RELIGION AS PROTEST; RELIGION IN POWER By Chandra Muzaffar It is important to begin with a clarification. The topic does not imply in any way that religion is only about protest and power. There is no denying that religion is far more complex and comprehensive than that. It embodies so many other dimensions of life. It speaks to death and the hereafter. For the great founders of the different faiths, religion was in the ultimate analysis a profound experience of the Eternal, of the Divine. In my presentation today, I shall first look at religion as protest, religion in power, in the past. Since one needs a cut-off point, the past is that long, long epoch in history before 1945, that is, before nation-states emerged in much of Asia and Africa partly through 'religion as protest' and, in some instances, managed to install 'religion in power'. I shall then examine these two aspects of religion in relation to the present or the period after 1945. I shall conclude with some reflections on the topic which will attempt to link the past, the present and the future. THE PAST In a sense, Gautama Siddartha's, the Buddha's, teachings constituted a protest against the prevailing Hindu caste system. "It is not your birth" he proclaimed, "but your deeds that determine whether you are noble or ignoble". His denunciation of the greed that grows out of attachment was also a response to the materialism of the elites of his time. When we move from Buddhism as protest to Buddhism in power, we realize that there were good and bad Buddhist kingdoms in the past. But the one that stands out is the rule of Asoka. He made loving-kindness, one of the essential attributes of Buddhism, the basis of his just and enlightened governance. His generosity towards the poor and his myriad deeds of charity are legendary. Asoka also adopted an accommodative and tolerant attitude towards the different religious sects that comprised his kingdom. As is well known, he renounced violence and war and committed himself to peace as the primary goal of the state. Jesus was also deeply concerned about the exploitation and oppression that characterized his time and place. His action against the unscrupulous money-lenders in the Early Christian communities around the We move on to the Prophet Muhammad. There is no need to emphasize that he inveighed against the corruption and the abuse of power of the Meccan elites and was a staunch champion of equality and justice. It was partly because he exposed their lack of compassion for the poor and needy and denounced their obsession with the continuous accumulation of wealth that he incurred their wrath and was subjected to such harsh persecution. Unlike most other prophets and sages in history, Muhammad not only protested against injustice. He succeeded in creating a state of sorts and in exercising power and authority. He encouraged different religious groups and sects to cooperate with one another; alleviated the condition of the poor through zakat, a wealth tax; and emancipated women from some severe misogynistic practices. The Prophet, true to his mission and his message, sought to translate the sublime principle of Tawhid, the Oneness of God, into social practice by trying to establish a bond among all human beings irrespective of gender, class and religion. Some of the caliphs who ruled the emerging Muslim state immediately after Muhammad also exercised power with a deep sense of responsibility and directed their energies towards delivering justice to the weak and disadvantaged. The first of these --- Abu Bakr --- for instance was conscious of, and committed to, the rights of the people. The second, Umar Ibn Khatab, adhered to the principle of accountability and translated equality into a living ethic. Then there was the fourth caliph, Ali Ibn Talib, whose dedication to integrity in public life and whose espousal of freedom made him one of the truly illustrious leaders of all time. Even after these early caliphs there were a number of remarkable rulers, like Sallehuddin al-Ayoubi, who strove to uphold the tenets of justice and good governance for the well-being of their people. However, there were also caliphs and Sultans who abused their power, who were utterly cruel and callous. Some were religious bigots who were antagonistic to people of other faiths. Others wallowed in opulence and extravagance. From this brief overview of protest and power in three religions, it appears that just as protest is a constant theme in all of them, the exercise of power also manifests certain affinities. In all religious traditions there are good and bad rulers; examples of competent and incompetent governance. Attachment to religion per se does not guarantee that one would be upright in one's actual conduct as a ruler. THE PRESENT When we turn to the present we also begin to see certain patterns in the role of religion both as a conduit of protest and as an instrument of power. Again, we shall provide brief overviews, this time of five religions. In the case of Hinduism, for instance, Gandhian movements advocating non-violence, peace and other such universal ideals have played some role or other in Indian public life since Gandhi's assassination in 1948. They have been part of various protests against corruption, consumerism and environmental degradation. But no Gandhian movement per se has succeeded to capture power either at the state or federal level in As with Hinduism, there are any number of Buddhist groups that adopt a universal, inclusive approach to their religion and give priority to dialogues and joint cooperative