover it anew for himself. If he does not put his whole energy into the struggle, he will fall short of his aim. No one can purify another, it is for each aspirant, by his own energy, efforts, striving and diligence to walk on the Way leading to the bliss of emancipation from the ubiquity of impermanence.
Branches of Buddhism
At the time of the Founder there were no known materials in India suitable for writing or engraving anything more than the briefest proclamations. As a result many of his sayings, utterances and discourses had to rely on human memory and word-of-mouth transfer. So for many centuries the teachings of the Buddha were carried in the memories of his disciples and their disciples in a long succession, or various successions of teachers and pupils. Divergence of opinion was inevitable leading to the emergence of various “schools” or sects in subsequent centuries – most residing in different monastic centres and localities.
To reconcile different interpretations of the true Dharma, the First Council was held by hundreds of disciples at Rajagaka, shortly after the Teacher’s passing away. His Dharma was recited out loud so as to come to agreement on the accuracy of the memory and to establish the genuine version to be preserved, learnt, mastered and followed. In time several “baskets” were assembled of the Teachings, believed to have been uttered by the Buddha and by his monastic disciples. Three of these “baskets” constitute the Tipitjaka or collection of canonical written texts which goes by the name Therevada –the doctrine, speech or profession of the Elders. In time several Therevada Councils were held with the object of “purifying” the records – at first spoken but later written down. The Sixth Council was held in Rangoon in 1956.
A different branch of Buddhist thought is called Mahayana, or “Great Vehicle”. The concept of vehicle represents the raft or ship that carries followers across the ocean of this world of suffering to the “beyond” of salvation or nirvana. The Mahayana school of Buddhist thought distinguish themselves from the Hinayana, meaning “inferior vehicle”. The northern half of the Buddhist world, including Buddhists in Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea and Japan, are mostly Mahayanists. The south is dominated by the Theravadins, one of the traditional sects of the Hinayana and their form of Buddhism is the national religion of Ceylon, Burma and Siam. Other Hinayana sects disappeared when the Muslims swept into Northern India 700 years ago and destroyed its flourishing Buddhist monasteries. Its persecution against centres of Buddhist monasticism was so unrelenting that the religion of Buddha was sent into exile from the land of its birth.
The Mahayana tenets of Buddhism spread in South East Asia at the same time as the beginning of the Christian era. It gathered momentum in the first post-Christian centuries. Edward Conze, in “Buddhism: The Mahayana” in the Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions, p.293, lists three parallels between the Mahayana and Christianity.
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First, loving kindness and compassion as a virtue. Secondly, bodhisattvas which calls for the sacrifice of lives for the welfare of all. Thirdly, an eschatological interest in the “second coming” of the Buddha. Each of these teachings is closer to the spirit of early Christianity than it is to the older Buddha doctrines. There are also verbal coincidences between the Mahayana and the Christian Scriptures. Conze speculates that the Mahayana originated in the south of India which was in close trading relations with the Roman Empire. In North West India, the second centre of original Mahayana Buddhism was also the area where traces of the successor states of Alexander the Great kept open a constant channel for Hellenistic and Roman influences. Most of the Mahayana literature was composed in Sanskrit, but also in Chinese, Tibetan and Central Asian languages.
Several offshoots of Buddhism developed in India and elsewhere. Janaism practiced ascetism, self- torture and even death by starvation. Its central doctrine is that all of nature is alive: everything from rocks and earthworms to gods have some form of “soul” called jiva. All jiva is eternal. Also central to Janaism is the concept of non-violence (ahimsa). Thanks to Janaism, ahimsa became a significant aspect of Hinduism – all following the Buddhist prohibition of killing any living creature. The Janaist guru taught that “... all things breathing, all things existing, all things living, all beings whatever, should not be slain, or treated with violence, or insulted, or tortured, or driven away”. Like Buddhism, Janaist philosophy soon acquired all the characteristics of a religious faith, practiced by an order of male monks, joined later by nuns and a supportive lay community. The Janaist community, centred in Gujarat refrained from agriculture, but turned to commerce and banking. They became wealthy and remained a mercantile community. Gandhi revived the “fast-into-death” as a political weapon.
Buddhism in China
The arrival of Buddhism in China was a concomitant of the expansion of Indian culture into Central Asia at a time when Chinese political and commercial connections with that area increased. A number of prosperous city states had arisen in the watersheds of the great rivers. The source of their prosperity was the trade between China, India and the Roman Empire. Central Asian art combined Hellenistic, Indian and Persian elements, but the Indian cultural influence was the strongest. Buddhist monks moved back and forth, travelling with the traders’ caravans.
The Chinese terminus was the city of Tun Huang. It was said that thirty-six languages were spoken at the market place. The penetration of Buddhism into China began in earnest with the arrival of translator-missionaries around AD150, mostly Central Asians. Assisted by Chinese monks and laymen they translated the Buddhist texts into Chinese. With the Han dynasty crumbling, thoughtful Chinese embraced the exotic Buddhist doctrines and spread Buddhism along the Yangtze valley. By AD300 Buddhism became the dominant faith of China. Different schools of interpretation developed in search of the true meaning of the scriptures. During the 5th century Buddhism completed its domination of Chinese religious life. It was patronised by the kings of several Chinese principalities and the majority of the population adhered to Buddhism. Cave-shrines were constructed at Yün- kang near the Great Wall and employed thousands of families. Dozens of caves were cut out of a cliff face and sculptures were carved out of the walls, ceilings and pillars. Royal favour was lavished on teachers at the many schools and monasteries. Chinese Buddhism reached its prime in the 7th century. Thousands were taught at Buddhist schools and many distinct sects emerged. Several Emperors were Buddhists or favourable to Buddhism.
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In 845, Buddhism was attacked by Taoists. Temples and libraries were destroyed but the discovery of the technique of block-printing had stimulated the printing of the scriptures. Buddhism again flourished under the Sung dynasty in the 11th to 13th centuries.
The Mongols who ruled China during the 13th and 14th centuries adopted a Tibetan variety of Buddhism. They patronised Buddhism lavishly. The Manchu dynasty (1644-1911) also favoured the Lamaist version of Buddhism and published scriptures in Chinese, Tibetan and Manchu. In 1756 there were 5 million monks in a population of around 500 million.
Buddhism’s main religious rival was Taoism. The superstitious elements of both are similar: concerned with magical powers and miracles. Both preach detachment and rising above worldly affairs. Buddhism starts from an analysis of the mind. Taoist doctrine centres on a cosmology – asking questions about the beginning or prior cause of every beginning – such as something supernatural. These two religions have remained in opposition throughout the ages.
But Buddhism’s most formidable enemy is the earthly literate classes. The literati’s basic philosophy is an ideal of worldly happiness in a well-run state where everyone fulfils his social duties. Other classes have the duty to produce goods and services and pay taxes – not to live as celibates in a life of poverty where they could produce no commodities and could pay no taxes. They felt Buddhists were radically subversive making light of success in this world turning men’s thoughts away from producing towards spiritual realms. Buddhism is not likely to survive the growing secular trends in China – least of all the onslaught of modern science.
Richard H. Robinson describes the impact of Chinese Buddhism as follows: “Chinese Buddhism is entitled to a place of honour among the world’s faiths for many reasons. Its devotees have been numerous and have exemplified the varieties of religious experience on a wide scale. It counts many saintly men among its followers, both past and present. Its monuments in literature and art are imposing. It is both the most distinguished offshoot of Indian Buddhism, and the parent of Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese Buddhism. And, even in its present weakness, it is in a position to contribute to the religious life of world civilisation.” (R.H. Robinson, “Buddhism in China and Japan” in R.C. Zaehner (ed), Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions, Barnes & Noble, New York, 1988)
Buddhism in Japan
Japanese Buddhism does not differ much from Chinese Buddhism in doctrine, but its institutions and social role are different. Japanese Buddhism also succeeded in meeting the impact of the modern world and westernisation more successfully than Chinese Buddhism. In Japan the Buddhist sects are corporations owning land and temples. Allegiance is hereditary giving Buddhism an enhanced durability.
Buddhism first came to Japan by way of Korea. Various Korean princes sent gifts and images to the Japanese imperial court. Buddhist monks also played an important part in the imperial administration. Monks served as engineers in building roads, bridges, dikes and irrigation systems. They also served as clerks and scribes.
In time Buddhism became an established church. All families were required to register at their local temple. Buddhism responded to Western influence by learning both from Christianity and secular
134 scholarship. At universities modern critical techniques are applied and contemporary Western currents of thought are debated.
Japan is predominantly a Buddhist country. It has retained its classical culture and has assimilated modern civilisation with outstanding skill. Buddhism is as securely entrenched as Christianity in England.
Taoism
Taoism is a religion as well as a philosophy. It gradually came to the fore in the period 450-220BC, arising from ancient myths and practices. The famous Tson Yen, a prominent figure in an academy of philosophers called the academy of the Chi-gate, was the first to formulate a Chinese “scientific” view of the universe as a system based on two universal energies – Yin (dark, female) and Yang (light, male), combined with five moving forces or elements (wu-shing).
The majority of scholars of this academy belonged to several Taoist schools that followed the doctrines of Yang Chu who advocated the concept of individual salvation, i.e. keeping out of harm’s way. Yang Chu mixed his ideas with ancient physical theories about “fine parts” connected with Ch’i which means air or breath. Ancient Chinese views were held that air was the physical basis of the universe acting through the agency of the “fine parts”. These, the subtlest parts of the air, were believed to be the essence of all life – for instance, being embedded in the five species of grain and by being eaten these “fine parts” were taken into the human body. Accumulating these “fine parts” within one’s body preserves and prolongs life. Numerous practices were developed in Taoist circles in order to accumulate “fine parts” in the body and so to obtain immortality.
The School of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu
This school of thought, known as “Mysterious Learning” developed the theory of Tao as the fundamental basis of all being in the 3rd and 4th centuries. It is the source of all being , and not- being. This not-being is described as emptiness or oneness, making Tao universal, all-pervading, all- embracing and indestructible. To avoid death and annihilation, nothing was more efficacious than to become like Tao or to unite oneself with Tao. Because Tao was emptiness, it was also silent, retiring and clear. Therefore, if one wanted to be like Tao one had to become silent, to retire from worldly affairs and empty of all personal desires. The sages of this school lived like hermits in rural retirement. Unification with Tao could be achieved by deep thinking and meditation. Throughout Chinese history, advanced thinkers were attracted by the philosophy of Taoism. All being originated from not-being and all beings must finally revert to not-being. All movement and existence originates from a silent, unmoving background to which it inevitably returns. Tao is the basis of every possible movement – it is the Way. The ancient goddess, the progenitor of all beings, is supplemented by the philosophical term Tao.
Although Tao is emptiness, not-being and above all, non-action, it is not without its efficacy which is Te (Virtue). Although Tao is not-being, the mysterious power of Tao is the potentiality of all-being. Tao produces and Te rears all beings. It is by Te that Tao becomes manifest as the unifying One, the unity behind the multiplicity of beings.
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The actual process of living depends on the harmonious binding of Yin breath with Yang breath. But the Yang principle has to be increased and the Yin principle be suppressed. However, this controversy was never resolved.
Immortality to the ancient Chinese always meant physical immortality. The Western concept of spiritual mortality was unknown to them until they came into contact with Buddhism. After his death, they believed man leaves his old body and soars off to the spheres of happiness.
Taoists believed in two kinds of practices to prolong life: religious – the observation of commandments, moral conduct, prayer, incantations; physical – diets, medicines, chemicals, breathing methods, gymnastics, etc.
The political theories of Taoism were quite unique. They believed the Emperor should refrain from governmental affairs and occupy himself with meditation and the purification of himself in order to unify with Tao. The government was under the guidance of an old wise Prime Minister, well versed in all the ways of Tao. He should practice non-action so that there is nothing that is not well governed. The government of the people should be such that one did not even know there were rulers. Hence the Emperor was to be prevented from interfering in the administration of the Empire (this theory sounds very much like John Locke’s advice that “government governs best that governs the least”!)
Revisions of Classic Taoism
In the year 470 one of the Emperors of the Liu-Sung dynasty created a new “Academy of General Learning” which introduced Taoism as one of the main subjects of study. The representatives of this school were literati who closely linked their Taoist philosophy with the tenets of Confucian thought – the traditional philosophy propagated by the literati. Tao was placed second, after T’ien (meaning “Heaven”). If therefore someone is going to explain Tao, he first explains T’ien and then follows the explanation of Tao and Te.
This group of scholars considered Confucius as the greatest sage of all ages and therefore tried to combine Taoism and Confucianism. Confucius, as the sage, was identical with “not-being”, but since “not-being” could not be made the subject of instruction, they felt bound to be dealing with “being”. Hence they revived classic Taoist philosophy with a new interpretation based on a link between Taoist and Confucian thought.
The new interpretation was tinged with the general spirit of the period and the class-mentality of the literati. Stress was laid on “oneness” as the natural justification of monarchic leadership. They argued that “... the many cannot be governed by the many since it is the supremely solitary who governs the many ... activity cannot be controlled by activity ... he who is stable and single controls the world’s activities ... in order that the many may be equally sustained ... the ruler must to the highest degree maintain his oneness”.
The new interpretation taught that Tao cannot produce anything because it is not-being. It does not cause the gods to be divine, because they are divine of themselves. Not only is it that not-being cannot become being, but also being cannot become not-being. Being exists eternally. All things spontaneously produce themselves and do not issue from anything else. The relative positions of ruler and subject, superior and inferior, hand and foot, conform to the natural principle of Heaven
136 and are not really caused by men. Servants must simply accept their lot and assist each other without dissatisfaction.
This new interpretation was fundamentally different from the almost anarchic views of classic Taoism. It also rejects the insistence on non-activity (wu-wei) of classical Taoism. Folding one’s hands does not produce anything worthwhile.
The new Taoist philosophy gave rise to a new movement among literati which was called “following nature”. It inspired artists to produce outstanding works of poetry and painting. Taoism was merged with Confucianism into what was known as Neo-Confucianism.
Through the centuries, Taoism underwent many changes, mostly influenced by fads and superstitions amongst the common folk. Taoist canon the Tao-tsang emerged with the technology of block-printing in the first half of the 15th century. It consisted of hundreds of works arranged in three sections in imitation of the Buddhist Tripitaka, corresponding to the “Three Domains of Purity”. The Tao-tsang became the most important source work for all aspects of Taoism.
Taoism was gradually absorbed in the vast sea of popular religion in China – a complex of superstitions and practices. From time to time these cults have been branded as heretical and were outlawed. This led to these cults further splintering into many little groups hidden in the mountainous regions of the vast countryside of China. Taoism was kept alive despite sporadic efforts to exterminate “superstitions”.
The Secret Societies
Since the end of the 13th century a noticeable difference between the Taoism of the South and that of the North emerged. The southern sects were dominated by secret societies built around secretive “celestial masters” who were often practitioners of magic arts and sorcerers or exorcists of “evil spirits”. In the North several sects developed, combining elements of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. They played a role in defending the realm against invasions of the Tartars and the Mongols.
Taoism also played a leading part in the secret societies which dominated political movements from 1644 to 1911. During the 20th century several secretive sects such as the “Society of the Tao and Te” were established which operated over a vast area in Northern China. They worshipped a Taoist god T’ai-i but their eclectic theology also enlisted the names of Confucius, Lao-tzu, Buddha as well as the symbols of Christianity and Islam. They emphasised the community of Heaven and Man in matters of the spirit and the brotherhood of man in earthly matters. It later assumed the name of the “Universal Red Swastika Society” and carried on the work of the Red Cross.
After the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 the secret societies seemed to hold the real power in China. They practiced gangsterism on a large scale, filling important positions with their partisans and terrorising the people. When Mao Zedong came to power in 1949, one of the first measures was to exterminate these degenerate organisations. Large numbers apostatised, particularly those identified with Chiang Kai-shek.
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Taoism Today
Werner Eichhorn writes that Taoism is by no means defunct as a religion. It is as much alive as ever. But it is a peculiarly Chinese religion and was never propagated among non-Chinese peoples. It remains an integral part of the Chinese way of life. It makes a direct appeal to the innate love of the Chinese for the beauty of their landscape. Taoism was always a worship of Nature within and without man and an attempt to bring both into harmony with each other. The Taoists believe the way of Nature should not be obstructed, but requires mankind to live in harmony with Nature. These sentiments have always been reflected in their traditional temples, architecture, artistry and lifestyles. Temples are now being repaired and cult images are being protected. Taoism is once again officially recognised and allowed to re-open their monasteries and national organisations. It is believed that Taoism is a force for good: promoting peaceful coexistence and fair social conditions for everyone. In Taiwan Taoism is the leading religion. (See Werner Eichhorn, “Taoism” in Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions, op,cit. pp.374-392)
Confucianism
When the Chinese seek answers related to mystical philosophy or religion, they turn to Taoism or Buddhism. When they seek answers relating to what a gentleman should do or should not do they turn to Confucius. What is called in the West “Confucianism” is not a religion, but the traditional view of life and code of manners of the Chinese gentry for two millennia. Confucius did not found a religion, nor was he a philosopher. He was a Chinese gentleman whose sense of what is done or what is not done has made him the most famous Chinese person who ever lived.
It is claimed that Confucius lived around the period 550 to 480BC. He was a scholar from the small feudal state of Lu. The scriptures of Confucianism are known as the “Classics” of which only four of the original six books survived. But it should be realised that the “Classics” were established by Imperial decree so that the questions relating to its origins are unsettled.
Although Chinese civilisation is the most stable in the history of the world it has, apart from some violent upheavals, undergone gradual transformations. Confucius did not claim originality for himself, nor was it claimed for him by his followers. It must also be emphasised that “Confucianism” was so named by Westerners who assumed that it was a religion founded by Confucius as Christianity was founded by Christ and Muhammedanism by Muhammed.
The Analects of Confucius, a collection of his sayings and the Mencius, the sayings of the most prominent of his successors together with other Classics formed the basis of the education of the ruling class and formed the set texts of the examinations by which the bureaucracy was recruited.
Confucius was not a prophet appealing to divine revelation, nor was he a philosopher appealing to reason. He makes no claims to supernatural authority and he seldom gave reasons for the views he expressed. He presented himself merely as a transmitter or chronicler of the teachings of the ancients – often reading moral lessons into traditional love songs. He was a gentleman whose sense of fitness has been matured by conscientious study of the best models. A customary morality, in his view, needs no justification except for “This is how it was done in the Golden Age, although in these degenerate times people do it differently”.
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Since the times of Confucius himself, there has been a close connection between Taoism and Confucianism. It is reflected in the “Classics” and other commentaries by Confucius and his followers. Taoism was deeply embedded in the cultural life of China and the emphasis placed by Confucius on moral tradition meant that he and his followers kept many Taoist concepts and precepts alive – returning to the “natural Way of Tao”. Certain strands of Taoist thought and Confucianism in particular, won ascendancy within the bureaucracy which it retained for more than two thousand years.
The Confucian way of life is in harmony with the natural world since all that happens on earth is due to a “decree of heaven”. All things have regular courses to follow – the “way of heaven”. This is reflected in the succession of day and night, the sequence of the four seasons, the harmonious conduct of father and son, ruler and minister, husband and wife, elder and younger, friend and friend. All under heaven (the world, that is China) is under the Emperor, the “Son of Heaven”, who owes his power to the “decree of heaven”. Within this all embracing harmony, the moral power of the Emperor and his conduct of ritual have immediate, magical effects on the natural and social order. The sage Emperors of antiquity did not have to govern at all, since the moral influence which emanated from them was enough to bring about peace and prosperity.
This conception of the place of man in the world goes back as far as the history of China can be traced. It underlies Taoism and Confucianism. In the more primitive phase, the Emperor was conceived as a ritual head who reigned “without action” (we-wei) – a phrase prominent in Taoist literature and used by Confucius. The underlying political philosophy is that the Emperor reigns by performing ritual functions, while the practical work of government was left to his ministers. When the Emperor rules badly his subjects have the right to rebel and institute a new dynasty. Flood, famine, rebellion, omens in the sky, are signs that the Emperor no longer deserves to rule and that heaven has withdrawn the decree by which he reigns. This theory was used by the founders of the Chou dynasty to justify their overthrow of the last Shang Emperor. Chinese dynasties were not branches of a single line of Imperial descent. Although usually a member of the gentry, they could come from the ranks of the common people. Examples are the founders of the Han and the Ming dynasties. An Emperor’s success in building an orderly and lasting government is enough to prove that he rules by the “decree of heaven”. Mencius declared that the way to become the heir of the Emperor was to govern in the interests of the people: “If your majesty governs the people with benevolence, is sparing with punishments, reduces taxation, and encourages agriculture, so that adults have time to cultivate filial piety and fraternal duty, loyalty and good faith, serving their fathers and brothers at home and their elders and superiors abroad, your subjects will be ready to fight with sticks against ... (the enemy)”. (Quoted by A.C. Graham, “Confucianism”, op.cit., p.362)
Heaven is spoken of in semi-personal terms: it is the superior member of the pair “heaven and earth” – the sky itself rather than a person living in the sky. In earlier literature there are references to a certain Shang-ti, the “Supreme Emperor” or “Primordial Ancestor” but it is treated more as a metaphor for heaven. The word Shên (translated as “spirit”) refers to a vague potent influence which requires the insights of sages to understand. But the shên is an influence for good, though impersonal, it can see through all things.
In Europe and Western Asia this kind of “nature-worship” has been replaced, first by worship of gods with elaborate mythologies, then of an absolutely omnipotent good God. Moral development
139 has been accompanied by increasing differentiation between the divine and the devilish and by the idea of a supernatural reward or punishment. (See A.C. Graham, op.cit. p.362)
In contrast to Christians and Muslims for whom the existence of God is of primary and supreme importance, Confucianism by-passes religion. For a short period in the 5th century BC a rival school of Mo-tzu claimed that heaven rewards the good and punishes the wicked on earth. Later the Buddhist idea of reward and punishment in the next world took root among the common people of China. But the Confucians turned their back on religion and developed their moral code without any appeal to religious sanctions. The expectation that all things should follow the “Way of Heaven” was either taken for granted, or rationalised as a philosophical order, without any intervening stage of personal religious conviction.
When asked for a definition of wisdom, Confucius said: “Devotion to one’s duties as a subject, and respect for the spirits while keeping them at a distance, may be called wisdom.” (Quoted by A.C. Graham, op.cit. p.363)
The attitude of Confucianism to the supernatural is illustrated in its approach to the question of survival after death. Confucius claimed that men have no business except with the living and should not concern themselves with what happens after death. According to the Analects, Confucius said “Until you can serve men, how can you serve spirits? ... Until you understand life, how can you understand death?” (See A.C. Graham, op.cit. p.363)
Confucius regarded sacrifice to one’s ancestors principally as a means of expressing reverence; what matters is that reverence should be sincere, not that the spirit addressed should exist. The motives of sacrifice are remembrance and longing. By it, loyalty, faith, love and reverence reach their utmost. Consciousness ends at death, it does not survive after death.
Confucius rejected the popular Buddhist doctrine of reward and punishment after death as an attempt to back morality by self-interest which could deceive only the ignorant. Similarly they dismissed the Taoist appetite for personal immortality as a selfish refusal to accept the natural rhythm of things, by which death follows life as night follows day and autumn summer. The question of survival mattered only in connection with the duties of the living to their ancestors.
Neo-Confucianism
The articulation of Confucian thought is to be found in the commentaries and teachings of several scholars and schools that followed in his footsteps through many centuries. The transformation of the old Confucian world-view into a philosophy took place during the Sung dynasty (AD960-1279). The chief scholar leading the transformation was Chu Hsi who systematised the traditional beliefs in order to defend them against Buddhism. Chu Hsi, like Confucius himself, did not claim to be original. He read back all his discoveries into the “Classics” and the official recognition of his teachings took the form of prescribing his commentaries on the “Classics” for students taking civil service examinations.
The Neo-Confucian philosophy is based on two concepts: “Principle” and “Breath” (Ether). All solid things in the material world condense out of “breath” (ether) and into which they dissolve. The ether alternately moves and returns to stillness, like breathing out and in. Moving it is called Yang, while becoming still is called Yin. In each pair of opposites, light and darkness, man and woman, ruler and subject, the ether of the active member in Yang and of the passive member Yin “Principle”
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(literally meaning “veins in jade”) is a grain running through all things, which is easy to follow and hard to go against. By thinking along the vein which runs from one thing through other things, we are able to infer from the known to the unknown. Principle is present inside man as moral principle. It may be obscured for man by the density of the ether of which he is composed, but by moral education the ether is gradually refined until it becomes easy to act according to principle.
For the Neo-Confucians the Way and heaven are simply names for “principle”. In spite of their scepticism about the spirits of the dead, they tended to conceive spirit as a sort of impersonal potency that is a natural force that is active in the heavenly bodies and the mountains and the rivers. But they opposed the popular belief in personal spirits.
