The Sunday Mail
RELIGION, seen by many as an oasis of tranquillity and hope, appears to be going bonkers with strange stuff happening in most faiths, particularly in Christianity and Islam.
With followers being made to eat grass, drink petrol, swallow live snakes and frogs, worship in the nude; while others detonate suicide vests and fire rockets at non-believers, many people are asking: is this still religion?
Functionalist sociologists see religion as “social cement” that moulds socially acceptable individuals, binds families and helps build societies.
On the other hand, Marxists have described religion as an “opium of the masses”, used to instil discipline and fear in populations so that they can be “willingly exploited”.
Given the various nerve-jangling reports emerging from various faiths, neutrals are tempted to go with the Marxian perspective on religion.
Accomplished scholar of religion, Professor Ezra Chitando of the University of Zimbabwe highlights the push and pull factors influencing the wave of religious extremism today.
“What we need to underscore is that as analysts we appear to have been so drawn to extreme Islamist forms of self-destruction, forgetting that self-immolation has been an integral part of the history of religions, including with Jesus Christ who gave up his life.
“So he might not have been a suicide bomber (but) he is somebody who sacrificed his life for the good of others. In Hindu there is the Sati practice where the widow commits suicide when the husband dies. This … has since been banned.
“I remember in Buddhism the body is burnt but instead of the husband’s body being burnt alone the wife is also burnt with it. So my argument is that we need to adopt a history of religions approach to see how personal sacrifice for religious goals has been a very systematic part of the history of religions. It’s not unique, it’s not a phenomenon that has started in the 1990s,” Prof Chitando says.
Closer to home, Zimbabwe is experiencing its own forms of religious extremism. Places of safety like churches have become dens of vice.
Consider the case of RMG Independent End Time Messages leader Robert Martin Gumbura, who was convicted of raping church members. An institution which is supposed to mould believers into upright members of society turned into a cult where women were abused.
In 2014 an apostolic sect led by Madzibaba Ishmael Mufani attacked police, journalists and members of Apostolic Christian Council of Zimbabwe after being banned from operating for violating the country’s laws and Christianity.
They were accused of denying over 400 girls of school going age to access education and abusing church congregants.
Prof Chitando poitns to this “hardened radicalism”.
“There are two levels of radicalism. The first is incipient when it’s in its formative stages. The danger is it can grow. Having Vapostori beat up police is hardened radicalism. What is key is the existence of social, cultural and economic problems which can lead to religious radicalisation. Zimbabwe like other countries in the region is facing demographic challenges that youths are not employed.
“Looking globally where there are social, cultural , economic and political problems, there arise a religious ideaology which appeals and it becomes the mobilizing force,” Prof Chitando says.
He underscores the motivations and socio-economic and political factors influencing religious actions.
“We also need to pay attention to how religions have created what we call a system of reward and punishment. In all these religions there is the promise that the one who has performed the ultimate sacrifice will be duly rewarded.
“For example some of the beliefs are that one’s sins no matter how gory they may have been will immediately be eliminated by that act of sacrifice,” he adds.
Referring to believers who are made to eat grass among other out of the ordinary acts, Prof Chitando said, “I would like to argue that if anyone shows such behavior then they are readily manipulable than others.”
Cases of worshippers being made to acquire anointed mantles among them pens and condoms dominated the local media last year.
Online sources say that between 1981 and June 2015, over 4 600 suicide attacks in abuse of the Islamic faith occurred in over 40 countries, killing over 45 000 people.
According to Prof Chitando, such actions go beyond religion.
“Religion has its own extreme fires but when you pour ideology and politics it inflames and that’s why we have conflagrations in Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan and so forth.
“The push factors are that normally and predominantly people who enlist and sign up for these are people who feel basically they have nothing to lose. So when you create a society or environments where some people feel they have nothing to lose, the current situation is stifling socially, politically and economically then you are providing fertile ground for the emergence of suicide bombers.
“What’s unique with this is the other types (of religious extremism) have been about the believer taking their own life without taking the lives of others with them…
“It is those who undertake spiritual suicide who are making a political statement, especially against what they feel is Western domination. So it’s this focus on making a political statement which has fed this current wave.
“Either when we began we overrated this power of religion and underrated its potential for fire, or there are people who have discovered the quickest way of mobilising politically is around religious groups. But they would not be able to mobilise if the people they attract did not have causes.”
To combat religious extremism, Prof Chitando speaks of the need to create hope.
“The biggest investment in undermining religious violence is an investment in progress and development so that when young people know, for example, that I have passed my A-Levels I can go to university, I can get a job, I start a family, I’m stable.
“But if at the back of their minds (they think) I wasted my time, what’s there for me…? An idle mind is the devil’s workshop. In this regard, it’s not the devil but the manipulators’ workshop. You throw in ideas and these young people blow themselves up.”
Concern has also been raised about the worrying trend of a fixation with the men of God and willingness to defend them at all times even when caught on the wrong side of the law. In there lies under and overtones of extremism said one contributor who preferred anonymity.
On the hand while there has been an attempt to paint the face of the Muslim faith with terror, Muslims point out time and again that terror has nothing to do with their religion.
Sheikh Yussuf Binali decries the inability to separate faith from fundamentalism and fanaticism.
“There is also an agenda by certain people who would want to tarnish the image of Islam by attributing such things to Islam. If you look at Islamic teaching there is nowhere where it condones violence.
“The issue here is going back to the orthodox teaching of any religion. Because we are looking at establishments whereby some are religions which have been established long back and they have remained practising their faith without being swayed by any materialism.
“So with Zimbabwe because of the growing aspect of the gospel of prosperity then there has been much love for materialism than the concept of worship in itself. Because religion is just a way of living by attaching yourself to God, nothing more.
“When one wants to become rich overnight obviously given that the person has been given such millions to go and do certain sinister things he can do because of money. So there is need to safe guard the orthodox teaching be it according to Jesus, be it any prophet so that people will follow faith without external influences coming in the sense of material gain,” Sheikh Binali says.
National Chair of the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs of Zimbabwe Ishmail Duwa says fanatics have hijacked the religion for their own selfish and evil goals.
“If someone goes to America and misbehaves people should not say Zimbabweans are like that, no! It is that individual.
“It is the same here, God will send people to hell as individuals not in groups as Muslims, Hindu, Christians or Jews.”
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