India-Books/Culture
The 2000-year-old
Christian faith is actually an entrenched belief system in the teachings of a
preacher from “coastal” Galilee (in modern day Israel) fuelled by the messianic
zeal of the followers of a Jewish miracle worker, preacher and spiritualist Jesus
Christ —a bunch of villagers, poor workers and farmers who believed in Christ’s
divine powers to build a religious edifice that is based on the supernatural
powers ascribed to the itinerant godman – rather than the real life and the
abilities of the man himself, argues Iran-born writer and scholar of religion
Reza Aslan, a resident of Los Angeles.
The argument may sound
“radical” and “plausible” to large swathe of the non-Christian world, but the
young writer, who is a born again Muslim after converting to Christianity as a
teenager, has whipped up storms in the “Christian media” and among the
conservatives, revivalists and Bible belt “die-hards” who believe that the
“Christian messiah” has been lowered in esteem by Aslan’s arguments about the
canons of Christ. As a faith, Christianity still remains one of the most
“popular” and according to theologians the easiest “evangelical spiritual code
to interpret and adopt”.
The writer of the
acclaimed “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth”, who was in India
recently to take part a literary festival, said “he had been obsessed with
Jesus for the last two decades”. As a young man, he was drawn by the Christian
gospel in a youth camp. “I was fascinated by the evangelical spirit of the
Christian camp and the Bible pumping. I spent four years preaching the
gospel to everybody and began to study the New Testament. Much of what I learnt
about was that Jesus was an iconoclast. The Jesus of history was the Christ of
faith,” Aslan told this writer in a candid conversation about faith, Jesus and
Islamic extremism.
“I left Christianity,
but continued my study about the historical Jesus. He was a poor pious Jewish
peasant, who formed this incredible moment in the world religion – with his
unshakeable faith in god, the cause of the Holy land, stories about his
miraculous feats and healing powers. He was a real man – but not much is known
about his real life. Christ was the one His followers made him,” Aslan
explained.
The writer, who has
been to Israel many times, says “most of the work that Jesus seems to have done
as a preacher was in the first century Palestine. The Romans occupied Palestine
in the era in which Jesus lived. It was an apocalyptic world where people
feared doom because of the frequent wars, plunder and arson between the local
groups of inhabitants, the rebels fighting for the freedom of the land and the
Roman army,” Aslan said. Most of the preachers, like Jesus, whose voices
reached above the “occupation” were arrested and executed.
The notion of
Christianity was malleable, Aslan said. “The millions of people who worship
Christ invoke the messiah of the faith. Jesus of history is frozen in time and
is largely a product of the world,” the “radical” writer pointed out.
‘The Christ of faith
can be anything you want him to be- anything for his people. He can be a Latin
American for the South American and faithful of the Hispanic origin, he can be
blonde, he can be blue-eyed and in African, he can be black. Those are all the
avatars of ‘Christ’ for the Christians to understand. There is a distance —
between the deified and the man. A deity becomes a deity because no matter who
you are. God becomes a part of you. On the premise of this argument, Jesus
becomes a reflection of you,” Aslan said, exploring the sociological relevance
of the “idea” of Jesus Christ, the saviour.
It is a complex
history, Aslan contended. “The simplest way to look at the perpetuation of the
gospel of Christ is that after his death followers offered a definition to
justify his greatness (amid by contentions by several other preachers) — that
Jesus was not the messiah, but was the defendant of king David – one of his
bloodline who had come to earth to recreate the kingdom of David on earth –
whom many people claimed to be the messiah. The people of Jesus changed the
definition of messiah – not only to the fellow Jews but to the Romans as well
when Christianity was born. And to spread the message of Christ to the
non-Jews. The biggest Icon was Paul who was responsible for what have been
known as Christianity,” the theologian said.
Aslan said “it was
true of all religions”. “We have this mistaken notion that prophets create
religions – but the prophet’s followers created Christianity. It is the same in
Quran, which was compiled by the prophet’s followers, Buddhism, whose gospel
was carried across the globe by the monks and Hinduism – whose followers take
the words and deeds of the propjets (and deities).”
In Christianity,
Judaism, Hinduism and Islam alike — “if you believe in the principles of good
and evil, it is likely that good and evil play themselves out in the deeds of
the gods and endows the actors with cosmic significance”, Aslan said.
The root of all
conflicts is in the opposing qualities of good and evil, Aslan said. “This war
between good and evil is not debates over politics but identities – that is
what I mean by cosmic. The earthly conflicts take on cosmic dimensions,” Aslan
observed, connecting the idea of religious terrorism and faith.
In the words of Aslan
— faith and interpretations contour the physical topography of societies and
their complex functioning ranging from popular perceptions, convictions,
lifestyles and the “jihads” across the world.
On shades of terror
“The most important
thing to learn about Islamic terrorism is that an “Islamist is a nationalist,
who wants to live in a Muslim nation”, Aslan said. “The idea of a state is what
I want Pakistan to be, Syria to be. A jihadist is an anti-nationalist who believes
that the concept of a nation state is sin - isolates the Umma- the pan Islamic community
worldwide in the age of globalization. The Mulsim Brotherhood is an Islamist organization
while the al-Quaida is a jihadist organization. The western governments,
however, treat the two the same way. The same response to the two creates a great
deal of confusion and suffering,” the writer said. Aslan addresses these debates
and issues in his book, “No God but God: The Origin, Evolution and Future of
Islam”.
“We can deal with
Islamic terror because the Islamists want something – the Islamists is Turkey
have done a good stable job, the Islamists of Tunisia are now doing a good job (post
Arab Spring) but the Islamists in Egypt have done a terrible job. How Islam
expresses itself can be dealt with because there is room for dialogue. The
Jihadists want something impossible- they are fighting a cosmic war – where there
is no room for negotiation,” Aslan pointed out.
“My argument is
two-fold: to help the Islamist away from becoming a jihadist, you need to allow
Islamists have a political voice... With jihadists, you have to try to deal
with the underlying grievance that dominates their cosmic ideology – take away
the grievance, the cosmic ideology will collapsed. You have to understand that
jihadist terrorism is different from Islamic terrorism. Islamic terrorism stems
from lack of socio-political advantages. Like for a member of Hamas living on a
garbage heap with no hope, terrorism becomes a tool. A jihadist is probably a man
with a PhD degree – who is globally conscious, does not lack socio-economic
opportunities but has a larger vision of the world,” Aslan said.
The set of challenge
is “to bring the cosmic paddle down to earth,” “There has been a profound disappointment
in people of all countries and religion in the promise of a secular nationalism,”
Aslan said.
-Madhusree Chatterjee
madhusree.chatterjee@gmail.com
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