Cardinal Virtues
Confucianism recognises five cardinal virtues. These are jên (benevolence) which shows itself in the feeling of sympathy for others; yi (duty) reflected in the feeling of shame after a wrong action; li (manners) such as propriety, good form, deference; chih (wisdom) reflected in the sense of right and wrong; and hsin (trust) good faith and trustworthiness.
The moral code based on these five virtues may be described as secular rather than religious except the general assumption that by following it one follows the “Way of Heaven”. Confucians who offend these virtues are expected to feel ashamed in their own eyes, but there is no religious sense of sin. Confucianism did not provide for private worship or prayer, nor for rites of atonement, confession and self-mortification to take away sin. The highest of the five virtues is jên which seems to be a collective name for the qualities which distinguish the noble or gentle from the vulgar. It marks the stress laid by Confucius on moral rather than ritual considerations. Confucius associated five things with jên: politeness, liberality, good faith, diligence, generosity. Being polite, you will not be slighted; being liberal, you will win over the people; having good faith, you will be trusted by others; having diligence, you will be successful, being generous, you will be worthy to employ others. Confucius believed the single principle behind jên is “love of others”. In the Analects xii, 22, he says “what you do not like yourself do not do to others”. And in Analects vi, 28, he says “The jên, wishing to stand themselves, help others to stand, wishing to arrive themselves, help others to arrive ... An ability to appreciate the needs of others by comparing them with one’s own may be said to be in the direction of jên.”
The Confucians believed that the social order must be maintained by as little force as possible and as much as possible by customary rules defining the relations between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, elders and younger, friend and friend. Statute law should have a small role compared to customary law. If you govern people by regulations and punishment, the people will only observe the rules to keep out of trouble. If you govern by moral influence and keep order by a code of manners, they will have a sense of shame and obey the rules by their own accord ... They will become more and more well-mannered and dutiful ... If you rule them by punishments, you will need more and more punishments. If punishments multiply, people will resent it and rebel: if manners and duties are increasingly respected, they will be harmonious and friendly. (Rites of the Elder Tai)
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Destiny
The Confucian does not question that riches and long life are unmixed blessings bestowed by the “decree of heaven”, but neither does he expect them as a reward for living rightly. He accepts the alternation of good fortune and bad as part of the natural rhythm of things. He does not, like the Buddhist, regard all life as suffering, nor does he, like many Western humanists, support himself by faith in a future Utopia on earth. So long as he fulfils his duty, failure and adversity should not trouble him, since they are due to heaven, not to any fault of his own. But it is believed that Confucius himself was hoping that his own mission to restore the way of the sages would not be in vain.
About 400BC the Confucian view of destiny was attacked by Mo-tzu, founder of a rival school. Mo- tzu argued that morality requires the ultimate sanction of reward and punishment by heaven and the spirits. If the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper the motives for moral action would be undermined. The Confucians answered that, on the contrary, one who understands destiny knows that it is a mere accident if selfish action is followed by material success. They preferred to strive to right action instead of self-interest with an undivided mind. This Confucian fatalism does not deny free will. Confucius regarded his understanding of destiny as one of the decisive steps in his own moral development.
Human Nature
What man cannot alter is decreed by heaven. This includes not only external events which are beyond our control, but also everything which is innate in us by nature. Is human nature good or evil? Is morality a fulfilment of man’s nature, or is it something against the grain of human nature? Confucius kept a profound interest in these questions and dismissed various possible answers: that human nature is neutral, that it is a mixture of good and bad, and that it is good in some men and bad in others. Confucius refused to provide a speculative answer. But his follower Mencius took the view that man’s nature is good. Every man will be moved at the sight of a child about to fall into a well. This proves that moral education merely develops impulses which are in us by nature. Mencius wrote “That in man which is decreed by heaven is what is meant by ‘nature’; to follow his nature is what is meant by the ‘Way’; cultivation of the Way is what is meant by ‘education’”.
This point of view became Confucian orthodoxy and in the 12th century AD, Chu Hsi grouped the Mencius views, the Doctrine of the Mean, the Analects of Confucius and the Great Learning as the “Four Books” in which Confucian doctrine was most fully expressed. Hsün-tzu took the opposite position that nature is evil. He held that the principles followed by natural phenomena are morally neutral, and that morality is not the Way of heaven but a human invention. The desires planted in us by heaven are dangerous unless restrained by the morality which the sages invented to save us from the consequences of the primeval war of all against all. Men can conquer their natural inclinations by educating themselves. His scepticism about human nature was carried further by the Legalist school. They argued that few men are capable of altruism, and that the majority can be kept in order only by laws imposed from above.
The founders of Neo-Confucianism in the 12th century, Chêng Yi and Chu Hsi finally revived the Mencian theory in qualified form. They held that every man can discover moral principles inside him without being taught, but the extent to which he can see and follow it depends on the transparency or opaqueness of the “ether” of which he is composed. The moral principle within him
142 is his true nature, which is therefore good. The endowment of “ether” received at birth, which determines his innate personal characteristics is his “physical nature”, which varies with different individuals and is alterable by education.
Social Class
Confucianism is not a body of ideas to which an unbeliever can be converted. It is a way of life which is practiced only within traditional Chinese society. A ju (the nearest equivalent in Chinese to the world “Confucian”) was not simply a believer in Confucian ideas, but a scholar educated in the Confucian Classics. Confucius thought that barbarians outside the “Middle Kingdom” would benefit from coming under the rule of the Son of Heaven, becoming civilised and learning to follow the “Way of Heaven”. But the idea of missionary activity to convert outsiders never occurred to Confucius.
Since the introduction of Communism in China, Confucian ideas have not been given any scope. There is no scope in a Communist Society for a leisured class educated to practice it.
A person who lives by Confucian standards is a chün-tzü (“lord’s son”) or “superior man”, much like an English “gentleman”. His opposite is a hsiao-jên (literally a “small man”), the knave or villain. Since book-learning, good manners and administrative ability are essential features of the chün-tzü, one cannot hope to become a sage without the benefits of leisure and education. Confucius explained merit by environment rather than by heredity, by education rather than by a mystique of blood. Hence Confucians accepted that the qualities of the gentleman may be latent in the members of any class. That explains the examination system by which the bureaucracy was recruited. The Confucian was on the whole content with the idea that common people should combine Confucian virtues with Taoism or Buddhism (which Confucians regarded as superstitions). The people can be made to follow Confucianism but cannot be made to understand it.
The Growth Momentum of East Asia
Since World War II several East Asian countries have achieved spectacular economic growth. Japan emerged as an economic superpower. In its wake followed the “Four Tigers”, usually identified as Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. Another four countries, usually identified as newly industrialising economies (NIES) have also emerged as fast growing “little tigers” (as they were then called): Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Straggling far behind the “little tigers” are an additional number of countries in East Asia that are often overlooked: the Philippines (93 million), Vietnam (86 million), Myanmar (53 million) and North Korea (24 million). Together these countries today represent a total population of some 820 million. China became an awakening Giant.
With the exception of the stragglers, these countries grew, on average, three times faster than the OECD economies since the 1980s. The top eight economies proved that they could sustain growth rates of over 7 percent a year – a rate at which an economy doubles its size each decade. By the middle of the 21st century there will have been a shift in economic power away from Europe and North America to the Western side of the Pacific Rim.
What makes these countries more successful than others? Many observers and commentators have attempted to identify and define the sources of the East Asian achievement and the literature grows increasingly voluminous. More complex analytical models have emerged incorporating not only economic variables but also political and cultural factors.
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Japan’s Post-War Recovery Template
For more than 250 years the Tokugawa shoguns governed Japan as a reclusive feudal state. Then in 1853, the American Commodore, Matthew Perry, steamed into Tokyo Bay and opened the country to trade. Japan then emerged as a rapacious colonial empire, powerful enough to conquer most of the Pacific Rim countries up to the Indian border and then, as part of the Axis Powers, attacked the Americans at Pearl Harbour in 1941.
When World War II ended with the American nuclear bombs in 1945, Japan was on its knees. Its economy was shattered and its infrastructure devastated. Reconstruction had to start from scratch.
The American occupation of Japan after 1945 brought in its wake direct exposure to the American way of doing things. After initial hardships brought about by dislocations, shortages and high inflation, the Americans introduced the “Dodge Plan” which set the ball rolling for the Japanese economic recovery. In addition Japan served as supply base for American forces involved in the Korean War which began in 1950 and it stimulated an export boom.
By the mid-1950s Japan’s steep growth path took off. By 1964, when the Olympics came to Tokyo, Japan’s national income was approaching the West European level. Consumers were acquiring the “three sacred treasures” – televisions, washing machines and refrigerators. By 1970 they graduated to the “three C’s” – car, colour television and air conditioning. By the 1980s the economy moved into a rapid technological growth phase. The Tokyo Stock Exchange was equal to that of New York and of the world’s ten biggest banks, eight were Japanese. By 1990 Japan’s exports produced such high levels of foreign reserves that Japanese companies began a shopping spree, acquiring foreign assets such as New York skyscrapers, Hollywood film studios and French paintings.
The Japanese spectacular growth was based on several fundamentals: strong industrial-financial combinations (keiretsu), a large and educated workforce, low inflation and a high savings rate. It absorbed as much American and European technology as it could buy and copy (e.g. transistors). It, furthermore, nurtured inherent strengths of the Japanese culture: an incredible work ethic, an intense identification with the employer-firm, a strong sense of national identity, a keen desire to a better life – and a searing memory of the humiliation of their World War II defeat. Also central was Japan’s commitment to exporting its way to growth. International trade became the bedrock of Japanese economic progress. It moved up the product chain: from textiles and simple manufactures to ships and steel to complex mechanical goods, electronics and high technology. Japan’s growth pattern became the template for its East Asian neighbours.
Industrial Development and Export Promotion
In the early stages of the economic development of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, their economies were characterised by limited natural resources, an over-supply of unskilled labour and a shortage of capital. The private sector was weak and the government played an active role in planning and encouraging industrial development. Many measures were taken and most of them were restrictive or protective in nature or took the form of a subsidy (such as tax reductions, tax exemptions and the provision of finance at lower interest rates) for the setting up of specific industries or the manufacture of specific products. The protective measures took the form of high tariff and non-tariff
144 barriers for supporting the growth of infant industries as well as the control of foreign exchange in order to make effective use of this scarce resource for importing the machinery, equipment and raw materials needed for industrial production.
In addition, several policies were implemented and measures were taken to encourage the process of industrialisation: - Encouragement of investment; - Export processing zones; - Science-based industrial parks; - Infrastructure development; - Appropriate education system.
A common feature of the economic growth of particularly Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea was the export expansion strategies that unleashed the potential productive resources – especially labour. After a period of import substitution based on tax relief, of loans at a low interest rate as well as tariff and non-tariff barriers, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore pursued very active export expansion measures.
Encouraging Savings and Investments
In contrast to less successful countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Morocco and Tanzania where policies for low interest rates were followed coupled with double-digit inflation, the East Asian countries encouraged their people to save more in order to generate domestic finance for sustained rapid growth. All these countries had allowed their domestic interest rates to rise to a reasonable level in their effort to curb domestic inflation. Consequently, saving through domestic financial institutions was encouraged. At the same time, this sort of realistic high-interest rate policy prevented the wasteful use and misallocation of scarce capital and thus ensured fair returns on their investment projects.
The four “Tigers” took care to promote the development of appropriate financial institutions and financial markets to channel funds from savers and lenders to borrowers and investors by expediting the creation and trading of financial instruments: the foreign exchange market, the money market and the capital market.
High positive rates of return on savings deposits have helped to mobilise savings to financial institutions, but have also made capital markets less attractive. Tax measures were used to encourage savings and investments, e.g. exempting from personal income tax the interest income from savings and fixed-term deposits with maturity terms of two years or more, as well as exempting from corporate income the tax profits that were ploughed back into investment. These inducements resulted in an inflow of voluntary savings into the banking system which provided much needed non-inflationary financing for domestic investment. The investment activities made possible by these non-inflationary sources of finance brought about a rapid increase in productivity.
In Taiwan the rapid increase in real income also enhanced savings. In this way Taiwan was converted into a country whose people had a high propensity to save. In 1952 Taiwan saved 5.5 percent of its national income. By 1963 the percentage stood at 13.2 percent and by 1980 savings in Taiwan climbed to the high level of 35 percent compared with 22 percent in Japan and less than 9 percent in the UK and the USA during the same year.
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Foreign investment has been encouraged as a national policy in all four newly industrialised economies (NIE’s). The contribution of foreign investment was not only financial but also extended to better technical know-how, more efficient management, the opportunity to import parts and appliances and excellent marketing contacts for export expansion.
Balancing Market Forces and Economic Planning
East Asian economies, at the start of their economic development, faced a series of obstacles: high unemployment, a lack of infrastructure, a high inflation rate, insufficient capital and a lack of entrepreneurial confidence. The private sector was characterised by small, traditional and even unsophisticated enterprises. The government of these countries had to adopt measures to overcome their difficulties and took a leading role, giving direction to national economic development, while at the same time encouraging the free play of private enterprise.
The nature of economic planning in these countries should not be confused with the rigid systems associated with centrally planned economies. East Asian governments did not invoke the central authority to compel private enterprise to adhere to government guidelines or to meet the targets that the government set. Instead the various governments employed policy measures such as tax reductions or tax exemptions, as well as financial measures to induce private enterprises to develop industries with the potential for growth in terms of comparative advantage in the world market.
In all the successful economies of East Asia, industries were privately owned rather than belonging to the government, except in naturally monopolistic industries such as public utilities. This choice turned out to have enormous economic significance because the owner-managers were motivated to make profits and hence prepared to put their own equity capital at risk. These owner-managers had the incentive to maximise profits and minimise losses and to pay careful attention to the consequences of what they did or did not do.
A further factor common to the successful economies was the extension of the rule of law to the economic sphere. This implied not only the enforcement of legal contracts but also the guarantee of due process and the reduction of discretionary administrative powers in economic matters. The rule of law enhanced predictability, the security of returns on investments and the curtailment of nepotism. It meant that the rewards of economic success go to the efficient and not to the merely politically powerful or well-connected and certainly not to the government of the day.
This is not to say that the East Asian governments have not been interventionist to the extent that they could attain certain recognised public policy objectives. But on the whole these governments have not directed the activities of private firms. They have allowed owner-managers to run their own firms and retain their taxed profits.
An additional important factor was the presence of competition. Most governments have generally refrained from creating or supporting domestic monopolies. The East Asian governments did not compete with private firms. Moreover, the export orientation of these economies implied that most enterprises had to compete internationally and to comply with the discipline imposed by the competitive world market. Private enterprise provided the profit motive, but competition and the rule of law ensured the efficient allocation of resources.
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In Japan and Taiwan the government has allowed companies to run their enterprises as they see fit within the bounds government policies have set. In sluggish India, on the other hand, the government tended to control everything and ended up serving only the vested interests of a handful of big businesses.
Upward Mobility and Political Stability
In Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and also China, comprehensive land reform policies were introduced to redistribute land. Under Taiwan’s “land-to-the-tiller” policy, which was implemented in the 1950s, large tracts of land originally owned by a small number of landlords were expropriated with government compensation and transferred to the tillers. These tenant farmers were then placed in a position to manage their own farming operations after obtaining ownership of the land. The former landlords, in turn, invested their money in industries, thus creating job opportunities for the under- employed surplus labour force on the farms. The successful implementation of land reform solidified Taiwan’s agricultural development and helped stabilise social and political conditions. This achievement also provided a favourable climate for the development of the industrial sector.
An obvious characteristic of the political environment of the successful East Asian countries lies in their stability. Over the period 1960-1990 there was not a single instance of the transfer of power to another political group in any of the eight economies. China remained a communist dictatorship. Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia have each been governed by the same authoritarian party since achieving independence. South Korea and Taiwan have begun to liberalise, but continued to be ruled by the same “old guard” elite structure. Hong Kong remained a colony of the United Kingdom until 1998. Indonesia’s President for almost two decades, Suharto, had military backing. In Thailand the generals and civilian politicians took turns in forming the government while a small group of technocrats appeared to be running the country. This elite group’s first loyalty was to the king who gave stability to the nation. Although the political lessons learned from the emerging economic powers of East Asia may be unacceptable to persons with a strong liberal-democratic persuasion, such examples do not necessarily mean that economic growth requires authoritarian government per se. Emerging Asia’s governments have been economically enlightened. They have not flinched from taking tough measures to maintain macro-economic stability and have ensured that economic policies are predictable and transparent.
An additional feature of the prevalent style of government in East Asia, is the predominant roles played by small cliques of unelected technocrats. These bureaucratic elites are found in the feudal fiefdoms of the Japanese manufacturing industry (“samurai” and “keiretsu”); in the corridors of Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI); the modernising Chinese Mandarin elite officials who are occupying key positions in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore; the so-called “Berkeley Mafia”, a group of hand-picked technocrats who have won accolades for their role in assisting Indonesia’s growth in the 1980s.
Education, Training and Technology
The single biggest source of comparative advantage for the successful East Asian countries lies in their well-educated and well-trained workforce.
Confucius wrote: “If you plan for a year, plant a seed. If you plan for ten years, plant a tree. If for a hundred years, teach the people.” This advice has not been forgotten in East Asia. Japan introduced
147 compulsory elementary education in 1872 and became one of the world’s most education-conscious societies. This obsession rubbed off on Japan’s former colonies, Korea and Taiwan.
In recent years a Korean teenager is said to be more likely to go to university than his Japanese peer. Korea spent 5 percent of its GDP on research and development in 2000. Taiwan’s achievement is equally impressive. It has 42 universities and 75 polytechnics turning out 40,000 engineers and 140,000 technicians each year. In 1980 one in every four candidates for doctorates in electrical engineering at American universities came from Taiwan. Taiwanese companies were not following technology, they were leading it in many fields.
From the experience of these countries it is clear that sound education improves the quality of the labour force and enables its members to accept advanced and sophisticated productive technology. It also induces innovation and invention which, in turn, enhance efficiency and productivity.
An Effective Entrepreneurship Culture
East Asia’s miracle economies have been driven by Asian enterprises which flourished long before the arrival of the Europeans, and had skilled craftsmanship, trade and commerce forming an integral part of traditional life. The growth impetus came from entrepreneurially driven enterprises: some large, many medium-sized and a multitude of smaller ones. Most were family owned.
By 1990, Japan had 6.5 million businesses in operation. Only 46,000 of these could loosely be described as large corporations; the rest were small to medium-sized firms. The vast majority of these – some 5.6 million firms in all – were active in the services and tertiary fields. The remaining 900,000 have traditionally been the loyal burden-sharers for Japanese manufacturing as component suppliers to big manufacturers. These suppliers usually have to absorb the unemployment costs when big firms take back their sub-contracted work and do it in-house during economic downturns. Subsequently, the proportion of small firms earning their living by sub-contracting declined to less than 50 percent of the total. Many became market producers in their own right, while others captured new markets – at home and abroad.
All the emerging countries of East Asia were found to show certain values and structural characteristics embedded in their societies which facilitated and enhanced entrepreneurship in both of its main features: the initiating as well as the co-ordinating side of business operations. East Asian society accords high status to businessmen and has developed systems which facilitate innovation and support such values as risk taking, achievement, wealth creation, co-operation, trust and professionalism. In addition, favourable “structural factors” were present such as a sound education system that provided training in professional and managerial skills.
The Chinese family business, dominated by the pater familias and internally owned and controlled, plays a prominent entrepreneurial role in most East Asian economies. The so-called “Overseas Chinese” form a highly significant economic group, particularly in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Various research projects have found that the “Overseas Chinese” maintain value systems and kinship structures which facilitate the initiating facet of entrepreneurship. The heavy reliance on family as the principal unit of society means that survival and security are closely allied to the success of the family business. The capital resources required are provided by the savings of family
148 members – or by private loan associations consisting of relatives and friends by means of drawing lots. Family members share all kinds of jobs – from manual labour to management. Their willingness to work hard has kept labour costs low and created a favourable environment for business enterprise. This environment has inevitably spawned a large number of small firms, further spurred on by values which support being an owner rather than an employee. On the negative side it was found that the family business context poses barriers to the higher levels of co-ordination necessary for the growth of large firms, as the forces of family control struggle with those of neutral professionalism.
As regards the other indigenous population groups, it was found that prevailing socio-cultural values have been barriers to the crucial first entrepreneurial stage of initiating. Their values about going into business appeared to be less encouraging than in the Chinese case. Family survival is less sharply an issue in people’s perceptions. Risk-taking is less of a norm and conservative orientations are likely to dampen innovative tendencies. The structural factors, particularly the labyrinthine bureaucratic controls, but also the misguided economic policies and financing systems are less conducive to either initiation or co-ordination activities, than they are in the cases of Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. These findings suggest a close association between the emergence of entrepreneurship activity and the economic milieu created by government policy and by the socio-cultural features of society.
Effective Business Networking
Another noteworthy characteristic of the successful East Asian economies is their highly effective system of business networking – the best example of which is found in Japan.
Giant parent companies like Matsushita, Toshiba, Hitachi, Sony, Fujitsu and others, stand at the apex of their vertically integrated business pyramids. Each manufacturing “family” of dozens of related companies includes some that are large and powerful in their own right, many of which are listed on the stock exchange. Some family members may be related in a “federal” loose-jointed structure, while others are more centralised and “unitary” in structure. Beneath the parent company’s directly associated corporate “family”, are the trusted retainers – primary sub-contractors – beneath which lie further layers of sub-contractors. Rather than doing their own designing and manufacturing, the various parent companies called “dai kigyo” or “keiretsu”, co-ordinate a complex design and manufacturing process that involves thousands of medium-sized and small companies.
Small to medium-sized companies called “chu-sho kigyo” make up the bulk of Japanese industry and form the real foundation of the Japanese economy. In 1990, it was estimated that over 75 percent of Japanese companies were capitalised below US$70,000 and only 1 percent of all companies in Japan were capitalised over US$700,000. Small and medium-sized enterprises employed over 80 percent of the national workforce.
But even the giant “keiretsu” manufacturing companies are integrated into large industrial groups. Some are part of the influential pre-war Big-Six “Zaihatsu” cliques, e.g. Mitsui (Nimoku club) Mitsubishi (Kinyo club), Sumitomo (Hakusui club), Fuji (Fuyo club), Sanwa (Sansui club) and Dai- Ichi Kangyo (Sanzen club). Others include non-zaihatsu groups formed around top manufacturing companies, banks and retailing conglomerates such as Toyota, Hitachi, Matsushita, Seibu and Tokyo. In step with the era of high technology, industrial groups are pursuing greater co-operation among
149 member firms, organising joint research and development projects in the fields of new materials development, biotechnology, electronics and data communications.
Japan’s awe-inspiring trade structure hinges on large trading groups called “sogo shosha”. These general trading companies differ from other giant groups in that they are not necessarily involved in the manufacturing field. Instead, they tend to be orientated to both the supply and demand side and to function as problem solvers. Their investments are directly connected with trade and international business. The most prominent among them are the Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsui & Co., Itoh & Co., the Sumitomo Corporation, the Marubemi Corporation, Nissho Iwai, Toyo Menka Kaisha, Kanematsu-Gosho and Nichimen. With the support of MITI they became the advance guard of Japan’s export drive. Since they played such a crucial role in exports and imports, they served as catalysts for Japan’s rapid economic growth. They have vast communication networks spanning the world, collecting and transmitting data on day-to-day commodity price fluctuations, markets, areas of surplus and shortage. They are involved worldwide in virtually any kind of commercial transaction, reaching far beyond trade itself into resource development, finance and the organisation of industrial projects and they offer clients a wide range of services: information, expertise, insurance, shipping, etc. Their total annual sales amount to over 40 percent of Japan’s GNP.
Japan’s business world is well organised to protect and further its interests in the government, political circles, organised labour, the media and foreign countries. There are four core organisations that function as vehicles for this rather intangible business activity: the Federation of Economic Organisations (“Keidenren”), the Japan Committee for Economic Development (“Keizai Doyukai”), the Japan Federation of Employer’s Associations (“Nikkeiren”) and the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (“Nissho”). Officials who serve in these organisations are top executives from leading corporations and many have posts in two or more organisations.
By far the most important and powerful is the “Keidenren”, a conglomeration of big businesses. Its chairman is often referred to as the “Prime Minister of Commerce”. Doyukai is an assembly of individual business leaders and the organisation’s influence is more of an ideological or theoretical nature. “Nikkeiren” is broadly speaking an employer’s bastion and its activities are primarily targeted at the affairs of labour. The Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (“Nissho”) is an organisation for small and medium-sized enterprises.
The “Keidenren” is a nationwide body with 117 associates and numerous corporate members. Its central organ of decision-making is the board of directors with 470 members. It performs the following roles: - It consolidates and co-ordinates the views of the business community and conveys these views to government and political parties; - It responds to official and unofficial requests for counselling and recommendations; - It provides representation on advisory organs of government enabling it to participate in the formulation of national economic policies and strategies; - It maintains close day-to-day communications and contacts with officials of various government agencies involved in economic matters; - It maintains bilateral contact with countries of particular economic importance to Japanese business.
