commercialMecca, but eventually it had to become an empire, because anabsolute monarchy was the best and perhaps the only way to keep the peace. Modern military historians agree that without professional and responsible armies, human society wouldeither have remained in a primitive state or would have degenerated into ceaselessly warring hordes.
Before the creation of the nation-state, people thought about politics in a religious way. Constantine’s empire showed what could happen when an originally peaceful tradition became too closely associated with the government; the Christian emperors enforced thePax Christiana as belligerently as their pagan predecessors had imposed thePax Romana. TheCrusades were inspired by religious passion but were also deeply political:Pope Urban II let theknights of Christendom loose on the Muslim world to extend the power of the Church eastward, and create a papalmonarchy that would control Christian Europe. TheInquisition was a deeply flawed attempt to secure the internal order ofSpainafter a divisive civil war. TheWars of Religion and theThirty Years’ War may have been pervaded by the sectarian quarrels of theReformation, but they were also the birth pangs of the modern nation-state.
When we fight, we need to distance ourselves from the adversary, and because religion was so central to the state, its rites and myths depicted its enemies as monsters of evil that threatened cosmic and political order. During the Middle Ages, Christians denounced Jews as child-killers, Muslims as “an evil and despicable race,” andCathars as a cancerous growth in the body of Christendom. Again, this hatred was certainly religiously motivated, but it was also a response to the social distress that accompanied early modernization. Christians made Jews the scapegoat for their excessive anxiety about the money economy, and popes blamed Cathars for their own inability to live up to the gospel. In the process they created imaginary enemies who were distorted mirror images of themselves. Yet casting off the mantle of religion did not bring an end to prejudice. A “scientific racism” developed in the modern period that drew on the old religious patterns of hatred and inspired theArmeniangenocide andHitler’s death camps. Secularnationalism, imposed so unceremoniously by the colonialists, would regularly merge with local religious traditions, where people had not yet abstracted “religion” from politics; as a result, these religious traditions were often distorted and developed an aggressive strain.
The sectarian hatreds that develop within a faith tradition are often cited to prove that “religion” is chronically intolerant. These internal feuds have indeed been bitter and virulent, but they too have nearlyalways had a political dimension. Christian “heretics” were persecuted for using the gospel to articulate their rejection of the systemic injustice and violence of the agrarian state. Even the abstruse debates about the nature of Christ in the Eastern Church were fueled by the political ambitions of the “tyrant-bishops.” Heretics were often persecuted when the nation feared external attack. Thexenophobic theology of the Deuteronomists developed when the Kingdom of Judah faced political annihilation.Ibn Taymiyyah introduced the practice of takfir when Muslims in the Near East were menaced by theCrusaders from the West and the Mongols from the East. TheInquisition took place against the backdrop of the Ottoman threat and theWars of Religion, just as theSeptember Massacres and the Reign of Terror in revolutionaryFrance were motivated by fears of foreign invasion.
Lord Acton accurately predicted that the liberal nation-state would persecute ethnic and cultural “minorities,” who have indeed taken the place of “heretics.” InIraq,Pakistan, andLebanon, traditionalSunni/Shii animosity has been aggravated by nationalism and the problems of the postcolonial state. In the past Sunni Muslims were
Before the creation of the nation-state, people thought about politics in a religious way. Constantine’s empire showed what could happen when an originally peaceful tradition became too closely associated with the government; the Christian emperors enforced thePax Christiana as belligerently as their pagan predecessors had imposed thePax Romana. TheCrusades were inspired by religious passion but were also deeply political:Pope Urban II let theknights of Christendom loose on the Muslim world to extend the power of the Church eastward, and create a papalmonarchy that would control Christian Europe. TheInquisition was a deeply flawed attempt to secure the internal order ofSpainafter a divisive civil war. TheWars of Religion and theThirty Years’ War may have been pervaded by the sectarian quarrels of theReformation, but they were also the birth pangs of the modern nation-state.
When we fight, we need to distance ourselves from the adversary, and because religion was so central to the state, its rites and myths depicted its enemies as monsters of evil that threatened cosmic and political order. During the Middle Ages, Christians denounced Jews as child-killers, Muslims as “an evil and despicable race,” andCathars as a cancerous growth in the body of Christendom. Again, this hatred was certainly religiously motivated, but it was also a response to the social distress that accompanied early modernization. Christians made Jews the scapegoat for their excessive anxiety about the money economy, and popes blamed Cathars for their own inability to live up to the gospel. In the process they created imaginary enemies who were distorted mirror images of themselves. Yet casting off the mantle of religion did not bring an end to prejudice. A “scientific racism” developed in the modern period that drew on the old religious patterns of hatred and inspired theArmeniangenocide andHitler’s death camps. Secularnationalism, imposed so unceremoniously by the colonialists, would regularly merge with local religious traditions, where people had not yet abstracted “religion” from politics; as a result, these religious traditions were often distorted and developed an aggressive strain.
The sectarian hatreds that develop within a faith tradition are often cited to prove that “religion” is chronically intolerant. These internal feuds have indeed been bitter and virulent, but they too have nearlyalways had a political dimension. Christian “heretics” were persecuted for using the gospel to articulate their rejection of the systemic injustice and violence of the agrarian state. Even the abstruse debates about the nature of Christ in the Eastern Church were fueled by the political ambitions of the “tyrant-bishops.” Heretics were often persecuted when the nation feared external attack. Thexenophobic theology of the Deuteronomists developed when the Kingdom of Judah faced political annihilation.Ibn Taymiyyah introduced the practice of takfir when Muslims in the Near East were menaced by theCrusaders from the West and the Mongols from the East. TheInquisition took place against the backdrop of the Ottoman threat and theWars of Religion, just as theSeptember Massacres and the Reign of Terror in revolutionaryFrance were motivated by fears of foreign invasion.
Lord Acton accurately predicted that the liberal nation-state would persecute ethnic and cultural “minorities,” who have indeed taken the place of “heretics.” InIraq,Pakistan, andLebanon, traditionalSunni/Shii animosity has been aggravated by nationalism and the problems of the postcolonial state. In the past Sunni Muslims were
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