Rudyard Kipling"
āWhen 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"
āWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā
āIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā āOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
āThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā
āMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā āThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
āNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
āIt 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."
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.
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.
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 Erdoganās government, which mixes Islamism
with nationalism. While Erdoganās Justice and Development Party
represents Islamism, its coalition partner for a decade, Nationalist Action Party, has an explicitly nationalist agenda.
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 āthe 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.
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.
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 āloyal to the countryā and offered assimilation as a solution.
Assimilation
of ethnic minorities into the majority may not be limited by language
and culture, because the countryās constitution connects Islam and the
Malay identity, stating: āMalay 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.
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.