Is Religion the Problem?

On Talk of The Nation today a young Muslim, Dr. Eboo Patel, was interviewed about his new organization the “Interfaith Youth Core”. I was delighted to here him speak. I was disheartened by many of the callers who tried to have him explain why Islam seems to be the only religion that has a penchant for terrorism. I would like to answer them.

There is a pervasive assumption that Islam is more violent than Christianity of Judaism. Recent history seems to bare this assumption out. I will not go into the recent anecdotal litany of Islamic radicals causing trouble. This assumption, nevertheless is wrong.

The trio of faiths listed above are none of them, either more or less violent than the other. All their holy books speak of violent militarism and God sticking up for the righteous fighters. All also speak to the necessity of doing good toward your fellow human beings. Helping the poor, not ignoring the widow or the orphan. The holy writings they adhere to in total can either be used to justify good or bad. So it is not the faith itself that causes the Crusader or Terrorist but the individuals application of the religion.

To say religion is evil is like saying science is evil. It is neither evil or good it is a set of ideas. What human beings do with it is either good or evil. Human justice does not exist outside human action. Justice does not exist within any text or book. A hammer can build a home or kill a man. Yet no one would argue whether or not the hammer is inherently evil of good. What it is used for is either evil or good.

Violence and religion have been intertwined throughout the millennia, from Moses and Judas Maccabeus, to Richard Cour d’Lion and his crusaders, to the Catholics and the Protestants slaughtering each other for 30 years in the 17th century down to todays Islamic jihadists. It is the nexus of a multitude of social, religious, political, and economic under currents that create religion-based violence not just religion. Violence is the problem not simply religion.

If you go into any of the violent examples provided above, religion is only a tool to justify violence, but never really the reason behind the violent activity. Political conquest, not conversion, is the real reason behind the violence. Currently Islam is in the nexus of currents that are out of its control. It is being used as convenient justification for what is in essense retaliation against the westernism, not Christianity or Judasim. The failed imperial states of the 19th and 20th century have brought about an environment of impoverished billions and pan continental civil wars. Islam spread quickly in the affected regions partially because of historical connection, and partly as a backlash against the departed imperial powers.

Today Islam is as much the victim of the collapse of the Imperial west as it is a perpetrator of its own collapse. The broad undercurrents of civilization flow regardless of election cycles in the US or the name of the current crop of religious fanatics. These vast undercurrents, like the movements of the ocean currents, are very hard to nail down. Constantly shifting they will bring and end of Islamic radicalism, as the did to the thousand years of Christian warfare. There will always be tools ready to help men justify conquest and killing. Religion is but one.