Religion and Politics

Damon Linker has published in   http://www.tnr.com/book/review/what-religion"> The New Republic a well-written and coherently argues review of Ian Buruma’s just published http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9110.html"> ‘Taming the Gods: Religion On Three Continents.”  

Unfortunately, The New Republic does not have a comment option on its website.

Linker takes Buruma to task for what he apparently sees as too broad a definition of religion by supposedly defining it as any strongly held opinion rather than a cluster of beliefs and practices related to the divine or the sacred. Buruma allegedly crosses the line in Linker’s mind when he describes liberal Western anti-Muslim rhetoric as “curiously religious.”

The criticism ignores the degree to which the culture of religion permeates education and culture even I secular societies and as a result also often informs attitudes of secularists and atheists. Examples abound:

a)      a) Turks look down on Arabs whom they ruled for centuries because “the Arabs betrayed us” by supporting the British against the Ottomans in the early part of the 20^th century. Few secular Turks realizes that in using that argument they are employing the Sunni principle that all Muslims belong to the ummah, the community of the faithful, and should not turn against it.

b)      b) Secular and atheist Jews define often define themselves as culturally Jewish even though they do not practice religion

c)  

             c) Puritanism in American politics is religiously inspired

d)     

Th  d) The moral tone in Dutch or Scandinavian foreign policy stems from Calvanism

e)      
Al   e) Alienated or marginalized Diaspora communities as well as communities in conflict zones often hark back to religion as the only framework they can relate to or find solace in.

In his recently published personal memoir of the conflict in Kashmir, http://books.simonandschuster.com/Curfewed-Night/Basharat-Peer/9781439109106">Curfewed Night, Kashmir journalist Basharat Peer describes responses to years of brutal Indian attempts to quash a nationalist insurgency. He writes:

“Shameena and Majid , who had a lost a son, were wading through the painfully slow bureaucratic procedures to find a job for their other son, and they didn’t have enough resources to pay for treatment of their younger son with psychological disorders. All they seemed to have was each other and faith. Hussein, who refused to marry after he was tortured, prayed regularly to find the strength to deal with his predicament. I had seen my parents credit God for saving their lives and increase their prayers after they survived the mine blast. (Dr.) Shahid told me that even the doctors at the crowded psychiatric hospitals recommended a reliance on faith. God and his saints seem to have become the psychiatrists with the largest practice in Kashmir; faith was essentially a support system.” 

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Islamists try to exploit Pakistani Water Woes

Islamic militants in Pakistan’s central Punjab province, responsible for various terrorist attacks in India, blaming the region’s water woes on their larger neighbor to garner support. Pakistan’s Roohi desert, a recruiting ground for militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, has seen its irrigation water decrease over the past five years

“There was ample water until 2005 – more than enough to grow our crops. Then, suddenly, the number of days that water was available to each village started to drop off and has now reached the point where it has become a serious concern,” The National quoted Ansar Rasheed Sindhu, a farmer from the village of Chak 205 on the Murad Canal 700km south-east of Islamabad as saying.

The dropping water supply has hit hardest subsistence farmers, who depend on the wheat and sugarcane harvests for much of their food and on the sale of cotton for cash. It is rolling back advances made by better quality seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, the paper quotes Mohammed Anwar, a father of three who lives off 1.2 hectares in Chak 205, as saying.

Farmers warn that the lack of water could mean that fertile land will be reclaimed by the desert. Militant groups like Jaish-i-Mohammed and Lashkar-i-Taiba (LiT) assert that Indian dam projects are to blame for the reduced water supply. . “India wants to destroy Pakistan by cutting off our water. Now it wants to build another dam on the Jhelum river to turn Pakistan into a desert and starve us all to death,” says Jamal Din, a former Taliban fighter in Afghanistan, who heads the local chapter of LiT charity Jama’at-ud-Dawah.

Pakistani government officials concede that the filling of the Baglihar dam has reduced water flows into Pakistan. India contends the dam does not violate its accord with Pakistan in 1962 over the use of water from the Indus River and its tributaries, which flow through both countries from the Himalayas. Under the accord, Pakistan had first right of dam construction on the Chenab, but failed to act within a stipulated time because of political indecision and a lack of funding. Pakistan has asked the World Bank to mediate.

Farmers in the region appear, however, not to be buying into either the government’s or the militants’ argument. “The shortages started before India built the dam, shortly after the last local government elections [in 2005]. After big landlords won and gained control, they started stealing water to fill reservoirs on their farms,” Mr Sindhu told The National . “Corruption within the irrigation department is now the issue that needs to be dealt with, but I can see how the poverty that it has caused could be twisted by the militants to meet their own agenda.”