September 11: Religious Perspectives on the Causes and Consequences
September 11: Religious Perspectives on the Causes and Consequences
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September 11: Religious Perspectives on the Causes and Consequences
Future for Religion and Violence
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If the advice for America is to exercise a little more humility and introspection about what sort of actions may have helped play a role in setting the conditions for religious terrorism, what about Muslims? Don’t they share some responsibility for shaping the future and for responding to terrorism done in the name of Islam? According to Ingrid Mattson, they have a very important role to play in this:
- The first duty of Muslims in America...is to help shape American policies so that they are in harmony with the essential values of this country. ...At the same time, Muslims in America urgently need to address injustice when it is committed in the name of Islam.
Some authors, however, seem not to have learned the lessons of violent, oppressive religion. For example, Miriam Therese Winter goes so far as to acknowledge that the dominance of Christianity in America has not always been for the good:
- ...the despicable treatment of African slaves that deprived them of physical, social, psychological, and religious freedoms indicate that historically, in America, religious freedom has been a whole lot freer for those within the dominant religion than for those who are outside.
She then, inexplicably and unbelievably, goes on to say that an “unfortunate consequence of this basic liberty often has been freedom from religion and its expression in the public domain rather than freedom for it.” What possible reason is there for implying that there is something wrong with people being free from her religion and her religious doctrines, especially right after admitting that, in the past, that freedom hasn’t always existed and people have suffered because of it?
Many Christians in the United States labor under the impression that their religion is so benign and so obviously true that no one should be without it. Ms. Winter may be similarly inclined, stating at a later point that “authentic spirituality” is the desire to “be one with God” — evidently, nontheistic Buddhists are incapable of authentic spirituality in her eyes.
This points to the real flaw in this book: it isn’t so much a collection of religious perspectives on the causes and consequences of September 11 as it is a collection of principally (though not entirely) Christian perspectives. A truly pluralistic work presenting a collection of religious perspectives would have included articles from Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, Native Americans, etc. Indeed, because the terrorism of September 11 is so often framed as a conflict involving Jews, Christians and Muslims, the perspective of independent religious traditions could be particularly interesting.
That said, if what you are interested in is a collection of responses and critiques to the causes and consequences of September 11 written from generally liberal Christian perspectives, this fits the bill quite well. The articles are all well written and make their points quite clearly. It serves as an excellent counterpoint to the statements made by so many members of the Christian Right, such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
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