Religion and Politics

On Saturday, Obama and McCain made their first joint appearance as presumptive nominees at a “Civil Forum”. The candidates were speaking before the Saddleback Church in California. NPR has reported news of the event and said that the church has a membership of “22,000 evangelical voters.” The pastor of the church and interviewer on Saturday was Rick Warren, the author of “The Purpose Driven Life.” Warren has not endorsed either candidate, saying that they are both patriots and his friends. The NPR article includes an interview with John Green from the Pew Research Center. He noted that the “approach to religious voters is central to both campaigns” although most analysts have agreed that Obama has been more forthcoming about his faith and how it shapes his life. The New York Times Politics Blog has pointed out that the forum was the “unofficial opening of the general election.” The two candidates spoke separately, with Obama going first (after flipping a coin) and each of them speaking for about an hour. The questions were quite varied but related mostly to character and personality. The main goal appeared to get the candidates to do some soul searching – allowing viewers to get more personal information from the candidates about their leadership styles and opinions. “The event reflects the importance of religion in American life and increasingly, in politics,” and as Pastor Warren said in his introduction (see transcript), “we believe in the separation of church and state, but we do not believe in the separation of faith and politics because faith is just a world view and everybody has some kind of world view.” A CNN article also looks at the politics of trying to persuade religious voters to vote one way or the other. Ed Hornick wrote that the “stakes are high for both candidates, who are actively courting so-called values voters and evangelicals, important voting blocs.”

Photo of Pastor Rick Warren from the Purpose Driven website

The Center for Religious Freedom of the Hudson Institute, with the Institute for Gulf Affairs, published this year an extended brief titled, “2008 Update: Saudi Arabia’s Curriculum of Intolerance.” The Introduction describes the Center for Religious Freedom as an institution that “promotes religious freedom as a component of U.S. foreign policy.” It joined the Hudson Institute in 2007, following ten years of affiliation with Freedom House. The Center – in its own words – “is increasingly engaged in ensuring that American policymakers defend the principle of religious freedom and believers who are persecuted purely for their religious beliefs.” The Foreword presents the current world political situation and says that “it has become quite clear that extreme Islamist ideologies have been gaining adherents throughout the world.” The paper looks at how Saudi Arabia encourages extremist thinking and radical views through textbooks and educational materials at schools, all the while funding madrassahs (religious schools) world-wide. The subsequent claim of the Center, therefore, is that “the world has been slow to respond to this new ideological challenge.” Furthermore, the goal of the report is to reveal the content of the textbooks posted on the website of the Saudi Ministry of Education and argue that it includes “violent and intolerant teachings against other religious believers.” It is an update from a 2006 document, which looked at a dozen textbooks published by the Saudi Ministry. The analysis is summarized in 12 key points on how the textbooks encourage religious discrimination. The points are further broken down into three categories regarding 1) Sunni, Shiite, Sufi and other non-Wahhabi or non-Salafi Muslims; 2) Christians, Jews, Polytheists, and other infidels; and 3) anti-Semitism. In the end, the report argues that the U.S. needs to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its adherence to its international obligations to respect freedom of religion – particularly as the U.S. State Department in 2006 “publicized that Saudi Arabia confirmed it would revise its textbooks and make other related reforms within two years” during the course of bilateral discussions.

Last week, Mazen Asbahi, stepped down as Barack Obama’s Muslim outreach adviser. He held the position from July 26 until August 6, at which point he resigned from the volunteer position. The Wall Street Journal reported that there were questions about Mr. Absahi’s “involvement in an Islamic investment fund and various Islamic groups.” A CNN blog also repeated that Mr. Absahi’s decision was based on his desire “to avoid distracting from Barack Obama’s message of change,” particularly as his involvement with those groups tied him for a brief period to Jamal Said, who has been linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. On June 26, this blog looked at the criticism Obama was getting from the Muslim-American community on account of the perceived disparity between attention given to Christian and Jewish Americans on the one hand and Muslims on the other. For this reason, the position of Volunteer National Coordinator for Muslim Affairs was a promising step in ensuring that the Arab and Muslim vote would not be divided between the two candidates. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Absahi was too well-connected to fill the post without political controversy. A recent Al Jazeera piece reminds readers that “three-quarters of the US Arab-American electorate is Christian, but they nonetheless share Arab-Muslim concerns on racial profiling, the war in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Obama cannot afford to ignore the politics of the Arab-American community or the Muslim-American community. At the same time, Obama is maintaining his ongoing attempts to dispel rumors about his own religious faith – arguing that the “whole strategy of suggesting” he is a Muslim actually shows widespread anti-Muslim sentiment. The WSJ article cited above also includes a fascinating Pew Research Poll that shows only 57% of Americans identified Obama as Christian, while 12% said he was Muslim, and 25% did not know. Those figures help explain why the front cover of the New Yorker last month may have been particularly offensive and politically controversial.  

