The Fundamentals Of Religious Extremism
By Sarah Saba
12 May, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Few years back while establishing a small research centre in Karachi to uncover the motives behind religious extremism we could never expect such wonderful and profound outcome of our initiative with a potential of bringing about a great positive change in the world. Our findings have not only helped us in reaching to the fundamentals of religious motives like extremism (psychology of religion) but also helped us in establishing an alternative plan of eliminating religious extremism in the world with the help of surprisingly less resources and manpower. This is for the first time that we are sharing few of our findings through our favourite group ‘Countercurrents’ with a desire to be associated with a potential research institute in the world for the betterment of global humanity and the development of world peace.
The important aspect of our findings is the lack of ability of the major research initiatives to properly address religious extremism in the world. And even more important is our counsel to immediately develop revised strategies based on state of the art analysis to address extremism which is going to enter into more complex and complicated forms. We think what we commonly lack in the worldwide conferences, symposia, dialogues and research papers is the spot on analyses of the situation and suggestions for the subsequent wise and concise strategies to address it efficiently. Suggestions, plans, strategies and their implementations all are useless if those are not focused on the correct findings. Few findings of our work are given below for the interest of the readers:
Most of the people in the world find themselves believing in a religion inherently – they have no role in striving or searching for the right faith. What they mostly do is to give strong rational basis to their inherent belief systems to make those stronger and ‘shock proof’.
Our research work on a number of people who accepted a religious movement or cult other than their inherent belief reveals that the acceptance of a different cult is based not on a logical research work or comparative studies in most of the cases. The ‘conversion’ is mostly based upon an instantaneous emotional experience or association which later on develops into a profound relationship full of reason and logics. The important point to note here is that the logical, philosophical and intellectual studies – all – are introduced only after acceptance of the cult or a reform movement as the personal faith/ philosophy.
Surprisingly, logic, reason, and deep down analysis have never been the factors behind mass conversion into any world religion. By studying the history of any religion especially the widespread of religion we find the most influencing factor has been ‘inspiration’ by a charismatic personality or a motivation to become part of a ‘movement for change’.
During the past eight years (Jan 2002 to Dec 2009) the trend of the Muslim youngsters (18-30 years) to turn to practising believers, especially associating with a mosque or seminary, in the urban areas of Pakistan remained 34 percent higher when compared to the last decade of the previous century. However the motive behind this notable move was more of a reactionary rather positive origin. The most influencing factor behind this trend remained the phenomenon of global ‘Muslim identity crises’.
Among the higher percentage of the youngsters who joined an extremist religious group during the past decade in the semi urban or the rural areas of Pakistan the main factor behind remained ‘association’ with a sympathetic group which gave them sense of security in the highly uncertain and unsafe societal environment.
The formation of an extremist group/ movement has entirely different factors than its spread. Such a movement initiates with the sense of revenge based on a closed religious experience. While the most influencing factors of its spread include the identity crisis, sense of insecurity and uncertainty.
Surprisingly the whole building of religious extremism, the ever increasing threat to the stability of the world, is structured on the awfully weak foundations. A belief system based on an extremist approach is a presentation of intense paradox and dichotomy.
But even more surprising is the response of the world to the religious extremism which has even given rise to such unwise phenomenon. In our opinion a perplex approach like extremism doesn’t require more perplex strategies to be addressed rather this could be successfully dealt with a wiser and specific approach directly addressing the weaker areas. Being a psychological ailment religious extremism needs target oriented, psychology based and practical ways of knowledge formation and knowledge sharing to play a potentially significant role in the shaping of the peaceful future of the world at large.
We have found that the unilateral combating strategies have proved to be highly unproductive and rather counterproductive in controlling the rise of extremism. Life threats and isolation as the standards of reprimand could hardly pose challenges to the religious extremists because of their mystifying extra worldly motives of sacrifice and martyring. Similarly projection of terrorism as Islamism through the worldwide media has helped the extremists in extending their voice to the Muslim masses by smartly replacing the regional political issues with the conception of global unity.
We are of the opinion that religious extremism can neither be properly studied nor be effectively addressed without studying the noticeable psychology behind. The centre of extremism is in the unconscious sphere of human mind and thereby it has deep emotional roots – so deep to influence a personality in offering even his/ her life in an act of mass violence. Based on our study based interviews we strongly emphasize that having the psychological background the phenomenon of religious extremism should be ‘treated’ as psychological ailment.
The works of the psychologists and philosophers like William James, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Gordon Allport, Daniel Batson, Erik Erikson and Erich Fromm on human psyche not only define religion as indispensable part of human psyche but also to differentiate between a healthy and unhealthy religious experience.
We have classified religious experience into open and close ones which have their profound roles in developing the healthy and unhealthy human psyches. An open or direct religious experience is the one which gives opportunity to the practitioner in experiencing religion as an open study of spiritual transcendence with opportunities of his/ her direct communion with the Supreme Reality of the universe. A close religious experience is the one which is established from enforced practices of religious rituals and stereotype following of the strict religious laws. Normally such an experience is linked with a politically or administratively organized system of control and authority.
Religious extremism is a state of mind which provides the followers with enough energy for doing the brutal acts of mass slaughter in the name of God. The particular state of mind can be reviewed under the topic, ‘collective unconscious’ in psychology, firstly described by Derkheim in his book ‘Mass Psychology of Fascism’. Jung is considered to be the founder of the term who had initial work on the subject. He explained the concept of Shadow - the part of our inner psyche which we suppress and try to isolate.
While deeply studying the phenomenon one comes to know that religious extremism is a state of mind which has nothing to do with illiteracy, backwardness, awareness, education, civilization, a particular faith, politics and modernization. As a state of mind it can be found anywhere or everywhere provided a background environment, an alluring extremist ideology and the capacity to reach to the deeper spheres of human psyche. It’s like an endemic the pathogen of which can infect any mind provided a favourable environment.
We have suggested the archetype ‘God’s Warrior’ to really express the extremist psyche in its active form. The persecution of Galileo, Stalin's Gulag, the burning of the "witches" of Salem, and the Oklahoma bombing all are different examples of ‘God’s Warrior’ in its activation form. However, the crusades of the medieval times, the rise of the contemporary Islamic extremism and the war of Hitler and Stalin, which is held responsible of killing around 50 million people based on religious extremism, are the typical examples of ‘God’s Warrior’ in its multiplication form.
The most important part of our research work is the establishment of a practical strategy, based on our decade’s long research work, with a capacity to very effectively reaching to the extremist psyche and replacing the unhealthy psyche with the healthy one. Based on the SWOT analysis our work recommends an effective and immediate way of addressing the ever-increasing phenomenon of extremism to avoid its spread in more complicated and complex forms.
Sarah Saba is a researcher and the moderator of the group 'South Asian Voice': http://groups.yahoo.com/group/South_Asian_Voice/. Sarah is from Karachi - Pakistan
