Views Expressed Are Those of the © 2003 by the American Academy Author of Each Article, and Not Necessarily of of Arts & Sciences

Dædalus coming up in Dædalus: Dædalus

Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences on science Alan Lightman, Gerald Holton, Albert Einstein, Susan Haack, David Pingree, Peter Pesic, Peter Wolynes, and Robert Schimke Summer 2003

on learning Alison Gopnik, Howard Gardner, Jerome Bruner, Susan Carey, Summer 2003: on secularism & religion comment Robert Post Congress & the Court 5 Elizabeth Spelke, Patricia Churchland, Daniel Povinelli, Clark Glymour, and Michael Tomasello on secularism James Carroll Why religion still matters 9 & religion Nikki R. Keddie Secularism & its discontents 14 on happiness Martin E. P. Seligman, Richard A. Easterlin, Martha C. Nussbaum, Henry Munson ‘Fundamentalism’ ancient & modern 31 Anna Wierzbicka, Bernard Reginster, Robert H. Frank, Julia E. Annas, Roger Shattuck, Darrin M. McMahon, and Ed Diener Martin E. Marty Our religio-secular world 42 Thomas Jefferson Religious freedom 49

on progress Joseph Stiglitz, John Gray, Charles Larmore, Randall Kennedy, Azzam S. Tamimi The renaissance of Islam 51 Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Jagdish Bhagwati, Richard A. Shweder, and M. Hakan Yavuz The case of Turkey 59 others T. N. Madan The case of India 62 Vali Nasr Lessons from the Muslim world 67 on human nature Steven Pinker, Lorraine Daston, Jerome Kagan, Vernon Smith, William Galston Jews, Muslims & the prospects for pluralism 73 Joyce Appleby, Richard Wrangham, Patrick Bateson, Thomas Sowell, Jonathan Haidt, and Donald Brown Jean Bethke Elshtain Against liberal monism 78 Daniel C. Tosteson Religion & the plague of war 80 on race Kenneth Prewitt, Orlando Patterson, George Fredrickson, Ian Christopher Hitchens The future of an illusion 83 Hacking, Jennifer Hochschild, Glenn Loury, David Hollinger, Akeel Bilgrami The clash within civilizations 88 Victoria Hattam, and others

poetry Lucie Brock-Broido The One Thousand Days 95 plus poetry by Les Murray &c.; ½ction by Joanna Scott &c.; and notes by Perez Zagorin, Richard Stern, Gerald Early, Rita Colwell, ½ction Lee K. Abbott Men of rough persuasion 97 Daniel Schorr, Jennifer Hochschild, S. George H. Philander, Shelley Taylor, Philip L. Quinn &c. dialogue Kwame Anthony Appiah & Robert S. Boynton on philosophy, race, sex &c. 104

notes Nathan Glazer on the American indifference to inequality 111 U.S. $13/Canada $16 Michael Traynor on environmental law 116 www.amacad.org

Inside front cover: Jesus and junk food, billboard and signs, the sacred and the profane: strip advertising on a state highway in Alabama. The United States, like other societies around the world, is “neither exclusively secular nor exclusively religious, but rather a complex combination of both.” See Martin E. Marty on Our religio-secular world, pages 42–48. Photograph © 2003 by Abbas/Magnum Photos. James Miller, Editor of Dædalus

Phyllis S. Bendell, Managing Editor and Director of Publications

Janet Foxman, Assistant Editor

Contributing editors: Robert S. Boynton, D. Graham Burnett

Board of editors

Steven Marcus, Editor of the Academy

Russell Banks, Fiction Adviser

Rosanna Warren, Poetry Adviser

Joyce Appleby (u.s. history, ucla), Stanley Hoffmann (government, Harvard), Donald Kennedy (environmental science, Stanford), Martha C. Nussbaum (law and philosophy, Chicago), Neil J. Smelser (sociology, Berkeley), Steven Weinberg (physics, University of Texas–Austin); ex of½cio: Patricia Meyer Spacks (President of the Academy), Leslie Cohen Berlowitz (Executive Of½cer)

Editorial advisers

Daniel Bell (sociology, Harvard), Michael Boudin (law, u.s. Court of Appeals), Wendy Doniger (religion, Chicago), Howard Gardner (education, Harvard), Clifford Geertz (anthropology, Institute for Advanced Study), Carol Gluck (Asian history, Columbia), Stephen Greenblatt (English, Harvard), Thomas Laqueur (European history, Berkeley), Alan Lightman (English and physics, mit), Steven Pinker (neuroscience, mit), Diane Ravitch (education, nyu), Richard Shweder (human development, Chicago), Frank Wilczek (physics, mit)

Dædalus is designed by Alvin Eisenman Dædalus

Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Nineteenth-century depiction of a Roman mosaic labyrinth, now lost, found in Villa di Diomede, Pompeii

Dædalus was founded in 1955 and established as a quarterly in 1958. The journal’s namesake was renowned in ancient Greece as an inventor, scientist, and unriddler of riddles. Its emblem, a maze seen from above, symbolizes the aspiration of its founders to “lift each of us above his cell in the labyrinth of learning in order that he may see the entire structure as if from above, where each separate part loses its comfortable separateness.” The American Academy of Arts & Sciences, like its journal, brings together distinguished individuals from every ½eld of human endeavor. It was chartered in 1780 as a forum “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” Now in its third century, the Academy, with its more than four thousand elected members, continues to provide intellectual leadership to meet the critical challenges facing our world. Dædalus Summer 2003 Dædalus publishes by invitation only, and as- Issued as Volume 132, Number 3 sumes no responsibility for unsolicited manu- scripts. The views expressed are those of the © 2003 by the American Academy author of each article, and not necessarily of of Arts & Sciences. the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Philosophy, race, sex &c. © 2003 by Robert S. Boynton All subscription orders, single-copy orders, and The One Thousand Days change-of-address information must be sent in © 2003 by Lucie Brock-Broido writing to the Dædalus Business Of½ce, 136 Irv- Men of rough persuasion ing Street, Suite 100, Cambridge ma 02138. © 2003 by Lee K. Abbott Periodicals postage paid at Boston ma, and at Library of Congress Catalog No. 12-30299 additional mailing of½ces. isbn 0-87724-040-x Postmaster: Send address changes to gst number: 14034 3229 rt Dædalus, 136 Irving Street, Suite 100, Cambridge ma 02138, u.s.a. Editorial of½ces: Dædalus, Norton’s Woods, 136 Irving Street, Cambridge ma 02138 If you wish to reprint an article from Dædalus Phone: 617 491 2600. Fax: 617 576 5088. in another publication or to reproduce an arti- Email: [email protected]. cle for classroom or other use, please send a written request to: Permissions Manager, Dædalus (issn 0011-5266) is published quar- Dædalus, 136 Irving Street, Cambridge ma terly by the American Academy of Arts & 02138. Permission can be granted in most Sciences. u.s. subscription rates: individuals– cases; charges vary according to use of the $40; institutions–$80. Canadian subscription copyrighted materials. If you have any ques- rates: individuals–$43; institutions–$86. tions, call 617 491 2600 and speak to the per- Foreign subscription rates: individuals–$60; missions manager. institutions–$100. Replacement copies for damaged or misrouted issues will be sent free Printed in the United States of America by of charge up to six months from the date of Cadmus Professional Communications, original publication. Thereafter back copies are Science Press Division, 300 West Chestnut available for the current cover price plus post- Street, Ephrata pa 17522. age and handling. The typeface is Cycles, designed by Sumner Newsstand distribution by Ingram Periodicals Stone at the Stone Type Foundry of Guinda Inc., 1240 Heil Quaker Blvd., La Vergne tn ca. Each size of Cycles has been separately 37086; Telephone: 800 627 6247. designed in the tradition of metal types. Comment by Robert Post

Congress & the Court

The United States in recent years has into three distinct branches, “so contriv- been drifting toward an important con- ing the interior structure of the govern- frontation over constitutional limits on ment as that its several constituent parts the power of the federal government. may, by their mutual relations, be the Three years ago, Supreme Court Justice means of keeping each other in their Antonin Scalia took the extraordinary proper places.” With exquisite practical- step of publicly accusing Congress of ity, the framers sought to make “ambi- “increasingly abdicating its independent tion . . . counteract ambition,” thereby responsibility to be sure that it is being “supplying, by opposite and rival inter- faithful to the Constitution.”1 More re- ests, the defect of better motives.”4 cently, New York Senator Hillary Clinton Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court has sharply warned against “the imperial were thus designed to face each other at tendencies of the current Court.”2 Amid arm’s length, with the abiding suspicion the charges and countercharges, one that the opposite branch might poten- thing is clear: In a series of landmark de- tially overreach its rightful bounds. cisions over the past decade, the Rehn- This tension has waxed and waned, quist Court has overturned understand- but the controversy now building beings of constitutional structure that have been in place since the New Deal.3 1 Justice Antonin Scalia, quoted in the editorial “A Shot from Justice Scalia,” The Washington The looming crisis is formidable, even Post, 2 May 2000, A22. Scalia added, “My court by the standards of a relationship that is is fond of saying that acts of Congress come to historically fraught with controversy. the court with the presumption of constitution- The framers of the U.S. Constitution, ality. But if Congress is going to take the atti- fearful that the “encroaching nature” of tude that it will do anything it can get away with and let the Supreme Court worry about political power would overwhelm mere- the Constitution . . . then perhaps that presump- ly “parchment barriers,” deliberately tion is unwarranted.” See also Robert Stacy separated the new federal government McCain, “Scalia Disses Congress,” The Washing- ton Times, 19 April 2000, A6; and Tony Mauro, “Court Declares Constitutional War on Con- Robert Post is Alexander F. and May T. Morrison gress,” The Legal Intelligencer, 22 May 2000, 5. Professor of Law at the Boalt Hall School of Law 2 Hillary Rodham Clinton and Goodwin Liu, at the University of California, Berkeley. A spe- “Separation Anxiety: Congress, the Courts, and cialist in the area of First Amendment theory and the Constitution,” Georgetown Law Review 91 constitutional jurisprudence, he is the author of (2003): 439, 449. numerous articles and books, including “Constitu- tional Domains” (1995) and “Prejudicial Ap- 3 See John T. Noonan, Jr., Narrowing the Na- tion’s Power: The Supreme Court Sides with the pearances: The Logic of American Antidiscrimi- States (Berkeley: University of California Press, nation Law” (2001). He has been a Fellow of the 2002). American Academy since 1993. 4 The Federalist Papers, Nos. 48 and 51.

Dædalus Summer 2003 5 Comment by tween Congress and the Court threatens tional law regarded as merely quaint ab- Robert Post to reach historic proportions. Until the surdities earlier Supreme Court deci- 1930s, the premise of American civics sions that had applied principles of fed- was that the federal government in eralism to limit national authority. Washington, D.C., was to have only lim- All this changed dramatically in 1995 ited powers; it was con½ned to the spe- when ½ve justices appointed by Republi- ci½c forms of authority granted it in the can presidents elected on platforms ded- Constitution. State governments, by icated to resurrecting the values of feder- contrast, were considered plenary; they alism joined together to decide what for had all powers except those that had the previous ½fty years had been almost been taken away by the Constitution. inconceivable–that a congressional stat- How to ascertain the proper balance of ute was invalid because it exceeded the power between the federal government limits of national authority transferred and the states was understood to consti- to Congress by the Constitution.7 These tute “the cardinal question of our consti- same ½ve justices have now coalesced in- tutional system.”5 The U.S. Supreme to a solid voting bloc that has embarked Court would from time to time seek to upon the remarkable task of circum- answer that question by articulating the scribing federal power in the name of constitutional limits of congressional federalism.8 The result has been fairly power. For example, in 1918 it decided characterized as a constitutional revolu- that the Congress had exceeded the tion. bounds of proper national authority It is of course serious business to hold when it sought to regulate child labor that our national legislature cannot en- within the states.6 act such legislation as is deemed neces- The Great Depression destroyed this sary to meet national needs. The Court’s vision of constitutional structure. In the crucible of that crisis the Court and the 7 United States v. Lopez, 514 us 549 (1995) (strik- country reinterpreted the Constitution ing down the Gun-Free School Zones Act of to authorize the national government to 1990). The Court had not struck down a con- legislate as necessary to meet national gressional statute on this ground since Carter v. needs. The Court accordingly rede½ned Carter Coal Co., 298 us 238 (1936). The ½ve Jus- its function: Instead of policing the lim- tices were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, its of federal authority, it would seek to Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, Antho- ny M. Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas. ensure that the exercise of national power did not violate individual constitu- 8 For the Court’s decisions limiting congres- tional rights. Congress consequently sional power under the Commerce Clause, see United States v. Lopez, 514 us 549 (1995); United emerged from the Great Depression and us from World War II essentially unbound States v. Morrison, 529 598 (2000); cf. Jones v. United States, 529 us 848 (2000); Solid Waste by the old constraints of federalism. Agency of Northern Cook County v. United States Generations of Americans have since Army Corps of Engineers, 531 us 159 (2001). For grown up assuming that national power the Court’s decisions limiting congressional is effectively plenary. For many years, power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth us the students to whom I taught constitu- Amendment, see City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 507 (1997); Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Educa- 5 Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government tion Expense Board v. College Savings Bank, 527 us in the United States (New York: Columbia Uni- 627 (1999); Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, 528 versity Press, 1908; reprint, 1921), 173. us 62 (2000); United States v. Morrison, 529 us 598 (2000); Board of Trustees of the University of 6 Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 us 251 (1918). Alabama v. Garrett, 531 us 356 (2001).

6 Dædalus Summer 2003 new decisions may not be dismissed review is an important means by which Congress & simply as conservative disapproval of the Court can limit an overreaching the Court past liberal legislation, for the Court has Congress. But the force of judicial review struck down many statutes, like the Reli- is countered by the constitutional mech- gious Freedom Restoration Act9 and the anisms given to Congress to restrain ju- Patent and Plant Variety Protection dicial excess. There are numerous such Remedy Clari½cation Act,10 that were mechanisms, which range from deter- enacted with virtually unanimous sup- mining the scope and nature of judicial port. What is most fundamentally at is- jurisdiction to the setting of judicial sal- sue in the Court’s recent opinions is the aries. By far the most important avenue structure of the constitutional relation- of congressional influence is the con½r- ship that will obtain between the Court mation process. Because the Senate and Congress. must approve the appointment of all These opinions have created real con- Article III federal judges, it can ultimate- fusion about exactly what the Court ly control the complexion of the federal wishes Congress to do in order to vali- judiciary. date the constitutionality of federal stat- Con½rmation hearings for Supreme ues. Some language in the Court’s opin- Court Justices have always carried the ions seems to point to the need for more potential to turn highly contentious. But detailed congressional fact-½nding; oth- political discord has sharply accelerated er language seems to point toward a cat- in the years since the Senate’s rejection egorical and judicially enforced “distinc- of President Reagan’s nomination of tion between what is truly national and Robert Bork in 1987. Each nomination to what is truly local.”11 It is not clear what the Supreme Court is now an impending leeway the Court will grant Congress to bomb waiting to explode in the Senate interpret and enforce constitutional Chamber. Senators are divided about the rights.12 nature of the con½rmation process. In the complex structure of checks and There is profound disagreement about balances created by the framers, judicial the questions that can appropriately be posed to a nominee and about the crite- 9 See City of Boerne v. Flores , 521 us 507 (1997). ria of judgment that ought to be applied in deciding whether or not to con½rm a 10 See Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education candidate. These sharp divisions are Expense Board v. College Savings Bank, 527 us 627 (1999). The Court has also struck down Title I now affecting the con½rmation hearings of the nearly unanimous Americans with Dis- of lower federal judges, most especially abilities Act as beyond the power of Congress of nominees to the U.S. Courts of Ap- under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, peals. This is an entirely new historical which in effect means that Congress cannot phenomenon. authorize its enforcement by private damage Although there are means by which actions against the states. See Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett, 531 us 356 the Court can check Congress and (2001). means by which Congress can check the Court, in most circumstances the federal 11 United States v. Morrison, 529 us 598, 617–618 government works best when Congress (2000). and the Court pull together, cooperating 12 Robert C. Post and Reva Siegel, “Equal Pro- in the smooth and ef½cient articulation tection by Law: Federal Antidiscrimination and enforcement of federal law. The idea Legislation After Morrison and Kimel,” Yale Law is that Congress enacts legislation, Journal 110 (3) (2000): 441. which is then seamlessly interpreted and Dædalus Summer 2003 7 Comment by applied by the judiciary. The orderly op- Leslie Berlowitz and Alexandra Oleson. Robert Post eration of the federal government de- There is in addition an advisory commit- pends upon this continuous and quotidi- tee that consists of members of the an cooperation. Court and Congress. Even here, however, the relationship The project is currently pursuing two between Congress and the Court is in initiatives. The ½rst is to host a series of disarray. Vigorous disputes have arisen private, off-the-record conversations be- among the justices about how exactly tween members of the federal judiciary they should go about the process of con- and members of Congress. These meet- struing and applying federal legislation. ings promote mutual understanding and Some justices contend that courts ought permit a broad range of issues involving never to review legislative history when the ongoing relationship between Con- seeking to interpret statutes, whereas gress and the federal courts to be venti- others deliberately look to all available lated and examined. Constructive solu- forms of information that might help a tions to particular problems can be pro- court understand the meaning of legisla- posed and vetted; cooperation can be tion.13 It has become unclear, therefore, encouraged. The second initiative in- what, in addition to the actual text of a volves bringing the disinterested exper- statute, will count as authoritative indi- tise of the American Academy to bear on cia of legislative intent and meaning. issues that currently divide Congress and The smooth cooperation of Court and the federal judiciary. To the extent that Congress is correspondingly under- these issues might be clari½ed by the ex- mined. ercise of such expertise, the American These are unsettling developments to Academy can assemble an interdiscipli- anyone who cares about the effective op- nary team of scholars whose work would eration of the federal government. As a be valuable to both sides. nonpartisan witness of recent develop- One area of investigation has already ments, with a strong independent inter- been identi½ed. The American Academy est in promoting principles of good gov- is working to assemble a group of schol- ernance, the American Academy is using ars to investigate the subject of statutory its good of½ces to facilitate a construc- interpretation. The study will select a tive dialogue to reach across the chasm sample of judicial decisions that involve now separating Congress from the feder- controversial questions of statutory in- al courts. It has launched a project to terpretation and will compare how the identify and study the current tensions relevant legislation was actually enacted, between the Court and Congress, with on the one hand, with how it was inter- an eye to ameliorating whatever tensions preted by the courts, on the other. By disinterested scholarship might properly closely examining these cases, the study address. The steering committee of the will assess the empirical plausibility of project consists of Jesse Choper, Linda the premises of the various theories of Greenhouse, Abner Mikva, Nelson W. statutory interpretation now in play. The Polsby, and Robert Post, together with study will also examine how the proce- dures of Congress, and the working 13 For a survey of the ½eld, see Philip P. Frick- processes of the federal courts, have ey, “Revisiting the Revival of Theory in Statuto- ry Interpretation: A Lecture in Honor of Irving changed in the past decades in ways that Younger,” Minnesota Law Review 84 (1) (1999): might affect the task of statutory inter- 199. pretation.

8 Dædalus Summer 2003 James Carroll

Why religion still matters

The question put to religion by the sec- not the only ones to justify violent abso- ular Enlightenment in its Freudian and lutism by appeals to the divine. Ameri- Marxist manifestations is asked in a dif- ca’s War on Terrorism is itself de½ned by ferent way in the age of terrorism. The a fervent Manichaeanism that divides old question was, How can otherwise sensi- the world between good and evil. “God ble people, in af½rming God as a source of bless America,” a formerly innocuous meaning, manifest such infantilism? Now patriotic piety, has taken on the charac- the question has become, How can people ter of a truth-claim, an open assertion of committed to the democratic ideal embrace a the long-dormant exceptionalism that belief system that underwrites intolerance and assumes a national anointing–a sacred even violence? destiny that elevates America above oth- To be religious, in the view of many er nations. A religious self-understand- who are not, involves a form of psycho- ing informs our nation’s new imperial logical immaturity. But more troubling is impulse, explicitly articulated in the the suspicion that religion itself is a fun- Bush administration’s 2002 “National damental source of radical discord–a Security Strategy.” suspicion that has its origin in the Euro- The result is a drastic reordering of pean wars of religion between Catholics American relations not only with an and Protestants in the sixteenth and sev- Islamic adversary that is perceived uni- enteenth centuries, but which has been vocally (Iraq is ‘evil,’ and so is Iraq’s broadly renewed since the 9-11 savage- mortal enemy Iran), but also with an ries were enacted in the name of Allah. openly skeptical Europe, and an increas- The problem is exacerbated by the fact ingly alienated Asia. that the suicide-murderers of Al Qaeda Meanwhile, Hindus and Muslims in (and of Hezbollah, for that matter) are India and Pakistan ½nd religious justi½- cations in their otherwise dissimilar tra- James Carroll, a Fellow of the American Acade- ditions for apocalyptic brinkmanship– my since 1998, is a novelist, a columnist, and the as if deities could will Armageddon after author of “Towards a New Catholic Church” and all. Many Muslim preachers, and not on- “Constantine’s Sword,” among other non½ction ly in the Arab world, have resuscitated works. Ordained as a Catholic priest in 1969, the ancient slanders of anti-Semitism– Carroll served as a chaplain at Boston University and even its modern corollary, which is before leaving the priesthood to become a writer. the murder of Jews for being Jews. A similarly anti-Jewish structure of mind

Dædalus Summer 2003 9 James (old versus new; law versus grace; form fundamentalist tradition like Catholi- Carroll on versus substance) is rooted in superces- cism, can breed what also must be reck- secularism sionist Christian theology–and while its oned as fanatical violence, even if it is & religion effects have been widely repudiated by more psychological than physical, and the churches, that theology itself re- even if it occurs on an intimate scale, in mains more or less intact. At the same an apolitical context. Indeed, from the time, self-consciously religious, ultra- point of view of its underage and pro- nationalist Jews, invoking God’s will as foundly vulnerable victims, the patholo- revealed in sacred texts, have staked gy of priestly sexual abuse and the relat- claims to disputed land on the West ed cover-up by bishops are exactly that– Bank and in Gaza–land which is now fanatical violence. valued above human life. A form of ex- While there is no moral equivalence pansive Jewish sectarianism denigrates between the suicide-murders of Muslim the lives not only of Palestinians, but of fascists, the exclusionary sacralizing of the broader population of Israel, whose disputed land by religiously nationalist entire project of democratic hope has Jews in Israel, the apocalyptic transcen- been put at risk by the exclusionist the- dentalism of nuclear brinkmanship (be ology of a restored biblical kingdom. it Washington’s or Pyongyang’s), and Equally troubling is the North Korean the Catholic preference of clerical power regime that, having been labeled ‘evil’ by even over the safety of children–all of President Bush, pushes back with a cos- these urgent problems from different mic dualism of its own. Of½cially athe- orders are manifestations of something ist, Pyongyang preserves the political wrong in the heart of religion. amber in which a communist ‘historical For detached spectators, the old ques- materialism’ itself supplies a transcen- tion has become one question: Would the dental justi½cation for nuclear reckless- world be better off without religion? ness–even if the transcendent end is But to ask such a question from within purported to be purely secular. (North a religious tradition is like asking, Would Korea reminds us that–after Marx–re- the world be better off without desire? (Not gimes animated by religious faith have quite an unthinkable prospect, since cer- no monopoly on the making of absolute tain Buddhists aim to extirpate desire.) claims to authority.) An emphasis on the negative conse- In the context of the way such world quences of faith can blur the powerful developments call into question the consolations and challenges that religion character of religion as such, the simul- sponsors. Indeed the impulse to honor taneous meltdown of authority in the transcendent being, and even to recog- Roman Catholic Church takes on special nize it as personal, can serve as much as signi½cance. At ½rst glance, it seems the a check on hubris as a source of it. Yes, main tragedy of the priestly sex abuse there have been Yahweh-sponsored scandal, apart from the personal devas- slaughters of Canaanites, the holy wars tation of its victims (and, of course, of Crusaders, and the jihads ancient and there is no ‘apart’ from that), lies in the recent. But where Pope Urban II de- discrediting of Catholic moral authority. clared “God wills it!” at Clermont in But in fact the scandal has put on display, 1095, Pope Paul VI, before the un Gener- even for the most conservative-minded al Assembly in 1965, cried “Jamais plus la Catholics, the way in which an absolute guerre!” exercise of expressly religious power, The great religions, by inviting human even from within a profoundly un- beings constantly to surpass themselves, 10 Dædalus Summer 2003 are part of what makes the human proj- of his ½nitude and lays bare his guilt yet Why religion ect possible. Whatever else these phe- bids him approach; the mystery enfolds him still matters nomena foster, the three Abrahamic train an ultimate and radical love which com- ditions, together with Hinduism, Bud- mends itself to him as salvation and as the dhism, and other established world reli- real meaning of his existence. gions, are organized around compas- Rahner is speaking from within Chris- sionate love for the neighbor as the mo- tianity, but his broad theological gener- tivating ideal. The great world religions, alization applies with comparable force that is, having been engines of humanis- to each tradition, no matter what else tic social change, remain reservoirs of separates them–or so it appears to this humane moral sensibility. To take an ex- Christian. ample from my own tradition: the mod- Positing an encompassing horizon ern Catholic Church’s declared prejudice that is ever beyond reach yet exerting an against violence (Pacem in Terris) could irresistible pull–and daring to name it slow the world’s current rush to war, God–the religions both accommodate while the Church’s skepticism toward and explain the human interest in what free market capitalism (Progressio Populo- lies beyond, even within. Mystery, far rum) could mitigate the widening chasm from alien or threatening, is thus ac- between rich and poor. counted for as essential to life on earth. Some religions give primacy of value Religion helps humans not to flee mys- to mystical union, some to works of tery, but to plumb it. charity, some to justice, and some to rit- But such is the human condition that ual observance. But all of the great reli- in every way that religion can be sacred, gions have tracked the movement from it can be trivial; in every way consoling, God as unknown, to God as fearsome, to threatening. A ready source of humility, God as love itself. Here is how the great religion embodies an impulse to tri- Roman Catholic theologian of the mid- umphalism, too. And the political events twentieth century Karl Rahner articulat- referred to above de½ne what is at stake ed that broadly religious intuition: “God in each religion’s struggle with itself. does not merely create something other This complexity moves the question than himself–he also gives himself to away from Why religion? to What kind? this other. The world receives God, the What in each tradition promotes peace in- in½nite and the ineffable mystery, to stead of war? Tolerance instead of contempt? such an extent that he himself becomes Self-criticism instead of smug superiority? its innermost life.” Religious human And these questions, far from abstract, beings are the creatures who instinctive- are in fact being forced on religions by ly respond to that innermost life. “This world conditions. Indeed, it is the shift mystery,” Rahner writes, in world politics–in demographics, in is the inexplicit and unexpressed horizon patterns of ethnic dispersal, in the explo- which always encircles and upholds the sion of information technology–that small area of our everyday experience . . . . has transformed the situation of reli- We call this God . . . . However hard and gion, especially of the formerly domi- unsatisfactory it may be to interpret the nant religions of European imperialism. deepest and most fundamental experience “The West is no longer shut up in it- at the very bottom of our being, man does self,” Rahner wrote: experience in his innermost history that it can no longer regard itself simply as the this silent, in½nitely distant holy mystery, center of culture, with a religion which . . . which continually recalls him to the limits Dædalus Summer 2003 11 James could appear as the obvious and indeed then moved into the center of ecclesias- Carroll sole way of honoring God . . . . Today on tical identity with the Second Vatican secularism everybody is the next-door neighbor and Council, and has been continued in ½ts & religion spiritual neighbor of everyone else in the and starts ever since. The apology in world . . . which puts the absolute claim of 2000 by Pope John Paul II for various our own Christian faith into question. sins of Catholic triumphalism, especially Catholic contempt for Jews and Jewish Absolute claims are the issue. The religion, is an emblem of this process, challenge for religions of all kinds, but and one that marks its beginning, not its perhaps especially for religions based on end. narratives of divine revelation, is to Now the Catholic Church, in response make positive assertions of faith that do to the crisis tied to priestly child abuse not simultaneously denigrate the differ- and the bishops’ cover-up, is openly ent tenets of faith held by others. Reli- grappling with such basic questions as gious denigration is a source of violence. its attitude toward sexuality, its clerical “There will be no peace among the na- caste system, the place of the laity, the tions,” the Swiss Catholic theologian need for democracy–and, especially, the Hans Küng has written, “without peace rights of women. Questions like these among the religions. There will be no push to the heart of Catholic theology, peace among the religions without dia- which in fact had already been penetrat- logue between the religions. There will ed by the challenges tied to the Church’s be no dialogue between the religions relationship to the Jewish people, to without the investigation of the founda- those of other faiths, and to those of no tions of the religions.” faith. Adjustments must follow in claims The new condition of world politics made for Jesus, in notions of who God is, that has brought so much trouble with it in the way sacred texts are understood is also the source of hope, because for- and taught, in the very structure of merly triumphalist traditions now have thought about what it means to be a no choice–precisely because of religious Catholic. Even in the throes of crisis, the elbow-rubbing–but to encounter the Church is invigorated by a ½erce debate truth claims of others. That means that –and it is a debate with itself. the foundational assumptions of every It is for adherents of each faith to de- religion must now be the subject of reex- ½ne, but some version of this grappling amination. with fundamental belief can be seen to Just such a thing is going on inside Ro- be occurring in other religions–certain- man Catholicism. And if it can happen ly in Judaism, where the question of there, it can happen anywhere. what it is to be a Jew is being asked with Since the Holocaust, fundamental te- new power. The political crisis of Israel, nets of Catholic belief have been called an entity regarded as originating as a into question–especially aspects of the sign of God’s covenant, brings with it faith that have spawned the Christian basic religious questions. anti-Judaism, which was so powerfully And so with Islam. The post-Septem- laid bare by its mutation into Nazi anti- ber 11 situation of Muslims seems Semitism. The important point is that marked by an urgent new introspection the questioning is being done by Cath- in response to the questions of reform, olics themselves–a project that began on text, attitudes toward the other, and the the margins of the Church with once tradition’s relationship to violence that suspect ½gures like Rahner and Küng,

12 Dædalus Summer 2003 have been forced by an expressly Islamic Why religion outbreak of terror. It is up to adherents still matters of Islam to refute the broad Western suspicion that Islamic devotion may be incompatible with democratic liberalism. But in this task, Muslim reformers have a great resource in the Islamic tradition of convivencia, which, even for the West, was the very incubator of tolerance– political as well as religious. All of this de½nes the new shape of religious commitment, and it suggests the kind of ‘investigation’ leading to reform that only the religiously committed can undertake. Each religion must seek ways of tapping into its reservoir of neighbor- liness, its foundational assumptions about the goodness of creation, its attitude toward God as the world’s innermost source of love. Criticism of religion is necessary and, these days, inevitable. But what really counts now is religious self-criticism. Detached observers among those who are not religious make a mistake to regard this project cynically, because broad religious reform is essential now to the rescue of the world itself. Democratic values, ideological open- ness, freedom of conscience, positive regard for those who are different (also known as pluralism), as well as the capacity to tolerate even those who remain intolerant: these pillars of the post-Enlightenment social order will not stand unless exactly equivalent pillars are erected to reform–and thus secure– the institutions of traditional religion. In short, I believe that religion and the social order are inseparable–which will come as no surprise to anyone who shares my faith that God is inseparable from God’s creation.

Dædalus Summer 2003 13 Nikki R. Keddie

Secularism & its discontents

In the quarter century since the Iranian In the survey that follows, I will focus Revolution took much of the world by on the conflict between secularist and surprise–not least in the way its reli- antisecularist trends in a variety of dif- gious leadership mobilized a genuinely ferent states, starting with the rise of popular uprising–many commentators secularism in the West. Before I begin, it in the West have been inclined to see the will be useful to examine more closely Middle East and South Asia as cultural the history of some key terms. backwaters, where religion-based politics are overcoming the secular forms of Over the centuries, ‘secular’ has con- political organization appropriate to veyed a far wider variety of meanings modern industrial societies. than current usage may suggest. A term But this understanding of recent derived in Middle English from the Old events is misleading. A comparative his- French word seculer (itself from the Latin torical survey of the rise and fall of suc- saecularis), the word originally referred cessive waves of secularism in the mod- to clergy who were not bound by the re- ern era reveals a more complicated and ligious rules of a monastic order. In Mid- paradoxical picture of trends in Western dle English, it could also refer to the countries and of the impact of these realm of the ‘this-worldly’ as opposed to trends on societies struggling to emulate the divine–the sacred and ‘other-world- the economic success of the modern ly’ realms historically monopolized in West. Western Europe by the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed, the evolving use of words based on ‘secular’ reflects, among Nikki R. Keddie, professor emerita of history at other things, a long and contentious his- the University of California at Los Angeles, has tory; ‘secularism’ and its militant Latin been a Fellow of the American Academy since sibling ‘laicism’ emerged in Western Eu- 1994. She has written on Iranian history, women ropean countries that were once, if not in the Muslim world, religio-political trends still, dominated by Roman Catholicism. worldwide, and Sayyed Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani. It was only in the nineteenth century The author of “Modern Iran: Roots and Results that the word ‘secular’ came to be asso- of Revolution” (2003), she also founded and ciated with ‘secularists’ who espoused a edited the journal “Contention: Debates in Soci- doctrine of ‘secularism’–that is, the be- ety, Culture and Science” from 1991 to 1996. lief that religious institutions and values

14 Dædalus Summer 2003 should play no role in the temporal af- By the end of the nineteenth century, Secularism & its fairs of the nation-state. These terms the political aims of secular societies had discontents were coined in England in 1851 by a radi- been largely achieved, in part because cal atheist, George Holyoake, who was they were in tune with other social and looking for respectable euphemisms to cultural trends. After the death of Brad- replace ‘atheist,’ ‘in½del,’ ‘freethinker,’ laugh and the defection of Besant, the ‘unbeliever,’ etc.1 Holyoake and his suc- movement, never large, faded away. By cessor Charles Bradlaugh led a national then, Darwinism and socialism had re- network of secular societies that some placed secularism as ½ghting creeds, and have seen as an alternative church–cer- Thomas Huxley’s late-nineteenth- tainly these societies served social and century coinage, ‘agnostic,’ had largely political as well as ideological functions. replaced ‘secularist’ as a term for reli- Appealing largely to skilled laborers gious skeptics. from the upper working classes, the sec- The older noun ‘secularization’ under- ular societies advocated an end of privi- went a somewhat analogous evolution. leges for the Anglican Church, and the For centuries, the term in Latin and extension of equal rights and freedoms French referred only to a change in cleri- to all religious and antireligious persons cal status–for example, when a monk and institutions. They convinced Parlia- became a secular priest. A broader ment to abolish disabilities for nonbe- meaning was documented only after the lieving witnesses, helped discredit Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of West- (though they did not succeed in abolish- phalia in 1648, when the term was used ing) blasphemy laws, and, after Brad- to describe the process whereby Bran- laugh was elected to Parliament and re- denburg was granted church land within fused to take the religious oath, made it its borders. In the decades that followed, possible for an avowed nonbeliever to ‘secularization’ was often used to de- hold of½ce.2 Apart from Bradlaugh, the scribe the con½scation or conversion of organization’s most effective speaker ecclesiastical religious institutions or and writer was the young Annie Besant, property for civil possession and use.4 best known for her later association with By the end of the nineteenth century, the theosophy movement, with its Hin- ‘secularization’ was being widely used in du and Buddhist overtones.3 conjunction with the terms ‘secularists’ 1 Edward Royle gives the origin and early de- and ‘secularism’ to refer to various state velopment of the secularist movement in Victo- measures that weakened the Church and rian In½dels: The Origins of the British Secularist religion, including the disestablishment Movement 1791–1866 (Manchester: Manchester of dominant churches, the protection of University Press, 1974). religious and atheist minorities, and increased lay control of formerly religious 2 Franklin L. Baumer, Religion and the Rise of 5 Scepticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & spheres. By extension, ‘secularization’ World, 1960), 135. was used as well to describe a general- ized process of replacing religious with 3 Edward Royle, Radicals, Secularists and Repub- licans: Popular Freethought in Britain, 1866–1915 4 Karel Dobbelaere, “Secularization: A Multi- (Manchester: Manchester University Press, Dimensional Concept,” Current Sociology 29 (2) 1980); Peter van der Veer, Imperial Encoun- (Summer 1981): 3–213. ters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 5 Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the 2001), chap. 3, “The Spirits of the Age: Spiritu- European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cam- alism and Political Radicalism.” bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

Dædalus Summer 2003 15 Nikki R. lay values in the character and direction In addition, all of these phenomena Keddie on of morality, education, and culture. For vary widely in scope and intensity, and secularism many, ‘secular’ and ‘secularist’ (and all of them can be paradoxical in their & religion French variants on ‘laic’) remain associ- implications. Instead of a separation of ated with unbelief. church and state, secularism has sometimes been used to justify and enforce Enter the social scientists: only in the aggressive political control over religion early twentieth century did ‘seculariza- and its institutions. This has been true in tion’ become a scholarly category, usual- modern Turkey, Pahlavi Iran, Bourgui- ly traced to the sociologists Weber, Ton- ba’s Tunisia, and the Soviet Union and nies, and Troeltsch, although similar communist Eastern Europe, whose gov- concepts can be found in earlier think- ernments have mostly seen such control ers.6 In common usage today, ‘secular- as a necessity for their states’ rapid social ization’ refers to: and economic modernization. • an increase in the number of people with secular beliefs and practices; For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most scholars and writers, • a lessening of religious control or influ- Western and Eastern alike, saw the ence over major spheres of life; and growth of secularism as a one-way street • a growth in state separation from reli- toward modernization–a wholly posi- gion and in secular regulation of for- tive process according to Comte and merly religious institutions and cus- many subsequent theorists, or a dialecti- toms. cal process synthesizing positive and These phenomena are to a degree logi- negative moments, as hypothesized by cally independent, and also often inde- Hegel and Marx. In the social science lit- pendent in practice. Trying to measure erature, the growth of secularism is of- the extent of secular beliefs and prac- ten interpreted as a natural concomitant tices through church membership may of the spread of science, education, and not yield accurate results; in Europe to- technology–all of which seem to under- day ½gures for religious belief as mea- mine the need for religious explanations sured by opinion polls are considerably of the world and, ultimately, for power- higher than those for church attendance ful organized religions in modern socie- and membership. Nor does the extent of ty. Theorists with a progressive view, belief or unbelief necessarily correlate whether straight-line or dialectical, have positively with the extent of state sepa- also tended to imagine that people will ration from, or control over, religion.7 enjoy ever greater levels of material well- being, thus diminishing the collective 6 Dobbelaere, “Secularization,” 9. need for religious consolation. (It is worth bearing in mind, however, a cer- 7 For discussions of problems regarding secu- tain imbalance in scholarly accounts: larization see Steve Bruce, ed., Religion and Mod- ernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the most scholars who write about secular- Secularization Thesis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ization consider it a rational, even natu- 1992). In that volume, Hugh McLeod, “Secular ral, point of view, while most scholars Cities: Berlin, London, and New York in the who write about fundamentalism are Later Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centur- ies,” 58–89, notes the ambiguity of the word cities in terms of religious belief, but the least ‘secularization’ and shows that in this period secular by the criterion of church-state rela- Berlin was by far the most secular of the three tions.

