Voices Across Boundaries Vol.1 No.2: Roundtable
Is Religion the Problem?
A multifaith panel takes a hard look at religion as a force in society
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INTRODUCTION
McGill's Faculty of Religious Studies and Institute of Islamic Studies and the Concordia University Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies cosponsored the panel discussion along with Across Boundaries Multifaith Institute. The panelists were:
- Charles Taylor, board of trustees professor of philosophy and law at Northwestern University in Chicago, and professor emeritus of philosophy at McGill University
- Thupten Jinpa, director and chief editor of the Institute of Tibetan Classics, and chief English translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama
- Michal Shekel, associate rabbi of Temple Har Zion in Toronto
- Ronald Beiner, professor of political science at the University of Toronto
- Farhang Rajaee, professor of political science at Carleton University in Ottawa
FARHANG RAJAEE
By way of introduction, I would like to recount a debate that took place between Ernest Renan (1823-92), the French historian and critic, and Saeyyed Jamal ad-Din Assadabadi, known as al-Afghani (1838-97), one of the most prominent Islamic political leaders and philosophers of the nineteenth century. The debate took place in 1883 and addressed exactly the same question: "Is religion the problem?" The context then was the advancement of science, just as today the context is the advancement of democracy and human rights. Ernest Renan delivered a lecture at the Sorbonne in March of that year on the question of Islam and science, the text of which was published in a French journal of the time, Journal des débats. On May 19 Al-Afghani published his "Answer to Renan," to which Renan submitted a rejoinder the following day.In his lecture, Renan made the categorical point that religions are hostile to science, and Islam in particular is more hostile than others because it unites the spiritual and temporal realms. Moreover, it makes dogma rule over both, thus imposing "the heaviest chain that humanity has ever borne." He concluded that it would be impossible to reconcile the two because religion would always be against science.
Afghani challenged such a categorical depiction, and instead argued that there is a permanent tension, what I like to call a constructive tension, between the sacred and the secular: "As long as humanity exists, the struggle will not cease between dogma and free investigation, nor between religion and philosophy. This is a desperate struggle in which I fear triumph will not be for free thought, because the masses dislike reason and its teachings are only understood by the elite, and because science, however beautiful it is, does not completely satisfy humanity, which searches for the ideal, and which likes to exist in dark and distant regions that the philosopher and the scholar neither perceive nor can explore."
In his rejoinder, Renan praised Afghani's insights and made the following observation: "The Christian does not have to abandon Christianity nor the Muslim Islam. The Enlightened parties of Christianity and Islam should arrive at that state of benevolent indifference where religious beliefs become inoffensive."
Now jumping ahead one hundred years, we ask the question, "Is religion a problem when it comes to democratization and liberalism?" It all depends how you approach religion, on the one hand, and liberalism and democracy, on the other. One possibility is to see both liberalism/secularity and religion ontologically as total world views. By that I mean how you and I as individuals look at religion, and at liberalism and democracy. Are you and I hubristic enough to think that we can understand the totality of religion, or that we can implement the totality of liberalism? Remember what al-Afghani said about the masses disliking reason. In other words, this is a zero-sum approach towards religion and liberalism.
But we might also take the approach of seeing both secularity and religion not so much as total world views or ontological straitjackets but as epistemologies or ways of understanding our human condition. This second approach is one of humility. I understand that liberalism can be total; I understand that religion can be total; I understand that they can be categorically applicable to all aspects of life. But I am unable to understand that totality; I am unable to grasp the essence of what God has asked of me. I am humble enough to say that I understand religion to be a total world view, a total system, but I am also humble enough to know that it is impossible to impose it. Then, instead of a zero-sum game, we get a positive sum: a complementary battle of ideas or constructive tension.
I am not well versed in Christianity, but let me say something from my humble familiarity with Islam. The question is not how Islam accounts for or doesn't account for secularism, but the other way around. Islam has always been a secular religion. Muslims always asked, "How do I purify the secular world?" Muslims were able to accommodate secularism in the form of the most prevalent paradigm in human history, the institution of the monarchy which came into being somewhere around 2000 BCE in Mesopotamia and spread to all of the modern world. If they are able to accommodate that, they are able to accommodate democracy.
