US Politics, religiosity, and the certainty of unexamined beliefs
America is sometimes held up as a paradigm of democratic governance, a system so close to perfection that it should be exported, even if that means at the point of a gun, to other nations. It positions itself as a force of moderation for populations in the grips of battles with fundamentalists such as the Taliban. However, when you begin to peel back the layers, the differences are not so clear. In a 2007 Gallup poll 53% of Americans said they wouldn’t vote for the best candidate their party put forward if he was an atheist. Six out of ten would however vote for a gay candidate, but nearly 1 out of 2 would not elect an atheist.
This is an anomalous position for a secular nation. In practice, it means that a non-religious Presidential candidate could not be elected in the Unites States. Given the current demographic dominance of Christians in the US, this makes America a de facto Christian nation, and that is certainly how many in the Islamic world perceive it. The tone and content of the US media also adds to the world’s perception of a crusader mentality. Many in the US position the current geopolitical conflicts as a battle between Christianity and Islam. The media feeds on this misunderstanding of the issues, and excites the uninformed with messages of fear, uncertainty and doubt
It is a truism in the US media that if you give a journalist a choice to report a story they will ‘accentuate the negative.’ Sadly, this negativity attempts to convey a gravitas that many reports don’t warrant based on the simplicity of content and the absence of analysis. The media especially loves sound bite stories in relation to what it terms as a fear based label the shadow of ‘radical Islam’.
The current conflicts should be more correctly identified as a battle against ‘militant Islamists’, as the predominant issue is political militancy, not religious radicalism. Religion may well be used as a cloak in this conflict, but it is a secular power and resource war, not one of ideology. The pursuit of political dominance and a desire for unfettered governance over a country’s population may well be dressed in the language of religious dogma but in reality it is the most earthy, lustful, secular desire for power that drives the violence.
Let’s take the intent Muslims and the Muslim nations as a case in point. If one only had access to domestic media, one could be forgiven for believing that every Muslim has evil intents towards America. In reality though to characterize such murderous intents as intrinsic elements of Muslim ideology hardly stands up to even the most rudimentary of analysis. In reality, it is a small percentage of Muslims that desire to do harm to the US and their interests, and it is declining year over year if one review the data objectively.
A recent poll among the Muslim nations, the largest number of those who approve using violence for political gain on U.S. civilians could be found in the Palestinian territories with 24% in favor, 15% with “mixed feelings”, and 59% opposed. After that, all the numbers drop off sharply. For those who support attacks on U.S. civilians, 8% in Egypt, 5% in Indonesia, 9% in Pakistan, 7% in Morocco, 11% in Jordan, 8% in Turkey, and only 4% in Azerbaijan.
These percentages are relatively consistent with the number of non-Muslims in our own Western nations who believe the use of violence for political gain is acceptable. This is a case where over-simplifying the issue, as the US media is want to do, is dangerous. Such an absence of nuanced understanding of complex issues can result in flawed foreign policy.
Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, comments:
“The US faces a conundrum. US efforts to fight terrorism with an expanded military presence in Muslim countries appear to have elicited a backlash and to have bred some sympathy for al Qaeda, even as most reject its terrorist methods.
“People in majority-Muslim countries express mixed feelings about al Qaeda and other Islamist groups that use violence, perhaps due to this combination of support for al Qaeda’s goals and disapproval of its terrorist methods.
However large majorities support allowing Islamist groups to organize parties and participate in democratic elections. In some majority-Muslim countries, Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, are forbidden from participating in elections.”
What is generally true is that the Muslim world remains suspicious of US objectives. Surveys indicate that most Muslims see US support for democracy in Muslim countries as conditional at best. Only very small minorities say “the US favors democracy in Muslim countries whether or not the government is cooperative with the US.” The most common response is that the US favors democracy only if the government is cooperative, while nearly as many say that the US simply opposes democracy in the Muslim countries.
If you read the full survey report, one can see that the issues are complex and interdependent. The US is mistrusted in relation to Israel and hypocritical in the application of international law. Many Muslims see the US as more interested in oil than freedom in the region. The fears and level of mistrust expressed in the Muslim world are not inconsistent with the view from the West – neither side trusts the political intent or agenda of the other side. The confusion of messaging of each other’s intent may not just be an issue of media agenda. There are political forces at work on both sides of this religious divide
The message frequently delivered in the mosque, the church, or the temple rings true and resonates with the faithful, but is it consistent with the faith’s true tenets or is it merely the orator’s political agenda? It seems that a large attitudinal influence is wielded from the evangelical pulpits of the American South, through the mosques of Europe, to the Temples of Tel Aviv. Religion is a primeval, tribal force built on dogma, regardless of creed, and can stifle intellectual debate among many religious communities. The media is equally complicit in this grand deception. It loves to simplify complex issues for instant guilt-ridden, bite-sized consumption. The intellectual demise of the media and the politicization of religion have a lasting impact on the tribal intelligence of a nation. We stand in danger of waging wars predicated on the questionable certainty of unexamined beliefs, and those are the most dangerous trends of all for our civilization.
