2000 David F. AustinWhat may underlie the attraction that many feel for Separation by Standards and Separation by Attitude is a perception that religion is personal in a way that Science is not. Science, some say, has as its goal the systematic acquisition of knowledge about nature, based on careful observation and experiment. The discussion of other separation principles reminds us that religion, too, seeks knowledge about nature, based on careful observation and experiment. [As I reported in discussion of Leibniz and Scientific Creationism, some deeply religious scientists see their systematic search for such knowledge as an investigation of a divine plan; as we'll find when we get to Separation by Explanation and Arguments from Design, the knowledge gained from the search can be put to good theological use.] But when religion seeks knowledge it is also concerned, for example, with securing the individual believer's proper personal relationship to God, and these seem to be very different sorts of goals. Since, presumably, a religion will seek to make this relationship better than it would otherwise be, let's consider:
Separation by Personal Improvement
Religion aims for personal improvement, but Science does not; Science seeks knowledge for its own sake.
Although this proposal seems quite promising, I think that it defaults.
One kind of improvement is the acquisition of knowledge, because having knowledge has, in addition to secondary effects, intrinsic value. It is a kind of improvement that is, one might say, the heart and soul of most religions since growing spiritually is learning. Of course, religions aim for lots of kinds of improvement, but a lot of what they aim for fits neatly under the heading of "knowledge," though they differ in the methods they recommend for achieving epistemic improvement, and in their advice about exactly what knowledge to acquire. If, as this suggests, learning is a kind of improvement, then to seek knowledge for its own sake is to seek a kind of improvement, and religion and science don't differ in this way.
What about the proposal's emphasis on the personal? This emphasis is a defect because goals in religion and science are often community goals. To see what this means, we need to talk about what kinds of things religion and science are.
I've already emphasized the difference between a theory and people who advocate or apply it (or, in parapsychology's case, the difference between this branch of inquiry as characterized by certain questions and individual parapsychologists with their attributes). The difference is obvious and important, but I don't want to overemphasize it. There is a great deal more to science than the theories it deals in. There are also the collective practices that constitute those dealings. These include devising and evaluating theories, extending the frontiers of ignorance by finding new phenomena to explain, and communicating the results of all this activity, none of which is typically done by lone individuals.
"Theology" means the systematic study of religious belief, but the term is also used to indicate a particular body of religious beliefs, e.g., Catholic theology or Japanese Buddhist theology, that may be the object of study. In the latter sense of the term, a theology is a theory about whatever the religion in question is concerned with, often, the origin and nature of the universe, including the nature of morality. But just as there is more to science than its theories, there is more to religion than its theologies. There is a complex relationship between theology and the normal practice of the religion, as evidenced, for example, in prescribed religious rituals.
A 1996 appeals court decision (US v. Meyers) gives a helpful list of ten "external signs" that are supposedly symptomatic of, if not essential to, religion (see the Appendix to "School Board Problems" for more information). Paraphrasing the decision, the signs are: being wholly founded or significantly influenced by a deity, teacher, seer, or prophet who is considered to be divine, enlightened, gifted, or blessed; embracing seminal, elemental, fundamental, or sacred writings; designating particular structures or places as sacred, holy, or significant (where these sites often serve as gathering places for believers, including physical structures and natural places); having clergy, ministers, priests, reverends, monks, shamans, teachers, or sages (by virtue of their enlightenment, experience, education, or training, these people are keepers and purveyors of religious knowledge); including some form of ceremony, ritual, liturgy, sacrament, or protocol (where these acts, statements, and movements are prescribed by the religion and are imbued with transcendent significance); having a congregation or group of believers who are led, supervised, or counseled by a hierarchy of teachers, clergy, sages, priests, etc.; celebrating, observing, or marking "holy," sacred, or important days, weeks, or months; prescribing or prohibiting the eating of certain foods and the drinking of certain liquids on particular days or during particular times; prescribing the manner in which believers should maintain their physical appearance or clothing; thinking that they have something worthwhile or essential to offer non-believers, and so attempting to propagate their views and persuade others of their correctness - sometimes called "mission work," "witnessing," "converting," or proselytizing.
