Is true religion always extremist?

The concluding debate in the British Academy Faith series got to the heart of contemporary discussions around religion. The question posed was: “Is true religion always extremist?” Responding were four experts in the field—all coming from different areas—who gathered in Belfast on 3rd March for an event chaired by BBC presenter William Crawley.

Opening the debate, Richard English, Professor of Politics at the University of St Andrews, said that the “pervasive late 20th century social scientific assumption that religion, like nationalism, was facing a teleological decline, has duly been mocked by the Almighty.” What he called the “bloodstained intersection of religion and political violence” has been on show recently from Pakistan to Paris to San Bernardino. But does that mean true religion is always extremist? No, said English, citing a “vast body” of evidence that there is “profound moderation, indeed tepidity” in the beliefs and practises of most religious people.

English said it was important to point out that the “overwhelming majority of people living in Muslim countries” opposed Islamic State (IS). Picking up an argument he made recently for Prospect, English went on to say that religion can often restrain extremism: one reason why most people in Northern Ireland opposed militancy during the Troubles, “was a set of religious beliefs that militated against violence.” And if we believed that only religion produced extremism, we need only visit Warsaw, “a city appallingly ravaged by Nazism and Soviet Communism.”

John Brewer, Professor of Post Conflict Studies at Queen’s University Belfast, agreed that religion does not cause political extremism, rather political extremists use religion. However, he also thought there were specific factors in “true religion” that allowed it to be mobilised by violent extremists. He pointed to the way religion divided people into the righteous and unrighteous; classified a person or group as being outside moral and social boundaries; and claimed that its adherents were a special or chosen people.

Theologians have shown that religion can be a site of peace, justice and reconciliation, Brewer argued. Churches in Northern Ireland, he said, “did not preach jihad.” But they also did not wholly give legitimacy to peace. It was those individuals whom he called the “mavericks”—dissident priests, monasteries, faith-based NGOs—who initiated constructive dialogue with militants. They helped humanise the other and dismantled negative stereotypes. However, in Northern Ireland, as elsewhere, religion was never enough. There had to be a shift in the political dynamics for this work to have an effect. “Religion has no monopoly for peace, justice and reconciliation,” Brewer said.

Innes Bowen, the author of Medina in Birmingham, Najaf in Brent: Inside British Islam, described how in 2004 she met the extremist group al-Muhajiroun, whose leader Omar Bakri openly praised Osama bin Laden. Were all British Muslims so extreme, she wondered? Over the next seven years, she went to mosques and spoke to community leaders looking for the answer. She found a complicated picture: Salafis, who have an extreme conservative interpretation of religion, were also mainly opposed to violence; the Deobandis were more like the equivalent of Christian evangelicals; the Barelvis were more Sufi-influenced. So what was true Islam? “I soon realised that I was missing the point. There are many schools of thought, and what the texts say does matter, but the interpretation is just as important.” The common idea that the “gates of interpretation” closed in the 12th century was false, Bowen argued. Islam was evolving all the time.

Sometimes this evolution was in the wrong direction. Tehmina Kazi, from the organisation British Muslims for Secular Democracy, picked up on a troubling anecdote Bowen mentioned. In the previous few days, a number of mosques in Britain—including Sufi-orientated ones—have been mourning the execution of a Pakistani man called Mumtaz Qadri. In 2011, Qadri assassinated the Punjab governor Salman Taseer, who had become well-known for defending a Pakistani Christian woman accused of blasphemy.

Kazi, who describes herself as a Muslim reformer, was not optimistic about the state of Islam. Leaving the religion is a criminal offence in many Muslim countries, from Afghanistan to Qatar. In reply to those who say IS is un-Islamic, she replied: “Why do only Muslims join it?” No wonder, she concluded, that 22 per cent of people in the UK think British values are incompatible with Islam. Kazi argued that little attention is given to reformers such as the Inclusive Mosque initiative, which is a pro-feminist, pro-LGBT Muslim group formed in London.

English made the important point that often what we define as extremism is “violence that affects us.” Bowen, responding to a member of the audience, argued that in defining true religion as extremist, you are giving the believer the choice of either giving up his or her religion (unlikely) or becoming a radical. That was not a sensible solution. She agreed with Kazi that the best approach would be, “Don’t generalise about a religious group, and do reach out to the people within those groups who are fighting a battle for moderation.”

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