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On the evolution of religion
Consider the following sayings from two prophets of different religions:
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
An honest merchant has a guaranteed place in paradise.
Now if you had to predict, which religion would you suspect would be more compatible with markets and modernity?
The first quote, of course, is from Jesus the second is a saying attributed to Muhammad.
My point is not to argue that Christianity or Islam are either more or less compatible with capitalism or liberal democracy. In my view all religions of reasonable age and numbers contain traditions and teachings compatible with modernity and all religions of reasonable age and numbers contain traditions and teachings incompatible with modernity. Call it the completeness theorem.
It's how religions adapt and evolve to modernity that is important. Religions are constantly changing, emphasizing certain features, downplaying others, creating new interpretations. Given enough time, I believe that any religion will evolve towards compatability with modernity because it's the memes that combine modernity and religion which will survive and prosper.
The problem is that Christianity has had hundreds of years to adapt itself to modernity while Islam has had modernity thrust upon it.
Fish don't walk overnight and neither do religions. Nevertheless there are Islamic leaders who, under the pressure of current events, see the direction in which Islam must move and who are actively encouraging evolution in that direction. Dan Drezner, for example, points to this article on developments in Morocco:
Morocco's 42-year-old King Mohammed VI has discovered religion as a means of modernizing his society -- and progress through piety seems to be the order of the day. By granting new rights to women and strengthening civil liberties, the ruler of this country of 30 million on Africa's northern edge, which is 99 percent Muslim, plans to democratize Morocco through a tolerant interpretation of the Koran.
Morocco's 350-year-old dynasty, the world's oldest next to the Japanese imperial dynasty, claims to be directly descended from the prophet Mohammed. And as "Amir al-Muminin," or leader of the faithful, the country's ruler enjoys absolute authority.
The Conseil Supérieur des Oulémas, or council of religious scholars, which the king installed a year and a half ago, has been issuing fatwas on the most pressing questions of the 21st century -- and, surprisingly, they've been well-received by both young people and hardened Islamists. If the king's reform plan succeeds, Morocco could become a model of democratic Islam.
Addendum: For more on Islam, markets and democracy see the Minaret of Freedom Institute.
Comments are open.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on January 24, 2006 at 07:14 AM in Economics, Religion | Permalink
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» Capitalism and religion from Pub Sociology
Alex Tabarrok makes a very interesting point:My point is not to argue that Christianity or Islam are either more or less compatible with capitalism or liberal democracy. In my view all religions of reasonable age and numbers contain traditions and [Read More]
Tracked on Jan 24, 2006 12:10:59 PM
» Capitalism and religion from Pub Sociology
Alex Tabarrok makes a very interesting point:My point is not to argue that Christianity or Islam are either more or less compatible with capitalism or liberal democracy. In my view all religions of reasonable age and numbers contain traditions and [Read More]
Tracked on Jan 24, 2006 12:12:26 PM
» Islamismo from De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum
O Leo indicou e eu fui lá conferir. Excelentes comentários sobre religiões e desenvolvimento econômico. Coisa realmente fina. O melhor de tudo é que, quando olhamos a mídia (blogs inclusos) brasileira, vemos alguns comentaristas - agora sim, da "direit... [Read More]
Tracked on Jan 24, 2006 2:33:29 PM
» Morocco's King Pushes for Islamic Democracy from nospeedbumps.com
Something to keep an eye on (via Marginal Revolution):
Morocco's 42-year-old King Mohammed VI has discovered religion as a means of modernizing his society -- and progress through piety seems to be the order of the day. By granting new rights to wom... [Read More]
Tracked on Jan 27, 2006 10:57:42 PM
» Incompatibility from Atlas Blogged
Those who hold the opinion that all Islam is radical and terrorist, or at least incompatible with Western values, are ignoring reality. It is likely that in the future, the Taliban will be as relevent to Muslims as the Inqusition is to today's Christi... [Read More]
Tracked on Feb 6, 2006 4:38:54 PM
Comments
This is too much a "Whig" theory of history, in which everything evolves in the right direction over time. What if Christianity in the year 350 was more compatible with an advanced economy and complex society than Christianity in the year 1000? What if Islam in the year 1000 was better suited to modernity than Islam in the year 1900 (or than Christianity in the year 1000)?
