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Articles, Opinions & Views: How religion fuses with populist nationalism to silence dissent By Ahmet T Kuru

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In A Foxhole

Rudyard Kipling

" ā€œWhen you're left wounded on
Afganistan's plains and

the women come out to cut up what remains,
Just roll to your rifle

and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldierā€
General Douglas MacArthur

" ā€œWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā€

ā€œIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā€
ā€œOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
ā€œThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace,
for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā€
ā€œMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā€
ā€œThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

ā€œNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
ā€œIt is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died.
Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."

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How religion fuses with populist nationalism to silence dissent By Ahmet T Kuru
Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Malaysiakini : My research shows that there is a rising global trend against dissenting and minority religious views. Analysing this trend is crucial to understanding why right-wing populist leaders are now ruling diverse countries, such as Turkiye, Russia, Israel and India, and how they may come to power in other places, including the United States.

All these countries have recently experienced the combination of three movements - religious conservatism, nationalism and populism.

Religion and nationalism: Old enemies, new allies

In both Christian and Muslim history, nationalism emerged in reaction to the religious establishment. Scholars of nationalism such as Benedict Anderson explain its origins in Europe after the 16th century through the expansion of vernacular languages, national churches and nation-states at the expense of Latin, the Vatican and divinely ordained dynasties.

Similarly, in many Muslim-majority countries, there was tension between Islamists and nationalists. The Islamists pushed for traditional religious education and Islamic law and emphasised global Islamic identity. Nationalists, however, modernised schools, established secular laws and stressed national identity.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

This tension continued throughout the 20th century in Turkiye, where nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded a secular republic in the 1920s.

There was a similar struggle in Egypt between the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and the nationalist military officers who built the republic under the leadership of secularist Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s.

Today, however, religious and nationalist forces are often political allies. For a decade, such an alliance has existed in Russia between the Orthodox Patriarch Kirill and President Vladimir Putin. Laws punishing insults to religious feelings have been expanded and Orthodox Christian values returned to school curricula.

Analysts define Kirillā€™s strong support for Putinā€™s invasion of Ukraine as a reflection of the nationalist ideology they share.  

In Turkiye, the main religious authority is Diyanet, a government agency that controls mosques and pays the salaries of their imams.

Although the Diyanet was established by Ataturk to serve secular nationalist policies, it has become an important pillar of President Recep Tayyip Erdoganā€™s government, which mixes Islamism with nationalism. While Erdoganā€™s Justice and Development Party represents Islamism, its coalition partner for a decade, Nationalist Action Party, has an explicitly nationalist agenda.

In the Arab world, there was a wrangling between Nasserā€™s secular nationalist Egypt and the Islamic state of Saudi Arabia in the 1950s and 1960s. No longer. Egypt, which has moved to Islamism with a constitution referring to syariah as the source of law since 1980, and Saudi Arabia, which has recently become less Islamist and more nationalist through Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmanā€™s reforms, are now regional allies.

Age of populist leaders

What explains this transformation in the relationship between religion and nationalism? I believe that populism is the glue that brings them together.

Populists often claim that they are defending ā€œthe peopleā€ against both elites and minorities, especially immigrants.

Recently, populist nationalist leaders have used religious symbols to mobilise their followers. For example, in 2016, Putin established an Orthodox Cathedral in Paris on the banks of the Seine River, near the Eiffel Tower.

Hagia Sophia

In 2020, Erdogan declared the Hagia Sophia a mosque again ā€“ it had been a church for over a millennium until the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul in 1453 and a mosque for about 500 years until Ataturk made it a museum.

Most recently, on Jan 22, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a Hindu temple in Ayodhya on the site of a mosque that had been built in 1528 but violently destroyed in 1992 by Hindu radicals, after a century of controversies over the land.

And while former US president Donald Trump did not establish a cathedral, he did give a photo-op holding up a Bible at a crucial moment ā€“ during the Black Lives Matter protests in June 2020 ā€“ as a sign of his religious politics against the protesters.

In such acts, populist leaders aim to incorporate religion and nationalism to serve their political agenda. Yet, for religious minorities, this symbolism may imply that they are secondary citizens.

Future of religious minorities

In several countries, the alliances between religious forces and populist nationalists have threatened minority rights.

One such case is Malaysia, an ethnically and religiously diverse country, where Muslim-Malays are the majority, while Buddhist, Christian and Hindu communities constitute a third of society.

As I learned during my recent visit, Islam is at the centre of political debates about nationalism in Malaysia. For example, on Jan 13, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the once powerful former prime minister, said ethnically Chinese and Indian citizens of Malaysia are not fully ā€œloyal to the countryā€ and offered assimilation as a solution.

Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad

Assimilation of ethnic minorities into the majority may not be limited by language and culture, because the countryā€™s constitution connects Islam and the Malay identity, stating: ā€œMalay means a person who professes the religion of Islam, habitually speaks the Malay language, conforms to Malay custom.ā€

For Malays and converts, leaving Islam officially is not an option ā€“ both civil courts and syariah courts have rejected that in various cases.

The strong connection between religion and Malay nationalism has helped Islamic authorities, such as syariah courts and syariah police, expand their influence.

The increasing Islamisation of the Malaysian government, however, is a worry for non-Muslim minorities.

Meanwhile, Muslim minorities are worried about their rights in several non-Muslim countries ruled by populist nationalists.

According to democracy watchdog Freedom House, in India, Modiā€™s government has pursued discriminatory policies against the Muslim minority of about 200 million people.

These policies have included the destruction of Muslim properties to the extent that bulldozers became ā€œHindu-nationalistā€ and ā€œanti-Muslimā€ symbols in India.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi

In the US, Trumpā€™s anti-immigrant policies included the so-called ā€œMuslim banā€ ā€“ an executive order that barred nationals of certain Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. While campaigning for the upcoming 2024 elections, Trump vowed to bring back the ban in an expanded manner.

As the experience of many countries around the world shows, the trend of advancing a religious-nationalist agenda restricts minority voices. This trend constitutes a major challenge to the ideals of democracy and equality of citizens worldwide.

These concerns are also personal for me: As a Muslim American, I want to both keep enjoying equal citizenship in the United States and give talks about Islam in Muslim-majority countries without being harassed by the police.


posted by Major D Swami (Retired) @ 10:27 AM  
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