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Front Page >> Potpourri > Story

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The Religious Rightwing
By B. Thohii Hiimai
A popular ideology of the 20th century that in the future religion will cease to have relevant or die and secularism will become a new religion has been discredited by ever growing of fervor in faith among believers of different religious communities. Believers are getting closer to their faith and as well more compartmentalized into their own religious communities for belongingness in this world situation in which a strange type of monotheistic religion seems to be sweeping the globe – this new religion is the worship of the universal market.

In this universal culture of consumerism where warlike situation of competition for pieces of shrinking cake to be shared becomes more ferocious, one finds succor and acceptability in the religion community. This trend has become more pronounced among those groups who make exodus to alien country or city for green pasture. On the other side, religion is also facing the growth of religious right wing within whose voices are growing ever louder and more radical in discourse.

The ideal of the liberals on universal religion – common to all humanity which is based on truth, love, and fellow-feeling – has not been earnestly embraced by the religious right in all religious communities. The liberal, for instance, like Swami Vivekananda’s exhortation, “My religion versus yours should become a thing of the past, for ‘religious bigotry’ and a ‘holier than thou attitude’ is the worst form of irreligion” has not convinced the right-wing in all religions to rid their jaundiced lens.

In a religion world where the voice of the religious right are getting ever louder than the moderate and liberals, the concept of the separation of religion and the state (politics) which relegates religion to the realm of private and respect for all religions is trampled on. Religion has stepped out of private domain to public affair. “Religion today is a big public business, using efficient political organization and cutting-edge information technology to enhance its ends. Religion play bare-knuckle rough all the time, while demanding kid-glove in return” says writer Salman Rushdie. A victim of Islamic extremism himself, his view on religious right is apparent enough.

In talking of religious fundamentalism there is a preconceived notion of apt to point finger at the Islamic world. Muslims are depicted as fanatic, fundamentalist and blood thirsty. Putting the Muslims on the wrong side of the moral issues stems from the strand of radicalism operating within Islam. Islamic fundamentalist wield the ideology of the sword.

Islamic terrorists crossing sword across the globe and over even regimes that are perceived themselves as fundamentalist aim a extirpation of all manifestation of western and secular intrusion. Hence the campaign to kill writers, unveiled women, dissenters, foreigners etc... The Islamic radical consider the non-Muslim as infidels. The severe danger pose by Islamic fundamentalist cannot be denied. But fundamentalism is by no means confined to Islam. In what Guy Sorman called as, “post-modernism or new-romanticism”, the evangelical movements seeking to interpret the Bible literally, Jewish groups wanting to establish a theocracy, Slavophilism, Hindutva are also a kind of fundamentalism.

Recently a Tele-preacher Robertson, America’s leading evangelist, speaking on his channel, the Christian Broadcasting Network, called for the assassination of Venezuela’s President, Hugo Chavez who, in a joint television appearance with the Cuban President Fidel Castro, accused the US of destroying the world. The evangelist brands the President as a “terrific danger”, a launching pad for communist infiltration and Islamic extremism all over the country”.

Another rightist evangelist Franklin Graham – the heir to one of the most influential evangelists Billy Graham – declared that Islam is a religion which is “wicked, violent and not of the same God” in the aftermath of 9/11. For the Americans in the absence of a unified image which was earlier furnished by communism and socialism, there is a tendency to create a new enemy image in the shape of the Muslim world.

This became more pronounced in the post-9/11. Christian rightwing in America debating and wanting to replace the teaching of evolution as science in schools with “intelligent design” (Creation) or on other moral issues are comprehensible but the religious rightism of Christian evangelist like Robert-son and Franklin Graham is something pretty hard to chew and swallow.

The communal forces commonly called the Sangh Parivars (the RSS, the VHP, and the Bajrang Dal) are into cultural program of promoting Ram as a national hero to support their anti-Muslim agenda. The agenda of the Hindu nationalists can be discerned from the ideology propagated by M.S. Golwalker, the successor of Dr. K.B. Hedgewar, founder of the RSS, who explicitly drew on the cultural nationalism of Adolf Hitler. For the Indian context he spells out that the non-Hindu people in Hindustan must adopt Hindu culture and language, respect and revere Hindu religion and glorify the Hindu nation or they deserve not even citizen’s rights. Only Hindus are children of the soil. The Hindu nationalists’ attempt to rewrite the nation’s history to suit their agenda could have been achieved had not the electoral tide been changed by the electoral by voting the secular parties to power in the recent past.

The fundamentalist forces which associate themselves with political conservatism and with heavily patriarchal values are gaining ground in all religious communities. Propagation of radical view by these forces is today furthered by digital information technology. In a recently held debate in Cairo on the topic “Digital Islamic”, live on the BBC radio, as part of the season, “Who Runs Your World: the BBC search for power in the 21st century”, one panelist said that Islamic websites have mushroomed in the post 9/11. Islamic radicals have websites to propagate their hate ideology against the western. Even recruitment of ‘jihad’ is made possible through website. Islamic fundamentalists are anti-western not so much for fear of military power but its intrusion with western values. Hence defying slogan, “To hell with modernity and western culture” from Islamic radicals.

Meanwhile in the west, Christian fundamentalists in the “electronic church” in the US whose voice is as loud as Islamic radical not only disfigures the image of evangelical Christians but also make harder for the liberal Christians to swallow. Islam and Christianity are two predominant religions in the world, and one imagines what if the ghost of the bloody crusade, centuries ago, in which Islam sought to spread by sword and Christian crusaders too sought to recover the Holy Land by butchery, revisit us today. The forces that sought to create theocratic state in the subcontinent and the West Asia have left lasting enmity among the people in the name of religion.

Religion unites as much as it divides people. It is a dangerous political instrument, pitting followers of one faith against those of another, with both sides willing to die to defend what they believe to be the only Truth. Religion as a potential conflict is still there today as it was in the past.

(Courtesy: The Sangai Express)

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