You can never separate the secular from the sacred ontologically. If you do you are doomed: for example, the Soviet Union collapsed precisely because it made that separation. On the other hand, you cannot mix the two epistemologically and phenomenologically because if you do you are doomed again, as happened with the medieval Christian Church. In both cases the social order was seen as unfair and eventually fell apart.
The question then is not whether religion is the problem, but what is the proper boundary between religion and secularism, and here I emphasize religion and secularism or liberalism as epistemologies rather than as ontologies or total ways. What is a proper boundary between a religious epistemology, which is here to help me with the moral and ethical question of right and wrong, and a secular epistemology, whether in the form of monarchy or democracy, which contributes to the notions of right and wrong not so much in a moral sense but in a scientific sense? That is the proper question.
MICHAL SHEKEL
One of the Jewish tradition's most startling ideas is found in a tale in which God tells the people, "Better you should forget me than forget my Torah [teachings]." I am not trying to encourage atheism in bringing this story to your attention. The message of this tale is to follow God's teachings; it is actions that count. You can be a very devout person and do lousy things. Just being religious does not automatically make you good. What you do is more important than what you think. Doing is what affects your community, the greater society and the world.Religion can have a powerful hold on people. It forms a basic part of human identity. Religion has been used for wonderful things throughout history, and it has been used for dreadful purposes as well. Human choice determines how religion will be used, and so it is humanity that is the problem. Religion is a tool -- like science. Used well it enhances lives; used wrongly, it can destroy them.
Because of the spectrum of beliefs, both within and across religions, I believe that we have greater freedom of religion within a democratic secular society. There is the possibility of freedom of religion within a religiously based society, but too often this is limited to the adherents of that particular branch of the religion. Perhaps such a religious society is tolerant of those who believe or practise differently, but tolerating is not the same as granting equal freedom.
This is not to say that living in a relatively secular society is not without major challenges to religious individuals and groups, but I believe religion is up to the challenge - - especially religious traditions that have a legal foundation. Yes, democratic secular society is a challenge, but such traditions have an affinity for the rule of law.
Living in a relatively secular society requires greater self-discipline on the part of the religious individual. We face many pressures and must examine how to view these pressures and how to respond to them. One pressure is the hostility of those who view religion as archaic. One of the items we looked at in preparation for this panel is a quote from Nick Cohen, writing in the October 7, 2001, issue of the Sunday Observer: "Jews, Muslims and Christians accept Abraham as their common ancestor. It is only the civilized who would be ashamed to have him in their family... A servant who will slaughter his son on the whim of the Lord will do anything."
I don't know which version of the story Mr. Cohen read, but in my religious tradition the entire point of the story is not to kill other human beings to appease the divine. The lesson is not to practise what the surrounding cultures practise. The biblical tale opposes human sacrifice; that is not what God wants. The central question is how to live within a society and maintain ethical religious behaviour, while not giving in to external pressures. In our society these pressures take the form of relative morality: what feels good to me is the right thing to do.
There are additional lessons to be derived from this story that were missed by Mr. Cohen. Our great leader Abraham was human. He was a man of enormous spiritual strengths and of human weaknesses. God chose him as a model for us to emulate, but all humans can do right and wrong. The rabbi and philosopher Emil Fackenheim, in an interview a few years ago, recounted a discussion with an ultra-Orthodox Jew concerning this story of Abraham and the binding of Isaac. In Judaism, the story is seen as a test of Abraham. According to Fackenheim's interlocutor, Abraham failed the test because he attempted to sacrifice his son. The proof is in the fact that God talked to Abraham at the beginning of the story, but not at the end. This is the same Abraham who argued passionately with God for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, yet in this case he failed to make any case on behalf of his own son. Abraham was a man of great faith, but did his faith border on fanaticism when he was willing to sacrifice his own child? Another lesson, then, is that God wants faith, not fanaticism.
What of the role of religious institutions? At a particular level, society counts on such organizations to play a critical role, specifically through social action and social justice programs. These activities unite various religious communities. In Toronto there is the "Out of the Cold" program to help the homeless. Religious institutions, on a rotating basis, provide food and shelter to people in need. The guests may be at a synagogue in December, a mosque in January, and a church in February. What unites religious institutions in this case is the understanding that all of us share the responsibility of providing basic human needs for all.
