From The Brussels Journal and Europe News:
“Clash Of Civilizations”: Spiritual, Not Intellectual
From the desk of A. Millar on Sun, 2012-01-01 16:37
The words “The Clash of Ideas” are splashed across the cover of the special anniversary issue of Foreign Affairs this month. This is of course a play on the “clash of civilizations” narrative that we’ve heard countless times since 9/11, and a nod to the notion that this clash – between radical Islam and the West, or liberal democracy – is fundamentally a “war of ideas.”
I have come to believe that this diagnosis is not only wrong, but a large part of the reason why we, who believe in freedom and the rights of the individual, appear to be losing ground. (For example, we are seeing more sharia in the West, despite us knowing that full sharia demands the execution of homosexuals, the stoning of women who commit adultery, and discrimination against religious minorities. And we are seeing our right to free speech eroded, especially across Europe.)
The battle is not one of ideas. It is a spiritual battle, pure and simple.
Deploying ideas like soldiers in which the generals do not believe, the “Counter-Jihad” and anti-Islamist pundits have reduced themselves to Sunday intellectuals.
A speech by any “Counter-Jihad” spokesperson or anti-Islamist media pundit is liable to denounce the increasing liberalism and “Cultural Marxism” of the West as a symptom of the rot, and to suggest that they are fighting for a more conservative Christian West, before going on to tell us that we are also fighting for liberal ideas, such as women’s rights and gay rights.
Such speeches will only ever appeal to the converted – “sensible people” who are able to shut out one half of the message to find support for their gut instincts. Contrast this with the radical imam, who calls for full sharia in the West, and who speaks with passion and conviction, regardless of what anyone thinks.
The imam knows what the West does not, i.e., that it is about the fire in the belly and in the eyes. It is first and foremost about integrity, conviction, and spirit.
If one wants an example of the ravages of strategy, put above values and integrity, one need look no further than Britain’s main three political parties. With the exception of Brighton – a student city – which elected a member of the Green Party to Parliament in 2010, over the last few decades the members of the British public have ignored those parties that best expresses their values on the grounds that they “won’t get in.”
Instead they have made the tactical decision to vote for the “mainstream” party that seems most likely to keep out of power the one they dislike more. The result of this “tactical voting” is that the three parties have become indistinguishable ideologically, and appear to be without values or, sometimes, without any morals at all. The complaint that party leaders would “say anything to get elected” reveals only that the leaders are no less tactical than the voters.
There is also, though, a tactics of the minority, of course, who believe that some extreme minor party should be supported, and its past behavior – which is, for example, racist and anti-Semitic – overlooked. To be sure, politics across the board has changed over the last decade, and so have the political parties. But where such changes appear to be cosmetic, masking a fascist underbelly, they cannot be supported.
Recently, I came across a comment on a blog that suggested violence against Muslim women was an advantage to those who opposed sharia and wanted to defend liberty, since it kept the fanatics busy. This is precisely the wrong attitude, and one that is certainly not supported by Western culture – or most other cultures.
It is completely alien to the notion of chivalry of the West, the Gentleman of Confucianism, etc.
It is the comment of one who believes strategy is to be placed above his own soul. But, without a soul, without integrity, without a clear sense of right and wrong, left only with his tactics, he is doomed to lose. His freedom will go the way of that of the Muslim women we see brutalized in Egypt, Iran, and elsewhere.
Either the West – and those who defend freedom most of all – will use this existential challenge to recover themselves, to know who they are, and to act with integrity – criticizing those who deserve it, praising those who deserve praise, and defending those who are subjugated for merely wanting freedom – or they will lose.
Types of Spirituality
I have spoken about spirituality in the Confucian and traditional Christian, European, sense. But we also need to take account of the types of spirituality that occupy the West today. We cannot pretend that the West is one hundred percent Christian, if we are serious about defending it.
In the introduction to her – in many respects fascinating and informative – 2006 book on Islamism in Britain, Londonistan, Melanie Phillips laments the decline of Christianity in the UK, and suggests that its disappearance is paving the way for radical, political Islam.
