Religion’s immunity from criticism has been an enshrined part of society for millennia. From Raif Badawi, the Saudi Arabian blogger guilty of “insulting Islam” and sentenced to one thousand lashes and ten years imprisonment for it; to the recurring cases of child sex abuse from within the Vatican, an issue which Pope Francis deemed unimportant in appointing Juan Barros to the Bishopric of Osorno in Southern Chile this year, a man whose child sex offences are well documented in the community he has been appointed shepherd of; to the more recent slaughter of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists for drawing the Prophet Muhammad and of course, the Paris attacks of the 13 November; all lay witness to the unceasing harm that religion inflicts on society.
Siphoning through the countless articles discussing the events of the Charlie Hebdo attacks of 7-9 January as well as the 13 November Paris attacks, one is met with a recurring word: ‘terror’. This is nothing but a crude substitute for ‘religion’. We are led to believe by the media that terror is a kind of spirit or force, but it is not. The motivation for such attacks were and are purely religious, a result of years of indoctrination, often from the cradle.
The backlash from the printing of the prophet Muhammad in the Charlie Hebdo magazine, drawn by those who are not bound by the Muslim faith and its doctrines, served to incite rioters in Niger to set fire to churches, precipitated the murder of five people in Zinder and resulted in the injury of several Algerian police officers. This violence has not been instigated by the desire to incite terror; it has been instigated by people who are motivated by unquestioning faith that their acts are good. Such events serve to reinforce the notion that is granted very little coverage in the media, that terrorism is but a facet of religious violence. In other words, religion’s harm comes in numerous guises. The most recent of which, following the Paris attacks of 13 November, is that of religious retaliation in the form of the rise of the Christian Right across Europe.
We have seen, in the exponential growth of Marine Le-Pen’s far right Front National party, the potential for religion to exacerbate an already toxic political climate. The Front National received 28 per cent of the vote in the first round of regional elections, the highest of any other party. Despite failing to win any regions in the second-round, due to ‘tactical-voting’ by other party supporters, the Front National succeeded in receiving 6.6 million votes which not only served to triple the number of Front National councillors, cementing their grass-roots powerbase, but also providing a significant boost to Marine Le-Pen’s 2017 presidential bid. Moreover, the rise of the Front National and parties like it pose a grave threat to our society. The language employed by Marine Le-Pen following the second round of regional elections described Front National voters as “victims”. She accused the government of “infantilising” and “intimidating” her supporters, declaring that they had been victims of an elitist system that had “persecuted” them.
This language of victimisation, alluding to the accusation that a crime had taken place, has served only to aggravate Front National supporters and bolster them in their support of a nationalist solution to the political issues of the day. This is precisely the danger that the far Right presents to society. They threaten to divide us against one another. Nationalism implies a hardening of identities that are averse to cooperation between those whom it sees as a threat to itself, as outsiders. The historical record is littered with examples. The same production has been performed in Europe before; the language of victimisation fostering hatred towards the political system employed to protect society, has before resulted in the consolidation of national identities against an ‘enemy of the state’; the cataclysmic crescendo resulted in the death of millions. The growing support of far Right parties, the Jobbik party in Hungary, now the third most powerful party, the election of the Law and Justice party to government in Poland in October, which professes a vitriolic opposition to settling Syrian refugees and denouncing immigrants, The Alternative in Germany which opposes immigration is now the third most popular party, and UKIP, who received 3.9 million votes in the May general election, all bear witness to the dangerous surge in support for the radical Right, at a time where their policies threaten society the most. All employ the language of division that threatens to severely weaken European society at the very moment unity is most needed. Such divisive language comes in no better form than religion rhetoric.
Nigel Farage stated during a debate in the European Parliament, following the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January of this year, that “we are going to have to be a lot braver and a lot more courageous in standing up for our Judeo-Christian culture”, leading to condemnation by numerous political figures including Tim Farron, the then Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson, who discarded Mr. Farage’s words as “politics of blame” and stirring “fear and division between people of different faiths”. Such “fear and division” has been replicated across the political class. Donald Trump’s plan to ban all Muslims entry into the Unites States until we “figure out what the hell is going on” is a fine example. This serves to throw another toxic ingredient into the mix of the Right’s rising loaf of intolerance: ignorance. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the somewhat comical poll conducted by Public Policy Polling, which asked 532 Republicans: “Would you support or oppose bombing Agrabah?”, the fictional city that features in Disney’s Aladdin. 30 per cent replied that they would and 57 per cent claimed that they “weren’t sure”. This example illustrates the potential that the Right has in threatening both the safety and freedoms that our society is based on.
