Op-Ed:
Conflict In the Name of Someone’s God
Every day, a plague tears through the world, slaughtering men, women, and children alike. It worms its way inside communities and destroys families, lives, and nations. ‘The plague’ is religious conflict. In today’s world, religion is a focus of many people’s lives. According to the PEW Research Center in a study in 2010, around 5.8 billion people were associated with a religion, out of the world population in 2010 of 6.9 billion (The Global Religious Landscape). Religious conflict is a force that has the potential to affect the entire world.
Currently, the world is reeling from the incredibly violent, religiously-motivated crimes committed by the terrorist group known as the Islamist State of Iraq and al-Sham. Abbreviated to ISIS, it controls large regions in Syria and Iraq, and has influence in other Middle Eastern countries. ISIS has used this control to launch a campaign of genocide against every other religious group in the area that holds even slightly different beliefs; raping, mutilating, and murdering. It is aggressively gaining ground, with globalization partially to blame.
Although multiple factors contribute to religious conflict, globalization plays a large role in its proliferation, especially when examining conflict surrounding Islam.
Globalization is the spread of culture, ideas, economics, and politics throughout the world. Today, separate cultures are so interconnected that individuals no longer know their place within them, producing an unpredictable environment where identities are mixed, and roles in society are unclear. Globalization "has made individuals and groups more ontologically insecure...One main response...is to seek reaffirmation of one’s self identity by drawing closer to any collective that is perceived as being able to reduce insecurity and existential anxiety,” (Kinnvall, 741-742).
Religion and nationalism are both powerful collectives that can soothe insecurity. Together they are especially conducive to creating religious conflict, because the combination creates groups that have no awareness of any boundaries between the individual and the group. Individuals are existentially attached to their group, as they see it as the embodiment of their existence. Everything that hurts the group is seen as hurting the individual. Consequently, the individual can easily be angered, because their sense of identity is inexorably intertwined with the collective.
The globalization of the Western world has contributed to a feeling of ontological uncertainty in Arab countries, in part provoking the excess amount of religious conflict in the area: “(After the second World War,) many emerging Arab countries pursued paths of modernization...that were Western-inspired...(These) reforms (were) expressed...and endorsed by the elites...(The) demise of such experiments created a disillusioned youth revolt in many Arab countries. Refuge was sought in the older and more familiar concepts...based on patriotism and religion,” (Kinnvall, 745). The reforms were the result of the spread of ideas from the Western world, which is one of the characteristics of globalization. These reforms, and by extension globalization, created an atmosphere of unpredictability in many Arab countries that caused the youth to look towards collective identities, like their religion and their nationality.
Even religions, the supposed 'relief' for this existential anxiety, can contribute to it: “(it has been posited that) a singular “Islam”...somehow (exists) outside of time and space and which (determines) not only Muslims’ behavior, but also their destinies...Rather than trying to determine Islam’s essence, scholars have increasingly turned to examining the behaviors and ideologies of Islamist groups and political parties,” (Shehata, 4). Some existentially insecure individuals look towards Islam for security. The essence of Islam has not been defined, which means those individuals are not being given concrete truths even in their religion. Insecure people crave assurance to ease their insecurity. In an effort to define the essence, there are numerous wildly varying interpretations of Islam. They are only attempts to ease individuals’ doubts about their existence, which were caused by globalization.
Often, religion is used as a tool to justify other actions. Since individuals’ values are so closely tied with their religion, they see their other agendas as being part of their religion as well. According to Shehata, “Most Islamists are not occupied with defending the nature of the Quran...the vast majority of Islamists...hold consciously innovative understandings of Islam, employ modern technologies, and are actively engaged in efforts to transform the contemporary world. Some Islamists, although not all, advocate increased political freedoms and social justice. Others have more radical, and sometimes violent, political agendas,” (Shehata, 3).
The driving force behind religious conflict is often not an individual’s or group’s desire to prove the truthfulness of their beliefs. They pretend that it is, but it is a facade which they use to carry out ulterior agendas. Much religious conflict is instigated by politics or other ideologies separate from the religion itself. Ideologies and politics are systems that are constantly being affected by globalization. Therefore, the world of people using religious beliefs for politics or other ideologies is constantly changing. This creates even more existential anxiety, which draws these individuals closer to the collective identity and creates more fear. People who are constantly filled with fear lash out, and conflict with others, all in the name of their religion.
History has repeated itself over and over. As long as religion has existed, there has been religious conflict. In the past, this occurred because of a number of factors, all converging to create conflict. Globalization has always been one of those factors, affecting religion and conflict surrounding it. The only difference now is that globalization plays a larger part. Now, the rate of globalization in the world is accelerating exponentially, so the its effects on religion are far more widespread and significant. Globalization has helped create a world where everyone questions their existence, where religion is not always a healing force but also a violent one, and where the powerful take advantage of the insecurity and desperation of the people. We need to create one collective identity everyone can fit into to, to ease this fundamental insecurity and create a happier, more peaceful world.
Works Cited
Kinnvall, Catarina. "Globalization and Religious Nationalism: Self, Identity,
and the Search for Ontological Security." Political Psychology 25.5
(2004): 741-67. Cite SeerX. Web. 5 Feb. 2015. .
Shehata, Samer S. Islamist Politics in the Middle East: Movements and
Change. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012. Google Books. Google.
Web. 5 Feb. 2015.
"The Global Religious Landscape." Pew Research Centers Religion Public
Project RSS. Pew Research Center, 17 Dec. 2012. Web. 08 Feb. 2015.
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