p03 Religious Fanaticism, I

Gibbon's Observations

By John Taylor; 2008 May 11, 14 Jamal, 165 BE

 

Tomorrow our Dunnville fireside will feature one of the best Baha'i speakers in the area, Joe Woods, talking about how to eliminate religious fanaticism. I thought today I might warm up the oven, as it were, for the master cook by discussing the topic a little on my own. I was taken aback though when I delved into this subject. What a daunting theme Joe has taken on! You could do a dozen Ph.D. theses and still have barely scratched its surface. My admiration for Joe was bolstered and my curiosity tweaked. How will he approach this?

 

As always, the first place I looked was at the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Their definition of fanaticism is being "filled with excessive, uncritical zeal, particularly for an extreme religious or political cause, or with an obsessive enthusiasm for a pastime or hobby." They go on to say that a fanatic "displays very strict standards and little tolerance," quoting in support George Santayana, "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim" and Winston Churchill, "A fanatic is one who cannot change his mind and will not change the subject".

 

Wiki, recognizing the prominence of religious fanaticism, reserved room for a separate article on religious fanaticism. It is spare and inadequate, but at least they have one. The Encyclopedia Britannica has no separate article for either fanaticism or religious fanaticism. Here is what the Wiki authors say about the kind of person who becomes a religious fanatic:

 

"Religious fanaticism has been shown to be correlated with orthodoxy and the self-importance of the belief to the individual. It is inversely correlated with consciousness of ambivalence."

 

In other words, fanatics get fixated and absorbed in an orthodox creed. Wiki goes on to say that religious fanatics tend to reflect their surroundings (in other words, they imitate) and value authoritarianism, conservatism and status. Under a heading "Impact," they offer one brief but infuriating sentence.

 

"In his book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins argues that religious fanatics have a major impact on the world."

 

This is amazing. The human race has been torn to pieces by religious fanatics for millions of years and Dawkins was the first to notice it! What a great genius he must be!

 

No, I must calm down. I did a survey of my little intellectual domain this morning and found enough to choke my brain and overwhelm my faculties. Eliminating fanaticism is, to say the least, at the heart of the Baha'i Faith, not to mention earlier religious traditions as well.

 

So, what I will concentrate on today is just the 18th Century historian Edward Gibbon. Gibbon, among others, anticipated the great Dawkins in his observations on how fanaticism can magnify human folly. Gibbon noticed that throughout the Ancient World, the urge to explore came not only of wanderlust and a desire to broaden trade relations, but also from fanaticism.

 

"The merit of discovery has too often been stained with avarice, cruelty, and fanaticism; and the intercourse of nations has produced the communication of disease and prejudice." (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Vol III)

 

Gibbon, with his usual irony, recognizes that there is very little that can be done to counteract religious fanaticism. Even the philosophers can do little to cure this disease,

 

"Philosophy alone can boast, (and perhaps it is no more than the boast of philosophy,) that her gentle hand is able to eradicate from the human mind the latent and deadly principle of fanaticism." (Gibbon, Vol II)

 

In spite of their greatness in the past, the Greeks were no more proof to fanaticism than were their teachers,

 

"Among the Greeks, all authority and wisdom were overborne by the impetuous multitude, who mistook their rage for valor, their numbers for strength, and their fanaticism for the support and inspiration of Heaven." (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Vol VI)

 

Even the privileged, the talented and learned often fell victim to religious fanaticism, which Gibbon compares to weeds of the mind. "... power was insufficient to eradicate the obstinate vegetation of fanaticism and reason." (Vol. V) Many emperors were corrupted by fanatical passions, and once they were there was little hope of a cure,

 

"Whenever the spirit of fanaticism, at once so credulous and so crafty, has insinuated itself into a noble mind, it insensibly corrodes the vital principles of virtue and veracity." (Vol II)

 

No religion was exempted from the enthusiastic lie of religious fanaticism. For example, Gibbon noticed that Christians during the crusades were motivated by fanaticism,

 

"The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause. Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with his sacred spoils, the relics of Greece and Palestine; and each relic was preceded and followed by a train of miracles and visions." (Gibbon, Vol. VI)

 

Earlier, Christianity was heavily influenced by monasticism, which Gibbon regarded as little more than an unusually organized rabble of rabid fanatics,