16 Dædalus Summer 2003 skeptical about the value of religious lization in most of the world–and cer- Secularism 8 & its politics. ) Most of the evidence from the tainly in Western Europe. There the discontents West has tended to bolster this view of authority of the Roman Catholic Church progressive secularization, and, despite was unrivaled: it may well have been the the West’s crisis of con½dence in prog- most powerful religious institution the ress, most modern governments have world has ever seen. From the late elev- continued to exercise ever greater levels enth century until about 1300, canon law of control over formerly religious had priority over secular law, and kings spheres. had to perform signi½cant penance if At the same time, it has become in- they violated Church edicts.10 Further- creasingly clear in country after country more, the Church played a leading role that the political struggles between reli- in organizing Crusades not only in the gious and secular forces are far from Holy Land, but also against heretics and over–whether in Iran, India, or even the non-Catholics in Europe. Later it also United States. Even though worldwide a played a leading role in dividing the New great many people think religion should World into Spanish and Portuguese do- not affect legislation and policy-making, mains. those who disagree are a growing force. The rise of Protestantism initially in- In the survey that follows, I shall focus creased religiosity in Western Europe by on parts of the world where institutions provoking intense personal concern of major world religions held power that about religious doctrines and loyalties, created signi½cant obstacles to secular- among both Protestants and the re- ization. I will therefore concentrate on formed and aroused Catholics of the areas that had either monotheistic scrip- Counter Reformation. Ultimately, how- tural religions with exclusive claims ever, the proliferation of sects and the –namely Judaism, Christianity, and Is- exhaustion of the combatants in long, lam; or a number of conflicting religions bloody, and inconclusive religious wars with strong incompatible claims, as in led to increasing religious toleration. South Asia. These are the areas where Governments gradually granted equal important struggles over secularization civil status to those holding a variety of have occurred. They are also, not coinci- religious and irreligious beliefs–a key dentally, the areas that have seen the re- condition for creating secular states. But cent rise in ‘fundamentalist’ move- rulers in Western Europe now had to ments, which I have termed ‘The New contend with a great variety of religions. Religious Politics.’9 The political implications of these changes evolved over several centuries, Before the sixteenth century, religion in a series of sometimes violent struggles was a major organizing principle of civi- that pitted rulers against established religious groups. In England, Henry VIII 8 For further discussion of these and other points on secularism see Nikki R. Keddie, “Sec- (r. 1509–1547) broke with Rome, con½s- ularism and the State: Toward Clarity and cated church lands, and closed monas- Global Comparison,” New Left Review 226 (No- teries. In Italy three centuries later, the vember/December 1997): 21–40. nationalists under King Victor Emman-

9 See Nikki R. Keddie, “The New Religious Politics: Where, When and Why do ‘Funda- 10 Thomas Renna, Church and State in Medieval mentalisms’ Appear?” Comparative Studies in Europe 1050–1314 (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/ Society and History (October 1998). Hunt, 1974).

Dædalus Summer 2003 17 Nikki R. uel II (r. 1861–1878) stripped the Church loyalties potentially conflicted with the Keddie on of its control over the papal states and priorities of emergent nation-states; secularism Rome, resulting in a break in relations even before the rise of modern national- & religion between the Vatican and the Italian gov- ism, European regimes tried to weaken ernment that lasted into the twentieth religious institutions that interfered century. In France, the struggle between with their secular power. the government and the Church, begun Nationalism created an ideological ba- in 1789 during the French Revolution, sis for nonreligious loyalties and also culminated between 1901 and 1905 in the made it easier to extend equal rights to con½scation of religious property and in citizens professing different religious a strict separation of church and state. In beliefs, and possible to encourage na- Spain, Portugal, and many nations in tional networks of production and con- Latin America, analogous struggles fol- sumption.13 Although in some modern lowed a broadly similar course.11 European countries–for example, Po- Regarding these trends, Western land and Ireland–nationalism has uti- thinkers drew a variety of conclusions. lized religious sentiments, in most it has Some thinkers, such as John Locke and been a force for secularization, putting John Stuart Mill, advocated religious tol- national loyalty above religion and ren- erance, while others, particularly in dering the nation-state stronger than France during the Enlightenment, any church, even in the presence of state harshly criticized organized religion. But religions, as in England. even some of the harshest critics (Vol- The period from 1860 to 1914 was taire, for one) believed that religion probably the heyday in Europe of expan- might be good for the lower classes, sive secularization, just as it was the hey- keeping them honest, diligent, and day of optimistic theories of evolution- peaceful–a proposition that came to ary human progress, from Karl Marx to seem especially credible after the anti- Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer. As clerical violence unleashed during the Eric Hobsbawm describes the period: French Revolution.12 Traditional religion was receding with The French Revolution also made it unprecedented rapidity, both as an intel- clear that nationalism–a growing senti- lectual force and among the masses. This ment of shared moral, political, and was to some extent an almost automatic social attachments expressed through consequence of urbanization . . . . In the the institutions of the nation-state– Roman Catholic countries, which com- might well rival, or even replace, reli- prised 45 percent of the European popula- giosity in the minds of newly self- tion, faith retreated particularly fast . . . conscious citizens. Traditional religious before the joint offensive of . . . middle- 11 Four Catholic national groups scarcely class rationalism and the socialism of touched on in this essay–Poland, Brazil, Spain, and the United States–are discussed in José 13 For recent interpretations of nationalism, its Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World causes and meanings, see Benedict R. Ander- (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, son, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the 1994). On France and Italy, see Maurice Larkin, Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Ver- Church and State after the Dreyfus Affair: The so, 1983); Ernest Gellner, Encounters with Na- Separation Issue in France (London: Macmillan, tionalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994); 1974). E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (New York: 12 See, e.g., Chadwick, The Secularization, 104– Cambridge University Press, 1992). 105.

18 Dædalus Summer 2003 school teachers, but especially of the com- sons of state. While democratic and so- Secularism bination of emancipatory ideals and polit- & its cialist secularists spoke for parts of the discontents ical calculation which made the ½ght urban intelligentsia, the rural majority against the Church the key issue in poli- of Russia’s people remained devoutly tics.14 Christian. After the October 1917 revolution, the These changes were accompanied by a Bolsheviks–committed to Marx’s athe- surge in secular control over education ist worldview–disestablished the Or- and a rise in Marxist socialism, especial- thodox Church and expropriated its ly among workers. “In many ways Marx- assets. Violent nationwide campaigns ism [in Karl Kautsky’s version] . . . was against the Church, religious belief, and the last triumph of nineteenth-century the clergy ensued. These policies positivist scienti½c con½dence. It was changed during World War II, and in materialist, determinist, inevitabilist, 1943 the regime accepted an accommo- evolutionist, and ½rmly identi½ed the dation with the Church that restored the ‘laws of history’ with the ‘laws of sci- patriarchate. The end of communism in ence.’”15 the Soviet Union enabled the Church to recover considerable property and influ- n Eastern European countries, where I ence, but levels of religious belief and orthodox Christianity prevailed, secular- church attendance remained low,17 indi- ism was also a rising trend between the cating that even top-down secularization seventeenth and early twentieth century. can succeed in undermining religious Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725) abolished belief in some circumstances. (Similarly the Russian patriarchate, created church low levels of church and mosque atten- government by synod, and installed a dance have been reported in post- government representative as chief pro- Communist orthodox Bulgaria and Ser- curator of the synod. Catherine the bia, as well as in many other areas of Great (r. 1762–1796) con½scated much Eastern Europe and the former Soviet church land, and a succession of nine- Union.) teenth-century tsars took further meas- European Jewry was also affected by a ures to control the Orthodox Church.16 broad secular trend, especially in West- In these years, secularization was prima- ern Europe. In countries like Germany rily a top-down affair carried out for rea- and France, middle-class Jews welcomed the separation of church and state and 14 E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875–1914 (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 265–266. the spread of civil equality. Theodor Herzl and most of the other late- 15 Ibid., 267. nineteenth-century founders of political Zionism were secularists–but many of 16 See Gregory L. Freeze, “Eastern Orthodoxy,” their followers in Eastern Europe were Encyclopedia of European Social History, vol. 5 (New York: Scribner, 2001), 313–326; Robert not. Among European Jews, secularism L. Nichols, “The Church in Imperial Russia,” and nationalism were not entirely con- The Donald W. Treadgold Papers In Russian, East gruent forces: many Zionists, especially European and Central Asian Studies, 102 (Seattle: on the popular level, were not secular- The Henry M. Jackson School of International ists, and many secularists were not Zion- Studies, University of Washington, 1995); Geof- ists. frey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire 1552– 1917 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). 17 Freeze, “Eastern Orthodoxy.”

Dædalus Summer 2003 19 Nikki R. Meanwhile, in the United States economy has exacerbated many of these Keddie on throughout the nineteenth century, problems and tensions and has lowered secularism though secular principles organized po- living standards for many. Working- & religion litical life, a variety of religions flour- class solidarity, trade unionism, and ished, partly because the equal treat- indeed the industrial working class itself ment of different Christian churches in have all proved weaker than socialists America left people free to join or found expected. a religion of their choice. But when reli- The new secular social systems have giously minded intellectuals in America also had mixed success, ameliorating moved toward more rationalist and so- some major problems but often creating cially reformist interpretations of reli- new ones. The decline in racial barriers gion in the latter part of the nineteenth worldwide was a major advance, but was century, it provoked a backlash from lit- nowhere accompanied by adequate edu- eralist Protestant conservatives, who cational, health, and other measures to fought the gradual secularization of be- provide equality of opportunity among havior, belief, and public schooling. racial groups. Ethnic tensions have Even in European countries at the ze- sometimes worsened. Many parts of nith of expansive secularization, reli- Europe have seen growing hostility to gious groups did not accept the situation immigrants, especially to Muslims. without a struggle. In Germany, divided Women have won greater equality, but between Protestants and Catholics, a very few countries have adequate child Catholic party formed and gained con- care and other services for working siderable strength. And in the past half mothers. Some women, given current century, a number of Western nations dif½culties, long for a return to the days have experienced a renewal of political of the idealized two-parent, male- claims on behalf of religious values and breadwinner family, often associated institutions. with religious morality. Doubts about the wisdom of unmiti- In short, secularism is nowhere in the gated secularism have been provoked by West a simple fait accompli. The spread of a variety of developments. One was the secular beliefs and practices in Europe devastation caused by the two world and the United States has involved slow wars and subsequent regional blood- change and continuing, sometimes baths. The civilized peoples’ capacity to sharp, debate. As a result, it would be commit acts of mass destruction, far foolish to expect that secularist reforms worse than anything experienced in the would somehow be accomplished more nineteenth century, bred pessimism easily in the Middle East and South Asia. about progress. Another factor was the I would argue that the slow ripening of mixed performance of economic sys- secular tendencies is more important tems, whether capitalist or socialist, that than doctrinal differences in explaining were supposed to ensure the wealth of the current strength of secularism in the nations. Although most people living in West. As even a short survey indicates, the West enjoyed a steady rise in their the West was at ½rst no more open to standard of living, the new economic secularization than are parts of the Mid- order created new uncertainties: cycles dle East and South Asia today. As I have of boom and bust, increasing income argued elsewhere, the common idea that gaps, high levels of unemployment. Re- religion and politics have always been cent rapid globalization of the world more inextricably intertwined in Islam

20 Dædalus Summer 2003 than in Christianity is untrue. Typically, Atatürk’s Turkey, in part because Turk- Secularism & its governments in the Muslim world fol- ish secularists had reasons to fear the discontents lowed Islamic rules only to the extent socioeconomic, political, and cultural they thought it was in their interest to power of their own religious elite. do so. Western European regimes were in- consistent in their application of secu- Secularism as an animating set of polit- larizing principles–especially in their ical beliefs came late to the Muslim colonies. While the French and some world, as a by-product of the growing other colonial powers were suppressing influence of Western political ideas. religious schooling at home, they en- While Christian Europe underwent its couraged it in their colonies as part of a epochal series of struggles between wider cultural project. The French col- church and state, most Muslim coun- onies, where conservative diplomats and tries remained moderately religious in military of½cers dominated, were ex- orientation. Throughout the early mod- empted from anticlerical laws, as the ern period, the majority of Middle East- Catholic orders continued to receive ern rulers adhered to Islam, and Muslim French government subsidies and sup- religious leaders continue to play an ac- port for colonial educational institutions tive role in civil society, though without by arguing that local nationalists would making claims to temporal authority of otherwise take over.19 Colonial policy the sort advanced by the Roman Cath- sometimes favored certain religious olic Church before the Reformation. groups, thus increasing sectarian strife– Because secularization has progressed but it also introduced some leaders in unevenly around the world, secularists colonized areas to Western thinking in the Middle East now face some of the about secularization and modernization. dif½culties previously encountered in After studying at Western-model schools Western Europe. For example, just last or returning to the Middle East and century, secularists in France and Italy South Asia from schools in the West, were hesitant to grant women suffrage, several of them opted for secular nation- for fear that the majority of them would alism, which after World War II became vote with the Catholic Church; some a dominant mode of decolonization not secularists in Arab countries today fear only in India, Turkey, and Tunisia, but the majority of a free electorate will elect also in Egypt, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. religious parties. Similarly, in 1902 the While some have compared the leaders of the French Radical Party is- politico-religious ferment in the Muslim sued an election program that proposed world today with the rise of Protestant- that “By suppressing religious orders, by ism, a closer, though still inexact, paral- secularizing ecclesiastical property in lel is the history of religious-secular mortmain, and by abolishing payment of struggles in Catholic countries. In both public money to the clergy, we mean to possible parallels, religion claimed pow- put into practice this decisive liberal for- er in politics, law, personal behavior, and mula–free churches in a free and sover- the regulation of gender and family eign state”;18 a few decades later, a somewhat similar policy was pursued in 19 See Elizabeth Thompson, “Neither Conspir- acy nor Hypocrisy: The Jesuits and the French Mandate in Syria and Lebanon,” .

Dædalus Summer 2003 21 Nikki R. roles. But whereas some version of secu- gious institutions. For example, Muslim Keddie on larism has emerged victorious in almost scholars, or ulama, were hierarchically secularism every Catholic country, the past few de- organized and sanctioned by the state, & religion cades have seen a dramatic growth in the and Ottoman sultans often issued de- influence of so-called Islamists–Mus- crees with the force of law. The powers lims who want to consolidate religion of the central government grew after and politics in novel combinations that 1826, enabling it to initiate a number of they present as traditional.20 secularizing measures in the nineteenth Contrary to Christian practice, in Is- century, often under Western pressure. lam there has never been a central body These measures included signi½cant to decide religious dogma; even the cen- government control over vakf (mort- tral institution of Islamic law has never main) property and the declaration of been universally applied. Here my dis- equal rights for Muslims and non- cussion will center on the Middle East Muslims. Meanwhile, nationalism grew and Pakistan, which include the strictest in the army and among the educated regions of Islam; and it should be noted middle classes. that in Southeast Asia and in Africa The biggest impetus to secular nation- south of the Sahara, where Islam spread alism came after World War I, with the late and peacefully, Islamic law and prac- accession to power of Mustafa Kemal tice has usually been less strict. Atatürk. A war hero, he had led the Turkish troops that repelled the Euro- Terms like ‘secular’ were never widely pean invaders, forcing the Allied powers used in Muslim countries until the twen- to recognize Turkish control of enough tieth century. Then, until roughly 1967, territory to constitute a viable nation- secularists, nationalists, and socialists state. Since the sultan-caliph had acqui- played a growing political role in the esced in the possibility of an Allied dis- Muslim world, coming to power in sev- memberment of Turkey, there was little eral countries and carrying out seculariz- internal resistance to Atatürk’s abolition ing programs as a concomitant to mod- of the sultanate and then of the cali- ernization. phate, though the abolition of the latter The Ottoman Empire and Turkey, its aroused resistance in other parts of the most central successor state, played a Muslim world. pioneering role in this regard. Under the The need for strong government ac- Ottoman Empire, the state exercised an tion to establish a secular state was due unusual amount of control over its reli- both to the residual strength of existing Islamic institutions and the felt need to 20 These problems were early suggested by catch up with a West that had a long Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, trans. head start in centralization and modern- Carol Volk (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni- ization. Atatürk’s secularizing measures versity Press, 1994), and are stressed in Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cam- included the romanization of the script bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). and outlawing the use of Arabic–and The trend to moderation of Iran’s policies since the abolition of religious education and the 1978–1979 revolution and the early loss of of Shariah. Modeling Turkish law on Muslim faith in Iran as a model for revolution the Swiss Civil Code, Atatürk granted elsewhere are relevant, and are discussed in Nikki R. Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results women almost equal rights and discour- of Revolution (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer- aged veiling. His were the strongest mea- sity Press, 2003). sures against religious institutions any-

22 Dædalus Summer 2003 where outside the Communist world, as much religious backlash in Turkey today Secularism & its he and many Turkish nationalists adopt- as in several Arab countries in the Mid- discontents ed the French model of militant laicism. dle East, and Turkey is unique in its re- It is not surprising that after World nunciation of Islamic justi½cations for War II there was a backlash against some laws and institutions. (Laws on women’s of Atatürk’s most aggressively seculariz- status have been similarly reformed in ing measures. Even secular politicians Tunisia, but there the reform was carried wanting better relations with the oil-rich out under Islamic justi½cation.) Arab world made gestures toward Islam. A dramatic sign of antisecularist reac- In Iran, the ulama had far more inde- tion was Turkey’s giving an electoral pendent power than anywhere else in plurality to an Islamist party and the ap- the Muslim world, due to developments pointment of a prime minister from that in Iranian Shiism after it became the party in 1996.21 This in turn produced a state religion in 1501. Only in the late secularist reaction, especially within the nineteenth century did nationalism be- military, and the Islamist prime minister gin to grow in the country: in dramatic resigned in the summer of 1997. Mainly contrast to Muslim leaders, early Iranian because of a deep economic crisis, a new nationalists blamed the country’s de- Islamist-based but more moderate and cline on the seventh-century Arab Islam- formally secular ak Party won a plurali- ic conquest, and vaunted its ancient ty in the November 2002 elections and ‘Aryan’ (linguistically Indo-European) has since led the government. Periodic heritage. Disgruntled ulama allied with struggles continue over issues like the merchants and nationalist reformers in a prohibition of Islamic head covering for partially successful antigovernmental women in state localities such as Parlia- revolt in 1890–1891. Beginning in late ment and universities. This prohibition 1905, a revolution produced a constitu- may eventually be rescinded, but the tional parliamentary regime that contin- basic secular nature of Turkey’s govern- ued in power until Russia and Britain ment is unlikely to change. This is partly intervened in 1911.22 because Turkey has hopes of joining the Reza Shah, who governed Iran from European community, and partly be- 1921 until 1941, imitated Atatürk, though cause the active majority of Turks are in his less modern nation he could not still secular, though often willing to al- go as far. He centralized his country– low freedom of dress, and the ruling par- chiefly by forcibly settling nomads, im- ty is not threatening basic secularism. proving education, transport, and com- As in Russia, much of the population 22 In the extensive literature on this, see espe- was successfully secularized by govern- cially Nikki R. Keddie, Religion and Rebellion in mental ½at and policies. There is not as Iran: The Iranian Tobacco Protest of 1891–1892 (London: Frank Cass, 1966); Janet Afary, The 21 On Turkey see Niyazi Berkes, The Develop- Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: ment of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy, and the University Press, 1964); Binaz Toprak, Islam and Origins of Feminism (New York: Columbia Uni- Political Development in Turkey (Leiden: E. J. versity Press, 1996); Mangol Bayat, Iran’s First Brill, 1981); David Kushner, “Turkish Secular- Revolution: Shiism and the Constitutional Revolu- ists and Islam,” The Jerusalem Quarterly 38 tion of 1905–1909 (New York: Oxford Univer- (1986): 89–106; Roy Mottahedeh, “The Islamic sity Press, 1991); Vanessa Martin, Islam and Movement: The Case for Democratic Inclu- Modernism: The Iranian Revolution of 1906 (Lon- sion,” Contention 4 (3) (Spring 1995): 107–127. don: Tauris, 1989); and several articles by Ann K. S. Lambton.

Dædalus Summer 2003 23 Nikki R. munications, and promoting the secular Muslim countries occupied by foreign Keddie on nationalist view of Iran hitherto favored settlers, there was a strong counter- secularism by intellectuals. Simultaneously, he assertion of national and religious iden- & religion forced his citizens to adopt Western tities, prompted in large part by efforts dress, promoted a secular public school to assert local, non-Western cultural val- system, and so forth. Modernizing secu- ues in regions ruled by the West. larization continued under his son, Mu- Secular nationalists generally led the hammad Reza Shah (r. 1941–1979), and anticolonial liberation movements after was widely associated with subservience World War II. In Egypt, Gamal Abdul to the United States and its interests, es- Nasser participated in a 1952 revolution pecially after American leadership and and survived an assassination attempt British involvement in the 1953 coup that by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1954, overthrew the popular (and secular) which he used to legitimate a crackdown Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. on religious institutions; two years later, Modernization, which took place there Nasser declared Egypt a socialist state. almost entirely between 1925 and 1975, Popular support for his brand of secular- was much more sudden in Iran than it ism began to fade with the defeat of had been in Turkey. Meanwhile, the sup- Egypt by Israel in the Six-Day War in pression of secular opposition opened 1967, and his successors, as autocratic as the way for the rapid rise and 1979 victo- he, provoked even deeper distrust by in- ry of a multifaceted revolutionary move- stituting ‘free market’ policies that, crit- ment led by a religious opposition that ics charged, primarily served Western appealed to widespread anti-Western interests. Current Egyptian Prime Min- and anti-tyrannical feelings.23 ister Hosni Mubarak has not limited his Other Muslim countries had only crackdown to militant Islamists; he has partly similar trajectories, which I will arrested and brought to trial a number of describe in brief. By a historical contin- dissidents, including civil rights leaders gency, in the Middle East only Arab like Saad Eddin Ibrahim. countries experienced Western colonial In Tunisia after its 1956 independence, rule. Almost all of them outside the Ara- Habib Bourguiba instated strongly secu- bian Peninsula were for a time either lar measures that reinterpreted Islam, colonies, protectorates, or mandates of weakened religious institutions, and in- Britain or France. Western control of troduced virtually equal rights for wom- Palestine in the crucial years after 1918 en. His successor, Ben Ali, however, has culminated in the creation of Israel, autocratically suppressed both Islamists which greatly strengthened anti- of all varieties and civil rights lawyers Western currents in the Arab Middle and advocates. East. In Palestine and Algeria, the only In Algeria, governmental suppression of the 1992 elections that Islamists were 23 Among the many works on Iran, see Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions poised to win led to a bloody civil war, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, but also to a signi½cant decline in mili- 1982); H. E. Chehabi, Iranian Politics and Reli- tant Islamism.24 Jordan and Morocco’s gious Modernism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univer- recent histories are more moderate; Sau- sity Press, 1990); Nikki R. Keddie, Iran and the di Arabia is ruled under a strict Islamic Muslim World: Resistance and Revolution (Lon- don: Macmillan, 1995); Sami Zubaida, Islam, 24 See Islamism and Secularism in North Africa, The People and the State (London: Routledge, ed. John Ruedy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989). 1994).

24 Dædalus Summer 2003 creed that dates back to the eighteenth political primacy of clerical and lay Mus- Secularism & its century; Syria and pre-war Iraq have si- lim leaders. The idea and practice of discontents multaneously suppressed Islamic and codifying Islamic law and making it the non-Islamic opposition. Militant Islam law of the state is also distinctly modern. is still a strong force in much of the Mus- Still, most people attracted to Islamist lim world, but I would agree with those ideologies do not envision a violent who point to its weakening in recent overthrow of their governments; they years in key centers including Iran, rather wish to establish political parties Egypt, and Algeria. Despite the bin and participate in free elections. Several Laden phenomenon, it seems unlikely Islamists today champion values long as- that militant Islamists will take over sociated with secularism in the West, in- more Arab governments in the near fu- cluding democracy and respect for mod- ture.25 On the other hand, recent U.S. ern science, technology, and education. policies toward the Arab-Israeli dispute, Anti-Western terrorism, while of natural Pakistan, and most recently, Iraq, have international concern, involves a very led to a growth in both Islamist and non- small minority of Muslims, and has thus Islamist hostility to the U.S. government far spread far less than many feared after in the Arab world, Turkey, Pakistan, and 2001. Southeast Asia that could be expressed Paradoxically enough, the Islamic in further violence against American and country where forms of secularism are Western targets. most popular today is probably Iran. Re- The fatal association of secularism formists have won repeated electoral vic- with autocratic rule and Western influ- tories in the country since 1997, demon- ence helps account for the general trend strations against the hard-liners who against secularism in the Muslim control the government are increasingly world;26 when people want to be free frequent, and there is a healthy ferment of Western control, they don’t generally in the arts. Just as the Iranian revolution envision the path to their salvation in was briefly seen as a model in much of the secularist ideas sovereign in the the Muslim world, so Iranian reformism West. The creation in recent decades of and activist opposition to clerical autoc- modernized and highly political versions racy are now models for many outside of Islam encourages mobilization of the Iran.27 Furthermore, in Iran as else- still-religious masses and provides the where, a number of writers, mostly elements of an ideology that seems fa- women, have undertaken the dif½cult miliar, powerful–and untainted by issue of interpreting early Islamic tradi- Western influence. tions as implying equality for women, In recent years, Islamist Muslims have and there have been a few legal and introduced antisecular elements rare in many social changes in the direction of past Islamic history, like the total inter- greater gender equality, though laws are twining of religion and politics and the far more unequal than they were under

25 Kepel, Jihad; Olivier Roy is also writing a book on these questions. 27 See Asef Bayat and Bahman Baktiari, “Revo- lutionary Iran and Egypt: Exporting Inspira- 26 These points are emphasized in several tions and Anxieties,” in Iran and the Surrounding chapters of Islam and Secularism in the Middle World, ed. Nikki R. Keddie and Rudi Matthee East, ed. Azzam Tamimi and John L. Esposito (Seattle: University of Washington Press, (London: Hurst and Co., 2000). 2002).

Dædalus Summer 2003 25 Nikki R. 28 secularist intellectuals continue to be Keddie the Shah. Women now comprise 63 on percent of university entrants, as health, stronger in these countries than in much secularism education, and family programs have of the Islamic Middle East. As a result, & religion brought birthrates down from seven per there is no consensus that being a Jewish woman to two. or Muslim state requires any further Some intellectuals in Iran and else- strengthening of religious laws. where in the Muslim world think that Pakistan differs greatly from Israel, advances associated with secularism in however; it trails Israel in moderniza- the West can be achieved via reinterpre- tion and education programs, and must tations of Islam without renouncing the also contend with widespread poverty ties between state and religion. The eco- and persistent tribal and regional power nomic failures and cultural repression centers. Having enacted, under General experienced under Islamic rule have dis- Zia ul-Haq in the 1970s, ‘Islamic’ laws illusioned most Iranians, whose anticler- that discriminate against women and re- icalism is exempli½ed by the pervasive ligious minorities, it is also substantially refusal of the country’s taxi drivers to different from Israel on the social front. pick up clerics. Many Iranians are speak- Current Pakistani President Pervez Mu- ing not only against clerical rule, but sharraf has secular aims, but by his acts also explicitly in favor of the separation he has alienated many Islamists and of religion and the state. The failures of democratic secularists alike, and he is the Islamic Republic have also damp- having trouble in his efforts to introduce ened enthusiasm for Islamic revolution secular education into the far-flung ma- and rule elsewhere. drasas. Ultimately, Israel’s government and society, despite all the privileges The dynamics of secularization in granted to Jews and the religious parties, South Asia and Israel, where religion are more secular than Pakistan’s. and nationalism have been closely inter- The case of India, where Hinduism is twined for decades, have been somewhat practiced among several other major re- different from those in the West and the ligions, is more complex. Hinduism, it Middle East. In Pakistan and Israel, reli- has been argued, did not originate as a gious identity spurred movements to single religion, but rather was ‘reformed’ create a nation, movements chiefly into a unity of doctrine and practice af- based on religious nationalism. And in ter the coming of the British and the de- both countries religion-based parties velopment of clearer Christian and Mus- 30 have grown since the states’ formation, lim identities within the country. Re- and constitute a signi½cant element in form movements that incorporated political life. Western influences ½rst emerged in In- The early leaders of Israel’s Zionist dia during the early nineteenth century movement were, however, secularists, as and developed earliest among Hindus, were a number of Pakistan’s founders, who occupied more middle-class posi- including Muhammad Ali Jinnah.29 And tions than Muslims.

28 See Nikki R. Keddie, “Women in Iran since 1979,” Social Research 67 (2) (Summer 2000): 30 See chapters by David Shulman, Heinrich 405–438, and the sources it cites. von Stietencron, and Robert E. Frykenberg in Gunther D. Sontheimer and Hermann Kulke, 29 See Stanley A. Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan eds., Hinduism Reconsidered (New Delhi: Mano- (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). har, 1989).

26 Dædalus Summer 2003 Founded in 1885, the Indian National In elections for provincial legislatures Secularism & its Congress was predominantly liberal- in 1937, the Muslim League did not get discontents secular, and of½cially neutral regarding the majority of Muslim votes, but subse- religion. Such religious neutrality quently many Muslims found the per- seemed necessary if the party was to formance of the Congress-dominated enlist both Muslims and Hindus in the legislatures pro-Hindu and discrimina- struggle for national independence. On tory. In the 1940s, after the Muslim the other hand, some leaders’ emphasis League’s determination to make Pak- on Hindu issues (for example, the move- istan a Muslim state further aroused ment against cow slaughter) as advocat- communal-religious feelings, most Mus- ed in the early twentieth century by B. G. lims actively supported the creation of a Tilak attracted mostly Hindu support separate Muslim state. While partition and alienated some non-Hindus. might have been avoided–especially if In the ½rst years of the twentieth cen- Nehru had accepted proposals for sub- tury, divisive communal issues came to stantial autonomy for Muslim regions– the fore with the abortive partition of it instead took effect with brutal sudden- Bengal, favored by Muslims but broadly ness after the hasty departure of the opposed by Hindus. The dispute over British in 1947. Large-scale massacres Bengal led to the formation of the Mus- occurred on both sides.31 And in the lim League and to the granting of sepa- decades that followed the partition, rate electorates, at ½rst for local bodies, three major Indian leaders were assassi- based on religion. Congress and the nated for religio-political reasons: Ma- Muslim League cooperated in the Khi- hatma Gandhi in 1948 by a Hindu na- lafat movement of support for the Otto- tionalist; Nehru’s daughter, Prime Min- man caliphate during and after World ister Indira Gandhi, in 1984 by a Sikh War I, but this became a nonissue with militant; and her son, Prime Minister Atatürk’s abolition of the caliphate, and Rajiv Gandhi, in 1991 by a Hindu adher- the cooperation broke down. ent of the Tamil Tigers. The Congress Party attracted a num- In India after the partition, maintain- ber of Muslim politicians, most promi- ing state secularism and religious neu- nently A. K. Azad, at a time when the trality proved dif½cult, and the Indian Muslim League was far from securing constitution did not establish a uniform the majority of Muslim voters. Congress civil code. In 1985, a crisis ensued when a secularism had unacknowledged contra- branch of the Indian supreme court dictions, however, and the successes of ruled that an elderly Muslim woman, the party’s outstanding leader Mohan- Shah Bano, was entitled to maintenance das Gandhi were partly due to the mass by her ex-husband under a section of the appeal of his spiritual themes such as Indian Criminal Code, and went beyond nonviolence and asceticism, which were this in advocating a uniform civil code. closer to certain Hindu and Jain tradi- This led to signi½cant Hindu-Muslim tions than to Islam. On the other hand, conflict, though some Muslim women the religious Gandhi and his agnostic fel- and liberals agreed with the judgment. low Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress (I) government were in agreement that the national backtracked, however, successfully movement and ultimate national government of a united India should be sec- 31 See Gyanenda Pandey, Remembering Parti- tion: Violence, Nationalism and History in India ular in its policies and treat all religions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). equally. Dædalus Summer 2003 27 Nikki R. pushing a 1986 law exempting Muslim reaction to Hindu and Muslim versions Keddie on women from the law of maintenance. A of religious nationalism, Sikh and Bud- secularism Hindu nationalist backlash was a factor dhist nationalist movements have & religion in the ultimately successful campaign to emerged in South Asia. In India, Sikhs demolish the Babri Mosque in Ayod- and Muslims have clashed with Hindus; hya.32 Other governmental acts that in Sri Lanka, Buddhists are battling Hin- encouraged communal reactions includ- dus. All of these religious nationalist ed af½rmative action policies for Mus- movements have contributed to a weak- lims and for disfavored castes and tribes ening of secularism in the region.34 at a time when educated Hindus were The Indian situation differs from that experiencing high unemployment. of the Muslim world in that it involves In recent years, Hindu nationalism has reactions against a longstanding secular grown in power; its party, the bjp, cur- government with democratic elections. rently leads the government. A number At the same time, Western political of intellectuals, including Ashis Nandy, hegemony is less of an issue in India. T. N. Madan, and Partha Chatterjee, India and the Muslim world are similar have questioned either secularism itself in that secularism developed there much or the particular secularist policies of more rapidly than in the West–imposed past governments. Some Indian intellec- top-down on populations that have not tuals defend secularism, but criticize its yet embraced a secular outlook. application, arguing, for example, that Nehru and his followers adopted a top- Another area where secularism has down policy, doing little to negotiate been on the defensive, and religio- with religious people before handling politics on the rise, is a very different problems with insensitivity. Others criti- country, neither third world nor newly cize the government’s conformity to established: the United States. public opinion. As a result of these on- The United States has little in com- going controversies, contemporary India mon with the countries surveyed so far, has produced perhaps the world’s largest and very possibly most of the reasons for contemporary body of publications the attacks on secularism in the United debating the merits of secularism.33 States are different from those else- The conflict between secularism and where, even though its antisecular forces religious nationalism has been a recur- became strong almost simultaneously. rent theme of recent South Asian history There do, however, seem to be some not only in India but also in Sri Lanka. In similarities. 34 On religious nationalisms in India see Peter 32 See especially the chapters on South Asia in van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Fundamentalism and Gender, ed. John Stratton Muslims in India (Berkeley: University of Cali- Hawley and Wade Proudfoot (New York: Ox- fornia Press, 1994); Mark Juergensmeyer, The ford University Press, 1994). New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley: University of Cali- 33 A good sampling of published work on the fornia Press, 1993); and the relevant chapters by question is Secularism and its Critics, ed. Rajeev Daniel Gold, Robert Eric Frykenberg, Harjat Bhargava (Delhi: Oxford University Press, Oberoi, Ainslee T. Embree, and Peter van der 1998), with an outstanding chapter by Akeel Veer in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, Bilgrami. The issue is intelligently covered in eds., Fundamentalisms Observed, Fundamental- T. N. Madan, Modern Myths, Locked Minds: Sec- isms and the State, and Accounting for Fundamen- ularism and Fundamentalism in India (Delhi: Ox- talisms (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago ford University Press, 1997). Press, 1991–1994).

