The Case for God

by Karen Armstrong

  Modern negativity is located not in any transcendent realm but in the hard reality before us: the fields of patriotic battles in the First and Second World Wars, from the killing fields at Verdun to the Nazi furnaces and the swift annihilation of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the carpet bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia, the massacres from Setif and Soweto to Sabra and Shatila, and the list goes on and on. There is no Job who can sustain such suffering.4

  Belief had emerged as the enemy of peace. John Lennon’s song “Imagine” (1971) looked forward to a world where there was no heaven and no hell—”above us only sky.” The elimination of God would solve the world’s problems. This was a simplistic belief, since many of the conflicts that had inspired the peace movement were caused by an imbalance of political power, secular nationalism, and the struggle for world domination. But religion had been implicated in many of these atrocities: in Northern Ireland and the Middle East it had served as a tribal or ethnic marker, it was used rhetorically by politicians, and it was clear that it had signally failed in its mandate of saving the world.

  In the United States, a small group of theologians created a form of “Christian atheism” that tried to engage with the “hard reality” of world events and enthusiastically proclaimed the death of God. In The Gospel of Christian Atheism (1966), Thomas J. J. Altizer (b. 1927) announced the “good news”: God’s demise had freed us from slavery to a tyrannical, transcendent deity. Altizer spoke in mystical, poetic terms of the dark night of the soul, the pain of abandonment, and the silence that must ensue before what we mean by “God” can become meaningful once more. Our former notions of divinity had to die before theology could be reborn. In The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (1963), Paul Van Buren (1924–98) argued that science and technology had invalidated traditional mythology. Even the sophisticated theology of Bultmann or Tillich was still immersed in the old, unviable ethos. We must give up God and focus on Jesus of Nazareth, the liberator, who “defines what it is to be a man.”5 William Hamilton (b. 1924) saw Death of God theology as a twentieth-century way of being Protestant in Radical Theology and the Death of God (1966): just as Luther had left his cloister and gone out into the world, the modern Christian must walk away from the sacred place where God used to be; he would find the man Jesus in the world of technology, power, money, sex and the city. Human beings did not need God; they must find their own solution to the world’s problems.

  The Death of God movement was flawed: it was essentially a white, middle-class, affluent, and—sometimes offensively—Christian theology. Like Hegel, Altizer saw the Jewish God as the alienating deity that had been negated by Christianity. Black theologians asked how white people felt able to affirm freedom through God’s death when they had enslaved people in God’s name. But despite its limitations, Death of God theology was a prophetic voice calling for a critique of contemporary idols (which included the modern idea of God) and urging a leap from familiar certainties into the unknown that was in tune with the spirit of the sixties.

  But despite its vehement rejection of the authoritarian structures of institutional religion, sixties youth culture was demanding a more religious way of life. Instead of going to church, the young went to Kathmandu or sought solace in the meditative techniques of the Orient. Others found transcendence in drug-induced trips, or personal transformation in such techniques as the Erhard Seminars Training (est). There was a hunger for mythos and a rejection of the scientific rationalism that had become the new Western orthodoxy. Much twentieth-century science had been cautious, sober, and highly conscious in a disciplined, principled way of its limitations and areas of competence. But since the time of Descartes, science had also been ideological and had refused to countenance any other method of arriving at truth. During the sixties, the youth revolution was in part a protest against the illegitimate domination of rational discourse and the suppression of mythos by logos. But because the understanding of the traditional ways of arriving at more intuitive knowledge had been neglected in the West during the modern period, the sixties quest for spirituality was often wild, self-indulgent, and unbalanced.

