The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (6 page)

In less pluralistic societies one religion may dominate. Some Islamic countries, for example, have strong control over the political power systems. Islam has been extremely effective because it is one of the first religions to successfully combine religious and political controls. Indeed, it is constitutionally
incapable of separating religion and politics. From Mohammed’s initial conquests, his was a political religion. The notion of separation of church and state is inconceivable. The Islamic virus was well crafted by its founders to defend against all other god viruses. Islam may well be the best-defended god virus of the major religions.

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World Intellectual Property Organization,
Modulation of a Balance Between the Gut Mucosal Immune System and the Intestinal Microflora
[article on-line] (2002, accessed 20 November 2008); available from
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2002072142
; Internet.

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In 1857, one hundred twenty non-Mormons were crossing Mormon territory on their way to California. Fifty Mormons taking orders from local ecclesiastical leaders went out and under a white flag of truce tricked the travelers into giving up their arms. They then massacred all but 17 children under the age of six. Brigham Young himself had stated only a few months earlier, “If any miserable scoundrels come here, cut their throats.” He never accepted any responsibility for the massacre but played a big part in an attempted cover up by blaming it on local Native Americans. Only in 1998 did the Mormon Church accept any responsibility and placed a monument at the site. Richard Abanes,
One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church
(New York: Four Walls Eight Windows Press, 2003), 245-51. Also see
ReligiousTolerence.org
,
The 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre
[article on-line] (accessed 20 November 2008); available from
http://www.religioustolerance.org/lds_mass.htm
; Internet.

Its excellent defenses come from the fact that Mohammed was exposed to a wide range of god viruses in his formative period. While somewhat isolated on the Arabian Peninsula, the nascent Islamic religion was close to the center of trade of goods and ideas between east and west. Most of the Islamic antibodies were designed before Islam was a hundred years old. They were effective against every religion they encountered. Islam’s strong defenses were written into the Koran and subsequent writings and were based on what was learned from the Jewish, Christian and polytheists of Arabia and, somewhat later, the Zoroastrians of Persia.

Both Judaism and Islam began as political/military movements. Their roots from Moses and Mohammed were militaristic and political. Christianity was born as a non-militaristic religion under the domination of the Roman Empire. Only later did it form its militaristic face. Christianity inherited strong defenses from Judaism. St. Paul invented others, but they were designed to survive as a minority religion in a large and powerful empire. Its antibodies were more focused on the ability to survive in a hostile religious and political environment. Indeed, the writings of Paul are some of the best defenses ever developed for Christianity, focusing on fighting other god viruses and surviving in hostile territory rather than on infecting a political nervous system.

From early on, Christian writers created justifications for taking over political structures but were held in check or slowed down for three centuries by competing religious and political systems. Ultimately, they succeeded, but the initial weakness of Christianity gave it less expertise in the political arena than Islam and much less experience or justification for military methods of infection. As a result, its writings are rather poor guidance on how to infect the instruments of state. On the other hand, from the beginning, Islam’s writings were well-designed guides. Paul, Jesus and Moses gave Mohammed great material on which to build.

The Christian virus depends heavily upon the Jewish virus for guidance. Christian preachers refer incessantly to Old Testament political schemas because there are none in the New Testament. The prophets, patriarchs
and rulers of ancient Israel like Isaiah, Jeremiah, David, Solomon and Moses all saw the religion as inseparable from the political. To this day, this is the struggle of a secular Israel, where the Jewish religion is constantly putting pressure on the state to infect the political central nervous system. Because Israel’s very existence depends on support and protection from the pluralistic Western world, it cannot afford to let Jewish fundamentalism take over. Nevertheless, there are many Jewish groups in Parliament with exactly that agenda.

Islam has some of the best defenses against other god viruses and has the potential to be more parasitically aggressive when consolidating political power with a society. More recent religions have had the misfortune of coming into a religious biota that was already crowded and somewhat balanced. For example, Mormonism began in an already crowded viral environment, and while its novelty and new defenses created an astounding opportunity for growth, it was nothing like the spread of Islam. Yet, Mormonism from its inception was designed to infect the political nervous system – Joseph Smith even ran for president in 1844. At each stage Mormons sought to take control of local political structure from its founding in New York state, to the move to Nauvoo, Illinois, then to Northwestern Missouri. However, because there were other strong religions present, they were not able to succeed until they migrated to the religious vacuum of Utah.

Islam developed in a fragmented society where polytheistic viruses were weak, Judaism was not parasitic, and Christian sects were fragmented. The Islamic virus was so well designed that Islam even avoided direct confrontation with other “people of the book.”
⁷
As a result, Jews and many Christian communities were simply bypassed as long as they did not politically or militarily resist Islam. This allowed Islam to spread without
expending energy fighting well-established and older monotheistic or quasi-monotheistic religions.

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Mohammed held Jews and Christians above other religions because they followed the Bible. While he felt they believed their religions were corrupted, he still respected them and showed tolerance whereas he had none for other religions.

Islam attacked Christianity as a false monotheistic religion. With its Holy Trinity – which makes it look suspiciously like a three-god religion – Mohammed claimed that Christianity was a corruption of Allah’s word and was not truly monotheistic. Islam’s clear monotheism gave it an advantage in converting even many Christians. Islam’s creed, “There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet,” is a powerful argument against the confusing and conflicting theories about the Trinity.

