Fields of Blood

Imagine an impassioned debate at the Oxford Union, “That this House finds Religion to Have Been the Cause of All the Major Wars in History.” Arguing for the motion, suggests Karen Armstrong, would be “American commentators and psychiatrists, London taxi drivers and Oxford academics.” Arguing against, at unnecessary length, is Karen Armstrong’s new book, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence. Unnecessary length because she instantly refutes the proposition by mentioning the two world wars. Nevertheless, against the background of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), declared three months ago, it’s timely enough to have attracted much media attention. Not that I suspect her of jumping on a bandwagon. She doesn’t mention Islamic State at all. She’s merely following up a polemical agenda she set up years ago & expounded in earlier books. I’ve mentioned her works in a couple of earlier posts but a comment made here is especially relevant:

The one aspect of religion she does fasten on, and is intent to bring to the attention of all the world, is that of compassion, as expressed in words attributed to Rabbi Hillel and echoed in words attributed to Jesus:

“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation.”

She takes it as a given that any criticism of Islam would be hateful to Muslims. She therefore refrains, and exonerates them at every turn, not excluding suicide bombers, and offers sympathetic explanations for the thinking of Al-Qaeda. It’s simply asymmetric warfare, she says, directed against the “systemic violence” of governments. On the other hand, criticism of Christianity, atheism, secularism, colonialism, capitalism & US foreign policy is not literally hateful to its respective apologists, so they’re all fair targets, and as a bonus, won’t issue a personal fatwa against the critic. But then, if you exonerate one, you must lay the burden on another. For the avoidance of any doubt, she comes straight to the point in the opening paragraph of her Introduction. She retells the ritual of the Scapegoat. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest used to transfer all the sins of the people on to the head of a goat, “and sent the sin-laden animal out of the city, literally placing the blame elsewhere”. The point of her parable is that it’s convenient for most of the world to blame Islam.

Familiar with her sympathies from other books, lectures on YouTube and interviews, I was immediately keen to find out who would be her scapegoat for the “fields of blood”; who would be found responsible for the extreme violence we’re currently hearing about. I have no intention to belittle the complexity and depth of her analysis. She’s written a work of immense scholarship and impassioned personal activism. One can only be respectful and even awed by her painstaking effort. But this is not meant to be a review of her book, only a simplistic summary of her intent; so I’ll jump to the end of her Afterword to see who or what actually is her chosen scapegoat. Her verdict is nuanced, so I’ll avoid quoting out of context and give the last paragraph in full:

When we confront the violence of our time, it is natural to harden our hearts to the global pain and deprivation that make us feel uncomfortable, depressed and frustrated. But we must find ways of contemplating these distressing facts of modern life or we will lose the best part of our humanity. Somehow we have to find ways of doing what religion—at its best—has done for centuries: build a sense of global community, cultivate a sense of reverence and ‘equanimity’ for all, and take responsibility for the suffering we see in the world. No state in history, however great its achievements, has not incurred the taint of the warrior. We are all, religious and secularist alike, responsible for the current state of the world. It is a stain on the international community that Mamana Bibi's son can say: ‘Quite simply, nobody seems to care.’ The scapegoat ritual was an attempt to sever the community’s relationship with its misdeeds; it cannot be a solution for us today.

The mention of Mamana Bibi relates to an incident she describes at the end of her previous chapter, “Global Jihad”:

On 24th October 2012, Mamana Bibi, a sixty-eight-year old woman picking vegetables in her family’s large open land in Waziristan, Pakistan, was killed by a United States drone aircraft.
. . .
‘Bombs create only hatred in the hearts of people. And that hatred and anger breed more terrorism,’said Bibi’s son. ‘No one ever asked us who was killed or injured that day. Not the United States or my own government. No one has come to investigate nor has anyone been held accountable. Quite simply, nobody seems to care.’

The point is well made, but I think that her book argues the wrong case. We are no wiser from finding we must not blame religion; especially as she needs more than one chapter to argue the proper meaning of the word, and why we have misunderstood it for centuries. She being the scholar and we the ignorant, she naturally wins her case. ’Tis pity it’s the wrong case.

What then is the right case? What book needs to be written, to explain how we in 2014 ended up in the current mess? I’ll try to summarize what I think is “the right case” in my next, to follow shortly. With particular attention to that little phrase she throws in: “the taint of the warrior”.