clash or fusion: in bed with the enemy

7/27/2019 Clash or Fusion: In Bed With the Enemy

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Clash or Fusion? In Bed with the Enemy

Jonathan Zilberg

Every group has a book that gets its goat, a tome that becomes a monkey on its back. For theChristian Right it is Charles Darwins The Origin of the Species , for liberals it is SamuelHuntingto ns Clash of Civilizations and for Islamists it is Salman Rushdies Satanic Verses . Thestriking thing about this getting of the goat, across the board, is how humans insist on behavinglike lemmings. While each of these groups incessantly bray about these books, they rarely if ever actually read them. For those liberal Westerners engaged in development, politics and Islam, theworst example of this is the case of Huntington. Let us begin then with Huntington, dwell for as pell on Darwin and Intelligent Design (ID) and conclude by holding upon high Rushdies socalled Satanism.

Liberals, and others of indeterminate politics, especially those involved in development, abhor Huntingtons book. A few brief examples of my experience in comparing Westerners reactionsto Indonesians reactions to Clash as given below are perfectly symbolic. Interestingly enough,while highly educated Westerners dismiss Clash out of hand, all the Indonesians I have workedwith who have actually spent the time to read the book find its central thesis to be rock solid.

Once in a meeting with a group of parliamentary economic advisors, for opening chit chat, Iraised Clash with their garrulous advisor, a senior cold war warrior. He exhaled the smokeslowly from his Cuban cigar and declaimed: If we burnt books in America, that is the first book that would have been thrown upon the pyre. In another similar case, with an even moreeducated, but far younger expatriate, a specialist on Islam and politics, I noticed that she haddelivered the usual uninformed castigation of Clash in her doctoral thesis. Suspecting as much, Iasked her if she had actually read Huntington, to which she replied: Why bother!

In contrast, when I asked JILs Hamid Basyaib w hat he thought of the book, he quickly replied:Huntington is absolutely correct! This was exactly the same response I got from my P3I(parliamentary research) group. In contrast to these thoughtful Indonesians who have actuallytaken the trouble to read Clash , the simplistic and automatic rejection of ideas that do notconform to ones own view of the world is typical. It shows how there is a broad fundamentaliststreak even amongst highly educated liberals. By fundamentalism, I mean a stubborn resistanceto entertain anything other than ones own preconceived and narrow view. I suppose we are allguilty.

There are a few key books that are causing a clash of ideas within todays collective

consciousness, a clash which has been ongoing since 1859. These are The Origin of the Species and the Abrahamic monotheistic doctrine as handed down through the Torah, the Bible and theKoran. Darwinism, the theory that man evolved by chance from an ape-like ancestor isunacceptable to those who believe that God created man in his image -- for obvious reasons.Stimulated by the raging contemporary debate in America over evolution itself, a fascinatingconjunction is taking place in which Abrahamic fundamentalists are finding common ground.For example, Harun Yahya in his Quick Grasp of Faith embraces Christian creationism, namelythe intelligent design movement, and transforms it into Islamic terms, if only simplistically so.


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Religious commentators such as Yahya reject Darwinism for the same ideological reasons asChristian fundamentalists do, instead of doing the harder work of trying to understand modernday biology on its own terms. Nevertheless, Darwin is not the real bogey man for Islamists.Here in Indonesia, the real unread bogeyman is Rushdie. But we are not yet finished withmonkeys and men.

Religious scholars should either leave science to the scientists or learn something about science before they climb onto the facile anti-Darwinist Intelligent Design bandwagon. For example,virtually all of Yahyas objectio ns to evolution are erroneous. He claims that natural selectioncannot produce new species without having the first clue about the new field of Evo-Devo or theFounder Principle, that complex systems like the eye cannot evolve though they do, that allmutations are harmful though many are advantageous, that aquatic beings cannot evolve intoterrestrial beings though the fossil record clearly shows how this is so, that birds and mammalsdid not evolve from reptiles though we have incontrovertible evidence of how they did, that notransitional fossils exist though a whole slew of such fossils exist, that all the fossils of early manare fake though only two were, and that Neanderthals were fully human which is utter garbage.

He concludes that the theory of evolution has no scientific validity which reveals a paradoxicalrespect for science. Worse still he demonizes scientists by stating that they hold on to their beliefs in evolution so strongly because they want to deny the existence of God. Apparently their real aim is to pervert people through teaching them that they do not have to follow any moralcode because they are not responsible before God.

The tragedy of this is that potentially intelligent people are being and will be denied theintellectual and professional opportunities science education offers through turning them againstscience before they even have a chance to understand it. Think of all the time young Muslims inconservative Islamic contexts will spend slavishly if piously memorizing the Koran instead of learning about math and science and one day - God be willing - actually becoming doctors,scientists and physicists and healing the world rather than stubbornly holding it back in thedarkness of the Medieval mind. In any event, there is no necessary conflict between science andreligion and many scientists are religious people as Yahya himself acknowledges.