So as not to oversimplify, we should acknowledge that Islam had its own mutations that threatened it from within – Shii’a and Sunni being the most prominent split. Nevertheless, Islam had sufficient power to overcome other religions in its expanding domain and continues to grow today with remarkable efficiency.

Scientology is another advanced virus, but it too has had the misfortune of coming into an already crowded religious biota. Had Scientology or Mormonism been born in a less crowded or virally weakened environment, either might have swept the globe.

Biological viruses walk a fine line between being too lethal and too weak. A highly virulent virus like the Ebola may kill its host so quickly that it has no chance to infect another host. Conversely, a weakened virus, like the smallpox vaccine, may be so compromised that it cannot reproduce.

God viruses face the same problem. Fundamentalism is the more virulent form of a religion. It generally must be kept in check lest it damage, cripple, divide or even kill its host society. Fundamentalism is most commonly “let loose” when the god virus is under attack or is in expansion mode. Thus, it can defend a religion from dangerous attackers, or it can create the energy to expand and defeat other religions. Fundamentalism can also turn on its own religion and cause havoc. The Iranian Revolution of 1978 was brought about by fundamentalists in Shii’a Islam to overthrow the Shah of Iran. Once this was accomplished, it continued to feed on the society and the lives of those who opposed it.

When fundamentalism gains ascendancy, rigid behavior is enforced and deviation receives quick sanction. Iran finally got the fundamentalist
genie back in the bottle in the early 1990s, but it continues to flare out of control on occasion.

Fundamentalism can be seen as an inflammation. Human immune systems use inflammation as a tool for fighting infection. Unfortunately, inflammation can continue in some cases long after the threat has subsided. Unchecked inflammation can cause hay fever, atherosclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis in the human body. Religious fundamentalism may protect the parent religion for a time, but it can continue long after its usefulness has passed, causing collateral damage to institutions, families and the social fabric.

A society cannot survive for long with rampant fundamentalism. It must be brought back under control once the emergency has passed or the expansion is complete. Uncontrolled, fundamentalism feeds on society itself. Examples of this can be seen in the rigid and deadly rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal. Similarly, China’s experience with communist fundamentalism in the so-called Cultural Revolution probably led to the deaths of 30 million peasants or more. Many were denounced and taken to reeducation camps or executed for failing to follow the fundamentalist beliefs of the party.

Saudi Arabia has harbored a strongly fundamentalist virus since 1744 when the dynasty of bin Saud formed an alliance with the cleric Abd-al-Wahhab to establish the desert kingdom. Wahibism began as a very conservative reform movement in reaction to certain corruptions that were creeping into Sunni Islam in the 18
^th
century. It was established to purify Sunni Islam and drive out practices like veneration of popular saints, tomb visitation and idolatry. Abd-al-Wahhab perceived a moral decline in Islam and sought to establish strict behavior standards for believers. Wahibism has been carefully followed and kept under control by the ruling class for two centuries.

A compromise of sorts was struck decades ago that let this virulent virus focus its energy outside Saudi Arabia, as long as it did not challenge the ruling elite inside. Thus, Saudi authorities have been hesitant to confront the virus directly because the political central nervous system is itself highly infected. For example, Osama bin Laden was a close follower of Wahibism and from a prominent Saudi family.

Al Qaeda is even more fundamentalist than Wahibism but is a direct mutation from Wahibism. As long as Wahibism and Al Qaeda kept their focus on Afghanistan or other places, it was tolerated. But Al Qaeda has become a direct threat to the Saudi ruling class, which now faces the delicate task of weeding out Al Qaeda without fanning the flames of Wahibism.

By supporting Wahibism and its missionary efforts in other countries, the fundamentalist virus infected the weakened societies of post-communist Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has now become endemic to these areas.

In nature, there are places where a virus can hide or stay for long periods and then break out in an epidemic. Bats are a reservoir for rabies virus, for example. From the bat reservoir, rabies can break out into other animals. The bacteria associated with the plague of the Middle Ages,
Y pestis
, is believed to have started from a reservoir of rats in east central Africa. From time to time the plague seemed to come out of that area and work its way north into the Middle East and Europe.
⁸
Somewhere in West Africa, the Ebola virus stays hidden and occasionally breaks out, generally through apes into human populations.

In biology, it is often unclear why a specific pathogen breaks out into the general population. Why do we get one type of flu one year and a different one another year? It appears to be related to the wide number of flu viruses in many different reservoirs. Each virus is held in check due to isolation, lack of efficient vectors or general immunity to the specific strain.

A virus can stay quiescent for years, during which time it may mutate and change many times until one variant finds the key to breaking out. Thus, the outbreaks of plague during the Middle Ages may have been a
succession of mutated pathogens from an East African reservoir. Each was different enough to overwhelm the defenses of those in its path.

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Robert S. Gottfried,
The Black Death: Natural & Human Disaster in Medieval Europe
(The Free Press 1983).

God viruses also have reservoirs. Afghanistan was the reservoir for two fundamentalist variants, the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The Taliban was a local variant of strict Islam that began as a reaction to perceived corruption in Afghan society. Al Qaeda, as noted earlier, was an offshoot of Wahibism in Saudi Arabia. Both sought to impose Shari’a law on society, which severely restricted women’s rights and sought to eliminate western influence by outlawing television, photography, kite-flying, chess and other things.