Remember the Christian journey to modernity began with the Renaissance and a conscious effort to recover the Greco-Roman past.
Posted by: DK at Jan 24, 2006 8:34:01 AM
Certainly any well-meaning person hopes that Islam adapts to modernity and becomes more and more compatible with human rights and democracy. I know a lot of Muslims want that to happen. The United States certainly has a Muslim population that seems very tolerant and appears to reject extremism. I certainly hope that this is a demonstration of Tyler's theory and not just a selection effect.
I have one major concern. Most religions, including Christianity, have a checkered past and plenty of people have done bad things in their name. But Islam faces a historical issue that might make adaptation more difficult. Mohammed himself spread Islam through battle, and Jesus, at least in Christianity's central theological account, did not use violence to spread Christianity.
Consequently, a Christian can argue that Torquemada wasn't "doing what Jesus would do" by pointing at Jesus' life. A tolerant Muslim has greater difficulty when debating a more militant Muslim, because the more militant Muslim can make a case that they are in fact doing "what Mohammed would do."
If we take these theological differences as parameters, they could give rise to different equilibria of tolerants and militants, depending on religious beliefs within a society. (More precisely, the ranges of tolerants and militants conditional on other factors would vary.)
In addition, a market society depends on the goodwill and good behavior of the vast, vast, vast majority of its citizens. Even if only 5% of the citizenry violently rejects modernity, that society will likely find it nearly impossibly to support a modern society without severe repression.
I certainly hope Tyler's right, and I hope the Moroccan experiment succeeds, and in fact I believe that it likely will. I believe that most people find ways to discard theology and history that doesn't fit with their lives today. How many fundamentalist Christian chruches, for example, follow the Apostle Paul's instruction that women keep their heads covered?
But we shouldn't ignore the case for pessimism.
Posted by: Keith at Jan 24, 2006 8:42:58 AM
I'm sorry. That was Alex's post, not Tyler's. My apologies.
Posted by: Keith at Jan 24, 2006 8:44:20 AM
I fear these criticisms don't go far enough.
1) Muslim society cira. 1300 was far more modern than Christian society. One could argue that corruption of Christian doctrine had a lot to do with this. But Christianity has been out-modernizing Islam for 700 years. Muslims have not had modernity thrust upon them. In Africa at least, they mostly chose to let it pass them by.
2) Islam has become a sort of global religion of the underclass. Like communism, which in many ways it has replace, it defines itself as being at odds with the successful elements of society as part of its appeal. (Not all Islam, of course.) In particular, with the passing of communism, it can be argued that current selection pressure are currently running _against_ modernity for most of Islam.
3) The theorem completely ignores the possibility that a society devolution might occur, and that a "regressive" religion might play a substantial role in causing that regression.
Posted by: Nathan Zook at Jan 24, 2006 9:28:29 AM
In 1453, the Ottoman Emperor hired Hungarian gun smiths to build for him the largest canons in the world with which to destroy the walls of Constantinople. He succeded in conquering the city. The next year, Guttenberg printed his first Bibles. At the urging of the ulema and the scribal guild, printing was not allowed in Constintople until the 18th century.
The Muslim rejection of modernity (or European ways) is not a new thing but goes back to the era of Muslim dominance. It was easier for them to be rejectionist in the 15th century, they were still winning.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at Jan 24, 2006 9:46:25 AM
I have to say, as an empiricist, that Modern Islam does not seem to show the historical image. Islam has an astonishing track record of tolerance. Incidents such as the Almohads are rare and confined to sects on the periphery. My own family (Greek Orthodox) lived under Islam for a Millenium without much trouble --we only suffered under Catholicism. In the Levant you find Christian minorities seeking refuge among Moslems, for protection -- Under Islam a Christian and a Jew have clearly defined rights, but not the other way around.
Likewise for the Jews. Unlike the crusaders, moslems never massacred local non-Moslem populations. The only recent pogrom, the massacre of Damascus in the 19th century was fomented by Christians, not Moslems. I am convinced that something strange has been taking place since the beginning of the 20th Century.
Posted by: Nassim Nicholas Taleb at Jan 24, 2006 9:53:33 AM
I like Mr. Taleb's point about "something strange ... taking place since the beginning of the 20th Century."
While I don't agree with Alex's idea of religious evolution towards modernity, his completeness theorem, or his view of Islam, I do agree with him that society exerts a pull on religion, and that religious leaders do accomodate themselves to society as surely as corporate marketers do.