 

"The monks were divided into two classes: the Coenobites, who lived under a common and regular discipline; and the Anachorets, who indulged their unsocial, independent fanaticism... The imagination, and even the senses, were deceived by the illusions of distempered fanaticism; and the hermit, whose midnight prayer was oppressed by involuntary slumber, might easily confound the phantoms of horror or delight, which had occupied his sleeping and his waking dreams." (Gibbon, Vol. III)

 

Not only monks, hermits and nuns were fanatics in Gibbon's eyes. The entire Christian religion was deluded by fanaticism,

 

"Whatever era is chosen for that purpose, the death of the apostles, the conversion of the Roman empire, or the extinction of the Arian heresy, the insensibility of the Christians who lived at that time will equally afford a just matter of surprise. They still supported their pretensions after they had lost their power. Credulity performed the office of faith; fanaticism was permitted to assume the language of inspiration, and the effects of accident or contrivance were ascribed to supernatural causes." (Vol I)

 

Not that any other religion was immune from this disease. The Barbarians were heavily influenced.

 

"But the influence of religion was far more powerful to inflame, than to moderate, the fierce passions of the Germans. Interest and fanaticism often prompted its ministers to sanctify the most daring and the most unjust enterprises, by the approbation of Heaven, and full assurances of success. The consecrated standards, long revered in the groves of superstition, were placed in the front of the battle; and the hostile army was devoted with dire execrations to the gods of war and of thunder." (Gibbon, Vol I)

 

The Jews too were pretty fanatical. Referring to their behavior before an unusually bloody pogrom, Gibbon writes,

 

"They still enjoyed the comfort of making frequent and devout visits to the Holy City, and the hope of being one day restored to those seats which both nature and religion taught them to love as well as to revere. But at length, under the reign of Hadrian, the desperate fanaticism of the Jews filled up the measure of their calamities; and the Romans, exasperated by their repeated rebellions, exercised the rights of victory with unusual rigor." (Gibbon, Vol I)

 

The religion of the Persians was every bit as fanatical as that of other peoples,

 

"The people was deluded and inflamed by the fanaticism of Mazdak, who asserted the community of women, and the equality of mankind, whilst he appropriated the richest lands and most beautiful females to the use of his sectaries." (Gibbon, Vol IV)

 

Harsh as Gibbon is on other religions, he uses "Muslim" and "fanatic" practically as synonyms.

 

"But the Mahometan religion is destitute of priesthood or sacrifice; and the independent spirit of fanaticism looks down with contempt on the ministers and the slaves of superstition. They (a tribe of Medinite Jews) trusted to the intercession of their old allies of Medina; they could not be ignorant that fanaticism obliterates the feelings of humanity." (Gibbon, Vol V)

 

Gibbon here is referring to an early massacre of Jews in Medina that shook Baha'u'llah in tender youth when He read about it. His horror at this atrocity motivated Him to devote His entire career to removing the roots of violence in religion. It might be said that His eradication of fanaticism from faith removes the large floodgates between the first Baha'i principle, search for truth, and the second, oneness of humanity. Now this confluence is characterized by a steady flow of loving kindness among all groups, not aggression.

 

In addition, Gibbon anticipated Abdu'l-Baha's thesis that prejudice and fanaticism (the Arabic word for prejudice that He uses also signifies fanaticism) are the prime preconditions of all war. He wrote, for instance, that "... the calamities of war were aggravated by the licentiousness of the Moors, and the fanaticism of the Donatists." (Vol. III) He noticed that fanaticism can make a good war bad, and its lack can make a bad war, if not good, then at least a little less vicious.

 

"The manner in which the war was conducted surely has little relation to the abstract question of the justice or injustice of the war. The most just and necessary war may be conducted with the most prodigal waste of human life, and the wildest fanaticism; the most unjust with the coolest moderation and consummate generalship." (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Vol V)

 

Gibbon observed that faith, when corrupted by extremism, intoxicates its devotees, not only figuratively but, often, literally as well. ".... strangers and pilgrims, who resorted to the city on the vigil of the feast; and who already felt the strong intoxication of fanaticism, and, perhaps, of wine." (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Vol III) This reminds one of the opening words of the Aqdas, which restrict the wine of religious enthusiasm to the Law of God, and to what it prescribes only.