Human beings have basic God-given needs and desires. We have the ability to overcome the baseness that is inherent in each one of us. Religion gives us the ability to go beyond the superficial. We can sink into an abyss, or we can channel our abilities and climb to unimaginable heights of holiness as individuals and as a community.
Let me conclude with words from my tradition (Deuteronomy 30:19), when God is addressing the people, instructing them by saying, "I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life."
RONALD BEINER
If the question is, "Is religion the problem?", then I would have to say that it doesn't make much sense. Sometimes, strong religious commitments have important civic benefits for the life of a shared political community, and sometimes they are quite pernicious, judged by the same standard. However, if the question is, "Is religion a problem?" -- that is, a problem for liberal societies that make it their priority to secure freedom and mutual civility for their citizens -- then I think one would have to be blind to certain manifestations of religion and religiously inspired politics to think that there is no significant problem here.Within the history of political philosophy, awareness of the problem goes back at least to Hobbes. As Hobbes correctly understood, one important dimension of the problem is what he calls (in De Cive, chapter 16) the problem of "private zeal" -- that is, appeals to divine authority that run contrary to the dictates of duly constituted civil authority. This problem is clearly still with us. We see it, for instance, when militant rabbis in Israel tell their settler followers that they should resist the Israeli army should it be instructed to dismantle settlements. The secular state cannot defer to or even tolerate private zeal in this sense; it must enforce its own authority as a legitimate source of laws that are binding for the whole society.
Does religion cease to be a source of cultural-political conflict only when it is pacified, and are there cultural losses associated with this pacification that are as significant as the political gains? Despite the huge amount of argument and debate already devoted to it, the Salman Rushdie affair merits further discussion in connection with these issues, for the Rushdie case can, I think, illuminate some of these dilemmas.
In his book Rethinking Multiculturalism, Bhikhu Parekh argues that the controversy over publication of The Satanic Verses needn't have escalated to flat-out cultural war. The conflict could have been averted if both sides had accepted reasonable compromises. Parekh argues that the liberal side, representing the majority community, ought to have quickly acknowledged Islamic sentiment, and responded with timely apologies, clarifications and promises to limit further publication. On the Islamic side, the minority community as a whole ought to have acknowledged that all religions need to adapt to modern circumstances, and should have lost no time in making clear that killing Rushdie would be going too far.
As regards what Parekh requires of liberals, it should first of all be said that there was no lack of apologies, clarifications and concessions by Rushdie. None of this had the slightest effect in terms of alleviating the pressure on Rushdie and his collaborators, or easing the wrath of Islamic militants. Second, Parekh's argument that the liberal principle of freedom of expression must stop short of mocking or offending members of a religious minority pretty much cuts the heart out of freedom of expression as a core liberal principle. But if Parekh's critique of the liberal side misses its mark, we should not automatically conclude that his critique of the Islamic side is fully reasonable either. It may well be that the problem resides, rather, in Parekh's larger conception that the appropriate theoretical response to this conflict is to urge both sides to compromise their commitments. Some commitments don't admit of being compromised without ceasing to be the commitments that they are.
I'm inclined to offer a twofold response to the issues raised by the Rushdie affair. One side is straightforwardly liberal. Writing intelligent, original, playful, funny, ambitious, even provocative works of literature is an entirely legitimate human activity. It is the sort of thing that human beings should be doing if they have the kind of talent that Salman Rushdie has. Satire, even satire directed at what the faithful regard as inviolable matters of piety, is not an abuse of literature but rather a proper outlet for the gift of the literary imagination. It is morally and politically outrageous that Rushdie's service to humanity as an expander of mental and imaginative horizons should make him a target of private zeal, and that not just the author himself but those involved in translating and publishing his work should be intimidated by threats and actual violence.
