A major issue in domestic politics and foreign affairs today is the very volatile Middle East. Due to tensions not only between Muslims and other religions but also between Muslims, fighting and thus people dying has become a common and accepted occurrence in the region. So today, many people ask the question, how do we fix this problem and gain order and stability in the region? Is there a solution in history that we can apply today?
Christianity, like Islam today, had its era of violence. During the birth of Protestantism and all the sects that developed under its umbrella, violence due to religious reasons became common. The British Isles had thier Civil War, the Continent had the Thirty Years War. The Thirty Years War was one of the most deadly wars of all time. It left 25% of Germany dead, compared to World War 2 where numerically the numbers were greater but proportionally there was less at a still significant 10%. Today, with deadlier weaponry mistakes that lead to wars like this would be much more costly. So how did Europe and Christianity move past there religious differences and establish religious tolerance? The answer is not so clear. Nations and people after a century or so of warfare and death came to the realization that they either had to move past their differences and get peace because if they didn't then they would just kill themselves off. They had to compromise to make sure there was still people to follow their ideologies. The warfare will not stop in the Middle East if we stop ISIS/ISIL or and all of the other militant Islamist groups but rather when like in history the two sects come to a compromise. With Christianity it came with the Peace of Westphalia where each region picked their religion and other regions had no say in what it was. People said hey, you do you and I do me, cool? cool. In the Middle East and with Islam, the only solution is to get people to say you do you and I do me. People have to live in countries where everybody is Sunni or everybody is Shia, like they did with Christianity. Sadly, today, this movement of people is happening not due to compromise but due to violence. And sadly despite American wish to intervene and help, all we are doing is exacerbating the problem. All we can do is wait and hope that they figure out a solution quickly because the stakes are much higher today than they were in the 1500s and 1600s.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-miles/mideast-war-christian-history_b_6091160.html
Christianity, like Islam today, had its era of violence. During the birth of Protestantism and all the sects that developed under its umbrella, violence due to religious reasons became common. The British Isles had thier Civil War, the Continent had the Thirty Years War. The Thirty Years War was one of the most deadly wars of all time. It left 25% of Germany dead, compared to World War 2 where numerically the numbers were greater but proportionally there was less at a still significant 10%. Today, with deadlier weaponry mistakes that lead to wars like this would be much more costly. So how did Europe and Christianity move past there religious differences and establish religious tolerance? The answer is not so clear. Nations and people after a century or so of warfare and death came to the realization that they either had to move past their differences and get peace because if they didn't then they would just kill themselves off. They had to compromise to make sure there was still people to follow their ideologies. The warfare will not stop in the Middle East if we stop ISIS/ISIL or and all of the other militant Islamist groups but rather when like in history the two sects come to a compromise. With Christianity it came with the Peace of Westphalia where each region picked their religion and other regions had no say in what it was. People said hey, you do you and I do me, cool? cool. In the Middle East and with Islam, the only solution is to get people to say you do you and I do me. People have to live in countries where everybody is Sunni or everybody is Shia, like they did with Christianity. Sadly, today, this movement of people is happening not due to compromise but due to violence. And sadly despite American wish to intervene and help, all we are doing is exacerbating the problem. All we can do is wait and hope that they figure out a solution quickly because the stakes are much higher today than they were in the 1500s and 1600s.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-miles/mideast-war-christian-history_b_6091160.html
This is a really interesting comparison Varun! I agree with the fact that American intervention is not helping the region find a peaceful solution the majority of the time. The primary reason the US is so involved with the fight in ISIL is essentially because ISIL has the capability to conduct terror attacks on American soil. If this wasn't the case, the US could not care less about this geopolitical instability that this region creates. Take Boko Haram as an example. Boko Haram isn't a direct threat to the United States, so no matter how many people are killed in Nigeria or the amount of political turmoil that this group creates, the US isn't going to take significant steps to mediate peace efforts as they would for ISIL. Boko Haram is regional and isn't of concern on the global scale (unfortunately).
ReplyDeleteEven if a type of agreement like the Treaty of Westphalia was reached in the Middle East, it would surely be upset by European/Western countries because ISIL is a violent organization that uses violence not only to carry out political and military but also social objectives AND it presents a threat to the safety of the west.
Thanks for sharing, I definitely see the similarities between the Christian conflicts of the 1500/1600 and those of Islam in the Middle East today. I don't believe that a solution based on trust ("you do you and I do me") would work in the 21st century because violence in the middle east can lead to violence in the United States. Globalism has changed the dynamics of religious conflict and has cause regional solutions to conflict to become for the most part useless.
Interesting post. I disagree with the view that Islam today is the same as Christianity in 1500. The goals of those fighting in the Thirty Years War were never to wipe out the civilian population of those that disagreed with them, as the goals of ISIS and radical Islamic groups are. The idea of western countries being able to end violence in the middle east by simply saying "you do you and I do me" is just not possible. Radical Islamic groups continue to be aggressive towards western society, such as with the recent attempted terrorist attacks at the Texas "Draw Mohammed" event. If a part of "you do you and I do me" is submitting to their oppression of our freedom of speech and requiring us to walk on eggshells whenever Mohammed is criticized, I don't think that we should.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that the if the islamic sects in the middle east reach a "you do you and I do me" policy, then there will be peace. The problem arises when reaching this policy. ISIS and ISIL are just part of the various other terrorist organizations that gain power through spreading fear and terror. They make sure that their people (many of them rule over countries) are brainwashed, being biased towards their benefit, and prevent them from gaining good education. Without good education, not to mention the constant fear that the terrorist put onto the people, it is very hard for them to know who is friend and who is foe, what is right and what is wrong. I think the first thing we should do is rid the middle east of its dictatorships and terrorist organizations. Then, after educating the people, I believe peace will be achieved. Don't ask me how this process can ever occur because I don't know how something so complex could ever be put into action. Overall, I think that education is key in the middle east problems. Most of the fighting isn't done using "our" knowledge, its done using the knowledge that has been shoved into the brains of the people of a dictatorship since they were born.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest I didn't know what that there were different sects of Muslims let alone what they believed. After doing some research I found that the Sunni sect believes that the profit Muhammad died without leaving a successor to lead the Muslims and in the absence of a leader the community elected Abu Baker to lead. The Shia sect on the other hand thought that Muhammad died appointing Ali ibn Abi Talib. This would indicate that the first split within the Muslim religion was based on the need for a new leader. From that time on the two sects fought. This has culminated in the fighting still happening today. It's ironic that the three main religions fighting today - Islam, Judaism and Christianity - all originated from the same historical father, Abraham.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this post. Indeed the fighting over the superiority of religion in zealotry groups such as ISIS does have that mindset of: only one religion is applicable, that being whichever religion pertains to the group. However what was truly intriguing here was the comparisons to the Treaty of Westphalia, which never crossed my mind before. However at the end of the day, we still don't have any answers, much like the stress articles, we have been discussing in class the past week, that being how will this resolve itself. While these issues may have been instigated by political and economic Cold War activities, they have morphed into something that is significantly different, because while the "you do you and I do me" to us is rational, the zealotry of the ISIS members remain deaf to such words.
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