However, she also notes, somewhat contradictorily, that, so far, the vacuum has been filled by all sorts of New Age-type “cults,” neo-paganism and even Satanism. In the introduction, Phillips exclaims,
First of all, we need to ask why the religious vacuum in the UK has been filled – not, as Phillips herself asserts, by Saudi and Tehran-funded Islam – but by other, unorthodox, forms of spirituality?
Secondly, if unorthodox forms of spirituality have flooded in where Christianity has declined, we should ask whether this is in fact part of the character of the West that should be defended against radical religion?
The “Occupy Wall Street” movement – which has garnered much media attention over the last few months – seems to supply an answer. Religion, in the traditional sense, has been notably absent. No Bibles. No Korans. No priests. No imams. No calls for sharia. Yet, protesters have been holding mass yoga sessions. Some have been meditating even while being arrested by police. Even Deepak Chopra – a New Age megastar – turned up at Zuccotti Park to lead a meditation. The Huffington Post has also been running stories on spirituality.
Of course, Christianity remains the largest religious denomination in the West, and it is from Christianity that we obtained such bedrock ideas as the separation of Church and State. Nevertheless, to deny that very many Westerners are now simply “spiritual” or religious in a post-Christian sense (of believing in God, but not Christ) is to deny a significant part of the character of the West.
And to snobbishly condemn those practicing New Age spirituality, Yoga, and so on, is simply to disenfranchise the very people that exhibit much of the energy in the West today, and to ignore the direction in which the West has been heading for centuries. To put it bluntly, it is to deny what the West actually is, in favor of a fantasy version of it.
A Long History of “Alternative Spirituality”
Despite being absolutely modern, the spirituality of the Occupy movement is the result of a long history. It obviously resembles the 1960s Hippy movement. However, we should not stop there to find its roots.
For many centuries, non-Christian spirituality has lain just beneath the surface in the West, exerting a strong – although today largely unrecognized – influence on the cultural elite.
Since we have already mentioned neo-paganism, it will be worth mentioning that the first neo-pagan “cult” – a Druid organization – did not appear in the late 20th century, but was founded in 1717 in London. This was a century in which mystical organizations and movements proliferated across Europe, headed, usually, by aristocrats or members of the continent’s monarchies. In the 20th century, Winston Churchill – the Prime Minister that the “Counter-Jihad” movement loves to invoke – joined a Druid Order while still a young man, although this was not a religious Order per se.
Again, during the Renaissance (14th-17th centuries) Hermeticism and neo-Platonism exerted a very substantial influence among the cultural elite, although its members were still Christian.
Although it would be possible to wind our way back through history, we might instead remark that if ancient Greece is the cradle of Western civilization, a few centuries BC, its culture also merged with Buddhism to create a distinct strand of the religion, known today as Greco-Buddhism. And, of course, we must also include Plato (and Socrates) and Aristotle as part of the West.
But it is important for us to challenge the assertion that the decline of Christianity – which is inferred to be the state, or officially recognized, religion – equals the decline of the West by turning to the US, still the world’s most powerful nation. Notably, many of the US’s founding fathers were Deists, not Christians per se. Several were also members of the mystical and philosophical fraternity of Freemasonry (although certainly most Freemasons were Christians at that time). The cornerstone of the US Capitol was also laid by George Washington in a Freemasonic ceremony, and much of its older architecture contains Freemasonic symbolism.
Spirituality and cultural revival
Odd, in my view, while “interfaith dialogue” with Islamic organizations has never proved a problem for Christianity, many Christians will be deeply uncomfortable with the prospect of acknowledging New Age and related forms of Western-born spirituality. Indeed, many Christians are uncomfortable with the very idea of “spirituality.” Nevertheless, it is imperative that we grasp the essential nature of the West, its history, culture, and its spirit. To acknowledge the considerable presence of practitioners of alternative spiritualities, and to engage them in the defense of liberty, religious and spiritual freedom against a totalitarian, politico-religious movement should not pose any threat to Christianity or to Christians, and may well benefit it.