Europride 2008 took place from July 25 to August 3 in Stockholm, Sweden. This past week, EUObserver.com published an article titled, “Anti-gay Bigotry Spans European Cultures,” which looked at the contrast between gay-friendly societies and governments in Europe and the “frequent reports of violent, homophobic attacks” that nevertheless still take place. The article points out that Europride 2008 was “marked by the attempted murder of a homosexual couple strolling peacefully in a quiet Stockholm street on the night of 28 July.” The reason for this blog is that the article also looks at the situation of homosexuality from the perspective of morality and religion. For example, the Turkish court decision last year to close down an Istanbul LGBT-rights group was based on arguments of morality (and law?) – although not necessary religion or the role of religion in the state. This trend of separating religion from morality has serious consequences for countries, which opt for secular government but do not necessarily restrict specific branches of government, which may disguise their religious verdicts with judgments about morality and what is “best” for society. The article further looks at the issue of gay rights from the perspective of human rights but notes that civil servants and politicians may not actually decide what rights specifically constitute human rights. In fact, and just as the article points out, religious feelings often “discourage frank debate.” A recently proposed EU directive would “put discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation on an equal footing with race, gender, and disability.”  The key difference between these forms of discrimination is the ease with which religion and religious sentiments can be used as justification for acts of individuals, decisions of courts, or government directives. To state an obvious example, it is hardly possible to use religious orthodoxy as a justification for racial discrimination.

According to an interview with a Chinese security official in Xinhua news, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement is “one of the main security worries to the Olympics.” The fear of this organization was highlighted on Monday when two Uighur men in the city of Kashi (in Xinjiang) killed 16 policemen. The Uighur population in northwest China is predominantly Muslim, and the Chinese authorities have claimed that it poses a serious terrorist threat. In March, there was an attempt by the East Turkestan Movement to sabotage a Southern Airlines flight. In recent weeks, there have been “a spate of smaller bombings or attempted bombings elsewhere in China.” The New York Times article on the issue (Ambush in China Raises Concerns as Olympics Near) reminds readers that this attack could be “the worst eruption of ethnic violence on Chinese soil since the early 1990s, when China blamed Muslim separatists for a spate of violent attacks.” Apparently, 82 people (through a crackdown on Uighur separatists) have been arrested this year on allegations of terror plots connected to the Olympics. On July 29, this blog discussed briefly the Turkestan Islamic Party and their threats to the Olympics. The Turkestan Islamic Party is another Uighur Muslim separatist group that claimed responsibility for recent explosions. In contrast to the NYT, the Globe and Mail/Reuters featured the article, “China Suspects Bent on Jihad.” This article, in contrast to the NYT, looks at the image of the Uighurs as religious extremists and discusses the attack on the police officers from the more stereotypical perspective that the movement is religiously motivated rather than politically desperate. A top official is quoted in the news piece as saying that “religion is more important to them than their own life or peace for their mothers, and so they set out to perform Jihad.”The U.S. State Department has listed the East Turkistan Islamic Movement as a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaeda and “the international jihadist movement.”

