Islamic Extremists Creating Religious Skepticism in Iraq?

The general trend across the Muslim world is for increasing religious fervor in young people, but not in Iraq. Because of five years of war in which vying religious sects have all claimed the mantle of True Islam while condemning all others as deserving of destruction, increasing numbers of young people in Iraq appear to be increasing in their skepticism of religion, religious authorities, and religious institutions. The same religious extremists who are admired by Muslim youth elsewhere are blamed for war and violence by Muslim youth in Iraq.

“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.” Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: “The religion men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore.”

Source: The New York Times

Solid data and statistics don't exist, and even if there is a genuine shift there is no way to tell if it represents a long-term change or just a temporary blip. There is, however, interesting anecdotal information about real changes in the choices being made by Muslim youth — choices which will necessarily have a real impact on the rest of their lives:

Professors reported difficulty in recruiting graduate students for religion classes. Attendance at weekly prayers appears to be down, even in areas where the violence has largely subsided, according to worshipers and imams in Baghdad and Falluja. In two visits to the weekly prayer session in Baghdad of the followers of the militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr this fall, vastly smaller crowds attended than had in 2004 or 2005. ...

A professor at Baghdad University’s School of Law, who identified herself only as Bushra, said of her students: “They have changed their views about religion. They started to hate religious men. They make jokes about them because they feel disgusted by them.”

It's not just religious leaders immediately in front of them which they are blaming, though. These religious leaders present themselves are legitimate representatives of Islam — and they are — so Muslim youth are also starting to look upon Islam itself as a failure:

“In the beginning, they gave their eyes and minds to the clerics; they trusted them,” said Abu Mahmoud, a moderate Sunni cleric in Baghdad, who now works deprogramming religious extremists in American detention. “It’s painful to admit, but it’s changed. People have lost too much. They say to the clerics and the parties: You cost us this.”

“When they behead someone, they say ‘Allahu akbar,’ they read Koranic verse,” said a moderate Shiite sheik from Baghdad, using the phrase for “God is great.”

“The young people, they think that is Islam,” he said. “So Islam is a failure, not only in the students’ minds, but also in the community.”

Not even all the years of rule by Saddam Hussein could create such hatred and skepticism of religion. Saddam Hussein was not himself especially religious, but he did encourage religion broadly — always ensuring that religion would serve his own political needs. Religion which would help him benefited greatly; religion which might challenged or undermine him was suppressed. Either way, Islam maintained respect from the general population, even among Iraqis who lead otherwise secular lives.

Even Islamic extremists like Osama bin Laden are less beloved than they once were:

Violent struggle against the United States was easy to romanticize at a distance. “I used to love Osama bin Laden,” proclaimed a 24-year-old Iraqi college student. She was referring to how she felt before the war took hold in her native Baghdad. The Sept. 11, 2001, strike at American supremacy was satisfying, and the deaths abstract.

Now, the student recites the familiar complaints: Her college has segregated the security checks; guards told her to stop wearing a revealing skirt; she covers her head for safety. “Now I hate Islam,” she said, sitting in her family’s unadorned living room in central Baghdad. “Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing.”

The article doesn't say anywhere that young people in Iraq are becoming atheists or even agnostics, so their anger at religion may not be translating into skepticism about the existence of a god. Nevertheless, belief in the existence of gods is maintained and transmitted primarily through religion — with religious leaders and religious institutions taking the lead on this. Skepticism, rejection, and outright hatred of those leaders and institutions will have to weaken people's committing to theism, even if some level of theism is preserved.

In the long run, this will make secular atheism and easier choice to make. It will be difficult for families and communities to insist on the need for theism when so many don't accept traditional religious belief structures at all. With so much violence and immorality committed in the name of religion, who will seriously believe the argument that religion and theism are required for morality? Even if the generation currently growing up remains mostly theistic, the next generation may see a significant increase in atheism.

What's especially interesting about this situation is how similar it might be to the original development of modern secularism in Europe in the wake of the Wars of Religion. So many Christians died in violent conflicts between Protestant and Catholic powers that many philosophers and even theologians began to see a need for politics outside the religious realm.

Whereas religion and politics were previously deeply intertwined, it came to be recognized that political force could never compel religious faith while religious doctrine was ill-suited as a foundation for political action or government. The authors of the American Constitution had Christian violence firmly in mind when they decided to create a wholly secular document of government. They wanted to leave religion to the sphere of church, family, and private institutions; public, civil government was to be conducted in a secular manner.

Perhaps Iraq is moving in this direction as well. It's such a shame, though, that Muslims would have to kill each other in such large numbers before they started to recognize the value of secularism.