However, such ignorance is not only demonstrated by the political class, but also by the religious. Indeed, the rise of such parties mentioned is a product of the aforementioned ‘religious retaliation’ that comes in the form of consolidating Christian values; a force that serves to drive a wedge ever deeper between communities of different faiths. The Queen’s Christmas Day Broadcast, which traditionally has a strong religious framework, did not disappoint in consolidating the Christian message. She said: “It is true that the world had to confront moments of darkness this year, but the Gospel of John contains a verse of great hope, often read at Christmas carol services, ‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’” This same religious consolidation is evidenced more explicitly in Pope Francis’ reaction to the Paris terrorist atrocities. He seemed more concerned with exacerbating the growing tensions between the Christian and Muslim community by condemning the employment of the phrase “Allah hu Akbar” (“God is great”) by the terrorists as “blasphemous”. Moreover, the aforementioned language of violence employed by the Front National and other far Right parties was replicated by the Pope himself following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, where he stated that if a friend “says a curse against my mother, he can expect a punch”. In short, Charlie Hebdo had it coming. The wife-beaters defence. Thus, we not only see the Pope’s support for the repression of freedom of speech, but also his justifying violence as an acceptable reaction to a challenge to religious dogma. Yet, Pope Francis did not stop here. He went on to state, in his State of the World speech, following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, that “religious fundamentalism” was to blame for the attacks. This was an unusual statement for a man who practices such fundamentalism himself, by condemning the use of contraceptives which directly results in the continual ravaging of the AIDS virus across large swathes of Africa. Not to mention the Vatican’s stance on family planning, forcing vulnerable young girls into illegal ‘back-alley’ abortions, once again resulting in countless deaths across the decades, discounting the mental trauma that such young girls are forced to live with for the rest of their lives. “It’s not religious fundamentalism that’s the problem”, he might as well have said, “its Islamic fundamentalism”. Pope Francis went on to condemn “deviant forms of religion” for such terrorist attacks, an example of the same language of division and hatred that the far Right parties profess. If he considers Islam to be a “deviant” form of religion then he is surely guilty of the same “politics of blame” that figures such as Nigel Farage have been accused of and must be treated with the same amount of ridicule. Figures such as Pope Francis are capitalising on the death of innocent civilians as a means of consolidating the Christian faith.
We are thus living in dangerous times, a time where the political and religious ruling elite are favouring the strategy of consolidation over reconciliation. A hardening of Christian values and identity is never going to solve the issue of Islamic fundamentalism, but only threatens to divide our society ever more by realigning European society between ‘us’ and ‘them’. This fulfils the very aims of groups such as IS, and other terrorist cells, which set out to divide us and tear our society apart. For as long as the European electorate turn to nationalist, religious groups, we surrender our ability to cooperate as human beings. As we move towards consolidating our Christian identity, typified by the #prayforparis that occupied the feed of thousands, we run the risk of weakening our society by aggravating the wound of revenge. We must remember the power of “revanche”, a force which added fuel to the fires of war in 1914, as Frenchmen were spurred on by the need to right the wrongs of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. We must never forget the power that nationalism possesses and the threat it poses to the stability of our society. Enough blood has been spilled as a result of our inability to unite when we have most needed to do so.
The way to tackle such issues as Islamic fundamentalism is to unite as human beings, ‘Christian’ and ‘Muslim’ alike, against an enemy which threatens our very society. Religion, and its consolidation under nationalist parties, disables our ability to do so by dividing us into ‘us’ and ‘them’. If only we could place on hold our religious allegiances and fight for the cherished values of freedom and tolerance, we would be far more successful in winning the battle of reason against barbarism. By rallying under the banner of Christianity, we are removing our barricades against intolerance and riding into the valley of death.
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