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Work Ethic and Non-Disruptive Labour
In societies where work is regarded as a virtue and idleness as a vice, it is hardly surprising that East Asia’s economies have managed to maintain non-disruptive labour relations and continuous economic expansion. The Confucian philosophy coupled with Chinese and Japanese tradition appears to have engendered the ability and willingness to work hard and for long hours.
The general labour relations picture is characterised by the employee’s strong sense of affiliation to the enterprise, weak umbrella unions and the dual structure of labour-management relations.
The strong sense of affiliation to one’s employer apparently arose out of Japan’s feudal history and traditional social structures. The greatest assurance of economic security for a worker lay in gaining a permanent attachment to the employer company. This pattern led to the emergence of “enterprise” unions, consisting of workers in a given company or plant. These unions cross trade or skill barriers and usually include both blue-collar and white-collar employees. Any antagonism between management and workers is perceived as a family or household dispute. A specific time in each year is set aside for handling disputes between labour and management and this is known as “Shunto”. This annual bargaining for higher wages each spring began under the leadership of Sohyo (The General Council of Trade Unions of Japan) to support the position of “enterprise” unions and the largely non-unionised sector – Japan’s myriad small and medium-sized enterprises.
Post-war industrial peace in Japan as well as in other East Asian countries has been based on the realisation that the enterprise encompasses a community of people – both management and other employees – who are bound together by a common destiny. Employees in major Japanese corporations form the heart of the corporations in the same way as shareholders form the nexus in US/European corporations. In addition, the Japanese worker has become both producer and supervisor on the shop floor, taking a subjective interest in improving production methods in the certain knowledge that the company has to survive in Japan’s highly productive and competitive environment.
Recognising satisfactory performance is another way of linking the fortunes of the worker to those of the enterprise. Japan has a bonus system to give bonuses annually to all employees, depending on how the company has fared. This system forms part of the catalyst that makes Japanese enterprises highly efficient in marshalling their employees’ energies.
Also in the case of the high-performance economies that share the Chinese culture, enterprises adhere to the Chinese tradition in labour relations which promises both flexibility and employment stability. Bonuses are paid to workers at major festivals and at the end of the year. Relations between employer and employee are more permanent than in the West, and employers are subject to moral pressure to take proper care of their workers.
Integration of Traditional and Modern Management Styles
The high-performance economies of East Asia followed in Japan’s wake in combining traditional Pacific values and styles with modernised management methods, styles and systems. For several decades the Japanese have been perceived as having perfected the art of taking apart other people’s products and working out how to make them almost as well and a great deal more cheaply. They
151 have eventually shed the image of merely being good imitators and have entered a new era of creativity in management and industry.
For many years there has been a heavy reliance in Japan on Western, particularly American management approaches and methods. Of particular relevance was Fredrich Taylor’s “scientific management”, Demmig and Juran’s “quality control”, Larry Miles’ “value management”, Chester Barnard’s “managerial co-ordination”, and Peter Drucker’s “management by objectives” (MBO). Although these approaches and systems have been superseded in the Western business schools by other fashionable concepts and fads, the original theories not only thrive in East Asia but are adapted and developed into company-wide systems. One such example is “value engineering” (VE) methodology with the aim of improving product and service functions, reducing costs and improving work efficiency. The technique analyses product function improvements through creative techniques such as brainstorming and the analysis of alternatives. Other examples are Quality Assurance (QA) to assure product reliability and Technology Promotion (TP) focussing on product promotion, and on rewards for invention and creative ideas. Japan’s success in adapting and extending Western management techniques is akin to its successful exploitation of Western electronic technology.
Low Dependency Ratios
A favourable demographic that underpinned much of East Asia’s economic success has been the favourable ratio of the region’s dependants – those 15 and under or 65 and over – to its working age population. Since the 1970s it has fallen from 80 percent (including many children) to 55 percent. For the whole region it is estimated to reach its lowest point around 2015 at 49 percent.
This demographic dividend (which excludes Japan) means a swelling cohort of working-age persons – comparable to the USA’s post World War II baby-boomers. East Asia’s baby-boomers are having a favourable effect on consumption patterns and expectations of a better future which includes more discretionary spending.
It is also argued that the region’s unofficial or black-market economy is as much as 50 percent of the size of the official economy (Japan excluded).This part of the economy could act as a better engine of higher consumption because it is not taxed at source.
As high savings fuelled much of the initial export-driven growth of the region, the new generation of baby-boomers could lead to a virtuous cycle of higher domestic consumption. It would encourage a more balanced development pattern, less dependent upon exports to unreliable foreign markets and more dependent on local consumption.
Reconstruction Singapore Style
Singapore is an island city-state with a population of around 5 million. Chinese make up 77 percent, Malays 14 percent and Indians 8 percent. For over 140 years of British rule until 1959, it had a simple entrepot trade economy with little agriculture and no industry. Since 1959 it strived towards inter-racial harmony by ensuring minority representation through group representation constituencies. This required a group of four candidates for each constituency to include at least one candidate from a minority racial group.
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Thirty years ago Singapore suffered from political unrest, high unemployment and low economic growth. They faced communist insurrection with strikes, go-slows, arson, political assassinations and general disorder. When Mr. Lee Kuan Yew took over as Prime Minister in 1959 the establishment of stability became his first priority. Thereafter came the restoration of social and work discipline. These objectives took several years to achieve, but it paved the way for economic growth through investments and trade.
Tripartite bodies of labour, management and government were established in a National Wages Council to set guidelines on what wages the economy could bear in each sector. Similarly a National Productivity Board was established to get workers and management to learn productivity techniques and to build up the spirit of co-operation so that productivity could improve and so increase profits and wages.
Once economic growth had got going in earnest, they launched a massive programme of public housing to give each worker a stake in the country’s progress. A compulsory savings scheme was built up to which employers and employees each initially contributed 5 percent of wages. Today this contribution has increased to 20 percent of wages from each side. Workers can borrow from this fund to buy their own homes and still have a retirement nest egg. Today nearly 90 percent of workers own their own homes bought with these savings.
Singapore’s key strengths in fostering growth have been meritocracy and an efficient and corruption-free administration. A person earns his place on merit. Race, status, connections or influence of his parents or friends are conscientiously screened off or filtered out. This was not easy because in the aftermath of victory in the post-independence elections, party stalwarts wanted to be rewarded for their loyalty and support – the only virtues they believed merited recognition. Meritocracy had little appeal to the previously disadvantaged. But the leaders had to moderate and temper expectations. They had to resolve the contradictions between the aspirations of their supporters and the realities of the economy. They were faced with enormous pressures to redress the inequities of past distribution of opportunities and wealth. According to Lee Kuan Yew the art of government in such a situation is to redress grievances in a manner and at a pace that does not turn the rules of economics upside down.
Modernisation Without Westernisation
The impressive growth experience of the East Asian “tigers” is indeed remarkable. Free marketeers point to their reliance on private enterprise, markets and trade liberalisation. Interventionists point with equal assertiveness to the non-market and centrally planned allocation of resources, the role of clever bureaucratic elites and regulated trade regimes. The truth of the matter is more complex and requires the careful balancing of a multitude of factors including the cultural traits of the societies involved. Regard must also be had to the interaction of these economies with the lucrative markets in the USA and Europe.
The East Asian achievement is all the more remarkable when one considers that several countries (e.g. Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong) were not endowed with rich natural resources. Several were faced with population pressures. In addition, the successful governments did not place development under any particular ideological umbrella. They were pragmatic in the sense of placing emphasis on what worked in terms of evidence-based policymaking.
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The spectacular success of Japan and its neighbours in East Asia, illustrates that modernisation can proceed without fully-fledged cultural westernisation. Western countries put a high value on individualism, freedom of expression, competitive politics, loose-jointed societies and diverse lifestyles. East Asians prefer easternisation, like working in groups, are more disciplinarian and conformist, socially conservative, hierarchical and accept interventionist power. But cultural factors undoubtedly did play an important role: attitudes to work, discipline, family loyalty, thrift, inherent commercial instinct and the high value placed on learning and education.
After the 1997-98 financial crisis, and more recently, the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, many foreign observers were quick to pronounce the end of the East Asian “miracle”. But they were wrong. The East Asian economies bounced back, partly because of the markets in the West, but also because the tiger-countries still had the inherent impetus to continue their growth-path: high savings to finance investment, high productivity and social stability. These are likely to help East Asia to remain the fastest growing region in the world in the foreseeable future. If a bigger share of those gains go to workers and consumers, the next growth phase could have widespread benefits for its more than 2 billion people.
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China’s Pragmatic Communism
Mainland China, also located in fast-growing East Asia, took a different path to modernisation - it became a modernising totalitarian communist dictatorship. Under Mao Zedong it used all the techniques of totalitarian control to establish the power base of the Communist Party and then afterwards, after much bloodshed and suffering, introduced pragmatic adjustments under leadership of Deng Xiaoping, which paved the way for China to become the emerging giant of the 21st century.
China covers an area of 9,596,961 square kilometres and its population is estimated to be around 1,400 million. The Han Chinese comprise 92 percent of its population and the remaining 8 percent include several minority ethnic groups – each more numerous than the populations of more than 20 countries represented in the United Nations.
Mao Zedong once said, with good justification, that China was like another United Nations. It has 31 provinces, five “autonomous” regions (Xinjiang and Tibet) and two “administrative” regions (Hong Kong and Macau). China’s largest city, Shanghai, is five times the size of Singapore. The most populous province, Sichuan, has over 120 million people – almost as much as Japan. The provinces Guangdong, Hubei, Anhui, Hunan, Hebei, Jiangsu, Shandong and Henan each have between 60 million and 100 million people. The Guanxi “Autonomous Region”, with 50 million people, is more populous than Poland.
Historical Background
The early history of China can be traced back to more than two millennia when the First Emperor consolidated various tribal groups into a consolidated political unit. During that early period perhaps 60 million people crowded what was to become the northern edge of China. This number more or less held over the next millennium, but from about the 12th to the beginning of the 13th century, the population doubled to around 120 million. At that point the pandemics that were also scourging Europe and the Middle East reduced the population to 70-80 million. Around 1400 the population rose again to over 100 million and to over 200 million by the middle of the 17th century.
In modern times, the era of the Manchu dynasty (1644-1911) ended when Sun Yat-sen and fellow revolutionaries overthrew the imperial regime in February 1912. A succession of unstable regimes and civil war followed. Sun Yat-sen’s Kuomintang (KMT Nationalists) established a government over parts of the country in Canton in 1919.
The Communist Party (CCP) was founded in 1921. By 1927 it controlled large tracts of territory in the south and its armies carried on an armed struggle against the Kuomintang’s rule led by Chiang Kai-shek. In 1931 the Japanese occupied the Chinese region Manchuria and in 1933 gained control of Jehol. In 1934 the KMT advance forced the Communists out of their southern bases. The CCT undertook the Long March (1934-1935) through southern and western China, finally ending at Yanan in the Shanxi province, where Mao Zedong emerged as the CCP leader. In 1936 Chiang Kai- shek joined forces with the CCP to fight the Japanese, but in 1937 Japan occupied much of North East China and established puppet governments in Beijing and Nanking. The Nationalists were forced to relocate their capital in Chongqing.
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After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the Kuomintang Nationalists took control of Japanese- occupied areas. The US attempted to mediate a negotiated settlement between the KMT and the CCP, but Beijing fell to the Communists in January 1949 (The People’s Liberation Army). The People’s Republic of China was formally established October 1st, 1949. The Communist forces marched south and stopped at the border with Hong Kong. In October 1951 Tibet was re-annexed, but Taiwan and surrounding islands were left in the hands of the KMT. China signed a friendship treaty with the USSR and the USA became the protector of Taiwan.
Between 1950 and 1958 a series of land reforms were implemented involving the redistribution of land among landlords, rich peasants, poor peasants and the landless. Agricultural co-operatives were formed which were later amalgamated into communes of about 200,000 people.
The 1954 constitution organised China into five autonomous regions, 23 provinces (pro forma including Taiwan), 175 municipal administrations and 2,000 districts. A central council under Mao Zedong, formed by the Communist Party, held absolute power. Zhou Enlai became Premier of the Administrative Council. In May 1957 the “Hundred Flowers Campaign”, ostensibly organised to invite constructive criticism by intellectuals, culminated in the “Anti-Rightist Campaign” against those who had spoken out. The movement to root out the “White Flags” followed.
The 1958 “Great Leap Forward” launched by Mao was intended to mobilise the support of the masses for his economic policies. Farmers were herded into regimented communes and backyard pig iron furnaces became the symbols of the Great Leap. It proved to be a disaster. Millions of people died of starvation as the disrupted agricultural and industrial production and internal trade plummeted. Refugees streamed into Hong Kong and Mao’s standing deteriorated.
In 1964 China detonated its first nuclear bomb and by 1966 Mao Zedong introduced the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” as a means to bolster his grip on supreme power. The charter of the “Cultural Revolution” allowed the masses to attack those in authority and the “Red Guard” was formed to eliminate unacceptable “old ways”. Red Guards proceeded to put numerous local authorities on trial. A Central Cultural Revolutionary Committee was formed with Chen Boda, Mao’s secretary as chairman and Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, as vice-chairman. The Revolutionary Committee, together with the Military Commission and the State Council, ruled China under Mao’s guidance. The Red Guards ran riot through cities, ransacking property and humiliating foreign diplomats. Mao’s Little Red Book served as the bible of the Cultural Revolution.
In 1967 Mao used the army to restore order and purged all authoritative bodies of members considered by Mao as undesirable and by 1969 Mao regained his influence as chairman of the Communist Party and the Central Committee. The army now filled the majority of the posts in the Central Committee, the Politburo as well as provincial and local councils.
Mao Zedong died on 9 September 1976. After a prolonged internal power struggle in the CCP, Deng Xiaoping emerged as the new leader in 1980. Deng Xiaoping was the son of a prosperous landowner – turned local-government official. As a boy he attended a traditional Confucian school, but amid the tumult following the Chinese Revolution of 1911, he proceeded to France where he met Zhou Enlai and Ho Chi Minh (from Vietnam) and became exposed to the communist movement which was fashionable amongst students and intellectuals in Paris. Deng also studied in Moscow where the Comintern, Stalin’s international apparatus, was teaching students revolutionary strategies. When
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Deng returned to China as a convinced communist, his organisational skills and sharp intellect carried him forward to become chief secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party at the age of 23. He allied himself with the Mao Zedong faction and took part in the Long March of 1934-35. His later wartime role carried him into a key position when the Communists came to power in 1949.
During Mao Zedong’s rule, Deng Xiaoping’s fortunes fluctuated between key roles and imprisonment. The ideological revolutionaries considered Deng as a “capitalist raider”. He was protected by his personal friendship with Zhou Enlai and his networking ties with the army. After the Cultural Revolution had run its course, Deng came back into the leadership circles. He believed in education and economic incentives as the road to development and modernisation rather than ideology and exhortation.
In December 1978 the Third Plenum of the 11th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party made the fundamental decision to re-orient China toward market economics. They made a break with Maoism and adopted instead a strategy of pragmatic adjustment – practical steps that deliver economic results as long as the party remained in control. Said Deng: “We have two choices – we can distribute poverty or we can distribute wealth”.
Deng Xiaoping’s Reforms
The initial reform effort centred on agriculture in view of the dismal results produced by Mao’s collectivised agriculture system. During 1978 Anhui province experienced a severe drought so that agricultural output was further diminished and starvation became endemic. Diseases swept through the region and people flocked into Shanghai.
People appealed for a return to the “old ways”, meaning the “household responsibility system” which allowed a family to keep some of the benefits of its labour. The peasants got their wish and the “household responsibility” system was adopted throughout the country and material incentives replaced the Maoist strictures. With the communal collectivised system undone, each family could take responsibility for the land it tilled. They had to deliver a certain amount of their production to the state, but the portion above that they could keep for own consumption or sell. Thus the first steps towards free enterprise were taken.
The results were stunning. Over the next sixteen years output increased by 50 percent. The introduction of markets in agricultural products generated a new trading apparatus. Farmers became involved in transportation, home building, repairs, private food markets and hiring workers. The changes created a whirlwind of entrepreneurship. In 1978 just 8 percent of agricultural output was sold in open markets; by 1990 the share was 80 percent – raising the real income in farm households more than 60 percent.
The rapid improvement in agriculture spurred economic reforms in other areas. It created a pro- reform constituency, not only among farmers but also among city dwellers, who could find more food and more variety in the marketplace. These improvements created a momentum for additional reform such as the de-control of prices. The reform process was set into motion with a clear winner.
The reform of the industrial sector was more difficult. It was highly interconnected, controlled from the centre, the scale was large and it generated much of government’s revenues. Change in the
158 system could throw the country into economic disarray. Moreover, Marxist economics was focused on industrial production. The desperate need of reform in the industrial sector spurred an acrimonious debate over the relationship of the state and the marketplace. One argument was that the way the state collected revenues from enterprises ended up “whipping the fast ox” – punishing firms that were more efficient. The higher the firm’s profits, the greater the proportion of profits taken away by the government. Arguments were made for increasing the autonomy of enterprises and moving the system towards “market socialism”.
At the Wuki Conference in 1979 economists gave expression to the general sentiments by stating that China “… cannot allow Adam Smith’s invisible hand to control our economic development (because) … if individual consumers in the market make decisions based on their own economic interests, this will not necessarily accord with the general interest of society”. Planning had to be made more effective, but giving over to the “blindness and anarchy of capitalism” was to be avoided. In addition the leaders were ambivalent about the legacy of Mao and their perception about the amount of change the system could absorb. Deng went along with the cautious re-adjusters. He argued that the CCP was essential to the central goal of modernisation. He agreed that without such a party, China would split up and accomplish nothing.
By the middle 1980s the “go slow” argument was loosing its credibility. The economy was growing much faster than anticipated without the severe problems that Chen Yun, the Party’s expert on economics, had forecast. Improvement in agriculture stimulated the emergence of rural industry and commerce. Reform now had both a constituency and a track record. Chinese economists took notice of developments in Hungary which involved experiments with market mechanisms as reflected in the influential writings of Hungarian economist Janos Kornai. But the most pressing example came from their nearby neighbour, Japan. Visiting Japan and seeing its dynamism firsthand shocked the Chinese Communists. The head of the CCP’s propaganda department noted that one in every two households in Japan owned an automobile; over 95 percent of households possessed TV sets, refrigerators and washing machines; the majority owned a variety of clothing and changed clothes every day!
Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
By the mid-1980s, the Chinese economy entered a period of high-speed growth. The leadership of Deng Xiaoping embraced economic reform and liberation even while striving to maintain political control. To appease his comrades who feared seeing capitalism replacing the socialism and communism they had strived for all their lives, he described what was happening as “Building Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” – which became the title of a book he published at the end of 1984.
Deng was constantly harassed by the opposition and rivalry of Chen Yun. Both were veterans who joined the CCP at the beginning, both were victims of the Cultural Revolution, both were intent on redressing the deep wounds inflicted upon society by Maoism, but they disagreed over the terrain of the reform package. Fortunately for China, Deng’s pragmatism carried the day – often by adjusting terminology: replacing “hired labour” (which sounded bad on Marxist ears) with “asked-to-help labour”!
From 1984 the debate about the future moved on beyond Marxist ideology to the practicalities of creating a market economy. Economic data replaced Marxist catechisms in arguments about market
159 allocation of resources versus planning. Deng was the paramount leader of reform, while Chen served as the paramount critic. At the heart of the debate was the question of the proper relationship between state and market.
The Chen-hardliners wanted to reassert centralisation, stabilisation and mandatory planning because they feared chaotic dislocations and inflationary pressures – and loss of political control by the CCP. Deng also feared the erosion of CCP-control, but wanted to reduce bureaucratic control by party secretaries and instead make enterprises responsive to market signals. The introduction of the “contract responsibility system” (echoing the “household responsibility system”) allowed state enterprises to keep earnings above a certain target. By December 1987, 80 percent of China’s large and medium-sized firms had adopted such a system.
The reforms were still inadequate to sufficiently reduce the inefficiency of state firms. They were losing out on the growing competition from new companies established by local villages and towns. It became clear that the most important missing element was property rights. It became clear that only ownership could introduce responsibility into decision making and channel motivation. So the debate moved from Marx to Mao and ultimately to Hayek.
Deng was essentially interested in results which for him meant increasing China’s wealth and power. But Deng was constantly compromised by Chen’s pressure to step on the brakes and to oppose the reformist incumbents of key positions. Deng was forced by Chen pressure to remove CCP general secretary Hu Yaobang on account of him being regarded as too liberal. He was replaced by Deng with Zhao Ziyang who promoted the idea to build up new industries geared to export, particularly in the coastal areas. The benefits of focusing on export industries were well illustrated by the success of neighbouring East Asian economies. It offered the solution to multiple problems: earning hard currency and absorbing surplus labour coming out of inland regions.
The central focus of the strategy would be Special Economic Zones (SEZ’s) to engage with the world economy. The original SEZ’s were created in 1980, some in Guandong province, including Shenzhen (close to Hong Kong) and others in Fujian province, across from Taiwan. Their whole orientation was outward as export-processing zones and they were also meant as magnets to draw in foreign investment. Beijing gave local authorities in the SEZ’s unprecedented autonomy in trade and investment decisions. From then on the Chinese economy was driven forward by the coastal cities.
Accelerating inflation by the end of 1988 forced Zhao and his allies to go on the defensive. A “Mao Zedong craze” was unleashed which forced the reformist leaders onto the back foot. They were accused of “capitalist-style crime and corruption”’ and being materialistic drivers of bourgeois inequality and democracy. Deng remained reform’s prime cheerleader, but in 1988 anticipation of a price reform, ignited a run on the banks and a panic buying of goods. Deng’s government was shaken and it changed course. The focus then turned to stability.
The Tiananmen Square Clampdown
Thousands of students occupied Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in April 1989, mourning the death of Hu Yaobang, the deposed reformist CCP general secretary and expressing their displeasure with the suppression of the democracy movement. To the hardliners, it was an act of rebellion – the consequence of too much reform and too little control. To people like Deng, it challenged the sacred supremacy of the CCP which the old veterans considered as the bulwark against disorder and chaos.
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To Deng it also resembled militant mass action during the Cultural Revolution. He feared that the leadership core could be in danger. The events in Poland and other East European communist states convinced Deng that concessions lead to more demands and more concessions beget more chaos.
Moreover, Tiananmen Square carried a lot of symbolism in the history of the CCP. In 1949, Mao declared victory and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on Tiananmen Square, and thirty years before that, on May 4th 1919, it had been the scene of the nationalist student demonstrations that paved the way for the birth of the Chinese Communist Party. In June 1989, the order was given to the military by Deng to crush the protest. About a thousand people are thought to have been killed in the ensuing struggle.
Zhao Ziyang, who was Party Secretary at the time, tried to peacefully disperse protesters in Tiananmen Square before the fatal confrontation with the military. Mr. Li Peng, who was Prime Minister at the time, forced Zhao to defend his actions to a disciplinary meeting of the CCP’s Central Committee. Zhao was put under house arrest, where he stayed for the rest of his life. His memoirs, dictated on tapes, were smuggled out of China and were published in 2009 under the title Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang (Simon & Schuster). In his memoirs, Zhao describes Deng as the enabler, not the architect of detailed reform measures. Zhao credits himself as the real architect of China’s reforms in the 1980s, with Deng helping him to keep the hardliners at bay.
The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and eventually in the Soviet Union in the period 1989-1991, reinforced the position of the CCP hardliners to rein in reform. Economic growth slowed and dissent was stifled. Although Deng remained in power he was by then advanced in age and of frail health. Reform was in retreat and so was Deng’s influence. His old rival Chen Yun was in ascendancy again and “Chen Yun Thought” enjoyed comparable prestige to “Mao Zedong Thought”.
Deng’s Legacy
At the 14th Party Congress in 1992 a new commitment to reform was affirmed. It was explicitly decided that China should shift from a “socialist planned economy” to a “socialist market economy”. At the ripe age of 88, Deng reaffirmed his position as paramount leader.
Deng indicated that Guangdong should be considered the engine of China’s growth and that China should overtake the four tigers – Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong – within 20 years. In reality China was already on its way. Between 1978 and 1995, under Deng’s rule, China’s economy grew at an average annual rate of 9.3 percent. Even in semi-retirement, he ruled China from his modest Beijing courtyard home. Leaders still vied for his attention. His growing deafness made communication difficult.
Deng Xiaoping died early in 1997 at age 93. At his funeral Chinese President Jiang Zemin referred to Deng’s “three rises and three falls”. But Deng broke with conventions and paved the way for China’s ascendancy as a world power. When he came to power China was desperately poor, but he launched a growth path that enabled China’s foreign trade to increase from $36 billion in 1978 to $300 billion in 1995. Per capita income doubled between 1978 and 1987 and doubled again between 1987 and 1996 – a rate almost unheard of in modern history. Deng lifted upward of 200 million people out of poverty in just two decades.