Last week, the Economist published two articles about religious conversion and the right of people around the world to follow their own religious path. One article, The Moment of Truth, questions whether the liberal understanding of religion, which puts emphasis on the right to change one’s belief, is actually widespread or perhaps an exception in certain countries like the United States. Readers are reminded that “one in four Americans moves on from the faith of their upbringing,” but that in most countries conversion has far more serious consequences because religious affiliation is often directly connected to power structures and political dynamics. The Economist describes this as a situation “where religion and authority (whether political, economic, or personal) are bound up,” and therefore, conversions cause controversy and shock waves. “It has been assumed that the wider community, in the form of the family, the village, or the state, has every right to take an interest in the matter.” The article further analyzes countries and settings that have historical remnants and contemporary issues of political power being divided and allocated along confessional lines, such as Lebanon. Therefore, the conclusion appears to be that “in many ways, religious freedom is receding, not advancing.” A second piece, titled, In Death’s Shadow, discusses the political ramifications of conversion and focuses on “an increasingly hard line across the Muslim world.” This article looks briefly at countries that impose the death penalty for apostasy – such as post-Taliban Afghanistan and the issue of Muslim-Christian conversion. Now, in India, there are also movements to make conversion from Hinduism ever more difficult, and in Malaysia, where sharia courts have increasing power, the judges “rarely let a registered Muslim quit the fold.” This second piece of writing looks at arguments being made in the Muslim world, and it starts with an analysis of the decision of Egypt’s grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, that Muslims can in fact convert to other religions – that it is a matter between the believer and God.

Six members of the Turkish Constitutional Court have voted to close down the AKP (the ruling Justice and Development Party). However, four others voted only to deprive the party of half of its government financial assistance. Closure of a political party requires seven votes. The court chairman, according to one news report, said that the cut in financial assistance was a warning. It is not entirely clear what such a warning will mean to the party. The case was brought against AKP in March “on claims that it became the focal point of anti-secular activities.” Other news reports question the procedure of bringing such cases before the court and that changes should be “made before opening of closure cases.” Turkey’s Prime Minister has said that the AKP is committed to the secular system. The AKP entered the political scene on August 14, 2001 and won 46.6% of the vote in the July 2007 elections. If AKP had been banned, the current government would have been removed from power – forcing elections. The poignant element of the debate over whether Erdogan and the AKP are “Islamizing” the country is that it unfortunately focuses so much on the question of hejab and women’s clothing. Would that really “Islamize” the country? The New York Times reminds readers that Turkey’s chances of gaining membership in the EU would have been hurt if the court closed the party, and the BBC reports that Turkey’s Labor Minister has said the court’s decision was “a victory for Turkish democracy.” Roger Hardy, for the BBC, has also written an analytical news piece about the second court case, which has been “deepening the rift between secularists and a government with Islamist roots.” The article discusses Ergenekon, the ultra-nationalist group that has been indicted on allegations that it was planning to overthrow the Turkish government.

The past few days have seen terrible acts of violence (terrorism) in Iraq, Turkey, and India – and threats in China. On Saturday, according to news reports, 17 explosions went off one after another in Ahmedabad, India – with two further blasts at hospitals. 49 people were killed. The attacks were probably “attempts to provoke violence between Hindus and Muslims,” and the NYT also reminds readers that the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington has concluded that from January 2004 to January 2007 India had a death toll of 3,674 to acts of terrorism – second only to Iraq. Questions have been raised about the involvement of the “Students’ Islamic Movement of India” and the Indian Mujahedeen that warned about the attacks in advance. On Sunday evening in Istanbul, 17 people were killed in two bomb blasts. Der Spiegel reports that the bombings could play a part in the decision of the Constitutional Court in Ankara, which has met to “deliberate the case seeking to ban the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).” The article also points out that “even though a majority of the judges are opposed to the AKP, they will not want to see the country descend into chaos.” Yesterday, three female suicide bombers killed 32 people in Baghdad. They were all Shiite pilgrims. Ethnic violence also erupted in Kirkuk between Kurds and Turkmens. In total, 61 people were killed and “by the end of the day, the riot and violence by Kurds against Turkmens had become one of the most severe ethnic skirmishes in Kirkuk since the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.” Now, the world community is wondering about the Beijing Olympics and what significance videotaped messages from the Turkistan Islamic Party have for the security of the Games. News reports have conveyed the terrorist message that the group intends to target the most important points of the Olympics and Chinese central cities. Meanwhile, Amnesty International’s spokesman has said that “the human rights situation in China has deteriorated in the run-up to its hosting of the Olympic Games” and the reports say that Beijing is getting rid of political critics and “underground Christian organizers.” China has denied that bombings on July 21 were terrorist attacks. Even more discouraging, attacks in Afghanistan are up by 50% in the first half of 2008.