A remarkable scientist who has written a great deal of accessible and interesting material onevolution, and who also happens to have been Jewish as so many eminent scientists are, was theHarvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould. Gould wrote a special book which anyone interested inlearning about science and religion should read -- Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the

Fullness of Life. There Gould advances the theory of NOMA, of non-overlapping magisteria.This simply means that science and religion are two separate fields of logic, two separatedomains of teaching authority in which the former explains the natural world and the latter,

provides a guide to the moral and spiritual world. According to NOMA, they should be keptrespectively separate. However, fundamentalists always have to totalize. The sacred hegemonictext, whether it be the Koran, the Bible or the Torah, has to explain everything literally, the sameway in all places and at all times. What to do?

There is no solution to this simplistic rejection of science by fundamentalist thinkers.Fortunately, on occasion, enquiring young minds break free from orthodoxy against all odds.Embracing critical reflection and learning for the sake of seeking knowledge beyond the prison


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of religious doctrine, they discover liberalism, and hopefully science and literature in the process.As I see it, what matters here, in this reading context, is that liberal minded Muslims in Indonesiastudy religiously, read more, question always, that they seek knowledge for its own sake.

Should they do so by actually reading Darwin and Rushdie and studying science instead of

simply accepting facile reactions to Darwin and scientific thought gleaned ironically from theChristian Right, should they critically read Huntington instead of aping knee jerk liberalreactions, and should they read Satanic Verses and Rushdies defense of it as a literary venture asgiven in Granta , they will feel the divine creative spirit glowing within them, that holinessfundamentalists seem to consider Satanic.

In short, the Indonesian liberal agenda to expand pluralism and tolerance as national virtuesshould also involve helping to open minds to science and literature, doors to knowledge andopportunity that fundamentalists are constantly seeking to close.

The Value of Intelligent Design?

These days, science and religion are widely perceived to be at logger heads, that is, by the ill-informed and by fundamentalists of all sorts. For the religious right, at least for Christianfundamentalists, the battle lines are drawn between creationism and evolution. Herein, intelligentdesign has become a weapon for inserting creationism back into the science classroom - a guisefor advancing a fundamentalist agenda in America and elsewhere. In contrast, in the Muslimworld, intelligent design is currently either little known or of little consequence except asengaged by Harun Yahya and perhaps some other Islamic scholars of whom I am as of yetunaware. Fortunately Yahya helps us to see how very much in common all Abrahamicfundamentalists have, especially when it comes to their opposition to Darwinism.

First one should be clear about what intelligent design (ID), a contemporary form of creationism,actually is. ID simply proposes that the emergence of life and the mystery and complexity of thenatural world supercedes mere chance that life itself presupposes the existence of a designer.ID scientists are actually philosophers of science because they do not propose to offer up anyscience which can prove intelligent design in that their credo is a matter of faith though theystrategically eschew the use of the word God. Harun Yahya, on the other hand, boldly insertsAllah into the equation and thus reveals ID for what it is - Creationism. In short, the proponentsof ID argue that the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest cannot explain the majesty of creation and life itself, nor the sheer intricacy and complexity of biological structures. Indeed, if you read Darwin, you will find that he would not have entirely disagreed with this objection. Inaddition, let it be noted that Darwin explicitly stated that he was an agnostic and not an atheists.

In order to promote the importance of intelligent design to Islam and monotheism moregenerally, rather than to simply dismiss the idea, it would be necessary to first salvage theconcept from the religious right and the political uses for which the concept has been used. ID isessentially an IUD in the womb of science education. It has been used to distort public

perceptions of science and scientists as the enemy of God. Though this is a recent phenomenonconnected to the rise of the religious Right and the emerging political power of the moralmajority, the Creationist idea has probably been around for as long as we have had language and


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even before. Since Neanderthal times at least, that is 40 000 years ago, we have been burying thedead and reflecting upon the mystery of life.

In this century, a mere flickering moment in the billions of years preceding mans emergence, wehave turned into Homo sciencies. We have become obsessed with those magical proteins - that

fantastically intricate world of composite structures, and with DNA activity, with how genesfunction to produce the world as we know it. How mysterious, how amazing is it that we havediscovered the exact nature of the extraordinary molecular structures which allow life to flow,the microbe to move and insects and animals to see, to fly and to flee. We only know about suchthings because of the gift of consciousness and critical scientific thought, God given if you

prefer. Indeed! Why are we here? What happens if anything after our deaths? One does not haveto be a fundamentalist to ask such questions. But one does have to be a fundamentalist to believethat one has the only acceptable answers and that everyone who disagrees is damned. We allstand in awe of the mystery of life. In fact, biologists and scientists have an even more profoundsense of awe for life itself as they are uniquely privileged to be so intimately aware of naturescomplexity, of its processes, structures and its remarkable evolutionary history.