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At Deng’s funeral president Jiang declared that henceforth “Deng Xiaoping Theory” would be the “guiding ideology” of China and, alongside Marxist-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, it would be the Party’s “guide to action”. The only way Mao’s theory could be made compatible, is through a healthy dose of pragmatism. By lifting the banner of Deng Xiaoping high, the communist leadership enshrined his adherence to the principle of pragmatism.
After his death, a Shanghai newspaper reported a generally unknown fact about Deng’s career. While Deng was studying in Paris to become a communist in the early 1920s, he also opened a restaurant called “China Bean Curd Soup”. It was reported that the bean curd was good, the restaurant was a success and Deng expanded both his menu and his seating space. It was also reported that Deng was fond of quoting Confucian proverbs and teachings.
Hong Kong’s Crucial Role
Hong Kong was part of Chinese territory ceded to Britain in 1842 after the Opium Wars. In 1997 it was returned to China and placed under control of a Chief Executive appointed by Beijing. During British rule, thousands of refugees from China entered Hong Kong in 1911, 1937 and in 1949. During the period 1941-1945 it was invaded and occupied by Japan.
Down the years Hong Kong offered a secure trading outlet as well as a safe haven for the assets of Chinese businessmen and industrialists. Over the years Hong Kong acquired a business community with advanced education, entrepreneurial skills and a network of connections with mainland China that were particularly advantageous to British interests, but it also provided an important commercial outlet for China and an avenue for importing foreign investments and technology into China. The investments of displaced Chinese and the availability of cheap labour fostered a mushrooming of local assembly plants, textile workshops and factories for light manufactures. Economic life was freewheeling. There were no trade or exchange restrictions, no central bank, labour legislation was light and taxes were low.
In the 1980s Hong Kong was closely linked to Deng Xiaoping’s reforms on the mainland. It re- opened the door to travel, trade and investment across the border. By establishing the first SEZ’s near Hong Kong in Shenzhen, Deng facilitated investment into China’s vast pool of labour and resources. Labour-intensive production was shifted onto the mainland turning the Pearl River delta into a megalopolis with Hong Kong and Guangshou as its twin poles.
Hong Kong also emerged as one of the world’s pre-eminent financial centres in the 1980s. With all the major trading houses established in the city, the Hong Kong stock exchange became a major source of financing and investment expertise for mainland enterprises. Hong Kong also served as clandestine conduit for funds coming from Taiwan and the millions of overseas Chinese (called “guanxi”). The guanxi also provided important trade and marketing channels for Chinese exporters.
Long before the Chinese take-over in 1997, China’s state-controlled firms invested heavily in Hong Kong real estate. The state-owned Bank of China built one of Hong Kong’s most distinctive harbour- front skyscrapers. Even before the handover, Hong Kong’s wealth – in per capita terms – was significantly more than the UK. Deng Xiaoping left his successors with an easy pragmatic solution to the special status of Hong Kong with the guiding concept “one country, two systems”.
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Today Hong Kong ranks as one of the most modern cities in the world. It has a population of over 7 million, safe deepwater harbour facilities and one of the most modern airports on the planet.
Trade Patterns
Angus Maddison, an economic historian at the University of Groningen, has estimated that between 1600 and the early 19th century, China accounted for between a quarter and a third of global output. During the period 1950 to 1973 it declined to 4 percent, then rose to 11 percent in 1998 and 18 percent in 2006.
With a trade-to-GDP ratio of around 75 percent in 2005 and a large volume of foreign investment, China has become one of the world’s most open economies. It means that the sum of its total exports and imports of goods and services amounts to around 75 percent of China’s GDP. To focus only on China’s growing share of global output and exports is to miss half the story. China’s imports have risen at the same pace as its exports. Thus China is giving a big boost to both global supply and demand.
The “positive supply-side shock” given to the world economy by China’s entry into world trade patterns, has increased the world’s potential growth rate, helped to hold down inflation and triggered changes in the relative prices of labour, capital, goods and assets. The entry of China’s vast army of cheap workers into the international system of production and trade has reduced the bargaining power of workers in developed economies. The threat that firms could produce offshore helped to keep a lid on wages.
Not only were the prices of the goods that China exported falling, the prices of the goods it imported were rising, notably oil and other raw materials. China became the world’s biggest importer of many commodities such as aluminium, steel, copper, coal and the second biggest consumer of oil. The upward pressure that Chinese imports had on the prices of commodities and raw materials has been offset by the downward pressure of Chinese manufactured exports. Hence China played a role in keeping a lid on inflation.
Much of the world’s low-cost manufacturing has shifted to the Chinese mainland. The Chinese manufacturing machine has sucked up vast quantities of raw materials and resources from many parts of the world. This gigantic manufacturing machine produces goods for the domestic market, but also vast quantities for its booming export market. China’s manufacturing machine has also sucked up vast quantities of parts and components for final assembly from other parts of Asia – Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as richer Taiwan and South Korea. China has been integrated into existing and highly sophisticated pan-Asian production networks.
All members of the pan-Asian network have benefited. Even rich Japan, which in 2002-2003 was pulled out of a decade-and-a-half slump by Chinese demand for top-notch components and capital goods. Economic inter-dependence between the two countries has grown by leaps and bounds since 2003. China has not only lifted Japan out of stagnation, it became its biggest trading partner in 2004. Japan now imports finished goods such as office machines and computers from China. In 2005, the total volume of trade between the two countries was nearly $190 billion. Japan also accounted for 11 percent of foreign direct investment in China, making it the largest foreign investor in China.
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South-East Asia also received a major boost from its trade with China. Rich in resources, including rubber, crude oil, palm oil and natural gas, it is likely to profit from China’s appetite for raw materials for a long time to come. For South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore trade has turned from the rich world towards China as their biggest trading partner. In China itself, the processing and assembly of imported parts and components now account for more than half of its exports. Much of China’s growing trade surplus can be explained by its trade formula which is based on assembly.
China has become a major economic power, not only on account of its fast growing exports, but also increasingly from being a major buyer, investor and provider of aid. China’s huge imports are a major source of influence in many countries. It is the source of a new kind of power: intertwined economic and political power.
China’s presence as a commercial force is rapidly being felt around the world, through its growing investments overseas and through an apparent insatiable hunger for resources to fuel its own industrial revolution at home. Planeloads and shiploads of oil-drillers, pipe-layers and construction workers are sent from China to work on oil rigs or build ports, highways or railways in South-East- Asia, Africa, Latin-America or the Middle East. Chinese workers are also fanning out to neighbouring countries in less formal ways to work on farms, forest plantations and market gardening. Throughout the 19th century, thousands of indentured workers were lured by Chinese and Western recruiters to work on the guano deposits of Peru, the cane fields of the Caribbean Islands or the goldfields of Australia and South Africa. Now the Chinese workers are present in many parts of the world with Chinese capital behind them.
Demographic Patterns
A look at China’s GDP statistics reveals the complexity of making sense out of available data. Economists have long doubted the credibility of Chinese official statistics, particularly the over- statement of GDP growth. Dragonomics, a research firm in Beijing, estimates that GDP growth was 5 percent in 1980, -1 percent in 1990, 5 percent in 2000, 13 percent in 2005 and 8 percent in 2008.
The problem with government massaged statistics is that politically embarrassing bad news is often understated or not published at all. The more eyes there are on China, and the more crucial its economic performance becomes for the rest of the world, the harder it becomes for officials to tamper with statistics. GDP figures are significantly distorted by regional variation. National averages conceal regional inequalities such as the poor Guizhou region compared with rich Guangdong. The cities of Shanghai and particularly Hong Kong have higher per capita income than the UK. Besides the regional inequalities, there is a serious wealth gap between city and countryside. Where city dwellers have washing machines and colour TV, the most widely owned consumer durable found in 70 percent of farm households, is the sewing machine.
Helped by the one-child-per-couple policy introduced in the late 1970s, China has a large working- age population with a small number of dependents. But as the number of young workers start declining the “demographic bonus” will run out. According to the UN’s World Population Prospects (2004 revision), China’s 15-24 age category stood at 18 percent in 1990 and is expected to decline to 12 percent in 2010 and to 10 percent in 2050.
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China’s growing dependency ratio could be mitigated by the rising productivity of an increasingly well-educated workforce. It could also be counteracted by productivity gains as more people migrate from rural to urban areas, and by an easing of the one-child policy. China’s population control measures is said to have resulted in some 300 million fewer births in the last 30 years. But while such measures may have helped to ease pressure on scarce resources and reduce poverty, they are also aggravating demographic imbalances that could undermine these gains.
In the next two decades, the proportion of China’s population aged 65 and over will begin swelling rapidly while the growth of the working age population will shrink. If current trends continue, the ratio of working age persons to retirees will fall from six in 2004 to two in 2040. That will impose huge financial burdens to meet pension commitments to the elderly. Urban China, in particular, is facing the “4-2-1 phenomenon” which refers to four grandparents and two only-child parents being supported by only one child.
The sex ratio is also becoming increasingly skewed. Cultural bias in favour of males has produced an officially recorded ratio at birth of 118 boys to 100 girls in 2000. The normal ratio is about 105 to 100. But some births are not recorded, in order to avoid reprisals by zealous family-planning officials. A further distortion is caused by selective abortions.
The desire for large families has also been blunted by China’s transition in recent years to a market economy. Health care, education and housing, once provided virtually free, are now costly. Even in some rural areas where authorities have experimented with allowing farmers to have two children unconditionally, parents have shown little inclination to increase their families. But there is a growing feeling that a two-child policy would be more suitable. Rich families are increasingly willing to pay the fines or sometimes even buy in vitro fertilisation treatment. Some try to have a second child abroad, so that the child can get a foreign passport and not be counted by Chinese family- planning officials.
The Chinese government has introduced a new pension scheme whereby it invests on behalf of individual workers and then pays them pensions from their individual accounts. This scheme is highly dependent on the development of a mature bond and equity market for its success.
Centralised Government
China’s political system is said to be one of “sharp elbows and centrifugal forces”. But despite the tensions between the centre and the periphery, China’s political system has not disintegrated into a warring quagmire of fiefdoms.
At the centre there are perhaps no more than 200 unelected, often elderly party veterans, who have kept control of the country as a whole and of the reform process. They have succeeded in holding on to control by devolving responsibility for economic growth to the local and regional levels, by way of the highly disciplined totalitarian single party system. Party discipline is enforced by keeping tight control over criteria for party membership and especially over the hiring and firing of local and provincial officials.
The collection of tax revenues is centralised, while the granting of credit to localities, regions and state enterprises, is carefully apportioned and rationed. The decision-making process is not
165 subjected to the glare of competitive news media or the pressure of public opinion. Dissemination of information in the public domain, is carefully scrutinised and regulated.
Civil Rights in a Totalitarian Dictatorship
The CCP’s grip on power to date has largely rested on its control of the military and the police forces as buttressed by the benefits of strong economic growth. But in the wake of economic growth normally comes rising expectations on the part of Chinese citizens. On the part of the wider world, the expectations are for a China not just wedded to capitalism but to the principles of open government, private initiative, sound corporate governance and legal impartiality. Elsewhere in Asia, rapid economic growth has often gone hand in hand with political change.
In China there are no clear indications of the anticipated rising expectations manifested in civic life. Serious political reform does not currently appear on the CCP’s agenda. It appears that there are, as yet, no particular rallying causes active in China today. Sporadic public protests take place in the countryside as well as in towns and cities, but the central government still enjoys considerable support. Angry peasants from time to time direct their resentment at rural authorities rather than at the central leadership of the CCP. The traditional view of government is based on a positive and favourable image of the good emperor – if only you could get through to him through all the layers of bad bureaucrats. Thousands of people go to Beijing every year to seek redress of local injustices. Their inevitable disappointment does not dim their belief that it is the local authorities, rather than the top leadership or the system itself, that is the problem.
Outspoken newspapers are closed to stifle public criticism of government. Dissidents who have posted their views on the internet are jailed. Party officials are subjected to intensive indoctrination campaigns. Congresses are mere rubber-stamp events held every five years to confirm party policy and name new leaders. Inter-personal contests amongst leaders take place behind the scenes and outside the public glare. Only a few isolated broad strands of political movements can be identified amongst intellectuals and party officials.
Growing inequalities of wealth and access to public services have prompted strident criticism of economic “neo-liberalism”. Champions of a more caring, worker-friendly kind of capitalism, are dubbed the “new left”. Wang Hui, editor of an outspoken literary journal “Dushn” propagated the idea that workers should be allowed to have independent trade unions rather than impotent party- controlled unions. He also argued against the way state-owned enterprises are being privatised, fearing that an oligarchy of a wealthy elite controlling the country’s resources might be created, as happened in Russia. Opposition was also expressed by new-left intellectuals against allowing domestic private investment in the state’s hitherto jealously guarded preserves such as power, railways and telecommunications.
In response, the government has tightened control over management buy-outs of state-owned enterprises. The “new left” also expressed opposition to a new draft law on property ownership. The 2009 Report of Amnesty International reported that in 2008, the year that the Olympic Games came to Beijing, Chinese authorities “intensified their use of administrative forms of detention which allowed police to incarcerate individuals without trial”. Instead of ushering in a happier, freer China, the Olympic Games had brought “heightened repression throughout the country”, with tighter state control over human-rights activists, religious groups, lawyers and journalists.
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Chinese Law and Totalitarianism
China’s legal structure is loosely based on a civil law system, largely derived from Soviet-age civil code legal principles founded on the political philosophy of state totalitarianism, incorporating elements of long-established imperial legal codes. It is essentially controlled within the framework of the one-party rule of the Chinese Communist Party. It means the judiciary is not independent; judicial proceedings are not open to public scrutiny and hearings are conducted in secrecy. The concept of state security overrides any competing legal claim; the rules applicable are not transparent or subject to established legal principles.
In the Western World, the “rule of law” is understood in terms of established liberal constitutional democratic principles (involving the sovereignty of law conditioned by the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary, the safeguarding of individual rights and the audi alteram partem rule). The “rule of law”, in this sense, is not applicable in China. The overriding characteristic is that the dictates and interests of the Chinese Communist Party government enjoy ipso facto pre- eminence and priority over the interests or claims of any individual person or company. It is a totalitarian one-party dictatorship.
The legal drama which involved employees of the international mining company Rio Tinto, in 2009/10, illustrates the opaque nature of Chinese Law. There is a murky line in China between state and commercial interests or “secrets” in industries where government monopolies mean the big players are all state-owned. As a result it is not clear where the line is between legitimate commercial information gathering and “criminal” action to obtain “state secrets”. The same opaqueness applies to the realm of civil rights. Citizen rights are determined by totalitarian Communist Party Rule.
Oil, Coal and Pollution
Behind the USA, China is the world’s second biggest oil importer – 40 percent of its demand. Government is committed to a car-led development path, which implies continued growth in oil consumption. Some 45,000 km of expressways have been built or are under construction. The government is also supporting a domestic car industry, which it sees as an engine of future growth. The number of cars in China has leapt from just 4 million in 2000 to 19 million in 2005. This figure is predicted to double by 2010 and reach 130 million by 2020.
China is the world’s biggest producer of coal, digging out 2.2 billion tonnes in 2005. Coal also accounted then for 80 percent of China’s energy use. China is also breaking new ground liquefying coal to make oil substitutes, which may in the long run help change its energy mix. But abundant use of coal also meant that China overtook the United States in 2009 as the world’s biggest producer of carbon emissions. In 2007 its share was 17 percent of the world’s total, against the USA’s 22 percent. Twenty of the world’s most polluted cities are in China.
Strategic Issues
The rapid spread of the internet technology in China in recent years, has provided new forums for citizens to air their views. Unfortunately China’s internet sensors closely monitor debate on internal
167 issues so that broad public participation is severely constrained. It also limits the possibility of the free world to penetrate the “bamboo curtain”.
To the disquiet of the Free World, China has followed a consistent path of cosying up to pariah governments around the world – Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Iran and North Korea. China imports 11 percent of its oil requirements from Iran – despite efforts from the UN to impose sanctions on Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.
China’s growing military budget reflects its growing wealth and prestige, along with its desire to protect its rising shipments of oil and other commodities. But China has also test-fired rockets that can destroy an old weather satellite in space.
China is also building roads, ports and pipelines in Myanmar and Pakistan, connecting west and south-west China with the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. These links could serve as future supply routes for the Chinese navy. The extension of the Qinghai-Lhasa railway could facilitate the transport of military material to the Tibetan border – and, if necessary put strategic pressure on India.
China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of 2.5 million may be the largest in the world and, assisted by North Korea’s 2 million, constitute an impressive military force. In reality it is neither well trained nor well equipped. Its officer class is rife with party and family nepotism. Many of its soldiers are semi-literate rural peasants. China’s military technology also has much catching up to do. It nevertheless is huge in terms of sheer numerical preponderance.
China has been systematically hiding its own history and conditions in the world outside from its population. Much is done to constantly remind the population about the Japanese atrocities during its occupation of China during World War II. But Chinese people are not told that Chinese people under past rulers, committed cruel atrocities on their own people. The civil war between the Communists and the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) claimed as many lives as the Japanese occupation. After the Communist victory in 1949 an estimated 2-3 million land owners were killed in the early 1950s and many intellectuals died during the anti-rightist movement of 1957. To cap it all, no less than 30 million fell victim to the famine that followed the Great Leap Forward (1958-61). New research also suggests that millions more than first thought died during the state-sponsored anarchy of the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. By those standards the few hundred killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 are considered insignificant by the Chinese Communist Party.
Although the power of Communist ideology is much reduced as the young generation immerse themselves in the promise of the new prosperous era, the vacuum has been filled with a strong sense of chauvinistic nationalism. For the present that nationalism is focused on the reintegration of Taiwan. It appears that China might hold the preponderance of power to force Taiwan’s return to China’s fold. In the interim, both sides of the divide probably realise that an unleashed conflict is too costly to contemplate.
Reactionary nationalist sentiments have deep roots in the Chinese intellectual tradition. As the global economy sputtered there were many signs of the revival of an extreme fringe group that pines for Maoist egalitarianism, state ownership and anti-West action. A clutch of websites in China are actively spreading pro-communist rhetoric suffused with a sense of China as victim and
168 yearning for revenge. Although reactionary Maoism is not likely to make a comeback soon, its nationalism has a broad appeal.
Boiling up nationalism was also stimulated by China’s sporting triumph at the Olympic Games in Beijing in August 2008. The West presented a gratifying target for pent-up contempt. Even the normally cautious government felt tempted to flex its muscle on the world stage. (See The Economist, “China and the West”, March 21st, 2009, pp.29-31)
For most of the period since 1990, China has played a cautious game internationally. Deng Xiaoping set the tone with his concise guidelines: China should keep a low profile, not take the lead, watch developments patiently and keep its capabilities hidden. The global economic crisis and the West’s obvious weaknesses created new opportunities. In a speech at Cambridge University in February 2009, Wen Jiabao, China’s Prime Minister, stressed that China’s development was no threat to anyone because it is a “peaceful and co-operative great power”. Chinese leaders are careful not to fuel suspicions in the West that China is a threat. China would like to be number one, but would at this stage rather get there without making big enemies.
Prospects
China’s spectacular recovery from the stagnant depth of the Maoist era in the 1945-1975 period is truly remarkable. A recent study by Goldman Sachs projects that China’s economy will be bigger than America’s by 2027, and nearly twice as large by 2050. Some futurologists predict that the world would by then live under a Pax Sinica with the dollar replaced by the renminbi as the world’s reserve currency, and New York and London replaced by Shanghai as the centre of finance. Global citizens will use Mandarin as much, if not more, than English and the thoughts of Confucius will become as familiar as those of Plato. European countries will become quaint relics of a glorious past, like Athens and Rome today.
With the West in financial turmoil and its leaders seemingly desperate for cash-rich China to come to its rescue, Chinese leaders can see many strategic opportunities: to acquire assets at bargain prices and to exploit political vacuums in many international hot spots like the Middle East and Sub- Saharan Africa. It is now the Chinese who are doing the lecturing.
Simplistic political and economic extrapolations, however, do not take into account the many uncertainties and imponderables that can come into play. China, like many other countries, also faces the problem of an ageing population, of expectations rising faster than the capacity of their system to deliver, of the destructive power of corruption and nepotism and the abuse of political power. The mere logistics of governing this vast country with its huge population pose gigantic challenges to whichever system of organisation and management that is brought to the task. China is also heavily dependent on its collaboration with the West: its technology, its markets, its natural resources and its investments.
Optimistic expectations for the emergence of free, open constitutional democracy in China are wishful thinking. China has never experienced an open pluralistic society. It has never developed neither the mindset of civic consciousness nor the associational community-based framework to serve as a foundation for a democratic infrastructure. Sporadic and isolated outbursts of discontent may occur, but a deep-rooted democratic transformation appears to be still decades, if not generations away.
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Bibliography
Brown, N. (1966) Man in the Universe, University of California Press Chen, E.K. (1979) Hypergrowth in Asian Economies, London: Macmillan Conze, E. (1957) Buddhism, Faber, London Estévez-Abe, Margarita Welfare and Capitalism in Postwar Japan: Party, (2008) Bureaucracy and Business, New York: Cambridge University Press Goodman, S.G. (1994) Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Revolution: A Political Biography, London: Routledge Håfheinz, R. & Calder, E.K. The East Asia Edge, New York: Basic Books (1982) Imai, K. (1980) “Japan’s industrial organization”, in K. Sato, Ed., Industry and Business in Japan, London: Croom Helm Johnson, C. (1982) MITI and the Japanese Miracle, Stanford: Stanford University Press Kaizuka, S. (1956) Confucius, Allen & Unwin, London Lau, L.J. & Klein L.R. (1990) Models of Development, San Francisco: ICS Press Li, K.T. (1989) “Sources of rapid economic growth: the case of Taiwan”, Journal of Economic Growth, pp.4-12 Lieberthal, K. (1995) Governing China: From Revolution Through Reform, New York: W.W. Norton Mahbubani, Kishore (2007) The New Asian Hemisphere – The Irresistible Gift of Power to the East, New York: Public Affairs Redding, S.G. & Wong, G.Y.Y. “The psychology of Chinese organizational behaviour”, (1986) in M.H. Bond, Ed., The Psychology of the Chinese People, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press Sakai, K. (1990) “The feudal world of Japanese manufacturing”, Harvard Business Review, November-December, pp.38-49 Scitovsky (1990) “Economic development in Taiwan and South Korea”, in Lau & Klein, Models of Development, San Francisco: ICS Press Takakusu, J. (1947) Essentials of Buddhist Philosophy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu Wade, R. (1991) Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialisation, Princeton: Princeton University Press Waley, E. (1937) The Way and its Power, Allen & Unwin, London Yergin, D. & Stanislaw, J. The Commanding Heights – The Battle Between (1998) Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking The Modern World, New York: Simon & Schuster Zaehner, R.C. (1988) Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions, Barnes & Noble, New York Special Report (1991) “The growing power of Asia”, Fortune International, October 7th, pp.32-88 The Economist (1991) “Where tigers breed: a survey of Asia’s emerging Economies”, November 16th, pp.5-24 The Economist (1994) “Oriental Renaissance – A Survey of Japan”, July 9th, 1994 The Economist (2000) A Survey of China, April 8th, 2000, pp.3-23 The Economist (2002) A Survey of China, June 15th, 2002, pp.3-18 The Economist (2002) “Report on East Asian Economies”, July 2002, pp.65-67 The Economist (2004) The Dragon and the Eagle, October 2nd, 2004, pp.3-24 The Economist (2005) “A Survey of Malaysia”, April 5th, 2005 The Economist (2005) “The Sun Also Rises – A Survey of Japan”, October 8th, 2005
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The Economist (2006) A Survey of China, March 25th, 2006, pp.3-20 The Economist (2007) “Troubled Tigers”, January 31st, 2007, pp.67-69 The Economist (2007) “Briefing East Asian Economies”, June 30th, 2007 The Economist (2009) Chinese Business, February 21st, 2009, pp.61-64 The Economist (2009) China and the West, March 21st, 2009, pp.29-31 The Economist (2011 Rising Power, Anxious State, June 25th, 2011, pp.3-18 The Economist (2012 Pedalling Prosperity, May 26th, 2012, pp.3-20 The World Bank (1993) The East Asian Miracle, New York: Oxford University Press
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6. Religion’s Footprints in Retrospect
At the present time, there is no empirical research data available to analyse the role of religion on societies on a comparative and longitudinal basis. The only information available is based on case studies of the historical developments of particular religions in various parts of the world.
