Religion and Politics

As Linus from Peanuts once memorably put it: “There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people ... religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.”  Well, today we can forget about the Great Pumpkin as another interesting analysis appeared recently in the Economist about Scotland, politics and religion following the recent Westminster Election results. 

 

The article argues that over the past 200 years there has been a steady decline in religion as the main focus of people’s public loyalties; this being replaced by secular nationalism. The recent landslide for the SNP suggests that Scotland with its history of religious conflict is a good example of this. Many Protestants, Catholics, Muslims and atheist Scots voted in early May for the re-establishment of an earthly rather than a heavenly kingdom.   

According to the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey of 2012, Scottish people are even less religious than English people.

 

Some other statistics from the survey:

 

Those identifying with the Church of Scotland: 20%

 

Those professing "no religion": 54%.

 

Those believing Protestant-Catholic tensions are still a problem: 88%

 

Those believing there has been an improvement in recent years: 47%

 

Religion is "an important part of who you are":  RC 72%      Protestant 45%.

 

Scottish Catholics, account for about 16% of the population and no longer fear a privileged Protestant Church in an independent Scotland. The proportion of Catholics supporting independence is higher than the share of Protestants who feel the same way, as the Catholic Church has been more successful at retaining the loyalties of young people; who are more likely to be pro-independence.

 

While the Catholic Church maintains its traditional position on abortion and the family it also opposes nuclear weapons and opposition to nuclear weapons is strong amongst left-leaning Christians of most denominations, so the SNP was the obvious choice there

 

It is also significant that no religious authority warned their flock against voting SNP. The SNP with its social democratic and progressive ethos became the obvious home for many  Catholics whose identity is no longer anchored in religious faith. The same was probably true of Protestants who in the past saw their Presbyterian identity as a mark of difference from England, but now that difference can be demonstrated in other ways.

 

All this brings closer the prospect of an independent, secular Scotland with no established or state religion, but whose flag is an ancient religious symbol, a cross associated with Andrew, the "first-called" among the Christian disciples.

Turbulent Times

A major concern in this part of the world is the failure of the maize harvest in the South West of Western Province. A local Mwandi District Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock report has looked at the impact of the severe dry spell in the district and identified priority needs and interventions.  90% of subsistence farmers are affected. There is a lack of both surface and ground water due to non-inundation of flood plains from the Zambezi River and its tributaries. This has challenged dependent households and livestock with high commodity prices, the collapse of local markets and the selling of household assets to buy food.

The main findings:

·         85% of rain-fed maize and drought tolerant crops have failed. 

·          3,800 households (21,800 people) will need food aid for 9 months.

·         There has been a significant increase in the prices staple food in the affected areas.

·         Income from crop based and agricultural paid labour to address any food deficit is unavailable.

·         The internal migrations to the Zambezi fishing camps and island pastures will happen much earlier and in greater numbers due to a lack of grazing and water in the hinterland.

The local areas most affected are Mabumbu, Sankolonga, Kamusa and Adonsi. The main environmental problems in our area stem from an increase in population leading to deforestation, monoculture on poor soil and overgrazing.

With much loud, political scepticism abroad, climate scientists tend to be very cautious about attributing specific weather events to global warming. The variability of weather makes it difficult to know whether climate change caused any particular drought, flood, heatwave or storm. An article in this week’s Economist called, “Is It Global Warming Or Just The Weather?” dealt, I thought, with the matter fairly and objectively and is of interest to us in the midst of our drought.

Much of the debate has focused on the rise of global mean surface temperatures by 2100. That is the simplest way to measure the long-term impact of climate change, but it has drawbacks; it takes measurement over a century. While most people worry about local temperatures not global ones, and try to link climate change to their local weather, not just increases in the mean temperatures, but also in the extremes which often have a more profound local impact on people.

It is still not possible to say categorically that climate change has caused any individual storm, flood, drought or heatwave, but scientific attribution does not require certainty; it deals in probabilities. Most rational people now link smoking to lung cancer, similarly we can say climate change increases the risk of a particular weather pattern by a measurable amount and, in some cases and that even a particular episode is almost impossible to imagine without global warming. That is as near as you can get to saying global warming caused a weather event. Contributions to climate change can be calculated by looking at what the climate would have been like if people had not increased greenhouse-gas emissions. That means comparing observations of the weather with computer models of what might have happened without climate change. So you can calculate the probability of a weather pattern occurring. So it is now possible to say that man-made climate change made this or that weather event twice as likely, five times more likely, or less likely and there is now a scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for climate change. The strongest evidence for human influence can be seen in some heatwaves, where human influence increased the risk of such high temperatures fivefold, at least. Some heatwaves would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.

Studies of recent heatwaves in in Europe, Australia China, Japan and Korea. All showed that man-made climate change had increased the likelihood of exceptional heat. This resulted in changes to ocean currents and the great Arctic melt, and to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols. However, some like the melting of Arctic ice, are influenced by natural variability as well.

Climate change also seems to be contributing to droughts, though the evidence here is weaker. Higher temperatures speed up evaporation, reduce soil moisture and lead to drought. Increased greenhouse-gas emissions are also a factor, as are other sorts of human influence, such as population growth and water consumption. Of four recent studies of droughts, two clearly showed that man-made influences were increasing the risk.

The evidence is weaker still when it comes to storms. It is often said that climate change is making hurricanes and other heavy storms more frequent but recent studies found no evidence of human influence in any of them.

