Fanaticism

Today's New York Times carries an article discussing the growth of Islamic fanaticism in Pakistan. A Pakistani political analyst notes that the country has been drifting for some time into religious extremism.

This conservatism is fueled by an element of class divide, between the more secular and wealthy upper classes and the more religious middle and lower classes.
--New York Times, quoting Najam Sethi, a former Pakistani newspaper editor

The article discusses the recent assassination of the Punjab's governor by one of his own bodyguard, and the fact that younger and more religious members of the legal profession now consider the killer a hero. Lawyers showered the defendant with rose petals when he appeared in court to face charges. The growing religious fervor is reinforced by a strong strain of populism.

"Salman had an easygoing, witty, irreverent, high-life style,” he [Sethi] said, “so the anger of class inequality mixed with religious passion gives a heady, dangerous brew."

Moderate Pakistanis blame the religious parties and fundamentalist clerics for inciting such attacks. They also blame the press: “Democracy has brought us a media that is extremely right-wing, conservative,” according to Sethi.

While Pakistan is a far different country from the United States, Pakistan being a country that is actually on the verge of becoming a failed state, certain dynamics in both countries are uncomfortably similar. Here we have fundamentalist Christianity rather than fundamentalist Islam. This similarity should not be exaggerated; most Christian fundamentalists abhor violence and focus on individual rather than national salvation. We have certainly seen an uglier and more politicized side to that fundamentalism among some national religious figures, however.

This fundamentalism is reinforced by a growing populism -- not just in the benign sense of sticking up for the common man, but in an uglier sense of detesting all forms of authority -- government, business, unions, universities, academic experts, science, experts of any kind. This is a throwback to the populism of Andrew Jackson, but is a dangerous development today, appearing in a highly technological, non-frontier society.

We also have Fox News and certain of its commentators, media figures who have discovered that inciting hatred brings in far more readers and money than does dispassionate discussion of political issues. To Fox, both religious fundamentalism and anti-intellectual populism are trends to be cultivated, whether to advance its owners' actual political beliefs or simply to maximize profits. Beyond Fox, even, we have a plethora of blogs and message boards that are truly scary to read.

The assassinations in Tucson this week may well be the result of the killer's serious mental illness. Jared Loughner's political views, such as they are, don't really match those of any one extremist party or cult. But the hatred filling the media over the past decade -- the loathing of "liberals," the belief that the Constitution has been hijacked, the hatred of government in general, the bewildering (at least, to a liberal) fury at health reform legislation -- may well have given focus to Loughner's paranoia and emotional turmoil, leading him to target a Democratic member of Congress serving in a state not particularly receptive to Democratic party principles.

Regardless of any connection or lack of connection between Loughner and the radical right, the shooting should at least call our attention to dangerous currents within our society, and a growing decrease in our ability as concerned citizens to reason out political solutions using logic rather than falling back on abstract dogma, name-calling, and mutual loathing.

We still have a long way to go before we reach the plight in which Pakistan now finds itself. But let's not go any further.