The religious right should target the capitalist system rather than gays

America’s religious right is emotionally and culturally lost. As it sees it traditional mores and culture giving way to a new liberal culture that pays little attention to religious issues, it is trying to reverse the change, for example, by influencing the country’s choice for President.

It is also spawning a whole lot of groups on the lunatic fringe, people like the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas who picketed the funerals of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Church claims God is punishing the U.S. because of its tolerance for gays, according to this report in CNN.

America and a lot of other cultures and countries have promoted unbridled capitalism and consumerism, often at the expense of traditional value systems. The breakdown of traditional culture and value systems is in a sense part of the grand design of capitalism to stress on integrated and homogenous markets for which it is more efficient to produce and more efficient to distribute. McDonald’s and its attempts at global homogenization has been the symbol of this attempt to neutralize cultural and yes religious differences in the interests of the markets.

This neutralization of local culture is being resisted in many countries, and often takes the form of anti-American sentiment. In America too, the religious right is now reacting to attempts of capitalist society to homogenize and control tastes, values and lifestyles. You may ask what do lifestyles and culture have to do with religion ? In the past, they have all moved together with religion, culture, and lifestyles influencing one another. You can’t neutralize or modify one, without pulling down the entire superstructure.

The religious right have made homosexuality and abortion rights their key issues. But they have conveniently avoided taking on the real cause of their problems – the breakdown of culture, religion, and values by mass consumerism, and the consequent anomie.

The fringes of the religious right are the real problem, as they are lunatic attempts to cope with the social and cultural anomie beget by modern consumerist society.

The religious right, which has typically voted Republican and in favor of the glorification of the current capitalist value system, has in a sense contributed to the social and cultural anomie in American society. They cannot blame homosexuals and abortionists for America’s problems. The devil is in the system – the capitalist system, and the value system it promotes to perpetuate its existence.

The religious right will probably look at these issues through their traditional demonology. They will probably say, “Hey, here is another self-serving homosexual”. I am not a homosexual. I believe that the religious right should put aside its witch-hunting of homosexuals and go after the big Satan – the system itself of which they are both the supporters and the victims.

Related articles:
God is dead, and I am not feeling too well myself

A white Jihadi !!

The arrest in Germany of two white terror suspects this week has demolished stereotypes of jihadi terrorists.

Until now the Jihadi was perceived as a person of West Asian or South Asian extract, fanatically religious, and unable to separate politics from religion.

Now it is that boy next door ! As if the number of west Asian and south Asian immigrants were not a large enough threat, it is the boy next door turning against Western civilization.

What makes a youngster, in the prime of life, strap bombs to his body, head to a crowded place, and blow himself and others around ? Until now this was an almost academic question about some people across the borders, or in some ghetto. Now it could be a question about a youth at home or in the neighborhood.

Rather than ask these questions, Germany is not unexpectedly slipping into knee jerk reflexes like exploring the option of monitoring the activities of German converts to Islam. See this report in Spiegel

It is becoming more clearer that unlike in conventional warfare, the “war against terror” will not be won by a large defense arsenal. Those were to an extent useful against organized terrorist militias in the Middle East like the Taliban, but they are increasingly less so when the new face of terrorism is increasingly an ordinary civilian in your neighborhood – most often a migrant, but sometimes that blond boy across the road..

Our weapons may be superior to that of the terrorist, but pray tell me where do you find him first ? He may be in our neighborhood, in our community. He may even be at the same place of work. And he will show his or her hand at a time suitable, typically when our guard is down.

We could get ham fisted, and back our government to search, intimidate, and harass communities which are suspected to breed terrorists . In the past our governments dropped some bombs hoping to kill terrorists, but also killed a lot of civilians in the bargain, as the Americans did recently in Afghanistan, hoping to kill some of the Taliban in a village. But you can’t do that on native soil.

If we harass and kill a lot of people in trying to catch a terrorist, we are doing a part of his work for him by alienating large parts of the community. If our laws become more draconian, we are again doing his work for him. Most terrorists have always believed that democracy is a sham that conceals an iron, dictatorial hand.

The American decision to house prisoners, suspected to be terrorists, in Guantánamo Bay, without access to the provisions of the Geneva Convention, did not cover America with glory. The fig-leaf of a pretext that Guantánamo was not American territory, and therefore the prisoners were not under the jurisdiction of US law, once again showed that we can expediently abandon democratic principles. Now Germany seems to be veering towards a surveillance policy that could seriously curb personal freedom.

It helps to have an army or police in the background to protect people, repeat to protect people if there is an attack. But soldiers and police armed to the teeth cannot be your diplomats, the carriers of your message of reconciliation.

Politicians and concerned people have to start communicating with suspects and those on the fence, break down the barriers, get around their fears and anxiety. The old ploy of identifying a “bogey-man” and attacking him may bring votes, but will not save lives.

Let us not try to change their way of life, their culture, because that is exactly what they suspect is our hidden agenda. When some of us talk, as does President George Bush, of exporting democracy to countries known to have large terror groups, we may in fact be insulting their way of life. It comes across as patronizing as some colonialists of yore who wanted to bring the colonized in Asia and Africa our of their “backward” living and beliefs into a more European and Christian way of life.

The NGOs should move in with aid, rather than prescriptions. The American people, the Indian people, the Russians, the British people, and all others who have been affected by the threat of terrorism should reach out to these people, talk to them about helping them, talk to them about restoring their dignity, their lives. This is not a job for governments, or the military, but for civil society.

The terrorist is in our midst. That brings up the opportunity for civil society to win them over on mutual terms. It is also a time to look within – what about US and European politics and culture, for example, are driving its young to other religions and culture ?

At the same time civil society cannot harbor the illusions that this will be an easy process. There will always be the more determined terrorists, planning a bomb attack, even while you are talking peace with them. While communicating with terrorists as people, civil society has to also communicate with one another, to keep a discreet eye on unusual activity, unusual objects lying around in our neighborhoods, unusual people.