28 Dædalus Summer 2003 Notably, the rise of the New Religious decline in community action and spirit, Secularism & its Politics since 1970 is in part a reaction to partly due to atomizing forces like televi- discontents strong and sometimes resented secular sion. Some people ½nd in revived reli- measures, accompanied by a rise in gov- gious ties and morality a partial or com- ernment centralization and increasing plete solution for such problems. encroachment in many spheres of life. In In the past, when religion and govern- the United States there have been a num- ment were usually intertwined, it was ber of secularizing governmental meas- easy for dissidents to see the weakening ures, but antisecular opposition has fo- of religious powers and the creation of cused in particular on two Supreme secular states as major steps to solving Court decisions: the outlawing of school social problems. Similarly, today, when prayer in 1962 and the legalization of secularism and government are usually abortion in 1973. The fundamentalists’ intertwined, it is easy for dissidents to earlier focus on creationism versus evo- react against secular states and call for lution, a matter for local governments an obvious alternative–renewed politi- and school boards, has expanded to cal power for religion. The same ‘enemy encompass opposition to schools’ teach- of my enemy is my friend’ logic applies ing about homosexuality–and, indeed, to ideology. In the past, when secular about sex at all.35 ideologies like nationalism, socialism, Throughout the world, the strengthen- and free market capitalism had not been ing of antisecular political parties and widely tried, they could more easily be movements has been accompanied by presented as keys to creating a better some weakening of secular parties and world. In recent decades this situation movements, a weakening due not only to has been reversed, and religious groups political failures but also to popular dis- no longer tied to government have been illusionment with the old secular ideolo- able to advance religious solutions to gies and panaceas. The end of Commu- intractable secular problems. nism unleashed in some populations a A related dynamic is at work in some renewal of religious traditions not whol- intellectual circles, in which disillusion ly lost in Eastern Europe and Central with various older secular ideals has Asia. Among worldwide behavioral opened the door for some to reinstate trends are the rise of freer sexual habits, religion or create new religious ideolo- resulting in more babies born out of gies. This goes along with the upswing in wedlock and a rise in sexually transmit- identity politics in recent decades, where ted diseases and crime rates, and a felt religion, along with ethnicity, gender, and sexual preference, has become a ba- 35 Different approaches to religion and politics sis of political solidarity, in part replac- in contemporary America are found in Sara ing older identities based on class or pa- Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Move- ments and Political Power in the United States triotism, or on universalist worldviews (New York: The Guilford Press, 1995); Garry like socialism and liberalism. Wills, Under God: Religion and American Politics In some ways, however, the rise in reli- (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990); Ralph giosity and decline in secularism are per- Reed, Active Faith: How Christians are Changing haps less pervasive than they seem. For the Soul of American Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1996). A thorough survey is Barry A. one thing, all sorts of traditions es- Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman, One Nation chewed by the Westernized educated Under God: Religion in Contemporary American classes have come to be seen, often erro- Society (New York: Crown Publishers, 1993). neously, as belonging to religious tradi-

Dædalus Summer 2003 29 Nikki R. tion. In the Islamic world as in the Unit- First, secularization around the world Keddie on ed States, the religious Right has em- has been a far longer, more dif½cult, and secularism braced a romantic view of traditional more partial process than is usually & religion social relations, projecting a picture of assumed. It requires a profound change harmony that never, or rarely, existed.36 in human outlook: in both the West and At the same time, when religious parties the East, the dif½culties of establishing have come to power, as in Iran, they have stable secular regimes have often been tended to retain, or eventually to rein- underestimated. state, important components of modern Second, the Western path to secular- secularism. Not only, for example, did ism, and indeed the Western de½nitions Iran’s Islamic Republic adopt a largely of secularism, may not be fully applica- secular constitution using Western mod- ble in all parts of the world, because of els, but its economy, foreign policy, and religious differences and the complex educational system are also run on impact of Western colonialism. It is mainly secular lines, despite a religious therefore predictable that non-Western overlay that, as with the U.S. religious states that try to establish secularism Right, concerns mainly questions of quickly by government ½at, without gender and sexuality. marshaling popular support, will experi- The backlash to secularism is likely to ence serious dif½culties–and run the produce its own backlash, which is hap- risk of provoking a religious backlash. pening already in Iran, particularly Modern religious rule has not, however, among young people and women, who solved the problems that brought it to have been able to force some changes in power. It has increased inequalities policy. In the United States too, for all between genders and among religious the superior grassroots political organi- communities and has brought about its zation of the religious Right, fundamen- own backlash and countermobilizations. talism has so far been unable to win majority support, either in elections or in polling on major moral and social issues, even though it has importantly influenced Republican policies.

Taking the world as a whole, we see that secularism today is not in over- whelming retreat, although antisecular ideologies now have more strength than they did some decades ago. Still, the struggle between secular and religious worldviews is far from over. In conclusion, I think it is worth stressing two major points that emerge from this brief comparative historical survey of secularism around the world:

36 See Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were (New York: Basic Books, 1992).

30 Dædalus Summer 2003 Henry Munson

‘Fundamentalism’ ancient & modern

During the reign of the Seleucid King fled to the hills of Judea. Joined by a Antiochus Epiphanes (r. 175–164 b.c.e.), band of “pious ones,” they struck down lawless men arose in Israel and urged the sinners and the lawless men. They their fellow Jews to follow Greek cus- tore down the unholy altars of the Hel- toms in de½ance of the laws of God. The lenists. They forcibly circumcised the king commanded the Jews to sacri½ce uncircumcised boys within the bound- pigs in the temple and leave their sons aries of Israel. “They rescued the law out uncircumcised. Seleucid soldiers were to of the hands of the Gentiles” (1 Macc. kill all those who disobeyed. Yet some 2:48). When Mattathias died, his son Ju- Jews continued to obey the laws of God dah the Maccabee–or Judah ‘the Ham- over those of the king. Among them was mer’ (Yehuda ha-Maccabi)–succeeded the priest Mattathias, who fled the dese- him as leader of the rebellion against cration of Jerusalem to seek refuge in the Hellenism and the Seleucid dynasty. At nearby town of Modi’in. ½rst, Judah and his men lived in moun- The king’s men came to Modi’in and tain caves like wild animals (2 Macc. ordered Mattathias to sacri½ce in the 10:6), but he was eventually able to gath- Greek manner. He refused. Then a Jew er an army of pious Jews to attack and came forward to sacri½ce as the king burn towns and villages at night. Like a commanded. When Mattathias saw this, lion, he “pursued the lawless” and “de- he was full of righteous rage and killed stroyed the ungodly,” and “terror fell both the Jew and a Seleucid of½cer try- upon the Gentiles round about them” (1 ing to enforce the king’s laws. Matta- Macc. 3:3–5, 8, 25). Judah eventually thias then cried out, “Let every one who gained control of the temple in Jerusa- is zealous for the law and supports the lem and puri½ed it of all traces of the covenant come out with me” (1 Macc. Hellenistic abominations. Jews celebrate 2:27, rsv). Mattathias and his sons and this deliverance from oppression every others seeking justice and righteousness year at Hanukkah. The ½rst and second books of the Mac- Henry Munson is professor of anthropology at the cabees emphasize the Maccabean insis- University of Maine. He has written three books tence on strict conformity to the Torah on the Islamic world and is now writing a book and the punishment of Hellenistic Jews entitled “Why They Hate Us: The Roots of Is- who renounced God’s laws. At the same lamic Militancy.” time, there clearly was a nationalistic and anti-imperialist dimension to the

Dædalus Summer 2003 31 Henry Maccabean revolt. Judah “gladly fought values–Hellenism, after all, embodied Munson on for Israel” and “extended the glory of his modernity in the Judea of the second secularism people” (1 Macc. 3:2-3). He called upon century b.c.e. & religion the Lord to look upon His “oppressed Traditional believers confronted by people” as well as His desecrated temple new, widespread values in conflict with (2 Macc. 8:2). Exhorting his men to pre- their own have, in principle, three op- pare for battle, Judah declared, “It is bet- tions. They can withdraw from the ter for us to die in battle than to see the broader culture, like a turtle under its misfortunes of our nation and of the shell. They can adapt to cultural innova- sanctuary” (1 Macc. 3:59). tions, as liberal Christians, Jews, and Muslims all have. Or they can ½ght back, The Maccabean revolt illustrates sever- militantly defending their traditional al important features of the modern beliefs. These three options are not mu- movements commonly called funda- tually exclusive. Even those who with- mentalist. These movements demand draw from the broader culture are inevi- strict conformity to sacred scriptures tably affected by it. Even those who ½ght and to a moral code ostensibly based on against innovations often end up adapt- these scriptures. They are usually politi- ing to them. Mattathias and his sons ini- cally assertive, although they sometimes tially tried to withdraw from what they oscillate between periods of militancy saw as the violation of God’s laws. Then and quiescence. They are fueled in large they felt compelled to ½ght back. But part by moral outrage at what their sup- eventually the Maccabees adapted to porters see as violations of the laws of Hellenistic culture and ruled under the God. At the same time, such moral out- auspices of the very empire they had rage is often meshed with nationalistic once fought. and social grievances. We see this in the revolt of the Maccabees in the second Many scholars have questioned the century b.c.e.–and also in the revolt of use of the term ‘fundamentalism’ as an Al Qaeda in our own time. analytical category in the comparative The Islamists of Al Qaeda are, in ef- study of religious movements.1 Their fect, Muslim Maccabees ½ghting the criticism tends to revolve around the fol- American rather than the Seleucid em- lowing points: pire, and Westernization rather than • the term ‘fundamentalist’is both po- Hellenization. Of course, Judah the Mac- lemical and prejudicial, insofar as it cabee, unlike Osama bin Laden, did not portrays all those who refuse to dilute blame his people’s problems on Jewish conspiracies. Nor did he ever destroy the 1 The most influential–and controversial– tallest building in the economic heart- comparative study of the phenomenon has been the monumental Fundamentalism Project land of the empire he attacked. But in directed by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Ap- other respects, Judah the Maccabee and pleby. Sponsored by the American Academy of his followers can be compared to the Arts and Sciences, and supported by the John militant Islamic revivalists of the late D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, twentieth and early twenty-½rst cen- this project produced ½ve encyclopedic vol- turies. umes, all published by the University of Chica- go Press in the 1990s. These volumes are an in- For millennia, traditional believers dispensable resource for anyone interested in have had to confront cultural innova- the comparative study of militant religious con- tions that violate their basic beliefs and servatism in the late twentieth century.

32 Dædalus Summer 2003 the fundamental tenets of their reli- Yet no matter how critical we may be ‘Funda- mentalism’ gions as bigots and fanatics; of Islamic militancy, if we wish to ex- ancient & • the term is of Protestant origin and to plain movements of any kind, we need modern apply it in other religious contexts dis- to understand how the people in them torts the true nature of the movements see the world, and why they see it as they so described; and do. This entails the careful study of the words and actions of their leaders and • the term is used to refer to such a wide supporters in the social-historical con- range of movements that it glosses texts that have shaped them. Under- over many of their distinctive features. standing the insider’s point of view is It is true that–except for Christian essential not only on scholarly grounds, fundamentalists who take pride in ap- but also with respect to shaping govern- plying the term to themselves–‘funda- ment policy. If, for example, a govern- mentalist’ has negative connotations of ment seeks to limit the appeal of an ex- bigotry, fanaticism, and even terrorism, tremist group like bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, given the current widespread use of the it must know the sources of the group’s phrase ‘Islamic fundamentalism.’ This is appeal. Policies based on empirically one reason most specialists on the Islam- baseless assumptions about the appeal of ic world prefer ‘Islamism’ or ‘political such movements are likely to be ineffec- Islam.’ Even conservative Protestants tive. sometimes see ‘fundamentalist’ as a term of abuse used to discredit those Unlike words like ‘zealot’ and ‘puri- who insist on defending the traditional tan,’ which have transcended their origi- beliefs of their religion. nal Jewish and Christian contexts, it is Scholars should of course avoid demo- sometimes hard to separate the generic nizing militant religious conservatives. use of the term ‘fundamentalism’ from At the same time, however, they should its original Protestant meaning. This is also avoid idealizing them. Many spe- one reason most people would not speak cialists on the Islamic world are so deter- of ‘Catholic fundamentalism.’ More- mined to avoid demonization that they over, Protestant fundamentalists have end up minimizing the bigotry and vio- traditionally condemned Catholicism as lence often associated with militant an illegitimate perversion of Christiani- Islamic movements, which generally ty, so the very phrase ‘Catholic funda- threaten the rights of religious minori- mentalism’ seems absurd. Yet to com- ties, women, and all those who do not pare Catholic conservatism with other believe what they believe. These move- forms of religious conservatism, both ments reject the idea of a peaceful reso- militant and moderate, is useful. lution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The case of Catholic conservatism And some of them have no qualms about raises one of the most serious problems using violence to achieve their goals. with the use of the term ‘fundamental- Such movements have acquired their ist’ in comparative analysis: the danger reputation for fanaticism the old- of producing an arbitrary and mislead- fashioned way: they have earned it. So ing sense of uniformity. The term is of- while we should resist embracing the ten used indiscriminately to describe a ‘axis of evil’ idea of Islamic militancy, we wide variety of movements in which should not view all Islamists as the inno- religion actually plays very different cent victims of Western ‘Islamophobia.’ roles. A striking example of this is the

Dædalus Summer 2003 33 Henry use of the term ‘Hindu fundamentalist’ posed the teaching of evolution, and Munson on to describe Hindu nationalism. This supported the temperance movement. secularism movement stresses the linkage between The conventional wisdom is that after & religion Hindu and Indian national identity–not the Scopes trial of 1925, most Christian strict conformity to sacred scripture and Fundamentalists avoided the political a moral code based on it.2 This is not to arena until the late 1970s. This is only suggest that there is no value in compar- partially true. Fundamentalists like Ger- ing Hindu nationalism with movements ald B. Winrod (1900–1957) and Gerald that insist on strict conformity to scrip- L. K. Smith (1898–1976) ran for public ture; there is, so long as we do not as- of½ce in the 1930s and 1940s on plat- sume that religion plays the same role in forms that combined anti-Semitism, all of them. anticommunism, populism, and Chris- In short, then, there are real problems tian revivalism. From the 1950s through with using the term ‘fundamentalism’ in the 1970s, Fundamentalist preachers like comparative analysis. My own prefer- Billy James Hargis combined similar ence is to avoid using the term as much themes with opposition to racial integra- as possible. Yet one can speak of a funda- tion. Most Christian Fundamentalists in mentalist impulse in some Christian, the South opposed the civil rights move- Jewish, and Muslim movements, in ment and the federal government’s at- terms of their insistence on strict con- tempts to deny tax-exempt status to the formity to sacred scripture. This funda- many Christian schools founded to cir- mentalist impulse is not equally signi½- cumvent the court-ordered racial inte- cant in all cases. Comparing the various gration of public schools.3 In 1963, when roles it plays in these very different Governor George Wallace refused to in- movements is useful so long as we pay tegrate Alabama’s schools, Hargis’s close attention to the other kinds of Christian Crusade called him “Christian grievances and goals with which it is Patriot of the Year.”4 often intertwined. The Christian Right that emerged with the formation of Jerry Falwell’s Moral The word ‘fundamentalist,’ traditional- Majority in 1979 was a response to the ly written with an uppercase ‘F,’ was cultural transformations of the 1960s coined in 1920 to refer to militantly con- and 1970s. Fundamentalists were out- servative evangelical Protestants ready raged by Supreme Court rulings that to ½ght for the basic tenets presented in legalized abortion and banned school The Fundamentals, a series of twelve pam- prayer. The increasingly permissive sex- phlets published in the United States ual morality that came to prevail in from 1910 to 1915 whose central theme is American culture also outraged religious that the Bible is the inerrant word of conservatives. On the other hand, the God. The early-twentieth-century Chris- new Christian Right distanced itself tian Fundamentalists believed they from the racism that had marked earlier should live according to a strict, biblical- Christian Fundamentalist movements in ly based moral code, were outraged by the South. the ‘higher criticism’ of the Bible, op- 3 William C. Martin, With God on Our Side: 2 Henry Munson, “Not All Crustaceans Are The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New Crabs: Reflections on the Comparative Study of York: Broadway Books, 1996), 173. Fundamentalism and Politics,” Contention 4 (3) (1995). 4 Ibid., 79. 34 Dædalus Summer 2003 Some would argue that to oppose Orthodox and the ultra-Orthodox. The ‘Funda- mentalism’ abortion, feminism, and civil rights for modern Orthodox insist on strict con- ancient & homosexuals, and to sanction school formity to Jewish law, but they have modern prayer, is inevitably to oppose ‘moderni- nonetheless devised ways to participate ty.’ Religious conservatives would rein modern society. The ultra-Orthodox spond that such an argument is biased are more demanding, insisting on strict and based on liberal religious and politi- separation from gentile society and from cal assumptions. They would say that it Jews who do not rigorously observe reli- is possible, for example, to oppose abor- gious law. Hostility toward Zionism pre- tion on the grounds that it constitutes vailed among both modern Orthodox murder, and yet endorse the idea of a and ultra-Orthodox rabbis in the late tolerant society in which all citizens nineteenth and early twentieth cen- have equal rights regardless of their reli- turies. But such hostility virtually disap- gious identity. peared among the modern Orthodox when the Holocaust appeared to con½rm In the late twentieth century, the term the Zionist argument that Jews could be ‘fundamentalist’ was often applied to safe only in their own state. three main trends in Orthodox Judaism: Some modern Orthodox rabbis sought militant religious Zionism, Ashkenazi to legitimate Orthodox participation in ultra-Orthodoxy, and the Sephardic the Zionist movement by severing it (Middle Eastern) ultra-Orthodoxy rep- from the idea of the Messiah. Rabbi resented by the Shas Party. All three Isaac Jacob Reines (1839–1915), who groups stress the need for conformity to founded the religious Zionist movement sacred texts and to a moral code based in 1902, agreed with the ultra-Orthodox on such texts, and they have all played that Jews should not try to ‘force the important roles in Israeli politics. To End.’ He embraced the traditional belief understand these movements, a brief that Jews should passively await the overview of modern Jewish history is coming of the Messiah, but he argued needed. that the Zionist settlement of the Land In the late nineteenth century, some of Israel had nothing to do with the fu- Jews concluded that the only solution to ture messianic redemption of the Jews anti-Semitism was the creation of a Jew- and thus did not constitute a heretical ish state. Instead of waiting for God and de½ance of God’s will. The manifestly the Messiah to bring the Jews back to messianic implications of the ‘ingather- the Land of Israel, Zionists such as Theo- ing of the exiles’ in the Land of Israel dor Herzl (1860–1904) argued that Jews limited the appeal of this idea, which should take it upon themselves to return was soon displaced by a radically differ- to this land. Most Orthodox rabbis op- ent view, namely that Zionism was itself posed Zionism on the grounds that it in- part of the gradual messianic redemp- volved humans trying to do what only tion of the Jewish people and the Land God and the Messiah should do. Anoth- of Israel. The secular Zionists were do- er reason for Orthodox hostility to Zion- ing the work of God and the Messiah but ism was that most of the early Zionist they did not yet know it. Rabbi Abraham leaders were not interested in a state Kook (1865–1935) made this argument, based on strict conformity to Jewish reli- and it has remained a basic theme in re- gious law. ligious Zionism. In speaking of Orthodox Judaism, one Religious Zionists are usually referred has to distinguish between the modern to as the ‘national religious’ (datim le’u- Dædalus Summer 2003 35 Henry mim in Hebrew). This term captures the in their everyday lives. But their political Munson on fusion of religion and nationalism that activities have focused primarily on set- secularism has come to characterize religious Zion- tling and retaining the land won in 1967 & religion ism. Unlike the ultra-Orthodox, the reli- rather than on creating a state and socie- gious Zionists have always been willing ty based on strict conformity to religious to cooperate with the far more numer- law. While there is no denying the fun- ous secular Zionists who were primarily damentalist dimension of religious Zi- responsible for creating the modern onism, it is also important to remember state of Israel. Traditionally, the Nation- its nationalist dimension and its roots in al Religious Party (nrp) and its prede- the revisionist Zionist idea that force cessors were most concerned with do- must be used to ½ght the inherently anti- mestic religious issues, such as the ob- Semitic gentile. servance of Shabbat, and left foreign af- To understand how the fundamental- fairs to the Labor Party. The Six-Day ist impulse came to be meshed with a War of 1967 awakened the dormant mes- militant form of nationalism in religious sianic dimension of religious Zionism. Zionism, we can turn to the writings of Many religious Zionists saw the war as a Rabbi Meir Kahane (1932–1990). In his miracle and as a major step forward on book Listen World, Listen Jew, Kahane of- the way toward the redemption of the fers a Zionist interpretation of the con- Jewish people. East Jerusalem, the Tem- cept of Qiddush ha-shem (Kidush Ha- ple Mount, Judea, the very heart of an- shem), ‘the sancti½cation of the name cient Israel, were now once again in Jew- [of God],’ which is the traditional He- ish hands. To return any of this land to brew expression meaning ‘martyrdom’: the Arabs would be to defy God’s plan A Jewish ½st in the face of the astonished for the redemption of the Jewish people gentile world that has not seen it for two and the Land of Israel. The religious Zi- millennia, this is Kidush Hashem. Jewish onists who felt this way (and not all did) dominion over the Christian holy places began to settle in the territories occupied while the Church that sucked our blood or–as they saw it–‘liberated’ in the war. vomits its rage and frustration. This is The militant religious Zionists in the Kidush Hashem. A Jewish Air Force that vanguard of the settlement movement is better than any other and that forces a formed a group called Gush Emunim, Lebanese airliner down so that we can ‘the Bloc of the Faithful.’ They clashed imprison murderers of Jews rather than with the more dovish religious Zionists having to repeat the centuries-old pattern who still led the nrp in the 1960s and of begging the gentile to do it for us. This 1970s. The doves like the militants be- is Kidush Hashem . . . . Reading angry edi- lieved that God had given all the Land of torials about Jewish “aggression” and Israel to the Jews, but they felt that mak- “violations” rather than flowery eulogies ing peace, and thus saving Jewish lives, over dead Jewish victims. That is Kidush took priority over retaining the land. For Hashem.5 the militant settlers, however, settling the land and preventing the government The rage that suffuses this passage was from withdrawing from it took priority not provoked by ‘modernity.’ Like Judah over everything else. the Maccabee, Kahane revolted against Militant religious Zionists advocate 5 Meir Kahane, Listen World, Listen Jew (Jerusa- the creation of a state based on the reli- lem: Institute of the Jewish Idea, 1978), 121– gious laws to which they strictly adhere 122.

36 Dædalus Summer 2003 both gentiles who oppressed Jews and drawal from the territories occupied in ‘Funda- mentalism’ Jews who rejected the laws of God. (He the Six-Day War, the Ashkenazi ultra- ancient & often referred to secular Jews as Hel- Orthodox political parties have contin- modern lenists.) His slogan “Never again” re- ued to concentrate primarily on obtain- ferred to his goal of ensuring that the ing funding for their community and on gentile would never again slaughter the enforcing strict conformity to their in- Jew. In Israel when one sees or hears the terpretation of Jewish religious law with expression “Kahane was right,” one im- respect to issues like observance of the mediately understands that this refers to Sabbath, conversion, kosher dietary Kahane’s goal of expelling all Arabs laws, and the desecration of the dead by from the Land of Israel, and not to his archaeologists. Since the Six-Day War, goal of a state based on strict conformity however, most Ashkenazi Haredim have to Jewish religious law. So while there tended to support the hard-line position was a fundamentalist dimension to of the militant religious Zionists regard- Kahane’s political orientation, it was ing ‘land-for-peace,’ despite their con- meshed with other issues that were far tinued theoretical opposition to Zion- more important sources of his political ism. Conversely, religious Zionists have signi½cance. increasingly embraced the stricter be- Kahane’s militant nationalism should havioral code of the Haredim. The Ash- have been anathema to ultra-Orthodox kenazi Haredim traditionally withdrew Jews, who are often called Haredim–He- from surrounding gentile society in the brew for ‘those who tremble’ in the pres- Diaspora and continue to separate them- ence of God. Like Christian fundamen- selves from mainstream Israeli society. talists in the United States, the Haredim Yet in the last few decades of the twenti- have been torn between the desire to eth century, they became increasingly withdraw from society and the desire to aggressive in trying to incorporate their reform it. Unlike the modern Orthodox, moral code into Israeli law. 6 virtually all of whom are religious Zion- The Shas Party typi½es the third major ists, the ultra-Orthodox continue to reform of militant Orthodoxy in Israel of- ject Zionism–in principle at least. In ten called fundamentalist. ‘Shas’ is a practice, many ultra-Orthodox Jews ad- Hebrew acronym for ‘Sephardim Guard- mire Kahane and the militant religious ians of the Torah.’ Although the term Zionism he represents. Indeed, the ‘Sephardim’ originally referred to Jews boundary between the ultra-Orthodox of Spanish origin, it has come to be used passively awaiting the Messiah and the to refer to Jews of Middle Eastern origin religious Zionists actively working for (the Mizrahim, or ‘Oriental Jews’). In Is- his arrival is more porous than one rael’s 1999 elections, the Sephardi ultra- might assume. Orthodox Shas Party won seventeen of It is important to distinguish between one hundred twenty Knesset seats, thus the Ashkenazi Haredim–that is, the becoming the third most powerful party ultra-Orthodox of Eastern European ori- in Israel, whereas the Ashkenazi ultra- gin–and the ultra-Orthodox of Middle Orthodox and religious Zionist parties Eastern origin, who will be discussed won only ½ve seats each. below. Unlike the religious Zionists 6 Samuel C. Heilman and Menachem Fried- (mostly Ashkenazim), whose political man, “Religious Fundamentalism and Religious activities since 1967 have focused prima- Jews: The Case of the Haredim,” in Fundamen- rily on settling and preventing with- talisms Observed, ed. R. Scott Appleby (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

Dædalus Summer 2003 37 Henry In addition to celebrating Sephardic are in part at least third world griev- Munson on identity and advocating strict conformi- ances. This is notably true of the resent- secularism ty to God’s laws, Shas provides schools ment toward Western domination that & religion and other social services for poor Se- pervades the Islamist literature. phardim, and much of its popular sup- At the core of political Islam is the ar- port is rooted in the frustration and re- gument that success and victory are sentment of those Jews of Middle East- signs of God’s favor, while failure and ern origin who feel they have been dis- defeat are signs of His wrath. (This logic criminated against by Israelis of Euro- is of course also found in conservative pean origin. Aryeh Deri, who played a Judaism and Christianity.) Islamists ap- central role in making Shas the third ply this argument as follows: When most powerful Israeli political party in Muslims obeyed God’s commandments, the 1990s, has said: “Shas was estab- He enabled them to create great empires lished on the basis of a sense of discrimi- and civilizations; when they ceased to nation. Shas arose because the Sephardi obey divine law, they became weak and public felt it did not belong. That it had God enabled the in½dels of Europe, and no framework, no home, either within later the United States and Israel, to sub- the Haredi world or within the State of jugate them. Israel overall. Shas gave those people In the nineteenth and early twentieth pride.”7 centuries, most of the Islamic world was To focus only on the fundamentalist conquered and colonized by the Euro- dimension of Shas while ignoring the pean powers. By the mid-1950s, most ethnic rage that it articulates would dis- predominantly Muslim countries were tort a principal source–if not the princi- independent, but the Islamic world re- pal source–of the party’s appeal. Shas mained relatively weak, and many Mus- demonstrates that movements called lims saw the establishment of Israel in ‘fundamentalist’ often owe their politi- 1948 as a manifestation of their weak- cal success to secular grievances as well ness vis-à-vis the West. Meanwhile, the as religious ones. We also see this clearly Islamists argued that if Muslims once in the case of militant Islamism. again obeyed the laws of God, they would again be strong and capable of In speaking of the modern Islamic defeating not only Israel, but all the movements that seek to create strictly Western powers. This argument was religious states, we need to bear in mind made, for example, in 1972 by Ayatollah that they emerged in radically different Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s Islamic contexts than the movements in the revolution of 1978–1979: United States and Israel with which they If the Muslim states and peoples had re- are usually compared. These two coun- lied on Islam instead of relying on the tries have technologically advanced in- Eastern or Western bloc–had placed be- dustrial economies, and democracy is fore their eyes the luminous and liberating ½rmly entrenched in both. The Islamic teachings of the Noble Qur’an, and then world is by and large a part of the third practiced those teachings–they would not world, and the grievances that fuel Is- be enslaved today by the Zionist aggres- lamic fundamentalism, or ‘Islamism,’ sors, terrorized by American Phantoms, and at the mercy of the satanic cunning of 7 Ari Shavit, “He will be back,” Ha’aretz, 21 July the Soviet Union. It is the gulf between the 2000. Muslim states and the Noble Qur’an that

38 Dædalus Summer 2003 has plunged our people into this dark and worldview would be a serious mistake, ‘Funda- catastrophic situation and placed the des- mentalism’ as many Iranians of a secular nationalist ancient & tiny of the Muslim peoples and countries orientation discovered after the estab- modern in the hands of the treacherous policies of lishment of Iran’s Islamic Republic in imperialism of the right and the left.8 1979. By the same token, however, to ignore In 1964, the Shah of Iran expelled Kho- the nationalist and anti-imperialist di- meini from the country for making a mensions of Khomeini’s rhetoric would speech in which he condemned the gov- be to ignore some of the key factors that ernment for granting Americans immu- enabled him to overthrow the Shah of nity from Iranian law in return for a Iran. Although Islamists like Khomeini $200 million loan from the United condemn the ideology of nationalism, States. In this speech, Khomeini de- which they contend Western imperial- clared: ism introduced into the Islamic world to Our dignity has been trampled underfoot; divide and weaken it, the Iranian revolu- the dignity of Iran has been destroyed. tion of 1978–1979 was, among other The dignity of the Iranian army has been things, a nationalist revolution against trampled underfoot. . . . They have reduced American domination.10 the Iranian people to a level lower than Similarly, if we consider the public that of an American dog. If someone runs statements and writings of Osama bin over a dog belonging to an American, he Laden, we ½nd that while he too clearly will be prosecuted. But if an American rejects the idea of a modern secular state cook runs over the Shah, the head of state, in which everyone has equal rights re- no one will have the right to interfere with gardless of their religious and sexual him. . . . The government has sold our in- identities, he became politically active as dependence, reduced us to the level of a a result of his resentment of Western colony, and made the Muslim nation of domination–not because of his rejec- Iran appear more backward than savages tion of ‘modernity.’ From 1979 to 1989, in the eyes of the world.9 he actively supported the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, The sentiment expressed in this speech which he saw as a jihad. He felt it was his is clearly one of nationalistic resentment duty to help the oppressed believers of foreign domination. It is true that ½ght the in½dels who were oppressing Khomeini also viewed Westerners as im- them. pure in½dels; that he rejected the mod- When Saddam Hussein invaded Ku- ern idea of a secular state; that he attrib- wait in August of 1990, bin Laden, a uted much that he disliked about the Saudi citizen, offered to raise an army to modern world to Jewish conspiracies; defend Saudi Arabia. Instead, the Saudi and that he persecuted Baha’is and is- government invited American troops, sued a fatwa urging all Muslims to kill among others, to defend the kingdom Salman Rushdie. To ignore the funda- against a possible Iraqi invasion, and mentalist dimensions of Khomeini’s then allowed the Americans and their 8 Ruhollah Khomeini, Islam and Revolution: various allies to attack Iraq from Saudi Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, bases. This is what led to bin Laden’s trans. Hamid Algar (Berkeley, Calif.: Mizan 10 Nikki R. Keddie, Roots of Revolution: An Inter- Press, 1981), 210. pretive History of Modern Iran (New Haven, 9 Ibid., 182. Conn.: Yale Unversity Press, 1981).

Dædalus Summer 2003 39 Henry active opposition to both the Saudi of Western domination articulated by Is- Munson on regime and the United States. lamists like bin Laden as mere xenopho- secularism In 1996, bin Laden told Robert Fisk, bia would be a mistake. & religion “Now the people understand the speech- Like Khomeini, bin Laden rejects the es of the ulema [religious scholars] in modern notion of a secular state. But so the mosques–that our country has be- does the government of Saudi Arabia–a come an American colony. They act de- government bin Laden seeks to over- cisively with every action to kick the throw. This is a state that insists on strict Americans out of Saudi Arabia.”11 Also conformity to the Wahhabi conception in 1996, bin Laden issued his ½rst public of Islam. It does not allow non-Muslims declaration of jihad against the United to build houses of worship. It beats Mus- States. It was entitled “Declaration of lims who do not pray ½ve times every Holy War against the Americans Occu- day. It forbids women to drive. And yet pying the Land of the Two Holy Places” bin Laden wants to overthrow the Saudi (I‘lan al-Jihad ‘ala al-Amrikiyyin al-Muh- regime because he believes it has turned tallin li-bilad al-Haramayn).12 In this text, “the Land of the Two Holy Places” into as in the 1998 “World Islamic Front’s an American colony. This is not a speci½- Declaration of Jihad against Jews and cally ‘fundamentalist’ grievance. Crusaders” (Bayan al-Jabha al-Islamiyya Bin Laden clearly rejects modern no- al-‘Alamiyya li-Jihad al-Yahud wa’l-Sal- tions of pluralism and tolerance. But this ibiyyin), bin Laden focused primarily on rejection does not in itself explain his the American ‘occupation’ of Saudi Ara- political appeal, which is derived in large bia and on what he portrayed as the part from the perception that he has oppression of the Palestinians and the dared to defy the West. Gilles Kepel Iraqis by “the Zionist-Crusader alliance” found that even Arab girls in tight jeans –that is, the alliance between Israel and saw bin Laden as a hero, even though the United States.13 Islamists like bin they did not share his conservative reli- Laden articulate such grievances in ar- gious views.15 For them, as for millions chaic terms of evil in½dels oppressing of other Muslims, bin Laden was like virtuous believers, and they inevitably Judah ‘the Hammer’–a liberator come throw in anti-Semitic nonsense like down from his mountain cave to defeat “these Americans brought . . . Jewish in½del oppressors. women who can go anywhere in our ho- In a 2001 videotape, bin Laden tried to ly land.”14 But to dismiss the resentment recruit Muslims for Al Qaeda by show- 11 Robert Fisk, “‘Saudis Know: The Real Foe ing graphic pictures of Palestinian, Iraqi, Is America’: Interview with an Islamic Rebel,” and Chechen suffering–not by dis- World Press Review, October 1996, 12–13; reprint- cussing abortion, gay rights, or school ed from The Independent, 10 July 1996. prayer.16 He would undoubtedly agree with conservative Christians and Jews 12 Available at ; accessed 21 July 2002. on these issues, but he has not focused on them in his public statements. In- 13 Available at ; accessed 5 August 15 José Garçon and Véronique Soulé, “La quête 2002. du martyre s’est propagée,” Libération, 19 November 2001. 14 Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Se- cret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: Free 16 Accessible at .

40 Dædalus Summer 2003 stead, he has focused on what he sees as ‘Funda- mentalism’ the oppression of Muslims by the United ancient & States, Israel, and Russia. He has exploit- modern ed the despair of Muslims who feel pow- erless to confront the United States and Israel in particular.

One can discern a common thread running through all the twentieth- and twenty-½rst-century Christian, Jewish, and Islamic movements commonly called fundamentalist: despite obvious differences, all of these movements have insisted on strict conformity to sacred texts and a moral code based on these texts. But the speci½cally fundamentalist dimension of these movements is not of equal signi½cance in each case and is often meshed with social and nationalistic grievances. Rather than conjure up empirically baseless explanations–such as the notion that these movements are the result of the stresses and strains of rapid modernization–we need to base our explanations on what the people in these movements actually say and do, and on the speci½c historical contexts that make them say what they say and do what they do. Rather than force all these forms of religious conservatism into a single pro- crustean model, we need to examine the various ways they all do and do not resemble each other. Meir Kahane is not simply Jerry Fal- well in a yarmulke–and Osama bin Laden is not simply Falwell in a turban.