A Swiss study into heatwaves and rain storms took all the heat and precipitation extremes between 1901 and 2005, defining extremes as events likely to occur once every 1,000 days. They found that 0.85°C of warming (the rise since the industrial era began) has made such heat extremes four or five times more likely. 75% of the heat extremes, and 18% of the precipitation extremes, were attributed to global warming and the probability of a heat extreme is twice as great at 2°C of warming than at 1.5°C.

That does not mean, alas, that the science of weather attribution will be able to forecast particular droughts or heatwaves, only to say that more of them are likely to happen. That is a useful addition to climate science. People are routinely told about—and routinely ignore—the bad things they are doing to the climate. The attribution studies show that the climate is doing bad things back.

Sectarianism

Sectarianism unfortunately is not restricted to Christianity and much of the conflict engulfing Iraq and Syria, where many of our brothers and sisters in Christ are being persecuted for their faith at the moment, has also a sectarian aspect to it.  The two sides involved are being supported by either Iran or Saudi Arabia. The Council for Foreign Relations has recently published an article called ‘The Sunni-Shia Divide’ which deals with the origins of this divide in Islam, present tensions, how both sides differ in the practice of their faith, and where different militants are to be found.

The struggles between Sunni and Shia forces have not only fuelled the wars in Syria and Iraq but have caused tension throughout the Gulf region and led to the development of a number of transnational jihadi networks.

While this schism is 14 centuries old, it is obviously not the sole reason for these conflicts but nonetheless provides some insight to explain some of the underlying tensions. Like many previous conflicts in the world this battle is being carried out by proxies, these are determined to purge apostasy or to prepare for the way for a messianic advent. Notwithstanding this, it must be said many Sunni and Shia clerics advocate the use of dialogue and non-violence. As with other sectarian conflicts in communities, for most of the time Sunnis and Shia Muslims have lived at peace with each other, have intermarried and shared mosques. Both believe in the Koran and Prophet Mohamed’s sayings and say the same prayers but they differ in rituals and interpretation of Islamic law.

Shias trace their roots back to 7^th Century to the killing of Husayn, the Prophet’s grandson. As a minority, Shias were often considered heretics and apostates by the Sunni majority. Of 1.8 billion Muslims today, 85% are Sunni and 15% Shia.

After the death of Mohamed a dispute arose over the succession. The Shias argued for the family dynasty; supporting Abu Bakr for Caliph and the Sunnis for a theocratic meritocracy to govern the new faith. The Sunnis backed Ali ibn Abi Talib. Shia stems from Shiatu Ali (supporters of Ali), whereas Sunni comes from Sunna (the Way). The Sunnis won and provided the Caliphs, but the Shias rejected their authority so were persecuted and marginalised.

For Sunnis an Imam leads prayers in the mosque, but for Shias Imam is used for a religious leader who is a descendant of Mohamed. Shias recognise 12 Imams; the 12th became hidden and will return at the end of time. Senior Shia clerics are the Ayatollahs (Sign of God). Many forced conversions amongst Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians chose to be Shia rather than Sunni to protest over Sunni bigotry. Shias form a majority in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Bahrain and are the biggest Muslim sect in Lebanon. Sunnis are the majority in the rest of the arc stretching from Mauritania from to Indonesia.

With Iran supporting groups with a Shia agenda, Saudi Arabia felt the need in turn to support the Sunnis and so propagated their form of Hanafi, Wahhabism, as the true faith.  However, neither side is particularly focused on fighting each other. They also have their own internal struggles to contend with, but sectarian violence does appear more common where a minority rules over a majority. In Saddam’s time in Iraq, a Sunni minority ruled over a Shia majority, this has since been reversed. The Assad regime relies on the Shia Alawis to retain power in Sunni Syria and in Bahrain a Sunni Royal family rules over Shia subjects.

Sunnis and Shias agree on the Five Pillars of Islam: confessing Allah as God and Mohamed as his messenger; daily prayers; giving to the poor; fasting at Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca. The main differences arise in the interpretation of Sharia (Islamic Law). Shias believe God provides a guide through the Imams, Ayatollahs and Maraji (religious schools). Sunis use the Koran and the traditions of Mohamed, and are constrained by legal precedent. Sunni jurisprudence has 4 divisions, the Hanafi and Shafii have their main centres in the Levant, Egypt and Indonesia, the Maliki in North Africa and Sudan and the Hanbali in Saudia Arabia

It is interesting to compare Sunni Al-Qaeda and Shia Hezbollah; neither stress their sectarianism, but rather their anti-imperialism, especially against the US and Israel. But Hezbollah is now part of the Lebanese political establishment, while Al-Qaeda continues to operate through clandestine networks. In Syria, Sunni fighters join groups such as Ahrar al-Sham, the Islamic Front or Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front against Bashir Assad, while the Shia enlist in the Syrian National Defence Force supported by Hezbollah  and Asaib Ahl al-Haq to defend the Syrian regime. The Sunni group ISIS came out of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and established itself in Northern Iraq and Eastern Syria. It defied Al-Qaeda’s High Command concerning its transborder presence and its extremism so was expelled from it, renaming itself IS and proclaimed its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as Caliph.

Both groups use satellite TV and the Internet in their propaganda war to demonise each other. Sunni extremists use social media to help with recruitment, easier than having to infiltrate mosques; Shias are generally recruited directly by the State in Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Saudi Arabia supplies financial support to the Sunni rebels in Syria while Iran props up the Syrian regime both financially and with military manpower.

As usual with sectarian conflict there is always a human cost. In this case another humanitarian crisis has emerged with the displacement of over 3 million traumatised and impoverished refugees. They are seeking refuge in already cash-strapped and pressured countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Kurdistan and Turkey