Why Is Islam the Fastest Growing Religion of the Modern Era?
What
bothers me is not that we are unable to find solutions to our problems,
what bothers me more is the fact that neoliberals are so utterly unaware
of real structural issues that their attempts to sort out tangential
problems will further exacerbate the main issues. Religious extremism,
militancy and terrorism are not the cause but the effect of poverty,
backwardness and disenfranchisement.
Empirically
speaking, if we take all other aggravating factors out, such as poverty,
illiteracy, disenfranchisement, deliberate training and arming of
certain militant groups by regional and global players and, more
importantly, grievances against the duplicitous Western foreign policy, I
don’t think that the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and the likes would find
abundant supply of foot soldiers that they are getting now in
insurgency-wracked regions of the Middle East, North Africa and South
Asia.
Although I do
concede that the rallying call of “jihad in the way of God” might be one
reason for abundant supply of foot soldiers to jihadists’ cause, on an
emotional level, it is the self-serving and hypocritical Western
interventionist policy in the energy-rich Middle East region that adds
fuel to the fire. When Muslims all over the Islamic countries see that
their brothers-in-faith are getting massacred in Palestine, Syria, Iraq,
Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan, on an emotional level, they feel
outraged and seek justice.
This emotional
outrage, in my opinion, is a far more potent factor that makes Muslims
vulnerable to radical ideologies and violence than the sterile
theological argument of God’s supposed command to fight holy wars
against infidels. If we take all other contributing factors out of the
equation, I don’t think the Muslims are an “exceptional” breed of human
beings who are hell-bent on killing heretics all over the world.
Peaceful, or
not, Islam is only a religion just like any other cosmopolitan religion
whether it’s Christianity, Buddhism or Hinduism. Instead of taking an
essentialist approach, that lays emphasis on essences, we need to look
at the evolution of social phenomena in its proper historical context.
For instance:
to assert that human beings are evil by nature is an essentialist
approach; it overlooks the role played by nurture in grooming human
beings. Human beings are only intelligent by nature; they are neither
good nor evil by nature; whatever they are, whether good or evil, is the
outcome of their nurture or upbringing.
Similarly, to
pronounce that Islam is a retrogressive or violent religion is an
essentialist approach; it overlooks how Islam and its scriptures are
interpreted by its followers depending on the subject’s socio-cultural
context. For example: the Western expat Muslims who are brought up in
the West and have imbibed Western values would interpret a Quranic verse
in a liberal fashion; an urban middle class Muslim of the
Muslim-majority countries would interpret the same verse rather
conservatively; and a rural-tribal Muslim who has been indoctrinated by
the radical clerics would find meanings in it which could be extreme. It
is all about culture rather than religion or scriptures per se.
Regarding
Islamic radicalism, if we look at the evolution of Islamic religion and
culture throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, it hasn’t been natural.
Some deleterious mutations have occurred somewhere which have negatively
impacted the Islamic societies all over the world.
Social
conditioning plays the same role in social sciences that natural
selection plays in biological sciences. It selects the traits, norms and
values which are most beneficial to the host culture. Seen from this
angle, social diversity is a desirable quality for social progress,
because when diverse customs and value systems compete with each other,
the culture retains the beneficial customs and values and discards the
harmful traditions and habits.
A
decentralized and less organized religion, like Sufi (mystical) Islam,
engenders diverse strains of beliefs and opinions which compete with one
another in gaining social acceptance and currency. A heavily
centralized and tightly organized religion, on the other hand, depends
more on authority and dogma than on value and utility. In addition, a
centralized religion is also more ossified and less adaptive to change
compared to a decentralized faith.
Islam is
regarded as the fastest growing religion of the 20th and 21st centuries.
According to World Religion Database, the share of world population by
religion during the last century was:
- Christianity: 1910: 34.8% ; 2010: 32.8%
- Islam: 1910: 12.6% ; 2010: 22.5%
- Hinduism: 1910: 12.7% ; 2010: 13.8%
- Agnosticism: 1910: 0.2% ; 2010: 9.8%
- Chinese folk religion: 1910: 22.2% ; 2010: 6.3%
- Buddhism: 1910: 7.9% ; 2010: 8%
Thus, while
the number of adherents of all other religions has remained static or
dwindled, the proselytization of Islam has nearly doubled during the
last century.
The only
feature that sets Islam apart from the rest of major cosmopolitan
religions, like Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism, and which is also
primarily responsible for this atavistic phenomena of Islamic resurgence
in the modern era is that Islam as a religion and political ideology
has the world’s richest financiers.
After the 1973
collective Arab oil embargo against the West in the wake of the
Arab-Israeli war, the price of oil quadrupled; and the contribution of
the Gulf’s petro-sheikhs toward the ‘spiritual well-being’ of Muslims
all over the world magnified proportionally. This is the reason why we
are witnessing an exponential growth of Islamic charities and madrassas
(religious seminaries) all over the world and particularly in the
Islamic world.
The phenomena
of Islamic radicalism all over the world is directly linked to Islamic
madrassas that are generously funded by the Gulf’s petro-dollars. These
madrassas attract children from the most impoverished backgrounds in the
Third World Islamic countries, because they offer the kind of
incentives and facilities which even the government-funded public
schools cannot provide: such as free boarding and lodging, free meals
for destitute students, no tuition fee at all and free of cost books and
stationery; some generously funded madrassas even pay monthly stipends
to their students.
Moreover, it’s
a misconception that the Arab sheikhs of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait
and some conservative emirates of UAE generally sponsor the
Wahhabi-Salafi sect of Islam. The difference between numerous sects of
Sunni Islam is more nominal than substantive. Islamic charities and
madrassas belonging to all the Sunni denominations get generous funding
from the Gulf Arab states as well as from wealthy private donors.
Besides
madrassas, another factor that promotes the Gulf’s Wahhabi-Salafi
ideology in the Islamic world is the ritual of Hajj and Umrah. Every
year, millions of Muslim men and women from all over the Islamic world
travel to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina to perform the pilgrimage.
When the
pilgrims return home to their native countries, after spending a month
or two in Saudi Arabia, along with cleansed hearts and purified souls,
they also bring along the tales of Saudi hospitality and their
supposedly ‘true and authentic’ version of Islam, which some Muslims,
especially the backward rural folks, find attractive and
worth-emulating.
Yet another
factor which contributes to the rise of Wahhabi-Salafi ideology
throughout the Islamic world is the migrant workers. Millions of Muslim
men, women and families from all over the developing Islamic countries
live and work in energy-rich Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain
and Oman. Some of them permanently reside there but mostly they work on
temporary work permits.
Just like the
pilgrims, when the migrant workers return home to their native villages
and towns, they also bring along the tales of Saudi hospitality and
their version of supposedly ‘authentic Islam.’ Spending time in the Gulf
Arab states entitles one to pass authoritative judgments on religious
matters, and having a cursory understanding of Arabic, the language of
Quran, makes one equivalent of a Qazi (a learned jurist) amongst
illiterate, rural Muslims; and such charlatans simply reproduce the
customs and traditions of the Arabs as the authentic version of Islam to
their backward rural communities.
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