Dædalus Summer 2003 41 Martin E. Marty

Our religio-secular world

In recent decades, many experts have nation of both the religious and the sec- marshaled empirical data demonstrating ular, with religious and secular phenom- a secular trend in modern societies. Still ena occurring at the same time in indi- other experts, marshaling different data, viduals, in groups, and in societies have documented a resurgent religiosity around the world. in these same societies. As a result of The old debates revolved around bina- these paradoxical ½ndings, my bookshelf ry categories: societies were either secu- is crowded with contradictory titles: lar or religious; worldly or otherworldly; next to The Secular City is The Unsecular materialist or spiritual; favoring imma- City; a volume that refers to Secular Man nence or transcendence, etc. The use of adjoins one exploring Unsecular Man. such polarizing concepts is valid in some Who is right? The answer, I believe, contexts, but it does not adequately ex- depends on the context of the question, press the ways that individuals, groups, the dimensions of the realities under dis- and societies actually behave; most peo- cussion, and the perspective an author ple blur, mesh, meld, and muddle to- brings to the topic. gether elements of both the secular and From my perspective–that of a theo- the religious, the worldly and the other- logian who has spent a lifetime ponder- worldly, etc. In adjusting to the complex ing the impact of secularism on religion world around them, people confound –we need a new model for describing the categories of the social scientists, the world that we actually inhabit. It is theologians, and philosophers: they sim- neither exclusively secular nor exclusive- ply ‘make do’ with a syncretic and char- ly religious, but rather a complex combi- acteristically modern blend of attitudes –call it religio-secular. Martin E. Marty, a Fellow of the American n the summer of 2001, I was driving on Academy since 1968, is Fairfax M. Cone Distin- I the Indiana Toll Road. At a service plaza guished Service Professor Emeritus at the Univer- near Mishawaka and Kokomo, a tourist sity of Chicago. With R. Scott Appleby, he direct- brochure for Amish Acres caught my ed the Fundamentalism Project for the American eye. Most of us assume that the Amish Academy of Arts and Sciences, for which he re- deplore all modern things; after all, they ceived the medal of the Academy. He has written travel in horse-driven buggies and shun more than ½fty books, many of them addressing electricity. The brochure highlighted secularism, religion, and modern society. such other-worldly aspects of Amish life

42 Dædalus Summer 2003 –beside advertisements of a range of ic blend of attitudes that I have called Our religio- restaurants, hotels, and craft shops, all religio-secular. Such a blurring of lines is secular conveniently located on a nearby farm– evidently as old as recorded history– world and invited readers to visit the website one thinks, for example, of medieval www. amishacres.com. mystery plays and religious festivals that As it happens, the farm is not actually verged on pagan orgy, as critics regularly run by the Amish. But there is no escap- complained. What is new is the coinci- ing the conjunction in this curious enter- dence of this traditional blurring at the prise of a nostalgia for religious purity level of ‘folk’ religion with three largely and a need for modern secular ameni- unanticipated global phenomena: ties. And the conjunction is true of the • the rise of fundamentalism; Amish as well. They drive buggies and • ignore modern media–but in order to a continuing growth in religiosity; and market their milk, they must meet mod- • the emergence of new forms of ern health standards. They do not spurn ‘spirituality.’ the bene½ts of modern medicine. They Taken together, these three global phe- wear glasses and visit hospitals. The nomena have transformed, almost be- Amish are very religious–but even they yond recognition, a world that social sci- cannot keep the secular utterly at bay. entists long assumed was becoming ever The same paradoxical trends are evi- more secular. dent among evangelical Protestants. In a classic analysis published in 1927, H. The ½rst phenomenon with which Richard Niebuhr could still describe an scholars in the West especially must intact “religion of the disinherited” in cope is the rise of modern fundamental- which conservative Protestants rejected ism and fundamentalist-like movements the world of ungodly materialism. But in all the major religions. Both develop- those attitudes are long gone. Conserva- ments have a long prehistory, but each tive Protestants today flock to religious took its existing form early in the twenti- theme parks like The Holy Land Experi- eth century. In the United States, conser- ence in Orlando, Florida. They buy vative Protestants coined the term ‘fun- cd Christian rock s and read fundamen- damentalism’ in the 1920s. That same talist pulp ½ction; several weeks each decade, the Muslim Brotherhood was or- year, explicitly religious novels dominate ganized in Egypt. The Rashtriya Svayam- the ostensibly ‘secular’ New York Times sevak Sangh (rss), so prominent in best-seller list. On television they can Hindu-Muslim clashes on the Asian sub- tune in to a variety of evangelical and continent today, was founded in 1925. religious programs. And in cyberspace In the Fundamentalism Project of the they can visit an even more amazing va- American Academy of Arts and Sciences riety of sancti½ed websites, from “Skat- that I helped organize in the 1990s, we ers that Hang with Jesus” to “Generation found similar movements dating back to X T - reme Ministries.” the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. These conservative American Protes- Originally, the partisans of the Enlight- tants are obviously not un-secular. Does enment pictured a world that had either that make them un-religious? been progressively purged of religion, or out½tted with milder forms of faith that Both Amish Acres and Generation X- were tolerant and rational. In reaction to Treme Ministries exemplify the syncret- this vision, partisans of traditional faith

Dædalus Summer 2003 43 Martin E. organized political movements that reas- Whereas the world numbered 3.7 bil- Marty on serted the value of religions organized lion people in 1970, it now numbers 6.1 secularism around passion and zeal. billion, with an anticipated population & religion As the third millennium began, funda- of 7.8 billion in 2025. While in parts of mentalists were more prominent than the ‘Euro-American’ world Christianity ever. In the United States, the New may be relatively in decline, worldwide Christian Right was a key interest group the picture is completely different. In with which political candidates from 1970, Barrett and Johnson estimate, both major parties had to contend. At there were 1.2 billion Christians; today, the furthest extreme, Al Qaeda, a terror- they count 2 billion; and Barrett believes ist group influenced by Wahhabi funda- there will be 2.6 billion by 2025. mentalism and the teachings of Sayyid That growth rate, however, is dwarfed Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood, struck by the expanding world of Islam. In 1970 targets around the world, climaxed by (according to another megacensus con- the attacks on the Pentagon and the ducted by Barrett and his colleagues), World Trade Center on September 11, there were 553 million Muslims; in mid- 2001. In India, the rss, thanks to its 2001 there were about 1.2 billion; and murderous assaults on Muslim citizens, Barrett thinks it likely that there will be poses a standing threat to the survival of 1.8 billion by 2025. A century ago every the nation’s secular constitution of 1947. eighth person in the world identi½ed One might assume that fundamental- with Islam; in 2002, every ½fth person ists like these would abjure all things does so. secular–but one would be mistaken. A similar picture emerges from other The rss, like Al Qaeda and the New megacensuses conducted by Barrett. In Christian Right in America, has chosen 1970, there were 463 million Hindus to mimic, adapt to, absorb, and exploit worldwide, there are now 824 million, many of the strategies, tactics, hardware, and by 2025 there are likely to be more lifestyles, and even the rational argu- than 1 billion. Meanwhile, Buddhists ments of the secular forces it opposes. numbered 233 million in 1970, presently Like the crass entrepreneurs behind total 363 million, and projections show Amish Acres, these fundamentalists can an estimated 418 million in 2025. well be described as religio-secular. Exactly how Barrett and his team de- ½ne ‘nonreligious’ is a little unclear. But The second largely unanticipated devel- their ½gures for this category reflect a opment that demands reappraisal has to slower rate of growth: 532 million non- do with religiosity itself. In his most religious in 1970, 774 million today, and a recent large study of world religious projected 875 million in 2025. Mean- trends, David B. Barrett, in collaboration while, avowed ‘atheists’ declined, from with Todd Johnson, has attempted to 165 million in 1970 to 150 million today. conduct a megacensus, documenting Such statistics are by no means trust- World Christian Trends a.d. 30–a.d. worthy. But the trends described by Bar- 2200. Though Barrett’s methods are in- rett and his colleagues are borne out by evitably speculative, his ½ndings are not anecdotal evidence. In the United States without interest–not least because they today, the mass media pay far more at- picture a world that makes a mockery of tention to religious events than they did those who have been projecting a long- before 1970. Religious coverage in the term trend toward secularization. press, once segregated onto a Saturday

44 Dædalus Summer 2003 ‘religion page’ in newspapers, now ap- lar fascination with altered states of con- Our religio- pears on front pages almost every day. sciousness and new varieties of religious secular Stories of papal travels, clerical abuse experience, from Zen Buddhism to exot- world scandals, and the involvement of reli- ic cults that revolved around Indian holy gious groups in debates over Middle East men and gurus. When Tillich’s Systematic policy are standard fare. Theology ½rst appeared, American book- A world that is properly described as stores typically stocked a variety of secular should not be seeing such a bur- Bibles–plus one book each by Bishop geoning interest in religion and religiosi- Fulton Sheen, evangelist Billy Graham, ty. Modern adherents of all the world re- and rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman. Today, a ligions of course bear the marks (as their typical American bookstore usually fea- forebears did not) of the modern secular tures shelf after shelf of books con- societies they inhabit; but that does not cerned with mysticism, wholistic medi- make their professed religiosity spuri- cine, astrology, metaphysics, witches, ous. Indeed, a dissatisfaction with secu- the occult, Eastern religion. The ongoing larism itself may, in part, explain the rise popular preoccupation with the ‘spiritu- in religiosity–and the spread of a new al,’ broadly understood, could not be kind of hybrid religio-secularism. clearer–and this in what is arguably the most this-worldly and materialist of A third development that demands at- modern societies. tention goes by the code name ‘spirituality’ in the United States, though I am One of the most striking facts about tempted to describe it as a kind of the religio-secular world we actually in- religiosity-in-disguise. While the rise of habit is how consistently most scholars fundamentalism and the growth in reli- and social scientists have mistaken its giosity more generally are global phe- mixed composition, and underestimated nomena, the rise of spirituality is con- the strength and durability of its reli- centrated in Europe, Japan, and North gious components, however one charac- America–in the heartland of post- terizes them–whether as fundamental- Enlightenment worldviews, technologi- ist, mainstream, or new-age ‘spiritual.’ cal enterprise, and secular capitalism. Take, for example, the argument of a In some respects, this is the most un- book published in 1967, with the support anticipated development of all. In 1963, of the American Academy of Arts and in the third and climactic volume of his Sciences. In The Year 2000: A Framework Systematic Theology, entitled Life and the for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Spirit, History and the Kingdom of God, Years, Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Paul Tillich, perhaps America’s most Wiener of the Hudson Institute offered prestigious theologian at the time, tried their assessment of what they immod- to revive interest in the word ‘spirit.’ But estly dubbed “the basic, long-term mul- even Tillich despaired of the attempt to tifold trend” of contemporary history. resuscitate the adjective ‘spiritual’; in his Discussing the future of religion, Kahn view, it was “lost beyond hope.” and Wiener con½dently predicted that Ironically, the rest of that decade global cultures would grow ever more would prove Tillich wrong. Before the “Empirical, This-Worldly, Secular, Hu- 1960s had ended, spirituality had been manistic, Pragmatic, Utilitarian, Con- rediscovered–and not just the word. In tractual, Epicurean or Hedonistic, and the United States and Europe, young the Like.” people were gripped by a growing popu- Dædalus Summer 2003 45 Martin E. The authors made their prediction spirituality in the most advanced and Marty on largely on the basis of Pitirim Sorokin’s affluent societies. secularism 1962 book, Social and Cultural Dynamics. But in fairness to Kahn and Wiener, it & religion In that work, the Harvard sociologist de- is worth stressing that they added a sug- scribed in detail what he called ‘sensate’ gestive footnote to their prognosis: cultures. The ‘sensate’ system of truth, Sorokin and almost all of the nineteenth- according to Sorokin, was characterized and twentieth-century philosophers of further by terms such as ‘skeptical,’ ‘ma- history seem to believe it likely that some terialistic,’ ‘mechanistic,’ ‘agnostic,’ ‘in- new kind of ‘religious’ stage will follow a strumental,’ and the like. Kahn and termination of Sensate culture. This stage Wiener would have preferred if Sorokin could be spiritual and intellectual, rather had called these cultures “worldly, hu- than arising out of technology, as [sug- manistic, or empirical”; that is why they gested by] Julian Huxley; or it could be a fleshed out the ‘sensate’ with this string properly religious, simple development of of adjectives. Christianity (as [suggested by the young] Most scholars distrust sweeping gen- . . . Arnold Toynbee); or it could be a new eralizations, with good reason. But Kahn synthesis of East and West, as [suggested and Wiener’s work reflected more than a by the] later Toynbee, or something com- century of speculation by social scien- pletely different. In any case, it is usually tists that the modern world would grad- argued that there will be some unpleasant ually stamp out religion and religiosity– events between the Late Sensate Chaos one need think only of Marx. Moreover, and the new religiosity. most of the adjectives marshaled by Sorokin, Kahn, and Wiener–‘skeptical,’ One may question whether we are now ‘materialistic,’ ‘mechanistic,’ ‘agnostic,’ living through an era of ‘Late Sensate ‘instrumental,’ etc.–do capture impor- Chaos.’ But there is no doubt, as I have tant dimensions of many cultures said, that we are living in an era of around the world today. So pervasive are renewed religiosity. the reaches of these secularizing forces that even those who would resist their What explains the surprising strength effects have dif½culty doing so. Indeed, and durability of the religious dimen- in a great many contexts of modern life sion of societies that are in other re- –in the academy, the scienti½c commu- spects profoundly secular? Without nity, the mass media–even relatively going into details, we can summarize religious professionals are expected to some of the most frequently cited fac- leave behind, or at least bracket, the reli- tors: gious aspects of their lives. • Some researchers make much of the Still, the fact remains that Kahn and fact that humans may be genetically Wiener didn’t get it right. They failed to ‘wired’ to seek meaning beyond the anticipate some of the most salient fea- empirical, secular, ordinary, in the tures in the world of 2000. Among other realm of what they perceive as tran- things, they did not foresee the collapse scendent. of Soviet communism and the concomitant retreat of aggressively secularist cre- • There is considerable discontent with dos, such as Marxism. They certainly did the barren aspects of modern life; sec- not foresee the rise of militant funda- ular rationality works for much of the mentalism, the burgeoning of popular ‘operational’ side of life, but does little religiosity, or the growth of interest in to satisfy the human heart. 46 Dædalus Summer 2003 • Humans are, to cite the title of a book egant, but our world is neither primarily Our religio- by Huston Smith, Condemned to Mean- religious, nor predominantly secular. It secular ing because they are “present to a is religious. And secular. At the same time. world world” (as Merleau-Ponty put it). I recall the sociologist Talcott Parsons in Let me refer to a surprising source, one conversation in 1969 observing that that I think can point us in the right di- humans cannot tolerate existence in an rection as we struggle to comprehend utterly random universe. To endow the contradictory world we currently in- their joys and sorrows, their failures habit. and successes, with meaning, they Leaning on Augustine, Martin Luther tend to seek patterns of meaning that developed a formula for the human take on the character of the religious. being of faith. For him, anyone who be- • One can adduce any number of inher- lieves in God is simul justus et peccator– ited reductionist accounts for religion, at one and the same time justi½ed and a be they economic (e.g. Marxist), psy- sinner. One was never only justi½ed, chological (e.g. Freudian), anthropo- never free of sin: no, one was always logical (e.g. Durkheimian), etc.; few of paradoxically justi½ed and a sinner at the them have gone unchallenged or same time. What facet one chose to proved themselves suf½cient, but they stress depended on the context and di- all throw some light on the subject. mension of human experience to which one referred. It depended on the per- • Religion provides adherents with com- spective one took. And from the Divine munity in a fragmented world, a haven perspective, the sinner was at the same in a heartless one. time just, the just was at the same time a • Religion claims to heal, and millions sinner. want healing. Forget the theology for now, and try • Many secular ideologies of the century the analogy. past, most of them political, some of Individuals, cultures, nations, and so- them economic, have either failed to cieties, in certain contexts, dimensions, deliver on their utopian promises, or– and perspectives, are really secular, in worse–turned out to be tyrannical. any plausible de½nition of the term. At • New situations demand a new ap- the same time they are, in another dimen- proach to ethics, and much of ethics sion and from another perspective, real- is grounded in the religious. ly religious, in almost unguarded ways. Secularization is a real phenomenon. All of these factors help make sense of That is why fundamentalists rise in re- the resurgence of religiosity that we ob- bellion against it–and simultaneously serve in our world today, as they help appropriate many of its features, begin- explain why secularism is in some re- ning with the mass media and modern spects in retreat. But we would be quite technology. But the resurgence of popu- mistaken to suppose that the secular lar interest worldwide in religiosity and dimensions of modern society are likely spirituality is a real phenomenon, too. to disappear anytime soon. They are not: That is why I am stuck, for now, with they are too integral to the global econo- the awkward and hyphenated term my and scienti½c culture we all inhabit. ‘religio-secular.’ That is why I think it worth insisting on Failure to do justice to both sides of the mixed character of our contempo- what we experience simultaneously in rary culture. The term I have used is inel-

Dædalus Summer 2003 47 Martin E. global societies, and applying a single Marty on description to cover what has developed, secularism can lead to gross miscalculations and & religion bad strategies. To those who want to see religion and secularism as mutually exclusive, my hyphenated term may well seem to represent an attempt to have it both ways–as if Yogi Berra’s familiar counsel could be applied metaphorically to individuals and cultures: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” It may also be, however, that de½nitions of the religious and the secular have for too long now been too con- ½ning. They drew too much on peculiar- ly Western developments during and after the Enlightenment. The encounter with cultures of the East and of the south may enlarge the imagination of those who tomorrow will do the observing, the naming, and the projecting of trends. As for the “basic, long-term multiform trend” of our own moment, I say: Be ready, again, to be surprised.

48 Dædalus Summer 2003 Thomas Jefferson

A bill for establishing religious freedom

Editor’s note: Three years after writing the section i. Well aware that the opinions “Declaration of Independence,” Thomas and belief of men depend not on their Jefferson drafted a bill “for establishing reli- own will, but follow involuntarily the gious freedom” in the state of Virginia. After evidence proposed to their minds; that declaring its independence from England, Vir- Almighty God hath created the mind ginia had stripped the Anglican Church of free, and manifested his supreme will of½cial status and ½nancial support. As a that free it shall remain by making it al- result, a debate erupted over whether or not together insusceptible of restraint; that the new state should use its revenues to support all attempts to influence it by temporal religion. Some leaders, such as Patrick Henry, punishments, or burthens, or by civil in- argued in favor of a tax on all citizens to sup- capacitations, tend only to beget habits port a variety of religious institutions. In of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a de- response, Jefferson and his staunchest ally, parture from the plan of the holy author James Madison, argued that state support for of our religion, who being lord both of religion was a form of tyranny, and that reli- body and mind, yet chose not to propa- gious beliefs should be solely a matter of pri- gate it by coercions on either, as was in vate conscience–not public policy. his Almighty power to do, but to extend Then, as now, the issue of religion in poli- it by its influence on reason alone; that tics was contentious. Only in 1786 did James the impious presumption of legislators Madison convince the Virginia legislature to and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, pass a slightly revised version of Jefferson’s who, being themselves but fallible and bill, which formed one basis for the religion uninspired men, have assumed domin- clauses in the U.S. Constitution. Both Jeffer- ion over the faith of others, setting up son and Madison numbered the act among their own opinions and modes of think- their greatest accomplishments. And Jeffer- ing as the only true and infallible, and as son’s original text remains the classic expres- such endeavoring to impose them on sion of American secularism: His bill protects others, hath established and maintained freedom of religious expression, and also false religions over the greatest part of declares a new natural right–freedom from the world and through all time: That to religion. compel a man to furnish contributions The third president of the United States of money for the propagation of opin- (from 1801–1809), Jefferson was born in ions which he disbelieves and abhors, is 1743 and died in 1826. He was elected a mem- sinful and tyrannical; that even the forc- ber of the American Academy in 1787, a year ing him to support this or that teacher of after his bill became law in Virginia. his own religious persuasion, is depriv-

Dædalus Summer 2003 49 Thomas ing him of the comfortable liberty of giv- to interfere when principles break out Jefferson on ing his contributions to the particular into overt acts against peace and good secularism pastor whose morals he would make his order; and ½nally, that truth is great and & religion pattern, and whose powers he feels most will prevail if left to herself; that she is persuasive to righteousness; and is with- the proper and suf½cient antagonist to drawing from the ministry those tempo- error, and has nothing to fear from the rary rewards, which proceeding from an conflict unless by human interposition approbation of their personal conduct, disarmed of her natural weapons, free are an additional incitement to earnest argument and debate; errors ceasing to and unremitting labours for the instruc- be dangerous when it is permitted freely tion of mankind; that our civil rights to contradict them. have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in section ii. We the General Assembly physics or geometry; that therefore the of Virginia do enact that no man shall be proscribing any citizen as unworthy the compelled to frequent or support any republic con½dence by laying upon him an ligious worship, place, or ministry what- incapacity of being called to of½ces of soever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, trust and emolument, unless he profess molested, or burthened in his body or or renounce this or that religious opin- goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on ac- ion, is depriving him injuriously of those count of his religious opinions or belief; privileges and advantages to which, in but that all men shall be free to profess, common with his fellow citizens, he has and by argument to maintain, their a natural right; that it tends also to cor- opinions in matters of religion, and that rupt the principles of that very religion it the same shall in no wise diminish, en- is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a large, or affect their civil capacities. monopoly of worldly honours and emol- uments, those who will externally pro- section iii. And though we well know fess and conform to it; that though in- that this Assembly, elected by the people deed these are criminal who do not with- for the ordinary purposes of legislation stand such temptation, yet neither are only, have no power to restrain the acts those innocent who lay the bait in their of succeeding Assemblies, constituted way; that the opinions of men are not with powers equal to our own, and that the object of civil government, nor un- therefore to declare this act irrevocable der its jurisdiction; that to suffer the would be of no effect in law; yet we are civil magistrate to intrude his powers free to declare, and do declare, that the into the ½eld of opinion and to restrain rights hereby asserted are the natural the profession or propagation of princi- rights of mankind, and that if any act ples on supposition of their ill tendency shall be hereafter passed to repeal the is a dangerous fallacy, which at once de- present or to narrow its operation, such stroys all religious liberty, because he act will be an infringement of natural being of course judge of that tendency right. will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its of½cers

50 Dædalus Summer 2003 Azzam S. Tamimi

The renaissance of Islam

In Western accounts of the Middle East nation used to weaken local religious in- since 1789, Islam is often treated as a pri- stitutions as part of an effort to consoli- mary impediment to the spread of tech- date the cultural and social power of nology, science, and modern democratic despotic authorities. values in the region. As a review of the There was nothing inevitable about historical record demonstrates, nothing this development, as the record will could be further from the truth–for Is- show. In the ½rst half of the nineteenth lam encourages, and even demands, that century, a variety of Muslim intellectuals Muslims acquire knowledge and reform responded warmly to the prospect of society. spreading technology, science, and dem- In this respect, the modern Middle ocratic values into the Middle East, be- Eastern experience stands in stark con- lieving that modernization did not contrast to that of medieval Europe, where flict with the established values and Christianity was indeed a real obstacle to principles of Islamic law (Shariah). It intellectual progress. In Europe, where it was only later, and under the influence ½rst arose, the ideology of ‘secularism’ of a small group of Christian Arab intel- gave direction to a lengthy effort to lectuals, that secularism was cast as the emancipate humans from the hold of a enemy of Islam–and turned into a tool corrupt religious institution. When the of domination. same ideology was belatedly introduced As a result of this unhappy experience into the Middle East late in the nine- with ‘secularism,’ the Middle East today teenth century, it became a tool of domi- is at a historic crossroads. A resurgent Islam at home with modernization Azzam S. Tamimi is director of the Institute of promises a revival of free inquiry and Islamic Political Thought in London and senior technological progress. But it has been lecturer at the Mark½eld Institute of Higher Stud- impeded by local despotic regimes that ies in Leicester. A native of Hebron, he is a writer cling to the ideology of secularism–and and commentator on Palestinian affairs and on by an American regime that feels threat- human rights and democracy in the Muslim ened by any signs of a Muslim renais- world. He is the author of “Rachid Ghannouchi: sance. A Democrat within Islamism” (2001) and the editor of four books, including “Islam and Secu- The ½rst efforts to modernize the Mid- larism in the Middle East” (2000). dle East were a by-product of European involvement in the region. Napoleon

Dædalus Summer 2003 51 Azzam S. Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt between Ibrahim to crush the expanding Wah- Tamimi on 1798 and 1801 dealt a humiliating blow to habi movement in Arabia between 1811 secularism the Muslim Ummah, rather reminiscent and 1819. He conquered the Sudan and & religion of the Crusades more than ½ve centuries quelled a rebellion in Greece. Embold- earlier. Though it was brief, the French ened by these successes, he seized Pales- ‘incursion’ into the heart of the Arab tine and Syria. Alarmed by his growing world, the very center of darul-Islam, power, French and British forces re- exposed the weakness of the Ottoman turned to the Middle East. In exchange Empire and her scandalous retardation for the hereditary governorship of Egypt behind Europe. for his line, Ali agreed to pare down his The task of regaining Egypt and ex- army. pelling the French expedition was as- At the same time, something similar signed by the Ottoman sultan to an Al- was taking place on the eastern wing of banian task force led by a former ciga- what is today the Middle East. The sec- rette seller named Muhammad Ali (1769 ond Qajar Shah Fath Ali, who ruled Iran –1849). Egyptians greeted Ali as a libera- from 1797 to 1834, found himself courted tor not only from the French but also by the French and the British, who both from the tyrannical Ottoman governor, wanted Iran to side with them against Khurshid Pasha. Thanks to his military the Russians. His Azerbaijan crown successes, ½rst against the French at Abu prince, Abbas Mirza, sought Western Qir in 1799 and then against the Fraser- training for Iranian forces and, as Mu- led English expedition in 1807, Ali hammad Ali did, sent students abroad to emerged as Egypt’s new governor. He improve the military. But the modern- promptly proceeded to establish a dy- ization of the military in Iran proved nastic autocracy, one of the ½rst in the even more dif½cult than in Egypt, and Middle East to explicitly devote itself to under the Qajars, Iran lost more territo- ‘modernization.’ ry to the Russians. Perhaps because he was European himself, or perhaps because he had van- The setbacks suffered in Iran and Egypt quished two European armies, Muham- inevitably provoked debate over their mad Ali became obsessed with the pur- causes. In both regions, the erratic and suit of science, technology–and politi- whimsical policies of despots made the cal power. Like two more recent Arab systematic pursuit of technological capa- leaders, Jamal Abd al-Nassir of Egypt bilities dif½cult, if not impossible.1 At and Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Ali em- the same time, despots like Muhammad barked on a variety of ambitious indus- Ali lashed out at the power of the ulama trialization projects. He dug irrigation (Muslim scholars), fearing it posed a canals, promoted cotton as a cash crop potential threat to their plans for mod- for export, centralized taxes, and estab- ernization–and also to their political lished monopolies in industry and for- authority. eign trade. He hired European experts It was in this context that intellectuals and professionals who helped him set up in the Arab world began to debate the special schools and training facilities to 1 Antoine B. Zahlan, “The Impact of Technol- educate and train army of½cers, state ogy Change on the Nineteenth-Century Arab of½cials, and technicians. World” in Charles E. Butterworth and I. Wil- In the meantime, on behalf of the Ot- liam Zartman, eds., Between the State and Islam toman sultan in Istanbul, Ali sent his son (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2001), 31–58.

52 Dædalus Summer 2003 causes of the dif½culties Muslim coun- row elements of European culture that The renaissance tries were having with modernization. did not conflict with the established val- of Islam Religion was of interest to such intellec- ues and principles of Shariah. In 1834, tuals–but not, oddly enough, as a barrier shortly after his return to Cairo from to progress. Paris, Tahtawi published his ½rst book, Take the case of an Al-Azhar scholar Takhlis al-Ibriz Ila Talkhis Bariz. This sum- by the name of Rifa’ah al-Tahtawi (1801 marized his observations of the manners –1873). His preoccupation with the ques- and customs of the modern French,4 and tion of modernization grew out of a stay praised the concept of democracy as he in France, where he served as a religious saw it in France and as he witnessed its guide for a group of Egyptian army defense and reassertion through the 1830 cadets who were studying science and revolution against King Charles X.5 modern military technologies. The scion Trying to show that democracy was of a scholarly family, Tahtawi threw compatible with the laws of Islam, he himself into the study of European cul- compared political pluralism to forms of ture with enthusiasm. He acquired a pre- ideological and jurisprudential pluralism cise knowledge of the French language that existed in Islam itself: “Religious and read books on ancient history, Greek freedom,” he wrote, philosophy and mythology, geography, is the freedom of belief, of opinion and of mathematics, logic, and, most impor- sect, provided it does not contradict the tantly, the French thought of the eigh- fundamentals of religion. An example teenth century–Voltaire, Rousseau’s would be the theological opinions of the Social Contract, and other works.2 al-Asha’irah and the al-Matiridiyah; another Returning home after ½ve years, Tah- would be the opinions of leading jurists tawi made no secret of his admiration within the doctrine of the branches. For for what post-revolution France had ac- by following any one of these schools, a complished. He advocated introducing human feels secure. The same would apply democracy into the Middle East. And he to the freedom of political practice and criticized those who opposed the idea of opinion by leading administrators, who taking knowledge from Europe, saying: endeavor to interpret and apply rules and “Such people are deluded; for civiliza- provisions in accordance with the laws of tions are turns and phases. These sci- their own countries. Kings and ministers ences were once Islamic when we were are licensed in the realm of politics to pur- at the apex of our civilization. Europe sue various routes that in the end serve took them from us and developed them one purpose: good administration and jus- further. It is now our duty to learn from tice.6 them just as they learned from our an- cestors.”3 Still, as a religious scholar, Tahtawi 4 Hourani, Arabic Thought, 70–71. insisted that Muslims should only bor- 5 M. S. Al-Dajani, “Tatawur Mafahim al- Dimuqratiyah ½l-Fikr al-Arabi al-Hadith” in 2 Albert Habib Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Azmat al-Dimuqratiyah ½l-Watan al-‘Arabi (Bei- Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge and New rut: Arab Unity Studies Center, 1984), 121. York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 69. 6 Faruq Abdessalam, al-Ahzab al-Siyasiyah ½l- 3 R. S. Ahmad, Al-Din Wal-Dawlah Wal-Thawrah Islam (Cairo: Qalyoob Publishing House, 1978). (Cairo: Al-Dar Al-Sharqiyah, 1989), 34. Transla- Translation from Arabic source into English is tion from Arabic source into English is mine. mine.

Dædalus Summer 2003 53 Azzam S. Tahtawi was not an isolated ½gure. Another of the Muslim modernizers, Tamimi on Other nineteenth-century Islamic re- Al-Afghani, called for adherence to Is- secularism formists–including Khairuddin Al- lamic fundamentals combined with a & religion Tunisi (1810–1899), Jamal Al-Din Al- repudiation of despotism. In his view, a Afghani (1838–1897), Abdel Rahman Al- key cause of the decline in the Muslim Kawakibi (1854–1902), and Muhammad world was the absence of ’adl (justice) Abduh (1849–1905)–were often re- and shura (council).9 The remedy, he ferred to as ‘Muslim modernists’ and believed, was republican government: followed Tahtawi in stressing that Mus- the people of the Arab world ought to be lims could bene½t from European suc- allowed to assume a larger political and cesses without undermining Islamic val- social role by participating through shura ues or culture.7 and elections.10 “For those governed by Typical of this generation of Muslim a republican form of government,” ar- modernizers was Al-Tunisi, leader of the gued Al-Afghani, “it is a source of happi- nineteenth-century reform movement in ness and pride. Those governed by it Tunisia. In 1867, he formulated a general alone deserve to be called human; for a plan for political and administrative re- true human being is only subdued by a form in the Arab world in a book enti- true law that is based on the foundations tled Aqwam al-Masalik ½ Taqwim al- of justice and that is designed to govern Mamalik (The Straight Path to Reformation man’s moves, actions, transactions, and of Governments). He appealed to politi- relations with others in a manner that cians and scholars to explore all possible elevates him to the pinnacle of true hap- means to improve the status of the com- piness.”11 munity and develop its civility, and cau- From Tahtawi to Al-Afghani, Muslim tioned the general Muslim public against scholars of the nineteenth century shunning the experiences of other na- seemed to have had no doubt that the tions on the misconceived basis that all failure of the Muslims to modernize had the writings, inventions, experiences, more to do with a lack of freedom than a and attitudes of non-Muslims should lack of technology. The latter was seen as simply be rejected. He further called for a fruit of the former, and in any case Is- an end to absolutist rule: “Kindling the lam was not responsible for the absence Ummah’s potential liberty through the of either. adoption of sound administrative proce- dures and enabling it to have a say in po- In the later years of the nineteenth cen- litical affairs,” he argued, “would put it tury, a quite different analysis of how to on a faster track toward civilization, modernize the Middle East was elabo- would limit the rule of despotism, and rated by a smaller but quite influential would stop the influx of European civi- group of Christian modernists. Among lization that is sweeping everything them were such important ½gures as Shi- along its path.”8 bli Shumayyil (1850–1917), Farah Antun 7 R. Ghannouchi, al-Hurriyat al-‘Ammah ½l- 9 Al-Dajani, “Tatawur Mafahim,” 123. Dawlah al-Islamiyah (Beirut: Arab Unity Studies Center, 1993), 252. 10 Ahmad, Al-Din Wal-Dawlah, 44–47. 8 Khairuddin Al-Tunisi, Aqwam al-Masalik ½ 11 Abdulbasit Hasan, Jamal Al-Din Al-Afghani Taqwim al-Mamalik (Tunis: Al-Dar Al- (Cairo: Wahbah, 1982), 267–268. Translation Tunisiyah, 1972), 185. Translation from Arabic from Arabic source into English is mine. source into English is mine.

54 Dædalus Summer 2003 (1874–1922), Georgie Zaidan (1861– nineteenth-century movement that saw The renaissance 1914), Ya’qub Suruf (1852–1917), Salama science as the key to unlocking the se- of Islam Musa (1887–1958), and Nicola Haddad crets of the universe, even as a form of (1878–1954). The real problem with the worship. He believed that the religion of Arab world, they argued, was its cul- science necessitated a declaration of war ture–and, speci½cally, its dominant reli- on older religions. For him, social unity gion. Most of these men had been edu- was essential for a general will to exist cated at the Syrian Protestant College and involved the separation of religion and then settled in Egypt, which was the from political life, since religion was a cultural hub of the Arab world. Their cause of division. He insisted that na- ideas were propagated through Al- tions grew stronger only as religion grew Muqtataf and Al-Hilal, Arabic publica- weaker, and pointed out that this was tions founded respectively in 1876 and true of Europe, which had only become 1892. These journals promoted a brand powerful and truly civilized once the of aggressive nationalism, in which love Reformation and the French Revolution of country and fellow countrymen had broken the hold of religious leaders would transcend all other social ties, on society.15 He criticized both shuyukh even those of religion.12 (Islamic scholars) and Christian priests Through their copious writings, these for resisting progress and develop- thinkers laid the foundations of an in- ment.16 digenous brand of secularism in the Ar- Farah Antun, who migrated from Trip- ab world. Praising the liberal thought of oli to Cairo in 1897, claimed that the con- France and England during the eigh- flict between science and religion could teenth and nineteenth centuries, and be solved–but only by assigning each to condemning the hegemony of tradition its proper sphere. He dedicated his book over the human mind, they stressed that to “those men of sense in every commu- reason should set the standard for hu- nity and every religion of the east who man conduct. For modernization to take have seen the danger of mingling the place, they demanded that only tradi- world with religion in an age like ours, tions that were compatible with this ob- and have come to demand that their reli- jective should remain.13 The main aim gion should be placed on one side in a of these intellectuals was to lay the basis sacred and honoured place, so that they of a secular state in which Muslims and will be able really to unite, and to flow Christians could participate on a footing with the tide of the new European civili- of complete equality.14 sation, in order to be able to compete After graduating from the Syrian Prot- with those who belong to it, for other- estant College, the oldest member of the wise it will sweep them all away and group, Shibli Shumayyil, went to Paris to make them the subjects of others.”17 study medicine. He is reputed to have Antun laid special emphasis on the sepa- ½rst introduced the theories of Darwin ration of temporal and spiritual authori- to the Arab world through his writings ties. If European countries were now in Al-Muqtataf. He belonged to the late- more tolerant than Arab, he argued, it

12 Hourani, Arabic Thought, 246–247. 15 Ibid., 250–252.

13 Ahmad, Al-Din Wal-Dawlah, 51. 16 Ahmad, Al-Din Wal-Dawlah, 53.

14 Hourani, Arabic Thought, 256–257. 17 Hourani, Arabic Thought, 254–255.

Dædalus Summer 2003 55 Azzam S. was not because they were Christian, but Amin’s contemporary Ahmad Lut½ Al- Tamimi on rather because science and philosophy Sayyid (1872–1963) was similarly eager secularism had driven out religious fanaticism and a to leave Islam behind. Religion, Islamic & religion separation of religion and politics had or not, was relevant to his thought only taken place.18 as one of the constituent factors of society.20 Seen as a leading ½gure in the na- By the end of the nineteenth century, a tional movement in Egypt, Al-Sayyid growing number of Muslim intellectuals made a signi½cant impact on the agen- fell under the influence of the Christian das of social and educational institutions modernizers. For example, Qasim Amin in modern Egypt. A lawyer and a judge (1865–1908) argued that the problem by profession, he served in successive with the Muslims was their backward- Egyptian governments in various posi- ness and resistance to social change. tions, and his ideas ½rst found a platform “Perfection,” he wrote, when he became chief editor of Al- Jaridah in 1906. In 1925, he was appointed is not to be found in the past, even the Is- dean of Egyptian University and, three lamic past; it can only be found, if at all, in years later, education minister. Moving the distant future. The path to perfection back and forth between the government is science, and in the present age it is Eu- and the university, he was appointed rope which is most advanced in the sci- minister of foreign affairs in 1946 and, ences and therefore also on the path to immediately afterward, deputy prime social perfection. Europe is ahead of us in minister. every way, and it is not true that while But the most important of the indige- they are materially better than us we are nous Muslim secularists, by far, was Ali morally better. The Europeans are morally Abdel Raziq (1888–1966), a graduate of more advanced; their upper and lower Al-Azhar and Oxford whose key work classes, it is true, are rather lacking in sex- appeared one year after the abolition of ual virtue, but the middle class has high the caliphate in 1924. This work–Al- morals in every sense, and all classes alike 19 Islam wa Usul al-Hukm: Bahth ½l-Khilafah have social virtues. wal-Hukumah ½l-Islam (Islam and the Fun- Educated in law in France, and a judge damentals of Governance: A Thesis on Ca- by profession, Amin became famous for liphate and Government in Islam)–turned his campaign for the emancipation of out to be one of the most controversial women. His call on women, in his 1899 works in modern Islamic history. book entitled Tahrir al-Mar’ah (The In it, Raziq denied the existence of a Emancipation of Women), to take off the political order in Islam and claimed that traditional Islamic head cover, which he the Prophet had never established one, believed obscured their intellectual as that it had not been part of his mission well as physical abilities, invited angry to found a state. In turn, Raziq’s work response from the ulama of late- became a main source of ammunition in nineteenth-century Egypt. He responded the vigorous campaign, launched by to his critics in 1906 with a book entitled ‘secularists’ in later times, against the Al-Mar’ah al-Jadidah (The Modern Wom- validity of Shariah. The book pioneered an). the idea of rejecting conventional interpretations and replacing them with 18 Ibid., 256–257.

