Dogma, Praxis, and Religious Perspectives on Multiculturalism
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298000290031701 |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Author | Cecelia Lynch |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
© Millennium: Journal of Int ernational Studies, 2000. ISSN 0305-8298 . Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 741-759
741
Dogma, Praxis, and Religious
Perspectives on Multiculturalism
Cecelia Lynch
‘I am a Musli m’, she told us, ‘b ut I didn’t kno w that before th e war. Before the
war, of course, we were all atheists!’1
—Amira Muhare movi
A couple of da ys later, I saw the maulana , and I told him I thoug ht some of his
students be lieved that terrorism, under certain circu mstances, was Koranica lly
acceptable . ‘Then you d on’t understand wha t we are teaching ’, he said,
frowning for j ust a moment. ‘There is a great difference between jih ad and
terrorism’. He invite d me to eat with him, to discus s my inabilit y to
comprehend the di stinction, but I begged off.2
—Jeffrey Goldb erg
‘The Lord rideth’, [Father] said, low and threateni ng, ‘upon a swift clou d, and
shall come into Egyp t’.
Hurray! The y all cheered, but I felt a knot in my stomach. He was getting that
look he get s, oh boy, l ike Here comes Moses tro mping do wn off of M ount
Syanide with ten fresh ways to wreck your life.
‘Into Egyp t’, he shouted in his rising singsong preaching voice t hat goes high
and lo w, then hi gher and lo wer, back and forth lik e a saw ripping into a tree
trunk, ‘ and every corner of the earth where His light’, Father paused, gl aring
all about him, ‘where His light has yet to fall!’3
—Barbara Kingso lver
I th ank David Gitomer, Mi chael Loriaux, Bill Maurer, and E lora Shehabudd in for savin g me fro m a
number of p otential errors and misconcept ions across fields. I also thank two anon ymous reviewers for
their very helpful comments. An y remaining errors, of course, are mine.
1. Quoted in Dav id Campb ell, Natio nal Deconstructi on: Viol ence, Identit y, and Justice in Bosnia
(Minnesota, MN: Univesit y of Minneapolis Press, 1998), 1.
2. Jeffrey Goldberg, ‘The Edu cation of a Holy Warrior’, New York Times Magazin e, 25 June 2000, 36.
3. Barbara Kingsolver, The Po isonwood Bible (New York: HarperCollins, 1998 ), 26.
Millennium
742
The first of these quo tes is from a scholarly treatise o n the problem o f alteri ty and
violence in allegedly ‘ethnic ’ poli tics in the Balka ns. It points to the imposition o f
religious identity from the ou tside, not b y religious fundamentalists b ut rather by
those (in thi s c ase, some Serbian lead ers) for whom fixed notion s o f alterit y
rationalise conflict, as well as by others (the Western press and diplomatic corp s,
the UN) who att empt to mediat e and ‘resolve’ violence. The second q uote is a
Western journalist’s accoun t of an Islamic school in Pakistan. It demonstrate s the
distrust of Islamic fundamental ism (itself a controversi al label) prevalent in
Western med ia and governme nt circles, and also expresses the a uthor’s Orientalist
determinati on to u nderstand the school’s teachings on his terms rather than t heir
own.4 The third quote for ms part of a fictional narrat ive about the neoc olonialist
clash of power and religion in th e Cong o. It also highligh ts the arrogance that
accompanie d much Christian missionar y activity in Africa, ev en in the second h alf
of the twentieth century. Ea ch of these q uotes, however, also indicates in differe nt
ways the degre e t o which our debates about reli gion in world politics reflect
Enlighten ment assumptions. That i s to say, each associates religion with dang er,
dogma, or rigid conceptio ns of otherness.
Enlighten ment c oncerns about religi on in world poli tics are multiple. Mo st
prominent is th e fear that religi on, because it add resses such elemental issues as
life, death, sal vation, right, and wrong, has t he power to create ‘true b elievers’ who
are, at a minimum, psychologically disturb ed and at a max imum, inciters of
intolerance and violen ce. True believers become espec ially dangerous as lead ers of
mass movemen ts, o r whe n their beliefs are systematised in powerful rel igious
institutio ns that treat non-members as heretics, deservi ng of subj ugation and even
death.
Conversely, following a ce rtain readin g of Karl Marx, man y charge religions,
especially those th at e spouse a belief in a more perfect afterlife, wit h muting
political demands and servi ng the interests of the powerful by teac hing patience
and passivi ty in the face of injustic e.5 Both Marxists and se cular liberals are
concerned that religio us belief, as evident i n the cre ationist/evolutionist debate in
education , can promo te romanticis m, ig norance, and backwardness in the face of
knowledge and progress. All of t hese fears assume that religious belie f is dogmatic,
intolerant, and unchang ing. The ‘other’, as seen through the prism of religious
belief, in this v iew, is inevitabl y in ferior, providing the justi fication for
proselytisi ng, coe rcion, and v iolence instead of pluralism and critical thinkin g.
Enlightenment insights were supposed to have overcome these problems, which is
4. Orientalism, according to Ed ward Said’s seminal work, is a Western academic tradition, a style of
thought, and a di scourse ‘by which European culture was able to manage—and even produce—the
Orient politically, sociolo gically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during th e
post-Enlight enment period’. See Orientalism (New York: Vint age Books, 1 979), 3f. See also Fred R.
Dallmayr, Beyond Orientalism (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1996) and Ri chard
King, Orientalism and Religio n, Postcoloni al Theory, India, and ‘The Mystic East’ (London:
Routledge, 1999).
5. This is of course an oversimplification of Marx ’s arguments about alienation. S ee, for example,
Daniel Pals, Seven Theories o f Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 137-38.
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