Intelligent design is both useful and natural, if you are a deist, as it simply assumes as an articleof faith that life itself the complexity of the world presupposes a creator. Therein the naturalworld and the soul itself exist for a reason and that such things cannot be explained through theworkings of chance. This is the crux of the matter. Hence it is true that ID can stimulate one to

better appreciate design in nature and foster spiritualism over materialism. In my interpretation,if ID focused exclusively on natural theology, it could more effectively promote a simultaneous

belief in God, in science as well as accept what it currently cannot - the unassailable fact of evolution. To do so, ID would have to be re-conceptualized and separated from its ideologicaland political moorings. Then we could return to Henri Bergsons concept of Creative Evolutionwith the benefit of hindsight and consider where a reconsideration of Bergsons complex deistthought on evolution and the strange nature of internal time could take us in the light of 21 st Century science.

It is no secret that Einstein, and many of the most profound scientists of this and past ages, have been perfectly able to reconcile their faith in both science and God. In contrast, while atheistscientists clearly do reject the notion of a designer, they seek laws which explain that design.They have every right to do so. In the middle ground, there is a huge silent majority who believein a higher power and that there are supernaturally ordained reasons for our existence. These

people invariably respect science as an autonomous domain of knowledge just as vital tohumanity as is religion to our hopefully immortal souls.

As I see it, the tragedy for intelligent design is twofold. First, it has been misused by theAmerican religious Right. Second, it has been led by a tiny group of second rate scientists,actually ideologues, who in their zeal to express their yearning for God have confused the natureof religion and science. As activists, the ID jihadists have sought to advance a scripturalistinterpretation of the origin of man and of the world. ID rejects the very basis of modern day

biology and disingenuously dismisses the monumental work scientists, that is, paleontologists,embryologists, entomologists, geneticists, ecologists, biologists and astro-physicists all, havedone since Darwin, that is, how they have brilliantly showed us how the world is constantly


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changing around us. It is altogether ironic in this regard, considering the notion of the "clash of civilizations" that Christian fundamentalists in America and Islamic fundamentalists in theMuslim world should suddenly find themselves on such common ground. The dangers of fundamentalist thought are indeed global.

The problem is that fundamentalists cannot accept established scientific knowledge because their literal interpretations of the Abrahamic texts contradict the reality of the fossil and biologicalrecord. Fundamentalism is innately anti-evolutionist. In fact, evolution, meaning change, isanathema to it for obvious reasons. Science, in contrast to religion, has no answers for questionsrelating to the soul and the meaning of life, nor even for the most challenging questions as to thespark of life itself. It does not pretend to. But what it certainly does do is explain the evolution of simple and complex organs and the whole galaxy of wondrous biological, environmental andsolar systems through which the spirit moves.

Science has gone so far, so fast down the road of explaining the biochemistry of life that this initself should stimulate our wonder, a sense of awe at the power of the human mind and the gift of

creative consciousness which is wholly dependent on critical enquiry. Nevertheless, in defendingthe sanctity of reason and science, one does not have to reject the numinous and fall into anatheist trap. That being said, people must have the absolute right to reject God if that is their

preference or to conceptualize God (or an Intelligent Designer) in their own way.

Once again, the problem facing ID is not that it is such a bad idea but that it is an article of faiththat necessarily exists outside of the realm of science. In short, the worst aspect of the ID

phenomenon is that it is being used by the religious right to hinder science education and pervert peoples understanding of science. The essential motivation behind ID is not necessarily entirely problematic but its wholesale rejection of Darwinism and thus modern-day biological science isdeeply problematic. All this renders it specious, divisive and non-productive.

The peculiar upshot of the ID debate is that educated liberals and secularists now find themselvesin a strange ethical landscape. For example, recently, in the December 2005 issue of Harper's

Magazine , Stanley Fish revealed this political perversion in "Academic Cross-Dressing: HowIntelligent Design gets its arguments from the left". As he shows, the proponents of ID havehigh-jacked the rhetoric of multi-culturalism and the post-modernist assertion of the rights of minorities to express difference through alternative discourses. This has allowed the ChristianRight to mobilize and strategically infiltrate local school boards in order to change the sciencecurriculum. Their goal is to force religion back into the science syllabus through introducingintelligent design. Fortunately, they have failed at least for now.

The recent spectacular failure of ID to legally achieve its political goals in Dover, Pennsylvaniais a triumph for secularism and liberalism. The attempt to counter the theory of evolution throughdemanding that Creationism be taught in the public school classroom has smashed itself upon thereef of rational secularism. For some this is a triumph for the continuing validity of the principlesof religious freedom upon which America was founded in the early seventeenth century when theElizabethan Anglican Puritans rebelled against the hierarchically ordained stasis of the GreatChain of Being.