Judaism and Jewry
Judaism is the source of the two largest religions in the world: Christendom and Islam. But where these religions are universalistic and missionary in orientation, i.e. focussed on extending its reach to all communities, Judaism is essentially particularistic and ethnically focussed exclusively on Jewish people. Christianity shares with Judaism its monotheistic roots in the Old Testament but it has extended its universalistic message to the teachings of Christ as set out in the New Testament of the Bible. Islam also shares with Judaism its monotheism and also its Abrahamic history and several precepts and practices but they direct their missionary focus to all communities who are prepared to accept the teachings of Muhammed about Allah as set out in their sacred text, which is the Koran.
The Old Testament’s book of Genesis begins with an account of the Jewish creation myth. It begins with a universalistic description of the beginnings of man and everything that is in Heaven and on Earth. But because man is created in the “image of God”, he also carries the divine spirit in him. This sets him apart, over and above the rest of creation. But the remainder of the Old Testament is mainly focussed on the history of the Israelites which it singles out as a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation”.
Judaism has a complex relationship with the Jewry. Judaism cannot survive without Jews because only Jews or persons converted to Jewry can become Judaists. Judaism has for centuries been handed down by many generations of Rabbis. Throughout, the Rabbis have acted as the interpreters, articulators and guardians of the Judaic Torah. They decided who qualified to be a Jew and what the text of the Bible meant. This has given Judaism an exclusiveness which is inevitably frowned upon by other communities.
After the middle of the second century AD, the diaspora of the Jews took them to many countries. Everywhere they distinguished themselves as an isolated, closed community of assiduous traders with wide-spun family and religious networks. As traders they became stockpilers, hoarders or accumulators of money. They developed a reputation as money lenders which raised the question of usury. Although the practice of charging an interest on loans was common in parts of Mesopotamia and among Phoenicians and Egyptians, Jews were not allowed to charge interest to other Jews. Deuteronomy 23:24 clearly stated “Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury, but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury”. By being permitted to charge interest to strangers but not to Jews, the charging of interest was made synonymous with something hostile. The charging of interest became calamitous for Jews in their relations with the rest of the world: they were disliked and mistrusted. As a result of their concentration on money lending to make a living, the Jews became an element in a vicious circle of money lending and being disliked.
The traditional involvement of Jews in a variety of money-lending practices, has given rise to giving Jewry a bad name. “Being a Jew” in a proverbial sense has acquired the meaning of being a reclusive exploiter of other people. Since the expulsion of Jews from Spain, many Jews took their ticket to emancipation or access to society through baptism as Christians. A famous example is the baptism
172 into the Anglican Church of Benjamin Disraeli in 1817 as a result of a quarrel between his father and the local synagogue. Jews were not legally admitted to parliament until 1858, and without his baptism Disraeli could never have become Prime Minister. Karl Heinrich Marx was baptised as a 6-year old in Trier. His grandfather was a rabbi, but his father, Heinrich, was a child of the Enlightenment and a student of Voltaire and Rousseau. But he was also an ambitious lawyer and became a Christian, and in due course, rose to be dean of the Trier bar. His son, Karl, instead of going to the yeshiva attended Trier high school. During much of the first half of the 19th century Jews could not own land or exercise a trade or profession throughout Prussia. It was only after the Prussian Reform Treaty of 1847 and 1848 that civil rights on a non-religious base were established in the German states.
Karl Marx himself, paradoxically, reflected the anti-Jewish sentiments of his time. Like the French utopian socialists Fourier and Proudhon who considered Jews as the “incarnation of commerce”, the “source of all evil”, an “unsociable race, obstinate, infernal ... the enemy of mankind”, “a network of commercial conspirators against humanity”, Marx described Jews in utterly pejorative terms. In two essays on “The Jewish Question” which he published in the Deutsch-Francöisische Jahrbucher in 1844, his terminology reflected typical anti-Semitic clichés: “the dirtiest of all races”, “leprous people”, “the Jewish money-men who never soil their hands with toil, exploit the poor workers and peasants”, the “disease of the Jews is the religion of money, and its modern form is capitalism”. Karl Marx expanded anti-Semitism from a conspiracy-theory based on a parasitical race into an anti- capitalist theory of class conflict.
Wherever Jews settled as communities, their money lending led to trouble with the locals. The very fact of their constant displacement and resettlement probably had an invigorating effect on their cultural way of doing things and probably sharpened their business skills. They generally added a dynamic input to the areas where they settled. They became “expert settlers” as a result of having been forced to move throughout their history. As strangers and sojourners from their earliest origins, they had, over many generations, and in a variety of circumstances, perfected the skills of concentrating their wealth so that it could be switched quickly from a point of danger to a safer destination. Their outsider status is well demonstrated in their attitude to dealing with money – a double standard for money dealings with Jews and Gentiles. This prepared Jews to take advantage of economic opportunities wherever they settled. They kept on pushing the diaspora further in search of new business opportunities.
They have been active over large parts of Asia from early medieval times trading in silks and spices they bought from the East and slaves they brought from the West. They served as bankers in Muslim courts, taking deposits from Jewish traders, while on-lending it to the Muslim caliphs. They thrived in Baghdad, Tunisia and Spain. Expelled Jews went to the Americas where they set up factories and became plantation owners. They were particularly active in Brazil where they controlled the trade in precious and semi-precious stones.
The Jews have always been skilful at using and transferring capital. But since they were established in Anglo-Saxon society, the security they enjoyed in law enabled them to accumulate assets. Trading, especially in articles of small volume and high value, such as jewels, easily concealed and whisked from place to place, no longer constituted the sole economic activity in which Jews could engage safely. In New York and elsewhere in America, the Jews soon moved to control the centre of the financial stage. In England the Jews became the founding element in the financial market of the City of London.
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As argued by Paul Johnson, the Jews made a contribution to the development of modern capitalism quite disproportionate to their numbers. They invented several financial instruments: bearer-bonds, bills of exchange, banknotes and a variety of financial securities. They dominated the Amsterdam stock exchange, held large portfolios in the Dutch VOC and both the British West and East India Companies. They were the first professional stock jobbers and brokers in England. In 1792 they took the lead in creating the New York Stock Exchange. As a people without a country, the world was their home: the further the market stretched, the greater were the opportunities. Jews built the first textile mills in India and acquired control of the first diamond and gold mines in South Africa. The Jewish Randlords in conjunction with Cecil John Rhodes and Lord Milner succeeded in pushing the British Colonial Office into war with the two Boer Republics. Afterwards the trading of gold and diamonds became the mainstay of the City of London trading accounts in the first decades of the 20th century.
In modern times the centre of the world’s financial markets shifted to the Jewish bankers in Wall Street, New York. Then in 2008 these bankers and brokers dumped their toxic financial instruments (all kinds of derivatives) onto other financial markets and so precipitated the World Financial Crisis when it brought the fragile European economies into turmoil. These economies, in turn, have been brought to the fringe of insolvency by their practice of chronic deficit spending financed by the unfathomable bond market – also a creature of Jewish financial acumen.
In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, Washington demanded no scalps from Wall Street. No directors were brought to book. When the US Congress introduced what actually became the “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act”, the financial interests of Wall Street evidently resolved that reforming Wall Street was too delicate a task to be left to Capitol Hill. The Obama Administration left it to the Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner (a former New York Federal Reserve President and Wall Street confidante) to design a mild overhaul of Wall Street regulation. After numerous consultations with interested parties such as Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, the voluminous Dodd-Frank Act was chaperoned through Congress by Wall Street lobbyists (the largest contributors to the President’s campaign fund). The new system enshrined the “too big to fail” principle without effectively creating a straight-jacket for the banks. It created a mechanism for seizing and winding down big failing firms and reinforces capital and liquidity buffers throughout the financial system, hoping thereby to reduce the danger of contagion caused by failing institutions. The changes effectively reshuffled the status quo and added additional regulatory bureaus to Washington’s already bulkanised regulatory arrangement which ensured that the regulated would continue to have opportunities to play off one regulator against the other. The “moral hazard” problem remains as large as ever.
During the bill-writing process, interested parties such as Blankfein appeared before Congressional Committees. The Sunday Times of November 8th, 2009, reported Blankfein saying in an interview with John Arlidge, that Wall Street was doing “God’s Work”. No one was reported to be commenting on God’s need to employ a good auditor to look into Wall Street’s shenanigans and possibly also a good prosecutor to seek out the culprits – the scapegoat Bernie Madoff aside. Subsequently, in 2012 it was reported in The Economist that the board of Goldman Sachs had awarded Blankfein the largest remuneration package ever received by a bank chief executive. God evidently rewards his “workers” very generously.
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The finance and banking cronies of Wall Street and the City of London are today sitting at the cross roads of the world’s financial networks, making a living out of speculative investments in a range of highly complex national and international financial instruments. These financiers operate on a global scale while the regulatory instruments, which the Jews also tend to dominate, only have a national footprint. They cannot function as an effective monitor of the world’s shadow finance and banking system driven by secretive hedge funds and investment trusts based in tax havens and obscure financial centres.
Economic historian Niall Ferguson’s remarkable study, The Ascent of Money – A Financial History of the World, Allen Lane, New York, 2008, p.2, makes the following statement: “Throughout the history of Western civilization, there has been a recurrent hostility to finance and financiers, rooted in the idea that those who make a living from lending money are somehow parasitical on the ‘real’ economic activities of agriculture and manufacturing. This hostility has three causes. It is partly because debtors have tended to outnumber creditors and the former have seldom felt very well disposed towards the latter. It is partly because financial crises and scandals occur frequently enough to make finance appear to be a cause of poverty rather than prosperity, volatility rather than stability. And it is partly because, for centuries, financial services in countries all over the world were disproportionately provided by members of ethnic minorities, who had been excluded from land ownership or public office but enjoyed success in finance because of their own tight-knit networks of kinship and rent.”
Addressing the summit of the Islamic Conference on October 16th, 2003, Dr. Mahathir Mohammed, Malaysia’s Prime Minister for 22 years, stated: “The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million, but today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them”. When his remarks drew outrage from Jewish groups around the world and from Western governments, Dr. Mahathir responded by saying the reaction to his comments proved his point, for it showed the Western media was controlled by Jews.
The important point is not merely the immensity of wealth (and power) accumulation, but the obscure and disproportionate concentration of power and influence in a few hands. It is not clear at what stage the concentration of power becomes manipulative and excessive. Lord Acton said “all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Certainly the Jewish people do not wield absolute power in today’s world but they do have a lot of influence and soft power: money buys results. Some people may even wield enough manipulative influence and power to make self- fulfilling predictions – especially if they believe that they are “God’s chosen people”.
In 2012 Edward Luce, an Oxford trained British journalist and Financial Times correspondent, published an interesting book entitled Time To Start Thinking – America and the Spectre of Decline, Little Brown, London, in which he paints a disturbing picture of the state of American society. According to Luce the American elites fail to come to grips with the real problems facing the country. He points his fingers in accusation at the Republican Party and “Tea Party” leaders of the conservative right rather than to the socialist-liberal left “... because there is no such thing as a liberal ‘movement’; angry liberals are not as unified as angry conservatives ... and they are not nearly as numerous”. (Luce, op.cit. p.268)
Luce misses the point. Most of his contacts and sources of information and opinions are Jewish American: Wall Street financiers, Washington lobbyists, leftist academics or lawyers, teachers or journalists. Luce is not a reliable guide into the intricate policy-making structures of the American
175 society. To understand the functioning of the complex American political-economic society, proper regard must be had to the demographic determinants of party and voter allegiances and particularly to the predominant role of the well-financed lobbyists on all levels of government where money buys results. There can be no doubt in whose hands the power strings of money are held. In years to come the American political scene is likely to be dominated by the contest between the political fronts of the major religious camps: the Jewish network, the “Bible Belt” campaigners, the insurgent Islamic jihadists and the efforts of these groups to win over the support of the emerging Latino contingency.
The person who was asked to write the chapter on Judaism in the Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions, R.J. Zwi Werblowsky, concluded his survey with the following words: “Perhaps we do not go far wrong in suggesting that Judaism and Israel can at least be partly understood as a continuing historical process which is the result of and the response to God’s charge to his servant Moses: ‘... for all the earth is mine. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel’. To which the Rabbis added the laconic comment: These are the words – no more and no less.” (See Werblowsky, op.cit. p.39)
The Jewish creation myth and Judaism’s particularistic and exclusively ethnic focus on Jews and their total reliance on the text of the Old Testament, have given rise to many questions. Has God chosen the Jews as the focus of his purpose with mankind? How certain is that claim? Since the Jews wrote the Bible, how can we find independent confirmation of the validity of that claim? What part of the Bible, the Talmud and Rabbinical Law is essentially a human creation? Was the Pentateuch verbally dictated to Moses? Is each and every individual Jew “chosen” and different from other citizens of the countries where he or she lives?
Paul Johnson ends his remarkable History of the Jews with the following words: “Historians should beware of seeking providential patterns in events. They are too easily found, for we are credulous creatures, born to believe, and equipped with powerful imaginations which readily produce and rearrange data to suit any transcendental scheme. Yet excessive scepticism can produce as serious a distortion as credulity. The historian should take into account all forms of evidence, including those which are or appear to be metaphysical. If the early Jews were able to survey, with us, the history of their progeny, they would find nothing surprising in it. They always knew that Jewish society was appointed to be a pilot-project for the entire human race. That Jewish dilemmas, dramas and catastrophes should be exemplary, larger than life, would only seem natural to them. That Jews should over the millennia attract such unparalleled, indeed inexplicable, hatred would be regrettable but only to be expected. Above all, that the Jews should still survive, when all those ancient people were transmuted or vanished into the oubliettes of history, was wholly predictable. How could it be otherwise? Providence decreed it and the Jews obeyed. The historian may say: there is no such thing as providence. Possibly not. But human confidence in such an historical dynamic, if it is strong and tenacious enough, is a force in itself, which pushes on the hinge of events and moves them. The Jews believed they were a special people with such unanimity and passion, and over so a long a span, that they became one. They did indeed have a role because they wrote it for themselves. Therein, perhaps, lies the key to their story.” (Paul Johnson, op.cit. pp.586-587)
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Christianity and the Rise and Decline of Religiosity
Historian Geoffrey Blainey states that few invasions of ideas have matched the global spread of Christianity during the period 1780 to 1914. During this period it became the largest religion in the world. Catholics were initially more successful than Protestants but the latter gradually gained ground. Two Catholic countries, Spain and Portugal, initially took the lead but Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, later joined by the United States, assisted the Protestants to catch up. Ever since the time of Emperor Constantine, political support was vital for Christianity’s expansion into new territories. Several dozen different churches, sects and religious orders joined in the quest to convert Africans and Asians. All the missionaries confronted the problem that they were often seen as accomplices of the ruling European powers. Christians who were willing to adapt to the new lands and peoples were more likely to succeed.
By 1900 Christian missionaries had reached almost every part of the inhabited world except remote parts of Africa and New Guinea. But they seldom succeeded in converting more than 5 percent of the local populations. The Philippines remained the most Christianised country in East Asia – a tribute to Spanish priests and monks and nuns of earlier centuries. Doctors, nurses, linguists and teachers came with the missionaries and sometimes a printing press to issue the newly translated New Testament in the local language. These efforts were financed largely by small coin contributions by European and American citizens.
In the industrial age new professions were open to the ambitious. More and more women were knocking at the door of church preaching as a career. But the doors remained closed until well into the 20th century. The first pioneer women preachers in the 19th century had to preach in the open air, because most church buildings were not open to them.
The crusade against slavery in the USA was initially a white male crusade, but gradually women also took leading roles in the American Anti-slavery Society. The abolition of slavery in the USA in 1865 owed much to the American Civil War and to the campaign led by Christian men and women. The rising campaign to reduce the consumption of alcohol relied heavily on female orators, writers and petitioners who came mainly from Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational, Disciples of Christ, Salvation Army and other denominations. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union was a major forerunner of modern political feminism because it demanded the right to vote. The women proved powerful campaigners.
Since the start of the 20th century, Christianity was seriously challenged by two powerful ideologies: communism and nationalism. Communism was an offshoot of socialism which, in turn, was originally derived from Christian principles, particularly assisting the less privileged or disadvantaged members of society through charitable action. Socialists elevated charitable action to collective action through the instruments of the state. The communists added to the collective action of the state the mechanism of the totalitarian party dictatorship. Nationalism is derived from extremist patriotic sentiments. Both fascist Italy and Nazi Germany elevated patriotic sentiments into a powerful nationalistic ideology where the alleged interests of the nation override all other considerations.
Following the theories of Karl Marx, communism insisted that religion was the “opium of the masses”. It made people feel content, materially, with what they had. Christianity fixed their hopes on an afterlife, whereas communism would create a paradise on earth in which poverty was
177 unknown. Communism became a secular religion luring millions of people away from Christianity. They set up their own version of the Inquisition with extinction chambers and prison camps in Siberia. The Russian Orthodox Church was suppressed first by Lenin and later by Stalin. In 1918 all theological seminaries were shut and afterwards all churches were closed or used as storehouses. A wave of Soviet propaganda denounced Christianity. During the Second World War, Stalin gave the Church a brief reprieve. After the war, the Soviet vendetta against Christianity was resumed and relayed to the newly occupied countries of Eastern Europe. In the whole history of Christianity few setbacks were as serious as the decline of the Orthodox Church in Russia in the first half of the 20th century. The Orthodox Church was the heir of the longest strand in Christian history: the eastern Orthodox brand of Christianity was the custodian of the birthplaces of Christianity. Its sacred language – classical Greek – was the language of the authors of the New Testament. The influence of Rome came into effect centuries later during the time of Constantine. After 1918, the Russian Church, the strongest of the Orthodox Churches, was suppressed by Russia’s atheists.
Many German Christians were alarmed by the spread of atheism and the suppression of Christianity in Russia. So when Hitler’s National Socialist Party came into power in 1932, many Christians saw in Hitler a bulwark against the communist threat. But Hitler saw Christianity only as a temporary ally. In his opinion one is either a Christian or a German. He elevated his brand of nationalism – Nazism – into a religion. He ceased to open the parliament after it was, fortuitously for him, burnt down in 1934. He broke his pact with the Catholic Church and divided the Lutherans by setting up his own brand of “German Christians”. A host of Lutheran pastors rebelled against Hitler and hundreds went to prison from where they never returned. A notable Lutheran opponent was Reverend Martin Niemöller, who spent seven years in Dachau.
In a mere five years Nazism replaced Christianity as the dominant creed. The cry “Heil Hitler” was the rallying call. The churches were allowed to continue in a subdued role. In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and after a brief Blitzkrieg soon subdued all the West-European countries, including France. Only the stubborn air defences of Britain and Churchill’s inspiring leadership saved the UK from invasion. In June 1941 Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and like Napoleon’s 1812 campaign, was defeated by the long distances and cold winters of the Russian steppe.
During World War II the Nazis perpetrated the most ghastly genocide of Jews and Gypsies imaginable by killing people on an industrial scale. It embraced all Jews, old and young for the crime of being Jews. Hitler massacred not only Jews from Germany but also from Poland, Austria, France, the Netherlands and other East European countries. The massacre of around 6 million Jews seriously reduced the talent pool of the Western world in music, art, literature, science, physics, law and finance. Some people tend to point accusing fingers at Christians for not doing more to stop Hitler. But that was easier said than done. Millions of Christians from Western countries fought and perished in the War to defeat Nazi Germany and its ally, Japan.
The Second World War stands out as a decade of unprecedented destruction. Human lives were destroyed at a rate of tens of millions to a total of around 50 million. Most of this destruction was facilitated by modern science in the hands of atheists. Both World Wars of the 20th century were devastating in the extreme because science and technology had been enlisted to support war efforts as never before. Two anti-Christian ideologies – Communism and Nazism – both placing a low premium on human lives, were in command of the destructive use of science and technology. Ironically, the deadliest part of World War II was when the two secular creeds confronted one another.
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Since the Age of Enlightenment all religions were seriously challenged by the advancement of science as a method of inquiry. Scientists rely on empirical evidence and factual knowledge that can be transferred intersubjectively to determine its objective validity. Beliefs and faiths related to supra-natural forces were viewed as mere superstitions. Although these doubts were applicable to all religions, the debate between scientists and believers mainly took place in the Western world. The parts of the world where freedom of speech, conscience and assembly were constitutionally guaranteed were much more amenable to debates about religion. In the Muslim world atheism is not tolerated and treated as a punishable crime. Even deviant religious beliefs are not tolerated. The Western world with its high level of religious toleration in modern times was also the main arena of scientific progress.
In the Western world it is widely assumed that many scientists nurse secret religious doubts, despite the fact that as many probably believe in God. Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel both probed the tantalising question of the origins and evolution of species – old and new. Most atheists and agnostics are less vocal than Dawkins about their religious beliefs.
As stated by Geoffrey Blainey, “Several learned observers concluded that midway between Christianity and atheism lay a wide strip of vacant ground. Neither side could capture it. Neither side could demolish its rival, intellectually. Christians, relying more on faith, intuition, imagination and a sense of wonder and mystery, could usually prevail in debates on their home ground – religion. Scientists, with their insistence on evidence and measurement, and their search for general theories and for certainties and predictability, usually prevailed on their home ground ... As for the deep question – is there a God? – Christian intellectuals could not prove the existence of God, and scientists could not disprove it.” (See Geoffrey Blainey – Christianity – A short History, op.cit. p.448)
What was often challenged on the side of the doubters, was the belief that Jesus was the Son of God, that he was conceived in the Virgin birth, that he had risen from the dead and that one day he would return to this earth to judge the living and the dead.
The permanent nature of this deadlock was succinctly expressed in 1959 by the French Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin in his posthumous book The Phenomenon of Man. He said that science and religion are two sides of the same phenomenon, a quest for perfect knowledge, and that each side was vital. Yet each side often insisted that there was only one truth and that it could be seen perfectly clearly in the mirror that it had selected.
Scientists and believers often stand at two opposite ends of the spectrum of future expectations. Many scientists and secularists are optimists about human nature, about human progress and the material benefits applied science can bring. People like Stephen Hocking expect that in the fullness of time science will enable humans to fulfil its enormous potential – if only we succeed in adequately employing our reasoning powers. At the other end of the spectrum stand religious believers such as Christians who assume that evil, like goodness, is part of human nature,. Christians, in particular, combine pessimism and optimism in their belief system and consider it essential to introduce an element of humility in our expectations. The development of scientific rationality is not, per definition, a linear road to perfectibility. The ultimate truth cannot be established qua science alone. “Ought” questions can only be resolved in the realm of values.
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In the Christian world, for close to 2000 years, people have believed that those who gravely and frequently offended the precepts of the Bible would, after death, suffer eternal torment in hell. This terrible fate was depicted in coloured glass in cathedrals and churches, in paintings, stone carvings, novels and poems. By 1900 millions of Protestants ceased to believe in perpetual punishment and in the existence of hell.
Heaven was not so easily discarded. It was a more consoling belief as a place where deceased loved ones would reunite. The persisting belief in heaven was further enhanced by the expectation that sins could be forgiven when genuinely repented. So sinners could also find a place in heaven. For Calvinists God’s judgement was supreme and should not be challenged.
For people of the Western world the 19th century was looking more promising” famine and disease were better controlled. Housing and hygiene improved and the standard of living was higher than ever before. People along both sides of the Atlantic were better educated, worked fewer hours, were healthier and more secure and better protected from foreign aggression. Fewer women died in childbirth, fewer children died in infancy and life expectancy increased. God’s wrath and blessings became more abstract and less visible.
The practice of church worshipping varied considerably in the West. Generally people of middling wealth were more likely than tradesmen or the poor to attend church and women more likely than men. The Irish and the Portuguese were more regular than the French or the English, the Poles more than the Swedes. Churchgoing was also less frequent in the city than the countryside, where it was also a social occasion. North America has always been a land of churchgoers. A good organist, a well- trained choir or good soloists, enhanced the standard of the music.
In the Western world, the 1960s started an era of rebellion against and rejection of traditions and taboos in religion, politics, sex, music, clothes and much else. Since the French Revolution, the Christian world has never seen such revolt against long-held precepts and values. The spirit of the time encouraged John Lennon of Beatles fame to declare “Christianity will go” and “It will vanish and shrink” and “We’re more popular than Jesus now”. But Lennon was partly correct in one respect: in the West, or Europe in particular, the Christian church was in decline. Christianity is still in decline in the most prosperous, most literate and most materialist nations. Is the decline in Europe, the traditional Christian heartland a portent of its long-term future?
Reliable survey data on religiosity – particularly in comparative and longitudinal perspective – is difficult to obtain. Recent statistics are summarised by Niall Ferguson in Civilization – The West and the Rest, pp.266-277, in the following terms: Europeans pray less and work less than Americans. According to the 2005-8 World Values Survey, 4 percent of Norwegians and Swedes and 8 percent of Germans and French attend church services at least once a week, compared with 36 percent of Americans, 44 percent of Indians, 48 percent of Brazilians and 78 percent of sub-Saharan Africans. The figures are significantly higher for a number of predominantly Catholic countries like Italy (32 percent) and Spain (16 percent). The only countries where religious observance is lower than in Protestant Europe are Russia and Japan. God is considered to be important in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and highest of all in Muslim countries of the Middle East. Only in China is God important to fewer people (less than 5 percent) than in Europe.