  It was, therefore, premature to speak of the death of religion, and this became evident in the late 1970s, when confidence in the imminent arrival of the Secular City was shattered by a dramatic religious resurgence. In 1978–79, the Western world watched in astonishment as an obscure Iranian ayatollah brought down the regime of Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–80), which had seemed to be one of the most progressive and stable in the Middle East. At the same time as governments applauded the peace initiative of President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt (1918–81), observers noted that young Egyptians were donning Islamic dress, casting aside the freedoms of modernity, and engaging in a takeover of university campuses in order to reclaim them for religion—in a way that was paradoxically reminiscent of student rebellions during the sixties. In Israel, an aggressively religious form of Zionism (which had originally been a defiantly secular movement) had risen to political prominence, and the ultra-Orthodox parties, which David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973), Israel’s first prime minister, had confidently predicted would fade away once the Jewish people had their own secular state, were gathering strength. In the United States, Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) founded the Moral Majority in 1979, urging Protestant fundamentalists to get involved in politics and to challenge any state or federal legislation that pushed a “secular humanist” agenda.

  This militant religiosity, which would emerge in every region where a secular, Western-style government had separated religion and politics, is determined to drag God and/or religion from the sidelines to which they have been relegated in modern culture and back to center field. It reveals a widespread disappointment in modernity. Whatever the pundits, intellectuals, or politicians thought, people all over the world were demonstrating that they wanted to see religion more clearly reflected in public life. This new form of piety is popularly known as “fundamentalism,” but many object to having this Christian term foisted on their reform movements. They do not in fact represent an atavistic return to the past. These are essentially innovative movements and could have taken root at no time other than our own. Fundamentalisms too can be seen as part of the postmodern rejection of modernity. They are not orthodox and conservative; indeed, many are actually anti-orthodox and regard the more conventional faithful as part of the problem.6

  These movements have mushroomed independently, and even those that have emerged within the same tradition do not have an identical vision. However, they bear what has been called a “family resemblance,” and seem instinctively to follow the pattern set by American Protestant fundamentalism, the earliest of these movements. All are initially defensive movements rooted in a profound fear of annihilation, which causes them to develop a paranoid vision of the “enemy.” They begin as intrafaith movements, and only at a secondary stage, if at all, do they direct their attention to a foreign foe.

  Protestant fundamentalism was chiefly exercised by theological questions that had been challenged by the new scientific discoveries. Fundamentalisms in other traditions have been sparked by entirely different problems and are not preoccupied with “belief” in the same way. In Judaism, the state of Israel has inspired every one of the Jewish fundamentalisms, because this has been the form in which secularism has chiefly impacted on Jewish religious life. Some are passionately for the state of Israel and regard its army, political institutions, and every inch of the Holy Land as sacred; others are either vehemently opposed to the notion of a secular state or adopt a deliberately neutral stance toward it. In the Muslim world, the political state of the ummah, the “community,” has become an Achilles’ heel. The Qur’an insists that the prime duty of a Muslim is to build a just and decent society, so when Muslims see the ummah exploited or even terrorized by foreign powers and governed by corrupt rulers, they can feel as religiously offended as a Protestant who sees the Bible spat upon. Islam has traditionally been a religion of success: in the past, Muslims were a
lways able to surmount disaster and use it creatively to rise to new spiritual and political heights. The Qur’an assures them that if their society is just and egalitarian, it will prosper—not because God is tweaking history on their behalf but because this type of government is in line with the fundamental laws of existence. But Muslims have been able to make little headway against the secular West, and some have found this as threatening as Darwinism seems to fundamentalist Christians. Hence there have been ever more frantic efforts to get Islamic history back on track.

  Because fundamentalists feel under threat, they are defensive and unwilling to entertain any rival point of view, yet another expression of the intolerance that has always been part of modernity. Christian fundamentalists take a hard line on what they regard as moral and social decency. They campaign against the teaching of evolution in public schools, are fiercely patriotic but averse to democracy, see feminism as one of the great evils of the day, and conduct a crusade against abortion. Some extremists have even murdered doctors and nurses who work in abortion clinics. Like evolution, abortion has become symbolic of the murderous evil of modernity. Christian fundamentalists are convinced that their doctrinal “beliefs” are an accurate, final expression of sacred truth and that every word of the Bible is literally true—an attitude that is a radical departure from mainstream Christian tradition. They believe that miracles are an essential hallmark of true faith and that God will give the believer anything he asks for in prayer.

