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Of Religion and National Identity
Just musing here:
Like those proverbial fish and their confusion as to the existence of water, human beings can forget that cultural assumptions are merely that. Assumptions. Not ultimate truths; or even sound ideas.
For example, I’ve been musing lately on the concept of secularism and its love-child, the separation of religion and state. These are after all peculiarly European ideas. Yes, they have flourished in parts of Europe and some of its colonies, such as the United States, yet we do well to remind ourselves that secularism was the product of a compromise to end the bloody destruction of the Thirty Years War, a religiously-motivated blood bath.
In other words, the water of secularism makes sense within the European context. Outside of a European context, however, it often makes no sense, and in nations still recovering from the scourge of European colonialism — such as Iran — the concept is equated with Euro-American oppression and therefore dismissed by many.
Another product of the fishy water of secularism is secularization theory, which holds that as people gain scientific knowledge they dismiss religious mythology. This once was stated as a universal truth. The theory has not, however, proved all that true outside of the European context and sometimes not even there, as shown by the examples of…
