Saudi Arabia: A Case Study in the Evil of Religion

For religious fundamentalists of all faiths, one of the most terrifying things is the prospect of having to think for oneself and to reach moral decisions without someone telling you what those decisions should be.  For leaders of such faiths, the thought of the faithful thinking for themselves is even more terrifying because thinking on the part of the faithful threatens their power and control - and often the plush financial benefits that go with such control.  Saudi Arabia is a case study in this phenomenon and demonstrates the manner in which power hungry and self-centered clerics perverted what they allege to be "holy scripture" and turn the faith they claim to be protecting into something far different than what it was originally.  There are, of course, similar parallels with fundamentalist Christianity where the Gospel message has become almost completely ignored as focus is directed to selective passages that further the agenda - and provide salve to the psychosis of - the faith leadership.  In whatever its form, fundamentalist religion is anti-knowledge and anti-human rights.  It deserves no respect and zero deference.  A piece in the New York Times looks at who Islam has become truly evil within Saudi Arabia and how the evil has has been exported.  Here are excerpts:

For most of his adult life, Ahmed Qassim al-Ghamdi worked among the bearded enforcers of Saudi Arabia. He was a dedicated employee of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice — known abroad as the religious police — serving with the front-line troops protecting the Islamic kingdom from Westernization, secularism and anything but the most conservative Islamic practices. . . . But the men of “the Commission,” as Saudis call it, spent most of their time maintaining the puritanical public norms that set Saudi Arabia apart not only from the West, but from most of the Muslim world.

For years, Mr. Ghamdi stuck with the program and was eventually put in charge of the Commission for the region of Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. Then he had a reckoning and began to question the rules. So he turned to the Quran and the stories of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions, considered the exemplars of Islamic conduct. What he found was striking and life altering: There had been plenty of mixing among the first generation of Muslims, and no one had seemed to mind.

[H]e argued that much of what Saudis practiced as religion was in fact Arabian cultural practices that had been mixed up with their faith.  There was no need to close shops for prayer, he said, nor to bar women from driving, as Saudi Arabia does.

It was like a bomb inside the kingdom’s religious establishment, threatening the social order that granted prominence to the sheikhs and made them the arbiters of right and wrong in all aspects of life. He threatened their control.

Mr. Ghamdi’s colleagues at work refused to speak to him. Angry calls poured into his cellphone and anonymous death threats hit him on Twitter. Prominent sheikhs took to the airwaves to denounce him as an ignorant upstart who should be punished, tried — and even tortured.

Inside the kingdom, all other religions are suppressed. Not only are there no public churches, there is no Church’s Chicken. (It is called Texas Chicken in the kingdom.) When asked about this, Saudis deny that this reflects intolerance. They compare their country to the Vatican, saying it is a unique place for Muslims, with its own rules.

Officials I spoke with were upset by the kingdom’s increasingly troubled reputation abroad and said over and over that they supported “moderate Islam.”

But what exactly did they mean by “moderate Islam”? Unpacking that term made it clear how wide the values gap is between Saudi Arabia and its American ally. The kingdom’s “moderate Islam” publicly beheads criminals, punishes apostates and prevents women from traveling abroad without the permission of a male “guardian.”  Don’t even ask about gay rights.

The Saudi royal family is terrified that the jihadist fervor inflaming the region will catch fire at home and threaten its control. So it has marshaled the state’s religious apparatus to condemn the jihadists and proclaim the religious duty of obedience to the rulers.

In the early 18th century, Sheikh Mohammed ibn Abdul-Wahhab called for a religious reformation in central Arabia. Feeling that Islam had been corrupted by practices like the veneration of saints and tombs, he called for the stripping away of “innovations” and the return to what he considered the pure religion.

He formed an alliance with a chieftain named Mohammed ibn Saud that has underpinned the area’s history ever since. Then the Saud family assumed political leadership while Sheikh Abdul-Wahhab and his descendants gave legitimacy to their rule and managed religious affairs.