  Fundamentalists are swift to condemn people whom they regard as the enemies of God: most Christian fundamentalists see Jews and Muslims as destined for hellfire, and some regard Buddhism, Hinduism, and Daoism as inspired by the devil. Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists take a similar stance, each seeing their own tradition as the only true faith. Muslim fundamentalists have toppled governments, and some extremists have been guilty of terrorist atrocities. Jewish fundamentalists have founded illegal settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with the avowed intention of driving out the Arab inhabitants, convinced that they are paving the way for the Messiah; others throw stones at Israelis who drive their cars on the Sabbath.

  In all its forms, fundamentalism is a fiercely reductive faith. In their anxiety and fear, fundamentalists often distort the tradition they are trying to defend. They can, for example, be highly selective in their reading of scripture. Christian fundamentalists quote extensively from the book of Revelation and are inspired by its violent End-time vision but rarely refer to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus tells his followers to love their enemies, to turn the other cheek, and not to judge others. Jewish fundamentalists rely heavily on the Deuteronomist sections of the Bible and seem to pass over the rabbis’ injunction that exegesis should lead to charity. Muslim fundamentalists ignore the pluralism of the Qur’an, and extremists quote its more aggressive verses to justify violence, pointedly disregarding its far more numerous calls for peace, tolerance, and forgiveness. Fundamentalists are convinced that they are fighting for God, but in fact this type of religiosity represents a retreat from God. To make purely human, historical phenomena—such as “family values,” “the Holy Land,” or “Islam”—sacred and absolute is idolatry, and, as always, their idol forces them to try to destroy its opponents.

  But it is essential for critics of religion to see fundamentalism in historical context. Far from being typical of faith, it is an aberration. The fundamentalist fear of annihilation is not a paranoid delusion. We have seen that some of the most formative creators of the modern ethos have indeed called for the abolition of religion—and they continue to do so. All these movements begin with what is perceived to be an attack by liberal coreligionists or a secularist regime, and further assaults simply make them more extreme. We have seen how this occurred in the United States after the media harassment in the wake of the Scopes trial. In the Jewish world, fundamentalism took two major steps forward: first, after the Shoah, when Hitler had tried to exterminate European Jewry; and second, after the October War of 1973, when the Arab armies took Israel by surprise and made a much better showing on the battlefield.

  The same pattern is observable in the Muslim world. It would be a grave mistake to imagine that Islam caused Muslims to recoil instinctively from the modern West. At the turn of the twentieth century, every single leading Muslim intellectual, with the exception of the Iranian ideologue Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1839–97), was in love with the West, recognized it at a profound level, and wanted his country to look just like Britain and France.7 Muhammad Abdu (1849–1905), grand mufti of Egypt, hated the British occupation of his country, but he felt entirely at home with Western culture, had studied the modern sciences, and read Guizot, Tolstoy, Renan, Strauss, and Herbert Spencer. After a trip to France, he is said to have made this deliberately provocative statement: “In Paris, I saw Islam but no Muslims; in Egypt, I see Muslims but no Islam.” His point was that their modernized economies had enabled Europeans to promote conditions of justice and equity that came closer to the spirit of the Qur’an than was possible in a partially modernized society. At about the same time in Iran, leading mullahs campaigned alongside secular intellectuals for representational government and constitutional rule. After the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, they got their parliament, but two years later the British discovered oil in Iran and had no intention of allowing the parliament to scupper their plans to use this oil to fuel the British navy. Yet immediately after the revolution, hopes were high. In his Admonition to the Nation and Exposition to the People (1909), Sheikh Muhammad Husain Naini (1850–1936) argued that representative government was the next best thing to the coming of the Hidden Imam, the Shiite Messiah who would inaugurate a role of justice and equity in the last days. The constitution would limit the tyranny of the shah and should therefore be endorsed by every Muslim.8

