It’s not “religion” in a single sense of the word. Religion is a vague term that people are using which encompasses wholly different groups of people. A more specific term might be extremists. Extremists infiltrate religions, governments, children’s organizations, stock markets, gardening clubs, you name it. It’s specifically the violent extremists that are the problem. We can talk about religion all day long but it’s really the radical fringe we are reacting to. How do we best get rid of them now that they are here?
We have to deal with the fact that we fanned the flames. They might have been marginalized before, but by our war activities we have exacerbated the problem. So there’s that.
But we also have to deal with the here and now. They will keep attacking unless we do something. That something likely includes warfare, preferably limited and not as a lone wolf action.
The thing I have the most trouble with is that I don’t think 90% of the people in the USA see all that subtlety. Maybe I’m elitist dog shit. But I don’t see a thoughtful populace who will insist on measured action.
So what, really, do we do then? We could mean a lot of things: individuals, groups, nations, boingers, etc. So whatever your thoughts.
Personally, a few things. Maintain personal integrity and alertness without going all survivalist crazytown. Vote for people who represent my values. Ummm, give to orgs doing peaceful humanitarian work, whom I can get behind. What else?
There are certainly a number of countries and regions that are more reluctant or downright hostile to the idea of welcoming Muslims. On the other hand, I’ve heard a number of reports of Christian refugees being intimidated in the refugee centres, so there’s an interesting mix of privilege or disadvantage that varies depending on the context. I’ve only met one Yazidi lady, I think they’re a pretty small group relative to the others.
The guy who is planning to stay with us actually has a Christian father and a Muslim mother - the father had to leave due to death threats, and the mother was being pressured to divorce him. Eventually the whole family got out, but they’re in a single room all together and he can’t concentrate on his studies with everyone else around.
The whole situation here seems to be organised chaos - Hamburg is a big hub, so a lot of people who arrive don’t stay long as they want to continue on to Scandinavia or elsewhere in Europe. You can travel through Germany without registering, so many stay here for a while without moving into a refugee centre in the hope of being able to meet their family in another country. Some people criticise the fact that many have smartphones, but this is one of the interesting things about modern refugees - you don’t need a fixed address to be connected, so a smartphone is an essential way to keep in contact with people while traveling. Apparently about 1000 people are staying in the main station, although they come and go so the people themselves keep changing. Meanwhile about a month ago some Roma people moved into the main church in the city centre, and are now wards of the church. Any time you go to the city you see refugees being given tours, or just traveling here and there in groups of about 20 - they all get free bus passes to get around the city. Interesting times…
I’d like to say I know, but I don’t know the answers. I am just another blowhard on the intertubes, of course. I know a decent amount on the background and history here, but I’m no policy wonk in terms of workable solutions. I’ll freely admit that. Of course for some, that means I should shut up, because only people who know all the answers should be allowed to speak!
I think the things you suggest are helpful. On some level, the politics of the situation is out of our hands, since it’s pretty clear that foreign policy has almost always been a realm where voters have some of the least sway and policy makers jealously guard their domain and push for their own views and try to shape ours. And of course there is so much we’re not privy to in terms of what’s actually happening. but the more weight we put behind politicians who represent more complex views of the world, and who are willing to think outside the box, the better. But those politicians are hard to come by. I think a major mass movement would help, but that would only go so far. There is still serious debate on whether or not the vietnam war was really effected by the anti-war movement or not. And mass movements tend to see serious attacks from the establishment institutions anyway.
I think this is one of the places where we really can make a difference in the west. These people are coming anyway, so making them as unwelcome as possible has zero chance of making us safer. In fact, making people welcome and showing true respect for them seems to me to be the best way to build ties between the Middle East and Europe and provide a realistic hope of an end to this madness. It’s probably a lot cheaper than war, and may actually reduce terrorism better than other ways. The dangerous ideologues on different sides still exist, but they don’t have to control the conversation.
There’s quite a lot of evidence that prosperous equitable democratic nations are less religious than third world dictatorships (the US is a bit of an outlier, being more religious than most of our peers, but you can argue that we might not be as democratic or equitable as other first world nations either). The question is which way does the influence flow: do countries become less religious as they develop and become democracies, or is the key to global prosperity and democracy to stamp out religion?
I think it’s even easier to sort-of agree what constitutes “religion” than what qualifies as “extreme”. Especially in British media I encounter a lot of vague rants about acting against extremism, with “extreme” serving as a vague placeholder for “what I have decided needs to go”. In the current climate, even pacifism can be quite easily labelled as being extreme. It is a totalitarian drive towards enforcing “common values” instead of understanding diversity.
Not unlike when US broadcast media was trying to create their “war on terror”, I usually deflated this with (what I thought was) an obvious question: Why not simply a war against violence? Why instead always choose some vague euphemism, if not that they want to excuse the use of violence themselves?
Some like to complain that semantics undermines such conversations, but I think that it would be naive to suggest that such labels do not matter. They are chosen and publicized quite deliberately, for very real reasons.
As you said yourself, religion is an instrument of power. Nothing more, nothing less. Always has been. Pretty much the most efficient instrument of power as well.
I’d say it’s the former, not the latter. But that’s a productive line of questioning, I think. Probably better than just asserting that religion is the only problem worth focusing on.
You defining religion this way also makes it exclusive, which in turn serves to bolster the power of your own arguments.
I think it demonstrates two common misconceptions:
That we can/should assume that organized religion has anything to do with how religion as a biological technology actually works. Organized religion is merely another petty social institution. Whereas religion itself (which most people don’t use) functions as a form of communicating between the conscious and deep mind with symbols. I think it’s easily argued that the former is relevant to the topic, whereas the latter is not.
That political power has any especial validity or relevance compared to other kinds of power. Power can be seen as the value-neutral motive force required to put anything in motion. But it requires a certain philosophical outlook shared between people to assume that power over people represents any kind of social reality. Power as physics, power as knowledge, and power as self-discipline IMO easily trump the notion when it comes to real-world accountability. We can posit that It Is A Thing, but we would do better to not assume that it is, nor its universality.
Thanks for that. Helpful background. So basically along with opening up third track discussions, we need to ensure a reliable supply of oil to the endangered areas. Surely, the Saudis could help out on that one.
Organized religion is the kind of religion the vast majority of people that call themselves religious is engaged in in some way or another, a system to harness “religion as a biological technology” as you put it, or spirituality maybe, although the latter is no requirement to partake in the former. In this way I would argue that they do have something to do with each other.
Yes, power is a very flexible term. I would definitely argue though that the power to influence millions of people to the point where a significant number of them are willing to give their life for some imaginary cause has special relevance. That kind of power is real and we saw it in action yesterday. Nothing produces it as well as religion, organized religion as you correctly wrote. I should have written organized religion.