With the possible exceptions of regulation of diet and dress (which are not necessary features of religion, either), there are striking similarities with science: embracing seminal or fundamental, writings.; designating particular structures (labs) or natural places (the field) as significant; having (tenured) teachers who, by virtue of their experience, education, or training, keep and purvey knowledge; including some form of ceremony, ritual or protocol (PhD orals, grant-seeking, peer evaluation); having a group which is led, supervised, or counseled by a hierarchy of teachers (as in universities); observing or marking important days, weeks, or months (the Annual Professional Convention, the Decade of the Brain, the International Geophysical Year, etc.); thinking that they have something worthwhile or essential to offer non-scientists, and so attempting to propagate their views and persuade others of their correctness (in teaching and through popularization and lobbying). Even diet and dress can be remarkably uniform within a scientific specialty, especially in large gatherings (e.g., professional meetings) - so much so that even if there are no explicit regulations, discipline-specific social forces do seem to be at work. (-Joke alert!) How all these activities should be carried out is closely related to, but not determined by, the particular theories current in science or a branch of science.
There appear to be deep, complex similarities between scientific theory and (normal) scientific practice, on the one hand, and theology and (prescribed) religious behavior, on the other. When a particular theology incorporates a specific scientific theory, it will be the "deepest similarity," namely, identity.
Because of these shared complexities, it can be very difficult to figure out exactly what a theory (or theology) and its associated norms of evaluation and application are. Is Professor Smythe really applying special relativity? misapplying it? applying another theory? Is Reverend Browne really a Baptist? a member of distinctive subgroup? a heretic? You need to find representatives whose activities, thoughts and behavior accord with the relevant norms since the norms are rarely spelled out. Even when an attempt at authoritative codification is made, you've got to be able to find the authority and to learn how to read their code, and since you're trying to discover what the norms and theories are, this can be pretty tricky. Your task is to find a good theory about what the theory is, so you face all the usual difficulties in finding explanations for complex phenomena, where part of the task is to distinguish more from less representative examples. As usual, if you're not careful, you'll end up generalizing from the acts of unrepresentative individuals, and biased stereotypes can result. (In the US, public debate about religion has been skewed by taking a few vocal individuals as representative of a larger group - taking conservative, Orthodox Christians as paradigmatic Christians or, more broadly, religious believers, for example.)
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With evidence that Muslim militants were responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, prominent Islamic scholars and theologians in the West say unequivocally that nothing in Islam countenances the Sept. 11 actions. But in interviews, they explained that certain scriptural passages are distorted by Islamic extremists like Osama bin Laden. In his office in Leesburg, Va., Taha Jabir Alalwani, the chairman of a council that issues Islamic legal opinions for Muslims in North America, opened a copy of the Koran to Page 1,732 and read aloud in Arabic a verse that lays out the rules of when a Muslim may fight. "The verse says you have a right to fight those people who try to force you to adopt another religion or to leave your home," said Dr. Taha, a Muslim judge who founded a graduate school in Leesburg to teach Islam to Westerners and Western values to Muslims. "But America didn't ask you to abandon your religion. America didn't deport you, or tell you to leave your homes." Questions about the role of religion in justifying the attacks have taken on fresh urgency with the discovery of letters that the Justice Department believes belonged to the hijackers. The letters cited from the Koran and reminded the hijackers that they were on a holy mission that would lead them to "eternal paradise with all righteous and martyrs." The scholars said they had not had time to judge the letters' authenticity, but, as far as the attacks themselves, they said that such atrocities violated the ethics of battle spelled out by the prophet Muhammad. In part because of this conviction, the scholars - educated intellectuals who teach in Western institutions - remain unconvinced that Muslims, even radical militants, were behind the attacks. Some of them even said that with the release of the letters by the Justice Department on Friday, it appeared that Muslims were being framed. The attack, they said, could have been the work of an American militia group, a religious cult like Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, or even the Israeli government. Dr. Taha said he was skeptical that Muslims were involved "based on who is the beneficiary of the crime," adding: "The Arabs, they lost a lot. A lot was jeopardized, even their relationship with the U.S." The scholars said that the terrorist acts clearly violated the ethics of battle spelled out