Confronting September 11: Religious Identity and National Loyalty
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The
tension between religious identity and national loyalty has become the
focus of much of the world's attention since the attacks on September
11th. In the first three readings we explored how individuals construct
their identity in relation to their cultural identities. This reading
begins to explore the connection between religious identity and
national loyalty as it has emerged in our world. Throughout recorded
history adherence to a particular religious tradition could mean
acceptance and privilege, while in other places and times practicing
the very same religion could make the individual suspect in the eyes of
the government and society.
Often monarchs ruled over their subjects
and justified their power in the name of the divine; their rule was
sanctioned by God. While religion has often legitimized the power
relationship between a monarchy and its subjects, these empires have
used many strategies for dealing with religious differences. In some
empires subjects have been forced to convert to the religion of the
monarch. In others those of different faiths were expelled from their
lands, and still others tolerated religious differences.
The issue of membership - who is in and
who is out - in society was significantly altered when people began to
see themselves no longer as subjects but instead as members of a
nation. In the past, people expressed loyalty to their ruler, not to
their country. People living within empires began to organize as
national groups for independence. In central Europe, after the military
successes of Napoleon, Germans, Austrians, Slavs, and Italians fought
to free themselves and in the process began to think of themselves in a
new way. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, groups seeking
independence from the Ottoman Empire sought to express their national
identity free of the Sultan's rule. Before long, the ideas of
nationalism spread over the globe.
Historian Hans Kohn defines nationalism
as "a state of mind inspiring the large majority of a people and
claiming to inspire all its members." It asserts that the nation-state
is the ideal and only legitimate form of political organization and
that nationality is the source of all cultural creative energy and
economic well being. Sociologist Theodore Abel views nationalism as a
feeling "more positive than patriotism, or love of one's country for
its beautiful streams, valleys, and mountains" and warns that it may
involve "a certain amount of ethnocentrism, a feeling of superiority of
one's nation over other nations." Martin Thom, in Nations, Republics
and Tribes, marks the transformation of the French idea of a nation
from encompassing all residents of a territory regardless of ethnicity
and religion, into a romantic ethno-nationalist concept focusing on
exclusion of those who do not fit in.
What role would religion play in this new
vision? As nation-states took on either an official religion or an
intensely secular identity, traditional religious identities and
beliefs were called into question. In France, for example, Jews were
given citizenship in 1791, along with other French men and women.
Despite their new status, in 1807, Napoleon called together 71 rabbis
and other Jewish religious leaders to help him decide whether the Jews
of France were members of the French nation. He asked:
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In the
eyes of Jews, are Frenchmen considered their brethren or are they
considered strangers? Do Jews born in France, and treated by the laws
as French, consider France their own country? Are they bound to defend
it? Are they bound to obey the laws and conform to the requirements of
the French civil code, the legal system?1
The Jews Napoleon questioned offered the following response:
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The love of
country is in the heart of Jews a sentiment so natural, so powerful,
and so consonant to their religious opinions, that a French Jew
considers himself in England, as among strangers, although he may be
among Jews; and the case is the same with English Jews in France.
To such a pitch is this sentiment carried among them, that during the last war, French Jews have been seen fighting desperately against other Jews, the subjects of countries then at war with France.
Napoleon was satisfied with their response.
This conflict between religious identity
continues as nations struggle for their identity. After the cold war,
Russian influence dwindled in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Tension
between nationalists, former Communists, and long silenced religious
groups flared. In his book Jihad, Ahmed Rashid, a journalist based in
Pakistan, described how this conflict has become the focus of the
world's attention. He offers one explanation for the rise of Islamic
extremism in Central Asia after the cold war:
-
For the
majority of the people in Central Asia, independence from the Soviet
Communist system did not immediately translate into an urge for
democracy, the market economy, or Western culture and consumerism, as
was the case elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, for example Russia
and the Baltic republics. Instead, Islamic revival swept through the
region. One of the key tenets of the Soviet system had been that
religion was incompatible with communism, and the Communists
methodically set about repressing all forms of religious expression
within the country. As the Soviet empire fell apart, the people of
Central Asia, who had been forced to renounce or hide their religion
for seventy-four years, at last saw an opportunity to reconnect
spiritually and culturally with their Islamic past.
The Central Asians embraced Islam not only to reestablish their own ethnic and cultural identity but to reconnect with their Muslim neighbors to the south, who had been cut off from them ever since Stalin closed the borders between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world. Almost the first new visitors to the independent Central Asian republics were Islamic missionaries from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and elsewhere, who helped build hundreds of new mosques and distributed free copies of the Koran translated into Russian and other native languages. Millions of Central Asians emotionally seized this opportunity to rediscover their identity and heritage, all of which they linked intimately with Islam. As I traveled through the region in that first heady year of independence, I was besieged by people wanting to know about the world of Islam outside their valleys and mountain villages. Few people knew about the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, the depth of Palestinian resistance to Israel, or the mini-wars that had been waged by Islamic militants in Kashmir, Algeria, Egypt and the Philippines. Many had forgotten their prayers and other rituals of Islam, even though an underground movement of itinerant preachers, as well as local mystics and teachers, had kept alive traditions of the faith and the cultural and social mores that this faith fostered.
What Central Asians did know about, however, for many of them had experienced its effects firsthand, was the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the ten-year war that followed. Thousands of young men had been conscripted into the Soviet Army and sent to fight the Afghan Mujahedeen (Islamic fighters). Contrary to Soviet expectations, many young men returned home with admiring stories of the sacrifices and Islamic zeal of their opponents. Even though some of their comrades had come back in zinc lined coffins, the survivors spoke with glowing pride of the Mujahadeen guerrillas' success and bravery against the overwhelming firepower of their own Soviet forces. Sipping tea, men of an older generation compared the Afghans to Central Asia's own Mujahedeen - the Basmachis - who had resisted the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution for more than a decade. Their hatred for the Soviet army and political system was obvious. The fact that they shared an ethnic and linguistic affinity with the people they were fighting made them realize even more deeply how the Soviet Communist system had deprived them of their common heritage and national pride.
