Academic Year 2007-2008

Religion, Pluralism, and Terrorism: 21st Century Dilemmas
November 14, 2007, 5:30PM
Speaker: John O. Voll, Georgetown University

Speaker Biography

John O. Voll is a Professor of Islamic History, and Associate Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. He taught World and Middle Eastern History at the University of New Hampshire, and was past president of the Middle East Studies Association and of the New England Historical Association. He was a consultant on the recent PBS documentary, "Muhammad: The Legacy of a Prophet," and served on the panel for the National Research Council that produced the report Discouraging Terrorism: Some Implications of 9/11 (2002). He is co-author (with John Esposito) of Makers of Contemporary Islam (2001) and Islam and Democracy (1996); author of Islam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World (1994); and co-author (with Sarah Potts Voll) of The Sudan: Unity and Diversity in a Multicultural State (1985). He had done research on Islamic movements in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia as well as in the Middle East.

Summary

John O. Voll, Professor of Islamic History and Associate Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, spoke about challenges facing the Middle East and highlighted avenues for fostering stability in the Muslim world. He framed his remarks by defining a "dilemma" as the juxtaposition of two opposing "lemmas," or premises that support further argumentation. In Voll's view, globalization and religious resurgence are competing lemmas that constitute a major dilemma at the beginning of the 21st century.

Globalization
Since globalization results in a profound transformation of basic units of identity, it has dissolved old-fashioned territorial boundaries. Voll suggested that only a few societies remain purely local, and that the proposition that separate units of civilization exist in competition with each other is misconceiving. Yet, despite the breakdown of physical divisions, distinctly identifiable communities that have no territorial reference point continue to expand.

For example, a quintessential Episcopalian church in New Hampshire is as likely to join a conservative diocese in Kenya as it is to prefer membership in the local liberal diocese. As well, Muslims answering the call to jihad are no longer motivated by nationalism. Rather, terrorist networks have recast their goals through modern strategies and technologies. Osama bin Laden is an "Equal Opportunity Terrorist Recruiter" in the most cosmopolitan of senses. Voll observed that, in many ways, "the bad guys" have outperformed "the good guys" at adapting to the challenges of globalization.

Religious Resurgence
In the context of globalization, religion has become a vehicle for the expression of identity. Globalization blurs the distinction between separate groups, whereas religion clarifies those separations. While some theorists make projections about the evolution of a religion-less society, Voll believes that human beings will not abandon religious practice. More than a venue for community activities, or a product of the wider marketing of particular sects, contemporary religious practice has become a reaffirmation of systemic traditions.

Voll asserted that religious systems have proven to be better than political systems and social systems at coping with changes throughout world history. Sustainable religions honor their core repertoires of symbols, images, and concepts, while enabling those repertoires to be attractive and useable in various contexts. To illustrate the endurance of Islam, Voll played a number of recordings of the call to prayer. Whether traditional muezzins based in Marrakech, or hip hop artists based in Chicago, Muslims continue to uphold the notion of the oneness of God with the same finality and devotion as early Muslims.

The Dilemma
Resolving dilemmas requires that one of the lemmas becomes dominant. This reality makes it possible for militant extremism to gain footing. Voll commented that the mechanisms for a global jihad are non-existent as of yet, especially since groups such as al-Qaeda still have small operational cores. But, there are a number of venues for violent action, and even though less than ten percent of Muslims are extremists, the global Muslim population is rising. Additionally, extremist actions are taking on the nature of a multi-national guerilla insurgency, which necessitates a particularly creative and comprehensive security response.

The tension between globalization and religious resurgence also generates a number of debates—some of which are actually detrimental to the security they aim to facilitate. For example, policymakers and citizens are concerned with the question, "Is Islam in Europe an integral part of an evolving multi-cultural universe or a threat to the integrity of European societies?" Voll observed that this line of reasoning is based on the assumption that European societies are insulated from the evolving multi-cultural universe. The question itself creates a dilemma between Islam and Europe, whereas the reality on the ground reflects an opposite tendency. Voll cited the recently recorded album by Yusef Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) as an example of the evolving culture of Europe.

Religious resurgence in the Middle East has encouraged democracy-promotion rhetoric and policies in the so-called secular West. Ironically, this propagation of democracy has resulted in the "religion-ization" of elements that are regarded as non-religious. Kemalists and French secularists construct belief systems that exclude religion, but their actions are often fundamentalist in nature. Likewise, democracy has practically become the salvation of U.S. foreign policy. While millions of people have been killed for ideological reasons in the last century, Voll noted that those responsible for genocides could more often than not be categorized as atheist nationalists rather than religious extremists.

Avenues for Stability
Voll asserted that distinctive religions are able to exist in a global context, provided that they embrace rather than reject pluralism. In an interactive universe, religious communication that is multi-cultural and multi-generational can have wide appeal. Not only have Muslim musicians proven the pluralist capacity of Islam; the creators of "Razanne: The Muslim Doll" have adapted the model of Barbie to the needs of modern Islam by enabling the toy to be manufactured with a variety of hair colors and skin tones.

At the beginning of the 21st century, religion is perceived as a threat because it has the capacity to divide communities as well as to infringe upon individualism. At the same time, pluralist religions can emerge as resources for solving problems, because they have the capacity to bring together elements that are seemingly contradictory. If the tools of modernization are used productively to engage in pluralism, as Voll recommended, the lemmas of globalization and religious resurgence need not remain in perpetual competition.

By Julia Bennett (MALD '08)