by Muhammad. The Koran, which Muslims believe was revealed by God to Muhammad at a time of vicious conflict between Arab tribes in the early seventh century, includes verses that prescribe the rules of war. Like scriptures of every faith, the Koran is open to interpretation and has been twisted to justify the actions of extremists, the scholars said. Mahmoud Ayoub, a professor of Islamic studies and comparative religion at Temple University, said: "The Bible has descriptions of the peaceable kingdom, where the lamb and the lion lay down together, but it also has the Book of Joshua about the bloody conquest of Canaan. Likewise, the Koran has plenty of verses that talk about peace, even with Muhammad's enemies, if they are inclined toward peace. But then there are also verses that advocate war. And so, we have to make choices." War has defined limits, said Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, a Muslim scholar who is founder and director of the Zaytuna Institute, an Islamic study center in Hayward, Calif. "The prophet clearly prohibited killing noncombatants, women and children," he said. "The prophet prohibited poisoning wells, which I think can be applied to biological warfare. The prophet prohibited using fire as a means to kill another being, because only the Lord of fire can punish with fire. And the destruction of property is prohibited. Even in war, you can't destroy other people's property." The Koran specified a grisly punishment for those who destroy themselves, said Zaki Badawi, principal of the Muslim College, in London. "God will punish him by making him commit the same act of suicide, the same cycle of torture, on the day of judgment," Dr. Badawi said. "If he kills himself with a dagger, his punishment is to sink the dagger in his heart again and again." Most of the Koran and the Hadith, the sayings of Muhammad, have nothing to do with war or violence, and their rules for battle bear little relation to the lives of most Muslims. Even the term jihad, which means struggle and is associated in the West with radical Islam, means something different to most Muslims. To them, it can refer to an individual's internal spiritual struggle, for example, and opposition to bad morals in a culture, as well as to armed conflict. But jihad is not among the five pillars required of Muslims (affirming that God is one, performing prayer, giving charity, fasting during Ramadan and making pilgrimage to Mecca). But while the rules of war are irrelevant to most Muslims, extremists are likely to be aware of the Koran's strict rules for engagement, the scholars said. That is why they said they did not believe that Muslims could have been the attackers. Adding to the scholars' skepticism is an expectation of racial profiling by American authorities, and their memory of Muslims being wrongly blamed for the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. The rules of evidence spelled out by the Koran also play a role in these scholars' skepticism. Under Muslim law, two witnesses or a confession are necessary for a murder conviction, said Dr. Taha, who is chairman of the 12-member Council of Islamic Jurisprudence of North America. Circumstantial evidence, said Dr. Badawi in Britain, is not sufficient because "it can lead to miscarriage of justice." Dr. Badawi said it had not been proved that Muslims flew the planes. In twisting the Koran, the Palestinian group Hamas never refers to its operatives as "suicide bombers" but as "martyrs,"the scholars said. Martyrdom is permissible on the battlefield, Dr. Ayoub said. Israel is clearly a battlefield, the scholars all said, because Israeli troops have evicted Palestinians from their homes and shot at children. Attacking Israelis is self-defense, which, according to the Koran, is the only acceptable justification for fighting. This helps explain why the same Muslim leaders who denounced the attacks on the United States have long refused to condemn the terrorism directed at Israel. Even the prohibition against killing noncombatants does not apply to Israel, where, the scholars said, civilians and settlers have attacked Muslims and taken their land. But Osama bin Laden's approach is beyond the pale, they said. Bin Laden, in two fatwas, nonbinding pronouncements issued in 1996 and 1998, justified attacking American targets. He redefined the United States itself as a battleground because of its support for Israel, its occupation of Saudi Arabia's holy ground and the war and blockade against Iraq, Dr. Ayoub said. In modern Islam, there is no religious hierarchy, no Vatican to excommunicate heretics. Islam is more akin to Judaism, where ultimate authority lies in scriptures. Fatwas were once issued primarily by recognized religious authorities of a country or Islamic university, said Shaykh Hamza in California, but "now, every Tom, Dick and Abdullah gives fatwa." |
