The Roles of Religion
by Jorge Vargas
In the Middle Ages, after the fall of the Roman and Byzantine empires, it became clear that there was only one political institution in the world that could withstand the chaos and violence of that time. In time, governments used the Roman Catholic Church, situated in the Vatican, in order to gain legitimacy as Christian monarchs and, in many instances, for protection. As the modern nation-state was born, the Church's geopolitical significance decreased, a trend that increased with the Protestant Revolution.
However, another key reason for the fall of the Roman Catholic Church's power was that many governments in the 18th and 19th centuries feared that the Church's influence weakened their own political clout and influence in the domination of their own nation. The reason for why the Church could be so powerful was that it had a governing institution - the Vatican - and every priest, bishop, cardinal, etc., had to answer to the Pope - a set-up that is still very much alive today. Naturally, the Pope didn't always ask for this loyalty from his servants within the Church. Nonetheless, loyalty was expected.
That is a part of the history of the Christian nations, which today, play a dominant role in the global economy and in all forms of geopolitical arrangements. Separation of Church and State is a concept that stems in part from the fear, on the part of governments, that the Roman Catholic Church would overstep its bounds and try to steal the power that belonged to the monarchs. This fear was later transferred to the Protestant nations that feared similar roles and actions in their own organized religions, although no Protestant sect is anywhere near as powerful as the Catholic Church and thus wouldn't be such a threat.
Islam's development was significantly different. Islam has theologians and other minor organizational arrangements and positions that are set up to control basic religious practices and to interpret the Qu'ran, but Islam doesn't have a well-defined hierarchy system similar to that of the Roman Catholic Church. Furthermore, because of a lack of hierarchy, the concept of "church" is missing in Islam and the only dominant concept is religion - we don't hear Muslims speaking of the church (an organization) but rather of Islam (a religion).
A secular government in the Western world is defined, by some, as one in which the organized religion does not play a dominant and dictating role within the government's policies. Great Britain, for instance, is secular in that religious officials do not have commanding roles in Parliament, making the British government secular on paper, and in practice, although that is not clear from this example, since there are many Western nations in which religious officials do not hold government posts while religious doctrines continue to be dominant, such as the Protestant United States of America.
In the nations with large Muslim populations, secularism is harder to define and harder yet to 'enforce.' Many critics of these nations and many individuals who argue that these nations suffer from poverty and its repercussions because of the cultural constructs of these nations claim that one of the problems within these nations is that they're not secular and that these nations need to adopt the values of the West and separate Islam from the state. These individuals - Thomas Friedman is one excellent example of this - will argue that religion hinders the state's development and that the state's emphasis on religion is what produces Islamist terrorists. A favorite example of this is Saudi Arabia, which is, surprisingly, an ally of the United States.
Of course, this ignores the basic construct of these Muslim-majority states: There is no church for the State to separate from; there are no dominant religious officials; the nations are predominantly Muslim and if the government weren't 'Muslim' itself, then that government wouldn't be a creation of that nation's culture and that would make it illegitimate by its very nature. This explains the hesitancy of many Iraqis to support the US-orchestrated government of Iraq since so many see it as US-dominated, whether that is the case or not.
Placing a 'secular,' Western-styled government in a Muslim country would not only ignore the nation's history and culture, but more importantly, wouldn't change anything. That nation would continue to be underdeveloped and it would continue to have poor education levels. Poverty in the Muslim states - and in all states - comes about due to exploitation, large economic inequalities, control of natural resources by a privileged elite, and corrupt governmental institutions and political actors. A government that uses religious diatribes to gain attention from the people has almost nothing to do with that.
Of course, it's true and can't be denied that Islam has been politicized and an honorable religion has been mutilated in order to usurp political power and legitimacy. Saudi Arabia, for instance, is ruled by a family that claims stewardship of Mecca - one of Islam's holiest sites - and which claims to be a true practitioner of Islam and Islamic law while that family is notoriously non-religious. But the cloak of Islam and piety were enough to secure legitimacy in the eyes of the Muslim world as rulers of the Saudi Kingdom which holds dominion over two of Islam's holiest cities: Mecca and Medina.
But this politicizing isn't particularly harmful for the development of these nations - Saudi Arabia is by no means a poor country, especially when compared to secular Mexico, for instance - and is not a phenomenon that occurs only with political Islam. Hernando de Soto, for instance, is a world-famous economist who portrays himself as a voice from the Third World who understands poverty and thus the desperation to remedy it. He makes these claims based on the fact that he was born in Peru yet doesn't mention that he was raised in Geneva and has never known poverty in his life - or perhaps the children of Geneva are starving in the streets and no one is reporting it?
Political Islam is an unfortunate development in history. Afghanistan, for instance, would be a much better place today had the fundamentalist Taliban not established itself there. However, a secular dictatorship would have been just as costly to Afghanistan's development and Islam should not be held as the criminal in that particular case - Haiti, for instance, is one of the poorest nations in the world and it has suffered from tense racial divisions, horrible governments, a string of bad economic policies, and other negatives that followed from those original three yet secularism was never a problem for Haiti.
It is unfortunate that religions can be so easily manipulated, especially since religion is a force that we need, today as much as ever, in a world so tainted with bad news, materialism, and lack of morality. However, religion is a human construct, just like any other, and susceptible to the same mistreatments. If the economists and politicians really want to help the Muslim states, they should stop requiring those states to give up their cultural identities and instead focus on the actual issues and problems that make those states poor. Religion may have been the culprit in the Middle Ages in Europe but we are in the 21st century. The Middle East is not Europe and should not be treated as such.