Contrary to what many conservatives aver, attacks on Christianity are not the cause of the religion’s decline in Europe and Britain, but are a consequence of its decline. While the US has a growing Evangelical movement outside of New York, Los Angeles, etc., Christianity has declined in the West precisely because it has largely refused to acknowledge and engage with its own mystical and intellectual traditions (at least outside of small circles).
According to Time and the BBC the USA’s most popular poet is the Sufi mystic Rumi. Yet virtually no one has heard of Meister Eckhart or Hildegard von Bingen, or – more unorthodox, admittedly – Jacob Boehme.
Joseph de Maistre is known only to Right-wing Catholics, and they would undoubtedly be shocked to learn that de Maistre, a committed supporter of the Papacy, was, at the same time, a committed Freemason and spiritualist. As I have said, the spiritual and religious history of the West is complicated.
Ali Mirsepassi in Political Islam, Iran, and the Enlightenment: Philosophies of Hope and Despair reminds us that “Broadly defined, it is the New Age movement of the twentieth century that most influentially tried to propagate a popular discourse of the problem of the ‘soul’ in Western material society.” Undoubtedly its popularity accounts, at least in part, for why so many Christians, and so many churches, view the New Age as a threat to Christianity, even as they embrace Islam (which believes Jesus was a Muslim who came only to prophesy about the coming of Mohammed, not to die on the cross for our sins) as well as other religions.
Yet, if the New Age movement has been on display lately with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, it was also instrumental in reviving Hinduism and Hindu nationalism in India, and in defeating imperialism in that country. As Mirsepassi notes, Mahatma Ghandi’s worldview was partly shaped “through his contacts with people on the Western New Age movement,” and that the “views circulated in this milieu were… of a ‘spiritual’ India.”
The New Age movement in question was Theosophy, founded by Mme Blavatsky, a strange, enigmatic, though physically unattractive Russian émigré. Theosophy was spread through the talents of Henry Steel Olcott, who had been the primary investigator of the murder of Abraham Lincoln.
A largely forgotten movement today, it was hugely influential, not least of in its effect in the East. Not only did Theosophy help to revive Hinduism in India, it also helped revive Buddhism in Sri Lanka. One of Olcott’s disciples wasAnagarika Dharmapala, who helped revive Buddhism in Sri Lanka and India. For Dhamapala, Mark Juergensmeyer tells us, “Buddhism was not only a movement of spiritual reawakening but also a nationalist and anti-imperialist one.”
Blavatsky and Olcott, we should acknowledge, were fervently anti-Christian. However, this was largely due to the devastating effects of imperialism that they saw in the East, especially in the destruction of national and indigenous religious culture. (It’s easy to dislike a religion that seems intent on converting people and destroying their culture.) There is no inherent reason why spirituality in the West would damage Christianity, or perhaps why it would not be able to help revive Christianity in Europe as it did Hinduism and Buddhism and national culture in the East. The situation the West finds itself in is markedly different in many ways, and, yet, remarkably similar in others.
Conflict and creative minorities
For some years now, Pope Benedict has been talking about the role of “creative minorities” in the preservation of Europe’s values. Those in the Counter-Jihad undoubtedly qualify as “creative minorities,” although there are others. Both the (allegedly Republican) Tea Party and the (allegedly Democrat) Occupy Wall Street movements believe themselves to be defending traditional and even timeless values. The phrase, “creative minorities,” asSamuel Gregg observes, “comes from another English historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975).” As Gregg notes,
However, the picture painted by Counter-Jihad pundits, of Christianity versus Islam/Islamism, is false. Six months before the World Trade Center was attacked, the Taliban detonated the giant sixth century Buddhas of Bamiyan statues since they were deemed to represent the “gods of the infidels.”Islamism’s war on Buddhism and Hinduism, and the mass murders, and attempted genocide, of Zorastrians and Yezidis, and the persecution of Baha’i, by Muslim extremists should be the natural concerns of those Westerners who regard themselves as “spiritual.” In 2007 350 Yezidis were killed, and 1,000 were left homeless, in one single attack on a village.