When independence came, with its rush of excitement and religious fervor, Central Asians nonetheless realized that the policies and actions of their governments would determine the political and economic futures of their fragile states as well as the future of their Islamic revival. Would the rulers embrace popular Islam and democracy and rejoin the wider Islamic community with its culture of tolerance or would they continue to embrace the Communist policies of political, social, and religious repression, thereby ensuring greater resistance from the newly aroused population? Such critical decisions would determine whether the Central Asian countries moved towards stability and progress or dissolved into instability and civil war.
The choice was there, but it quickly became apparent that the Central Asian leaders - all but Kyrgyzstan's President Askar Akayev apparatchiks from the Communist era were never going to consider these options. Instead, these highly centralized bureaucratic post-Soviet ruling elites lumbered along well-trodden paths they knew best - the suppression of dissent, democracy, popular culture, and eventually the Islamic revival.
Central Asia's reemergence into the world brought global conflicts as well. The region's enormous oil and gas reserves, which had lain largely untapped because Moscow preferred to exploit the resources of Siberia, now became a battleground for the competing interests of Russia, the United States, and neighbors such as Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and China. In what analysts quickly came to call the "new Great Game" (after the 19th century rivalry between the empires of tsarist Russia and Great Britain for control of Asia), Russia, China and the United States struggled to establish pipelines that would give them access to natural resources and influence over the peoples of Central Asia.
Afghanistan, which had been a pawn in the Cold War U.S.-Soviet rivalry since 1979, found itself still caught in the middle, despite the breakup of the Soviet Union. However, the money the United States had funneled via Pakistan's secret service to the most extremist of the anti-Soviet Islamic fighters during the war started a movement that would change the game altogether. A new group, the Taliban, rose to power and created a model of extremist Islamic fundamentalism unknown in the Muslim world. With the financial and military help of the Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan which became a base for Islamic militants of every kind, who trained with the Taliban cadres before returning to their homes to spread political and social instability across the region.2
While much of this history is still being
written, Marc Gopin instructs us in the introduction to these readings
that, "much of the struggle of recent months has been over events in
the Middle East, and specifically in countries such as Afghanistan and
Pakistan. It is wonderful to think in the abstract about identity,
spirituality and religion, and democracy. But the hard work of
intellectual maturity and responsible citizenship comes in
understanding the details of human experience. We dare not speak in
generalities and not know the facts about specific places and their
particular circumstances."
CONNECTIONS
- Why do you think religious and national identities have so often come into conflict? What kind of situation aggravates the tension?
- Is it possible to have a "we", like a nation, without having a "they" who do not belong?
- What is citizenship? How is it obtained? What rights and responsibilities are attached to citizenship? Some scholars claim that through citizenship in a nation people and nations develop a sense of common good and shared purpose. How do those ideas help us understand the place of religious identity in a political community?
- What is secularism? What role should religion have in a secular country?
- Based on Napoleon's questions to the Jewish religious leaders, what were his concerns about Judaism? Have you seen those concerns reflected in other religious traditions?
- How did religious loyalty and national identity come together in Afghanistan?
- Rashid describes missionaries and Mujahedeen flocking to Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets. They brought with them interpretations of Islam - wahhabi or salafi - that were new to Afghanistan. John L. Esposito, author of Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam describes wahhabism as "Saudi Arabia's ultraconservative, puritanical brand of Islam: literalist, rigid, and exclusivist. Presenting their version of Islam as the pristine, pure, unadulterated message, the Wahhabi seek to impose their strict beliefs and interpretations, which are not commonly shared by other Sunni or by Shii Muslims throughout the Muslim world."3 Through a combination of fundamentalist religious schools and terrorist training camps, Esposito writes "A hitherto little-noted part of the world spawned a Taliban-al-Qaeda alliance that became the base for a network of organizations and cells from across the Muslim world that hijacked Islam, indiscriminately slaughtering non-Muslims and Muslims alike."4
- Why does Rashid suggest fundamentalist missionaries targeted Afghanistan? What might have made the population more susceptible to their message?
- Ahmed Rashid describes a religious fervor that came with independence in Central Asia. Why do you think questions of religious identity in Central Asia have become so pronounced following the fall of the Soviet Union?
- How does Rashid explain the rise of the Taliban? What factor seems most important? What is the relationship between belief and action?
- What roles does religion play in your community, state, or country? Do religious identities come into conflict with local or national interests? How are those tensions negotiated or resolved?
- Why have so many governments attempted to restrict and regulate religious practice? Does a nation-state ever have any legitimate reasons for doing so?
- Historically various nations in Europe have defined citizenship according to blood or residency at different times depending on contemporary circumstances. What other markers of citizenship are suggested in the reading?
- To explore these issues further read Chapter 2, "We and They," in Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior. For more on the relationship between Jews and Nationalism read Chapter 2, "Outsiders in Eastern Europe," of Facing History and Ourselves: The Jews of Poland.
1 Facing History and Ourselves, Holocaust and Human Behavior (Facing History and Ourselves, 1994) p. 80.
2 Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, by Ahmed Rashid. Yale University Press, 2002 ,pp. 67.
3 Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam by John L. Espositio, (Oxford University Press, 2002)106
4 Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam by John L. Espositio, (Oxford University Press, 2002)117.
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