19 Ibid., 164–169. 20 Ibid., 170–172.

56 Dædalus Summer 2003 innovations based mostly on Oriental- eth century, Islam has been nationalized, The 21 renaissance ists’ opinions and writings on Islam. marginalized, and suppressed in the of Islam name of reaching out to modernity and But the pioneers of Arab secularism catching up with the advanced world. If founded the principles of their thought anyone is in doubt, consider the achieve- on a number of incorrect assumptions. ments of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk of Tur- They likened Islam to Christianity and key (1881–1938), Ahmad Sukarno (1902 assumed it to be just another religion –1970) and then Suharto of Indonesia that could, or even should, be restricted (1921–), Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia to the spiritual sphere of human life. (1903–2000), Gamal Abdel Nasser of They assumed Islam’s spiritual authority Egypt (1918–1970), Houari Boumedi- hindered progress and prohibited free- enne of Algeria (1925–1978), Ha½z Asad dom of thought, and should therefore be of Syria (1930–2000), and Saddam Hus- prevented from interfering in temporal sein of Iraq (1937–). matters. But these assumptions about Is- What do they share in common? They lam’s conflicts with logic or science were are secularist dictators who succeeded in merely extrapolations from the Euro- building huge corrupt bureaucracies and Christian context. The presupposition failed miserably in their ½scal and indus- that Islam and Christianity held identi- trial policies. cal positions on the freedom of thought and the emancipation of the mind led to Throughout the nineteenth and twenti- the conclusion that, just as Europe had eth centuries, Arab writers, who could rid itself of the influence of religion as a see salvation in nothing short of espous- prelude to progress, the Arabs needed to ing European modernity, failed to recog- constrain Islam. And Westernization nize that Islam is a religion that contin- was said to be the sole means of mod- ues to shape and influence the lives of its ernization, which further blurred the adherents, who believe its values and distinction between secularization and principles are aimed at liberating man- modernization.22 kind, establishing justice and equality, What the secularists have advocated encouraging research and innovation, has been pursued with varying intensity and guaranteeing freedom of thought, across the Muslim world since the start expression, and worship. of the twentieth century. Secular nation- Like their nineteenth-century Muslim alist elites took over from the colonial forebears, many contemporary Arab in- authorities and claimed to embark on a tellectuals believe that Islam is not in- quest for progress, development, and incompatible with modernization. We ar- dustrialization. In territorial states creat- gue that the scienti½c and technological ed within arti½cial borders, mostly by underpinnings of modern civilization colonial power at the turn of the twenti- are reducible to categories of knowledge and practice that Muslims can learn and 21 M. Al-Bahiyy, Al-Fikr al-Islami al-Hadith wa- bene½t from without having to give up Silatuhu bil-Isti’mar al-Gharbi, 12th ed. (Cairo: their cultural identity.23 We also believe Maktabat Wahbah, 1991), 206–209. 23 R. Ghannouchi, “Islam and the West,” a lec- 22 For more details see Azzam Tamimi and ture given at the Center for the Study of De- John L. Esposito, eds., Islam and Secularism in mocracy, University of Westminster, October the Middle East (London: Hurst; New York: 1992. New York University Press, 2000).

Dædalus Summer 2003 57 Azzam S. that Islam is consistent with republican Tamimi on and democratic forms of self-rule. secularism Indeed, today Arab secularists routine- & religion ly try to justify the suppression of democratic trends. Their attitude toward the aborted Algerian legislative elections is illustrative. The victory of the Islamic Salvation Front was a clear indication that the majority of the Algerian people sought a change after three decades of enforced secularization. Free democratic elections have proved secularization to be unpopular with the masses. Fearing defeat, contemporary secularists appealed to the army to intervene. They cheered as tanks crushed the ballot boxes and as thousands of citizens were apprehended and jailed in detention camps set up in the desert. They claimed they were protecting democracy from the majority, because according to them the majority could not be trusted. Islam is a divinely ordained set of commandments, values, and directives. Its claims are not incompatible with those of science, technology, and democratic self-government. Its appeal is profound and profoundly popular. And it is not liable to be vanquished anytime soon by a form of secularism that has been foisted by colonizers and despots on Muslims in order to weaken, if not destroy, the basis of our social order, and render us colonizable and controllable.

58 Dædalus Summer 2003 M. Hakan Yavuz

The case of Turkey

Although most partisans of republican ual consciousness. If religious sensibili- Turkey expected modernization to lead ties of one sort or another are for many to a decline in religious attachments, deeply rooted in everyday practices, then that did not happen. we must somehow harmonize religious Instead, the processes of moderniza- attachments with the demands of a tion transformed traditional Islamic be- modern society. liefs and groupings and moved Muslims The Turkish republic, however, was into the public sphere. As a result, elec- founded on a very different set of as- tions held in November of 2002 gave sumptions. In 1923, Mustafa Kemal im- power to Turkey’s Justice and Develop- plemented a series of reforms in an ef- ment Party (ak), the nation’s ½rst overt- fort to forge a modern nation-state. In- ly Islamic political group.1 stead of being neutral on the question of These developments suggest that it is the religious practices and beliefs of its impossible to maintain a rigid separa- citizenry, the Kemalist state seeks to re- tion of religion and politics in Turkey or move all manifestations of religion from anywhere else in the world. Religious the public sphere and put them under networks and organizations are essen- the strict control of the state. In the deci- tially voluntary associations organized sions of the Turkish Constitutional for the purpose of fostering a variety of Court, for instance, the secular public values, from ethical conduct to social sphere is assumed to offer peace by re- justice. Some sense of spirituality revolv- moving any form of difference rooted in ing around the quest for hope and mean- ethnicity or religion; religiously derived ing informs the deepest core of individ- claims are treated as divisive and dangerous for the tranquility of society. M. Hakan Yavuz is associate professor of political As an intellectual and political project science at the University of Utah. A native of in Turkey, Kemalism has a long history Turkey, he has written a number of scholarly arti- of differentiating, marginalizing, and cles in Turkish and English for such journals as excluding large sectors of society. In- “Current History,” “Middle East Journal,” and deed, the twin pillars of Kemalist ideolo- the “Journal of International Affairs.” He is cur- gy, Turkish nationalism and secularism, rently completing a book on “Islamic Political Identity in Turkey” to be published by Oxford 1 M. Hakan Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity in University Press. Turkey (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

Dædalus Summer 2003 59 M. Hakan are the main sources of the country’s tions. Different groups have reacted in Yavuz on current crises. There secularism has not different ways: some have rejected mod- secularism meant simply the formal separation be- ern Turkish society, others have sought & religion tween religious and political authority to escape from it, while still other Islam- and institutions, but rather a Jacobin ic groups have tried to accommodate form of social engineering that differs their religious beliefs to the exigencies of markedly from Anglo-Saxon traditions the modern world. of religious pluralism. It has tended to be Those who ‘reject’ modernity are an authoritarian state ideology to stamp called fundamentalists. They struggle out religious and ethnic differences in against the secularized world. Some the name of Enlightenment values. groups do it peacefully, others violently. In examining Islamic social move- Still other religious Muslims have opted ments in Turkey, one needs to take this to drop out of politics in an effort to se- exclusionary history of secularism into clude themselves against the effects of account. There the history of the contes- secularism: for example, some Su½ or- tation between religion and secularism ders do not even allow new converts to is the story of the struggle between a enter their communities, in order to state-imposed modernization run by a avoid contamination from the outside circumscribed Kemalist political elite world. and a popular resistance that has often In Turkey, however, most Muslims are assumed a religious cast. The Kemalists neither political militants nor religious outlawed Islamic identity claims, as well purists. Instead of trying to restore ‘Is- as Kurdish ethnic claims. Instead of lamic government’ or impose ‘Islamic being viewed as a strength, the Ottoman- law,’ they have formed new voluntary Islamic tradition of pluralism, tolerance, associations in the media, in the schools, and cultural diversity was viewed as a and in the business world. This has al- debilitating weakness. The elite used lowed religious identities and commit- secularism to consolidate its power ments to move into the public sphere of against society and undermine potential civil society. centers of opposition in the name of sci- A prime institutional example would ence and progress. Secularism became a be the Nur movement of Fethullah strategy of exclusion and an instrument Gülen, the largest and most influential of oppression. movement in Turkey. Gülen argues that Yet despite the efforts of the Kemalist “Islam empowers Muslims to decide elite, Islamic idioms have played a dy- ‘how we should live as modern Muslims’ namic role throughout modern Turkish within a democratic system.” The move- history, offering a framework for think- ment represents a shift in the institu- ing about the meaning of the good life tional location of Islamic authority, from and the just society. Modernization did mosque to the media, from ulama to not lead to the demise of Islam in Tur- public intellectuals. This faith-based so- key, but rather transformed it and–para- cial movement brings Islam back to the doxically–brought it into the public public sphere by cross-fertilizing Islamic sphere. Secularism itself raised key ques- idioms with global discourses on human tions about identity, the ethics of differ- rights, democracy, and the market econ- ence and co-existence, and social justice. omy. As a result, Islamic groups in Turkey As a consequence of these develop- have been forced to address such ques- ments, there are two competing visions

60 Dædalus Summer 2003 of secularism in Turkey today: one au- The case thoritarian, the other pluralist. The of Turkey Kemalist version of secularism is a system of controlling religion and subordi- nating it to an of½cial state form. The pluralist version requires a neutral state and a new tolerance for Islamic voices and institutions in civil society. Since religion infuses all aspects of human life, one cannot, and should not, try by force to exclude it from public life. The expanding role played by Islamic groups in Turkey’s media, schools, and businesses has the potential to create a new, and more liberal, society–and also a new, and more tolerant, version of Islam.2

2 I would like to thank Mujeeb R. Khan for his critical comments on this essay.

Dædalus Summer 2003 61 T. N. Madan

The case of India

British India was partitioned in 1947, at (about 75 percent) of the Muslims of the the very moment the nation became in- subcontinent. Several hundred autono- dependent of England.1 Partition fol- mous Indian principalities were expect- lowed the failure, despite prolonged ef- ed to accede to one or the other new forts, of the British government and the state on the basis of territorial contiguity Indian National Congress (the oldest and the religious composition of the and largest organization of ‘freedom population. Much faster than most peo- ½ghters’) to convince the Indian Muslim ple expected, the process of ‘integration’ League (arguably the most representa- of princely states was completed within tive political body of Muslims) that– a year. Only the Muslim-majority Kash- notwithstanding the validity of separate mir state, which acceded to India in Oc- religious identities in their own context tober of 1947 following Pakistan’s effort –the political, economic, and social in- to annex it by force, became a problem terests of all the peoples of British India that still awaits solution. would best be served by establishing a As soon as Pakistan was created, its state based on the principle of a com- ½rst head of state, Mohammed Ali Jin- mon nationhood. nah (1876–1948), who had led the move- Since consensus could not be reached ment for partition, quite ironically ar- and nobody wanted to prolong colonial gued for the creation of a secular state, rule, a decision was made to divide the saying that religious identities were irrel- country and to create, besides an inde- evant for citizenship rights. But this ex- pendent India, the new state of Pakistan, cellent idea died with him a few months meant to be a homeland for the majority later, and his successors proclaimed Pak- istan an Islamic state. And that is the T. N. Madan is professor of sociology emeritus at way it has remained ever since, although the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi, India. not without controversies about the im- He is the author of “Modern Myths, Locked plications of this choice. Minds: Secularism and Fundamentalism in In- 1 As Nikki Keddie has noted in her paper in dia” (1997) and “Pathways: Approaches to the this volume, recent scholarly contributions to Study of Society in India” (1994), and the editor the debate on secularism in India (mostly but not exclusively by Indians) have grown into a of “Muslim Communities of South Asia: Cul- large body of publications. In my reading of it, ture, Society, and Power” (1995) and “Religion this corpus comprises three distinct points of in India” (1991). view. What follows is a brief elaboration of the same.

62 Dædalus Summer 2003 In India, by contrast, a more successful essential to the making of a modern The case variant of secularism emerged. That the society,4 but he knew that his mentor, of India new nation’s leader, Jawaharlal Nehru Gandhi, a man of religion par excellence, (1889–1964), an avowed secularist and had a deep rapport with the people, and socialist, would opt for a secular state considered respect for all religious faiths was only to be expected. What is note- the ½rst principle of a good society. Oth- worthy is that its republican constitu- ers whose advice Nehru respected, most tion, promulgated in 1950, deliberately notably the eminent philosopher S. Rad- avoided the terms ‘secularism’ and ‘sec- hakrishnan who became the country’s ular state.’ It rather depended upon second president, also maintained that clearly worded provisions guaranteeing an India bereft of religiosity was incon- equality of citizenship rights and free- ceivable and that, therefore, an Indian dom of conscience and protecting the concept of religious pluralism had to be cultural and educational rights of reli- elaborated. Pursuantly, and perhaps in gious minorities.2 Incidentally, an his own mind as a temporary measure, amendment in 1976 added the words Nehru de½ned the secular state as one ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ to the characteri- “which honours all faiths equally and zation of India as a democratic republic gives them [their followers] equal opin the preamble of the constitution. portunities.”5 His admiration for Lenin In the years immediately after the notwithstanding, he abjured the Leninist trauma of partition, religious toleration and Kemalist paths of coercion. and secularism were regarded in India as self-evident verities. The dismay over Nehruvian secularism developed violent religious conflict did not, howev- cracks as one-party dominance in In- er, mean that Indians turned their back dian electoral politics declined through on religious belief and practice anymore the 1960s. In the years that followed, than the Europeans did in the wake of India moved in the direction of a multi- the wars of religion in the seventeenth party state, governed in different regions century. There was a tension between and at different times by secularist par- secularization and religiosity, however. ties on the left as well as communal par- Eleven years after independence, Nehru ties (with their membership drawn told André Malraux that the two greatest exclusively or primarily from one reli- problems he had faced as a nation- gious community) on the right. In the builder were “Creating a just society by middle, the Congress Party vacillated just means . . . [and] a secular state in a and showed a willingness to accommo- religious society.”3 date the interests of one religious com- Nehru himself was an agnostic, and munity or another, and to otherwise in- his overall assessment of the role of reli- dulge in opportunist politics, in order to gion in human history was negative. He stay in power. considered the cultivation of scienti½c temper and the technological approach 4 T. N. Madan, Modern Myths, Locked Minds: 2 T. N. Madan, “Freedom of Religion,” Eco- Secularism and Fundamentalism in India (New nomic and Political Weekly 38 (11) (15 March Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 238–247. 2003): 1034–1041. 5 S. Gopal, ed., Jawaharlal Nehru: An Anthology 3 Quoted in André Malraux, Antimemoirs (Lon- (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980), don: Hamish Hamilton, 1968), 145. 330–331.

Dædalus Summer 2003 63 T. N. Things came to a head in the early duce the latter as a mask for communal- Madan 7 on 1980s when Hindu revivalism, Muslim ism or more expediency.” In effect, I secularism separatism, and Sikh fundamentalism was advocating a religio-secular society & religion gained salience, mutually reinforcing of the sort described by Martin Marty. one another through a convergence of Ignoring signi½cant differences be- political, economic, and social stresses. tween my position and Nandy’s, some The churning of politics was soon secularist critics castigated us for hold- matched by more widespread ideologi- ing views that, they said, could only pro- cal controversies. vide support to the proponents of Hindu While some secularist intellectuals in political and cultural domination who the Nehruvian mold called for a reasser- take shelter under the abstract principle tion of the principles of the Enlighten- of equality of rights that could, given ment (including scienti½c temper as well that Hindus account for nearly two- as the primacy of science and technology thirds of India’s population, only mean as instruments of social transforma- permanent majoritarianism. The point is tion), others boldly questioned these not that my position or Nandy’s is im- principles, drawing attention to the mune to criticism, but that the secular- flawed character of ‘the modernity proj- ists apparently claimed that privilege for ect’ and advocating the revival of tradi- themselves; for them, secularism is sim- tional cultures. Ashis Nandy wrote in ply India’s destiny. 1988 about the importance of “the recov- As it happened, Partha Chatterjee (the ery of a well-known domain of public third contributor to the secularism concern in South Asia–ethnic and, espe- debate in India mentioned by Nikki Ked- cially, religious tolerance–from the heg- die) pointedly asked in 1994 if secular- emonic language of secularism.”6 ism is “an adequate, or even appropriate, A year earlier I had argued that the ground on which to meet the political idea of privatization of religion, which is challenge of Hindu majoritarianism” central to the ideology of secularism, because “the Hindu right . . . is perfectly had succeeded in the West because of at peace with the institutional proce- certain antecedent developments within dures of the ‘Western’ or ‘modern Christianity itself, most notably the Ref- state.’”8 The best way to protect minori- ormation. But the acceptance of this idea ty cultural rights, which are a central was problematic in India because the concern of Indian secularism, Chatterjee country’s major religious traditions did suggested, is toleration “premised on not assume any radical antinomy be- autonomy and respect for persons” but tween the sacred and the secular. As I made “sensitive to the varying political have said, secularism in South Asia, un- salience of the institutional contexts.”9 derstood as interreligious understanding While the upholders of the orthodoxy and the equality of citizenship rights, of the 1950s continue to consider every could succeed only if we “take both religion and secularism seriously, and not 7 T. N. Madan, “Secularism in its Place,” The reject the former as superstition and re- Journal of Asian Studies 46 (4) (1987): 759. 8 Partha Chatterjee, “Secularism and Toler- 6 Ashis Nandy, “The Politics of Secularism and ance,” in Rajeev Bhargava, ed., Secularism and its the Recovery of Religious Tolerance,” repub- Critics (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, lished in Ashis Nandy, Time Warps: The Insistent 1998), 345–346. Politics of Silent and Evasive Pasts (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), 61. 9 Ibid., 375.

64 Dædalus Summer 2003 attempt to carry the debate forward as headed public policies. This in effect is a The case an attack on secularism, others have call to the Indian state to discharge its of India moved ahead in several directions. As I responsibility to govern ½rmly and im- have already mentioned, close attention partially within the four walls of its con- is being paid to the issue of minority stitution. After the Gujarat carnage of rights. It has been suggested that the early 2002, one can no longer be sure notion of toleration is inadequate and that a blatantly partisan, although elect- that the state should be required to put ed, government will not bend the insti- in place supportive structures that tutions of the state to serve party objec- enable minorities to prosper like any- tives rather than to protect and promote body else without losing their cultural the common interests of the citizenry. identity.10 Others worry that this will There is an urgent need to keep the state delay the emergence of a common civic itself under watch, lest “the war of all identity.11 against all” be unleashed under its auspices. Some Indian social theorists have ar- The institutions of civil society–espe- gued that the term ‘secularism’ has ethi- cially voluntary associations, which can cal and political varieties: the former express general concerns, provide the variety “seeks the separation of religion means for collective action, and mediate from politics by virtue of the contribu- between citizens and primary groups– tion it makes to the realization of some have a constructive role to play in fur- ethical ideal”; the latter seeks the same thering the goals of a tolerant society. separation but “merely because it makes This role is perhaps best illustrated by for a more livable polity.”12 For political current controversies about religious lib- secularism, “the right is prior to the erty. good”; “it merely provides a way of liv- India’s constitution grants citizens as a ing together, not a way of living together fundamental right the freedom to “pro- well,” which too is af½rmed as a valid fess, practice and propagate” their faiths. project.13 The right of propagation has turned out It has been contended that in view of to be a thorny issue in the context of its multiple connotations, secularism mass conversions from Hinduism and has always been a fuzzy idea in India. tribal religions to Buddhism, Christiani- Earlier, ambiguity was considered its ty, and Islam. The role of foreign mis- strength, but many now believe that its sionaries and funding has been high- vagueness is a poor foundation for clear- lighted and even exaggerated by the Hindu Right. Attempts by some of the states of the Union of India to put severe 10 Neera Chandhoke, Beyond Secularism: The limitations on conversions–including Rights of Religious Minorities (New Delhi: Ox- the assignment of district-level bureau- ford University Press, 1999). crats and judicial of½cers to determine if 11 Mukul Kesavan, Secular Common Sense (New force, fraud, or allurement has been em- Delhi: Penguin Books, 2001). ployed to effect the conversions–have been criticized as a frontal attack on reli- 12 Rajeev Bhargava, “What is Secularism For?” gious liberty. It is arguable that citizens in Bhargava, ed., Secularism and its Critics, 492. groups backed (but not controlled) by 13 Ibid., 498, 508–509. the state may be the best guarantors of

Dædalus Summer 2003 65 T. N. freedom of conscience and the best pro- Madan on moters–through educational, cultural, secularism and other initiatives–of the secular & religion ethos mentioned above.14 A serious problem in this context is that some communities may contend that religious liberty entails a plurality of personal laws or civil codes. Indeed, Muslims, the largest minority at 12 percent, have taken this stand. Needless to say, such a stance jeopardizes those common bonds of citizenship that are a critical component of secularism.15 Despite the political dif½culties it now faces, secularism remains a primary term in Indian political discourse today. Communalism (or religious nationalism) and fundamentalism are de½ned negatively in opposition to it. Those who would go beyond secularism consider it a benchmark. Limitations of space preclude a discussion of ‘fundamentalism’ here, but I share Henry Munson’s distrust of the term and its tendency to produce “an arbitrary and misleading sense of uniformity.” This is best illustrated, as he points out, by the misidenti½cation of Hindu religious nationalism (which is on an aggressive course) as fundamentalism. But Hinduism does not have a core revealed text comparable to the Bible and the Koran. And the proponents of the ideology of Hindutva have so far shown far more interest in the cultural and political domination of non- Hindus than in the religious life of Hindus.

14 Madan, “Freedom of Religion,” 1038.

15 John H. Mans½eld, “Religious and Charita- ble Endowments and a Uniform Civil Code” in Gerald J. Larson, ed., Religion and Personal Law in Secular India (New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2001).

66 Dædalus Summer 2003 Vali Nasr

Lessons from the Muslim world

Secularism has come under assault able chasm between religion and secu- over the course of the last two decades, larism, and predicts the inevitable domi- in developing as well as industrialized nation of the latter, will give place to societies, in democracies as well as dicta- what Martin E. Marty has referred to torships. Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and in this volume as the “religio-secular Jewish fundamentalisms, with different world.” To understand the shape of political aspirations representing diverse things to come we have to take stock of constituencies, have spearheaded the re- the changes that have taken place over surgence of religious values, institutions, the past few decades and also look close- and organizations. On a global scale, the ly at changes that are currently unfold- fundamentalist juggernaut has eroded ing. This we should do not through the the place of secularism in politics, lens of old paradigms, but with a view to policy-making, law, and social relations, identifying emerging trends. and has posed a profound challenge to old ways of thinking about modernity, Nowhere is the scope of change pro- its prerequisites, directives, and institu- duced by fundamentalism more evident tions.1 than in the Muslim world.2 It was here In time, the legacy of Western histo- 1 José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern ry–of the Enlightenment and the Re- World (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago naissance–which postulates an impass- Press, 1994), 5–39; Mark Jurgensmeyer, “The New Religious State,” Comparative Politics 27 (4) Vali Nasr, an expert on the politics of Islamic fun- (July 1995): 379–391; Brian H. Smith, “Religion and Politics: A New Look Through an Old damentalism, is professor of political science and Prism” in H. E. Chehabi and Alfred Stepan, international relations at the Naval Postgraduate eds., Politics, Society, and Democracy: Comparative School in Monterey, California. His books include Studies (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995), “Expectation of the Millennium: Shi’ism in His- 73–88. tory” (1989), “The Vanguard of the Islamic Rev- 2 For general discussions of Islamic fundamen- olution: The Jama’at-i Islami of Pakistan” talism see John L. Esposito, Islam and Politics, 3d (1994), and “The Islamic Leviathan: Islam and ed. (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, the Making of State Power” (2001). He has re- 1991); Nazih Ayubi, Political Islam: Religion and cently been studying the network of extremist Politics in the Arab World (New York: Routledge, groups that have supported Al Qaeda in South 1991); Hamid Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Asia. Thought (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982); Emmaneul Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval

Dædalus Summer 2003 67 Vali Nasr that fundamentalism found its most vo- lim world; Iran during the Pahlavi peri- on secularism ciferous and disruptive expression and od, Arab nationalist regimes, Indonesia, & religion mounted its most direct and poignant Pakistan–all to varying degrees emulat- challenge to secularism and its institu- ed the Turkish model.4 tions. It is also here that the intensity of In the Muslim world, the postcolonial the struggle between religion and secu- state thus sought to drive religion out of larism is producing new paradigms and politics and public life–just as Atatürk institutions that will shape our world for had done in Turkey. Attempting to use years to come. nationalism or socialism or both to mold In the Muslim Middle East and Asia, citizens into a secular whole, the state secularism was not a product of socio- showed a great concern for regulating economic, technological, or cultural the daily lives and cultural outlook of its change–it was not associated with any subjects.5 Social engineering went hand internal social dynamic. In fact, it was in hand with the conscious seculariza- not even an indigenous force. Secularism tion of the judiciary and the educational was ½rst and foremost a project of the system, and with the nationalization of state–½rst the colonial state, and later religious endowments, thus truncating the postcolonial state.3 It was a Western the sociopolitical role of religion.6 import, meant to support the state’s aim Still, the process of secularization was of long-run development. As a result, problematic in the Muslim world, inso- from the outset a religious-secular divide far as it did not seek to separate religion came to reflect the increasingly conten- from politics, but rather to subjugate re- tious relations between the society and ligion to political control.7 This had the the colonial state. effect of politicizing religion as Muslim The postcolonial state in the Muslim institutions struggled with the state, of- world reproduced these tensions in a ten in an effort to loosen the state’s con- voluntary effort to emulate the Western trol over society. Though forcibly mar- state, which it understood to be inher- ginalized, religion thus remained rele- ently secular. The Turkish Republic es- 4 Alan Richards and John Waterbury, A Politi- tablished after World War I serves as the cal Economy of the Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: most lucid example here. It was militant- Westview Press, 1990), 187–218. ly secular and adopted nationalism in lieu of religion to forge a modern nation. 5 H. E. Chehabi, “Staging the Emperor’s New The Turkish state soon became a model Clothes: Dress Codes and Nation-Building Un- der Reza Shah,” Iranian Studies 26 (3–4) (Sum- for state formation in much of the Mus- mer/Fall 1993): 209–229.

6 See, for instance, Shahrough Akhavi, Religion Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven, and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy-State Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985); Nikki R. Relations in the Pahlavi Period (Albany, N.Y.: Keddie, “The Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993: suny Press, 1980). Comparative Considerations and Relations to Imperialism,” Comparative Studies in Society and 7 M. Hakan Yavuz, “Political Islam and the History 36 (3) (July 1994): 463–487. Welfare (Refah) Party in Turkey,” Comparative Politics 30 (1) (October 1997): 64–65; Daniel 3 S. V. R. Nasr, “European Colonialism and Crescilius, “Nonideological Responses of the Emergence of Modern Muslim States,” in Egyptian Ulama to Modernization,” in Nikki R. John L. Esposito, ed., The Oxford History of Keddie, ed., Scholars, Saints, and Su½s: Muslim Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, Religious Institutions Since 1500 (Berkeley: Uni- 1999), 549–599. versity of California Press, 1972), 167–210.

68 Dædalus Summer 2003 vant: in the struggle between state and came most spectacularly evident with Lessons from the society, religion in some cases became a the Iranian revolution of 1979. The revo- Muslim focus for resisting authoritarian forms of lution was the ½rst instance of a funda- world secularism. In Egypt for instance, Gamal mentalist movement replacing a secular Abd al-Nasser’s imposition of reforms state, and it inspired similar challenges on the al-Azhar Islamic educational in- to state authority and its secular under- stitution to bring its values into align- pinnings across the Muslim world. ment with the goals of the state had the Since 1979, revolutionary movements effect of imparting political attitudes on in Algeria, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, religious leaders and institutions, which Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Indonesia, as eventually culminated in the growing in- well as international umbrella groups fluence of fundamentalism and parties such as Al Qaeda, have harkened to the dedicated to a ‘re-Islamization’ of Egyp- Iranian model.10 But in Iran itself funda- tian society after 1980.8 mentalism is no longer the revolutionary Secularism in the Muslim world never force that it once was;11 the Islamic Re- overcame its colonial origins and never public of Iran has failed to produce a vi- lost its association with the postcolonial able model for Islamic government and state’s continuous struggle to dominate is today facing a crisis that will likely end society. Its fortunes became tied to those the political dominance of religion of the state: the more the state’s ideology came into question, and the more its actions alienated social forces, the more vs. the State (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, secularism was rejected in favor of indig- 1999); Vali Nasr, “Secular States and Religious Oppositions,” sais Review 18 (2) (Summer/ enous worldviews and social institutions Fall 1998): 32–37; Charles Tripp, “Islam and –which were for the most part tied to Is- the Secular Logic of the State in the Middle lam. As such, the decline of secularism East,” in Abdel Salam Sidahmad and Anoushi- was a reflection of the decline of the ravan Ehteshami, eds., Islamic Fundamentalism postcolonial state in the Muslim world. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996), 57– 60; John P. Entelis, “The Crisis of Authoritari- The crisis facing states from Malaysia anism in North Africa: The Case of Algeria,” to Morocco in the latter part of the Problems of Communism 41 (May/June 1992): twentieth century fostered an Islamic 71–81. challenge to secularism and the postcolonial state.9 The emerging trend be- 10 David Menashri, ed., The Iranian Revolution and the Muslim World (Boulder, Colo.: West- 8 Malika Zeghal, “Religion and Politics in view Press, 1991); and Nikki R. Keddie and Egypt: the Ulema of al-Azhar, Radical Islam, Rudi Matthee, eds., Iran and the Surrounding and the State (1952–1994),” International Journal World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics of Middle East Studies 31 (3) (August 1999): 373– (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 375. 2002).

9 Robert Malley, The Call from Algeria: Third 11 Fariba Adelkhah, Being Modern in Iran (New Worldism, Revolution, and the Turn to Islam York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Oli- (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); vier Roy, “The Crisis of Religious Legitimacy in Leonard Binder, Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Iran,” The Middle East Journal 53 (2) (Spring Development Ideologies (Chicago, Ill.: University 1999): 210–211; Vali Nasr, “Iran: State Power, of Chicago Press, 1988), 328–341; Said Amir Identity, and Development,” in Jeffrey Kop- Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic stein and Mark Lichbach, eds., Comparative Revolution in Iran (New York: Oxford University Politics: Interests, Identities, and Institutions in To- Press, 1988); Denis J. Sullivan and Sana Abed- day’s Small World (New York: Cambridge Uni- Kotob, Islam in Contemporary Egypt: Civil Society versity Press, 2000), 348–380.

Dædalus Summer 2003 69 Vali Nasr there. Equally important, elsewhere in however rigid, seem relevant to modern on 13 secularism the Muslim world fundamentalism has society. They have been able to bridge & religion proved to be neither as successful nor as traditional and modern segments of intractable and uncompromising as the society. At the same time, fundamental- example of revolutionary Iran suggests. ists have done much to politicize Islamic It has interacted with secularism and the symbols and to formulate new Islamic state to produce new approaches to concepts of relevance to politics–such modern society and politics and the role as ‘Islamic economics,’ ‘Islamic educa- of religion therein. tion,’ ‘Islamization of knowledge,’ and In the process, fundamentalism has by the ‘Islamic state.’14 They have both ar- and large matured. Although it still in- ticulated the manner in which these spires extremism, that tendency is no symbols should serve political ends and longer the dominant force in many Mus- convinced large numbers of citizens that lim societies. Indeed, fundamentalism ‘Islamization’ is a necessary and bene½- has developed new perspectives on soci- cial process.15 Despite their opposition ety and politics, compromised on its nar- to secularism, many fundamentalists row ideals, and become an ingredient in have supported extensive state interven- the broader movement toward the mod- tion in the economy and society, and, in ernization and development of Muslim some countries, have given fresh legiti- states. And what comes out of this pro- macy to the idea of a domineering state. cess will inevitably determine the rela- As a result, fundamentalists have been tion between religion and secularism in able to rede½ne the concept of politics in the Muslim world and beyond. much of the Muslim world, shaping how politicians, state institutions, dissident Islamic fundamentalism was not suc- groups, even how educated youth and cessful in its assault on secularism and the state in the wake of the Iranian revo- 13 Roxanne Euben, Enemy in the Mirror (Prince- lution–but it was able to institutionalize ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999); S. V. R. Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic a role for Islam in society and politics. In Revivalism (New York: Oxford University Press, so doing, it both gave impetus to a great- 1996). er popular role for Islam in the public sphere and made Islam a legitimate– 14 John L. Esposito and John Voll, Makers of and in many cases attractive–tool with Contemporary Islam (New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 2001); Farid Alatas, “Reflections on which to achieve political goals, thus en- the Idea of Islamic Social Science,” Comparative couraging many more social and politi- Civilizations Review 17 (1987): 60–86; Timur cal actors to use Islam in a largely secular Kuran, “The Economic Impact of Islamic Fun- public arena.12 Though unable to damentalism,” in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott achieve its own avowed goal of replacing Appelby, eds., Fundamentalisms and the State (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, the postcolonial state, fundamentalism 1993), 302–341; Ishtiaq Ahmed, The Concept of was able to make Islam a critical force in an Islamic State: An Analysis of the Ideological Con- society and politics. troversy in Pakistan (New York: St. Martin’s The advocates of a return to Islam Press, 1987). have been able to make religious values, 15 Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, Mobilizing Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); 12 Geneive Abdo, No God but God: Egypt and the Jenny White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Triumph of Islam (New York: Oxford University Study in Vernacular Politics (Seattle: University Press, 2000). of Washington Press, 2003).

70 Dædalus Summer 2003 segments of the intelligentsia de½ne er than the state that have been at the Lessons 16 from the their goals. forefront of political change, de½ning Muslim the ways in which Islam and secular pol- world Islamic fundamentalism became en- itics could blend to produce new models sconced in the politics of Muslim soci- for state and society to follow. eties at a time when the secular concep- Turkey is perhaps the best example in tion of the state and its nationalist un- this regard. Faced with the uncompro- derpinning were losing legitimacy and, mising secularism of the state, Turkish hence, political ef½cacy. Still, because Islamic forces have abandoned their nar- fundamentalism was not able to com- row fundamentalist views in favor of an pletely replace existing political and so- inclusive and pragmatic approach to the cial structures,17 it has set the stage for role of religion in politics: they have an ongoing and intense struggle over the dropped their demands for strict adher- proper balance between religion and ence to Islamic law, they support Tur- secularism in Muslim societies. key’s relations with the West, and they Many secular states have responded to even accept the need to maintain rela- the fundamentalist challenge by appro- tions with Israel. The pragmatism of priating aspects of its discourse, to bol- Turkey’s Islamic forces has produced a ster their legitimacy and thus augment model for the rest of the Muslim world their power. Malaysia and Pakistan ex- to follow, one in which modern state and emplify this trend. In both countries, the social institutions that are secular in na- leadership has successfully confounded ture also reflect Islamic values. its fundamentalist opposition while Iran–a secular state that fell to an Is- reaping the fruits of its propaganda. By lamic revolution that now faces a secular introducing ‘fundamentalism from backlash–represents a very different above,’ they have been able to exploit model of what the future may hold. the fundamentalist challenge from be- Through the crucible of revolution, and low, while strengthening their control the rise and fall of popular support for over politics and society. creating an Islamic republic, Iran has Faced with the staying power of the been experimenting with a unique com- secular state, still other fundamentalist bination of religion and secularism. forces in other countries have opted to There the state is now the repository of change.18 By compromising, they have Islam and the society is pushing for secu- been able to gain a foothold in the politi- larization–the obverse of what is hap- cal process. Here it is Islamic forces rath- pening in the rest of the Muslim world. Iran’s Islamic Republic enjoyed only 16 S. V. R. Nasr, “Ideology and Institutions in temporary success in implementing its Fundamentalist Approaches to Public Policy,” in Sohrab Behdad and Farhad Nomani, eds., vision. Its theocratic ideal quickly be- International Review of Comparative Public Policy came a facade behind which religious 9 (1997): 41–67. and political authorities stood increasingly apart from one another.19 The 17 Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam state was never able to completely con- (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, trol its sizable secular social stratum, 1996). which has become a primary source of 18 John L. Esposito and John Voll, Islam and 19 H. E. Chehabi, “Religion and Politics in Democracy (New York: Oxford University Iran: How Theocratic is the Islamic Republic?” Press, 1998). Dædalus 120 (3) (Summer 1991): 69–92.

Dædalus Summer 2003 71 Vali Nasr secular resistance to the Islamic Repub- on secularism lic. So in time the Republic had to bow & religion to other pressures that, for one, have necessitated the use of elections to settle struggles for power. And the practice of voting has, in turn, inadvertently produced a certain degree of pluralism and also a distinct political momentum for institutionalizing more democratic practices and modes of political behavior.20 This dialectic–a growing secularism in society reinforced by a gradual opening of the Islamic state–is peculiar to Iran. It represents a unique model in which secularism and the sociopolitical institutions associated with it are not merely imported ideals imposed from above, but homegrown trends that have emerged to curtail the power of the Is- lamic state. As a result, Iran promises to produce a religio-secular model whose point of origin is Islamic rather than secular–and quite different from what one ½nds elsewhere in the Muslim Middle East and Asia. As the example of Iran suggests, the Muslim world is in the midst of a process of change, experimenting with models that, by balancing the competing demands of religion and secularism, can create viable ways for these societies to modernize. What is likely to emerge at the end is nation-states that strike a very different balance between religion and secularism from that drawn in the West. These states will call upon the cultural resources of religion to address their social and economic needs–but not necessarily in the manner that European history suggests.