In fact, I think that even "fundamentalists" are often very modern, even pioneering new applications for technology, despite their backwards image. In the US, Christian right groups pioneered a new wave of political techniques including direct mail and audience-targeted tv and radio efforts, as well as starting companies to reedit DVD's to suit a wider range of audience tastes. Likewise, Hezbollah and Hamas are in many ways political pioneers and masters of marketing and self-promotion -- they have their own tv stations and social services infrastructures more advanced than their local governments' services. Even Al Qaeda can arguably be seen as an innovator in use of the Internet and modern technology to wage war.
IMHO, the problem in the Middle East has little or nothing to do with Islam and very much to do with fascism, socialism, Nazism, and excessive nationalism, all highly modern and secular imports from Europe, all with very destructive economic and political effects. Those "isms" have influenced both Christinity and Islam in the countries where the "isms" have been dominant, just as freedom, democracy, and tolerance have influenced both religions in countries where openness has been dominant.
Posted by: DK at Jan 24, 2006 10:40:55 AM
Nassim: If I take your last sentence correctly, I agree with its implication -- that the change in Islam to a kind of intolerant nationalism was caused by Western intermeddling in the affairs of the "middle east" and brought the whole thing to a boil by the foundation of and continued active support by Europe and the USA for Israel.
Posted by: Dennis J. Tuchler at Jan 24, 2006 10:45:47 AM
No HTML comments! What a travesty! At least it warned me.
Juan Cole's _Modernity and the Millennium_ is on topic here. It sees the founding of Baha'ism (the world's youngest independent religion) as a reaction to the wave of modernity rolling over the Middle East in the 19th century -- joint-stock corporations, industrialization, modern war methods. Unlike some threads of Islam, Baha'i engaged with modernity instead of rejecting it. I read the book in college before I'd ever seen Cole's blog and liked it.
Posted by: Noumenon at Jan 24, 2006 10:47:31 AM
Dennis Tuchler, I don't think that implication is at all clear in Nassim's post; Nassim might well think that, but he hasn't said anything of the sort.
For example, it is pretty easy to argue that something "went wrong" at the start of 20th century Europe, something specifically involving aggressive German nationalism, communism, and anti-Semitism. Was that due to Western intermeddling in the affairs of Europe?
Posted by: DK at Jan 24, 2006 1:14:58 PM
Hello Dennis. I made no such implication --as a matter of fact I call these back-fit explanations. My point is that something extremely strange happened around the turn of the century.
Incidentally, things tend to take place very rapidly in the area. As I am writing my next book "The Black Swan" about consequential and unpredictable changes, I am hungry for accounts of the greatest mystery of all: why a long Greco-Roman, later Christian tradition were blotted out in a matter of years. Alexandria, Antioch, and other Levantine cities were the center of Western thinking. Yet Islam penetrated the Meditterranean (Eastern and Southern) in no time at all. These transitions are very abrupt, very strange and invaluable to the historian, yet nobody, except for a few open minds like Duby, talks about them.
Posted by: Nassim Nicholas Taleb at Jan 24, 2006 2:23:04 PM
Hello Dennis. I made no such implication --as a matter of fact I call these back-fit explanations. My point is that something extremely strange happened around the turn of the century.
Incidentally, things tend to take place very rapidly in the area. As I am writing my next book "The Black Swan" about consequential and unpredictable changes, I am hungry for accounts of the greatest mystery of all: why a long Greco-Roman, later Christian tradition were blotted out in a matter of years. Alexandria, Antioch, and other Levantine cities were the center of Western thinking. Yet Islam penetrated the Meditterranean (Eastern and Southern) in no time at all. These transitions are very abrupt, very strange and invaluable to the historian, yet nobody, except for a few open minds like Duby, talks about them.
Posted by: Nassim Nicholas Taleb at Jan 24, 2006 2:23:21 PM
"This article" contains a non-trivial error. The Danish royal family
is as old as the Japanese, dating back to King Gorm in the 9th century,
the Viking era. They and the Japanese one get along famously becaue of
this. The Moroccans are Muhammed-come-latelies.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jan 24, 2006 2:51:47 PM
Paraphrase - any religion with many adherents spread across a large area for a long period of time will have diversity of interpretation, fervor, and practice - some compatible with modernity, some not. Doesn't seem like a particularly controversial position to me but that also makes it less interesting.