That mix proved potent among the warring Arabian tribes, as Wahhabi clerics provided justification for military conquest in some cases: Those who resisted the House of Saud were not just enemies, but infidels who deserved the sword.

Fast forward to 2016, and the main players have transformed because of time and oil wealth. The royal family has grown from a group of scrappy desert dwellers into a sprawling clan awash in palaces and private jets. The Wahhabi establishment has evolved from a puritan reform movement into a bloated state bureaucracy.

It consists of universities that churn out graduates trained in religious disciplines; a legal system in which judges apply Shariah law; a council of top clerics who advise the king; a network of offices that dispense fatwas, or religious opinions; a force of religious police who monitor public behavior; and tens of thousands of mosque imams who can be tapped to deliver the government’s message from the pulpit.

And there are fatwas that arm extremists with religious justification. There is one fatwa, still available in English on a government website and signed by the previous grand mufti, that states, “Whoever refuses to follow the straight path deserves to be killed or enslaved in order to establish justice, maintain security and peace and safeguard lives, honor and property.”

It goes on: “Slavery in Islam is like a purifying machine or sauna in which those who are captured enter to wash off their dirt and then they come out clean, pure and safe, from another door.”

If the clerical attacks on Mr. Ghamdi were loud, the blowback from society was more painful. His tribe issued a statement, disowning him and calling him “troubled and confused.” His cellphone rang day and night with callers shouting at him. He came home to find graffiti on the wall of his house. And a group of men showed up at his door, demanding to “mix” with the family’s women. His sons — he has nine children — called the police.

Mr. Ghamdi had not broken any laws and never faced legal action. But in Saudi Arabia’s close-knit society, the attacks echoed through his family. The relatives of his eldest son’s fiancée called off their wedding, not wanting to associate their family with his.

But there is a split in society between the conservatives who want to maintain what they consider the kingdom’s pure Islamic identity and the liberals (in the Saudi context) who want more personal freedoms. Liberals make cases like Mr. Ghamdi’s all the time. But sheikhs don’t, which is why he was branded a traitor.

“We sent our message, and the goal was not for us to keep appearing and to get famous,” she said. “It was to send a message to society that religion is not customs and traditions. Religion is something else.”
 

Why Religious Fundamentalists Are Sex Obsessed

There's a reason that religious fundamentalists of both the Christian and Islamic variety share a common obsession with sex.  It is all about control.  Control of people's lives and, at least in the minds of the theocrats, control of people's thoughts.  Thoughts that might lead the populous to over throw the theocrats' influence and control, especially political control.   In Iran, the religious extremist government is waging a war against women who fail to wear head covers.  While utterly different on the surface from the American Christofascists' war on LGBT citizens, the root motivation is the same: power and control - and thought control so that the masses don't begin to release that they are being sold a bunch of fairy tales that help keep their religious elite in power.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at both the sex obsession of Iran's rulers and how it translates to American Christofascists.  Here are excerpts:

Welcome to Operation Spider 2. Yes, Iran’s War Against Hair even has a code name. In a sting led by no less significant a unit than Iran’s cybercrimes division, eight other models were arrested and charged with “promoting western promiscuity.” State prosecutor for cybercrimes Javad Babaei confirmed that his unit was focused on Instagram and is concerned with “sterilizing popular cyberspaces.” Many of the country’s leading models have reportedly suffered this clampdown. They are accused of promoting "immoral and un-Islamic culture and promiscuity.”

As moderate political forces continue to gain ground in Iran’s educated city centers, establishment clampdowns against “Western promiscuity” are becoming more visible, and more desperate. 

A desire to restrict any of these voices is a desire to control. When enforced on others, religion becomes nothing but a tool of power and control. Sexuality, in particular, obsesses male theocrats more so than any other topic. 

Whether in Iran and Saudi Arabia, where women’s dress is government enforced, or in Syria and Afghanistan, where Islamist terrorists seek to enforce it, or across Muslim-majority nations more generally, sexual expression has fast become a dividing line for fundamentalists harboring presumptuous assumptions about a “pure” East and a “promiscuous” West. 