20 Nasr, “Iran: State, Power, Identity, and Development,” 348–380.

72 Dædalus Summer 2003 William Galston

Jews, Muslims & the prospects for pluralism

The question of the hour is whether Is- ent tenets of faith held by others.” Those lamic fundamentalism can be compati- who believe that there are many paths to ble with democracy. Though important, God, or that it is not given to ½nite hu- that question is subordinate to another: mans to know which is the right path to whether Islamic fundamentalism can the In½nite God, will ½nd it relatively make its peace with religious pluralism. easy to embrace religious pluralism. After all, a democratic majority could Genuine fundamentalists cannot ac- well bring a Shiite theocracy to power cept either of these beliefs. Fundamen- in Iraq. A wide variety of institutional talists may however believe that other forms, many of which do not resemble faiths are on the same (right) path al- American constitutionalism, can express though they cannot reach the end–the and secure respect for pluralism. If that one true faith. They may also believe respect is absent, however, nation- that it is wrong to use coercion as an builders will have no choice but to en- instrument of religious conversion. force tolerance, or to abandon belea- Each of these beliefs ½nds textual sup- guered minorities to their fate. port as well as opposition within Islam. James Carroll puts it well: “The chal- For example, in the Koran (al-Baraqah lenge for religions of all kinds, but per- 2:62) we ½nd the following: “Verily, haps especially for religions based on those who believe and those who are narratives of divine revelation, is to Jews and Christians and Sabians, whoev- make positive assertions of faith that do er believes in Allah and the Last day and not simultaneously denigrate the differ- do righteous good deeds shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be William Galston is Saul I Stern Professor of Civic no fear, nor shall they grieve.” Much de- Engagement and director of the Institute for Phi- pends on the ability of the proponents of losophy and Public Policy at the University of a genuinely Islamic pluralism to broaden Maryland. Galston was deputy assistant to the public support for a generous and ac- president for domestic policy during the ½rst Clin- commodating interpretation of their ton administration, and executive director of the shared tradition. National Commission on Civic Renewal. A politi- Acceptance of pluralism comes more cal theorist who has written widely on education, easily to religions that emphasize inner family policy, and religion and public values, Gal- conviction, because they need to ask lit- ston is the author of “Liberal Purposes” (1991) tle of politics beyond being left alone. By and, most recently, “Liberal Pluralism” (2002). contrast, religions that take the form of

Dædalus Summer 2003 73 William law, as do traditional forms of Judaism a culturally diverse empire. Instead, he Galston and Islam, are forced to take seriously embarked on an aggressive campaign of on secularism the content of public law. The terms of cultural homogenization, unrelated to & religion engagement between religious law and the requisites of stable and secure rule, public law then become critical. that ultimately triggered resistance. Sec- Speaking broadly and schematically, ond, Mattathias’s revolt originated not there are three possible relations be- as a thrust toward theocracy but as a des- tween political and religious authority. perate defensive measure. He may well Political authority may be comprehen- have been seething with resentment sively dominant over religion and thus against Seleucid rule throughout his life, put it in the service of state power (for but the evidence suggests that he was this reason it is often termed ‘civil’). prepared to accept it, so long as the au- Second, political and religious authority thorities did not interfere with Jewish may coexist, each with authority over practices. Once his revolt began, howev- different aspects of communal life. er, its aims expanded to include the de- (Maxims such as “Render unto Caesar Hellenization of the entire society. what is Caesar’s” create the basis for While bearing in mind Munson’s sen- such a pluralist understanding.) Finally, sible caveats concerning dissimilarities religious authority may coincide with, or among different varieties of fundamen- comprehensively dominate, political talism, I will hazard a generalization authority, yielding theocracy. from the Maccabean story: We should distinguish between religious move- When it comes to theocracy, there are ments that are essentially defensive in important historical differences between nature and those that are offensive. Judaism and Islam. Defensive fundamentalist movements I want to begin by reflecting on Henry are content to withdraw from the arena Munson’s retelling of the Maccabean of power, or to participate in it on equal revolt, which he treats, plausibly terms with others, so long as they are enough, as an archetype of what we now free to practice their faith. They may not call fundamentalism. Breaching a long- accept other faiths as equal to their own. standing modus vivendi between Jews They may deplore the copresence of ‘for- and their Seleucid rulers, King Antio- eign’ or ‘strange’ gods within their polit- chus Epiphanes arrogantly and unwisely ical community. But they are prepared to ordered Jews to violate their most funda- accept competing practices, out of ne- mental commandments. When one of cessity, as the price for being left alone. the resisters, the priest Mattathias, fled Offensive movements, by contrast, Jerusalem, the king’s men pursued him. seek power to impose their way on oth- Mattathias resorted to violence only af- ers. Four characteristics of offensive fun- ter it became apparent that the govern- damentalist movements render them es- ment would allow him no refuge and pecially dangerous: their outlook is in- would not permit faithful Jews to ob- tolerant; their stance, uncompromising; serve their commandments without per- their aspirations, totalist; their tactics, secution. latently if not actually violent. These are This sequence of events is instructive the movements that pluralist societies in several respects. In the ½rst place, un- and those seeking to build such societies like the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs, (as in Iraq) have good reason to fear, and Antiochus was not satis½ed to rule over must resist.

74 Dædalus Summer 2003 aken literally, the authority estab- fairs in any way beyond this, unless the Jews, T Muslims lished by the laws of Moses was theo- king delegated his powers to them.” The & the cratic and, if the Book of Judges is to be secular authority, he argued, had one prospects for taken as history, was exercised theocrati- sphere of authority, religious leaders an- pluralism cally for an extended period. Gideon fa- other. The two spheres overlapped to mously refused the people’s demand some extent, and it was not incumbent that he become king over Israel: “I will on secular authority to yield in cases of not rule over you myself; nor shall my conflict. Jews were required to resist sec- son rule over you; the Lord alone shall ular authority–at the cost of their lives rule over you” (Judges 8:23). if need be–in only a handful of in- But in practice, the legal structures of stances, such as mandatory idolatry. traditional (rabbinic) Judaism developed Otherwise, the law of the kingdom was over a period of nearly two millennia binding, the Torah notwithstanding. during which Jews were a nearly power- Throughout the medieval and early less minority in the states they inhabit- modern periods, Jewish populations ed. The religious practices, such as the sought to maximize communal autono- rituals of the Temple, that presupposed my and to minimize conflict between Jewish sovereignty in Israel fell into de- the law of secular authorities and the suetude and were not revived–even af- commandments of the Torah. Efforts to ter the reestablishment of a Jewish state enforce the fundamentals of the religion in Israel in 1947. were invariably defensive, never offensive. In the meantime, Shmuel, an authority And when, after World War II, Israel was of the early Talmudic period, laid down established, it was barely thinkable that the principle that became central to all the religious law developed over cen- subsequent discussion: “The law of the turies of political marginality in the dias- kingdom is law.” Civil law loses its claim pora could serve as civil legislation for to be obeyed only when it commands the new state. For the most part, Ortho- something that the Torah explicitly for- dox communities and political parties in bids, or forbids something that the To- Israel ranked other goals ahead of the rah commands. aspiration to rest civil legislation on To- As the discussion of these matters de- rah law, in part because applying it to po- veloped during the Talmudic and medi- litical power wielded by a Jewish majori- eval periods, kingship became not a party might well require sweeping revisions ticular form of political regime but rath- in the content of that law. er a metaphor for secular government in general. Nissim Gerondi, a leader of the Nikki Keddie reminds us that the total Barcelona Jewish community, argued ex- intertwining of religion and politics is plicitly for two “separate agencies”–one rare in Muslim history, and that calls for to render decisions on a range of civil codifying Islamic law as the law of the matters in accordance with religious law, state are “distinctly modern.” Still, we the other to uphold public order. The need to explain the receptivity of many precedent for this, he insisted, was es- contemporary Muslim populations to tablished during the biblical period: “At such ideas. I would suggest that in con- a time when Israel had both Sanhedrin trast to Talmudic law, Shariah (the Mus- and king, the Sanhedrin’s role was to lim religious law founded on the Koran judge the people according to just [To- and the conduct and statements of the rah] law only and not to order their af- Prophet) developed in an extended peri-

Dædalus Summer 2003 75 William od during which Muslims wielded politi- public funding and public standing, Galston on cal power, often over populations that especially in the arena of education. An- secularism were overwhelmingly Muslim. The other possibility is a new version of the & religion structure of that law thus reflects the multiconfessional structure of the Otto- expectation that it would have political man Empire (reproduced to some degree as well as communal authority. As Kha- in Israel), in which a dominant religious led Abou El Fadl states, classical Muslim group shares civic space with other jurists described the best system of gov- faiths that enjoy substantial autonomy ernment as “the caliphate, based on and authority, especially over family law. Sharia’ah law [which] ful½lls the criteria In short, there is no reason, other than of justice and legitimacy and binds gov- the perennial libido dominandi, why a erned and governor alike.” The idea of a moderate of½cial ‘establishment’ of secular state in which Shariah is both Islam need eventuate in religious perse- distinct from and subordinate to politi- cution and repression. As Noah Feld- cal authority stands in uneasy relation to man, author of After Jihad: America and this ideal, and many Muslims experience the Struggle for Islamic Democracy, has that idea as an alien (Western) imposi- written: tion. If man in the West cannot imagine democ- For example, in 1959, Iraq’s new revo- racy without separation of church and lutionary ruler, General Abd al-Karim state, many in the Muslim world ½nd it Qasim, promulgated a Code of Personal impossible to imagine legitimate democ- Status that contradicted Shariah in areas racy with it. Fortunately, democracy does such as polygamy and inheritance. Cleri- not require an absolute divide between re- cal resistance to the Code helped under- ligion and political authority. Liberty of mine General Qasim’s regime, and the conscience is an indispensable require- repeal of the Code was among the ½rst ment of free government–but an estab- acts of the new government that took lished religion that does not coerce reli- power in 1963 following a successful gious belief and that treats religious mi- coup. Calls to rest civil law on Shariah norities as equals may be perfectly com- and to recognize the autonomy of reli- patible with democracy. gious judges have a resonance in Islamic communities without parallel for most In this regard, the trajectory of Iran Jews, no matter how observant. since 1979 is instructive. As Keddie and It would be too hasty to conclude, Munson show, Khomeini’s rhetoric however, that Islamic fundamentalism responded both to the cultural disloca- must entail some form of theocracy or tions of modernity and to imperialism’s always take a violent and intolerant affront to national pride. Over time, form. There are a number of political ar- however, the majority of Iranians began rangements that might express an Islam- to react against what they experienced as ic outlook without ceasing to respect theocratic oppression. In their eyes, pluralism. Clearly, Atatürk’s severe anti- what initially presented itself as a cure clericalism is not one of them. Nor is an had become part of the disease. For all American-style separation of church and we know, ordinary citizens in Saudi Ara- state. bia are equally impatient with the severi- But one might well imagine an Islamic ty of Wahhabi fundamentalism. The dif- version of the Netherlands, a state in ference is that the Iranian Constitution which a number of different faiths enjoy allows for elections that express popular

76 Dædalus Summer 2003 sentiment and that influence the distri- Jews, Muslims bution of political power. & the There is thus reason to hope that, giv- prospects for en time, the exposure of Islamic regimes pluralism to the culture of modernity and to institutions of democratic accountability will produce a tolerable degree if not of respect at least of liberty for diverse faiths and ways of life. In contemporary circumstances, that liberty is the principal requisite of political decency.

Dædalus Summer 2003 77 Jean Bethke Elshtain

Against liberal monism

Despite the separation of church and That church and state in America are state in America, religion and politics in in fact separate means that ours is a sec- this country have long influenced one ular government–but it does not mean another in ways direct and indirect. that ours is a secular society. It isn’t now. This theme was advanced by Alexis de It has never been. Tocqueville in his masterwork, Democra- In fact, the terrain on which religion cy in America. Tocqueville argued that the and politics have most often met in nation’s religiously formed democratic American history is the realm of non- optimism was something new under the state institutions we call civil society. In political sun, for it led, in practice, to the every aspect of human endeavor, faith associational enthusiasm he observed matters to people and to particular com- when he toured America during the munities, and, when as citizens these Jacksonian era. people and communities participate in Contemporary analysts too frequently politics, to the nation at large. assume that the mutually fructifying in- These facts suggest a logic for religious fluence between religion and politics ap- engagement in the civic realm that clash- plauded by Tocqueville either no longer es with a dominant strand of argument exists or is deeply problematic. Their in academic philosophy that, although mistake is a result of focusing too nar- prominent in scholarly debates, has very rowly on the recent constitutional trend little to do with how people actually talk toward strengthening the separation of and act. The academic philosophers in- church and state, rather than looking sist that the convictions of the religious more broadly at the worlds of religion need to be translated into a purely secu- and politics as they actually intersect, lar idiom if the faithful are to join in and mutually flourish, in America today. political deliberation. If the religiously minded are not comfortable translating their convictions into such a secular Jean Bethke Elshtain, a Fellow of the American idiom, they had best remain silent. Academy since 1996, is Laura Spelman Rocke- Some versions of this argument–for feller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at example, that associated with the late the University of Chicago and the author, most John Rawls–are subtle and complex. recently, of “Just War Against Terror: The Burden Others are much simpler. They assume of American Power in a Violent World” (2003). that there is a single vocabulary for political discussion; if your speech lies out-

78 Dædalus Summer 2003 side the purview of a secular language of aims to do in the realm of discourse– Against ‘public deliberation,’ it isn’t legitimately namely, to strip public life of religious liberal monism public speech at all. markers, emblems, and ceremony. The draconian requirement that a I have called this position liberal mo- purely secular mode of speech supplant nism, for its origins lie in certain strands all other ways of making public argu- of classical liberal political philosophy. ment cuts against the grain of American This position holds that all institutions political history and civic culture. In the within a democratic society must con- real world of religion and politics as they form to a single authority principle; a actually coexist in America, citizens re- single standard of what counts as reason sort to ‘god talk’ at least as much as they and deliberation; a single vocabulary of use ‘rights talk.’ Faith informs the way political discussion. Within this posi- America speaks and has always spoken. tion, religion is routinely discounted– The U.S. Constitution never required as the secularization hypothesis would that people give up the communal di- have it–as irrationalism, or as a search mensions of their faith as the price for for epistemological privilege. civic admission. Catholics, Lutherans, According to liberals like Rawls, citi- Jews–all built networks of schools and zens who are believers are obliged to charitable institutions. Jews, in particu- translate every view supported by their lar, distinguished themselves publicly beliefs into a purportedly ‘neutral’ secu- through visible markers of their identity lar language. Only in this way, so the in dress and in dietary regulations. Even argument goes, can Americans achieve a cursory glance at our history shows the some kind of workable civic consensus. manner in which confessional pluralism From the standpoint of religious be- and social pluralism have been linked in lief, however, ‘the problem’ looks quite the American polity as religious differ- different: for what Rawls proposes ences were marked publicly through a would dramatically narrow the purview variety of modes of communal identi½- of religion as it actually exists within cation. One reason that America’s reli- American civil society. gious institutions are such an indispen- Rather than asking how much religion sable part of American civil society is can, or should, the polity tolerate, we that religion in America has never been might pose a different question instead: compelled to privatize itself along the What sort of political arrangements lines suggested by Rawls. “enable religion to play the constructive For the ½rst 150 years of the American public role that religious commitments republic, primary responsibility for reli- themselves demand?”1 gious rights and liberties was lodged in One enters political life as a citizen. the states. No federal law governing reli- But if one also has religious convictions, gious institutions in their relation to the these convictions naturally will inform government was ever passed. The federal one’s judgments as a citizen. My reli- government got into the act where religious views help to determine who I am, gion is concerned–at least in a big way how I think, and what I care about. This –only during the last half century. is as it should be. In America it makes no In recent years, a constitutional posi- sense to ask people to bracket what they tion has emerged that might be called care about most deeply when they de- strong separationism. This position bate issues that are properly political. seeks to do on the level of law what a 1 This is the provocative suggestion of the strict version of Rawlsian philosophy theologian Robin Lovin. Dædalus Summer 2003 79 Daniel C. Tosteson

Unhealthy beliefs: religion & the plague of war

In response to the savage terrorist at- recognize the microbial origins of many tack on the World Trade Center in New infectious diseases and discovered ways York City and the Pentagon in Washing- of preventing and curing many of them. ton, my country has resolved to wage the In this sense, the human mind is our ½rst war of the third millennium. The most powerful resource for protection terrorist attack unjustly murdered thou- against illness. The recent emergence sands of human beings. In retaliation, of sars and the recognition that it is many thousands more will die prema- caused by a hitherto undescribed mutant turely, infected by the lethal plague of of coronavirus reminds us of our in- war. creasing skill in managing our endless Unlike many infectious diseases, the competition with pathogenic microbes. plague of war is not caused by some vi- Still, for all the remarkable discoveries rus or bacterium or parasite, but rather wrought by biomedical science, the hu- by a pathogen that is even more poten- man mind continues to breed murder- tially lethal: the beliefs created by the ous convictions. It has proved in½nitely human mind. ingenious in creating ever more deadly Of course, the mind is responsible for weapons of war: clubs, swords, arrows, the remarkable improvement in human lances, shells, biological and chemical health that has occurred during the last poisons, conventional and nuclear two centuries and, particularly, during explosives delivered by airplanes or the most recent few decades. Through guided missiles or minivans. And, given the patient and careful observations and its ingenuity, attempts to reduce or elim- reasoning of many generations of scien- inate war by preventing any particular tists and scholars, we have learned to mechanism of murder are unlikely to succeed, since other options for killing are, sooner or later, always invented. Daniel C. Tosteson served as president of the The necessary and suf½cient condi- American Academy from 1997–2000. A Fellow tions for outbreaks of the plague of wars since 1979, he is Caroline Shields Walker Distin- of terror are mutual hatred between two guished Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard or more groups of people and the sus- Medical School. Dean of the Medical School pension of civil constraints against mur- from 1977 to 1997, he was also president of the der–indeed, the of½cial glori½cation of Harvard Medical Center. mass murder that occurs during war- time. Many factors contribute to the de-

80 Dædalus Summer 2003 velopment of these conditions: poverty, It is easy to understand why some Religion & the plague starvation, persecution, slavery, revenge, would choose to discourage religious be- of war envy, greed, an insatiable desire for pow- lief altogether. It is not unreasonable to er–to name only a few. infer from the historical record that the But a particularly salient recurrent price in human misery of wars between cause of the plague of war is conflicting peoples with conflicting conceptions of religious convictions. god is too high. Often, the murderers are self-right- Perhaps, at last, we could acknowledge eous in their belief that they are acting that god is not the creator but a creature according to the will of the god or gods of the brain, a ½ction that is useful for in whom they believe. By acts of persua- maintaining the fabric of a society that sion or coercion or, as a last resort, by persists beyond the span of our individ- killing those who continue to disagree, ual lives. Perhaps we could accept and they aim to bring all human beings into celebrate our individual deaths as an agreement with their beliefs. Their deep essential component in the vast system passion for hegemony arises partly from of living creatures of which we are a the desire to control the behavior of the part. Perhaps we could elaborate a secu- in½dels, and partly to avoid the confu- lar vision of the human situation that all sion and anxiety aroused by the aware- might embrace, a vision that could sus- ness that different groups of people may tain a healthy society without recourse hold radically different religious beliefs. to the outworn myths of our childhood. In the past, geographic isolation Perhaps we could all have the vision and curbed the frequency and intensity of courage to sing with the American poet- plagues of war between groups of hu- ess, Emily Dickinson, that, despite the man beings with conflicting belief sys- inevitability of death, this life that we tems. But modern technology has en- have, with all of its complexities, confu- abled the rapid transport of people and sions, and hopes, is enough: information, radically intensifying the I reckon–when I count at all– encounters between peoples with con- First–Poets–Then the Sun– flicting convictions. Globalization accel- Then Summer–Then the Heaven erates not only the spread of infectious of God– diseases caused by microbes, but also And then–the List is done– the plagues of war caused by incompatible religious convictions. But, looking back–the First so seems As the globalization of all human ac- To Comprehend the Whole– tivities continues inexorably, as I believe The Others look a needless Show . . . it will, despite the protests of many dis- advantaged and resentful citizens of the But it is very unlikely that mankind planet, the mutual hatred of groups of will renounce religion altogether. Again people with conflicting concepts of god drawing evidence from the historical will intensify and increase the probabili- record, the penchant to conceive a god ty of wars of terror. or gods to account for our experiences, What can the great majority of people and, particularly, our personal deaths, is who seek a peaceful life do to prevent or evident in almost all human societies. remedy the plague of unconditional ha- For this reason, we would do well to cel- tred that infects the small minority who ebrate the capacity to discover (or in- wage wars of terror? vent) god as an essential step toward

Dædalus Summer 2003 81 Daniel C. constructing a personal identity that al- Tosteson on lows us to respect and honor ourselves secularism and our fellow human beings; but if we & religion do so, we should also realize that differences of religious conviction are both likely and essential for learning–not ex- pressions of disrespect. But if all individuals are free to choose their own system of religious belief, then the possibility, even probability, of pas- sionate conflict will persist. How then to inhibit the emergence of the unconditional hatred and suspension of civil constraints that produce the plagues of war? We must recognize that our all-too- human propensity to resort to violence is a form of mental illness, related to but even more dangerous than addiction to mind-altering drugs.Recent research on the neurobiological basis of warlike behavior reveals many paths worthy of exploration. But such research also suggests that the aggressive impulses of human beings, like the microbial infec- tions that plague them, are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. In the meantime, the best remedy is the global adoption of the principle of the separation of church and state, and the primacy of secular over sacred law. This will require the formulation, articulation, and adoption of a worldview that all of the earth’s diverse citizens can embrace. We must search for new ways of thinking and feeling about ourselves and our fellow human beings that will lead toward a form of tolerance that is more mutually respectful and more accommo- dating to diversities of belief than anything we have yet achieved. The need is urgent–for the failure to ½nd a way could be catastrophic for life on earth.

82 Dædalus Summer 2003 Christopher Hitchens

The future ofan illusion

1 Karl Marx was neither a determinist nor personal source of comfort–rather than a vulgar materialist and never said that a matter of state and society–should not religion was “the opium of the people.” be dismissed either. Freud only extended What he did say, in his Critique of Hegel’s this idea in his celebrated essay The Fu- Philosophy of Right, was that it was at ture of an Illusion, by pointing out the ex- once the expression of inhuman condi- traordinarily close correlation between tions and the protest against them: “the doctrines of immortality and redemp- heart of a heartless world; the sigh of the tion, and the inextinguishable human oppressed creature; the spirit of a spirit- desire to defeat or transcend death. For less situation.” Secular criticism, he said, him, faith was ineradicable as long as had endeavored to “pluck the flowers humans were in fear of personal annihi- from the chain, not in order that man lation–a contingency that seems likely shall wear the chain without consolation to persist. But the strength and tenacity but so that he can break the chain and of the belief did not make it any less of cull the living flower.” It was only in this an illusion context and with these metaphors that he described religion as an opiate, and 2 even then not as we would now de½ne a The moral superiority of atheism (and mind-dulling (or mind-expanding) ‘con- also of what I prefer to call anti-theism trolled substance,’ but rather as an anal- and has been called miso-theism) is less gesic on the Victorian model. often stressed than its intellectual supe- On his analysis, the likelihood that riority. The intellectual advantage hardly religion would ever wither away or go needs elaboration: we do not normally into a decline must be reckoned as very accept unprovable assertions at face slight. However, the possibility of its value, however devoutly they are main- becoming a private belief or a purely tained, and we possess increasingly con- vincing explanations of matters that Christopher Hitchens is visiting professor of lib- once lay within the province of the su- eral studies at the Graduate Faculty of The New pernatural. Skepticism and inquiry and School and I.F. Stone Visiting Fellow at the Uni- doubt are the means by which we have versity of California, Berkeley. He is also a colum- established such a civilization as we pos- nist for “Vanity Fair.” His most recent book is sess; professions of sheer faith are a hin- “Why Orwell Matters” (2002). drance to investigations both moral and material.

Dædalus Summer 2003 83 Christopher However, there are some moral claims cent fluctuations in religious fervor and Hitchens on for atheism that may be worth putting allegiance, the evidence is that millions secularism forward. First, and most conspicuously, of adults now live this way (probably & religion the atheist cannot be entirely happy with including in their number a fair propor- his conclusion. To be resigned to death tion of the congregations at churches, and extinction is not always a consola- mosques, and synagogues). The Dutch, tion even to the Stoic–though it does by some accounts, now have an actual have its satisfactions. Among these satis- secularist majority. In Northern Ireland factions, at any rate, one can include the recently, despite British government reasonable certainty that mere wish- inducements to register as Protestant or thinking did not help to stack one’s in- Catholic in the census–if only on the tellectual deck. Second, the atheist can false promise of compensation for past expect to be free of the pervasive solip- wrongs–12 percent of respondents de- sism that dis½gures religious thought. If clined to adopt a confessional allegiance. an earthquake should occur, or a comet For me, however, the country with the ½ll the sky, he can be sure that this devel- most impressive and intelligent secular- opment is not all, indeed not at all, about ist movement is India–most recent vic- his own brief existence and vain human tim of the stupidity and cruelty of mobi- aspirations. W. H. Auden put it deftly lized faith. when he wrote (as a hopeful Anglican): Looking up at the stars, I know quite well, 4 That for all they care, I can go to hell. Those who write about religion and who tell me that it stands for, or substitutes 3 for, various nationalist or emotional or historical needs, are telling me what I We live in a time when physics is much already know and what nobody is trying more awe-inspiring than any faith or any to deny. Those who maintain that it is a man-made deity, and when Galileo’s strong and continuing force in human realization–that the solar system is not affairs are simply bashing their shoul- earth-centered–has itself been eclipsed ders against an open door: I knew that and re-eclipsed, so that we can see the too. Those who write about religion and solar system itself as a dim and flicker- tell me that “God does not merely create ing bulb in an unimaginable sweep of something other than himself–he also galaxies and constellations. Paradoxical- gives himself to this other,” are claiming ly, it is those who calmly recognize that to know something that they cannot we are alone who may have the better possibly know. If I made a concession in chance of investing human life with such an argument with the religious, it would meaning as it might be made to possess. be this: I am willing to admit that there Those who decide to try and lead ethi- may be unknowable things. It’s a poor cal lives without an invisible authority return for this admission to be told that are also ‘blessed’ in another way, be- the devout already know the mind of cause they do not require a church, a god. That was the ground of argument to priesthood, or a reinforcing dogma or begin with–and what’s the point of an catechism. All that is needed is some ele- ineffable deity if he can be so readily mentary fortitude, and the willingness to comprehended by banal mammals like follow the flickering candle of reason ourselves? At least the faithful should be wherever it may lead. Despite many re- expected to display a little reverence

84 Dædalus Summer 2003 here. But apparently they can’t wait to also true of the ‘secular’ forms taken by The future seize their little shred of local and tem- the religious mentality. Ostensibly irreli- of an illusion poral authority. gious despotisms based on faith and And why is that? Their god already praise and adoration invariably take the controls the past and the future, and has form of cult worship. North Korea today dominion over paradise and hints on manifests this idolatry to an extent not how to get there. His kingdom, as the attained even by Hitler or Stalin or Mao. Christians say, is not of this world. But in But this observation does not just mean which world does religion actually exact what many take it to mean–that fanati- the demand for obedience? In this one. cism or tyranny can take an atheist form. How confoundedly odd. It means, rather, that fanaticism and Now you may choose to tell me that tyranny have a strong if not ineluctable Osama bin Laden (say) is upset about tendency to take a theistic form. The Jerusalem and Mecca and Medina, and connection between Stalin and the pre- still raw about the Crusades, and that decessor system that regarded the Czar this analysis of his agitation explains his in the light of the divine is fairly obvious. appeal. What could be more intelligible, China and especially North Korea can be or more trite? But how would it explain shown to have modeled their precepts of his theology? According to him, all is de- authority on Confucianism. The Japa- cided by heaven, and the true believer is nese emperor-worshiping militarists assured eternal luxury and congratula- took the principles of Zen as their inspi- tion: a vast promise compared to the ration and employed them as a training brevity and vicissitude of this vale of manual. (See the fascinating new study tears. Versions of this fantasy appear in Zen at War, written by Brian Victoria, a all creeds, with discrepant degrees of Buddhist savant.) Hitler was a pagan in literal-mindedness depending on the some ways but he got the Roman Cath- date and on the society. olic bishops to celebrate his birthday If I truly had such a belief, it would from the pulpit every year. The other fas- make me happy, or at least would have a cist leaders in Europe–Mussolini, Pavel- chance of doing so. But does it bring con- ic in Croatia, Franco in Spain, Salazar in tentment to its adherents? Not at all! Portugal, Horthy in Hungary–were in They can know no peace until they have more or less explicit alliance with the coerced everyone else into sharing their Vatican, and one of them (Father Tiso in good news. Does this argue for con½- Slovakia) was actually in holy orders. dence in the belief? Not self-evidently. Ah, but what about Martin Luther My provisional conclusion, then, is that King, Jr., and Gandhi? I would reply, the religious impulse lies close to the ½rst, that if religious believers are not root of the authoritarian, if not the total- willing to accept the connection be- itarian, personality. tween faith and horror as necessary, they should be careful in proposing any close 5 connection between faith and good Some obvious connections can’t avoid works. The emancipation of black notice even from the most casual ob- America and the independence of India server: religious absolutism makes a were not sacred causes: they were fought good match with tribal feeling and with for by many people of no religion (and sexual repression–two of the base in- opposed by many people of profound gredients of the fascistic style. This is faith). No supernatural commitment

Dædalus Summer 2003 85 Christopher was or is necessary in either case, and no strictly material. And few of us have not Hitchens on religious claim is vindicated by it. Take been tempted by harmless superstition: secularism the references to god out of Dr. King’s a sensation that something may have & religion speeches and they lose none of their happened for a purpose. However, no- moral force. Take the ostentatious Hin- body has proposed any nontautological duism out of Gandhi’s worldview and reason to suppose that this is more than you increase the chance that sectarian an emotion, and it is quite possible to fratricide in India could have been avert- survive cheerfully enough, once having ed. In neither outcome, in any case, can recognized that the problem of interpre- it sensibly be argued that god intervened tation that superstition proposes has no in human affairs. resolution. Again, those who wish that he would I was being intentionally gentle when I had better be careful what they ask for. If referred to superstition as ‘harmless.’ I their god can claim credit for miracles, suppose I mean that it is forgivable to be then he cannot avoid responsibility for impressed by, say, apparently fateful co- many other drastic occurrences. I would incidences, or moments of unusual think it base and illogical to argue that beauty in the natural order. However, suffering disproves the existence of god: while credulity and solipsism are to be there seems to be no ground for connect- found in every person, it is not usually ing the two ideas in the ½rst place. But if thought advisable to praise someone for I were arguing for the existence of a god, his credulous and solipsistic aspects. It I would be careful to avoid citing happi- is, rather, the work of education and civ- ness or good fortune, lest I arouse that ilization to train the mind to employ rea- same base and illogical (and corollary) son and to respect evidence, and to train thought in the minds of the uncon- the individual to be modest. Somebody vinced. claiming to detect a divine design in respect of himself may phrase the idea in 6 terms of humility, even submissiveness. If Karl Rahner really said that “the mys- But this false modesty is, as always with tery enfolds [me] in an ultimate and rad- false modesty, a symptom of the most ical love which commends itself to [me] majestic self-centeredness. (“Don’t as salvation and as the real meaning of mind me–I’m just busy doing god’s [my] existence,” then why should he not work.”) In individuals, I must say that I be asked how anybody can know this? ½nd this mainly irritating. But by all His statement is inoffensive enough: it means let them devote some of their day does not propose a jihad or a crusade or to prayer and reflection, and to an an Inquisition. But it is circular and awareness of the transience of all things. meaningless. So is his related claim that Religion, however, is not the recogni- “The world receives God, the in½nite tion of this private and dutiful attitude. and the ineffable mystery, to such an ex- It is its organized eruption from the pri- tent that he himself becomes its inner- vate into the public realm. It is the eleva- most life.” This is just as interesting as tion and collectivization of credulity and being told by some saffron-cloaked solipsism, and the arrangement of these mendicant that all things are part of the into institutional dogma and creed. It is great whole. Few of us have not had the attempt to decide what shall be some moment of ‘transcendence’: a feel- taught, what shall be allowed by way of ing that there is more to life than the sexual conduct and speech and even

86 Dædalus Summer 2003 thought, and what shall be legislated. The future And it is the attempt to make such deci- of an illusion sions beyond challenge, through the invocation of a supernatural authority. In many places, the attempt to do these things has been implicitly accepted as a resounding failure as well as a historical outrage, and it will be noticed that those societies that honor pluralism and liberty the most are those that have learned to keep religion in bounds. How- ever, there are constant efforts to undo the secular state and it is important for us never to forget what happened, and what happens, when these attempts are successful. 7 A word in closing on the ‘anti-theist’ position. I discover when I read the claims of even the more meek Tillich-like theologians that I am relieved that they are untrue. I would positively detest the all- embracing, refulgent, stress-free embrace that they propose. I have no wish to live in some Disneyland of the mind and spirit, some Nirvana of utter null completeness. Religion’s promise to deliver this is in my opinion plainly false. But what it can deliver me is the prospect of serfdom, mental and physical, and the chance to live under fantastic and cruel laws, or to be subjected to frantic violence. Nobody asserts that there is a straight line of connection between faith and murder and slavery. But that there is a connection is undeniable. When I analyze the sermons of bin Laden, I cannot see how his claim to divine authority and prompting is any better or any worse than anybody else’s. And I am not content to dispute his conclusions only with people who share his essential premise.

Dædalus Summer 2003 87 Akeel Bilgrami

The clash within civilizations

There is some reason to worry that against two countries with predomi- Samuel Huntington’s messianic vision nantly Muslim populations. Most Mus- of a “clash of civilizations,” even though lims, even when they are devout, have no it seemed to many of his commentators particular absolutist vision of their to be based on a rather super½cial under- creed. That is to say, they have no partic- standing of various parts of the world, ular desire to perpetrate atrocious (and might become a sort of self-ful½lling self-defeating) acts of terrorist violence prophecy as a result of the military in Islam’s name, no particular desire to schemes and actions of the present U.S. live lives observant in the last detail of government and its coterie of advisers. Shariah laws, no particular desire to live What seems the best hope against the under the tyrannies of oppressive gov- prophecy being ful½lled is the fact of a ernments that impose the strictest of quite different kind of clash, one within Islamic ideologies upon them, such as the civilizations of which Huntington for instance in Saudi Arabia or Iran. And writes. Let me focus on Islam in particu- ½nally, though they may often justi½ably lar, since it is so much the focus of cur- conceive of the West, and especially rent events and thinking. America, as a political and economic threat Reflective and knowledgeable people to them (because of its sometimes naked acknowledge and often assert that most pursuit of corporate interests, its sup- Muslims are not absolutists or ‘funda- port of Israeli occupation and expansion mentalists,’ to use the more misleading in Palestinian territory, its cynical sup- term. Even the president of the United port over decades of Islamic fundamen- States said so repeatedly in waging wars talist groups whenever that suited its geopolitical interests), unlike the absolutists, they do not particularly reject, as Akeel Bilgrami is Johnsonian Professor of Philos- a religious threat coming from ‘in½dels,’ ophy at Columbia University. He is the author of the various ideas and freedoms en- “Belief and Meaning” (1992) and two books trenched in Western political practice. forthcoming from Harvard University Press: The clash I have in mind, then, is be- “Self-Knowledge and Resentment” and “Politics tween the values of these Muslims and and the Moral Psychology of Identity,” which those of the absolutists, whom they far includes several essays that focus speci½cally on outnumber. That brings me to the theme Islamic identity. of my paper: It is right, I think, to describe this clash within Muslim popula-

88 Dædalus Summer 2003 tions as a clash between secularists and practices. This of course means that they The clash within absolutists. Let me explain why. may have to give up strict adherence to civilizations some elements of their religion–those A few years ago, the journalist Christo- that aspire to a political relevance and pher Hitchens gave an interesting lecture that clash with familiar liberal laws. To on secularism at Columbia University. be prepared to do so is the mark of what Inevitably, the question of Islam came I was calling ‘ordinary’ or ‘moderate’ or up. I raised a point during the discussion ‘non-absolutist’ Muslims. Since every- and in his response he made the extraor- one acknowledges that such Muslims dinary claim that the very category of a considerably outnumber the absolutists, ‘moderate Muslim’ was incoherent, that the prospect of secularism, soberly unit was doubtful that you can have reli- derstood along these lines, is in principle gious convictions and not be given to far better than Hitchens’s view suggests. fundamentalist tendencies and sympa- This is not to deny that a great deal of thies. I don’t think he was especially very dif½cult and important effort is picking on Islam. This was a reaction to needed to realize that prospect. But religion in general, familiar from a ro- whatever the needed effort is, it does not bust British intellectual tradition amount to what Hitchens has in mind, stretching from Bertrand Russell to viz., to bring about a society of unbeliev- Richard Dawkins.1 So, thinking he must ers, attractive though that might be for have something more subtle and plausi- atheists like Hitchens and me. ble in mind, I asked him a question that I What needs to be done depends on thought could not possibly get an af½r- how we diagnose the moral psychology mative answer: “It seems to follow from of Islamic politics today in different what you have said that it is impossible parts of the world. to have genuinely secular societies until Hitchens is perhaps led to his conclu- everyone, or at any rate most people, are sion of a somewhat heavy-handed ideal irreligious–but you don’t mean that, do of an irreligious conception of the secu- you?” He said, “Yes, I do.” lar because of a certain powerlessness If he is right, then it is quite wrong to and even unwillingness on the part of describe the ‘clash’ of values in the way I ‘ordinary’ Muslims to confront the abso- just did, as a conflict between the secu- lutists. Though I do not on this basis larist and the absolutist. If he is right, come to his conclusion (because to do so then we are not likely to have genuinely is premature and does not dig deep), I do secular societies virtually anywhere in have the anxiety and disappointment the world for a very long time. that many of us feel when we see most But he is wrong. The term ‘secularism’ ‘ordinary’ Muslims sit silently by while today, whatever its origins and history of the much smaller group of absolutists use, describes only a political doctrine, a gets the limelight. The right response to doctrine about how citizens, even citi- this no doubt troubling phenomenon is zens who are devout people, agree to live not to give up on the very idea that a and try and flourish in a polity that is practicing Muslim can be secular; it is not governed by religious principles and rather to try and diagnose why the ordinary Muslim is sitting silently by, why he 1 This tradition has mostly targeted doctrinal or she is not more critical of the abso- religions such as Christianity and Islam rather lutist with whom he or she shares so lit- than, say, Buddhism. tle by way of ideology and ideal.