Random tidbits. I keep coming across important figures in financial history with connections to the Iberian penninsula, which had been Muslim and then became Christian. It was the Christians who persecuted the Iberian Jews and caused a diaspora. Eg, in marketing the original US treasury bonds in the late 1700s, we find people of Jewish faith from Brazilian immigrant families who had left Portugal. In England, we find David Ricardo's family had left Iberia to go to the Netherlands and then to England. In setting up England's markets, there was a special bill to allow the immigration of several Jews (specified).
These and other examples could just be coincidence. However, it does make me suspect that Iberian financial markets must have been more advanced than England's before the modern period. Does anyone know a good place to review financial history in Muslim Spain and the impact of the reconquista? Certainly, Ibn Khaldun has a reputation as a pro-market scholar but was he an anamoly or was Medieval Islam's economic policies compatible with markets? Has there been an anti-market movement in the Muslim world? (Aside from Western socialist ideas).
Posted by: tedm at Jan 24, 2006 2:58:43 PM
On Islam's historical "tolerance" of other religions, read about dhimmitude.
I don't agree with the implicit assertion that modernity is incompatible with a very conservative, historical, "what did the original authors intend" interpretation of the Christian Bible. I was going to say more on this topic, but let me avoid controversy and move to the next point.
The Koran has many more specific injunctions related to commerce than does the Christian Bible. In particular, conservative interpretations of the Koran (i.e., interpretations faithful to the text) are going to run into big trouble with modernity. I claim that this is not a problem faced by Christianity.
Posted by: randy at Jan 24, 2006 4:49:20 PM
The first quote is a mistranslation. The word "camel" should be replaced with "rope (probably made from camel's hair," thus christianity is not completely anathema to the rich.
Posted by: XL at Jan 24, 2006 5:24:05 PM
Randy,
"Dhimmitude" was a lot more tolerant than the auto da fe that
was practiced against the Muslims and Jews during the Inquisition.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Jan 24, 2006 6:08:36 PM
XL or anyone, do you know who Jesus was likely to be refering to when he spake of rich men? Would he have meant merchants or landholders, both or neither?
Posted by: Ronald Brak at Jan 24, 2006 7:07:40 PM
Nassim, I am sure that you ment more than simply politics or warfare when you asked your question about why the "western" traditions disappeared so quickly from the near east. However, I will venture one reason why Islam took Egypt and North Africa so quickly.
Because less than one generation earlier Justinian waged a horrible war agaist heretics in that area and weakened both the population and leaders. The war was followed by a plague. Perhaps in that climate, there was simply not enough intellectual power left to form any sort of resistance to the Islamic juggernaut.
Posted by: Kyle N at Jan 24, 2006 7:10:23 PM
Ronald Brak, My reading of Jesus Of Nazareth's teachings seem to point at an unfailing attack against hypocrisy, primarily religous hypocricy. He did not admonish rich people for being rich, but rathe for what they did with their wealth. See the story of the "rich young ruler". Jesus told him to give all he had to charity and come be his disciple, he did not make similar suggestions to the welathy Centorian, or the wealthy men whose homes he stayed in.
Likewise, he lost his temper at the moneychangers in the temple, not moneychangers at the city gates.
Posted by: Kyle N at Jan 24, 2006 7:15:58 PM
I have a few comments.
1) Dhimmi, from my understanding of the use (I am not going to the dictionary but rather referring to common usage) sems to imply "moral obligation to protect, related to the expression "bi dhimitak" meaning "subjected to your conscience". A Christian and a Jew not only were not "harmable" but one was under the obligation to protect them. So dhimmitude was not inferior status, rather special protection.
I am saying that with some knowledge: my ancestors were dhimmis, and, as Eastern Orthodox Christians, felt far safer under Islam than to the "West" --the "West" was Catholicism, the sack of Byzantium, the pillages around Antioch.
What happened after the Ottoman Empire evaporated is truly unusual. Just consider that Copts are routinely massacred today --they made it for 14 centuries without harm!
2) Kyle, Christianity at the time was immensely fractious, especially in the Levant. Alexandria had serious mob fights, with entire massacres (say with the Arian heresy).