endeavours with peoples of other faiths. On conspicuous consumption, unbridled capitalism, social greed and the persistence of abject poverty, Buddhist groups in various parts of the world have spoken up. Some of the most notable Buddhists who have contributed to the development of an engaged Buddhism since the second world war would be Ambedkar from India, Ariyaratne from Sri Lanka, Thich Nhat Hanh from Vietnam and Buddhadasa and Sulak Sivaraksa from Thailand. At the same time however there are Buddhist protest groups that are exclusive, sometimes even chauvinistic in their orientation. The Heritage Party in While both progressive, engaged Buddhists on the one hand and the Heritage Party on the other are part of the larger protest movement within contemporary Buddhism, there are perhaps only two states that claim to be Buddhist, albeit from different perspectives. The Buddhist credentials of the Sri Lankan government will not stand up to scrutiny partly because of its militaristic approach to the Tamil problem. The other Buddhist state, Bhutan, is, in a sense, more justified in using the Buddhist label because it seeks to define development and progress from a different angle, compared to almost every other nation on earth! Instead of using the conventional Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as its measure, Among religious Jews too there are at least two types of protesters --- a situation that is not dissimilar to what obtains within Hindu and Buddhist protest movements. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a sense brings to the fore these two divergent tendencies. There are religious Jews including rabbis who espouse the cause of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank and However, the Jewish state of Within Christian protest movements also there is a great deal of diversity. Whether it is the question of global poverty or the international debt or global warming, Christian groups in both the North and the South have adopted progressive positions. For instance, clerics and laity alike from both the Catholic and Protestant communities in Europe and North America were in the forefront of the massive global protest against the US led war on However, as in the case of the other religions there is a downside to Christian protest. Today, it is the Christian Right who dominate religious discourse in the Though the Christian Right is an influential force in American society today, it would not be fair to describe the present Bush led US Administration --- George W. Bush is part of the Christian Right --- as a Christian Right government because it accommodates various other interests which are sometimes contrary to the aspirations of the Christian Right. There is in fact no Christian Right state today just as there is no progressive Christian government. The Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez is more socialist than Christian. Perhaps the Sandinista government in Protest movements within the Muslim world are perhaps even more varied in their orientation than in any of the other religious communities. To start with, there are groups in various parts of the world that are critical of corruption among the elites and the growing chasm between rich and poor and espouse a return to the Quran and the Sunnah, specifically to the sharia, as the panacea for all the ills that have befallen the ummah (the Muslim community). These groups like the Ikhwanul Muslimin (the Muslim Brotherhood) in certain Arab countries or the Jamaat Islami in Pakistan or the Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) in Malaysia often operate within the existing constitutional framework, and participate in elections, if allowed to. In It is this rejection of hegemony and imperialism that links these Islamic groups to another category of Muslim groups and individuals who also function within the constitutional arena and believe in peaceful social and political change. For this category it is not the sharia that is the solution nor is the Islamic state their goal. The universal values and principles that underscore the Qur'an, they postulate, should provide the inspiration and the impetus for a holistic transformation of the social order. It is from this Qur'anic perspective that groups and individuals in the Nahdatul Ulama and Muhammadiyyah in Indonesia, think tanks in Pakistan and India dedicated to the mission of the late Muhammad Iqbal, and some intellectual coteries in Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia, evaluate their governments and assess the international system. From their evaluation and analysis of contemporary challenges, it is apparent that they differ from the sharia proponents on vital questions such as the rights of women, the role of non-Muslims in society, the relationship between religion and culture and indeed, the significance of the inclusive dimension of Islam as against its exclusive dimension. It should be noted in passing that this inclusive, universal approach to Islam is gaining more and more adherents among Muslims in the diaspora, in Western Europe and There is a third type of protest movement among Muslims that is much more in the news these days than the first two categories. These are Muslims under occupation who have chosen to liberate themselves from subjugation through peaceful as well as violent means, though the latter seems to be the preferred strategy. Ideologically, some of these groups are very different from one another even if they all share the same larger objective of securing their independence and restoring