Dædalus Summer 2003 89 Akeel efore taking up that question, it is Here, by the nature of the case, the Bilgrami B on worth noting ½rst the manifest relevance arithmetic points to a slightly different secularism here of an elementary link between political diagnosis. Since these are dem- & religion arithmetic and politics. If most Muslims ocratic nations with all the formal appa- everywhere (including Iran, Saudi Ara- ratus of a democratic state, what is evi- bia, and Pakistan) are not absolutists, it dently needed is not merely a democrat- seems remarkable that these non- ic polity, but far greater democracy with- absolutist voices are not heard as the in the Muslim community, which will al- representative voices of Islam, wherever low the absolutist voices to be shown up it exists. It is remarkable that the much for what they are: a shrill but unrepre- smaller group of absolutists seems more sentative minority. central to the image and the voice that What forms such democratization Islamic nations project. should or could take within minority Since an explicit rationale of demo- communities in democratic states like cratic politics is that it calibrates repre- India and Britain is a complex question sentation with numbers, the failure of with no easy and obvious answer. It is a democratization in these societies is one subject that is unduly neglected in politi- obvious diagnosis for this remarkable cal sociology and political theory. discrepancy. We know that in elections Still, democratization itself will be in Iran and Pakistan the fundamentalist hard to achieve–whether within Mus- parties never get anything close to a ma- lim minorities in democratic countries jority. In Pakistan whenever there have like India or in Muslim countries such as been elections, they do not get even 10 Iran and Saudi Arabia–unless moderate percent of the vote. In fact, it is a perfect- Muslims are able to come out of their ly safe generalization to say that funda- shells. To do so, they must become much mentalist Islamic parties meet with very more openly critical of the fundamental- little success in democratic elections ists, with whom they share so little. everywhere in the world, unless they But criticism of fundamentalist Mus- have been persecuted or suppressed, lims by moderates has to date been rela- such as in Algeria. tively muted, largely, I think, because of The problem is slightly different in a deep-seated moral psychology: As a countries where Muslims are a minority, result of a long colonial history, with its such as in India (or for that matter, Brit- detailed subjugations and attitudes of ain), and where there are functioning condescension, and as a result of contin- democracies. In these countries, the uing feelings of helplessness in the face state (responding for political reasons to of what is perceived as American domi- possibly disruptive pressures from an nation and Israeli occupation and expan- aggrieved and aggressive interest group) sion, even moderate Muslims feel that to generally pays far greater attention to criticize their own people in any way is absolutist Muslim voices than to the letting the side down, somehow capitu- vastly more numerous (but relatively lating to a long-standing history of being muted) voices of moderates. In this cir- colonized and made to feel inferior. cumstance, absolutists implicitly be- This suggests that there is yet another come the voice of the community, and clash that is pertinent, a clash of atti- exercise an influence quite dispropor- tudes and values, not this time between tionate to their numbers. moderates and fundamentalists, but a

90 Dædalus Summer 2003 clash internal to the psychology of moderates they (including Osama bin Laden) have The clash within themselves. Most moderate Muslims are openly declared that these issues are civilizations torn between their dislike for fundamen- central to them. talist visions of their religion and soci- But, in any case, it is not primarily the eties on the one hand, and, on the other, fundamentalist who needs to be ad- their deep defensive feelings of resent- dressed. It is the far more ubiquitous ment against forces that they perceive to moderate who needs to be convinced be alien and hostile in one colonial form that criticizing his own people and his or another for a very long time, forces own stultifying silence in the presence of that have often supported the funda- shrill revivalist Islamic voices is not sim- mentalists when it suited their political ply the handing over of ultimate victory agendas. to forces of long-standing external dom- This second layer of internal clash ination. The cruelty of wars, of bomb- within Islam is a vital factor in under- ings, of occupations, of expansionist set- standing the scope for a secular Islam. tlements, of embargoes and sanctions, of There can be no scope for secularism if support of corrupt elites, does nothing this conflict in the hearts of moderate to convince them of this, does nothing Muslims is not resolved in one direction to give them the necessary con½dence– rather than another–that is, if they do nor does the often transparently exploit- not ½nd a way to overcome these defen- ative pursuit of Western corporate inter- sive feelings of resentment. Without ests in these regions. They only encour- overcoming them, they will not be able age and increase the defensiveness. to take the creative and assertive steps It is extraordinary that humane and necessary to oppose the absolutists–and intelligent people do not see this quite no amount of democratization of Mus- obvious point. Even someone like Sal- lim societies will help to subdue the fun- man Rushdie, who has come around to damentalists unless the moderates are saying that his brilliant, irreverent writ- con½dent enough to launch that opposi- ings about Islam were intended not to tion. governments that have suppressed their peo- There is no space here to elaborate in ple politically and economically in Iran under any detail what it would take to over- the Shah, in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt–these are come such a defensive cast of mind. But all irrelevant issues. Muslims may say that it is a form of convenient and self- these things are relevant, but that is all a ve- neer of false political rhetoric on top of the serving obtuseness on our part to think, real underlying cause of the problem: their reas some do, that addressing the issues ligious fanaticism. And even if they think that that give rise to this defensive resent- these things are relevant, even that is false; it ment is irrelevant and unnecessary.2 It is is false consciousness. At bottom, all that is cru- perhaps true that it will not affect the cial is that Islam has bred fanaticism, and addressing all these issues will not help at all fundamentalists to address these issues with that.” It’s not hard to see that it is a short –but even that is questionable, since step from this view of things to conclude that nothing will help but ‘shock and awe.’ This 2 It is quite common to hear people say things attitude is more than just self-serving or ob- like: “Nothing will help with these Muslims; tuse; it is a form of impertinence, as all such the issues are not about corporate presence charges of false consciousness are, because it and exploitation in Arab lands, not about Is- makes claims to having more insight into peo- raeli intransigence and expansionism, not ple’s motivations than the people themselves about American support for corrupt elites and have.

Dædalus Summer 2003 91 Akeel merely ridicule the fundamentalist con- gious Muslims would have to oppose the Bilgrami on ception of Islam but also to give encour- fundamentalists and therefore relin- secularism agement to the moderate Muslim oppo- quish some aspects of their religion. & religion sition to the fundamentalist, goes on to They would have to relinquish certain support two wars that have done every- ideas about relations to non-Muslims, thing possible to undermine any motiva- ideas about gender relations in institution that a moderate might have in forg- tions such as marriage, divorce, alimony, ing that opposition. etc., and commitments to censorship But all this is to take up matters that and punishment of blasphemy. But to do are current and controversial, and I did so, it will be said, would be to give up on not want this essay to be primarily po- one’s Muslim identity, to cease to see lemical. The diagnostic points I am mak- oneself as a Muslim. ing are much more general. To put them This line of thought is based on a in summary, I have been arguing: 1) that numbingly false picture of cultural iden- there is an implicit clash within Islamic tity that fundamentalists would like to societies between moderate and funda- encourage. But a person’s identity is not mentalist Muslims, and sheer arithmetic given by a checklist, such that if every suggests that democratization (includ- item is not checked off one loses one’s ing intracommunity democratization) in identity. Identity is simply not a codi½ed Muslim societies will help end this clash phenomenon in that way. It is fluid and in a secular direction; and 2) that resolv- malleable and survives enormous ing a second, quite different sort of clash amounts of revision and erosion, as we by paying humane attention to the very all know even from Muslim societies in speci½c sort of internal moral and psy- many parts of the world today. The idea chological conflict that the moderate that if one gives up a Shariah law about Muslim faces may be a necessary and blasphemy or alimony, or even a cus- prior condition for resolving the clash tomary religious practice such as pur- between secularists and fundamental- dah, that one is ceasing to be a Muslim ists. altogether is an egregious misrepresen- tation of what it takes to be a Muslim. I Why is it that political positions such know any number of Muslims, not as Huntington’s and Hitchens’s are blind déracinés like me but religious people, to these more subtle clashes, which whom it would be a travesty to count as should be the basis of any effort to de- anything but Muslims, and who have fuse the more portentous clash that they altogether shed these offending convic- predict? tions and practices. To say that they I suspect it is because of a line of don’t count as having Muslim identity is thought that goes something like this: to assume a conception that only an Populations that identify themselves absolutist would af½rm. Huntington and with Islam could not possibly resolve Hitchens, therefore, should worry a bit these clashes along these lines, because that their views here are too perfectly of to do so would be to give up on that a piece with the absolutist’s. identi½cation with Islam, to give up on Since there is scope for misunder- Muslim identity. standing here, it is important to state As I said at the outset, if these conflicts that the point I have just made about were resolved in the ways I think possi- identity not being codi½able should not ble, then moderate but nevertheless reli- be confused with the quite different and

92 Dædalus Summer 2003 much more glib idea of what is some- tion, which will sometimes, though by The clash within times called ‘hybridity’ or ‘multiple no means always, produce a new identi- civilizations identities.’ There is a tendency, mostly in ty. Identities, conceived and shaped in contemporary literary theory, to say that these ‘dialectical’ rather than ‘hybrid’ in a world of postcoloniality and large- terms, are hard won; they reflect the scale immigration, there are no identi- constitutive relationship that history ties, only cultural flux that dissolves and experience have to the self and its notions such as ‘self’ and identi½cation moral psychology.3 with religion and other forms of cultural belonging. But to return from these more theoreti- Of course, the idea that we all have cal reflections to the central point of this multiple identities is a banality. Who can paper, which they are intended to make deny it? But it’s not an idea that could possible: There is much scope for Mus- possibly overturn the plain fact that in lims retaining their identity as Muslims, many historical and social contexts, for even as they de facto shed this or that quite speci½able functional reasons, aspect of their faith. It has already hap- some of these multiple identities loom pened in many parts of the world. That much larger for us than others, and is to say, there is much scope for them to abide for much longer than others. What acquire an increasing and cumulative makes the picture of constant flux and secularism even within their commit- hybridity (or, to use Salman Rushdie’s ment to Islam. But they will ½nd it very wonderful word ‘chutney½cation’) so hard to do so if we do not cease to gear implausible is that it cannot accommo- our rhetoric and political agendas to the date this plain fact, and actually ½nds it ideal of a ‘clash of civilizations,’ and theoretically misguided to try to do so. focus instead on these clashes within The notion I am invoking is not hy- Islamic civilization itself. bridity at all, but a lack of codi½cation in one’s understanding of identity, which 3 For more on these themes, see my essays can allow for revision of commitments “What is a Muslim? Fundamental Commit- and values without the necessary loss of ment and Cultural Identity,” Critical Inquiry 18 identity. The only thing that such an idea (4) (Summer 1992); “Identity and Identi½- shares with hybridity is the negative goal cation” in The International Encyclopedia ofthe Social and Behavioral Sciences (New York: Else- of repudiating the essentialism of pri- vier, 2003); “Secularism and the Moral Psy- mordial and immutable conceptions of chology of Identity” in Rajeev Bhargava, Amiya identity. But to achieve this goal, it posits Kumar Bagchi, and R. Sudarshan, eds., Multi- not some postmodern conception of an culturalism, Liberalism, and Democracy (New incoherent psyche produced by immi- Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). grant or postcolonial experience, but rather a quite different neo-Hegelian idea–of a psyche informed by an internal conflict of values. These conflicts, which are engendered by historical or even sometimes by personal encounters, do not altogether dissolve notions of self and identity. Rather, they become the occasion for a community’s (or individual’s) internal deliberation and negotia-

Dædalus Summer 2003 93

Poem by Lucie Brock-Broido

The One Thousand Days

There is the mourning dish of salt outside My door, a cup of quarantine, saucerless, a sign

That one inside had been taken down By grieving, ill tongue-tied will or simple

Illness, yet trouble came. I have found electricity in mere ambition,

If nothing else, yet to make myself sick on it, A spectacle of marvelling & discontent.

Let me tell you how it came to this. I was turning over the tincture of things,

I was trying to recollect the great maroon Portière of everything that had ever happened,

When the light ½rst stopped its transport & the weather ceased to be interesting,

Then the dark drape closed over the altar & a minor city’s temple burnt to ground.

I was looking to become inscrutable. I was longing to be seen through.

It was at slaughtering, it Was at the early stain

Of autumn when the dirt- Tinted lambs were brought down

From the high unkempt ½elds of Sligo, bidden, Unbidden, they came down.

Dædalus Summer 2003 95 Poem by It was then that I was quit Lucie Brock- Broido Of speech, a thousand northbound nights of it. Then was ambition come Gleaming up like a fractured bone

As it breaks through the bodiced veil of skin. I marry into it, a thistle on

The palm, salt-pelt on The slaughtering, & trouble came.

That the name of bliss is only in The diminishing–as far as possible–of pain.

That I had quit the quiet velvet cult of it, Yet trouble came.

Lucie Brock-Broido is the director of poetry in the Writing Division in the School of the Arts at Columbia University. She is the author of three collections of poetry: “A Hunger” (1988), “The Master Letters” (1995), and “Trouble in Mind” (forthcoming).

96 Dædalus Summer 2003 Fiction by Lee K. Abbott

Men of rough persuasion

Almost lost among the gabbies and pocket of his Omar Sharif. The stotinki, goombahs, fakeloos and funnelheads, of course, is ill-gotten gelt, two K of catamites and hypes, rajahs and ringers, which are the tala-taka for a patty-cake and can-openers and Visigoths in the Open Sesame at a poobah’s palace off twenty-plus chapters that are The Gates the Forbidden Square. Little T is jumpy of Hell, a semi-sci-½ mystery with no lit- –“sweating bullets,” you’re tempted to tle tallyho at the end of it, is the skel say–and is medicating himself with Harbee Hakim Hazar–Triple H himself corn from the well. When he’s not mak- –an Ur-Dravidian whose opening line of ing too loud chitchat with the bar rag, dialogue, addressed to his image in a Lonesome Abe, he’s trying to ½gure out, mirror, is this: “Behold, dips and dew- given the givens of the wide and craven heads, the baddest, blackest bindle- world, who to hose ½rst. Seventeen bopper to bo your peep.” thousand samolians, after all, buys a lot He’s a dropper, contract-style, working of loose. A lot of uptown leg. A lot of this evening for the Solatzo sect. Blades downtown boogaloo. A shoofly as ½nan- are his specialty–the shiv, the ice pick, cially ½t as he could trip some beaucoup the Flora Dora. His mark is Terry “Little light fantastic. Still, what complicates T” Blount, a thief built like a flagpole, his thinking is that of late he, too, has and an hour before Triple H guts him in been in the employ, albeit sporadic, of the alley, the half-loaf is camped at a the Solatzos, in particular of the High burp-n-urp on Euclid Avenue in New Pillow himself, Don Marco, an elder too Cleveland, Khalid and Ling’s O-Town of wrathful even for the Old Testament. A Music, nearly twenty large in the breast “hard man,” the Brunos say. Speci½cally, The Don has put the fear of God into Lit- Lee K. Abbott is the author of six collections of tle T–fear with a head and tail and im- short ½ction, including “Wet Places at Noon” pressively large teeth. It’s fear with lots (1997), “Living After Midnight” (1991), and of x’s and y’s in it, a parlez-vous more “Dreams of Distant Lives” (1989). A professor of spit than speech. So here the hooch-head English at The Ohio State University, he is twice is, Little T, breath ragged, heart rattling, the recipient of the O. Henry Award, and his work gorge in the gullet–only time, he sus- has been twice selected for both the Pushcart Prize pects, between him and an ugly end. and “The Best American Short Stories.” And here he comes, out of the dive, looking both ways–at once, if possible–he a © 2003 by Lee K. Abbott

Dædalus Summer 2003 97 Fiction by disease with mucous and red eyes and –strings, Mother Nature rinsing her del- Lee K. clammy feet. icate underthings. Abbott The atmospherics are minimal–miz- “I suppose I got no choice,” Little T zling rain, light suf½cient enough to see says. “I suppose we couldn’t negotiate, how alone you are, the scrape and hiss say.” and clatter, all the effects you expect in Little T is doing a lot of supposing, this genre–and Little T is making his Harbee says. way to his bucket, a bona ½de land yacht “It’s curtains,” Little T says. “Suppos- (a Volgograd with custom largo and rust ing’s called for.” on the kootenai), which is parked Harbee can appreciate that. Truly. A around the corner. Several steps behind, humanoid, even gink as pubic and in- hewing to the shadows, follows Triple H, consequential as Little T, is entitled. You whose brain, we’re to infer, is part ½sh, got your bottom-feeders. But, not un- part ferret. You can’t imagine him as a happily, you got your bottom-feeders boy, at least not an unarmed boy or oth- with backbone. The low-down getting erwise coffee-and-doughnut. When Lit- upright. tle T reaches his iron–you can all but “You a family man?” Little T asks. hear his quote big sigh of relief unquote Past tense, Triple H tells him. The cup- –Triple H makes his move: the Damas- cake and carnage didn’t work out. There cus high in the back, free arm around the were tensions, obvious points of conten- neck, trap close to the trapper. tion–hairs split, nits picked. Now it’s “Into the alley, sweat sock,” he growls. just chippies, bims, tea bags, and the like Little T goes wet in the whistle. What –Janes no longer worrying about their else can he do? A force of nature, irra- choice in chuck. tional and heartless as a hurricane, has “Me, too,” Little T says. “Got a daugh- him throttled, something perilously ter somewhere though. Margaret. Her sharp digging hard into the tender flesh mother named her after the saint.” between his wings. There’s another page and a half of “The Don?” he says. biography, the bulk of it touchingly ordi- “None other,” says Triple H, spinning nary (Little T owns a cat, it turns out, a Little T around. Harbee prefers the face- monster with one ear named Mister Piti- to-face, respects the various truths, ripe ful; Triple H prefers Knott’s Berry Farm or raw, you can read in the eyes of an over Disneyland, cartoons make him Opie about to land mug up outside the nervous–“It’s a syndrome,” he says, locked gates to Paradise. Little T, Harbee “you can look it up”), before Triple H is pleased to think, looks like a Jasper ea- orders Little T to fork over the moola, ger to take direction, to curry favor. whereupon Little T, The End rushing “You Harbee Hazar?” Little T asks. at him in bold type and exclamation “Triple H?” points, grows emotional–a catch in the “Chains and chips,” he says. throat, several tears, some pathetic trem- “I heard about you.” bling of the flippers. It’s repartee you ½nd under D, Triple H “Get a grip,” Triple H says with exas- thinks. D for Despair–yip to yap when peration. “That isn’t becoming at all.” the ipso gets facto. “Sorry,” Little T says, sniffling. But, “Figured you were Fiji. Maybe some- Uncle Jesus, this is a dire moment– body’s outback.” gloom and doom, expiration and such, “African American,” Harbee tells him. the Kibosh itself. “Yardarms and lamp- You can imagine a sound track here posts,” he says. “The Big Sleep.” 98 Dædalus Summer 2003 “Too true,” Harbee says. have passed. The Don is dust–a stroke Men of Here Little T pulls out the Knox, a wad in the middle of a sit-down across from a rough persuasion the size of a welterweight’s ½st, enough precinct viceroy dressed in vulcanized geetus to put some satisfying distance go-go boots and a leather breastplate– between you and the vulgar life. so the High Pillow now is The Don’s “You don’t have to do this,” Little T nephew, Jake Fox, for whom, dingus or says. no, Harbee is effecting a necessary diplo- “A contract is a contract,” Triple H matic service on the eighth floor of the says. “Plus, there’s a reputation, pride in downtown Hyatt, the particulars of the job, and related issues. Passion and which the dish had been quizzing him action, Heidegger puts it.” on only seconds before she said she “A mope, this Hi-guy?” could stand some skee. “Parched.” “Light reading,” Triple H tells him. “A “Help yourself,” Harbee says, indicat- paragraph or two before bedtime. Reli- ing the minibar. giously. Data to crunch before the Sand- Her sashay from the sofa in the suite is man visits and it’s thereafter cataracts a story with four endings, three of them and Coney dogs.” unique to doomsday. Lots of if-only and The mazuma has changed hands now, holy-cow in those hips. Lots of swear-to- disappeared into the Adam & Eve Triple God upon that full-sprung hindmost. H is wearing. “So the deal is–”she starts, which ex- “Why me?” Little T says. position Harbee once again tries to detail Our hero shrugs, the question more by saying that they, the Ozzie and Harri- schoolroom than clubhouse. “You’re a et they are, stay put, watch the paint loose end,” he says. “The Don prefers peel, pass the time, until the phone call, the tidy. Duck soup and getaway sticks.” maybe a couple hours from now, where- Little T seems to take this information upon she returns to her fourscore as in, pick it over for dry spots, maybe glom Mrs. Ernest Hoom, mobster’s housefrau, a way to leave the air. and he, fully recompensed, goes back to “How you going to do it?” Little T his as the proud owner of a Gold’s Gym asks. franchise on Euclid near the clinic and Harbee says, “With dispatch.” the Plaza of Previous Humiliations. Little T looks around. No Angels of “You ever met my brother?” she says. Mercy. No Tartars. No Air Cav. Just night “Seen pictures,” Harbee tells her. as the arty-farties at mgm imagine it, The croak’s got hands the size of shov- the last of his allotted thousands. elheads. Deals in hop and ice and snow, And then, quick as the weasel pops, has a back-scratching arrangement with Little T is zotzed, ef½ciently if brutally, the Greene gang from the Kingdome of the blade thrust under the breastbone, Lyndhurst and parts. Represented by a beneath the right nipple and through the lip named Leach with a nest in the Ter- pump, Little T to bleed out in less than a minal Tower. Shags a looker–Doreen or half hour while Harbee Hakim Hazar– Noreen, some such–lives in Bay Village, nothing between his ears but three bars Miss Pneumatic Tool and Die once upon from what he thinks is an old-timey Isle a time. of Dogs bootleg–walks with purpose “He’s an animal,” the sister is saying. right out of Chapter Two. “My high school prom, the kid who takes me out doesn’t get me back by You don’t read about Harbee again un- midnight or whatever. Dennis takes a til the middle of To Hell and Gone. Years bat to his knees. The Rocky Colavito Dædalus Summer 2003 99 Fiction by model, if I remember. Thirty-six “African American,” Harbee says, his Lee K. Abbott ounces.” pants suddenly too tight. A family man, Harbee thinks. “No offense,” she says. “The Neck–my husband?–he’s no “None taken,” he tells her, having lost better.” The sultana is pointing at the interest in the to and fro of C. J. Pucker minibar, door open, hers a pro½le that is and her look-Ma-no-hands attitude. all mutton and handful of ideas as won- “I’m a Democrat,” Mrs. Hoom is say- derful as they are woeful. “You want?” ing, turning off the floor lamp next to Harbee shakes his head. “Business be- the sofa, whereupon the ambience fore pleasure.” morphs from Broadway to boudoir al- “Your loss,” she says. most immediately. Heat’s not rising any- Triple H pulls Harlem Sunset out of his more; it’s settled, close and wet, nothing pocket, flips to the page where the Ral- to do but sweat and try not to breathe phie, dark meat named Feet, is crawling overmuch. free from still another instance of dire “Look, Mrs. Hoom–” straits. The chapter before featured a “Doris,” she says, a given name ½nally two-ply, C. J. Pucker–“the hostess with for the 3-d havoc he is guessing will fol- the mostest”–and Brother Hazar is hop- low. ing she’ll show up again, heater in hand “You ever been to the House of and hitting on all eight. Slaves?” he asks. “It’s in Goree, an is- “So, technically,” the kitten is saying, land off western Africa.” “I’m a hostage, right?” She’s never been anywhere, she tells Harbee lays it out–the sukiyaki and him. New York City, sure. Florida. The the succotash. “Insurance,” he tells her. Neck’s got a condo near the Shula com- “My guy and your guy are in powwow, pound in Miami. But anyplace without setting parameters. Your brother’s plugs nocturnes and Neptunites–who’s kid- got one of ours, we got you–a way of ding who? guaranteeing that nobody gets jobbed.” “They speak Wolof there,” he’s saying, She’s back to the sofa now, legs hoping to pile up suf½cient je-ne-sais- crossed, and Harbee’s having a hard time quoi to hide behind, scoot in low, and thinking about anything that isn’t score some hey from the diddle-diddle blonde, shimmy, and sassafras. She’s before the cock-a-doodle does. “I’ve pure rumble, she is, a biped with slant been to Banjul, too. The mouth of the and hoorah and wire, a torcher you Gambia River. They got hibiscus you wouldn’t object to ½nding in your wiki- would not believe.” up. “If you say so,” she says, all the angles “So what do you want to do?”she says. here now Chinese and outer space, and He points to his book. C. J. has just put Harbee feels too large for himself, the in an appearance, thoroughly darb and mob inside him ready to riot, especially dolly. now that she, mostly belly and kneecap “We could–you know,” she says, like a and ooh-la-la, has abandoned the sofa clerk or a teller, funny business evidently for parts spectacularly unknown. still business after all, and Harbee is “So I’m saying,” our hero begins, “that trusting his puss doesn’t say too much I’m a serious man. Maybe you shouldn’t about the racket his thumper is making. be trifling with me.” “I mean, I never had a black man be- She’s not trifling, she insists. She’s the fore.” bulge and the breeze, a clean sneak with

100 Dædalus Summer 2003 no nasties to fret about, keen to pitch culiar to desperation and glee both, their Men of rough woo. clothes the product of forces of incon- persuasion “And Ernest?” he asks. venience, a stone to pray to behind that “The Neck?” She’s not a giant step big swirling mass overhead, the tele- away, a red-hot in high heels. “The Neck phone–noisy as the sixteenth century –Ernest–is a gourd, Mister Skipout in itself–ringing berries and buttons and the flesh, a loogan with nix in his noo- bings, Harbee grabbing the thing, his a dle. He’s my concern, not yours.” “hello” in spirit only, not another “ugh” Tripe H has a moment with his higher to utter before he is to vanish into space self here, weighing the right against the white as the walls of Wonderland. not-so. He suffers no special affection “It’s The Neck,” the voice grumbles, for The Neck, sure. He also suffers no full of nails and sandpaper. “Put Doris special desire to be a sharper himself. on.” You got the tomato, he tells himself. Or Which Harbee does, the phone disap- you got trip for biscuits. Your call. May- pearing into the bedding like quicksand. be somebody throws lead one day. May- be you toot the wrong ringer. Or, chick- The last time you see Triple H is in en and cheese, you get ribbed up and it’s Hell’s Hounds, where he’s just left a can thereafter glad rags and eggs in the cof- house, the scent of a redhead cat½sh fee. Harbee consults the book again. named Charisse in every crease and pore What would Feet do? of him. His ashes have been hauled, his “Time’s a-wasting,” Doris is saying. clock cleaned, his buck wheated, and “Let’s hootchy-koo, Mr. Hazar. My now, less than a half-block from his boil- pump is primed.” er, last year’s Anglo-Saxon, his head is Another light has gone off–she’s part stuffed with images of a bop most hori- electrical storm, he decides, part work of zontal, the heels round and the sugar art–and, what with the curtains closed, sweet. Threw down enough spondulix to it’s dark as a French movie. make her squeak “Eefff,” and then “My tribe was the Dinka,” he says. “A tipped his mitts to say, “Who’s your very proud people.” daddy, cheeks?” At which point, Cha- Doris has made a noise, sound with risse, to the possible what the tongue is muscle in it. And gland. to taste, went all but jingle-brained with “My tribe was the O’Boyles,” she says. delight, a lid to be lost if she were wear- “A very drunk people.” ing one. Without any more “but” and “might,” So here he walks, the memory of her they’ve made contact, and soon the get-along getting nicely along, a ½t to be physics have begun, tabs and slots every- pitched and a hoity gone toity, until he’s where, everything coming to hand either reached his crate, opened the door and hot or easily pushed out of the way, sec- settled himself behind the wheel when onds falling away from the future in from the inexplicable darkness of the handfuls, the landscape in Harbee’s backseat comes a voice as unexpected as mind seventy-½ve percent storybook oa- it is feminine: “Grab a little air, Brother sis, Doris Hoom a secret a country or Hazar.” two might ½ght over, and the only word Triple H needs a moment to get his going back and forth too vowelly for En- breathing in order, to rake the sand back glish–one and one not making two any- on his beach. more, just a last act full of blocking pe- “You gave me a fright, Miss,” he says.

Dædalus Summer 2003 101 Fiction by “Ms.,” she says. “I’m a modern girlie.” scenario and who-knows-what in the Lee K. Abbott Nothing in the rearview mirror, just of½ng. the suggestion of a shape, darkness “You remember a wrong number measurably darker than usual. A ghost, named Terry Blount?” the woman asks. he thinks. Probably what you see when “Little T?” you’ve gone over the edge with the rams “This in the Dark Ages?” Harbee won- or hit the pipe, when the gas is Nevada ders. and the cap snapped. Still, he’s hearing “The darkest,” she says. things, too–speci½cally the direction to “Could be.” put his hands on the steering wheel. “Take your time, slip knot.” “That the crop?” he says. “This a He does, his time getting bunched and bump?” tumble-down, too many yesterdays to Harbee doesn’t know, and won’t for paw through. There’s a derrick named several minutes, that this is his ½nal Goodnight and a clout called Shirttail hour. He’s about to exit–an adios at- Shelly, never mind various conks and tended by gunpowder and badinage–so flatties and frails, Mustang Sally among we won’t know, for example, much more them–but so far, nothing T-related. about his fondness for seafood (grouper “A sap, mostly b & e,” the woman is foremost) or about his many but anony- saying, “a little goosey, I’m told. Liked mous donations to pal and the Fund for the eel juice too much, the pins when he the Terribly Wistful. He’s a Leo, too, and could afford the luxury. Had a pan with taking an extension class in Personal Ex- blue eyes.” pression at Tri-C–the “wanton word,” “You’re told, you say?” says the teacher, a Dagwood with flesh “My father,” she says. “Terrence the shade of week-old pork. His moth- Xavier Blount.” er’s dead, a lunger, and all that’s left of Harbee tries again. Less who’s who, the Hazar clan is a cousin with a fond- though, than what’s what. Lots of Big’s, ness for bangtails and an uncle–Fergus however. Biggie Smalls, for instance. Big maybe, or Ferdie–more ding than dong. Bob Harris from Harrisburg, as much Why, but for a blip or a broderick, Triple gaycat as gonif. And a horn-head called H is virtually retired. His Bigness, raised bees, hustled a lot of “How’s Charisse?” the skirt asks. “She jack for the Philly folks. But no Little’s, still all high-hat and happenstance?” not for the longest time–until, a rock Here Harbee takes an inventory: head, having tumbled free in his brain, Harbee heart, the Alderman–all the parts he Hakim Hazar remembers, and the root could count on only a second ago. of him goes grainy and rank. The Don. “So you know the lady,” Harbee says, The many large. The burble of blood. keeping the mustard off his cornbread. Uncle Jesus. “We used to drink out of the same bot- “You’re Margaret,” he says. “After the tle,” the modern girlie says. “Worked the saint.” Argentine squeeze one time. Did doobs “The one and only,” she tells him. in Chi-town. Habeas, Mister Hazar, and “That’s what–mid-Nineties?” corpus.” “Ninety-one,” she says. “I’m twelve at Still nothing speci½c in the backseat. the time. Go to St. Mary’s of the Weep- Not a kisser. Not a mush. Not a map. Just ing Wood. The plaid jumper, the white the voice, doubtlessly a rod attached. blouse–the whole bit. Vocabulary Jumping Jesse James, a Vincent Price champ three years running.”

102 Dædalus Summer 2003 Harbee’s ready to blow. Out the door, “How you and me come to be in your Men of rough up the street–climb the beanstalk if heap on the last night of your life, persuasion necessary. right?” “Legerdemain,” Margaret says. “That She’s on the nut there, he tells her. was one of my words.” Right as a hook. The threads are popping now, the “You remember Doris Hoom?” she seams of him giving way. After all, he says. “Downtown Hyatt. You and her knows up from up, the kite from the and a rumpled king-size.” string, what one whizzer whispers to How could he forget, he says. She was another. jip and juju both, mesca and marbles, the “Staphylococcus,” she is saying. “Any hubba-hubba and the alaban left. of various spherical parasitic bacteria “Then you remember The Neck, too?” occurring in grapelike clusters–” Instantly, Triple H has no need for any “I could apologize,” Harbee offers, additional up-and-down. The picture’s considering his what-if’s. clear to him–savvy and sin and singular. The silence back there has heft and You got your Numero Uno, Jake Fox, and hue. your Butter and Beans Buster, The Neck. “Make restitution,” she says eventual- You got the rap and the details that bring ly. it to life, your poke and your preaching. “Exactly. Put you next to respectable You mix it together, let sit for three de- cush. We dip the bill, an hour passes cades or so, and, quicker than you can with some chin, I work the blower, and cop a smell from the barrel, you got a –bingo–you’re lousy with lint. No tin-talking tamale in the dark and a peach. No Shoshone.” dinge about to be ½lled with daylight. “Everything silk and swift.” “You ready?” Margaret says. “Indeed,” he says. “The world wise Harbee nods. “But not willing.” and white.” She’s got a butt lit, and in the rearview This time the silence is frigid, the bad Harbee sees she’s more speed trap than air at the bottom of a grave. parking lot, something in the eyes that “You’re forgetting the Shakespeare,” says “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” she says. He’s pinched now, unwanted tonnage “The tit for tat, you mean?” collapsed atop his innermosts, time That’s precisely what she means. The grinding forward with a screech, his bossa and the nova. The eye for an eye. pipes starting to clog. Not to mention the teeth and hair and “Zucchetto,” he says, a light way at the hands. end of the tunnel. Now it’s Harbee’s turn to turn yapless. She gives him a pointedly amused look He’s in a corner, Dutch any way he cuts –one-part margarita, one-part mother it, his whip lashed and his shot put. of pearl. Buck, yeah, but no Rogers. Modern Margaret has the hooey on him, “From the Italian,” she begins. “A the powder very nearly dry in his vitals. skullcap worn by Roman Catholic cler- He ½nds himself wishing for a lucky star, gymen.” She sighs–too much air, too a ding-a-ling–any hombre with super- little space. “You ½nished, Harbee?” natural powers and more than common Triple H consults that tunnel anew. compassion for a smoke being ½tted for Yeah, he guesses he is. a wooden kimono. “So I’m wondering,” he says.

Dædalus Summer 2003 103 Dialogue between Kwame Anthony Appiah & Robert S. Boynton

on philosophy, race, sex &c.

robert s. boynton: You recently be- backlash against dark-skinned immi- came a U.S. citizen. Why? grants and it might be dif½cult to stay here unless one was a citizen. kwame anthony appiah: There are very few differences between the things q: Your close collaborative friendship you can do as a resident alien and as a with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has been citizen, but I wanted to be able to vote enormously productive for the both of and to be on juries. And I felt that there you. What role has Gates had in your in- was a possibility that there would be a tellectual development?