A much better job needs to be done at explaining that the clash is not between two religions (Christianity and Islam), or between two types of (religious) conservatives, but between religious intolerance and those who stand for spirituality, freedom of conscience, and pluralism.
Think tanks need to start raising the issue of the ethnic cleansing of Zoroastrians, Yezidis, and Kalash (as well as terrorist attacks on religious and ethnic groups elsewhere, such as Buddhists in Thailand). Counter-Jihad bloggers and anti-Islamist pundits need to acknowledge that a large segment of the West is “spiritual.” Acknowledging that it is not exclusively Christian does not expose some weakness. Rather it illuminates a major strength of the West.
Western conservatives have been extraordinarily snobbish in their dismissal of non-religiously affiliated spirituality – and a large section of the West along with it. Yet, some Islamists clearly recognize the threat it poses to their authority. Notably, on November 11 this year the Egyptian authorities closed the pyramids when it became known that a group of New Age practitioners were planning to hold a meditation ceremony at one of them. According to the New Age group this was to “help Mother Earth.”
Similarly, the regime in Tehran believes New Age spirituality has been exported to Iran in an attempt to destroy Islam. This is incorrect, of course, but the idea that one can have spirituality without a particular religious dogma is, in a religious society, one of enormous revolutionary potential. It changed the shape of the West, and can potentially change the shape of the Middle East.
If anti-Islamist pundits are serious about combating religious intolerance and clerical fascism, then they will need to take a lesson from the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, and acknowledge that the spiritual core of the West is today is “spiritual,” not just Christian. To alienate such a large and energetic section of society is foolish. To alienate it when it might provide the best illustration of living a spiritual life without religious fanaticism and religious competition is little short of suicidal.
There are plenty of areas of agreement between “spiritual” people, Christians (and most other religious groups) and even atheists, which should be concentrated on, not for tactical reasons, but from personal conviction and for personal integrity:
I have come to believe that this diagnosis is not only wrong, but a large part of the reason why we, who believe in freedom and the rights of the individual, appear to be losing ground. (For example, we are seeing more sharia in the West, despite us knowing that full sharia demands the execution of homosexuals, the stoning of women who commit adultery, and discrimination against religious minorities. And we are seeing our right to free speech eroded, especially across Europe.)
The battle is not one of ideas. It is a spiritual battle, pure and simple.
Deploying ideas like soldiers in which the generals do not believe, the “Counter-Jihad” and anti-Islamist pundits have reduced themselves to Sunday intellectuals.
A speech by any “Counter-Jihad” spokesperson or anti-Islamist media pundit is liable to denounce the increasing liberalism and “Cultural Marxism” of the West as a symptom of the rot, and to suggest that they are fighting for a more conservative Christian West, before going on to tell us that we are also fighting for liberal ideas, such as women’s rights and gay rights.
Such speeches will only ever appeal to the converted – “sensible people” who are able to shut out one half of the message to find support for their gut instincts. Contrast this with the radical imam, who calls for full sharia in the West, and who speaks with passion and conviction, regardless of what anyone thinks.
The imam knows what the West does not, i.e., that it is about the fire in the belly and in the eyes. It is first and foremost about integrity, conviction, and spirit.
If one wants an example of the ravages of strategy, put above values and integrity, one need look no further than Britain’s main three political parties. With the exception of Brighton – a student city – which elected a member of the Green Party to Parliament in 2010, over the last few decades the members of the British public have ignored those parties that best expresses their values on the grounds that they “won’t get in.”
Instead they have made the tactical decision to vote for the “mainstream” party that seems most likely to keep out of power the one they dislike more. The result of this “tactical voting” is that the three parties have become indistinguishable ideologically, and appear to be without values or, sometimes, without any morals at all. The complaint that party leaders would “say anything to get elected” reveals only that the leaders are no less tactical than the voters.
