Rising violence
As the 20th century drew towards its close, religion, rather than declining, grew in influence in the political arena. Or rather religious institutions gained political and economic power in numerous countries of the world. In India, established in 1947 as a secular state where different cultures, religious or not, could flourish as of right, Hindu nationalists came to power in 1998. Since then, communal violence has been a regular occurrence, with Hindus killing Muslims in Gujerat, and bombs set off, it is thought by Muslims, in the centre of Mumbai. Is this a struggle for religious ideas or human rights?
In Iran, in 1979, a secular monarchy headed by the Shah was replaced by a Shi'ite Muslim regime headed by Ayatollah Khomeini. The Shah's regime was harsh but the new one replaced human rights with religious authority. Seventeen years later, in Afghanistan, the Taliban took over and imposed on the population the strictest interpretation of Islamic law the world has ever seen.
Chechens lay siege to a Moscow theatre, October 2002
Terror or resistance?
Over the last 10 years in Chechnya, tens of thousands of people have died in the conflict between Chechen separatists and Russian federal forces. The Chechens are Muslims; the Russians are Christians, mainly Russian Orthodox. Is it a continuation of centuries of Chechen resistance to Russian domination? Is Chechnya seething with organised crime that must be rooted out, as the Russians claim? Or is it a religious war?
In September 2001 two planes flew into the World Trade Center in New York. The group blamed for the attack was Al Qaeda, an organisation led by Osama bin Laden and closely connected to the Taliban in Afghanistan. In the wake of the New York attack, Britain and the US invaded Afghanistan. Was this a new Crusade? A battle between Christendom and Islam – a 'clash of civilisations' as some claimed? Was America rescuing the population of Afghanistan from dictatorship? Or was Al Qaeda holding out the prospect of liberation from a superpower?
