Imagine No Religion,I Wonder If You Can

The review of two books, Reaching for Power: The Shi’a in the Modern World by Yitzhak Nakash and Shia Revival:How conflicts within Islam Will Shape The Future by Vali Nasr, by Max Rodenbeck in the November NY Review of Books provides needed insight into a very current dilemma. To me it ,reinforces my negative assessment of religion in general and provides new arguments for just this position.

A huge problem in having a religion which incorporates prophets into it’s belief system is the issue of whether this “holiness”,this having been singled out by God, then becomes a hereditary trait. It is just this question of inheritance and lineage which has historically plagued Islam and continues to cause deep divisions within the Muslim world today, divisions which are now and will continue to affect us all.

Within the Shiia account of Holy lineage, or House of the Prophet, a grudge arose immediately after the death of Muhammad, when his cousin Ali was passed over three times for the title of caliph, or worldly successor, in favor of the Ummayad cousins. This is your basic Hatfields and McCoys, only with somewhat more serious historical implications. Ali finally reigns for a bit but is assassinated. His son Hussein trys to rally, but Ummayad Yazid slaughters Hussein and his followers. Sister Zaynad survives and on it goes.Questions arose over the number of generations of legitimate direct decendents, with some arguing seven , others insisting on twelve. “Twelvers” believe a second coming of Muhammad alMahdi, the last in their “chain’ of succession, is immanent. Twelvers, including Irans bellicose President Ahmadinejad , Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and those of the Badr Brigades, believe religious scholars should be outspoken regarding politics. Traditionally the Najaf, the religious school led by Ayatollah Sistani, has championed political quetism.In terms of rights or liberties, all sides remain forbidding social conservatives.

Now we get to the rupture with the most serious consequences for our time, that between the Shiia and Sunni sects. Sunnis , making up 85% of the worlds 1.2 billion Muslims, reject the exalting of cousin Ali and the notion of a hereditary imamate, regarding it as a dubious innovation which obscures Islams core message. While respecting the House of the Prophet, they believe the worshipping of tombs to be a form of corruption”.In the Sunni narrative , the Shiia are seen as outsiders, Persian-tinged schismatics whose assault on Muslim unity has periodically weakened the faith.”

Because ,for the past millennium, half the worlds Shiia have lived within Iran with the rest diluted within overwhelming Sunni populations, sectarian conflict has been in remission. Historically, pan-Islamist unity has increased under the threat of Western imperialism, and around causes such as the formation of the Islamic state of Pakistan and that of the plight of the Palestinians. We see this now in a shared antagonism towards the US occupation in Iraq. Both sects express yearnings for a unified Muslim nation, or ummah, but it is clear this is threatened by forces now shattering the calm between the sects. Increasing Sunni radicalism and triumphalism, in the form of Wahibism, and the rise of “Sunnification” of political discourse, both harden positions and condemn Shiism as an obstacle to progress. Failures throughout the 1950s and 60s of forms of secular opposition such as unions, communism, Pan-Arabic nationalism and Baathism (contributed to by Western intervention) have forced both Shiia and Sunni to adopt more theocratic forms with strict clerical leadership.

To my mind, all religion is a bit demented and appeals ,with some exceptions, to the most regressive tendencies within the human psych. To the religious ,faith becomes certainty, peace becomes war and truth becomes a possession to be fought over. The dream of a future ,a modernity, where justice creates the condition for peace, is held hostage by those clinging to a past of retribution and redemption. Whether it is the Sunni extremism of Hamas or the Christian extremism of apocalyptic Milleniallism, the project of democratic equality and the flourishing of human potential is held back by the severe limitations and restrictions they place on imagination and political possibility. While superstition and ancient dogma may not be the root of oppression, they collaborate willingly or as pawns with the institutions and structures of power which perpetuate injustice. Church and State must be entirely separated, religion and politics must be isolated spheres and eventually, religion itself reduced to a non-role in civil society.