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BOSTON-These events have split the whole world into two camps: the camp of belief and the camp of disbelief," Osama bin Laden said in his speech televised on the day America started bombing Afghanistan. And he left no doubt about the beliefs to which those in the first camp must adhere. "There is only one God," Mr. bin Laden told his listeners. "And I declare that there is no prophet but Muhammad." Osama bin Laden's words are chilling, not only because they threaten further terrorism, but also because they echo themes that have run through America's own religious history. At the same time, his rant is oddly reassuring, for the contrast between his zealotry and our measured response reminds us of how far we have come since the days when Protestant triumphalism reigned in this country. The Puritans who landed in Massachusetts, fleeing from religious intolerance, were anything but tolerant themselves. They saw infidels all around them, even among other Christians who did not share all of their theological convictions. As the Salem witchcraft trials showed, the Puritans could be as unbending and cruel in their interpretation of what the Lord required as any Taliban court. Because it stressed the notion of a covenant, Puritanism eventually made its peace with individualism. And because, unlike Islam in so many contemporary settings, Puritanism had to accommodate to a democratic society, it lost its harshness in the quest for popularity. Still, the notion that Americans were destined by their faith in a specifically Protestant God to fill their own land and to exercise their influence abroad lasted throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. "Christianity is the only possible religion for the American people, and with Christianity are bound up all our hopes for the future," the German-born scholar Philip Schaff told the American Historical Association in 1888. Josiah Strong's influential book "Our Country," published three years before Schaff's speech, asked the United States to carry out its duty to "Christianize" the world. And the Christianity they had in mind was Protestant Christianity. The first war to come along after their pronouncements, the Spanish- American War, was justified by many Protestant leaders because it was fought against Catholic Spain. Even after Catholics and Jews were accepted into American life, our political leaders still invoked religious language that Protestants could interpret as their own. An American as liberal as Henry Wallace could say, in his 1944 book "Faith of Our Fighters," that democracy was "the only form of government which harmonizes fully with the principles of the Bible." America remains a decidedly religious society, but it is now religious in a very different way. To be sure, religious fundamentalists have prominent political presence even now. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, for example, are not averse to invoking a language of crusade in the political arena. But neither Mr. Falwell nor Mr. Robertson is president; George W. Bush is. And Mr. Bush has done a brilliant job of not permitting Osama bin Laden to define the terms of the conflict. The more we think that what is at stake is a clash of civilizations, the more like our enemy we become. By insisting that we are not at war with Islam, Mr. Bush deprives Mr. bin Laden of the religious battle he so intensely desires. It is not only President Bush who has kept his viewpoint balanced; it is also the American people. A country whose single largest religious denomination is Catholicism can no longer feel comfortable fighting for Protestant principles. Indeed America is no longer Judeo-Christian, the term of art we developed, after the Holocaust, to include Jews. Even "Abrahamic," a term invented to include Muslims along with Christians and Jews, excludes Buddhists and Sikhs. There is no single God for whom this ever more diverse society could enter a war. And it is not just our religious diversity that makes our religious experience different from our Puritan past; whatever their particular beliefs, Americans tend to practice their faith in distinctly modern ways. Many Americans, including many evangelical Christians, strongly support the constitutional principle of separation of church and state. (Conservative opposition to President Bush's faith-based initiative shows that this support is not just a liberal position.) Our cultural temperament may also help inoculate us against a stringent religious fundamentalism. We are too optimistic in our beliefs to find Satan lurking behind every rock. There are, of course, American believers who evangelize, persuaded that those who do not believe as they do are destined for hell. Yet there are far more who believe that whatever their own path to God, other people will choose different paths that deserve respect. Surveys routinely show that more than 90 percent of Americans believe in God. Our culture celebrates religious belief and provides it enormous freedom in the private sphere. But our constitutional system of government - by separating belief from politics - tempers this impulse when it interferes with governance and the making of laws. The Taliban and Osama bin Laden wage war against us because they embrace religious governance in the political sphere while allowing individuals no religious choice. That use of religion has resulted in a totalitarian society that cannot countenance any deviation. The war now going on between Americans and the forces of Osama bin Laden is not between belief and nonbelief. It is instead about two different ways of believing, only one of which allows for individual conscience and freedom. The refusal of the other to make that allowance is what makes terrorism against nonbelievers possible. Alan Wolfe is professor of political science and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. |