Now the other side. It should not be surprising if a community of the faithful should interpret their Law as ordaining absolutes. That's what it means to live one's life in fidelity to a certain understanding of religious authority. Berating the religiously orthodox for failing to adapt to the modern world, as Parekh does, is as off the mark as berating Rushdie for writing novels that genuinely reflect his artistic vision. Just as Rushdie would have to violate the integrity of his art if he were to refashion his work in accordance with Parekh's strictures about culturally inoffensive literature, so his adversaries would have to violate the integrity of their vision of life if they deferred to Parekh's strictures about modernizing their faith. There is an integrity on both sides that one would fail to honour if one took the easy route -- Parekh's route -- of demanding that both sides compromise their respective life-commitments so as to allow everyone to live in happy coexistence.
Religion is innocuous only when it is drained of the very robust cultural meanings that, precisely because they are so powerfully distinctive, unavoidably contain a potential for deep cultural conflict ("Christ is the Saviour"; "The Jews are the Chosen People"; "Paradise awaits the martyrs of Islam"). Brian Barry has recently written, "For many multiculturalists, culture has taken the place once assumed by religion. The crucial difference is, of course, that in the past most people who adhered to a religion believed that it was true and its rivals false. Multiculturalists, in contrast, tend to have a warm feeling towards cultures simply in virtue of their being cultures. It is interesting to observe, however, that religion itself seems to be going the same way." He goes on to bemoan the rise of "woozy ecumenicalism."
If a more serious, more meaningful cultural diversity is what we want, there is, woozy ecumenicalism aside, no shortage of cultures happy to oblige by continuing to adhere to resolutely illiberal approaches to the art of living, far removed from the comforting images of cultural diversity held by boutique multiculturalists. The classic paradox comes into play here of how to be open to cultures and ways of life (very much including religions) that are not themselves open.
If we are expected to show respect towards cultures that mandate clitoridectomy or polygamy, doesn't this require that we suspend commitment to the moral-political principles of our own culture? But if we are prepared to accord respect to these cultures only insofar as they converge with liberal-universalist norms, doesn't our respect for cultural diversity begin to look rather hollow? It looks as if we render these cultures worthy of respect only by excising their cultural substance. And yet, as I've also suggested, when we respond culturally and politically to illiberal forms of religion, we can't simply shelve liberal ideals of freedom, equality and openness to ways of life that are not one's own: qualifying the universalism of liberal principles makes nonsense of those principles. So, yes, inevitably, religion is a problem in liberal societies.
THUPTEN JINPA
There is no denying that, insofar as conflict and violence are concerned, religion's record in human history is not an admirable one. When confronted with this historical reality, apologists of religion in general, and those of individual faith traditions, often present the argument that this is not the fault of religion; rather it is the fault of human beings. I do not find this apology particularly helpful. In fact, I feel this kind of response really denies precious opportunities to a given faith tradition to fine-tune its understanding of its normative doctrines in the light of new challenges, challenges that are an integral part of the growth of human understanding.I think it is important, however, especially for those who perceive themselves to be "secularist," whatever that means, to recognize the other half of the story of religion. For thousands of years, religion has been a powerful positive force in human society in that it has been one of the most important sources for spiritual inspiration and moral guidance. For millions of human beings, religion has been and continues to be a source of profound spiritual solace, a psychological and emotional anchor. No other ideology -- including secular philosophy, scientific materialism or Marxism -- has ever rivalled or will probably ever rival religion when it comes to providing a coherent sense of meaning to human existence.
So, when addressing the question of religion's role and place in human society, I feel it is wrong to focus entirely on the negative aspect of society's encounter with religion. Just as we must address this question seriously, we must also fully accept the positive experience of the human encounter with religion. In this way, there is a greater chance of gaining a deeper insight into understanding the complex phenomenon of religion.
Before we address the question "Is religion the problem?" head on, we need to reflect on some basic facts of our current historical reality pertaining to religion. Awareness of these facts may help us situate our question in a better context so that we have greater success in understanding the complexities of the issues involved.
- Despite the widespread assumption in the secular media and academia that as societies become more educated and prosperous the influence of religion will correspondingly dwindle, today we are witnessing one of the greatest periods of growth in religion in human history.
- Interestingly, much of this rise among the followers of religions is witnessed among denominations that, on the whole, tend to be opposed to the forces of modernity and secularism. Certainly, this must say something about how millions of people worldwide feel a deep sense of unease about the vision of human life and society an avowedly secular view tends to promote.
