Why Fundamentalism is Rising?
Is there any way to tackle it?
I was reading A History of God by Karen Armstrong. When I started reading this book, my guess was that the author will try to amalgamate three major religions Christian Islam Judaism. But I enjoyed the book beyond expectation. It's a book about the evolution of the idea of God. How God has been symbolized, how it has been venerated throughout the history of mankind, and now recently how people are trying to throw the idea of God!!!
In the biblical period, when human civilisation started with farming and cultivating in the streaming areas, people felt an urge YAHWEH to worship for better harvesting. Time flies on, another new opponent of God, the opposite kind virtue of YAHWEH came into. That's how the idea of religious supremacy has been followed in the lineage of humankind. When ancient peasants were struggling to accept only one GOD and made a physical symbolical meaning of God a Messiah arrived in the area of Israelites. Human always wants to believe what he sees and this created an urge to incarnate God. Only incarnation won't make immaterial, it has to be passed from generation to generation. Messiah started to script the words and compiled them into Torah. A similar thing happened in the case of Christianity. But this time an idea of Trinity emerged, Father, Son, Spirit are components of Trinity. This Trinity was somewhat vague, even the church was struggling to unite it towards God. Several saints preached that Trinity all together is god, to feel the closeness of God, we have to segregate the God into this three. Father is the one who we will visualize, his feelings is passed to Son, then their words will touched the spirit. All three creates a divine connection to God. Imperial patronage promoted the Christianity. On the other hand, in Arab peninsula when the tribals community has been growing, Muhammed (SWT) came with new God, Allah.
In Arab, the tribal community was always dominating, and people in between the tribals were compassionate to each other, they helped the alms. The tribe leader and the people considered the whole tribe as its own family. A single attack on a member of a tribe has been considered a threat to the whole tribe. As a result, whole tribes seek revenge on the opponent but issue happened when the revenge went to an extreme relative to the first attack. Then they all engaged in a long time war. Before the birth of Muhammed (SWT), all this stopped due to an influx of money and individual business increased. As a result, helpless people have been exploited, sybarite, indulgence in whore increased. Tribes worshipped their pagan gods. According to the author, choosing a common pagan god, al-Lah to incarnate helped Muhammed to preach Islam. But there are some other important factors that made him trustworthy. Scripts of the Koran was written in Arabic. An important feature of Koranic scripts is that- recitation of the Koran only touches heart when it is in Arabic, translation to any other language make it dull. As a result, tribed felt it their own scripts. As a result, within 23 years the whole Arab peninsula accepted Islam and al-Lah as their god. Unlike Bible and other scripts, Koran is different in several perspectives. All other scripts tried to explained- Me, God is the one who will take care of you, call upon me when you are in distress. But in case of Koran, the scripts are written in a new syntax- Have you not seen my benevolence? Have you not considered this….? This new syntax is not a command from a High entity, rather it creates an epiphany how empathic God towards us? How much we owe to God? Koranic verses is mainly focused on justice and brotherhood which helped to unite all different Arab tribes into one. Another key features of the Koran- it has a story of Messiah, Christ and other pagan Gods. Including all other gods into Koran, helped to worship a single God. This is so phenomenal to incarnate God into unity, which was Church has been struggling for centuries.
Islam spread after the death of Muhammed (SWT) and God of Philosophy emerged from the hegemony of Islamic empire. Previously, Church excluded reason from religion but this time Falsafah translated into philosophy from Arabic, came with a new way to symbolise God. Practitioners of Falsafah believed that to understand the greatness of God, we have to include reason and logic to human expressions, feelings. This exclusive inclusion of logic and reason, made Muslim empire dominant in science and technology. New branches of science emerged, new philosophy was preached. Sufism, become the torchbearer of this new philosophy. Other religions fall behind with pace of dominance in Islam. As a result, whole Arab, Part of Europe, Africa been ruled by Islamic empire. Several doctrines, Shii and Sunni are the prominent one started to symbolised God in their own sect but not without omitting logic and reason. But this created a similar issue like Christianity, where two different sects Protestant and Catholic become intolerant to each other just due to their different incarnation of God. While, in case of Islam, the dispute was for Muhammed (SWT) family lineage. But this dispute is inherent to human civilisation since ancient ages.
Enlightenment emerged with the increase of new sciences in the seventeenth century. The word Atheist, people started to use to demean someone but atheist was a believer in God. Several philosophers started to show disobedience against Church, and Church prosecuted them with Athiest. With the influence of the Muslim empire, which accepted science wholeheartedly Church espoused Science in religion. But when in the seventeenth century, a new scientific revolution happened, the church felt insecure and to curb it they coined the term atheist against philosophers. In retaliation to this, Philosophers and scientists like Newton promoted to understand the idea of God we have to explore hidden laws in nature. Church liked this idea, with patronage of imperialism, science in the Christian domain sky-rocketed. This scientific revolution in name of understanding god happened till the nineteenth century. Suddenly, philosophers like Karl Marx, scientists like Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein came with some iconoclast ideas which shattered the rule of God for the first time. And Church, Muslim hegemony wasn't prepared for this. First time in history, mankind has been able to find a ray of hope to understand the creation of nature with Darwin evolutions. Bible, Koran never ever focused on this- How God created nature? It all started with Eve eating apples, as a result, Adam and Eve have been abandoned from Eden to earth. But Evolution and Einstein relativity was an unprecedented attack against the God of Philosphy. Chruch was somewhat reluctant to accept relativity as they believed that Newtonian mechanics is enough to understand heavenly bodies. Basically, this two scientific ideas somewhat destroyed the idea of God for all three major religions.
The doctrine of creation in Islam, Christian and Judaism was always problematic but in case of Christian and Judaism it entered lately and Islam always taken al-Lah for granted
As a result, the idea of a personalised god is more promoted rather an institutional god. Every new philosophy now tries to discard the idea of God, even feminism, as throughout history God is He. This expunge of God breeds Fundamentalism, because God was nothing but an idea to which people imposed their offers. Poets like John Milton, Yeats everyone has written poets about God. When educated, the sober and responsible elements will be eradicated, then an extravagant form of God will arrive. It happened in case of Zionism, who believe whole someday Zionists will rule whole Israel but never ever in history Israel was inhabitants of a single God, Islam, Christian, Judaism existed there.
The existence of God is a paradox. Let's finish the post with A.J Ayer quotes:
Theism is so confused and the sentences in which God appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability and falsifiability that to speak of belief or unbelief, faith and unfaith are logically impossible. Atheism is as unintelligible and meaningless as theism. There is nothing in the concept of God to deny or to be sceptical about.