Posted by: nassim nicholas Taleb at Jan 24, 2006 7:57:07 PM
The Bible is full of people blessed with wealth for living a righteous life. Like the young rich man told to sell everything he has, the camel and the needle is about the believer having to give god greater priority than money.
Posted by: jack at Jan 25, 2006 4:28:27 AM
Ronald Brak, Jesus addressed that comment to one specific rich man whose source of wealth was not identified, and who had specifically asked Jesus for personal advice on how to be a good person. The main rich people with identified professions whom Jesus addresses were tax collectors, who were generally depicted as having gotten their money illegimately and needing to make restitution for past overcharges.
Nassim, I have met a lot of feminists who say that "special protection" is an "inferior status." I try to stay out of those arguments myself.
Posted by: DK at Jan 25, 2006 8:06:58 AM
I fear nassim is wearing rose tinted spectacles with respect to his views of Islam, or at the very least tending toward a positive view that risks appearing naive.
I grew up in an Islamic society - Kano N.Nigeria. As the son of a european father who had a pivotal role to play in the development of medical services in the region, we were accorded a position of some status. However the same most certainly could not be said for the Christian Ibo and Yuroba peoples who moved north to live among the Hausa Muslim peoples. These southern Christians migrated to the Muslim north in order to take jobs in the civil service, run small businesses etc.
We were living in Nigeria when appalling attacks were mounted against these Christian "infidels" by the Hausas. Calls went out from the mosques and gangs of men armed with machetes made it their mission to slaughter every Christian they could find. At one point I actually traveled with my father when the bodies were being retrieved. Due to a lack of facilities, many of these victims were piled in a courtyard of the city hospital.
The truly horrifying nature of this slaughter, was its specifically Islamic nature. The murderers had the blessings of their imams and saw themselves as instruments of Allah's will.
The technique they employed in hunting Ibos and other unfortunate Christians, was to cut the person with machetes and permit him to run, often naked, in the withering heat of the African sun. When the hunters caught up with their prey they would cut them some more. This continued until a given victim was unable to run further and was left bleeding, lying on the road like a piece of garbage surrounded by vultures, waiting for death to come.
It was beyond barbaric.
In recent years we have seen an escalation in Muslim violence toward Christians in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and parts of the Philippines. Just recently in the Sulawesi province of Indonesia, three Christian school girls were beheaded - an act of sickening brutality directed against young and defenceless children.
The under-reporting of Muslim violence directed toward Christians, seems almost routine in the western media. There has been an escalating pattern of violence toward the Christian minority in the Palestinian territories that goes under-reported.
In September 2005, Muslim gangs attacked the Christian town of Taybeh. The attack was launched because a young Muslim women had become involved in a romantic affair with a local Christian businessman and became pregnant. She was murdered by her own people, who then went on a criminal spree to terrorize Taybeh.
This event was virtually ignored by the Western media. However, if this had been a Jewish mob attacking a Muslim town in this fashion - it would have made the headlines of european papers.
Most people are familiar with Sura 9:5 in the Qu'uran that calls on Muslims to "slay the idolaters wherever ye find them".
Some revisionists attempt to play this down, or offer it as an exception to the rule. However this saying and others of a similar nature, speak to an underlying perogative that makes violence a very real option for Muslims in their dealings with non-Muslims.
The period of the Ottomans saw vicious repression directed toward Christian minorities. To cherry pick the examples of peaceful co-existence and try to suggest that all was wonderful, simply whitewashes many unpleasant truths,
1.5 million Greeks and Armenians were killed or starved to death in what has become known as the "Armenian genocide". Efforts were made to "cleanse" many other ethnic peoples - for example Assyrian Christians and before the attacks on the Kurds in Iraq - there was an orchestrated effort to cleanse the Yezidi peoples of the region.
Posted by: Aidan Maconachy at Jan 25, 2006 10:54:29 AM
I'm only nominally Christian, if that, and not to get too focused on the "eye of the needle" verse, but it never stops surprising me that people almost invariably take it out of context. The next verses (from Matthew in this case, but pretty much the same in all three synoptic Gospels) are these: "When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."
That changes the meaning pretty radically--by means of a highly characteristic rhetorical move on Jesus' part, by the way--and in my opinion brings the quotation more in line with Kyle N's thinking.
Posted by: John Lilly at Jan 25, 2006 11:07:08 AM
