Religion and the "New War"

A friend of mine, Shanti Tangri, a Professor Emeritus of Economics at Rutgers and a humanist, made an interesting point today that got me thinking. Shanti, a secular Indian-American of Hindu background was forced to flee his home in the late 1940s in the Indian Civil War that produced the Muslim separatist state of Pakistan. His point was that in this conflict, as in life, he has much more in common with the secular people of all countries than he does with religious fundamentalists, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, who attack others of different religious backgrounds, co-religionists who reject their policies, and secularization in all forms. In that sense this is a war about religion's role in the modern world, not a war against or for any specific religion, not the cultural conflict that the old cold warrior Samuel P. Huntington has been trying to stir up, between an aggressive Islam (replacing international Communism) and the NATO defenders of"Western Civilization."

Certainly, the forces of the religious right, representing"premodern" values have risen on the world scene along with the champions of 19th century laissez-faire capitalism of the Reagan-Thatcher variety. The two often allied with each other against the revolutionary left, as in the Afghan Contra war, or for that matter the anti-Marxist conservative Hindu BJP party(now the governing party) in India.

In Muslim countries, where secular democratic institutions are weak, the U.S. government for half a century has supported the most reactionary feudal elements, the Gulf States, Pakistan, the bloody Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, because of their anti-Communist politics and oil holdings. Certainly, the bin Laden family with its extensive U.S.-Aramco related connections, its endowments to Harvard and Oxford, has much more to do with the ruling classes of the United States and the United Kingdom than I do, or, I am sure, those who will read this article.

At the same time, I and most of those who read this article have much more in common with the women of the Revolutionary Association of Afghan Women, who have risked and given their lives to keep elementary education alive for young girls in Afghanistan, and those Afghans who would not beat a man whose beard is too short, or murder a women who does not wear a veil, than with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and their allies in the Republican party.

Can a government that has forgotten about the separation of church and state in its appeasement of our Southern-based Bible Belt fight a serious war against the killers of the"Koran Belt," whose governments they have supported for so long? What are the war aims in a war against"international terrorism"?

What about equal rights for Afghan Women, and the right to live a life free from clerical restrictions, including reproductive rights, as part of the human rights guaranteed by the Human Rights Charter of the United Nations. What about the rights of the women of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, and the rights of the citizens of those states to elect their own representatives, instead of being ruled by hereditary aristocracies? Even Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedom seem revolutionary as war aims, compared to what the Bush administration has come forward with up to this time.

During World War II groups like the NAACP advocated and sought to implement a"two-front war" against fascism abroad and Jim Crow at home. Perhaps one should call for a"two-front war" against the religious of bin Laden and the Taliban and the secular and religious rightists who undermine civil liberties and the separation of Church and state in the United States. Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom From Want, Freedom From Fear, the Four Freedoms of Franklin Roosevelt, not the use of fear and want to suppress speech and impose religion, and not the defense of those who suppress speech and impose religion as"friendly countries," because they give us military bases and oil concessions.

This, of course, may be to much to ask of the Bush administration, but it is not to much to ask of progressive Americans, who understand that serious war aims and a serious reconstruction policy for the region, one that strengthens secularism and economic and social development for the majority, is the only way to fight a serious war against bin Laden and the forces of the terroristic religious right.