Making Religion Conform

Date: Aug. 8, 2014

All over the world, religions, religious doctrine, and religious freedom has

become the rallying cry - pro and against - for “subversives,” “insurgents,”

and even status quo governments. Somehow, the Middle Ages have come back to

haunt us. Many in America do not know of the Muslim expansion that even

captured Spain (711 AD), or the real causes of attacks of and on the

Crusaders, or indeed the horrors of the 1490s Spanish Inquisition (aside

from the Monty Python spoof) or the 1520s English Reformation. It all seems

so long ago and, surely, modern times couldn’t possibly see a repeat, could

it?

Since the death of a most moderate voice, Egyptian Sunni premier leader

Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, the Muslim world has pivoted right, far

right. As we all know, the Sunni factions in Iraq are now aligned with the

Syrian rebels and, without a calming religious voice, became the ISIS force

and are hell bent in reclaiming Iraq from the Shia factions, previously

liberated with US help, who threw all the Sunnis from power. Religious

freedom, promised as part of the US liberation efforts has been a joke since

Shia factions had decades of grudges to enact and were openly mistrustful of

any Sunni members of government. Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (who

took over from Ayatollah Khomeini, who himself had permanently poisoned any

Shia-Sunni goodwill when he said all Sunni origins were false and original

leaders should have been put to death) is hardly likely to stand by and

watch the world’s 84% Sunnis push the 16% Shias aside either. It is going to

escalate.

Meanwhile, in Nigeria the 60 million Sunnis are battling with the 6 million

Shia there, but they are both united in the butchery and enslavement of any

Christians (65 million approximately) or “modern ideas” women.

Egypt, meanwhile, is perhaps still the most important Muslim country

(insofar as influence is concerned) and there the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood

is outlawed and jailed, including 16 clerics. Not one moderate Muslim

cleric, Sunni or Shia, is speaking out, not one. Everyone knows religious

retribution has a long shelf-life. The Christian example they have to follow

is perfect proof. How many “non-believers” have we in America starved,

enslaved, tortured or killed in the name of “our” religion, “our God?” What,

you thought the KKK was over and done with?

So let’s turn to the world’s two most populous countries and see if they are

handling religious freedom any better… India and China.

Hindu Nationalists (as they also like their political party to be called)

have a serious hate issue with Christianity. They have burned or tortured

thousands of people in the past 10 years, many of them children -boys and

girls. Currently, they have turned their hate especially towards women.

After the rape murder by four known young Hindu Nationalists in June the

Hindu Nationalist party (who control that state in India) obstructed the

police, the judiciary and, in the end, no one went to jail. Regularly

burning churches for the past decades, especially during Sunday services,

was not violent enough, they want to ratchet it up.

China has a different problem. Driven by commerce and business interests,

they certainly do not want to be seen as riot-clubbing Christian gathering

faithful (they have), nor do they want the disruption organized religion can

bring to the social construct Communism has evolved into there. In short,

you can pray in private, but otherwise don’t ask, don’t tell. Christians in

far western China have had serious clashes with Muslim communities there,

but they were all stepped on hard, authoritarian hard. However China is

coming up with a middle way forward which does, nonetheless, kill religious

freedom.

If you have to politically oversee churches, why not take a leaf from Henry

VIII’s rule book and make the religion a state affair? So in Tibet, they

annexed all Buddhist religion and “harmonized” it. Now they are turning to

Christianity; Wang Zuoan, Beijing government minister for religious affairs,

states that China supports the spread of personal Christianity within the

country. However, the organized “construction of Chinese Christian theology

should adapt to China’s national condition.” With up to 40 million active

Christians in China, and most of China’s trading done with Christian

populated nations, China is being what they term as “helpful and practical”

when it comes to organized religion. Next on their radar are Sunni factions

on their Western borders.