There is also, though, a tactics of the minority, of course, who believe that some extreme minor party should be supported, and its past behavior – which is, for example, racist and anti-Semitic – overlooked. To be sure, politics across the board has changed over the last decade, and so have the political parties. But where such changes appear to be cosmetic, masking a fascist underbelly, they cannot be supported.
In 1988, the National Front, under the leadership of Nick Griffin, supported islamists and fascists everywhere, and calls for "green revolution" in the UK. Green is the color of Islam, used by Khomeini (top right) and Gaddafi (top left).
Like the follower of Confucius, we need to cultivate integrity, so that we’re supported in our struggle for freedom – a struggle which must, perhaps, take place anew with each generation – by an inner will, and an inner spirit.Recently, I came across a comment on a blog that suggested violence against Muslim women was an advantage to those who opposed sharia and wanted to defend liberty, since it kept the fanatics busy. This is precisely the wrong attitude, and one that is certainly not supported by Western culture – or most other cultures.
It is completely alien to the notion of chivalry of the West, the Gentleman of Confucianism, etc.
It is the comment of one who believes strategy is to be placed above his own soul. But, without a soul, without integrity, without a clear sense of right and wrong, left only with his tactics, he is doomed to lose. His freedom will go the way of that of the Muslim women we see brutalized in Egypt, Iran, and elsewhere.
Either the West – and those who defend freedom most of all – will use this existential challenge to recover themselves, to know who they are, and to act with integrity – criticizing those who deserve it, praising those who deserve praise, and defending those who are subjugated for merely wanting freedom – or they will lose.
Types of Spirituality
I have spoken about spirituality in the Confucian and traditional Christian, European, sense. But we also need to take account of the types of spirituality that occupy the West today. We cannot pretend that the West is one hundred percent Christian, if we are serious about defending it.
In the introduction to her – in many respects fascinating and informative – 2006 book on Islamism in Britain, Londonistan, Melanie Phillips laments the decline of Christianity in the UK, and suggests that its disappearance is paving the way for radical, political Islam.
However, she also notes, somewhat contradictorily, that, so far, the vacuum has been filled by all sorts of New Age-type “cults,” neo-paganism and even Satanism. In the introduction, Phillips exclaims,
Judaism and Christianity, the creeds that formed the bedrock of Western civilization, have been pushed aside and their place filled by a plethora of paranormal activities and cults.The observation bears reflecting upon, although we should step back from viewing this phenomenon at the most extreme fringe possible.
First of all, we need to ask why the religious vacuum in the UK has been filled – not, as Phillips herself asserts, by Saudi and Tehran-funded Islam – but by other, unorthodox, forms of spirituality?
Secondly, if unorthodox forms of spirituality have flooded in where Christianity has declined, we should ask whether this is in fact part of the character of the West that should be defended against radical religion?
The “Occupy Wall Street” movement – which has garnered much media attention over the last few months – seems to supply an answer. Religion, in the traditional sense, has been notably absent. No Bibles. No Korans. No priests. No imams. No calls for sharia. Yet, protesters have been holding mass yoga sessions. Some have been meditating even while being arrested by police. Even Deepak Chopra – a New Age megastar – turned up at Zuccotti Park to lead a meditation. The Huffington Post has also been running stories on spirituality.
Meditation at Occupy Wall Street, New York
Of course, Christianity remains the largest religious denomination in the West, and it is from Christianity that we obtained such bedrock ideas as the separation of Church and State. Nevertheless, to deny that very many Westerners are now simply “spiritual” or religious in a post-Christian sense (of believing in God, but not Christ) is to deny a significant part of the character of the West.
And to snobbishly condemn those practicing New Age spirituality, Yoga, and so on, is simply to disenfranchise the very people that exhibit much of the energy in the West today, and to ignore the direction in which the West has been heading for centuries. To put it bluntly, it is to deny what the West actually is, in favor of a fantasy version of it.
A Long History of “Alternative Spirituality”
Despite being absolutely modern, the spirituality of the Occupy movement is the result of a long history. It obviously resembles the 1960s Hippy movement. However, we should not stop there to find its roots.