Good day everyone, I am Patrick Frost, the FPA blogger for Central Asia, and Karin has been kind enough to let me do a post on this site from time to time. Please feel free to send me comments, critiques, and questions at patfrost1@gmail.com or just post them on this site.

Today, I would like to talk about a book I read about six months ago that challenged the way I saw the West’s political society based on secularization, other societies, civilizations, and political systems throughout the world, especially in Muslim dominated lands, and the current ‘war on terror.’ It is Mark Lilla’s, professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, The Stillborn God; Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. At its most basic, it is a philosophical history of Europe/US advancement from a society ruled by political theology to one ruled by secularization. But the book is about much more, in fact it is a warning against complacency of this type of political/societal system in the West.

Here is Lilla’s dramatic message;
‘Intellectual complacency, nursed by implicit faith in the inevitability of secularization, has blinded us to the persistence of political theology and its manifest power to shape human life at any moment.’

Lilla warns us in the West to not feel so safe and cozy with our secular system, for he argues that we are the ‘exception’, not the rest of the world, and that we are in fact still living in an ‘experiment.’ These are strong words and statements, but they are important for all to ponder. This is a pertinent book because it is based on a question not often asked; ‘Why don’t we understand the ‘enduring attraction of political theology?’ Instead of ‘why don’t they understand our (and copy) our political system and way of life?’

Lilla strongly believes that the argument over politics and religion will not end, and in fact ‘could not end,’ because it concerns the enduring question that all societies must answer and face, whether ‘to order their political affairs in light of a divine revelation, or to make their way alone.’

Somalia has now faced 17 years of bloodshed and chaos. This past week news agencies have been reporting on and questioning the ongoing power struggle (between the Western-backed government and armed “Islamist militias”) and the effects of Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys’ proclamation that he is the leader of the country’s opposition. Aweys is designated a terrorist by Washington, and according to Agence France Press, on July 22, the head of the opposition ARS or “Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia,” dismissed Aweys’ move. This official head of the ARS, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, was chosen as the leader in September 2007. Ahmed and Aweys “fell out after Ahmed decided to participate in UN-sponsored peace talks in Djibouti.” In other major newspapers, reports have come out this past week about “Islamic insurgents” targeting foreign aid workers. This means, according to the sources, that the country is being pushed even closer towards a “full-scale famine” - the number of people needing assistance soon reaching 3.5 million. The Christian Science Monitor has reported that the attacks on aid workers are now part of “a deliberate terror campaign.” For example, on July 7, as reported by Al Jazeera, the head of the UNDP in Somalia was shot dead in Mogadishu as he was leaving a mosque. The Djibouti Agreements were signed at UN-sponsored talks on June 9 and should have come into force on July 9. The signatories to the agreement were Ahmed, the head of the ARS and the Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein. On July 19, Agence France Press reported that Ahmed said the ARS wanted “the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces from the Horn of Africa nation and a deployment of UN forces before implementing the Djibouti agreement.” The majority of the ARS appears to back the agreement, while hardliners have rejected the peace deal. The AFP article reminds readers that “Ethiopian forces came to the rescue of an embattled Somali government in late 2006 to oust an Islamist movement that controlled much of southern and central Somalia” and was accused of being connected to Al Qaeda. The New York Times on July 20 estimated that seventeen aid workers have been kidnapped this year and reported that workers are leaving Mogadishu after leaflets were found in the city calling them infidels and threatening their lives. In this NYT article, by Jeffrey Gettleman, there is an excellent analysis of the source of such warnings and the theories behind the “violent murkiness” which has overtaken the country.

This blog discussed briefly the situation in Somalia on June 28 after it was listed as the world’s most unstable country by Foreign Policy magazine.