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LONDON -- "This isn't about Islam." The world's leaders have been repeating this mantra for weeks, partly in the virtuous hope of deterring reprisal attacks on innocent Muslims living in the West, partly because if the United States is to maintain its coalition against terror it can't afford to suggest that Islam and terrorism are in any way related. The trouble with this necessary disclaimer is that it isn't true. If this isn't about Islam, why the worldwide Muslim demonstrations in support of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda? Why did those 10,000 men armed with swords and axes mass on the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier, answering some mullah's call to jihad? Why are the war's first British casualties three Muslim men who died fighting on the Taliban side? Why the routine anti-Semitism of the much-repeated Islamic slander that "the Jews" arranged the hits on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with the oddly self-deprecating explanation offered by the Taliban leadership, among others, that Muslims could not have the technological know-how or organizational sophistication to pull off such a feat? Why does Imran Khan, the Pakistani ex-sports star turned politician, demand to be shown the evidence of Al Qaeda's guilt while apparently turning a deaf ear to the self-incriminating statements of Al Qaeda's own spokesmen (there will be a rain of aircraft from the skies, Muslims in the West are warned not to live or work in tall buildings)? Why all the talk about American military infidels desecrating the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia if some sort of definition of what is sacred is not at the heart of the present discontents? Of course this is "about Islam." The question is, what exactly does that mean? After all, most religious belief isn't very theological. Most Muslims are not profound Koranic analysts. For a vast number of "believing" Muslim men, "Islam" stands, in a jumbled, half-examined way, not only for the fear of God - the fear more than the love, one suspects - but also for a cluster of customs, opinions and prejudices that include their dietary practices; the sequestration or near-sequestration of "their" women; the sermons delivered by their mullahs of choice; a loathing of modern society in general, riddled as it is with music, godlessness and sex; and a more particularized loathing (and fear) of the prospect that their own immediate surroundings could be taken over - "Westoxicated" - by the liberal Western-style way of life. (boldface and italics added) Highly motivated organizations of Muslim men (oh, for the voices of Muslim women to be heard!) have been engaged over the last 30 years or so in growing radical political movements out of this mulch of "belief." These Islamists - we must get used to this word, "Islamists," meaning those who are engaged upon such political projects, and learn to distinguish it from the more general and politically neutral "Muslim" - include the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the blood-soaked combatants of the Islamic Salvation Front and Armed Islamic Group in Algeria, the Shiite revolutionaries of Iran, and the Taliban. Poverty is their great helper, and the fruit of their efforts is paranoia. This paranoid Islam, which blames outsiders, "infidels," for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world. This is not wholly to go along with Samuel Huntington's thesis about the clash of civilizations, for the simple reason that the Islamists' project is turned not only against the West and "the Jews," but also against their fellow Islamists. Whatever the public rhetoric, there's little love lost between the Taliban and Iranian regimes. Dissensions between Muslim nations run at least as deep, if not deeper, than those nations' resentment of the West. Nevertheless, it would be absurd to deny that this self-exculpatory, paranoiac Islam is an ideology with widespread appeal. Twenty years ago, when I was writing a novel about power struggles in a fictionalized Pakistan, it was already de rigueur in the Muslim world to blame all its troubles on the West and, in particular, the United States. Then as now, some of these criticisms were well-founded; no room here to rehearse the geopolitics of the cold war and America's frequently damaging foreign policy "tilts," to use the Kissinger term, toward (or away from) this or that temporarily useful (or disapproved-of) nation-state, or America's role in the installation and deposition of sundry unsavory leaders and regimes. But I wanted then to ask a question that is no less important now: Suppose we say that the ills of our societies are not primarily America's fault, that we are to blame for our own failings? How would we understand them then? Might we not, by accepting our own responsibility for our problems, begin to learn to solve them for ourselves? Many Muslims, as well as secularist analysts with roots in the Muslim world, are beginning to ask such questions now. In recent weeks Muslim voices have everywhere been raised against the obscurantist hijacking of their religion. Yesterday's hotheads (among them Yusuf Islam, a k a Cat Stevens) are improbably repackaging themselves as today's pussycats. An Iraqi writer quotes an earlier Iraqi satirist: "The disease that is in us, is from us." A British Muslim writes, "Islam has become its own enemy." A Lebanese friend, returning from Beirut, tells me that in the aftermath of the attacks on Sept. 11, public criticism of Islamism has become much more outspoken. Many commentators have spoken of the need for a Reformation