For many centuries, non-Christian spirituality has lain just beneath the surface in the West, exerting a strong – although today largely unrecognized – influence on the cultural elite.
Since we have already mentioned neo-paganism, it will be worth mentioning that the first neo-pagan “cult” – a Druid organization – did not appear in the late 20th century, but was founded in 1717 in London. This was a century in which mystical organizations and movements proliferated across Europe, headed, usually, by aristocrats or members of the continent’s monarchies. In the 20th century, Winston Churchill – the Prime Minister that the “Counter-Jihad” movement loves to invoke – joined a Druid Order while still a young man, although this was not a religious Order per se.
Winston Churchill being initiated into the Albion Lodge of the Ancient Order of the Druids at Blenheim Palace, 15 August 1908.
Again, in recent years there has been a popular call – and an early day motion in Parliament – to make “Jerusalem” the official anthem for England. Surely, we could get no more Judeo-Christian than that? Yet, William Blake’s words – appropriated for Jerusalem later on – were inspired in large part by the works of Emanuel Swedenborg a Swedish mystic, who claimed to commune with angels, and to receive an esoteric interpretation of the Bible from them.Again, during the Renaissance (14th-17th centuries) Hermeticism and neo-Platonism exerted a very substantial influence among the cultural elite, although its members were still Christian.
Although it would be possible to wind our way back through history, we might instead remark that if ancient Greece is the cradle of Western civilization, a few centuries BC, its culture also merged with Buddhism to create a distinct strand of the religion, known today as Greco-Buddhism. And, of course, we must also include Plato (and Socrates) and Aristotle as part of the West.
But it is important for us to challenge the assertion that the decline of Christianity – which is inferred to be the state, or officially recognized, religion – equals the decline of the West by turning to the US, still the world’s most powerful nation. Notably, many of the US’s founding fathers were Deists, not Christians per se. Several were also members of the mystical and philosophical fraternity of Freemasonry (although certainly most Freemasons were Christians at that time). The cornerstone of the US Capitol was also laid by George Washington in a Freemasonic ceremony, and much of its older architecture contains Freemasonic symbolism.
George Washington in Freemasonic regalia.
This is not because of a conspiracy by a “new world order” to announce its secretive existence at every opportunity, but because the fraternity was popular among all classes at the time, and, with no national symbolism, the early citizens of the USA appropriated what was to hand. An examination of quilting, woodwork, and other aspects of folk culture show reveal that the same symbolism was popular among the very poorest Americans.Spirituality and cultural revival
Odd, in my view, while “interfaith dialogue” with Islamic organizations has never proved a problem for Christianity, many Christians will be deeply uncomfortable with the prospect of acknowledging New Age and related forms of Western-born spirituality. Indeed, many Christians are uncomfortable with the very idea of “spirituality.” Nevertheless, it is imperative that we grasp the essential nature of the West, its history, culture, and its spirit. To acknowledge the considerable presence of practitioners of alternative spiritualities, and to engage them in the defense of liberty, religious and spiritual freedom against a totalitarian, politico-religious movement should not pose any threat to Christianity or to Christians, and may well benefit it.
Contrary to what many conservatives aver, attacks on Christianity are not the cause of the religion’s decline in Europe and Britain, but are a consequence of its decline. While the US has a growing Evangelical movement outside of New York, Los Angeles, etc., Christianity has declined in the West precisely because it has largely refused to acknowledge and engage with its own mystical and intellectual traditions (at least outside of small circles).
According to Time and the BBC the USA’s most popular poet is the Sufi mystic Rumi. Yet virtually no one has heard of Meister Eckhart or Hildegard von Bingen, or – more unorthodox, admittedly – Jacob Boehme.
Joseph de Maistre is known only to Right-wing Catholics, and they would undoubtedly be shocked to learn that de Maistre, a committed supporter of the Papacy, was, at the same time, a committed Freemason and spiritualist. As I have said, the spiritual and religious history of the West is complicated.