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The problem raised here for pluralism today is this. If we must respect differences of opinion,then how can we exclude the Christian Right from injecting their agenda into the classroom,either in America or Indonesia? They are attempting to do this because the classroom is a keycontext in which future world views are formed. But in doing so, they are forcing their religious

beliefs upon everyone else. In essence, to reject the Right's agenda is to reject relativism so there

is an interesting quandry at hand. This has a certain relevance to the problem facing liberal Islamand pluralism in Indonesia in terms of combating fundamentalism in a state which legislates pluralism but demands deism.

The solution may be beguilingly simple and yet revealing on two counts. First, no one group,even if it is the dominant group, has the right to control either the national religious agenda nor the syllabus in the public classroom at least in a plural society and all societys are plural. Inthis regard, the First Amendment is a historic document of extraordinary import and globalapplication. Yet it is fascinating how it has no corollary in Indonesia which in fact legislates thevery opposite the conjunction of religion and the state. In any event, the First Amendment andthe Constitution are written documents which are open to interpretation and it is not entirely

clear as to what the relation between church and state actually should be. This is a matter of social and political evolution forged through debate and is a separate matter too complex tofollow up on here.

Relativism, though it is much touted as sacrosanct, particularly by liberals, should be qualifiedwithin moral brackets. Relativism can only be morally acceptable when the values and principlesespoused do not contravene the rights and dignity of others. This is a form of liberal relativismwhich is not value free. Moreover, relativism should be strictly limited to the domain of morality,that of civil society and religion and physics if you must. Yet science has its own self-correcting logic and is arguably methodologically value free - that is what makes it work. Yet

pluralism does apply in the realm of science as scientists vigorously debate explanatory principles, rigorously test their models against their data and constantly contest each othersclaims. In fact, it is interesting that the intellectual motor in science is the same criticalinvestigative mode that liberal Islam values.

So what is one to do when Islamic scholars portray Darwinism as being a Satanic denial of God?What is one to do when one knows so little about evolution and biological science that onecannot soundly reject Harun Yahyas flirtation with ID as nonsense? This solution is so simple.Read Darwin, read Rushdie, read Huntington. Read up on the amazing things that biology hasdiscovered since Darwin. Read about Evo-Devo (evolutionary developmental biology) and thegenetic tool-kits or body building genes which explain how major structural changes occur for example how the structure of the human face is determined by the same genes which determinethe shape of a birds beak.

Most amazing of all, Evo-Devo explains a host of remarkable facts such as the simple stepwiseexpression of a gene that results in the growth of six legs rather than eight. Dont take Yahyasword for it. Read for yourself how the ever emerging fossil record continues to revealintermediate extinct forms of life. This plethora of evidence makes a complete monkey out of Creation science and its latest manifestation in Christian and Islamic Intelligent Design.


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As odd or as natural as it might seem to fundamentalists caught unaware by the suddenconjunction, there is a potent elective affinity between Christian, Islamic and Jewish and evenHindu Creationism. The result is that Huntington's "clash of civilizations" implodes into a global

plural clash of liberal versus fundamentalist tendencies in which religious extremists, or perhapsmore fairly conservatives, find fertile common ground. On a more local level however, and as

it concerns evolution and literature in Indonesia, if Darwinism is apostasy and Rushdie Satanicthen the MUI should indeed issue another fatwa. This time they should expand the ban onGodless tomes for this is a country in which it is strictly illegal to blaspheme the Lord. IsDarwinism not an infidel science?

In that case the current controversy over the changes in the Indonesian curriculum and the fusionof religion and science raise a whole new set of problems of being in bed with all kinds of friends and enemies.

Fundamentalist Muslims and Christians might well even find themselves side by side with thoseAmerican liberals and weird convoluted cold war warriors who would burn Huntingtons book

as some of my esteemed colleagues would do after a few too m any bloody Marys - if I let themget near my copy of Clash . Considering that Rushdie and Marx are already banned here, why notadd Darwin and even Freud to the list? Then Indonesia could become more like Iran andKansas or heaven forbid - Arkansas. But sarcasm and book burning aside, Islamists and Christianconservatives consistently react the same way to Rushdie and Darwin, as liberals do toHuntington. They all vilify these books without ever having even read them. On the other hand,sometimes liberal authors are accorded heroic status also without having ever been read.

This life of books beyond the text is fascinating as it shows how the spirit of a book can becomea platform or a context for the clashing and meeting of ideologies across space and time. Andthere, through uniting against Darwin, fundamentalists from different faiths might wake up onlyto find themselves in bed with the enemy. Imagine that!

clash or fusion: in bed with the enemy

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