in the Muslim world. I'm reminded of the way noncommunist socialists used to distance themselves from the tyrannical socialism of the Soviets; nevertheless, the first stirrings of this counterproject are of great significance. If Islam is to be reconciled with modernity, these voices must be encouraged until they swell into a roar. Many of them speak of another Islam, their personal, private faith. The restoration of religion to the sphere of the personal, its depoliticization, is the nettle that all Muslim societies must grasp in order to become modern. The only aspect of modernity interesting to the terrorists is technology, which they see as a weapon that can be turned on its makers. If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern is based, and without which Muslim countries' freedom will remain a distant dream. Salman Rushdie is the author, most recently, of "Fury: A Novel." |
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If many of the country's specialists on Islam and the Middle East are getting more public exposure than usual, the debate over who's right has also been heating up. One well-known expert in particular is blaming what he sees as the establishment in the field for failing for years to predict the danger of Islamic extremism. The expert, Martin Kramer, who teaches both in the United States and in Israel and is editor of Middle East Quarterly, writes in a new book, "Ivory Towers on Sand," that the study of the Middle East and of Islam has been afflicted with so much political bias and wishful thinking that most scholars have missed "the major evolutions of Middle Eastern politics and society over the past two decades." And in Mr. Kramer's view of things, nothing has been more completely missed than the threat posed by Islamic terrorism to the United States and the West. Not surprisingly, Mr. Kramer's accusation has provoked a heated debate in the academic world, with angry rejoinders from some of those criticized by name in his book. Those who disagree accuse Mr. Kramer of a host of sins, from being motivated by his own political agenda to quoting his rivals out of context to misunderstanding the nature of Islam himself. "I haven't read the book yet, but what I've read about it is completely consistent with the views that Martin has expressed in recent years, and completely offensive," said Richard Bulliet, a professor of history at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University. "The impression that I have is that he thinks that any degree of sympathetic study of Islamic politics is simply dead wrong, that it's anathema and should be represented as such." In an important sense, the charges and countercharges prompted by Mr. Kramer's book are a new chapter in a continuing saga, one that in recent years has seen deep fissures develop both over Middle East politics in general and the nature of Islamic fundamentalism in particular. The disagreements have a good deal to do with Middle East politics themselves, with Mr. Kramer and his scholarly allies tending to be more pro-Israeli and more critical of the Arabs than his scholarly adversaries. But the debate also encompasses other questions confronting Americans as they ponder the attacks of Sept. 11 and their government's response to them. How powerful a force is militant Islam? Is it by its very nature an enemy of the United States and the West? Or has it become an enemy because the United States has misunderstood it and pushed it into opposition? Does it contain within itself the possibility of a democratic evolution? "There are two camps," said John L. Esposito, a leading American scholar of Islam and the founder of the Center for Muslim- Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, who is among the scholars criticized by Mr. Kramer. "One of them believes that all Islamic fundamentalist groups or movements are a threat. The other, represented by myself and several others, would say that you have to distinguish between mainstream Islamic society and extremists, who attack people in their own societies and now in the West." Daniel Pipes, the founder of Middle East Quarterly and author of several books on the Middle East, is a colleague of Mr. Kramer and agrees that the division has to do with the vision of fundamentalism. Asked how he differed from Mr. Esposito, he replied: "What I say is that this is a totalitarian movement and everybody involved in it is a problem. There is no good in it. He would make a distinction between good and bad fundamentalisms." To Mr. Kramer, the majority of experts "failed to ask the right questions at the right time about Islam." He said: "They underestimated its impact in the 1980's; they misrepresented its role in the early 1990's; and they glossed over its growing potential for terrorism against America in the late 1990's." He argues in part that what he calls the establishment in Middle East studies in this country failed, first, to predict the revolution of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979 and then to learn something from it. "In their view any Islamic movement is either moderate or potentially moderate," Mr. Kramer said of the major research centers in the United States. "So every time there is a disagreeable act by some Muslim group, what they say is: `Well, this doesn't represent Islam; this is not true Islam.' But the real question, which they don't ask, is why do the people who perpetrate these acts justify them in terms of Islam?" Mr. Kramer's