Ali Mirsepassi in Political Islam, Iran, and the Enlightenment: Philosophies of Hope and Despair reminds us that “Broadly defined, it is the New Age movement of the twentieth century that most influentially tried to propagate a popular discourse of the problem of the ‘soul’ in Western material society.” Undoubtedly its popularity accounts, at least in part, for why so many Christians, and so many churches, view the New Age as a threat to Christianity, even as they embrace Islam (which believes Jesus was a Muslim who came only to prophesy about the coming of Mohammed, not to die on the cross for our sins) as well as other religions.
Yet, if the New Age movement has been on display lately with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, it was also instrumental in reviving Hinduism and Hindu nationalism in India, and in defeating imperialism in that country. As Mirsepassi notes, Mahatma Ghandi’s worldview was partly shaped “through his contacts with people on the Western New Age movement,” and that the “views circulated in this milieu were… of a ‘spiritual’ India.”
The New Age movement in question was Theosophy, founded by Mme Blavatsky, a strange, enigmatic, though physically unattractive Russian émigré. Theosophy was spread through the talents of Henry Steel Olcott, who had been the primary investigator of the murder of Abraham Lincoln.
A largely forgotten movement today, it was hugely influential, not least of in its effect in the East. Not only did Theosophy help to revive Hinduism in India, it also helped revive Buddhism in Sri Lanka. One of Olcott’s disciples wasAnagarika Dharmapala, who helped revive Buddhism in Sri Lanka and India. For Dhamapala, Mark Juergensmeyer tells us, “Buddhism was not only a movement of spiritual reawakening but also a nationalist and anti-imperialist one.”
Blavatsky and Olcott, we should acknowledge, were fervently anti-Christian. However, this was largely due to the devastating effects of imperialism that they saw in the East, especially in the destruction of national and indigenous religious culture. (It’s easy to dislike a religion that seems intent on converting people and destroying their culture.) There is no inherent reason why spirituality in the West would damage Christianity, or perhaps why it would not be able to help revive Christianity in Europe as it did Hinduism and Buddhism and national culture in the East. The situation the West finds itself in is markedly different in many ways, and, yet, remarkably similar in others.
Conflict and creative minorities
For some years now, Pope Benedict has been talking about the role of “creative minorities” in the preservation of Europe’s values. Those in the Counter-Jihad undoubtedly qualify as “creative minorities,” although there are others. Both the (allegedly Republican) Tea Party and the (allegedly Democrat) Occupy Wall Street movements believe themselves to be defending traditional and even timeless values. The phrase, “creative minorities,” asSamuel Gregg observes, “comes from another English historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975).” As Gregg notes,
Toynbee’s thesis was that civilizations primarily collapsed because of internal decline rather than external assault. “Civilizations,” Toynbee wrote, “die from suicide, not by murder.”Like spiritual practitioners generally in the West, those who populate the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, are highly unlikely to find acceptable sharia, or, more especially, such sharia punishments as the stoning of adulterers (and even rape victims), the cutting off of the hand of a thief, or death penalty for homosexuality. Yet, they also see no reason to side with one religion (Christianity) over another (Islam).
The “creative minorities,” Toynbee held, are those who proactively respond to a civilizational crisis, and whose response allows that civilization to grow. One example was the Catholic Church’s reaction to the Roman Empire’s collapse in the West in the 5th century A.D. The Church responded by preserving the wisdom and law of Athens, Rome and Jerusalem, while integrating the invading German tribes into a universal religious community. Western civilization was thus saved and enriched.
However, the picture painted by Counter-Jihad pundits, of Christianity versus Islam/Islamism, is false. Six months before the World Trade Center was attacked, the Taliban detonated the giant sixth century Buddhas of Bamiyan statues since they were deemed to represent the “gods of the infidels.”Islamism’s war on Buddhism and Hinduism, and the mass murders, and attempted genocide, of Zorastrians and Yezidis, and the persecution of Baha’i, by Muslim extremists should be the natural concerns of those Westerners who regard themselves as “spiritual.” In 2007 350 Yezidis were killed, and 1,000 were left homeless, in one single attack on a village.
