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It is midday and I’m still in bed. I was so hung-over on New Year’s Day – yet another year welcomed in with a pathetic hangover - that I had to get drunk again and today I suffer on behalf of all mankind. A genuine martyr.
I fire-up my laptop, roll around in agony for a while, then load up the previous days six o’clock news (dated 01/01/10) hoping for a new years greeting from the Queen or some anecdotal story about a fireman, a cat and a rather tall tree. But the headlines, after the ominous gongs of Big Ben, are as follows:
“A suicide bomber has killed more than sixty people gathered for a volley ball match in northwest Pakistan. Members of a local peace group who campaigned against the Taliban are believed to be among the dead. The British I.T. consultant Peter Moore has arrived back in the UK after being held hostage in Iraq for two and a half years. The opposition leader in Iran has said the country is in crisis and that he’s prepared to die in the fight for reform. Gordon Brown is to host an international meeting in London to discuss how to combat extremism in Yemen where the alleged Christmas Day bomber says he received his training. The bloodiest year for British forces in Afghanistan has ended with the death of a bomb disposal expert. The Gardeners Question Time regular, John Cushnie has died.”
What, not John Cushnie!!! Who am I to call if my geraniums wither or my herb garden falters in the extreme South China climate?
Humans have evolved to process small numbers and understand small stories. It is part of our tribal heritage. John Cushnie’s death resonates with a British listener. It is personal, intimate and knowable but sixteen dead in some obscure region of Pakistan does not. Just like saying the world evolved over millions of years is more difficult to process than by saying it is ten thousand years old and was made by one higher being in little under a week.
To wake up at the dawn of a new decade to the news that religious extremism and violence are far from over added insult to my already unfavorable condition. You see, my adult life has been strongly influenced, perhaps dramatically altered, by the world of religious conflict. And for a non-believer that’s sometimes hard to come to terms with.
It may surprise readers to discover that during my university days in England, I marched against both the Afghanistan and Iraq War. I went to London in protest and proudly sported an anti-war t-shirt. It seemed to me at the time that America, not Britain had been attacked and that by allying ourselves so closely with the US we’d make targets of ourselves. I think the London bombing in 2005 proved that hunch correct. I also felt that in both cases, particularly in the case of Iraq, the nation as a whole was not really responsible for 9/11 and at any rate, the people of both countries were not ready for the obscure concept we call ‘western democracy’. I happen to think systems of governance evolve (just as we do) and that our democracies (by which I refer predominantly to the US and UK) are not quite evolved or enlightened enough yet to be enforced on others who neither wish nor desire them.
Now that is not to say the Taliban and Saddam Hussein were not tyrannical leaders, especially the Taliban with their very special brand of religious cruelty; public stonings, dehumanizing women, etc. But has the US lead invasions of either country brought about peace or an end to suffering? BBC 4 had just reminded me of “the bloodiest year in Afghanistan for British forces” and according to the Iraqi health ministry, an estimated 87,215 Iraqi violent deaths occurred between January 1, 2005 and February 28, 2009 excluding those missing, presumed dead. Wow, we really did a great job teaching them about our enlightened western democracy. In fact, so impressed were both nations by our ideology that they quickly spiralled into religious extremist violence and had we not hung around years after the wars officially ended to kill off “insurgents” the respective nations would have very promptly fallen under another dictatorship or theocracy.
What I found so hard to swallow about the wars was the sheer religiosity of the rhetoric on both sides in an era many years since Darwin laid down the architecture for understanding our world, the universe and our place in it. George W. Bush, as unqualified to lead America as Saddam Hussein or the Taliban were to rule their nations, was a self-confessed born again Christian, a nice way of phrasing religious fundamentalist, a term usually reserved for the “evil dooers,” in the Islamic World. Bush actually believes the exact word of the Bible with all its wacky contradictions and improbable events. One must also imagine this committed Bible reader was familiar with the fire and brimstone apocalypse in the Book of Revelations.
Religious killing and warfare have been the norm, not the exception through the ages. The present wars echo the Medieval Crusades when Christians went to reclaim the Holy Lands from the Muslim Arabs. Indeed, it could be argued that the Taliban were still running a medieval country and Bush at least, was thinking medieval thoughts – Freud, Marx, Darwin, Einstein and countless other subsequent thinkers have espoused doubts or condemnations in their own way about religious belief. Maybe if the President had spent a little less time reading the Bible…
Blair too was a closet Christian. His director of communications, Alistair Campbell realised the PM should not appear outwardly religious in front of the British people and famously said “we don’t do God.” But after Blair’s reign came to a close (mostly due to the public’s negative opinion of the Iraq war) he converted to Catholicism, the branch of faith most comfortable with contradiction, and said on ITV’s Parkinson, “God will be my judge on Iraq.”
I hope Blair reads his Book of Revelations: “Think where you were before you fell; repent, and behave as you did at first...”
Well how does all this lead me to China? My break with the political left in the UK came gradually. As I read more and more about our history, of evolution, science and the tiny part of the cosmos we inhabit these wars seemed more and more futile. I began to imagine an advanced alien species arriving at our planet to discover some primitive primates fighting global warfare over whose book of superstition was best. The British left championed the poor Muslims with their oppressive, backward and unenlightened thinking where as the political right endorsed the arrogant superiority of the Christian ‘liberators.’ I could identify with neither. It was like watching two heavyweight boxers pummel themselves into oblivion. I didn’t care who’d win or if there could ever be a winner. And so whilst Brits of various political elegancies grumbled into their pints, I fled to China.
Now China is a multi-faith society. There are many ancient religions here including Taoism, Buddhism and Islam and more recently, Christianity. China has its own serious problems with religious conflict in its western regions further complicated by ethnic tensions and territorial claims. To discuss them would require another paper. But I can speak of my own experiences on the populous eastern seaboard where the majority of the people live. And I must say most Chinese people I’ve met are not very religious. As an American friend and fellow unbeliever often say’s “Chinese people’s culture is their religion.” I listen to people chat on the street. The issues concerning them most include economic development, food, family, corruption, pollution, the plight of the nation… but seldom faith. I asked all five classes in the university where I used to teach if they believed in God. Believers averaged one per class, a statistic you’d be hard pressed to match anywhere in the world.
Now critics will claim religion is not tolerated in China. But long gone are the Maoist days of religious persecution. I regularly eat in Muslim and Buddhist restaurants and frequently see Churches, Mosques and Temples on my travels around the Pearl River Delta. Modern China is a place where religion is controlled but accepted. It just hasn’t seemed to capture the imagination of mainstream society. Western movies, foreign foods and brand names are all making incredible inroads in China. But those meddling missionaries have been less successful. Perhaps the Communist Party is halting religions progress but for the time being at least, China offers a rare sanctuary for Atheists and Shenzhen couldn’t feel further from the ancient and pathetic wars the US and the UK are still waging with the Islamic nations in the Middle East and central Asia.
This year the UK, its economy in tatters, has pledged more troops to Afghanistan. Meanwhile the least religious of all the world’s great civilizations, China, will continue its relentless climb up the economic ladder.
It’s 2010. Isn’t it time the UK, indeed the world, took a leaf out of China’s book and started moving forward again? |