- Throughout its long history religion has been one of the most important features of human existence. No account of human history, and indeed no understanding of human existence, is complete without some understanding of the religious dimension.
- The fact of religion's resilience and longevity must hold some important suggestions about the truth of the human condition. Other competing ideologies, such as Nazi-Fascism or Marxism, failed even to outlive the very century of their birth, while most of the world's major religions have a history of at least a thousand years. As far as what could effectively be religion's most challenging rival -- secularist materialism -- is concerned, the jury is still out.
There is first the tendency in religion, at least in the manner in which some have interpreted their individual faiths, to portray some kind of absolute authority. Second, this claim for absolute authority tends to go together with a claim that one's tradition alone represents the truth and the sole path to salvation. In addition, many religions possess an apocalyptic vision whereby a divine judgement is meted out, which represents the final court of one's fidelity to the true faith. Finally, when taken to their extreme, these features in religion often give rise to a sense of self-righteousness, intolerance of those who are different and the urge to impose what one understands to be the only truth.
Are these features utterly unique to religion? I do not think so. Already, we see most of these tendencies in secular fundamentalism, whether it takes the form of scientific materialism, or some version of radical social Darwinism, or Marxist dialectical materialism. This suggests that any form of belief system, religious or nonreligious, can give rise to fundamentalism and intolerance.
Are these features, then, indispensable to religion? If so, can they be understood in a way that does not breed fundamentalism and intolerance while safeguarding the integrity of a given religion? Are these features inescapable for any belief system that makes truth claims of any kind? If so, are secular liberalism and religion always condemned to be on a collision course, with the entailment that ultimately only one or the other will prevail? Are there "middle ways" that can be achieved at least on the practical level that do not involve any violation of the integrity of the respective traditions? These are difficult questions. I just want them to be out there so that we can begin the hard task of grappling with them.
Tragic as the September 11 event and the U.S. administration's subsequent so-called war on terrorism have been, one of the byproducts of these events has been to compel us, as societies, to critically examine the place of religion in human society. It is my hope that we as individuals and societies will rise to this new challenge so that we have better opportunities for gaining greater self-understanding as human beings.
CHARLES TAYLOR
Ronnie Beiner has his finger on a very important dilemma: the dilemma of the integrity of religious faith as understood by many of its members on one hand, and the demands of liberal society on the other. This dilemma certainly exists, but I don't think we understand the modern world if we stop there and essentialize religion. Essentialization involves making two mistakes: thinking that religious traditions mean the same thing to all of their members, and also taking them as something static. It is not only the secular world that is constantly changing; religion is as well.From that point of view, there is another big dilemma, which is faced by all religious traditions at different points. It takes a number of forms, but let's look at it in relation to violence. From a certain reading, it might appear that because religious traditions have to impose their views, this necessarily leads to violence. Now, if we leave aside the relation to liberal society for a minute, let's think of the internal dilemma when a religious group finds itself doing things that are deeply repugnant to its own tradition. This creates a kind of learning process, which Europe went through several centuries ago when religious wars between Catholics and Protestants were fought to a standstill. Many people felt an incredible nausea at what they were doing -- a religious nausea at what this was doing to them and their faith.
Another aspect of the dilemma has to do with religions in modernity. Modernity can be seen as the existence of political entities, largely but not entirely democratic, which involve mobilizing masses of people on the basis of a common identity, very often national. Sometimes, however, the markers are religious markers: Catholic and Protestant in Northern Ireland, or Hindu or Muslim in India. This mobilization often leads to a shifting of the centre of gravity in these religious traditions to things which are of very dubious value in terms of their ethical and spiritual core.
Just think of the phenomenon of having a lot of ex-Communists, still atheists, mobilizing various groups in Yugoslavia in the name of the Catholic or the Holy Orthodox Church. A sense of absurdity enters your mind when you look at this, and you ask, "What has happened to religion?" It has become instrumentalized as a marker for mobilization. This also produces nausea: people with a genuine spiritual life and living faith become nauseated at what their faith has become. So it's not just a matter of conflicts between faiths and liberal society, but also of internal conflicts within religious traditions. Some of these cases are so much a feature of modernity that we still haven't worked out what this amounts to in each of our faiths.