their sovereignty. There is, for instance, the Taliban in With these differences at the back of our minds, let us now turn to states that have been established in the name of Islam in recent times. Here again, one will notice that there are significant differences in their political, economic and social structures though all of them claim to be committed to the ideal of creating societies guided by the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Each of these Islamic states has certain achievements to its credit just as they have all failed in other respects. With the mammoth revenue from its huge oil reserves, REFLECTIONS If we reflected upon the roles played by the five different religious communities as conduits of protest and as instruments of power, we would be able to draw certain tentative conclusions. Whatever the religious community, there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the protest movements that have emerged. The 'conservative' and the 'progressive', the 'exclusive' and the 'inclusive', the 'parochial' and the 'universal' are some of the many trends and tendencies that characterize these protest movements. Why there are such varied trends and tendencies, it is not difficult to explain. Since every religious philosophy contains ideas which can be described as 'conservative' or 'progressive', 'exclusive' or 'inclusive', 'parochial' or 'universal', there will always be articulators of the faith who will choose to emphasize this or that dimension of their belief system. Most of us are not capable of --- or are not inclined to --- viewing a belief-system in its totality. Besides, human beings often tend to give prominence to those aspects of a religion that reflect their own interests or their own inclinations. Circumstance and the personality of the individual who is at the helm of a protest movement also help to shape its thrust and direction. It is partly because Some of the reasons that explain the different orientations of various protest movements also account for the different types of states that have crystallized under the same religious rubric. Of these reasons, the interests of the ruling class or of the influential strata of society appear to be the most important. If the Saudi version of an Islamic state preserves and protects feudalism, it is because it is in the interests of the ruling class to do so. If the Iranian notion of an Islamic state bestows paramount significance upon a religious elite, it is because that elite controls the levers of power. One can be absolutely certain that if Bush established a Christian state it would be totally different from Chavez's version. The former would want to perpetuate the interests of capital while the latter would seek to redistribute wealth and opportunities. Their different orientations would be mirrored in what each of them would emphasise or not emphasise from the vast reservoir of Christian teachings. Even in the past, needless to say, vested interests, the failure to understand the fundamental spiritual and moral message in each religion from a holistic perspective, surrounding circumstances and the ideological or intellectual propensities of a leader, had coloured and conditioned both protest movements and states that spoke in the name of a particular religion. Though we have not discussed in this presentation the protest movements that evolved in past centuries, after the time of the founder of each faith, we can rest assured that they assumed diverse forms, just like the protest movements of the present period in history. Negative protest --- protest that violated the essence of the message of the religion on caring for the weak or being kind to the stranger --- was as pervasive as positive protest --- the protest concerned with oppression and tyranny. We have seen how in the past, in the experience of every religion, there were outstanding instances of good governance and tragic cases of bad governance. Very often --- if we may labour the point --- it was the ability of the ruler and his clique or class to transcend their own interests and serve the people with sincerity and honesty that determined the success or failure of the state. If this is how religion as a conduit of protest and as an instrument of power was in the past, and is in the present, how will it be in the future? The chances are that those who act on behalf of religion will continue to manifest characteristics that are both positive and negative. Their articulation of protest may be beneficial or destructive from the standpoint of the people. Their exercise of power may be good or bad. As we have noted, adherence to a religion, attachment to a faith, in itself does not guarantee virtuous behaviour especially when one is power. There is no need to repeat that every now and then men and women who are religious in the conventional sense succumb to the temptations that power has to offer. Of course, this is also true of those who are not affiliated to any religion. Nonetheless, we have come to expect those who are religious to be more moral in their conduct when in power than those who are not. Are we justified in expecting this? Or, is religion more moral 'as protest' than 'in power'?
(Chandra Muzaffar is a leading Malaysian intellectual. He is associated with the Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, and also runs the Just World Trust in Kuala Lumpur. He can be contacted on muza@po.jaring.my For details about the Just World Trust, see http://www.just-international.org/)
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