RSIS presents the following commentary Studying Southeast Asian Religious Conflicts: Bringing Back Religion by Kumar Ramakrishna. It is also available online at this link. (To print it, click on this link.). Kindly forward any comments or feedback to the Editor RSIS Commentaries, at RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg
No. 152/2013 dated 15 August 2013
No. 152/2013 dated 15 August 2013
Studying Southeast Asian Religious Conflicts:
Bringing Back Religion
By Kumar Ramakrishna
Bringing Back Religion
By Kumar Ramakrishna
Synopsis
The study of Southeast Asian religious conflicts paradoxically downplays the role of religion in these struggles in favour of essentially nationalist grievances. New insights from the natural sciences suggest that religion should be brought back to the fore in such studies.
The study of Southeast Asian religious conflicts paradoxically downplays the role of religion in these struggles in favour of essentially nationalist grievances. New insights from the natural sciences suggest that religion should be brought back to the fore in such studies.
Commentary
SOUTHEAST
Asia seems to be going through a period of religiously-motivated
unrest. Indonesian Islamist militants recently bombed a popular Buddhist
temple in Jakarta, in apparent retaliation for violence on Rohingya
Muslims in Myanmar. The fragile truce between the Buddhist Thai State
and Patani Malay-Muslim insurgents in the troubled Deep South of
Thailand seems to have shattered, while the nascent peace process
between the Catholic Philippine State and Moro Muslim insurgents in
Central Mindanao appears similarly stressed.
Furthermore,
continuing troubles between the Buddhist Myanmar State and its Rohingya
and wider Muslim community have generated regional impacts as well.
More than just political
However,
prevailing analysis of these troubles appears largely driven, not by a
religious perspective, but by a socioeconomic, political and ultimately
nationalist standpoint. An influential school of thought suggests that
these conflicts only appear religious on the surface, while what really
drives them are nationalist political and socioeconomic concerns cloaked
in religious garb. In short religion is but a means to an end. Hence
religious idioms – whether Islamic or Buddhist as the case may be –
merely serve as an ideological mechanism to justify violence essentially
motivated by more traditional socioeconomic and nationalist concerns.
Admittedly,
there are other voices amongst Southeast Asian country studies scholars
who demur. They insist instead that the religious motif – though not
always obvious and often intertwined with nationalist grievances - is
the primary impulse behind many of these conflicts. As it turns out
there are now scientifically sound reasons for this perspective.
A view from the natural sciences
Firstly,
some evolutionary psychologists have pointed out that religiosity
- basically a belief in supernatural agents - is inescapably rooted in
human nature. In particular religiosity is regarded as an evolutionary
by-product of the human penchant for among other things,
cause-and-effect thinking, storytelling and mythmaking. The religiosity
instinct interacts with environmental influences throughout an
individual’s lifetime and this interaction determines whether he turns
out as a fundamentalist, atheist, agnostic or believer.
Religiosity
- as the individual instinct - moreover becomes religion the cultural
system at the group level. Religion, comprising a combination of
supernatural agents, symbols, myths and collective rituals, is very much
an adaptation to promote in-group cohesion vis-a-vis out-groups.
Neuroscientists, social psychologists and evolutionary biologists have
added that this ingroup/outgroup divide is pervasive and universal.
Moreover,
they emphasise that the ultimate roots of intergroup violence go well
beyond relatively ephemeral nationalist and ideological grievances, and
are located instead within in-group ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and the
drive for higher social status in relation to relevant out-groups.
Secondly,
it should be noted that nationalism is itself rooted in religion.
Evolutionary anthropological evidence indicates that religion is the
most powerful institution in human history. It evolved as an adaptation
to enable the members of an in-group to cohere effectively so as to
rival out-groups and vanquish them. Evolutionary-minded religious
scholars have shown that religious symbols have historically included
sacred physical space such as territorial homelands.
Religion
scholar Mark Juergensmeyer thus hits the target when he observes that
“secular nationalism” possesses “many of the characteristics of a
religion, including doctrine, myth, ethics, ritual experience, and
social organisation,” and importantly – the ability “to give moral
sanction to martyrdom and violence.” This is precisely why it is said
that, “beneath the surface of nationalism often lies religion.
Bringing back religion
Taking
religion as a central factor - rather than as a peripheral adjunct to
nationalism - would enable students of Southeast Asian conflict to pick
out elements they would have otherwise dismissed as of marginal
relevance. Some key instances: the founder of the Indonesian Darul
Islam movement Kartosuwiryo was a dedicated Sufi who believed in
spirits and whose Javanese mysticism added to his mass political appeal;
the ringleaders of the historic 28 April 2004 mass assault by Patani
Malay-Muslim insurgents on Thai government targets in the Deep South
reportedly expended time and effort on blessing knives and swords,
shirts, and amulets belonging to individuals involved in the attacks,
and even deployed “holy sand” on roads leading to their targets to
prevent security forces from interfering with their plans; the invoking
of religious oaths by the leaders of both Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah
and Patani Malay-Muslim militants to ensure loyalty on pain of divine
retribution; the constant fissuring of the Moro Islamist movement in
Mindanao into splinter groups declaring themselves to be more genuinely
Islamic than the predecessors, the latest being Umbra Kato’s Bangsamoro
Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF); and the controversial Myanmar Buddhist
leader Wirathu’s deep-seated fear that Buddhism in that country would be
rendered extinct within 100 years by rapidly growing Muslim masses.
In
short, these conflicts have never been animated simply by socioeconomic
grievances and nationalist sentiments. The religious motif has always
been integral to the fabric of these struggles, rather than playing a
merely instrumental role. Thus the religion factor should arguably be
front and centre of the analysis.
Implications
Two implications may arise.
Firstly, the finer details may vary across national boundaries, but the general principle should be clear: over and above policy solutions seeking to improve socio-economic governance and address nationalist political concerns, equal or greater effort must be employed in ensuring adequate respect for the relative social standing, sacred practices and cherished symbols of affected religious communities in regional conflicts. In sum, religion matters.
Firstly, the finer details may vary across national boundaries, but the general principle should be clear: over and above policy solutions seeking to improve socio-economic governance and address nationalist political concerns, equal or greater effort must be employed in ensuring adequate respect for the relative social standing, sacred practices and cherished symbols of affected religious communities in regional conflicts. In sum, religion matters.
Secondly,
from an analytical standpoint, staying within one’s disciplinary
comfort zone seems closed-minded. Southeast Asian country studies
scholars have performed a crucial service by exhaustively sketching out
the pressing themes, key social actors and groups pertinent to any
conflict and the relationships between them. But more can be done.
What
is needed is what legendary Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson calls a
consilient approach integrating insights from the natural and social
sciences in a careful, systematic manner. Only then will the study of
the role of religion in Southeast Asian religious conflicts be put
arguably on a more nuanced and policy relevant footing.
Kumar
Ramakrishna is Associate Professor and Head of the Centre of Excellence
for National Security (CENS) at the S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University.
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