What do you lose when your religious faith becomes the marker for patriotism? As a Canadian, I am sometimes worried by our neighbours to the south, in that religion is mobilized by certain spokespeople in the American government, including a very highly placed one who shall remain nameless. Their sense of their religion is wedded to a certain great-power chauvinism. What does this do to your faith?
So in a way the path before us may not only allow for, but even demand, the kind of conversation we're having here. We're all living this drama and we have to learn how to free ourselves of these distortions, which history is somehow leading us or tempting us into. All of us -- those of us in each faith who battle these distortions, and our secular friends as well -- we can all learn from one another's battles.
It has been said many times that it's not exclusively religions that turn to this kind of behaviour; but let's look at this side of the story again. Stalin wasn't a religious man; Hitler wasn't a religious man; Pol Pot wasn't a religious man. But they all used some of the same mechanisms. It's important to understand these mechanisms better. Stalin started off as a believer in communism. What greater or more humanistic goal has ever been proposed for human beings? And yet it led to mass murder, which was a betrayal of that whole belief system. So we have to learn together, to learn by exchange, how to avoid this kind of self-poisoning, which we are so easily led into, and of which the long depressing history of religious and ideological strife is a clear example.
Indeed, if we look at it from this point of view the history is, in a way, even more depressing than we thought, because it's a result of deep tendencies that are operating all the time. But looking at it this way also gives a slight opening of hope, because we see that we can perhaps learn to grow beyond the self-poisoning. It's better to be together in exchange than locked each in our own tradition, trying to reason or battle with our own extremism. And that is why I think that a conversation like this is such a significant and hopeful step.
Even the internal dilemmas within religious traditions are not necessarily perennial, because some of them have been generated out of modernity, and more such dilemmas will be generated as people are shaken loose from more traditional and often more peaceful forms of religious life. Over time, people have often settled down into a way of life in which there was a certain amount of synchronistic coexistence with their neighbours, as there once was between Hindus and Muslims in India. In many cases, the very process of modern reform reintroduced and remobilized the conflict.
There is a distorted view prevailing in the media and academia that on the one hand there is religion, which has its nature and is there primordially and goes along in the same way for thousands of years, and on the other hand there is modernity, which comes along and changes things. Actually, with regard to some of our biggest problems, that is completely the wrong way to understand the situation. We have to understand the nature of religious evolution today in different ways in different parts of the world as a result of modern mobilization, and see how that brings about a new kind of phenomenon with its own dynamic, and find a way of dealing with it. So seeing these faiths in essentialized terms is exactly the wrong way of thinking about them. It's more complicated than that -- and in some ways more depressing, but in other ways more hopeful because we can glimpse a direction in which to go.
NOW THE FLOOR IS OPEN...
Farhang Rajaee: I want to ask a question of Ronnie. I was so glad to see you deal with private zeal. But then I became disappointed when you started to talk about integrity of the vision of life. The problem of religion, and for that matter the problem of any body of thought, is when private zeal decides what the meaning of those ideas is. But as Charles Taylor so eloquently suggested, we can't really talk about the integrity of any vision. We lost integrity when we lost heaven, when we were kicked out of heaven, when we left heaven, however you want to interpret it. Integrity is only there, and the integrity of the secular worldview only exists in theory. The minute you put it into practical life it falls apart and becomes very messy. Now, how do you reconcile the concepts of private zeal and integrity of vision? I would like you to say something about those two.Ronald Beiner: First of all, when I referred to the integrity of an approach to life that certainly wasn't intended as giving a blank cheque to zealous forms of religion. I remain crucially preoccupied with the problem of private zeal. It's the fundamental thing I'm concerned with.
I'd just like to say a few words in response to Chuck Taylor. I think that he makes things easier for his argument than they should be by focusing on forms of religion that lead to outright spilling of blood. For instance, people who interpret the Qur'an so that it means flying airplanes into the World Trade Center have clearly misunderstood and distorted something in their own faith, because surely religion can't mandate people murdering each other. In a way it is better to appreciate the problem here by looking at more moderate examples, that is, forms of religion that are illiberal and therefore in tension with the basic norms and principles of liberal society but not violent. An example would be forms of Orthodox Judaism that presuppose conceptions of gender relations that are incompatible with the liberal norms of equality between men and women. Here it's not an obvious distortion, but still it's an important challenge to the basic principles of liberal society. When Chuck rejects the idea of religion as static, I think there is an assumption there that religions naturally evolve in a liberal direction -- that the growth of religions, the learning processes within religions, means their liberalization. But when you say to Orthodox Jews, "This is unacceptable," then you're really asking of them to transform their vision of life.