Oddly, hundreds of years ago it was the opposite. A Europe in the Dark Ages, plagued by the Inquisition and conflicts caused by religious intolerance, placed a similar premium on sexuality. Back then, it was the East that European Orientalists fetishized as overly “promiscuous,” while the West valued its prudishness. The one common factor is a correlation between the rise of theocratic demands anywhere, and restrictions on sexuality.

In this way, sexuality has become the axis upon which enlightened values and progress have pivoted between nations. Sexual freedoms have become a litmus test between open societies and closed ones. The drug that dogmatic ideologues are usually addicted to is control, and the thirst for control almost always manifests itself in sexual control. This is why the subject of sex among women, gays and “unmarried” youth fascinates extremists of all bents. And it is why—regardless of our gender or sexual orientation—the struggle against controlling sexuality should preoccupy us all. 

Who Are the Spiritual but Not Religious?

As much of institutional Christianity increasing proves itself to be rule ridden, often full of hate towards others with different skin colors, faith traditions, and sexuality, and best defined by hypocrisy, the number of "Nones" has risen sharply.  Paralleling this is the growing numbers of individuals who see themselves as "spiritual but not religious."  The husband and I find ourselves increasingly in this category as traditional Christianity refuses to accept modernity, modern scientific knowledge and seems more focused on dividing people and communities than working for a common good.  A new book, Belief without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious, looks at the phenomenon.  Here are some review quotes:

People often say they are “spiritual but not religious”. We see them either as enlightened freethinkers or fuzzy fence-sitters, depending on our point of view. Although sociologists of religion have spent time studying Christians and New Age practitioners, we don’t know much about the group that Linda Mercadante calls SBNRs.

A minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), Mercadante’s fascination with this group stems partly from her mixed religious heritage: born to Jewish and Italian parents, she embraced Roman Catholicism, alternative spiritualities and evangelical Christianity before settling in mainline Protestantism.

Here, she sets out, via interviews with about 100 Americans – two-thirds women, mostly baby boomers (born 1946-64) and Generation Xers (born 1965-81) – to discover what SBNRs believe. She explores their thoughts on transcendence, human nature, community and afterlife and finds that they don’t believe in an interventionist or personal God (if “God” exists, they think God is part of creation, not separate from it). As for human nature, they don’t see themselves as sinners needing salvation, but as “inherently good” selves needing freedom and choice so that their “purity, even divinity” can shine.

On life after death, SBNRs share ground with Hindu beliefs, reflecting what Colin Campbell calls “the Easternization of the West”. Most believe in reincarnation and “karma, endless opportunities, inevitable progress, expanding consciousness, and the very American ideal of free will and personal choice”. Their optimism is clear: reincarnations will be better, not worse, than their previous life. Actions have consequences, but only positive ones.

Belief without Borders deals with tricky conceptual territory: are spirituality and religion distinct, as SBNRs claim, or different words for the same phenomenon? Mercadante sees this group as part of the “nones”, the religiously unaffiliated, whose numbers have tripled since 1990 to a fifth of the US population.

A theological standpoint frames the book, for Mercadante is concerned about what this means for the church. Although gracious in her critique, she pulls no punches: SBNRs think theologically, but haltingly. Their beliefs have something to teach the church (for instance, care for the Earth), “but are they enough?” she asks.

Sadly, institutional religion is mostly about money, power and control - control being an obsession in the Catholic Church and denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention.   Despite the positives of the Gospel message, their focus remains on depicting God as a mean and vengeful monster from which one can only be protected by membership in and compliance with their dictates.  This, of course, requires giving lots of money and mindless obedience.  Thankfully, more and more people, especially the young, are seeing through this agenda and are walking away.  I for one hope the trend accelerates rapidly.  We need to rid society of the belief that religion is a positive force.  It isn't and it needs to be recognized for the embrace of ignorance, hate and division it fosters.