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The case of Britain is especially interesting in view of the determination with which Britons sought to spread their own religious faith in the 19th century. Around 17 percent of Britons claim that they attend religious services at least once a week – higher than continental Europe, but less than half the American figure. Fewer than 25 percent of Britons say God is very important in their lives – less than half of the American figure. The surveys do not distinguish between religions, so that they almost certainly understate the decline of British Christianity. More Muslims attend a mosque than Anglicans go to church. The Evangelical and Pentecostal churches are better attended than the Anglican Church. Prior to 1960 most marriages in England and Wales were solemnised in a church. After that a downward slide began to around 40 percent in the late 1990s. The Church of Scotland shows a similar trend.
These trends seem certain to continue. Practising Christians are ageing. According to a 2000 “Soul of Britain” survey, younger Britons are markedly less likely to believe in God or heaven. Less than 8 percent identified themselves as “atheists”; 12 percent indicated they did not know what to believe; 32 percent considered all religions as equally valid; more than 66 percent said they recognised no clearly defined moral guidelines; and, bizarrely, 45 percent of those surveyed said that the decline in religion had made the country a worse place. So much for opinion surveys!
Why have Westerners lost their Christian faith? Some seek the answer in the secular philosophies of the Sixties, the Beatles, the contraceptive pill, the mini-skirt, pop culture and the like. Many Europeans attribute the change to the realisation that religious faith is just an anachronism, a vestige of medieval superstition and roll their eyes at the religious zeal of the American Bible Belt. They do not consider their own lack of faith as an anomaly.
“So who killed Christianity in Europe?”, asks Niall Ferguson. Max Weber, the famous German social scientist, predicted that the spirit of capitalism was bound to destroy its Protestant ethic parent, as materialism corrupted the original asceticism of the godly. Leo Tolstoy also saw a fundamental contradiction between Christ’s teachings and those habitual conditions of life which we consider as civilisation, culture, art and science. If so, asks Ferguson, “what part of economic development was specifically hostile to religious belief? Was it the changing role of women, the decline of the nuclear family, and the demographic decline of the West? Was it scientific knowledge which caused the ‘demystification of the world’? Was it Darwin’s theory of evolution which overthrew the biblical story of divine creation? Was it improving life expectancy which made the hereafter a much less alarmingly proximate destination? Was it the welfare state, a secular shepherd keeping watch over us from cradle to the grave? Or could it be that European Christianity was killed by the chronic self- obsession of modern culture? Was the murderer of Europe’s Protestant work ethic none other than Sigmund Freud?” (Ferguson, op.cit. p.270)
Freud, the Moravian born Jewish founding father of psychoanalysis, set out to refute Max Weber. For Freud religion could not be the driving force behind the achievements of Western civilisation because it was essentially an “illusion”, a “universal neurosis” devised to prevent people from giving way to their basic instincts – in particular, their sexual desires and violent, destructive impulses.
Freud’s theories about the death of Protestantism did nothing to explain America’s continued Christian faith. Americans have become richer, their knowledge of science has increased. They have been more exposed to psychoanalysis and pornography than Europeans. Millions of worshippers flock to American churches every Sunday. The West has always maintained a strict separation between religion and state, allowing an open competition between multiple Protestant sects. The
181 competition between sects in a free religious market seems to encourage innovations to make the experience of worship and church membership more fulfilling. But are these American sects flourishing because they have developed a kind of consumer Christianity? It is easy to drive to and entertaining to watch. It makes few demands on believers. It is easy to switch from one church to the next.
Ferguson argues that the Americans, by turning religion into just another leisure pursuit, had drifted a long way from Max Weber’s version of the Protestant ethic, in which deferred gratification was the corollary of capital accumulation. They have created capitalism without saving. This decline of thrift turned out to be a recipe for a financial crisis – as has been experienced since 2008. People lived beyond their means and borrowed more than what they could realistically afford to repay.
This phenomenon was not uniquely American. Variations of the same theme were played out in other English-speaking countries and ultimately exported to Europe: “the fractal geometry of the age of leverage”. The irony is that as the debt burdens of Westerners increased, the savings of Easterners also steadily increased. Asians work many more hours than their Western counterparts and save more. The rise of the spirit of capitalism in China and elsewhere in South-East Asia has, chronically, gone hand-in-hand with the rise of the Protestant work ethic: working hard and saving more.
When G.K. Chesterton wrote his Short History of England in 1917, he said Christendom meant a specific culture or civilisation. When Christianity declined, “superstition would drown all your rationalism and scepticism”. Today, the West is indeed awash with post-modern cults, none of which according to Ferguson, “... offers anything remotely as economically invigorating or socially cohesive as the old Protestant ethic. Worse, this spiritual vacuum leaves West European societies vulnerable to the sinister ambitions of a minority of people who do have religious faith – as well as the political ambition to expand the power and influence of that faith in their adopted countries. That the struggle between radical Islam and Western civilizations can be caricatured as ‘Jihad vs McWorld’ speaks volumes. In reality, the core values of Western civilization are directly threatened by the brand of Islam espoused by terrorists, derived as it is from the teachings of nineteenth- century Wahhabist Jamal al-Din and the Muslim Brotherhood leaders al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb. The separation of church and state, the scientific method, the rule of law and the very idea of a free society – including relatively recent Western principles like the equality of the sexes and the legality of homosexual acts – all these things are openly repudiated by the Islamists.” (Ferguson, op.cit. pp.289-290)
What is striking about the modern reading of history, is the speed of the Roman Empire’s collapse. Could our own version of Western civilisation collapse with equal suddenness? China and other big Asian countries are narrowing the economic gap between the “West and the Rest”. Some people throw in the spectre of a climate change disaster caused by man-made carbon emissions. It is difficult to weigh the evidence.
Many historians, philosophers and scientists have speculated about the rise and fall of civilisations in cyclical or gradualistic terms. Polybius, following Aristotle, wrote about the following cycle: monarchy – kingship – tyranny – aristocracy – oligarchy, democracy and ochlocracy (mob rule). The American historian Carroll Quigley spoke of the cycle of civilisation as seven ages: mixture, gestation, expansion, conflict, universal empire, decay, invasion.
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Ferguson argues that civilisations are highly complex systems made up of a large number of interacting components that are asymmetrically organised. They operate between order and disorder, stable for sometime, in reality constantly adapting but a perturbation can set off a transition from equilibrium to crisis – and fall. The sun set on the British Empire with remarkable suddenness. The Soviet Union collapsed within a matter of months in 1989-1991. It fell off a cliff.
Samuel Huntington predicted that the twenty-first century would be marked by a “clash of civilizations” in which the West would be confronted by a “Sinic” East and a Muslim Greater Middle East and perhaps also the Orthodox civilisation of the former Russian Empire. The fault lines between civilisations will be the battle lines of the future. Numerous objections were raised to this prediction which was made in 1996, but it nevertheless seems to be a better description of the post- Cold War than any competing theories.
It is argued that Huntington’s model failed as a prophesy. But much depends on the time-frame and the terminology used to describe the conflicts that occurred since 1996. The Iraq and Afghanistan confrontations, preceded by the 9/11 disaster, certainly fit Huntington’s model. The conflicts in the Sudan, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast involved religious and ethnic confrontations, but ethnic conflicts usually also involve religious cleavages. The fact that local conflicts have not spilled over into a global collision of civilisations is merely a matter of time-bound perspective and terminology. The question is what lies at the root of these conflicts? At the beginning of the second decade of the 21st millennium the major flashpoints were Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Afghanistan – all of which involved intra-Muslim cleavages which were largely avoided by the Western powers. This aloofness was partly inspired by strategic caution and partly by the financial constraints on the part of the Western powers to get involved. Exceptions were the Iraq and the Afghan wars, when the West was provoked by jihad action and the domestic political pressure within the United States.
Ferguson provides an appropriate end to this analysis with his assessment of the recent historical challenges facing Western civilisation: “Maybe the real threat is posed not by the rise of China, Islam or CO2 emissions, but by our own loss of faith in the civilization we inherited from our ancestors ... by our own pusillanimity – and by the historical ignorance that feeds it.”
The Ascendancy of Islam
The historical record reveals that by the year 1000 Islam had become a prominent religion in large parts of the world. As the spearheads of Islam continued to probe in all directions, it soon reached the Strait of Gibraltar in the west. Far to the east it reached the mouth of the Indus on the Indian Ocean, the areas north of the Ganges as well as the banks of the Brahmaputra above the Bay of Bengal. After conquering the lands of the Persians they penetrated Central Asia all the way to Samarkand and the areas west of the Chinese Walls. But the discovery of sea routes across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans by the Portuguese and Spanish navigators opened a new field for Christian missionaries. Western Europe also became dominant in science and technology which gave it increased vitality to capture most of the Muslim lands.
After the Second World War, Islam revived. The occupied Muslim lands became independent and Muslim regions benefited from the discovery of large oil deposits in their regions. Oil rich Muslim nations became financiers of the extension of Islamic influence. Millions of Muslims emigrated to Western lands where they flourished and were allowed to practice their religion. Islam maintained
183 an intensity of belief and a pace of growth not matched by its main rival in recent centuries. Although Christendom remained the religion of more than 30 percent of the world’s population, Islam was catching up. With around 12 percent in the year 2000, Christians are estimated to outnumber Muslims only by a ratio of five to four today.
Throughout modern history, religion has been a major foundation for identity and cohesion as a result of its profound hold upon people’s emotions and imaginations. Islam has provided the common bond for both a militant cultural identity and a sense of sacred mission for millions of people. In Islamic countries, religion has taken on an added importance because it regards the secular and the sacred realms as inseparable. Co-existence of different religions or secular communities within Islamic states is particularly difficult, if not impossible. Religious parties see it as their sacred duty to suppress and crush what they see as anti-religious, anti-Islamic movements.
All Islamic states are closed societies. With the exception of Dubai, they do not readily allow or attract immigrants, but they do generate millions of emigrants to Western countries. Only four Islamic countries have in recent years experimented with constitutional democracy: Turkey, Indonesia, Lebanon and now also Egypt. In both Turkey and Indonesia the preservation of a fair degree of secular civil rights depends heavily on the intervention of the military.
A typical characteristic of the Arab world is the strong hold of plutocratic cliques at the heart of Islamic regimes coupled with the remarkable resilience of family dynasties such as in Saudi-Arabia, the Gulf States and Morocco. There have been positive stirrings of social change in the wake of the “Arab Spring” of 2011 and 2012. Positive breakthroughs have occurred in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen. However, the democratisation process has moved slowly and ambiguously. Satellite television plays an important part to spread information about the world, but a democratic lifestyle can only be built on a deep-rooted process of modernisation in education, training, regulations and cultural habits. Muslim societies across the Arab world today enjoy unprecedented access to information and divergent opinions through al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya. But much needs to be done to penetrate closed societies such as Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia.
Compared to the West and the rapidly developing East, Muslim countries are generally under- developed. This state of affairs has much to do with the down-trodden status of women and the narrow focus of their education system. It is claimed that about 50 percent of Arab women cannot read or write. They suffer from unequal citizenship and legal entitlements.
It seems that today, throughout the Islamic world, there are two opposite trends competing for ascendency: Islamic theocracy at one end of the spectrum and secular liberal democracy at the other end. The Islamic theocracy movement is currently the most prominent. The momentum of secular liberal democracy is sporadic and faces many obstacles. Islamic theocracy has several obvious advantages: their messages are cast in religious rather than secular political terms; both their critiques and aspirations are expressed in terms that are familiar and easily accepted on the street level; they have access in the mosques to a communications network that bears the authentic stamp of Islam; secular democrats are required by their own ideologies to tolerate the propaganda of their opponents, whereas the religious parties have no such obligation – and, in fact, go to great lengths to persecute secular or democratic views; Islamic theocrats diagnose the ills of the Islamic world as due to infidels and their local imitators and declare it the sacred Islamic duty to crush the anti- religious, anti-Islamic secular movements.
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The bulk of the Islamic populations find themselves somewhere between the opposite positions on the political spectrum. Hence Islam’s main political arms differ greatly in both tactics and aims: from jihadist militancy against infidels to pragmatic co-existential participation in the political process as is currently happening in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.
The political debate in the Arab world is overshadowed by the issue of Israel. It looms larger than anything else in Arab minds and distorts the internal Arab debate about politics and government. Iran has turned the Palestinian conflict with Israel into a tool against America’s Arab allies, arousing anti-American passions on Arab Street. Pro-American regimes lack democratic legitimacy and are presented as lackeys of a resented superpower. Many Arabs reject the idea of peaceful co-existence with Israel. This conflict tends to override internal quarrels between secular and religious Sunni and Shia, or left and right. Their hatred for Israel is an intoxicating way to ignore their own failings and to blame someone else. It enables the plutocratic regimes to maintain states of emergency at home and postpone reform. There will be no new dawn without solving the Palestinian problem.
Islam’s networks, like the Jewish network, are global in their reach. The most prominent are Salafism, Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood. Their pan-Islamic movements arose in reaction to what was perceived as the threat of Western colonialism. All three movements focus on the common cultural, linguistic, historical and religious links between the Arab countries which are held up as the backbone of Islam. Pan-Arabism is seen as a prerequisite for Muslim unity. The Muslim Brotherhood appears to be the strongest in terms of numerical support and organisational coherence. It expects certain virtues of body, mind and behaviour to be upheld by members. It works through other movements and fronts or proxies. It takes advantage of any opportunities available. The control centre of the Brotherhood is in Egypt and much of their activities are financed out of Saudi Arabia. Its primary aim is to promote Islam and the introduction of Sharia law, which they believe will happen once people have freely convinced themselves of its virtues. Hamas is a prominent offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Qaeda shares common ideological origins with the Muslim Brotherhood, but differs over politics and tactics.
In recent years a range of secret jihadist networks have appeared – all sailing under the flag of Islam. Many take advantage of the West’s civil rights guarantees of freedom of conscience, assembly and speech. In this way they are able to spread hate-filled messages and to create fifth column activists working to exploit and undermine the very systems under which they live in the West. Western governments and societies do not seem to understand the ideological threat posed by radical Islam. It is essential that they find ways to protect themselves not only from terrorism but also from the indirect incitement by militant organisations. Close to 20 million Muslims live in Western countries, which means the host countries will have to deal with a growing minority of disaffected Muslims. Theological struggles, like ideological contests, can last many generations.
Jihadist movements are constantly flaring up in many parts of the world: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar, the former Soviet Republics, Syria, Lebanon, Palestinian territories, the Gulf States and Africa, north of the equator over a vast terrain in and around the Sahara that stretches eastward across Somalia to the Horn of Africa. Al-Qaeda inspired militants are the driving force in many cases, taking advantage of the mismanagement of corrupt governments. These extremist Islamic groups recruit ill-educated, jobless and angry Muslim youngsters to wage a campaign of violence and murder. They are operating throughout the arc of instability stretching from Somalia in the east through Chad to Mali in the west. Extra money is collected from sponsors in Saudi Arabia and other sources in the oil-rich Gulf.
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The global jihad movements capitalise on local grievances and ignorance. It radicalises jobless young Muslims, giving their discontent a dangerous edge which poorly trained and equipped local security services cannot contain. As in Kenya, Somalia and the Sudan, the tensions created by the jihadists easily spill over into tensions between Muslims and Christians. The conflict in one country spills over to its neighbours. Unless Muslims themselves turn hostile to jihad, outside intervention can do little more than douse isolated flare-ups of violence. Only when local communities become more prosperous, better educated and better governed will the jihadist menace be quelled.
Hinduism’s Renunciation of Worldly Things
Hinduism is indigenous to India and is also known as “Brahmanism” – the original name derived from the Brahman caste of priests who first developed the notions of nature worship into a creative and adaptable religious practice. The word “Hinduism” was a term coined by the Muslims who were advancing into India to designate all Indians who were not Muslims. They derived the name “Hindu” from the River “Indus”.
Hinduism has no founder, prophet, specific creed or ecclesiastical institution. Grasping its meaning is as elusive as water escaping through your fingers. It is richly diverse both in religious practices and extremely creative and adaptable. The bond that is holding it together is the continuity of its development from ancient times to the present day. For this reason the Hindus themselves call their faith the “Eternal Religion” (satana dharma).
Because it has not been “founded” by anyone, has no fixed dogma and is enigmatically Indian, it is a religion that has “developed” and is still developing. The Hindus believe that like the world itself, there is no absolute beginning or a unique process leading to an end in salvation. The world is eternal and is constantly renewing itself. There is no particular being as a creator or saviour at the centre of Hinduism. Hence different systems of thought and cults have equal rights and validity. At different times wise men and religious teachers appear and proclaim their teachings in different forms – each with his own following.
Some Hindus proclaim having a personal creator God while others adhere to the idea of a non- personal law governing the world. The paths to salvation are many and varied. However the faith is not completely arbitrary. There are a number of specific central philosophies: that the cosmos is an ordered whole ruled by a universal law (dharma); the earthly representation of this order by a strictly hierarchical caste system and its purity laws; a belief in cosmic cyclical periods (calpas) constantly ending and beginning again; and the belief that this natural world order also acts as a moral order.
Hinduism is resolutely Indian. It undertakes no spiritual mission beyond that culture. Hindus have been engaged in missionary work in South-East Asia and in winning over devotees during the “India Craze” of the 1960s and 1970s in Europe and the USA. But winning “individual souls” is not an established Hindu custom.
Two distinct religious traditions merged to form Hinduism: ancient indigenous nature worshipping and Aryan beliefs invading from the North. The original Indian population were probably Negroid people who were pushed further and further south by intruders advancing from the north. The Aryans advanced over the mountains of the North West into India during the second millennium BC.
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They overpowered the indigenous people. Their faith was “henotheistic” (one God at a time), which implied a Supreme Lord who directed the universal law with other gods also active in subordinate fields. The Aryans introduced the caste system when they advanced around 1000 BC from the Punjab to the fertile Ganges Plain. The Aryans themselves made up the top three castes while the indigenous people and their descendants became the fourth class (sudras). A complicated system of rituals and sacrifices gave the Brahmin caste superior influence. The Brahmins were the priests and they claimed superior knowledge, a position they retained right through to contemporary Hinduism. The Brahmin priests used Sanskrit, an artificial language employed for religious purposes. Ordinary Indians used Prakrita. They also introduced the gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and reserved the officiating of ceremonies and sacrifices to male members of the three highest castes.
From the 4th century BC, Hinduism was challenged by the emergence of Buddhism. After the suppression of Buddhism, Hinduism was overpowered by the advance of Islam from the North by the 8th century AD. Subsequently the Sikhs split off in the Punjab region where they still survive as a separate faith combining Hindu and Islamic elements.
In the 16th century first the Portuguese then the Dutch and afterwards the English set up export monopolies at major Indian ports and by 1857 overthrew the remnants of Mogul rule. In 1877 Queen Victoria of England accepted the title of Empress of India. India was finally granted independence on 15 August 1947 after partitioning off East and West Pakistan. This partitioning of India was accompanied by an extremely violent persecution and re-settlement process. Gandhi was murdered in 1948 by a fanatic Hindu who saw Gandhi’s tolerance as a betrayal of Hinduism. A large number of Muslims (about 160 million) still live in India, which implies that the potential conflict between Hindus and Muslims remains very real.
Hindu scriptures are a diverse assemblage, but are considered to be the authoritative source of knowledge about the moral world order, the law of cause and effect of deeds, the rights and duties of all living beings and natural, spiritual and social hierarchies. The most important texts are the four Vedas (Holy Hymns), the associated Brahmanas (Holy Treatises and the Uphanishads (Secret Teachings). These scriptures are considered by Hindus to be of supernatural origin and constitute the “basic dogmas” of all Hindu systems. They set out the broad outline of the domains of Hindu gods, initiation rites, the social rules of the caste system, the belief in an eternal law (dharma) and the system of retribution through a hierarchy of reincarnations. The works are still written in the scholarly language of Sanskrit and are divided in two parts: superhuman revelations (sruti) and those created by human hand and are handed down from memory (smriti).
The word for God in Hinduism is Deva from “div” (to shine or radiate). The three gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are all-powerful figures in the Indian Pantheon. They are connected (trimurti) through the theory that they are only three different aspects or forms of the one original being in its activity as creator, preserver and destroyer of the universe. Some Hindu theologians see the different Gods as subordinate incarnations. Brahma is the creator God, but he did not create the world according to his free will, nor did he create it out of nothing. He is the personification of the eternal self of each individual and also the merging of other cosmogonic figures mentioned in Brahman texts. Most Hindu theologists see Brahma as the architect of worlds who constantly re- orders the existing components of the world. He gives the souls caught up in the cycle of the world new bodies each time they are reborn. Vishnu, the preserver, embodies the principle of the
187 preservation of the world through ethical or heroic deeds. Vishnu comes to the rescue whenever the world or humanity is in danger of falling into decay due to evil forces or moral decline. Shiva, the destroyer, is the most popular god in Hinduism. He sends diseases but also drives them away again. Shiva is double-headed and embodies both creative and destructive forces of the cosmos – depending on his different incarnations. Shiva is seen by his followers as the highest Lord of the World because he has the greatest number of different forms and facets. He is the god of storm, illnesses and death. He has more than 1000 different names. There are also countless other deities in Hinduism such as Ganesha, the potbellied god with the head of an elephant who is the god of wisdom; Surya, the sun god, the giver of life; Indra, the god of water; Varuna, the god of death; Yama, the god of wealth; Kubera, the god of fire, Vayu, the god of misfortune; Indra, the god of thunder, etc.
Hindu cosmology is a complex network of continents and seas; netherworlds (populated by demons), hells as places of punishment for evil-doers; upper worlds stacked one on top of the other, where the spirits and gods live. The whole world is surrounded by a shell with an infinite number of “world-eggs” moving in empty space. An infinite number of things inhabit the world, each consisting of a soul made of pure spirit (jiva) and a material body. Souls have always existed since time has no beginning, and depending on their karma (deeds performed) they repeatedly take on new bodies. Immortal souls really do not form one unity with their mortal bodies.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) known as “Mahatma” (great soul) was an orthodox Hindu but was influenced by Western thought (eg. Tolstoy). He led the Indian campaign for independence under the banner of non-violence and emphasised the truth of all religious under one God.
Many Hindus believe the Ganges River is the utmost symbol of what Hinduism means. It is the gift of the god Brahma to the Indian people and its flow symbolises the circulation of life, death and reincarnation over billions of years. Throughout India, temples abound like wayside shrines and Hindus invest much time and energy in their elaborate decorations. Everything in the form of paintings, architecture, finely sculptured figures carved in wood or stone reflects symbolism.
Since you can’t take your wealth with you, letting go of earthly things lies at the heart of Hinduism. Temples and shrines are monuments to the process of renunciation – the giving up of worldly things.
The god Shiva is the destroyer who brings death. It is the patron of Varanasi, the place where millions of dead have been brought to be cremated so that their ashes could be spread in the water of the Ganges. Death is as important as birth: both are transition points in the path of life. Many believe that at Varanasi everyone attains liberation from the great circular motion of birth, death and reincarnation. Because they believe at Varanasi you go straight to heaven, explains why millions flock to Varanasi in that hope.
Hinduism does not expect converts from other religions, because other religions are considered to be alternative pathways leading to Brahma. Hinduism explicitly teaches that there are many pathways to Brahma. Each of the many other gods and goddesses are symbols of the alternative pathways. The intercourse of male and female reflects the creative love of Brahma. It gives life to every living thing. When the gods of Fire and Water combine, the world is in harmony.
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India’s main challenge in the next few decades lies on its domestic front. It has to lift the bulk of its huge population out of abject poverty and provide the necessary quality of public services and the enabling policy environment for its economy to grow.
Nandan Nilekani, a prominent young Indian businessman (co-founder of Infosys, the country’s second largest IT company) recently wrote Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation – an interesting analysis of India’s prospects. The first part of the book explains why democratic, English- speaking India is starting to achieve its potential and how that could lead to a globally influential position for the country. The second catalogues the alarming reasons why the country could still fall apart.
Nilekani believes India now stands evenly balanced between the reluctance to change in the face of immense challenges on the one hand and the possibilities that could arise out of tackling these issues head-on. India will either become a country that greatly disappoints when compared with its potential, or one that surpasses all expectations.
India has already taken some steps to reduce the dead weight of bureaucracy with its near-infinite paperwork and corruption, to maintain its food security, to cut its patronage-based subsidy system, to build an integrated national gas grid to transport India’s growing supply of relatively clean natural gas, to deregulate its labour market, to strengthen its “deliberative democracy” and to bridge the yawning gap between rich and poor.
Unfortunately no outline has been provided of the steps to be taken to transform Indian politics into a reliable vehicle for reform. India’s economy is the vehicle required to transport its people to a better future with better schools, health services, housing, job opportunities and a higher standard of living. It requires a sustained high rate of economic growth. As long as that happens, India’s emergence will continue.
