Here we are again at the intersection of religion and politics
[ by Charles Cameron — and I should add that I don’t think it’s a matter of a minor side street crossing a grand boulevard ]
.
I have high regard for Mark Juergensmeyer, whose book Terror in the Mind of God is rightfully a classic, and I don’t by an means always trust tweets from a TV channel… but in this case I wouldn’t be altogether surprised if NBC Nightly News had it right, and Mark Juergensmeyer was shading things just a bit too cautiously.
Sources:
Mark Juergensmeyer, Don’t Blame Religion for Boston Bombings NBC Nightly News, on Twitter
**
But look, I feel the way I do about the intersection of religious and political motives — in this and other cases — because I have some personal understanding of how passionate a matter religion can be, and a sense, too, that our secularizing age wouldn’t mind at all if religion quietly dropped off the edge of the world.
Having said that, I like to listen to the voices of those who may see things in a different light, so perhaps I may point you to two recent articles by two of the keener observers of the Islamist political scene — Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel:
Olivier Roy, Boston: More Like Sandy Hook Than 9/11 Gilles Kepel, Après le printemps arabe, l’hiver islamiste… Est-ce une bonne description de la réalité
Two people with very rich exposure to the varieties of contemporary Islam speak to us in those two pieces.
April 23rd, 2013 at 2:34 am
Hi Charles –
.
I’m not sure I see a difference in your paired quotes. The rage of angry young men can have its expression in religious feelings. Roy says something similar in his article.
.
I know the commentariat here probably won’t like this, but it seems like that rage, religious or not, is behind a great many terror and mass murder attempts. I’m not implying a biological origin, although testosterone certainly is capable of propelling violence. It could be societal as well – I think we just don’t know because we haven’t given the attention to these male behaviors the way we have to female behaviors. Or some of us have been paying attention and see some societal causalities in “women’s place.”
.
Religion, as you’ve been saying, is also powerful stuff to load pre-existing emotions into. Combine that with relational ties to a very conflicted part of the world. But only these two Chechen immigrants decided to build pressure-cooker bombs and set them off at the Boston Marathon. So there’s yet another variable or variables.
April 23rd, 2013 at 3:48 am
Hi Cheryl:
My reason for pairing them was to note the difference in emphasis: “also seems to be a secondary aspect” vs “motivated by religious fervor”. I don’t think they’re utterly incompatible, but I do think we tend to downplay the religious motive, rating it “secondary”. The Boston Globe may have started it with their April 20 headline, “Islam might have had secondary role in Boston attacks“.
I’m fine with that, but with the caveat I expressed in my post Fire walking and the intensity of apocalyptic arousal today, i.e. that religion tends to create more than usually powerful aspirational spaces for those emotions to expand into.
.
So my concern here is that we shouldn’t dismiss religion as a motivating factor either by calling it politics, or by calling it rage. IMO, religious aspiration can be a potent “force multiplier” for rage, politics, and acts of individual or group violence. So yes, there are many factors involved, but don’t let’s elide this one…
April 23rd, 2013 at 6:12 pm
“The explosive ones. — When one considers how much the energy of young men needs to explode, one is not surprised that they decide for this cause or that without being at all subtle or choosy. What attracts them is the sight of the zeal that surrounds a cause — as it were, the sight of the burning fuse, and not the cause itself. Subtle seducers therefore know the art of arousing expectations of an explosion while making no effort to furnish reasons for their cause: reasons are not what wins over such powder kegs. ” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, #38)
.
But on another note: There is altogether too much use of phrases like “religious feelings,” “religious fervor,” “religious motivation”—as if of course those using the terms or ideas always know what they signify.
.
I think that more often than not, “religious ________” is merely an excuse, or framework for an excuse, for those who feel it. An excuse to themselves as well as one offered to others.
.
This doesn’t mean that it is inconsequential, useless, or irrelevant. But it is highly ambiguous. Even if it is something real that cannot go by any other name or by several other names.
April 23rd, 2013 at 6:15 pm
[ I’m posting this before reading Curtis’ comment, which he posted while this comment of mine was “in process” ]
.
Another neat DoubleQuote would have paired that NBC Nightly News tweet with this one from the Washington Post:
I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive — but what I’m getting at, here again, is the subtlety and nuance of the issues at hand…
.
For instance, there’s also the point to consider that Joshua Foust makes (with some overkill, IMO) when he tweets:
See also his tweet:
and the articles he points to here and here