Mormon Church Seeks to Squash Growing Support in Utah for Gay Marriage

I often thing the main goal of institutional religion boils down to money, power and control.  Having been raised Catholic and having followed the Roman Catholic Church's efforts to cover up sexual abuse to protect Church assets, it became readily apparent that the Catholic Church hierarchy's true god was money, followed by a goal of controlling uppity members of the Catholic laity who might dare to exercise independent though utilizing their God given intelligence.  Now, with support for gay marriage growing rapidly in Utah, the leadership of the Mormon Church seems to be demonstrating that control is even more important than money to the leadership of the Mormon Church.   A piece in Slate looks at the Mormon Church's effort to clamp down and control possibly wayward Mormons who, God forbid, might come to believe in gay equality. Here are highlights:

On Sunday, in LDS wards across the country, Mormons received instruction about their church’s ongoing fight against same-sex marriage. Two days earlier, the First Presidency, the LDS Church’s highest ranking authority, distributed a letter to all congregational leaders to be read during church services. Acknowledging the recent events in Utah, the memo reminded Mormons that heterosexual marriage “was instituted by God” and that LDS officials would not perform same-sex marriages nor would any Mormon buildings be used for such purposes. The missive also directed congregational leaders to review with members, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” a document the church produced in 1995 that has appeared at times of social crisis ever since.

Understanding the creation and history of “The Family” not only helps us appreciate the particular logic of Mormon objections to same-sex marriage but also clarifies the larger issues at stake for the LDS Church in this matter. In 1993, after two decades of bruising internal theological and political battles over questions regarding gender and church authority, the LDS Apostle Boyd K. Packer told a group of church bureaucrats that the three greatest threats to the faith of Mormons were intellectuals, feminists, and the gay-rights movement. 

“The Family,” issued as the church began these fights, linked the Mormon theology of salvation rooted in the traditional heterosexual family unit to the civil rights question of gay and lesbian Americans without even acknowledging their existence. Mormon salvation—or exaltation to the Celestial Kingdom—requires that male and female Saints enter into a temple-based marriage and enact, as “The Family” describes, the “divine design” of their respective gender roles. Men are to “preside over their families” while women are “primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.” Together, they are to fulfill their religious responsibility to reproduce, creating an extensive earthly family that will be joined together eternally in the afterlife.

[S]ame-sex marriage threatens the basic foundations of Mormonism. This is why “The Family” has been such a critical document for the LDS Church in its fight against same-sex marriage for the last 20 years and why the church has repeatedly reissued the document at other critical moments in the marriage equality battle, including in 2008 during the height of the church’s involvement against California’s Prop 8. By instructing Mormons about heterosexual marriage as a divinely-created institution essential for their own salvation, “The Family” and other LDS teachings construe the fight against same-sex marriage as a defense of their faith rather than an assault on the rights of gay and lesbian Americans.

All religious leaders have to connect theology to social issues in order to justify and mobilize political activism from their members, of course, but the LDS Church’s continual use of “The Family” has purposes beyond the same-sex marriage fight. Despite Mormons’ conservative reputation and voting patterns, there’s increasing evidence from grassroots Mormons that they are not as exercised about same-sex marriage as their leaders are.

A 2012 study from Brigham Young University found that only 29 percent of Utahans said same-sex relationships should enjoy no legal recognitions. This was down from 54 percent in 2004.

Mormon acceptance of gay marriage challenges the church’s authority, a core component of LDS belief. Church leaders have continually described gay marriage as a “moral” rather than political issue. If LDS leaders are unable to command solid opposition to same-sex marriage from the Saints, then its leaders’ prophetic status and moral authority has been weakened.  

Increasing societal support for same-sex marriage suggests another crisis moment for the LDS Church could be coming. . . . .  “The Family,” then, provides the clarifying reminder, disentangling same-sex marriage from the basic humanity of gays and lesbians while reinforcing heterosexual marriage as the cornerstone of Mormon salvation. And its continual reissuance underscores the LDS Church’s ultimate authority, reminding Mormons that a seeming political question has eternal consequences for all of them. It remains an open question, however, whether they will continue to agree.