Charles Taylor: I wasn't at all thinking that being dynamic, not being static, means getting better. You have, in the melding of religion with modern mobilization, cases where it got a lot worse. In the case of gender relations, in Afghanistan under the Taliban, gender relations were much worse than before precisely because the kind of ideological extremism that goes along with modern mobilization can produce exactly that. In certain Muslim societies, the reaction against what is understood as Western or secular imposition has led to the idea that certain features of women's dress become markers for real Muslim identity, and then you get a rigidification.
So in many cases, the effect of modernity in the short run is to make things worse. At the same time, just take the very interesting case of Turkey, where the mobilization of Islamism was a reaction to secularizing forces imposed from within by Kemal Atatürk and his successors. But the Islamists needed to mobilize various kinds of leadership to be effective in various niches, including women who became spokespersons for more moderate Islamic parties on television.
So you have the beginning of a process that is moving in the other direction. But it is by no means the case that it is getting better and better in modernity. It's changing, but the inner conflictuality is increasing. And that's where you see that we're not dealing with a kind of static opposition here.
Michal Shekel: What about the liberal parts of religions that take part in modern society and have their own intransigence? Let's use the issue of gender equality and egalitarianism. I can only speak from Judaism, and I certainly come from a very liberal part of Judaism, where for many people something like egalitarianism becomes an overwhelming principle that you can't compromise. And so, you do not deal with the more conservative parts of your own religion.
Sadia Zaman: I think the majority of us really struggle with the question, "Is religion the problem?" What I hear from everybody tonight is that it's not really a problem, but other things are. And I was wondering if you could address what other things we are talking about. When we look at the violence and the terrible things that have been happening in the world, especially over the last couple of years, if religion is not the problem, what is the problem?
Thupten Jinpa: I don't think I've given that impression in my presentation. I was actually quite explicit in saying that I don't find this apology very helpful. I feel that there must be a way of understanding one's own faith tradition that allows room for some recognition for accountability of the religious tradition itself. And this for me is very important because otherwise you go back to essentialism. You presuppose a static notion of your religion which somehow enshrines some eternal truth which will remain unchanging. Human interpretations which may evolve may be distortions of that eternal reality. I don't think that that understanding of religion is really helpful because it lets religion off the hook. I feel that people have to find a way of understanding their own faith tradition with a tremendous sense of loyalty and devotion, but at the same time allow the room that would enable the followers of that faith tradition to say, "Yes, there is an element in religion that tends to promote these kinds of extremism, these kinds of intolerance, and we need to look at them."
Charles Taylor: I agree with Jinpa. I'll put it this way: there are tendencies in human beings, but they work their way out first in religion. Can I feel really good, can I feel really pure, without identifying the evil, impure one, and getting rid of or fighting against him or her? This is a problem which has found its home in religion through the ages. Now a lot of people say, "Get rid of religion and the problem goes," but we've discovered in the twentieth century that that doesn't work. The same set of tendencies comes back. So it isn't true to say that religion isn't the problem. There is a very deep problem that has found its natural home in religion for centuries but now can survive being expelled from that home. So we have to look at the problem afresh, but it's not something that is separable from religion or from very powerfully held ideologies.
Michal Shekel: I also think there's a problem with religion. But what are the problems? One way of looking at the answer is to ask, why do people turn to religion? People turn to religion for a sense of security; people turn to religion because of hope; people turn to religion because of a sense of loneliness; and people turn to religion because secular society doesn't have the answer to the question of what to do if a loved one can't breathe on their own or can't take food on their own, and the question of when life begins and when life ends. And that's why people turn to religion. Now what's going on in the modern world is challenging religion to the extreme, even in nonviolent instances such as stem cell research. Part of the evolution that's going on is that we're looking at ancient sources for modern questions. But I think that what's really fascinating is how many people are turning to religion now, and while maybe twenty or thirty years ago they would approach religion from an intellectual basis, now it's from a very emotional basis. I think we need to ask why that is as well.