1,500 year-old giant Buddha statues defaced by the Taliban in 2001
A much better job needs to be done at explaining that the clash is not between two religions (Christianity and Islam), or between two types of (religious) conservatives, but between religious intolerance and those who stand for spirituality, freedom of conscience, and pluralism.
Think tanks need to start raising the issue of the ethnic cleansing of Zoroastrians, Yezidis, and Kalash (as well as terrorist attacks on religious and ethnic groups elsewhere, such as Buddhists in Thailand). Counter-Jihad bloggers and anti-Islamist pundits need to acknowledge that a large segment of the West is “spiritual.” Acknowledging that it is not exclusively Christian does not expose some weakness. Rather it illuminates a major strength of the West.
Western conservatives have been extraordinarily snobbish in their dismissal of non-religiously affiliated spirituality – and a large section of the West along with it. Yet, some Islamists clearly recognize the threat it poses to their authority. Notably, on November 11 this year the Egyptian authorities closed the pyramids when it became known that a group of New Age practitioners were planning to hold a meditation ceremony at one of them. According to the New Age group this was to “help Mother Earth.”
Similarly, the regime in Tehran believes New Age spirituality has been exported to Iran in an attempt to destroy Islam. This is incorrect, of course, but the idea that one can have spirituality without a particular religious dogma is, in a religious society, one of enormous revolutionary potential. It changed the shape of the West, and can potentially change the shape of the Middle East.
If anti-Islamist pundits are serious about combating religious intolerance and clerical fascism, then they will need to take a lesson from the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, and acknowledge that the spiritual core of the West is today is “spiritual,” not just Christian. To alienate such a large and energetic section of society is foolish. To alienate it when it might provide the best illustration of living a spiritual life without religious fanaticism and religious competition is little short of suicidal.
There are plenty of areas of agreement between “spiritual” people, Christians (and most other religious groups) and even atheists, which should be concentrated on, not for tactical reasons, but from personal conviction and for personal integrity:
- The separation of Church and State/ support for liberal democracy.
- Opposition to (state-sponsored/religious) discrimination against, and the oppression of, religious and ethnic minorities, such as the Copts in Egypt, the Yezidis and Assyrian Christians in Iraq, Zoroastrians and Baha’I in Iran, Hindus in Pakistan, Kalash in Afghanistan, and Buddhists in Indonesia.
- Opposition to the culture of honor violence, and support for women’s rights.
- Opposition to (usually anti-Semitic) conspiracy theories as peddled in the media of the Middle East (which have come to exert pressure in the West, e.g., with some high school teachers afraid to teach the Holocaust for fear of offending Muslim boys who have been taught, at mosque or by parents, that the genocide of the Jews is a fabrication), and the insistence on a culture of reason and inquiry about the truth.
- The teaching of proper – not ideologically slanted – history in schools.
- Respect for the individual and the conscience of the individual, and opposition to degrading treatment and torture of prisoners in Iran, Egypt and elsewhere.
- Denunciation of the spread of Nazi ideology, and admiration for Hitler, in the Middle East.
- Support for individuals who suffer death threats, violence, etc., for leaving their religion for another or because they have adopted atheism.
- Support for science and free inquiry, and for evolution, which, as the Catholic Church, has noted in many different ways, does not conflict with faith. As Pope Benedict has said, “there is friendship between science and faith.” (This is true of Catholicism, and most other Christian denominations. It is also true of New Age spirituality, Buddhism, etc.)
- Opposition to sharia, which is being pushed in the Middle East, Malasyia,and the West. (Sharia is a complete system of law, which discriminates against women, demands execution for homosexuality, adultery, and blasphemy, and the subjugation of religious minorities. Western Governments have allowed the practice of sharia family law in some instances. However, it is unacceptable to allow legally-bindingjudgments to be passed when those judgments are based on a discriminatory legal code.)
- Proper, scholarly and archeological examinations of the religions and their core texts. (Christianity has a long history of such studies, as do most other religions.)
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