East Asian Modernisation and Confucian Capitalism
Confucianism as an ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius (the Latin name of K’ung-fu-tzu), who lived around 551-479BC. For long periods it was held as the official state ideology of the Han tribe who predominated in China for long periods. The disintegration of the Han domination in the second century AD, opened the way for the spiritual doctrines of Buddhism and Taoism to dominate the spiritual and intellectual life in China. Confucianism returned during the Tang dynasty in a reinvigorated form and was adopted as the basis of the imperial exams and as the core philosophy of the scholarly official class. In popular practice, the doctrines of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism are often melded together and have been embedded in the culture of East Asian societies over many generations.
Official Confucianism was only ended when the examination system was abolished in 1905. The New Culture intellectuals blamed Confucianism for China’s weaknesses in comparison with the Western powers. However, during the 20th century, Confucianism was revived and by the late 20th century Confucianism was credited by many observers with the rise of East Asian economies.
The core of Confucianism is its humanism and focus on the secular life. Confucianism is not about the gods or afterlife. It is about life in this world as families, as communities, as righteous and moral people and the norms and propriety that determines a good lifestyle. This stance rests on the belief
189 that human beings can be taught, improved and perfected through personal and communal endeavour – especially through self-cultivation and self-creation. In Confucian thought, the cultivation of virtue and the maintenance of ethics depend particularly on three basic elements: yen, yi and li. Yen is an obligation of altruism and humaneness towards other members of the community. Yi is the upholding of righteousness and the moral disposition to do good. Li is a system of norms and propriety that determines how a person should properly act within a community. Confucianism holds that one should sacrifice your life, if necessary, for the sake of upholding the cardinal moral values.
Confucianism has influenced the cultures of several countries: China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, as well as other territories settled by Chinese people. Although few people explicitly identify themselves as Confucian, its ideas and customs prevail in many cultural ways in these areas. Confucian ethics are often seen as a complementary guideline for other ideologies, beliefs and practices. It is remarkable that around 500BC Confucius proclaimed as a cardinal virtue the moral code that we still cherish as the “golden rule”: “... what you do not like yourself, do not do to others”. The wording changed somewhat, but the underlying principle is the same “do not do to others as you would not be done by”.
Western Missionary Work in East Asia
Western powers such as the Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish and British have been active in East Asia from the 16th to the 18th centuries as traders from their colonial outposts. All of them were also engaged in some form of cultural transfer. This involved trade and manufacturing skills, government and administration systems, language skills, education and Christian missionary work.
In 1572, a Jesuit, Francis Xavier, sailed in a Portuguese trading ship to Kagoshima in Japan where he established a small missionary station where the people converted by him totalled 150,000 when he died in 1557. But by 1630 Christianity was totally banned in Japan. So strong was the pressure for seclusion that Japanese individuals, even sailors, were forbidden to travel abroad. The Jesuits also penetrated China using the port of Macao as their first missionary station. The Chinese Emperor was friendly to the Jesuits for they were skilled in mathematics and astrology.
Many regions of East Asia had long been closed to Christian missionaries when in 1858 the Treaty of Tientsin allowed them to enter the interior of China and a stream of North Americans arrived. In the 1870s Japan was again opened to European and American missionaries and they soon were permitted in Korea too, where they won more success than in any other part of the East Asian mainland. In Korea the missionaries were welcomed as allies against the invading Japanese.
China was for long the focus of intensive missionary work. Catholic schools alone had taught some five million Chinese students by 1949. Catholic hospitals and doctors served around 30 million people and Catholic orphanages alone numbered 1500. When Mao’s Communists took over, these schools and hospitals passed into government hands and churches were closed. Foreign priests, pastors, nuns and medical staff returned to their homelands. Many of those were Americans and Canadians.
The leader of the Nationalist Government, General Chiang Kai-shek and his wife were Methodists and they retreated with their followers to Taiwan. The Buddhists who had been active in China for
190 centuries could still sound their temple gongs in the provincial towns, but only older people answered their calls.
After 1949, Christians were largely excluded from large areas of East Asia: China, North Korea and much of Indo-China. The YMCA for China continued to function, but its leader Y.T. Wu was soon imprisoned where he died 20 years later in 1979. The Red Guards closed all Christian churches and many Chinese priests and pastors were imprisoned. All foreign cultural influences were seen as toxic. A Handful of remaining Christians continued to assemble in houses privately. However, by 1980 some surviving Protestant congregations were again allowed to meet in the old church buildings that remained standing. In 2002 the Vatican estimated that around 8 million Chinese Catholics still worshipped “underground”. (See Geoffrey Blainey, op.cit. pp.531-532)
The period 1945-1954 was characterised by enormous upheaval in East Asia: the Communist takeover in China in 1949, the Korean War 1950-53, and the post-war reconstruction and development of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. These momentous events brought about paradigmatic changes in the paths of development followed in the affected countries.
Japan’s Reconstruction
After the Second World War ended, in the West with Germany’s surrender in May 1945, Japan kept on fighting until September when Japan’s Emperor surrendered to the Americans in 1945 after nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan was devastated, humiliated by absolute defeat, its industrial plants and more than a third of the country in rubble and ashes. There was hardly anything to eat. The confrontation with American power had overwhelmed the Japanese and driven home the fact of superior American economic and technological prowess. The occupation that followed brought them fact-to-face with American standards. Japan had to accept a new constitution which ended the divinity of the Emperor and gave sovereignty to the people. An independent judiciary was established, free labour unions were permitted and war was renounced.
The first post-war years were hard, dominated by vast dislocations, chronic shortages and high inflation. The cost pressures of the American occupation and the emergence of the Cold War against the Communist Bloc forced the Americans to turn their focus on promoting the Japanese economic recovery. There were many elements in Japan’s post-war success. Part of that was the “Dodge Plan” which did much to extinguish inflation. The US occupation implemented land reform and broke up the zaibatsu, the large industrial financial combinations. The zaibatsu were succeeded by keiretsu, groupings of banks and industrial companies with links that were less tight than before and thus created more scope for new entrepreneurs like Akio Morita, the cofounder of Sony. The country had a large and educated workforce, low inflation and a very high savings rate. Japanese set out on a forced-pace campaign to obtain and absorb technology from America and Europe. Morita’s partner at Sony came across the transistor at Westinghouse while on a State Department sponsored tour and promptly acquired the rights. Japanese companies sought continuing quality improvement as a competitive weapon and invested in ever-greater scale in mass production in order to win market share. As described by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw in The Commanding Heights – the Battle Between Government and the Market Place That is Remaking the Modern World, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1999, p.162, “All this was sustained on values that included an incredible work ethic, an extraordinarily intense identification with the firm, a shared sense of national identity (and of the
191 country’s precarious position), a desire to live better – and the searing memory of the defeat, the harsh post-war years, with the occupation and the humiliation that went with it”.
Amongst other factors that played key roles was Japan’s commitment to exporting its way to growth. International trade won over inward-looking policies and Japan benefited enormously from the increasingly open international trading system that America took the lead in shaping. America did not see Japan as a competitor, but as a source of cheap, low-quality goods. Japan’s own protectionist policies were overlooked. As an exporter, Japan moved up the product chain: from textiles and simple manufactures to ships and steel to complex mechanical goods, electronics and high technology. (See Yergin & Stanislaw, op.cit. p.163)
The other major paradigmatic influence on the post-war events in East Asia was the thrust of Soviet Communism into the area during the final months of the Second World War. Stalin was kept informed about the progress of American nuclear technology by a few renegade Jewish informers. After the fall of Berlin, Stalin realised that the conquest of the Japanese Empire and the areas it occupied was imminent. Having already occupied much of Eastern Europe, Stalin realised that the countries lying on his eastern frontier could be pulled into his sphere of influence. At the Potsdam Conference the question of the Soviet Union’s entry into the war with Japan was mooted. In reality Soviet armies were already heavily engaged in driving Japan out of Manchuria, the northeast corner of China and strengthening its bonds with Mao Zedong’s forces in China. When Japan surrendered, the Communist forces already stood at the 38th parallel which later became the border between North and South Korea. For Korea, Japan’s defeat ended the harsh Japanese colonial regime imposed in 1910, but it also brought a division of their country: a Communist North and an anti-Communist South.
When the Korean peninsula was partitioned in 1945, South Korea had been left with very little. Most of the existing industry – largely Japanese built hydro-electric stations on the Yalu River and the nearby chemical and fertiliser plants – had ended up in North Korea. In June 1950, 135,000 North Korean troops invaded the South. Communist China (and Russia) entered the war in support of North Korea and for a while it seemed as if South Korea might not survive. Seoul, its capital, changed hands several times. The USA entered the war in support of the South, using Okinawa in Japan as the military base for General McArthur.
The Korean War, 1950-53, and the military build-up that went with it, provided a major stimulus to economic growth throughout the industrial world, but particularly to Japan as the supply base for the American forces. Japan rose from recovery to strong and sustained economic growth under Prime Minister Ikeda. Within 20 years Japan’s national income approached those of Western European countries. By the end of the 1980s, the capitalisation of the Tokyo Stock Exchange was equal to that of New York and of the world’s ten biggest banks, eight were Japanese. Its economy was controlled by what was called the “iron triangle”: bureaucrats, businessmen and politicians. At the centre of the jukyu chosei – the apparatus of economic management – was one agency that controlled both domestic and external strategy: the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). It channelled information and knowledge and facilitated the flow of new technologies and used an array of tools, price setting, quotas for imports and market share, licences, quality standards, administrative guidance, organised mergers and encouraged the specialisation of small and medium-sized companies. It also restricted foreign competition within Japan through a host of tools and barriers. MITI acted as the single coordinator. It was staffed by the top graduates from the top universities.
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A key feature of Japan’s growth was its flexibility in pursuing economic objectives. In the 1950s the focus was placed on heavy industry shipbuilding and iron and steel. In the 1960s it moved into high- technology consumer manufactures largely for export. From the 1970s Japan concentrated on technological innovation and higher value-added products while transferring the production of lower value-added goods overseas. Then began an era of massive Japanese investment in Asia, America and Europe. In the 1990s Japan had the world’s strongest economy with the larges per capita GNP and the largest holding of foreign assets and debt.
South Korea’s Emancipation
In 1953 the Korean War ended with a truce, not a peace treaty. Kim Il Sung, first of North Korea’s megalomaniac leaders, never wavered in his relentlessly hostile policy. South Korea was devastated by the war, with 7 percent of its population killed and two-thirds of its industrial capacity destroyed. President Syngman Rhee, a Ph.D. graduate from Princeton University under Professor Woodrow Wilson, remained in power to 1960. But Rhee’s forte was politics, not economics. After a military coup in 1961, General Park Chung Hee ran the country from 1962 to 1979. He adopted the Japanese growth model: highly interventionist with a strong export orientation. Korea promoted big companies – national champions called chaebols – which were holding companies that controlled diversified industrial conglomerates. Their names are globally known: Hyundai, Samsung, Lucky Goldstar, Kia and Daewoo.
It was only after 1979, under the influence of economic adviser Kim Jae-Ik, with a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University, that South Korea dismantled its government interventionist apparatus, sold off most state-owned enterprises, liberated the financial sector, reduced import barriers, promoted foreign investment in the country, increased accountability for business leaders. After Kim’s death, South Korea continued to pursue policies aimed at less intrusive planning, an expanded role for the market and financial and import liberalisation. The powerful bureaucracies were reluctant to lose their power, but the South Korean leadership persisted with its free market policies and the country’s impressive growth continued. South Korea was unrivalled, even by Japan, in the speed with which it advanced from poverty levels to one of the world’s most industrialised, prosperous nations.
Along the way upwards, South Korea went through a stage of massive corruption, kickbacks, bribes and political payoffs. Many of its generals, managers and politicians grabbed too much profit for themselves and several of the heads of chaebols were given prison terms. Two former presidents (Chin and Roh) were arrested: one imprisoned for 20 years and the other sentenced to death. It appears that even today, south Korea is still in the grips of powerful chaebols and political cliques, but its reforming and restructuring process is an ongoing challenge.
Taiwan’s Confucian Capitalism
In 1949 the forces of Nationalist Party leader Chiang Kai-shek was defeated by the forces of the Communist Party leader Mao Zedong. The Communists took control of mainland China and the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan where they relied on the protection of the American military umbrella based in Japan. Taiwan had been a colony of Japan and then briefly a province of china after World War II ended. It became a separately functioning country again in 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek sought refuge there with around 2 million soldiers and civilians.
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Although heavily outnumbered by the Taiwanese Chinese by three to one, the refugees from the mainland took control of Taiwanese life. Survival of Taiwan became the paramount issue. The Chinese civil war was, in effect, still ongoing as Chiang and the Nationalists refused to acknowledge that Taiwan was not China and talked for many years about retaking the mainland. In time, Chiang’s resolve shifted to become an aspiration, then a myth, then a “liturgy”. Initially its challenge was to withstand an onslaught from the mainland, then later to weather Taiwan’s isolation as the People’s Republic of China took its place in the international community. It faced an almost constant struggle for legitimacy in the international system. It had to strengthen its own national unity on the island and build the economic infrastructure required for survival. Things did not look promising in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The country had few resources, few established entrepreneurs, no savings and was heavily damaged during the war. Questions were also asked about the compatibility of the Chinese culture with the requirements of modern capitalism. However, the experience of Taiwan is a monument to “Confucian capitalism”.
The remarkable success story of Taiwan with its 20 million people even surpassed that of Japan and south Korea. After a process of serious soul-searching, they identified the societal pathology they wanted to avoid methodically: corruption, inequality, arbitrary government power, hyperinflation and failure to embrace modern science and technology. On the positive side, they aimed at creating an anti-corruption ethos, creating an environment for entrepreneurs to flourish, use planning to create a market system, to depoliticise the economic system, to invest in good infrastructure and to promote exports of manufactured goods. The government supported export industries through low- cost loans, enterprise zones and aggressive sourcing for technology. The results were spectacular.
The Taiwanese success was assisted by their reliance on the many overseas Chinese and many Chinese who had gone abroad for their education. These overseas Chinese were turned into a “brain bank” and an effective network for technology transfer. Taiwan also had the good fortune of enjoying the inputs of a few “supertechnocrats” K.Y. Yin and K.T. Li who acted like Confucian advisors for several decades.
K.Y. Yin was an electrical engineer who read economic texts and K.T. Li a graduate in nuclear physics from Cambridge who believed in “replacing the arbitrary political power of government with the automatic adjustment mechanism of the market”. They adopted the Japanese policy formula: “competing out and protecting in” – on condition that Taiwanese firms should be gradually subjected to the rigors and tests of international competition in their home market. They also insisted that Taiwan should aim to continue the transition from authoritarianism to democratic rule and the broadening of the middle class.
The Kuomintang established by Chiang Kai-shek kept a tight grip on power for decades, appointing rather than electing the president. The biggest challenge is to define Taiwan’s relation to the People’s Republic of mainland China. Taiwan has remained by far the biggest investor in mainland China, despite the fact that the People’s Republic regards Taiwan as an errant province that need to be regathered. The Taiwanese insist that their distinct status ought to be respected and that the gulf between them would be narrowed as China’s brand of socialism becomes more like Confucian capitalism.
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Singapore and the Overseas Chinese
Singapore started its life as an entrepot centre for the region as a British colony. Its economic architect, Dr. Goh, was sent to England where he earned a Ph.D. at the London School of Economics. He teamed up with Lee Kuan Yew who went to Cambridge University and came back to lead the anti colonial movement. After an unsuccessful effort to form a federation with Malaysia, Lee Kuan Yew led Singapore to become a city-state. Lee Kuan Yew and Dr. Goh formed a formidable partnership with a remarkable ability to adapt their policies to changing situations and achieve an economic growth rate of 7 to 9 percent over four decades.
Both leaders began their careers as committed socialists but turned to market-friendly policies with a strong government say. They forced civil servants to think like businessmen. They financed social services like health care and housing, but tried to foster as much personal and family responsibility as possible. They promoted the Chinese propensity to save through the Central Provident Fund which, at one stage, took 50 percent of all wages. The Fund was used to finance infrastructure, industry, housing and a vast industrial park on a wide expanse of swamp, called Jurong.
They decided no public services should be free: the government is a facilitator, not a provider. It was the agenda keeper, long-range planner, strategic player and the manager of resources. A small elite of bureaucrats, selected on merit, ran the whole system. The whole of Singapore worked like a cohesive company. The basic principles which they selected to underpin its operation were: stable and predictable rules, low inflation, a high savings rate, an anti-corruption ethos and a climate friendly to business.
A basic component of the Chinese culture is the hua ch’ia (“Chinese across the bridge”). The ethnic Chinese who live, trade, work, invest and collaborate across the East Asian region and across the world. An estimated 30 million Chinese live in South East Asia. They make up around 30 percent of Malaysians, 15 percent of Thailand and 4 percent of Indonesia. In these countries they play an inordinately large entrepreneurial and commercial role (like the Jews in America). They are famous for doing their deals without contracts, lawyers, bankers and consultants – even when large amounts are at stake. Kinship-based rules of the game assume the role that contract law performs elsewhere, facilitating trade, investment and the movement of capital. (See Yergin and Stanislaw, op.cit. p.191)
Mainland China’s Suppression and Revival of Confucian Capitalism
The establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 was expected to launch China’s economic modernisation, but Mao Zedong’s revolutionary command did more to retard than to advance economic progress. From the late 1970s, however, China managed to pursue a path of economic liberalisation with outstanding success although its internal politics remained repressive.
China’s modern history was marked by a century of internal conflict and disintegration which was exacerbated by external aggressors. The Opium Wars waged by Britain in the 1840s, forced the Chinese Emperor to allow free trade access to British traders who wanted to sell opium to the Chinese. Britain secured control of Hong Kong for a period until 1997 and provided a secure trading outlet and a safe haven for assets of businessmen and industrialists. The revolution of 1912 that overthrew the Qing dynasty led to turbulent decades in which southern China was the terrain of raging battles among nationalists, communists and warlords of varying allegiances. The warlords
195 were battling for control of various regions and the nationalists and communists were initially collaborators and shared objectives to modernise China. Wealthy nationalists were financing the training of young revolutionaries in Moscow with the hope of restoring China’s dignity. Deng Xiaoping, Zhou Enlai and Chiang Kai-shek’s son, Chiang Ching-huo, all studied at the Sun-Yat-sen University. They returned to China where Deng became chief secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party at the age of 23.
The alliance between communists and nationalists broke down as they competed for power. Mao led the Long March of 1934-35, the 6000 mile trek to escape the nationalists. It began with 90,000 communist soldiers and ended with 5,000. This march later provided the leadership cohesion that carried the communists to victory and rule over all of China.
The Japanese invasion of 1937 created the circumstances for the strengthening of communist’s power vis-a-vis the nationalists. Deng Xiaoping played a central role in the Huai-Hai campaign that broke the back of the nationalists in 1949. It destroyed a nationalist army of 500,000.
As early as 1949 Deng Xiaoping saw the need to design a new system built upon “capitalist production” where people who are lazy and unenthusiastic about work should suffer. Deng realised however that a well organised party is a necessary instrument of modernisation. The state that was created by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under leadership of Mao Zedong was a totalitarian one-party dictatorship. It displayed all the typical characteristics found in previous examples of totalitarianism: nationalist or socialist ideology, utopian goals, conflagion of party and state, bureaucratic rule, leader glorification, mass propaganda, dialectical enemy as motor for psychological hatred, pre-emptive censorship, genocide and coercion, collectivism, militarism, universalism, contempt for liberal democracy and moral nihilism. Mao was inclined towards mass mobilisation projects such as “the Great Leap Forward” which ended in a devastating famine. Farmers were herded into regimented communes and families were encouraged to start backyard pig iron furnaces – all intended to quickly catch up with the capitalist world. Millions of people died of starvation as industrial production and internal trade collapsed.
Deng Xiaoping was one of the chief figures to pick up the pieces and to replace mass mobilisation with systematic, gradual investment. Deng was ideologically more pragmatic saying that “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice”. This pragmatism was held against Deng when Mao launched his “Cultural Revolution”. Mao was dissatisfied with the lack of ideological zeal in the country and that he was no longer receiving the veneration due to him as paramount leader. The senior leadership of the Party was under suspicion. The bible of the Cultural Revolution was Mao’s Little Red Book which Deng unceremoniously turned away. Deng was attacked as a “capitalist roader”. Was kept in solitary confinement for two years and then he and his wife were put to work in a tractor repair plant. His son was paralysed as a result of a physical assault by Red Guards. What saved Deng’s life was his network of friends, including Zhou Enlai.
After the Cultural Revolution, Deng came back into the leadership and helped direct the economic recovery based on the principles he believed in: education and economic incentives rather than ideology and exhortation. With Mao against him he was again stripped of power and he was forced to sign yet another document confirming his self-criticism. He was described as “poisonous weed” who was trying to undermine the glorious revolution. Fortunately his old comrades from the army gave him protection.
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The death of Mao in 1976 liberated Deng. The “Gang of Four” who masterminded the Cultural Revolution, including Mao’s wife, were arrested. Deng was then engaged in a bitter power struggle against Mao’s anointed successor, Hua Guofeng. By the end of 1978 Hua was defeated and Deng emerged as paramount leader. Out of the pieces he would lay the foundations for china’s real great leap forward.
December 1978 became a major turning point in 20th century Chinese history. A fundamental decision was made at the third plenum of the 11th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party to reorient China toward a market economy. There was no grand plan, but rather a few practical steps to break with Maoism. Whatever worked economically was good, results were what counted. Deng wanted to create a wealthy and powerful china, not a utopian or messianic paradise. Deng was essentially a Chinese nationalist who used communism and the party as mechanisms to reach his objectives. Deng declared “I have two choices. I can distribute poverty or I can distribute wealth”. He had seen enough of the former under Maoism. (See Yergin & Stanislaw, op.cit. pp.196-198)
Deng’s initial reforms centred on agriculture. He introduced a revised “household responsibility system” to allow a family to keep some of the benefits of their labour. Material incentives replaced the Maoist strictures. The commune system and collectivisation were undone. Peasants had to deliver a certain portion of their production to the state. Above that they could keep the output, consume it or sell it. With that free enterprise was launched.
The results were stunning. Output increased by 50 percent over sixteen years. Markets in agricultural products generated an entire new trading apparatus: transportation, repairs, food markets, building and hiring workers. By 1990 as much as 80 percent of agricultural output was sold in open markets. In six years, the real income of farm households rose 60 percent. The rapid improvement in agriculture spilled over into other economic reforms. It provided momentum for the next steps in the remainder of china’s economic life.
The leadership under Deng embraced economic reform and liberalism even while striving to maintain political control. Deng sought to ensure those who were concerned that China would loose its socialist and communist moorings with the explanation that what was happening in China was a process of “building socialism with Chinese characteristics”. That became the title of a book he published at the end of 1984.
To transfer his “incentive” scheme into the industrial sector, Deng introduced the “contract responsibility system”, which echoed the agricultural “household responsibility system”. It meant that state enterprises were allowed to keep earnings above a certain target. By December 1987, 80 percent of china’s large and medium-size firms had adopted such a system. But state-owned firms remained inefficient. The next reform measure involved the creation of property rights. Only ownership could introduce responsibility into decision making and channel motivation.
Deng then turned to building up industries geared to export, particularly in coastal regions. This meant adopting the export-led growth strategy that the Chinese could see working in Japan, south Korea and Taiwan. It offered solutions to multiple problems. These industries would earn hard currency, absorb surplus labour coming from the country’s interior. It meant taking part in international competition and pushing the coastal regions into the international market. At the centre of the strategy were Special Economic Zones (SEZs). These SEZs engendered China’s
197 engagement with the world economy. The first SEZs were created in 1980 in Guangdong province, including Shenzhen (near Hong Kong) and in Fujian province, across from Taiwan. They were essentially export-processing zones and acted as magnets to draw in foreign investment. From then on the coastal cities drove the Chinese economy forward.
In April 1989 Deng experienced a serious setback when the democratic aspirations among students brought thousands of demonstrators to Tiananmen Square to mourn the death of the purged reformer Hu Yaobang. To “old guard” members such as Deng it was an act of rebellion challenging the sacred supremacy of the Party, which they considered the bulwark against disorder and chaos. It reminded Deng of the Cultural Revolution and its militant students. He felt that survival and order were paramount and authorised the use of the army to quell the demonstrations. About a thousand people are thought to have been killed. Retrenchment and controls were stepped up in view of the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe at the time. Chinese conservatives decided to rein in reform and reassert control. Deng’s opponent, Chen Yun, was in ascendency again and “Chen Yun Thought” was celebrated similarly to “Mao Zedong Thought”. Chen attacked Deng directly, charging that his policies were responsible for the trends that had culminated in both the overheated economy and the events in Tiananmen Square. Chen charged that the SEZs were capitalist in character and conduits for forces that would destroy communism in China.