Farhang Rajaee: I think your question, Sadia, was answered in some way by all of us. If I may reiterate some of the answers, I think generalizing the notion of private zeal is at the heart of making religion a problem. Connecting religion with power is another part, and making it an ideology of gain and an ideology of specific definitions of ends is yet another part.
To me, religion is a challenge. Unfortunately, for many of us religion is no longer a challenge but a panacea. And since we treat it that way we expect it to do everything for us. Religion is full of nuance and very sophisticated ambiguity. I think that for many extremists, religion is a body of thought that can be denoted rather than understanding its symbolic connotations.
Questioner from the audience: How do you live according to the rules of a liberal democracy and accept that the Truth or the Good may be multiple, may be plural? There are religious traditions where there are nonnegotiables and that causes a lot of problems in a liberal democracy. Same-sex marriage would be one issue currently in the public square that illustrates these problems.
Charles Taylor: It would have to be a very bad theology, and bad theologies exist, to believe that God gives you a completely consistent code that can be perfectly applied in all times throughout human history. You would have to have zero knowledge of human history to think that that was possible. Nevertheless, this is a very strong belief in Western modernity. It began in the Christian Church and has become constitutive of a lot of liberalism, and makes it impossible to think in terms of dilemmas. You have this in the whole philosophical tradition of Utilitarians and Kantians, but it starts in Latin Christendom with the legalization of Christianity in the later Middle Ages. So we've been under a very bad influence, and extremely bad theology in this regard, for about a thousand years. We've bequeathed this very bad feature of Latin Christendom to our secular heirs, without the good features. We've inherited a tremendous rigidity and that's why we have such a hard time getting along with one another and living together in our world.
Michal Shekel: I think we also need to realize that people who are truly deeply religious are also very humble and can be very accepting of differences in other religions. It becomes much more difficult within your own religion. But I think that it is possible for people to live together and to have one person believe that life begins at conception and another believe that life begins at birth. The problem arises when the overall society pushes one belief or another. How then do you deal with that tension when one of those beliefs is stifled?
Farhang Rajaee: What Professor Taylor suggested can be applied to Islamic history as well. Wahhabism is a modern phenomenon. In the history of the Islamic tradition, there was a pluralistic understanding of what God desired or of what God commanded of us. There is an enormous degree of humility in the question: "Do we really understand what God wants?" It's only in the modern era, and again it's only a mirror image of the certainty of science and modernity and secularism, which has made it possible for those who claim to be religiously motivated to come up with this denotation instead of connotation of their religious belief system.
Thupten Jinpa: Insofar as secular society is concerned, sometimes there is a tendency which may explicitly be presented as a version of tolerance, but in fact it is quite a condescending, patronizing toleration which I think is quite dangerous. The basic assumption is, "'These people' believe in 'that religion,' and as long as it's not threatening it's fine, but they believe in this because they don't know better, they haven't thought it through more clearly."
Another questioner: I grew up in a small, monocultural town. So when I come to Montreal I am always quite overwhelmed by it. I feel like a small-town girl in a big city, which is what I am. But when I was travelling here tonight on the subway and looking around me, completely overwhelmed by all the people and the advertising, feeling like a small-town girl, I stared for a long time at an ad for Toyota which appealed very explicitly to sex, to prestige, to selfishness and actually to evil. I wondered if people on this subway train who come from all over the world and probably have very deeply held religious beliefs, and then find themselves in this secular liberal society and this is what they see of it, what credibility does it have for them? I was wondering if a group of people like you, who are overtly religious, have something to offer to secular liberal society. Should religious people participate more in the political institutions of secular liberal society, or is that dangerous?
Ronald Beiner: Secularism is simply the view that there are no privileged answers coming from the religious traditions, and that one is on one's own resources, or one tries on the basis of one's own resources to deal with the mysteries of life. You could hold that view in perfectly good conscience and have no sympathy for all of the materialism of the modern world. So I think that it's too quick to simply associate secularism and materialism and I object to that.
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PHILIP STREET