A Fellow of the American Academy since 1995, a: Well, for one thing, I wouldn’t be in Kwame Anthony Appiah is Rockefeller University this country if it weren’t for Skip Gates. Professor of Philosophy at Princeton’s University He was a Mellon Fellow–the ½rst black Center for Human Values. Born and educated in one, I think–at Clare College, Cam- England–he is reputed to be the ½rst African to bridge, which was my college as well. have received a Ph.D. at Cambridge–he has writ- There weren’t many brown or black peo- ten widely on issues of race, multiculturalism, and ple at Clare–I think there were three of questions of ethnic and sexual identity. He is also us at the time–and Skip says that people the author of three mystery novels. His most recent kept asking him whether he’d met me, book is “Thinking It Through: An Introduction to and that when white people keep asking Contemporary Philosophy.” you that question you can usually assume that the other person is black. Robert S. Boynton is director of the graduate mag- We became very close. He was already azine journalism program at New York University. living with Sharon, his wife, and I would His pro½les and essays have appeared in “The New often go over for dinner. Wole Soyinka Yorker,” “The New York Times Magazine,” “The was at Cambridge, and the three of us Atlantic Monthly,” and “Lingua Franca,” among would talk about Pan-African issues. It other publications. His conversation with Appiah had never occurred to me to come to the took place on January 7, 2003. A longer version United States before he persuaded me. will appear next fall in “Critics at Work: Inter- As a child growing up in a Pan-Africanist views 1993–2003,” a collection of interviews with household I was aware of people like intellectuals edited by Jeffrey J. Williams for nyu Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and Press. if you followed those stories it was natural that one’s general impression, on the © 2003 by Robert S. Boynton

104 Dædalus Summer 2003 whole, was that the United States wasn’t So my mother showed up at the Gold Philosophy, the best place for a non-white person to Coast (as Ghana was called at the time). race, sex &c. be. My father was a very good friend of Nkrumah’s at that point, so my mother q: Your father was a prominent Ghana- found herself in an odd position: the ian barrister and politician who was daughter of a British cabinet minister deeply involved in the Pan-African traveling around with all these anticolo- movement. Your mother descended nial types who were trying to get Britain from a prominent British family com- out of the country. And she couldn’t tell posed of Fabian socialists and landed anyone why she was there. She came gentry. How did they meet? back to England and said it was a lovely country. a: My father was studying law and was My father’s family were typical aristo- the president of the West African Stu- crats, so all they cared about was that she dents Union. My mother knew Colin came from a ‘good’ family–which she Turnbull, who had founded an organiza- did. Once that was explained, they said tion called Racial Unity, and as the secre- the marriage was ½ne with them. tary of Racial Unity she met the president of the West African Students q: Where were you born? Union. My mother’s father was Sir Stafford a: I was born in England and went to Cripps, the chancellor of the exchequer Ghana when I was one. I went to pri- in the ½rst postwar government, who mary school in Ghana, and when I was helped create the welfare state. Her eight Nkrumah threw my father in pris- great-aunt was Beatrice Webb who, with on, for reasons that were never entirely her husband Sidney, founded the Lon- clear. It was a dif½cult time for the fami- don School of Economics, and were ly, and I was sick as well. I had toxoplas- leaders of the Labour Party. mosis, which wasn’t very well understood at the time, and it took a while to q: I assume interracial couples were ½gure out what was wrong. I spent a rare then. How was their marriage per- number of months in the hospital, and ceived? at about the time they ½gured out what I had, the queen of England made her ½rst a: People say that it was the ½rst British trip to Ghana. Society interracial wedding, although I I was in my hospital bed, and Nkru- don’t know whether that is true. My ma- mah and the queen toured the hospital. ternal grandmother and grandfather Nkrumah didn’t speak to me, and as he knew the leaders of the colonial empire was leading the queen and the duke of –Indira Ghandi stayed at their house, Edinburgh away, the duke turned to me etc.–so they were quite familiar with and said, “Do give my regards to your non-English, non-white people from mother,” whom he knew. This mightily various countries. My grandfather had upset Nkrumah, because the spouse of a recently died, and my grandmother told visiting head of state was saying nice my mother, “Well, if you are going to things about the spouse of someone he marry him, you’ve got to go live in his had thrown in jail. It was an internation- country and ½nd out what it is like.” al incident. My doctor was deported,

Dædalus Summer 2003 105 Dialogue and the event was on the front page of It was one of the most exhilarating between Kwame the British newspapers. books I had ever read at the time. Anthony So my mother decided that it was per- Appiah & haps best for me not to be in Ghana at q: What was the dominant school of Robert S. Boynton that point. I was very close to my mater- philosophy at Cambridge at the time? nal grandmother in England, so I went to stay with her. And from the age of nine I a: Philosophy of language was the thing, was at an English boarding school. and the big topic was the debate that Michael Dummet had started about q: How did you decide to attend Cam- “truth conditions and assertability,” bridge? which was what I wrote my ½rst mono- graph on. The debate was whether the a: This is moderately embarrassing, but essential concept in the theory of mean- if you were on the track that I was on at ing was assertion or truth. school, you went either to Oxford or There was a group that modeled them- Cambridge. I also had a lot of relatives selves on Wittgenstein, which I thought who had gone to Oxford, so going to was quite phony and pretentious. The Cambridge was a way of getting away Wittgenstein world was a world of disci- from them. I intended to be a medical ples. For me, philosophy had been about student, and Cambridge is better than liberating myself, so I was very put off by Oxford for that. I wanted to be a doctor this. because I was so infatuated with the doc- My teachers were Phillip Petit, Hugh tor who took care of me when I was ill as Mellor, Ian Hacking. There was a sort of a child. Cambridge tradition of thinking about probability. I attended the lectures that q: So how did you end up studying phi- became Hacking’s wonderful book, Why losophy? Does Language Matter to Philosophy?

a: What got me into philosophy was re- q: The philosopher Jonathan Lear was a ligion: I was an evangelical Christian at philosophy student at Clare College at the time. We were serious people, so we the same time you were. Both of you thought about religion and read theolo- moved from logic and the philosophy of gians like Barth, Bultman, Tillich, etc. So language to ‘softer,’ more interpretive it was in the context of thinking about forms of philosophy–psychoanalysis in my faith that I got interested in philoso- his case, and cultural theory in yours. phy. A lot of what I read for myself was Any similarities? philosophy of religion. I told the philosophy tutor that I had a: I think that what was true about Jon- made a terrible mistake and wanted to athan and myself was that we were intel- study philosophy rather than medicine. lectuals who became philosophers. We He told me that I had to ½nish the term, were people of ideas, not people driven and gave me a stack of philosophy books by a particular technical agenda. to read over the summer. If I still wanted to study philosophy after reading them, q: What then drew you to something as it was ½ne with him. I remember reading technical as analytic philosophy? What Rawls’s A Theory of Justice that summer. satisfaction do you get from it?

106 Dædalus Summer 2003 a: There is a certain pleasure in thinking Cambridge. This meant I had room and Philosophy, about how things hang together, or com- board and a small stipend, library privi- race, sex &c. ing up with a solution. Although a large leges, and that I could teach. part of what I did was either critical or the working out of some details of q: Your most recent book is an introduc- thoughts that originated with someone tion to philosophy called Thinking It else, I did feel that I was making prog- Through. How would you describe your ress; after working through the philo- conception of philosophy? sophical problems, I knew that certain strategies in the theory of meaning a: I think of philosophy as a tradition of wouldn’t work. There is an ocean of pos- arguments about certain topics, and the sibilities, and knowing that the truth way a topic becomes a philosophical doesn’t lie in that direction is a kind of topic is by connecting itself to that tradi- knowledge. It may be the only kind of tion. That means the status of strings in knowledge that is available in this area, string theory in physics can become a although perhaps I shouldn’t put it in philosophical topic by way of discus- quite that way. sions of realism and nominalism. To put it in a slogan form, I think that philoso- q: Did you go directly from your under- phy has a history, but no essence. It graduate philosophy studies to your doesn’t seem to me appropriate to take a graduate studies? view about whether this is a good or a bad thing. It simply seems inevitable. a: No. When I ½nished my undergradu- The only normative question that one ate degree, I had no idea what I was go- ought to ask of philosophy is, “Is it good ing to do next. It hadn’t occurred to me for society that the practice exists?” And to continue studying philosophy. I I’m convinced that the answer to that thought it was something one did at col- question is yes. Having an intellectual lege, and then one went out into the grasp of how we ½t into the world is in- world and got a job. So I went back to trinsically valuable in the sense that a life Ghana. I packed all my books into a with it is eo ipso more successful than a crate, and my mother had bookshelves life without it. And it is also true that a made for me at home. culture in which people are thinking I hadn’t yet received my exam results, about the questions of philosophy is bet- and one day I got a telegram from Cam- ter equipped to deal with deciding such bridge informing me that I had received questions as whether it is okay to lock up a First. So I went back to Cambridge. In dissidents on the say-so of the attorney those days there were no courses. You general. Philosophy isn’t the only set of simply hung around and read until discourses whose presence is helpful for someone said, “Why don’t you start thinking about these questions–I’m writing something?” I returned in 1976, glad there are Quakers around as well– and in 1979 Skip persuaded me to teach a but it helps you think it through and course on Pan-Africanism at Yale. That make distinctions. was when I ½rst started investigating the history of Pan-Africanism. While I was q: Did your training in analytic philoso- there I wrote my dissertation proposal in phy help or hinder you as you began to order to get a research fellowship back at retool yourself as a cultural critic?

Dædalus Summer 2003 107 Dialogue a: When I started to write about race I ah and a Cripps. But saying that doesn’t between Kwame made quite swift progress, by compari- commit me to any view about there Anthony son with much of the recent discussion, being any biological properties that the Appiah & because I did what I had been trained to Appiahs share. What the race-like iden- Robert S. Boynton do: cut it up, clarify the question, point tities have in common–including the out the logical inconsistencies in various ethnic ones–is that they are genealogi- proposals, etc. I think I made a useful cal. But commitment to genealogy isn’t a contribution to the ½eld with that work. commitment to there being anything bi- I came to be able to do this kind of ologically signi½cant about it. work through the discovery of a form of The very idea that there was a distinc- writing that I enjoy, which is the philo- tion between what we call biological sophical essay. These essays aren’t the characteristics and other characteristics kinds of things that would be published is itself the product of a theoretical devel- in philosophy journals because they are opment. When you read the eighteenth- too essayistic and anecdotal. Even century natural historians, they talk though by the standards of cultural or about clothing and beards and skin color literary studies what I do is quite ab- all in the same paragraph. They don’t yet stract, I try to be less abstract than most have the distinction between those char- philosophers are, and always to have ex- acteristics and biological ones. The dis- amples in mind when I write. tinction in its modern form depends on a genetic theory. Genetic theory was dis- q: You have famously argued not only covered by Mendel in the nineteenth that racial rhetoric is the product of bad century but wasn’t really noticed by any- science, but furthermore that race itself one at the time, and is really an early- doesn’t exist. Do you still believe this? twentieth-century creation. So the very notion that you should have a property a: The way I’d formulate that claim now that is inherited in the body in the way is that while there aren’t any ‘races,’ that genes are is a very modern idea, and there are ‘racial identities.’ They don’t the idea that you should have a form of have any biological signi½cance, but classi½cation in which those characteris- they are important socially. I want to tics are central is extremely modern– hold on to the ½rst claim as an important well into the twentieth century. part of understanding what is true about In the case of the West, genealogical the second claim. That is, I believe that identities were theoretically understood racial identities don’t make sense unless as genetic or biological. And this was a you understand that some of the people mistake. who participated in the creation of them have these false biological beliefs. I do q: What concrete differences do these not think that racial identities would theories make? have the shape they do if they were not tied to biological ideologies. a: I think that if everybody genuinely You need the following distinction: gave up the false biological belief, what- forms of identity that are genealogical, ever fed our de½nitions of our racial that are based on descent; and forms of identities would have to change. You identity that are biological. Families, for wouldn’t even call them racial identities. example, are genealogical: I’m an Appi-

108 Dædalus Summer 2003 q: Do you have any concrete proposals q: Another way to proceed might be to Philosophy, for how race should be dealt with in analyze different aspects of identity; to race, sex &c. America? do for, say, your sexual identity what you’ve done for your racial identity. Is a: If you ask me my thoughts about how that an interest for you? to make progress on race in America, I believe that it has very little to do with a: People have asked me why, given that things we say. If you wanted to invest po- I’ve written so much about race, I litical and ½nancial resources in one haven’t written about sexuality in, say, thing, I would say that we should mix up the mode of queer studies. The answer the neighborhoods. As long as we have a I’ve given is that I did think philosophi- society in which huge proportions of Af- cally about sexuality when I was starting rican Americans grow up in neighbor- out, and what struck me is that most of hoods which are 80 percent or more Af- what one has to say was just responding rican American, these will remain pow- to terribly bad arguments, and this did erful, salient identities–in bad ways, as not seem very interesting to me. well as good. q: But how is this different from the q: In your book Color Conscious (1996), critical philosophical work you’ve done you discuss the process by which the in the case of race, which also required “politics of recognition” requires that a that you respond to terribly bad argu- group (whether de½ned by ethnicity, ments? gender, or orientation) writes a new “script” for how it should behave and be a: Part of it is that I was better equipped perceived. Would you describe your cur- to deal with bad arguments concerning rent work as writing a new script for the case of race because I had had a rath- identity? er substantial education in biology. And evolutionary theory was one of the top- a: I’ve mostly been interested in trying ics I was most interested in, so I actually to understand these processes, rather know a lot about genetics and evolution- than trying to get people to do things. I ary biology. somewhat resist being identi½ed as a In the case of race, I mostly concen- public intellectual. I’m an intellectual trated on criticizing the best form of the and I care about politics, but I don’t wrong theory. The bad science in the think of my responsibility as an intellec- case of homosexuality has mostly been tual in politics as in any way greater, or psychoanalytic and, partly because I different, from that of any citizen. I’m came to psychoanalysis through reading not against people taking those responsi- critiques of it, I’ve never had any time bilities, but I haven’t done so. There is a for it. Probably to an inappropriate de- kind of fussiness about intellectual dis- gree, it makes me want to barf. It is just tinctions that I think is inappropriate in not a sensible way of thinking about sex- a struggle where there are two sides and uality. So disentangling my general skep- you know which side you’re on. In phi- ticism about all explanations of homo- losophy there aren’t two sides, so scru- sexuality from my skepticism of these pulousness is not fussy. particular explanations would be dif½- cult.

Dædalus Summer 2003 109 Dialogue There is a separate problem, which has between Kwame to do with the nature of ethics. Clearly Anthony attitudes toward homosexuals have a lot Appiah & to do with views about the proper use of Robert S. Boynton sex–the role of sex in pleasure, etc. And I must say that it is unclear to me why those are topics on which one ought to have any intrinsic moral thoughts. Sex is important because it produces pleasure, because it produces relationships, because it produces children, and all of these are of intrinsic moral importance. But sex itself is like, say, eating–it produces pleasure, it produces sociality, etc.–but we don’t have the sense that we should take eating seriously as a moral topic. I don’t feel as if I have anything special to say about sexuality, nor do I feel that it is my obligation to do so. There is another difference between sex and race as philosophical topics. I am not a radical constructivist about sexual identity. I think there is something biologically there in the sexual sense. I think there is less there than most people think, but I don’t believe there is nothing. Whereas with race, I don’t think it is at all interesting from the biological point of view.

110 Dædalus Summer 2003 the economically developed countries– and that inequality has been increasing. If Americans don’t care about inequality, it obviously isn’t because inequality doesn’t exist here. Nathan Glazer One could argue that they don’t care about inequality because the poor do on Americans pretty well in America, if one looks at & inequality measures of consumption rather than income. And in this vein one could argue that while Americans don’t care about inequality, they do care about poverty and have provided an adequate ‘safety net’ to protect against impoverishment. But the presence in the United States of the homeless, beggars, soup kitchens, and the like does not suggest great concern for the poor. In fact, the United Americans, unlike the citizens of other States does much less than European countries to redistribute income to the prosperous democracies, not to mention oecd those of poor countries, do not seem to worse-off. According to the , care much about inequality. One might transfers and other social bene½ts think that our attitude toward it must (which we may assume go mostly from sooner or later change–especially now people with more income to people with that the newspapers are ½lled with sto- less income, though that is not uniform- ries of the money and perquisites ceos ly the case) amounted in 1999 to 11 percent of gdp in the United States and 18 have extracted from their companies. gdp But even after the Enron and other scan- percent of in the countries of the dals, most Americans remain apathetic European Union, with a range among about inequality: What we have today is the larger European nations from 20 per- outrage against those who do not play cent in Germany and France to 16 per- fair–not outrage over inequality as such. cent in the United Kingdom. The United In recent surveys, furthermore, Ameri- States is particularly de½cient in family bene½ts and unemployment and labor- cans have named the state of the econo- gdp my, terrorism, and education–but not market programs–1 percent of for inequality–as the most important issues these, against 5 percent in the European facing the nation. Union and a whopping 8 percent in Swe- In a way, this is surprising. After all, den. The United States also lags behind the United States is the most unequal of in old-age, disability, and survivor’s ben- e½ts–7 percent versus 12 percent in the European Union. Nathan Glazer, a Fellow of the American Acad- These differences also extend to the emy since 1969, has written extensively on issues treatment of the working poor, making of ethnicity and race in American society. He is it dif½cult to sustain the argument that professor of sociology and education emeritus at Americans do care about the condition Harvard University. of the poor but make a distinction between the working and the non-working

Dædalus Summer 2003 111 Note by poor. The legal minimum wage in the Lipset and Gary Marks, It Didn’t Happen Nathan United States in the early 1990s was 39 Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United Glazer percent of the average wage, as against 53 States (2001). percent in the European Union. And our Alesina, Glaeser, and Sacerdote assert unemployment bene½ts are below that that the American pattern of a small of most eu countries. Only the United government and a smaller welfare state Kingdom matches us in miserliness– has deep historical roots: “From the very but in the United Kingdom one may get beginning of the expansion of the public these bene½ts for fours years, as against sector in the late 19th century, the Unit- six months in the United States. Notori- ed States and Europe show very distinc- ously, the United States does not require tive patterns . . . . [T]he absolute differ- employers to provide any paid vacations, ence grew as the welfare state expanded while European countries mandate on both in Europe and the us . . . .” This average four weeks–France and Sweden, makes it dif½cult to explain the current ½ve. The contrast between American pattern by recent political events such as and European family bene½ts is also the Reagan administration. This is not to striking. European family bene½ts (pay- exclude the political factors that affect ments for each child, which do not exist inequality and poverty and the size of in the United States) are for all: the state the welfare state, which would be silly, offers such aid as a means of strengthen- but it does remind us that there may be ing the nation. (One wonders whether large, historically rooted factors that op- such bene½ts will maintain their popu- erate independently of given administra- larity as the immigrant and Muslim pop- tions and their philosophies. ulations in the European welfare states What then are these factors? Accord- expand. A visiting Norwegian economist ing to Alesina, Glaeser, and Sacerdote, notes in conversation the large families they could be aspects of the American of Pakistani immigrants in Norway who economy, of the American political sys- can live, without working, on family tem, or of something else. They use the bene½ts, and who continue to receive term ‘behavioral’ to characterize this these bene½ts if they return to Pakistan. ‘something else’–those noneconomic Even the model services of the Scandina- and nonpolitical factors that may ex- vian countries may be strained by such plain why the United States is divergent. developments.) (I would call such factors ‘social’ or ‘cul- Recently two important studies have tural.’) helped us to think about the puzzling The authors begin by deploying an difference between European and Amer- economic model to compare the United ican attitudes toward poverty and in- States with European countries. Despite equality. One is a long paper by three its formidable mathematical form, their economists–Albert Alesina, Edward model operates on some simple assump- Glaeser, and Bruce Sacerdote–titled tions: that economic factors will affect “Why Doesn’t the United States have a the self-interested political decisions of European-Style Welfare State?” (pub- people, and that these in turn will affect lished in 2001 in the Brookings Papers on the policies of government in a democ- Economic Activity), from which most of racy. What this model shows is that the facts given above have been taken. Americans, unlike Europeans, do not act The other is a book by Seymour Martin as much on the basis of direct economic

112 Dædalus Summer 2003 self-interest: even though inequality is sive in explaining indifference to Americans greater in America than in Europe, inequality. & inequality Americans are less inclined than Euro- At the same time, they remark on cer- peans to demand energetic governmen- tain regnant beliefs that seem to me tal action to redistribute income from equally compelling here, and not at all the well-off to the less well-off. easy to disentangle from racial preju- So why don’t Americans vote for more dice: “Opinions and beliefs about the government action against inequality? poor differ sharply between the United One possible explanation is that there is States and Europe. In Europe the poor more social mobility in the United States are generally thought to be unfortunate, than in Europe, so if those with less in- but not personally responsible for their come expect that in time they will have own condition. For example, according more, they may be less concerned with to the World Values Survey, whereas the protection provided by a true safety 70% of West Germans express the belief net–that is, a developed welfare state. that people are poor because of imper- The evidence on whether there is actu- fections in society, not their own lazi- ally more social mobility in the United ness, 70% of Americans hold the oppo- States than in Europe is unclear–sur- site view . . . .” Recall that Americans be- prisingly enough, it has been unclear lieve, and Europeans don’t, that the poor since Seymour Martin Lipset and Rein- can work their way out of poverty. hard Bendix began studying the question The poor, from other evidence, seem forty years ago. But whatever the facts to share in these distinctively American about social mobility, it is clear that the beliefs. According to Alesina, Glaeser, beliefs about social mobility are very dif- and Sacerdote, work patterns in the ferent in the United States from what United States seem coherent with this they are in Europe: Alesina, Glaeser, and belief: there is a strong positive correla- Sacerdote report, using the World Values tion between earnings and hours Survey, that “71% of Americans, but on- worked. People in the top quintile in the ly 40% of Europeans, believe that the United States work longer hours than poor have a chance to escape from pov- people in the middle quintiles, and peo- erty.” ple in the lowest quintile work much After their consideration of economic fewer hours. If you work more in the factors, which explain little, and political United States, you are less likely to be factors, which explain more (because of poor. Patterns in Europe are different. In our complex political arrangements– Sweden, all work the same number of think of the electoral college), Alesina, hours. In Italy and Switzerland, the poor Glaeser, and Sacerdote come to their ‘be- work longer hours. Alesina, Glaeser, and havioral’ factors. Here they regard one as Sacerdote note, too, that there is a rela- decisive, far outranking any others in tion between the belief that luck deter- their various regressions: the racial fac- mines income and the amount of social tor. A cross-country comparison relates spending in a country. The United States social spending to a measure of ‘racial spends the lowest amount on social wel- fractionalization,’ and a cross-state com- fare and also has the lowest percentage parison in the United States relates the of people who believe that luck deter- percentage of blacks in a state to the size mines income. In other words: when of the welfare bene½t. Race seems deci- people are impoverished, Americans

Dædalus Summer 2003 113 Note by don’t chalk it up to ‘bad luck’–they colonists; one hundred ½fty years ago, Nathan Glazer rather assume the poor are responsible, when the incoming Catholic Irish creat- in large part, for their poverty. ed their own welfare institutions; one Alesina, Glaeser, and Sacerdote’s bot- hundred years ago, when we saw similar tom line: “Americans redistribute less institutions created by Jewish, Italian, than Europeans for three reasons: be- and other immigrants. cause the majority of Americans believe What originally had been institutions that redistribution favors racial minori- created by the state or established reli- ties, because Americans believe that they gions in the early colonies, following the live in an open and fair society, and that patterns of Europe, were broken up and if someone is poor it is his or her own privatized under the impact of increas- fault, and because the political system is ing religious and ethnic diversity. And so geared toward preventing redistribution. Harvard College, founded as an institu- In fact the political system is likely to be tion of higher education by the Bay State endogenous to these basic American Colony and its established religion, mu- beliefs.” In effect, we have the political tated into a private and independent in- system we do because we prefer its restitution, no longer supported or gov- sults–such as limiting redistribution to erned by the state or by a dominant reli- blacks. gion. The establishment of what might Lipset and Marks agree on the role of have become in time a uniform state beliefs and the importance of the politi- public educational system was broken by cal system in explaining American atti- the immigration of the Catholic Irish. tudes toward inequality. But they give The new immigrants were cared for in much less attention to the racial factor, large measure by their own religion- incorporating it into the larger theme of based social welfare institutions. the ethnic and racial diversity of the In the United States, the government American working class, one of the began late making provisions for those many factors that has been noted in the affected by the industrializing society, century-old discussion of why there is and never fully replaced religious groups no large socialist party in the United and other nongovernment charitable States. institutions in providing social welfare. I do believe the speci½c racial factor Of course, this network of institutions that emerges so sharply in the regression still exists and is very extensive. Alesina, analysis of Alesina, Glaeser, and Sacer- Glaeser, and Sacerdote give us the aston- dote has to be acknowledged. But I also ishing estimate that charitable contribu- believe it is linked to the larger structure tions in the United States in 2000 of American diversity, in religion, in eth- amounted to $691 per capita, compared nicity, and that it is this larger structure to $141 in the United Kingdom and $57 in that is the key factor in shaping the Europe as a whole. American welfare state. So where do blacks factor in? The situ- We can see the effects of this distinc- ation of African Americans was indeed tively American diversity and its impact different. No other ethnic group in the on the provision of welfare more than United States had to face anything like two hundred ½fty years ago, when the the conditions of slavery, or the ½erce increasing sectarian divisions in the subsequent prejudice and segregation to original colonies began to affect the wel- which blacks were subjected. And the fare institutions of the New England preexisting conditions of fractionated

114 Dædalus Summer 2003 social services affected them too. Like Still, there is a distinctive pattern of val- Americans other groups, they established their own ues we see in the United Kingdom as & inequality churches, which provided some services, well as in the United States, and that we within the limits set by their prevailing can also discern to some extent in the poverty. Like other groups, too, they other settler societies founded by the turned to preexisting systems of social English, centered on the belief in effort service. and merit and opportunity as against Owing to their economic condition, egalitarian provision by the state. We African Americans were much more can see this pattern in public opinion dependent on America’s primitive pub- polls. The United Kingdom lags behind lic services, and in time they became the Europe on most measures of inequality special ward of the American welfare and redistribution, and it also places state. Having become, to a greater extent more blame on the poor. than other groups, the clients of public In sum, a satisfying answer to the puz- services, they affected, owing to the pre- zle of America’s relative indifference to vailing racism, the public image of these inequality must, I think, consider a num- services. ber of factors: common institutional ori- But there is something more than race gins in the British Isles; the impact of re- and diversity that shapes our character- ligious diversity and immigration; a istic system of beliefs–something dis- greater faith in equal opportunity than tinctively American, connected to our in government-established equality–all founding values as a pioneer society cre- have played a role in shaping American ated by English settlers. Lipset and attitudes. The racial factor is important, Marks place great weight on these initial too. founding values. All this, and our distinctively complex What is English or Scottish or Welsh political structure, has produced great or Scotch-Irish, and what is Calvinist or inequality in the United States–and Presbyterian or Anglican, in our found- there is no evidence that Americans to- ing would be very dif½cult to sort out. day want it otherwise.

Dædalus Summer 2003 115 the Global Judges Symposium on Sus- tainable Development and the Rule of Law. Their symposium preceded the United Nations World Summit on Sus- tainable Development in Johannesburg, Michael Traynor which I attended as a representative of the Environmental Law Institute (eli). on environmental In many ways, the conceptual leader- law ship demonstrated by the Global Judges outstripped the thinking at the summit. The judges readily acknowledged the connection between human rights and sustainable development and af½rmed the need for an independent judiciary and judicial process to decide environmental disputes. They pointedly observed that it is the poor who suffer most from environmental deterioration and Many countries as well as some U.S. that there is a pressing need to strength- states recognize a constitutional human en the public’s rights to enforce environ- right to a healthful environment. But the mental laws. They called for expanded federal government of the United States public participation in decision-making, does not. Given restrictive trends in the help from the judicial system in environ- federal courts, an anti-environmental mental disputes, and open access to in- president, and an unsympathetic Con- formation. gress, it is barely conceivable that any As an American lawyer who has been branch of the U.S. federal government an environmental advocate for more will soon recognize such a human right, than forty years, I was inspired by the or even a rudimentary constitutional courageous, forthright, and innovative right not to be poisoned. ideas of the Global Judges and by the By welcome contrast, judges from possibility that they may lead to effec- across the globe have af½rmed their tive implementation in concrete cases. commitment “to spare no effort to free Judges from elsewhere in the world all of humanity, and above all our chil- seemed surprisingly willing to envision dren and grandchildren, from the threat a vital role for the judiciary in forging of living on a planet irredeemably spoilt the link between environmental law and by human activities.” These forward- human rights. It seems the courts of thinking judges convened in Johannes- the world may go well beyond what is burg, South Africa, in August of 2002 at achievable presently in the United States. Had the delegates to the un meeting Michael Traynor, a member of the board of been listening to the judges and acting directors of the Environmental Law Institute and in concert with them, the summit would past chairman and president of the Sierra Club have been a far more valuable exercise. Legal Defense Fund (now Earthjustice), has been Although the delegates achieved modest a Fellow of the American Academy since 2002. (and nonbinding) consensus on items such as controlling harmful chemicals,

116 Dædalus Summer 2003 restoring depleted ½sh stocks, and pro- tainable development.” Instead, the Environmental tecting biodiversity, they failed to match Plan of Implementation now merely ac- law the principled leadership of the Global knowledges “the consideration being Judges. given to the possible relationship be- Most of the government leaders who tween environment and human rights, attended the summit seemed to share a including the right to development.” progressive spirit–with the notable ex- The policymakers thus left access to in- ception of those representing the United formation, public participation, citizen States. President Bush elected not to at- enforcement, and the development of an tend the summit and conveyed the im- environmental human right primarily to pression to many that he disdained it; judges and environmental advocates. the delegation he sent instead, led by Sadly, the Johannesburg summit took a Secretary of State Colin Powell, concen- backward step from the 1972 Stockholm trated on protecting oil interests while Declaration that af½rmed the funda- undermining human rights. mental right to “adequate conditions of For example, the United States refused life, in an environment of a quality that to join Europe and most of the rest of the permits a life of dignity and well-being” world in key proposed provisions of the and the 1992 Rio Declaration on Envi- consensus document, known as the Plan ronment and Development that re- of Implementation. Instead, allying it- af½rmed it. self with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and a The world leaders and of½cial govern- few other notable polluters, the U.S. del- ment delegations assembled at Sandton, egation worked to defeat a speci½c target an upscale suburb of Johannesburg that to increase the global share of renewable contains a convention center, of½ce tow- energy sources to at least 15 percent of ers, and many elegant shops and restau- the total by 2010. It only grudgingly rants. It might well have passed for a agreed to a commitment to halve the wealthy part of Houston, another city number of people without safe drinking built on the extraction of riches from the water and adequate sanitation by 2015 earth. Under the rules of the assembly, and linked that concession to its de- each leader spoke for only a few min- mands on energy policy. On such a basic utes. Most followed the harmless formu- issue as decent water and sanitation, the la of thanking South Africa for being a U.S. delegation thus used the prospect of splendid host, agreeing that the world’s alleviating continuing human misery environmental problems deserve serious and disease as a bargaining chip to sus- attention, and expressing his country’s tain American consumption of oil and dedication to resolving them. Although other nonrenewable fossil fuels. many speakers struck bland notes indi- The U.S. delegation did not stop there. vidually, together these became a cre- It lobbied to delete a proposed statement scendo of shared concern. Meanwhile, calling for “public access to information, as the U.S. delegation maneuvered to public participation in decision-making defeat strong environmental commit- and access to justice.” It also succeeded ments, including renewable energy in diluting a proposed statement that sources and the reduction of agricultur- would have acknowledged “the impor- al subsidies, another malevolent force tance of the interrelationship between rumbled from a different direction human rights promotion and protection through the booming voice of Zimba- and environmental protection for sus- bwe President R. G. Mugabe.

Dædalus Summer 2003 117 Note by A powerful speaker–adept at manipu- ents and resources of developed and de- Michael Traynor lating world opinion while advancing a veloping countries, civil society and the repressive and violent regime–Mugabe private sector.” He referred speci½cally spoke in no uncertain terms: “The mul- to the South African Housing Initiative tilateral programme of action we set for “to help private contractors build 90,000 ourselves at Rio has not only been unful- houses for a half million people in over ½lled but it has also been ignored, side- the next ½ve years” and to four new lined and replaced by a half-baked uni- “‘signature’ partnerships in water, ener- lateral agenda of globalisation in the gy, agriculture, and forests,” including service of big corporate interests of the sustainable forestry in the Congo basin. North. The focus is pro½t, not the poor, Secretary Powell identi½ed a few con- the process is globalisation, not sustain- structive approaches that the United able development, while the objective is States is taking, and he and his key staff exploitation, not liberation.” He justi½ed seemed to be the most open and helpful the “agrarian reform” ruthlessly under- among the U.S. delegation. However, the way in his country and said that “this delegation’s overall retrograde tactics fundamental question has pitted the overshadowed its few good ideas for black majority who are the right-holders, public/private partnerships and foreign and, therefore, primary stakeholders, to aid. It is no surprise that in contrast to our land against an obdurate and inter- the thunderous applause for Mugabe, nationally well-connected racial minori- Powell had to endure the sustained jeers ty, largely of British descent and brought of both of½cial representatives and un- in and sustained by British colonialism.” of½cial guests from the rest of the world. Departing from his prepared text, he ad- The U.S. delegation’s promotion of its libbed with a message for Tony Blair: nonrenewable energy agenda and its “Keep your England and let me keep my suppression of environmental values, Zimbabwe.” Mugabe’s remarks received together with the consequent hostility greater and more sustained applause among people from other countries, from the of½cial delegations and their enhanced Mugabe’s strategy of playing guests than the remarks made by any the cards of race and colonial imperial- other world leader. ism. The United States picked Secretary of During one of the summit’s ngo pro- State Colin Powell for the unenviable grams, which were held a long bus ride task of responding to Mugabe’s chal- away from the main conference, envi- lenge. Good soldier and decent man that ronmental advocates invited by the eli he is, he did his duty. He pointedly noted from various countries in Africa gave that “In one country in this region, Zim- compelling reports on their efforts to babwe, the lack of respect for human address severe challenges. An advocate rights and rule of law has exacerbated” from Nigeria described his tribe’s effort poverty, aids and other infectious dis- to withstand and confront one compa- eases, drought, wasteful land use, and ny’s venture to exploit oil located under economic mismanagement, “to push a reservoir of natural gas. Instead of us- millions of people toward the brink of ing available technology to preserve the starvation.” He called for “sound eco- natural gas before reaching the oil, he nomic policies that encourage entrepre- reported, the company simply lit it on neurs and that spur growth” and for “ef- ½re, thereby wasting the resource, pol- fective partnerships to unleash the tal- luting the air, and poisoning the lungs of

118 Dædalus Summer 2003 nearby residents. Without the laws and our own laws, the loose concept of ‘sus- Environmental enforcement we have in the United tainable development’ may simply be- law States–even though they are being un- come a cover for free riders or a recipe dermined by our own government–the for exploitation cloaked by deceptive struggles that environmental advocates advertising. undergo in places such as Nigeria are Overall, my impressions were mixed. I comparatively ½erce and extraordinarily came away from Johannesburg feeling dif½cult, and they require countervailing positively about the widely shared com- intelligence, spirit, and community ac- mitment of people throughout the tion, as well as help from the courts. world, including many judges, lawyers, What did the summit mean for busi- and business leaders, and many Ameri- ness interests? They were visibly pres- cans, to improving, sustaining, and sav- ent, particularly at a concurrent meeting ing the environment for our children of the World Business Council on Sus- and future generations. But I also came tainable Development that was attended away more concerned than ever about by representatives of the oil, chemical, the harm to our environment as well as utility, mining, and automobile indus- to our security and economy that may tries. Greenpeace and an organization occur from the convergence of three called Business Action for Sustainable powerful forces: ½rst, the current Development (created by the World administration’s misguided dedication Business Council and the International to nonrenewable resources and heavy Chamber of Commerce) made an im- agricultural subsidies, and its arrogant portant announcement about a novel disregard of environmental interests and collaboration on climate protection. My human rights; second, the increasing impression is that many business leaders poverty and environmental distress and, and plant managers want to achieve consequently, the increasing rage of sound environmental results under in- much of the rest of the world, as exem- telligent laws that provide attainable and pli½ed by demagogues like Mugabe; sustainable goals without undue govern- and, third, the possibility that as her mental intrusion and control. However, temperature rises, Mother Earth will go the lack of vision and leadership from beyond floods and drought to demon- our own government and its overall anti- strate how angry she is at being devel- environmental strategy make positive oped rapaciously but not sustained. business action dif½cult. Without the With its unrivaled power and prosper- impetus of effective laws and enforce- ity, the United States is in a unique posi- ment, businesses may ½nd it dif½cult, tion to counter these forces. It could pro- particularly in today’s economy, to justi- vide global leadership by setting an in- fy the investments and long-range plan- spiring environmental example, instead ning that could result in important fu- of undermining environmental protec- ture gains but that do not result in an tions. But until the Bush administration immediate pro½t reportable in a quarter- modi½es its approach, I am afraid that ly or an annual report. Without leader- sustainable development, together with ship that helps people and countries pull a universal right to a healthful environ- together and that improves and uni½es ment, will remain an elusive goal.

Dædalus Summer 2003 119 President Patricia Meyer Spacks Executive Of½cer Leslie Cohen Berlowitz Vice President Louis W. Cabot Secretary Emilio Bizzi Treasurer John S. Reed Editor Steven Marcus Vice President, Midwest Center Martin Dworkin Vice President, Western Center John R. Hogness

Dædalus Board of Editors Committee Steven Marcus, Chair, Joyce Appleby, Russell Banks, Stanley Hoffmann, Donald Kennedy, Martha C. Nussbaum, Neil J. Smelser, Rosanna Warren, Steven Weinberg; ex of½cio: Patricia Meyer Spacks, Leslie C. Berlowitz

Committee on Publications & Public Relations Guy W. Nichols, Chair, Emilio Bizzi, Joan Bok, Jesse H. Choper, Denis Donoghue, Jerome Kagan, Jerrold Meinwald; ex of½cio: Patricia Meyer Spacks, Steven Marcus, Leslie C. Berlowitz

Inside back cover: Friday services at the Kouba Mosque in Algiers, Algeria: a cloth screen separates the women from the men at prayer. Islam’s appeal “is profound and profoundly popular. And it is not liable to be vanquished anytime soon by a form of secularism that has been foisted by colonizers and despots on Muslims in order to weaken, if not destroy, the basis of our social order.” See Azzam S. Tamimi on The renaissance of Islam, pages 51–58. Photograph © 2003 by Abbas/ Magnum Photos.

Dædalus coming up in Dædalus: Dædalus

Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences on science Alan Lightman, Gerald Holton, Albert Einstein, Susan Haack, David Pingree, Peter Pesic, Peter Wolynes, and Robert Schimke Summer 2003

notes Nathan Glazer on the American indifference to inequality 111 U.S. $13/Canada $16 Michael Traynor on environmental law 116 www.amacad.org