book was published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a group that has close relations with Israel, and Mr. Kramer himself is a past director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies in Tel Aviv. These organizations are respected by scholars in the field, but these institutional affiliations suggest to some of Mr. Kramer's detractors that his underlying purpose is to discredit those who disagree with him on the basic Israeli-Arab conflict. "If you look at Martin's own profile, his own ideological profile, and that of his publisher - which are not primarily concerned with what is best for America - it's clear that there is an agenda here, which is to discredit the entire Middle East establishment," Mr. Esposito said. Reactions to Mr. Kramer's views are mixed, reflecting what Mr. Esposito called the warfare that takes place in the field. Some, including Mr. Bulliet and others, agree with Mr. Kramer that academic experts, like most government experts, were focused on other sorts of change in the Middle East and underestimated the strength of extreme fundamentalist groups. "The field has been narrowly focused and polarized in part because the Arab-Israeli conflict took so much of its attention," said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Sarah Lawrence College. "One of the consequences of that is that we have underestimated the reach and power of fringe Islamicist groups, like bin Laden, like the Egyptian Jihad and other groups in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon." "Osama bin Laden was an obscure man up until the mid-1990's," Mr. Gerges continued. "We did not imagine how his message resonates in the minds of many Muslims." Mr. Kramer views Mr. Esposito as representative of much that is wrong in Middle Eastern studies, writing about him as an influential figure among policymakers in Washington who in the 1990's "came forward to claim that Islamist movements were nothing other than movements of democratic reform." Mr. Esposito's reply is that Mr. Kramer errs both in his characterization of his writings and in his view of Islamic politics. "The best response is probably to ask people to read my books, like "The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?" and come to their own conclusions," Mr. Esposito said. "I specifically deal with bin Laden and talk about him as an extremist involved in acts of terrorism. But I also say that we shouldn't focus on him too much because that would obscure the fact that there are other bin Ladens, and an excessive focus makes him more of a drawing card for other extremist groups." Mr. Bulliet, who, like Mr. Esposito, is criticized by name by Mr. Kramer, agrees with him that a degree of wishful thinking has infiltrated the analyses of some experts. Still, he argues that it is Mr. Kramer's view of Islam as monolithic and unchangingly hostile that is incorrect. "The question is what do you see when you look at Islamic politics," Mr. Bulliet said. "Is it an evil that must be fought against root and branch? Or is it a spectrum of political activities that encompasses strong advocates of participatory government, and Iran would now be representative of that, and advocates of totalitarian government, and bin Laden would represent that. "But if you say that everyone that wants Islam central to public life is an enemy," Mr. Bulliet said, "then you empower the radical fringe." |
Acknowledging these complexities makes the study of religion and the study of science ("Religious Studies" and "Science Studies") difficult, but not impossible. Such studies would miss their subjects if they focused on one of theory or practice to the virtual exclusion of the other.
Talk of "community" in religion and in science can thus describe these important complexities characteristic of the kinds of things they are.
Is it even possible for there to be a religion that's thoroughly "anti-community," perhaps even a religion of one (person) forbidden to seek interpersonal relations of any sort? (-Ultimate Hermitism) Even if there could be a "religion of one," it's clear that for some religions, the basic unit is a group (e.g., the congregation, the adherents to the faith) and the religious group's well-being and improvement is paramount. The ideal may also be for members to benefit from their relationship to the group, but some religious ideals require self-sacrifice in practice. And if one person suffers or dies so that the others may live or live better, she might, according to her religion's tenets, achieve excellence or salvation or eternal reward. But everyone's benefiting is consistent with the purpose of the martyr's actions being the improvement of the group's status. A necessary consequence of the community's improvement might be the improvement of the individual, without the latter's being the purpose of the improvement.
Science seems about as personal as religion is in this way. Learning (including learning what's unknown) is the improvement that the scientific communities seek. Individual scientists may benefit or may make great sacrifices in the process, but the purpose is to increase the community's knowledge. A manic-depressive psychiatrist who tests a potentially toxic, new-found cure on himself risks sacrifice for the sake of knowledge and personal improvement. Acting in accord with a scientist's professional obligations, he seeks to improve the state of knowledge.
2000 David F. AustinGo to next section Separation by Fact and Value
