Malign geo-politics, religious extremism and anti-western nationalism threaten civilisation

I am indebted to Jonathan Haslam’s new book, The Spectre of War, for a quotation from Keynes: “It is, sometimes, [the] changes which are going on around us of which we are least aware.” We all recognise that “the whole world’s in a terrible state o’ chassis,” but in almost every conflict, there may be a common theme: religion.

Oakeshott wrote that civilisation is only a collective dream. We know about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. There are also the five riders of original sin. In the case of both individuals and societies, five great and turbulent forces regularly threaten to turn Oakeshott’s dream into a nightmare. They are: sex, money, hunger, nationalism – and religion.

All can be controlled: canalised by strong but benevolent governments, by ethical and legal systems, and by self-confident established churches. In the West, such churches are under threat. I should probably apologise for the next quotation, because it has become a cliché. Yet it is also indispensable. It is impossible to think about recent history for five minutes without its coming to mind: “The best lack all conviction/The worst are full of passionate intensity.” That is especially true of religion.

I am using that word to mean more than churches and doctrines. As Chesterton almost said, if a man does not believe in God, he will believe in something worse. That often proves true. When well-established churches decline, not many adherents turn to David Hume’s gentle stoicism. Far more embrace a mish-mash blend of indifference and sentimentality. There is nothing harmful about that, except aesthetically.

Then we come to surrogate faiths. Britain has two obvious examples: the National Health Service and football. Although the cult of football is harmless, the sacramentalising of the NHS makes it much harder to adopt a rational approach to health care. But many others want a more demanding creed even than the local team or the local hospital. They are in the market for either fundamentalism or a millenarian pseudo-religion, usually blended with politics, sometimes also with nationalism, always full of anger, persecutory zeal and a disposition towards violence: rough beasts slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. Extinction Rebellion is an obvious example: the military wing of an environmentalist movement which is sabotaging sensible debates about environmental policies.

The West has many such cults. The Southern United States has long been full of them. Weird and wonderful creeds flourish in the boondocks. Some of the itinerant preachers are sincere: cornpone versions of Billy Graham. In other cases, they are scam artists, who have as much to do with religion as the King and the Duke in Huckleberry Finn had with the Almanach de Gotha. The Elmer Gantrys are equally dependent on naiveté.

But despite what Blue State liberals would like us to believe, the most potent and dangerous current blends of religion, nationalism and politics are nothing to do with Donald Trump or the National Rifle Association. They are to be found in the Middle East, India and China. In the course of the past century there has been a religious revival in much of the Islamic world, infused with politics and nationalism plus sex and hunger: all five riders.

The politics comes naturally. Islam has no concept of secularism. Allah’s Kingdom is very much of this world. There is a further political factor, which almost qualifies for sixth-rider status: the decline of Empires. That has usually been a troublesome business. When an Empire falls, there is always the danger of a dark age. In our dealings with the former Ottoman territories, we in the West were guilty of grievous miscalculations. We should have looked to Turkey itself for guidance.

Ataturk was a blood-stained character, but he knew how to run a developing country. If we had taken him as a model, Egypt, Syria and Iraq might have evolved into Ataturkist states, and conceivably Algeria as well, if the French had renounced their fantasy of Algérie française. There is no reason why Iraq should not have become a constitutional monarchy, as could Iran, if we had not overthrown Mossadeq. That might even be true of Libya, if we had guided the Senussi dynasty in the right direction. Admittedly, this might seem over-optimistic. Ataturkism has not saved Turkey from Erdogan. But there would have been more chance of success if we and the French had recognised the need to become post-Imperial in our dealings with the former Ottoman territories. For a start, we were too broke to think in terms of replacing Ottoman Imperialism with our own version. The exhaustion from war and imperial over-stretch left us unable to solve the problems of Palestine and Pakistan, let alone take on new burdens. We may have been so irritated by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s patronising and one-dimensional approach to the British Empire as to be unable to acknowledge that, unfortunately, he was not wholly wrong.

As it was, we have ended up with anti-Western forms of nationalism, and masses of peoples who have felt humiliated by the way in which their countries have been treated. We also have to reckon with failed or failing states with large, youthful populations. When young men cannot find jobs or wives and are being fed inflammatory versions of nationalism, recent history and religion, fundamentalism can become an outlet and a compensation, even to the point of martyrdom. There would appear to be no imminent grounds for optimism.

India is too complex for summary. The former premier, Manmohan Singh, once addressed a group of us in Delhi. “Gentlemen, you must remember one thing about India. Every generalisation you hear about us is true. So is the opposite.” Moreover, anyone who has ridden in a ramshackle motorised rickshaw through the streets of Delhi knows the feeling. A crash seems inevitable. How can the driver avoid it? Somehow, he does. There is an obvious analogy with the Indian political system. Somehow, nation-threatening crashes have been averted. But can there be a modus vivendi between Hindi fundamentalism, other religious groups, pluralist democracy and the rule of law? We can hope so, devoutly, while castigating any of our own politicians who try to turn Kashmir into a domestic political issue.

One aspect of current Chinese polity ought to be encouraging. Although Marxism may still feature in official political rhetoric, it is extinct as an intellectual force. That might appear desirable; extinction Marxism would always seem a good idea. But it has been replaced by a militant quasi-religious form of nationalism, which may be harder to cope with. Modus vivendi: we will have to negotiate one with the Chinese. There is only one difficulty. How?

There seems only one antidote to the malign conjunction of geopolitics and religious extremism: the calming bells, architecture, liturgy and language of a proper English Church. But even a soothing Evensong cannot assuage the thought that our civilisation may be threatened by even-tide.