  It is important to emphasize this early enthusiasm for modernity, because too many Westerners regard Islam as inherently fundamentalist, atavistically opposed to democracy and freedom, and chronically addicted to violence. But Islam was the last of the three monotheisms to develop a fundamentalist strain; it did not do so until the late 1960s, after the Arabs’ catastrophic defeat by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967, when the Western ideologies of nationalism and socialism, which had little grassroots support, appeared to have failed. Religion seemed a way of returning to the precolonial roots of their culture and regaining a more authentic identity. Western foreign policy has also hastened the rise of fundamentalism in the Middle East. The coup organized by the CIA and British Intelligence in Iran (1953) that displaced the nationalist, secular ruler Muhammad Mosaddeq (1880–1967) and put the exiled shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi (1878–1944) back on the throne left Iranians with a sense of bitter humiliation, betrayal, and impotence. The failure of the international community to alleviate the plight of the Palestinians has led others to despair of a conventional political solution. Western support for such rulers as the shah and Saddam Hussein, who denied their people basic human rights, has also tarnished the democratic ideal, since the West seemed proudly to proclaim its belief in freedom while inflicting dictatorial regimes on others. It has also helped to radicalize Islam, since the mosque was often the only place where people could express their discontent.

  The rapid secularization of some of these countries has often taken the form of an assault on religion. In Europe and the United States, secularism developed gradually over a long period, and the new ideas and institutions had time to trickle down naturally to all members of the population. But many Muslim countries had to adopt the Western model in a mere fifty years or so. When KemalAtatürk (1881–1938) secularized Turkey, he closed down all the madrassas and abolished the Sufi orders. The shahs made their soldiers go through the streets tearing off women’s veils with their bayonets and ripping them to pieces. These reformers wanted their countries to look modern, even though only a small elite sector was familiar with the Western ethos. In 1935, Shah Reza Pahlavi ordered his soldiers to shoot at a crowd of una
rmed demonstrators who were peacefully protesting against obligatory Western dress in Mashhad, one of the holiest shrines in Iran. Hundreds of Iranians died that day. In such a context, secularism does not appear a liberating option.

  Sunni fundamentalism developed in the concentration camps in which President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–70) interred thousands of members of the Muslim Brotherhood without trial. Many of them had done nothing more incriminating than handing out leaflets or attending a meeting. In these vile prisons they were subjected to mental and physical torture and became radicalized.9 Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) entered the camp as a moderate, but as a result of his imprisonment—he was tortured and finally executed—he evolved an ideology that is still followed by Islamists today.10 When he heard Nasser vowing to confine Islam to the private sphere, secularism did not seem benign. In his landmark book Milestones, we see the paranoid vision of the fundamentalist who has been pushed too far: Jews, Christians, communists, capitalists, and imperialists were all in league against Islam. Muslims had a duty to fight against the barbarism (jahiliyyah) of their day, starting with so-called Muslim rulers like Nasser.

  This was an entirely new idea. In making jihad, understood as armed conflict, central to the Islamic vision, Qutb had distorted the faith that he was trying to defend. He was not the first to do so; he had been influenced by the writings of the Pakistani journalist and politician Abu Ala Mawdudi (1903–79), who feared the effects of Western imperialism in the Muslim world.11 In order to survive, Mawdudi believed, Muslims must be prepared for revolutionary struggle. This jihad could take many forms: some would fight with the pen, others would engage in politics, but in the last resort every able-bodied Muslim must be prepared for war. No major Muslim thinker had ever made “holy war” a central tenet of the faith before; Mawdudi was well aware that he was making a highly controversial claim but was convinced that this radical innovation was justified by the present political emergency. Qutb took the same view: when asked how he could reconcile his hard line with the emphatic warning in the Qur’an that there must be no compulsion in matters of religion,12 he explained that Qur’anic tolerance was impossible when Muslims were subjected to such violence and cruelty. There could be toleration only after the political victory of Islam and the establishment of a truly Muslim ummah.13