A comment on the rise of religious violence and terrorism that seems to make a lot of sense to me: “The secular world has to have enough justice in it for one not to have to constantly invoke God’s justice against the injustice of the profane.” That’s from Aijaz Ahmad. To which Tony Eagleton adds: “The solution to religious terror is secular justice.”
That may come across as too simplistic. Sure, there are many factors behind religious terrorism — or violence in the name of God. But one of them surely is what Ahmad and Eagleton are pointing to: People get very angry when they feel they are being pushed aside, stepped on, or not respected. And when they think God doesn’t like that either, they feel (rightly so, I would say) that they can respond with God on their side. And if they have a notion of a patriarchal father God who himself gets violent when he’s angry, watch out. That’s where anger-endorsed-by-God leads to violence-endorsed-by-God.
So, the solution to religious terror is indeed secular justice. But that is not enough. The solution also requires theological criticism and reform of a patriarchal God who gets pissed off and starts swinging.
Psychological literature on religiously-motivated terrorism provides us with an interesting empirical point. With respect to Islamic radicals, in not a few cases, what provokes their resentment is not “other religions.” But surprisingly, it is the impending secularism from the West. Is the solution to religious terror secular justice? Maybe. But for many Islamic radicals, the “secular justice” is as much “cause” of their religious terrorism as it is the solution. Religion has a problem; so does secularism.
I think it is both the threat of “Western secularism” and the reality of economic injustice that are animating, understandably, so-called Islamic radicals. But “justice” does not have to be “secular justice.” And I suspect that if there were more genuine justice and economic well-being within the Muslim words, secularism would not be as big a problem. — Thanks for your provocative comment.