Pushed into the defensive again, Deng undertook his last campaign, the nanxun (southern journey) when he spent four weeks in his private railway car, slowly observing what was happening in the Pearl River delta in Guangdong province and the Shenzhen SEZ which borders Hong Kong. When he saw the enormous changes from what he had viewed in 1984, he realised that despite the growth problems, the resulting high-rise urban area was a stunning success – he called it a “flying leap” and a model for the future. He remarked that socialist systems can have markets too and that plans and markets are simply economic stepping stones to universal prosperity. He advised his fellow Party members “... to watch out for the Right, but mainly defend against the Left”. Replying to Chen’s reading list of communist classics, Deng said that he never bothered to read Marx’s Das Kapital because he neither had the time nor the patience. His nanxun report became the subject of extensive press coverage and much discussion. At the 14th Party Congress in 1992, Deng’s “brilliant thesis” was hailed and it was decided that China would shift from a “socialist planned commodity economy” to a “socialist market economy”. Reform was back on track and it was Deng’s final victory. At 88 he was reaffirmed as the paramount leader.
Between 1978 and 1995, China’s economy grew at an average annual rate of 9.3 percent. It also moved from a Soviet-style command economy toward being governed by market forces. “Collective” enterprises, owned by villages and localities and the army continued to operate next to completely private enterprises. Foreign investment, particularly from Taiwan and from overseas ethnic Chinese (called guanxi) played an important role, particularly in Guangdong and Fujian provinces. A large proportion of the overseas Chinese trace their origins to Guangdong and they have, in recent years, invested billions in the province and assisted in the marketing of their products all over the world. Between 1978 and 1993, Guangdong’s economy has grown at around 14 percent, well above the national average. The Pearl River delta’s growth was still higher at more than 17 percent. A region that hardly contains 2 percent of China’s population, generates around 40 percent of China’s exports.
Deng Xiaoping’s influence in China’s rebirth can hardly be over-estimated. As a boy he started in a Confucian school, and throughout his long life, he was fond of quoting Confucian aphorisms. He
198 shifted the Chinese Revolution away from ideology toward the more pragmatic objectives of wealth creation as a source of power and welfare. At the Central Party School in Beijing, familiar courses on Marxism, Leninism and the history of Communism have given way to courses on marketing, accounting and international business practices. Deng Xiaoping died in 1997 at the age of 93 at the end of a remarkable life.
Concluding Remarks
The wellsprings of growth and transformation in the East Asia regions included several forces: sound macroeconomic policies in the sense of getting the fundamentals right, incentives for increasing productivity, openness to foreign ideas and technology, an export orientation and the development of human resources. A positive government role was crucial. It was buttressed by a leadership committed to a broad-based development and an efficient bureaucracy. Government did not act as planner or owner of industrial enterprise, but as a guide and facilitator, developing infrastructure and a framework for effective policy implementation, encouraging the accumulation of physical and human capital and allocating it to productive activities. International competitiveness was recognised as the ultimate aim and it relied on the private sector as the engine of growth. The east Asian success stories demonstrated that targeted and controlled government activity can be beneficial to the common good – government involvement is not bad per se. But should be kept within proper limits.
The influence of cultural factors is well illustrated by the influence of the Confucian tradition. Under Confucianism, government has an absolute right to regulate all aspects of social and business relations for the common good. This may explain why there was no jury system, little right of appeal – even in commercial law cases. There is a stark contrast with the Western legal tradition, based on individual rights and freedoms, which dates back to the Enlightenment - but is now well-entrenched in “the rule of lawyers and lobbyists”. In the West a large proportion of political leaders are trained as lawyers, while in East Asia a large proportion of leaders are trained as engineers. In countries with a Confucian tradition such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China and Indonesia, the freedom of action of a person or a company stems not from a fundamental right, but is based upon the “grant of benefit” from those in power. It must be pointed out, however, that these cultural traits were expressed in various forms and proved to be subject to change and modernisation.
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Bibliography
Blainey, G. (2011) Christianity – A Short History, Penguin Books, London Ferguson, N. (2011) Civilization – The West and the Rest, Allen Lane, London Johnson, P. (2003) A History of the Jews, Phoenix Press, London Hattstein, M. (1998) World Religions, Krönemann, Cologne Huntington, S.P. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations, Simon & Schuster, New York Yergin, D. & Stanislaw, J. The Commanding Heights – The Battle Between Government (1998) and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World, Simon & Schuster, New York Zaehner, R.D. (ed) (1997) Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions, Barnes & Noble, New York
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7. Key Determinants of Human Affairs
Any analysis survey of human societies around the world reveals many similarities in patterns of behaviour. Most societies are in favour of peace and progress: a better future for themselves and their offspring. Each and every society has developed its own specific recipe to achieve a better future: some more successful than others for a variety of reasons. But a closer look at possible reasons for success and failure reveals distinct differences in the recipes or strategies followed. This does not imply that all societies have been strategising at some point, selecting specific courses of action or responding to specific calls of divine revelation. But all societies have been influenced by the effect of a variety of causal factors: natural, ecological, demographic, cultural, social, institutional, political and economic. The interaction and motive force of these factors determine the degree of success they achieve. Generally speaking, modern societies do not rely on the intervention of supra-natural forces, but most have been comprehensively influenced by religious traditions.
Within the analytical framework of social science the determinants of human achievements are interpreted as a combination of nature-nurture factors. Under “nature” is normally understood the particular combination of inherent qualities belonging to a person by birth: talents, abilities, instincts, characteristics, disposition and tendencies. Under “nurture” is normally understood the non-genetic external influences that modify, nourish, educate, train or condition individuals after their birth. Their accomplishments in the many spheres of life are determined by the interaction of their innate potential with the opportunities coming their way, whether structured, spontaneous or by chance. Some people of great potential have limited opportunities; others may not have the talents to exploit their opportunities or may simply squander their chances. Some are very fortunate, when, as Machiavelli said, “the goddess of fortune smiles their way”.
In the case of nations, countries or regions, similar forces are at work. A country’s economic fortunes are determined by a combination of natural endowments and human action, manifested by the interaction of its geography and its history.
Nature’s Endowments
The world is strewn with examples of nature’s inequality of “given” factors: latitude, climate, rivers and lakes, topography, mean temperatures, humidity, seafronts, mineral resources, arable land or soil quality. Nature’s unequal distribution of its favours is not easily remedied by human action, but humans can make a difference.
On a map of the world in terms of product or income per head, the rich countries lie in the temperate zones, particularly in the northern hemisphere; the poor countries in the tropics and semi-tropics. With a few notable exceptions, equatorial countries are largely stifled by problems associated with a low standard of living and a short life expectancy. The world shows a wide range of temperature patterns reflecting location, altitude and the declination of the sun. These differences directly affect the rhythm of activity of all species. Animals have adapted and evolved in their own way. Mankind generally avoids the extremes – unless driven by greed to exploit petroleum or minerals, or assisted by modern heating or cooling technology. In general the discomfort of heat exceeds that of cold. Year-round heat tends to encourage the proliferation of insects and parasites. Water distribution is also of critical importance for human habitation. Regular and predictable rainfall promotes the cultivation of food crops. Recurrent floods and droughts are serious constraints on agricultural development. It is no accident that settlement and civilisation followed
201 the main rivers of the world: the Nile, the Volta, the Indus, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Ganges, the Rhine, the Volga and the Mississippi.
Western Europe is a good example of the favourable conditions existing in the temperate zone. The privileged European climate was largely a gift of the Gulf Stream, rising in the tropical waters and then working its way in clockwise rotation bearing heat and rich marine life. This geological good fortune gives Western Europe warm winds, gentle rain, water in all seasons and low evaporation. Though not idyllic, these factors enhanced good crops, big livestock and dense hardwood forests. Europe’s climate is more equable along the Atlantic and becomes more “continental” as one moves east toward the Polish and Russian steppes with wider extremes of both moisture and temperature. Along the Mediterranean coast, the temperatures are kind, but rain is sparser and the soil yields less. Olive trees and grapes do better than cereals and pasture pays more than agriculture. Down its history, Europe knew famine and disease, long waves of cooling and warming, also epidemics, pandemics and bad crops. Europeans kept a rich diet in dairy products, meat and animal proteins. They grew taller and stronger while staying relatively free of worm infestations. Healthier Europeans lived longer and worked closer to their potential than communities living in tougher environments. By comparison with many other communities, Europeans were very lucky. (See David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, London: Little Brown & Co., 1998, pp.17-22)
China ranks as one of the most successful human settlements in the world. With some 7 percent of the earth’s land area, it supports some 21 percent of the world’s population. For more than 2000 years, the peoples at the eastern end of the Asian steppes exchanged nomadic pastoralism for the higher yields of sedentary agriculture. Their leaders evidently saw the link between numbers, food and power. The Han people, as they called themselves, settled along the Yellow River and its branches where they cultivated rice, millet, sorghum, barley and later also wheat. As they moved south into the Yangtze basin and beyond, they found that the wetter, warmer climate, mild winters and long summers permitted double cropping: winter wheat and summer rice in submerged paddies. They kept animals for ploughing, hauling and as mounts for the army – and pigs as their primary source of meat. Sheep and dairy products were largely unknown. In the 17th and 18th centuries they added new plants from distant lands: peanuts, potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams. A labour-intensive, water-intensive model became an important feature of Chinese development.
The spread of substances obtained by mining has played a crucial role in economic growth around the world: bringing employment, regional development, trade and export growth. These substances occur in nature. Sometimes they comprise inorganic material, such as quartz, of definite chemical composition or aggregations of inorganic materials such as metal-bearing ores or rocks. Other natural products may be of fossiliferous organic origin such as asphalt, hydro-carbons or coal.
Because deposits of metals in rock are rare and difficult to extract, it took centuries before anyone worked out how to remove the material and then to work it into something useful. In time, someone found a place where there was enough metal-bearing ore or rocks to remove it to places where they could heat it in kilns to melt the metals contained in the ore or rocks. Once they found a way to pour and collect the metal the process called smelting and casting was discovered which made it possible to extract larger amounts of metal from the ore. All sorts of items such as tools, weapons and ornamental objects or jewellery could then be made of copper, tin, silver and gold. Metals such as copper and gold were easy to be worked as jewellery, but they made poor tools. The solution was to combine metals to make an alloy that was hard-wearing. Mixing copper and tin produced bronze that was tough, easy to work and could be sharpened. Liquid metal can also be cast in a mould to
202 produce all sorts of complex shapes. Casting became popular because it was easy to produce complex shapes. Since hammering hardened the metal, this method was used to make objects like tools and weapons.
Archaeologists have established that the use of copper was developed in Asia, the Balkans and Iberia where the metal was available in abundance around 9000 BC. By 6000 BC, smelting and casting developed in these areas. With the development of better trade routes, knowledge of metal-working gradually spread to other surrounding areas. By 2000 BC, bronze was widely used in Asia for everyday tools and weapons. The importance of bronze working led historians to call this period the Bronze Age. But bronze did not reach Australia, South America or many parts of Africa. In such places people may have used gold or copper occasionally; they mostly made do with stone technology.
Bronze was a useful metal, but not as hard as stone. Then around 1300 BC, some metalworkers in the Middle East discovered iron. Iron-working gradually spread throughout the Middle East and into Southern Europe. Iron weapons were used by empire builders such as the Hittites of Turkey to conquer new territory. The Greeks used iron weapons to build colonies around the Mediterranean and in India the use of iron made metal technology widely available. It enabled the Celtic people of Europe to protect their hill fortresses with iron swords during the Halstatt period. Archaeologists have found metalwork and coins made as early as 450-100 BC in Europe.
Human Action
The history of the world records the amazing progress of humankind, from the Stone Age to the Space Age. Looking into humankind’s development reveals the ideas, abilities and processes that created the modern world within the framework of available natural resources.
Civilisation today represents how far humankind has developed since the appearance of the first humans, or hominids in prehistoric times. By trial and error people acquired the knowledge and skills that would allow them to survive: which plants and fruits to eat, how to make weapons to hunt animals and protect themselves, to live safely in family groups, to develop special skills in a co- operative lifestyle, to plant seeds and to herd animals and to establish permanent settlements.
The process of civilisation gradually emerged as villages developed into towns and then into cities. Rulers with strong support conquered nearby regions and brought them under their control. Civilisation started at different times and blossomed at different tempos in various parts of the world. Some areas, such as the great plains of North America and some regions of the Middle East, Far East and Africa, did not develop civilisations because they could not be easily farmed. Soil types, distance from water resources, climate, all affected the nature of the civilisations that emerged in any particular area.
Warfare, exploration and the constant search for raw materials developed as trade increased between chieftaincies or principalities. New forms of warfare and weapons continued to develop as peoples such as the Greeks, Romans, Vikings journeyed through and around Europe as well as west toward North America. The Chinese explored eastern Asia and the Polynesians roamed the vast Pacific Ocean. The Mongols dominated Central Asia and from there penetrated South Asia and East Asia, spreading the Muslim religion.
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From the 1500s, exploration and conquest became major factors in increasing the wealth of several European countries: Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France and Britain. These countries created trading networks that reached across the globe. Explorers from these countries created maps of most of the world and probed into the unknown territories of North and South America, Africa and Asia. Traders, soldiers and priests followed in their footsteps – and empires were built and eventually lost.
(See Niall Ferguson, Civilization – The West and the Rest, Allen Lane, London, 2011, pp.1-18)
The Landes Paradigm
David Landes, in his remarkable historical survey called The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, examines the various factors that could possibly explain the divergent economic outcomes of the process of development in different societies. Some were much more successful than others. Landes acknowledges the importance of material factors such as climate, latitude, location and resources, but attaches much more importance to “nonmaterial” factors such as values (culture) and institutions. He further points out that such concepts as “values” and “culture” are not popular with economists who prefer to deal with quantifiable (or more precisely, definable) factors, but says “... life being what it is, one must talk about these things...”
On the basis of his survey of the experience gained in many countries in the course of history, Landes outlined what he called the “ideal case” – the society theoretically best suited to pursue material progress and general enrichment. He cautioned that this does not necessarily mean “better” or “superior”: it simply means “... one fitter to produce goods and services”. (See Landes, op.cit. pp.215-219)
Landes drew up a list of “ideal-typical” characteristics or standards a “growth-and-development” society would have to comply with. Such a society would be one that: “1. Knew how to operate, manage, and build the instruments of production and to create, adapt, and master new techniques on the technological frontier. 2. Was able to impart this knowledge and know-how to the young, whether by formal education or apprenticeship training. 3. Chose people for jobs by competence and relative merit; promoted and demoted on the basis of performance. 4. Afforded opportunity to individual or collective enterprise; encouraged initiative, competition and emulation. 5. Allowed people to enjoy and employ the fruits of their labour and enterprise.” (Landes, op.cit. p.217)
Landes then argues that these standards imply certain corollaries: gender equality (in order to double the pool of talent); no discrimination on the basis of irrelevant criteria (race, sex, religion, etc.); also a preference for scientific (means-end) rationality over magic and superstition (irrationality). He remarks that the tenacity of superstition in an age of science and rationalism is surprisingly common: it even beats fatalism. It is a resort of the hapless and incapable in the pursuit of good fortune and the avoidance of bad. It is also a psychological support for the insecure. Hence the persistent recourse to horoscopic readings and fortune telling.
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David Landes also compiled a list of measures which “the ideal growth-and-development” government would adopt. Such a government, he suggests, would for example do the following: “1. Secure rights of private property, the better to encourage saving and investment. 2. Secure rights of personal liberty – secure them against both the abuses of tyranny and private disorder (crime and corruption). 3. Enforce rights of contract, explicit and implicit. 4. Provide stable government, not necessarily democratic, but itself governed by publicly known rules (a government of laws, rather than of men). If democratic, that is, based on periodic elections, the majority wins but does not violate the rights of the losers; while the losers accept their loss and look forward to another turn at the polls. 5. Provide responsive government, one that will hear complaint and make redress. 6. Provide honest government, such that economic actors are not moved to seek advantage and privilege inside or outside the marketplace. In economic jargon, there should be no rents to favour and position. 7. Provide moderate, efficient, ungreedy government. The effect should be to hold taxes down, reduce the government’s claim on the social surplus, and avoid privilege.” (See Landes, op.cit. pp.217-218)
Again, Landes adds additional corollaries to embellish the “ideal society”. The ideal society would be honest, not only enforced by law, but based on their generally held belief that honesty is right (also that it pays) and would live and act accordingly. The society would also be marked by geographical and social mobility. People would move about as they sought opportunity, and would rise and fall as they made something or nothing of themselves. This society would value new as against old, youth as against experience, change and risk as against safety. It would not be a society of equal shares, because talents are not equal; but it would tend to a more even distribution of income than is found with privilege and favour. It would have a relatively large middle class. This greater equality would show in more homogenous dress and easier manners across class lines.
Conceding that no society on earth has ever matched this ideal paradigm, Landes admits that “... it is designed without regard to the vagaries of history and fate and the passions of human nature.” Landes again: “... the most efficient, development-oriented societies of today, say those of East Asia and the industrial nations of the West, are marred by all manner of corruption, failures of government, private rent-seeking.” Landes claims that this paradigm nevertheless highlights the direction of history – that it outlines the virtues that have promoted economic and material progress. It remains to be seen to what extent development patterns around the world today show a resemblance to the historical trends implied by the Landes paradigm.
Divergent Patterns of Growth and Development
Britain was the first industrial nation to come close to the model of a “growth-and-development” society. It had the ability to transform itself and adapt to new things and ways of doing things. In particular, England had the precocity to increase the freedom and security of its people, to open its doors to migrants with knowledge and skills such as Dutch, Jewish and Huguenot refugees. Many newcomers were merchants, craftsmen, old hands of trade and finance and brought with them their network of religious and family connections.
The Industrial Revolution started in Britain, then changed the world and the relations of states to one another. The goals and tasks of political economy were transformed. The world was now
205 divided between “... a front-runner and a highly diverse array of pursuers.” Britain became a commercial power of considerable potential and the principal target of emulation from the beginning of the 18th century. While Germany was still a collection of squabbling Germanic principalities and France was recovering from the turmoil of the French Revolution, the British Empire was streaking ahead. It took the quickest of the European “follower countries” more than a century to catch up – and to surpass. (See Table 1)
Table 1 Estimates of Real GNP per Capita (Selected Countries in 1960 US Dollars)
1830 1860 1913 1929 1950 1970 Belgium 240 400 815 1020 1245 2385 Canada 280 405 1110 1220 1785 3005 Denmark 225 320 885 955 1320 2555 France 275 380 670 890 1055 2535 Germany 240 345 775 900 995 2750 Italy 240 280 455 525 600 1670 Japan 180 175 310 425 405 2130 Netherlands 270 410 740 980 1115 2385 Norway 225 325 615 845 1225 2405 Portugal 250 297 335 380 440 985 Russia 180 200 345 350 600 1640 Spain - 325 400 520 430 1400 Sweden 235 300 705 875 1640 2965 Switzerland 240 415 895 1150 1590 2785 UK 370 600 1070 1160 1400 2225 USA 240 550 1350 1775 2415 3605
(Based on figures provided by David Landes, op.cit. p.2322)
Socio-Cultural Factors
Economic historians like David Landes and Niall Ferguson highlighted the importance of “socio- cultural” factors as determinants in the affairs of men: in the ascendency of the West and now, also, in the advent of a new Eastern epoch. In his provocative Civilization – The West and the Rest, Ferguson argues that what distinguished the West from the Rest were the mainsprings of its power: complexes of institutions and associated ideas and behaviours. These are summarised under six headings: competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumer society and work ethic. Ferguson denies that this is simply another self-satisfied version of the “Triumph of the West”. He argues that it was not just Western superiority that led to conquest and colonisation, it was also the fortuitous weakness of the West’s rivals.
Ferguson argues that the expression “West” is more than just a geographical expression. It is a set of norms, behaviours and institutions with borders that are blurred. It is possible that “Western” norms, behaviours and institutions could have been embraced by Eastern societies as many of them already seem to be doing. Much of “Western Civilisation” is at any rate based on influences derived from ancient sources in the Middle East and further South East and East. The West is simply the pre- eminent historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ.
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It must be understood that socio-cultural factors, whatever their source, are universally powerful determinants of societal trends and behaviours. The “socio-cultural” parameters refer to the complex network of interactions between individuals and between groups within societies: their customs, beliefs, morals, habits, store of knowledge and ways of doing things. These characteristics are acquired simply by being members of society: by living together. The impact of these socio- cultural characteristics or phenomena cannot be easily quantified or validated by rigorous empirical research methods. But it is simply a matter of observation that socio-cultural factors have real and comprehensive consequences for all aspects of societal life.
The Question of Providential or Divine Reality
Throughout history there have been numerous anecdotes of “miracles”: miraculous events have happened. But the causes of such events are not clear. For believers in a monotheistic supreme Providential Power or devotees of other Divine Powers, the explanations provided by the scientific study of the world around us are inadequate. Without necessarily denying the validity of scientific evidence or findings, they believe proper regard must be had to the role of Providential or Divine influence which overrides and determines all events and outcomes in the world of experience and physical phenomena. The various religions or belief systems use divergent explanatory systems to understand the scope and nature of Providential and Divine intervention in worldly affairs.
Over the centuries, some of the major religious movements have accumulated a large volume of theological literature to explain the dogmatic principles and precepts of their belief systems. They have also developed distinct rites and ceremonies to express their devotion to their belief systems. Of particular relevance is the question of knowing with any degree of certainty the extent of Providential and Divine intervention. How is this knowledge attained and how can its certainty or validity be established? Are these interpretations mere hypotheses, propositions of faith and belief or mere speculations not claimed to be intersubjectively transmissible knowledge? When it is contended that there is “knowledge” of factors – based on “intuition” or “inward seeing” or “belief” – which are beyond empirical-logical proof, the answer of the “scientific method” is not that there is no such knowledge. It is merely that we cannot intersubjectively prove it to be correct.
Belief systems are, epistemologically speaking, a completely different category of “knowledge” than science. Although all forms of knowledge can claim correctness, for any such claim to stand, it must be able to be verified, refuted, or must be left standing neither verified nor refuted. Since the Age of Enlightenment it has become the scientific convention not to blend scientific and religious arguments, because it was found impossible to prove the existence of Providence or the Divine in an intersubjectively conclusive manner. In the pursuit of scientia transmissibilis, religious “truths” can, at most, acquire the standing of a scientific “working hypothesis”.
To speculate about things unknown is an activity characteristic of human beings since ancient times. But in modern times even theologians have increasingly refrained from attempts to offer “scientific” proof for the reality of Providential or Divine Power. They tend to focus more on inner experiences and by “presupposing” or “assuming” the reality of the Providential or the Divine.
Many a scientist, if asked whether they believed in God, would most likely pose a preliminary counter-question such as, what is meant by God? If allowed to define the word God or Deity in his or her own way, a scientist could find a modus vivendi with believers. If the term “God” is meant to refer to any kind of supreme or supra-human being equipped with the power to think, to plan, to act and
207 thought of as the creator either of the entire universe or, at least, of the moral world of the “good”, then the scientist is likely to be bound by the impossibility to prove the existence of such a God in an intersubjectively demonstrable and conclusive manner. However, if someone calls the universe itself, or the laws governing it, “God”, but denies that this God can think, plan, and act spontaneously, then the concept of Providence or Divinity could be used in a different sense than is commonly understood.
In line with the impotence of science to prove the reality of Providence or the Divine, all deductive arguments that start with the recognition of godliness and with the allotment of definite attributes to such a Providential or Divine Power, such as absolute goodness, absolute knowledge, and absolute power, have come to be considered as either “non scientific” or “extra scientific”. Any form of metaphysical order or ontological reality cannot be demonstrated intersubjectively in a conclusive manner.
Modern science has equally recognised that it is impossible to prove that there is no God and consequently, to disprove the absolute validity of ethical postulates founded in beliefs of Providential or Divine reality. The validity or not of such beliefs are beyond scientific demonstrability. But what science can do – within the parameters of its own methodological rules and procedures – is to study, analyse and demonstrate the impact or influence of specific religions on human behaviour. It can analyse and recognise the role such religion plays as a foundation for moral values such as thinking and feeling about what is right, just, fair, preferable, true and universally compelling as ethical rules. Since ancient times, religion has played a predominant role in the development of specific socio-cultural characteristics of communities and societies. It exerted influence specifically to their cultural ways of doing things: of courtship and marriage, customs and traditions, of ethical rules of behaviour and of socio-cultural priorities. A cursory glance at the international experience over the past three millennia shows that no other determinant has acted as comprehensively in the formation of distinct socio-cultural characteristics in societies as their views of supreme reality.
Bibliography
Ferguson, N. (2011) Civilization – The West and the Rest, Allen Lane, London Landes, D. (1998) The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, Little Brown & Co. London Olson, M. (1982) The Rise and Decline of Nations, Yale University Press, New Haven