All of Armstrong’s arguments come back to the same basic point: It’s impossible to explain contemporary or historical violence solely through religion. “Muslim fundamentalism … has often—though again, not always—segued into physical aggression,” she writes. “This is not because Islam is constitutionally more prone to violence than Protestant Christianity, but rather because Muslims had a much harsher introduction to modernity.” (Here, she dates modernity to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.) In other words: Even religious history has to be read through the narrative lens of politics.The point, once again, is fairly straightforward: Humans start wars and slaughter their enemies and blow themselves up for complicated reasons. For a book with such an abundance of historical facts and analysis, Fields of Blood seems to be making a simple argument at an ambitiously macroscopic level—it’s an inevitably overwhelming sprint through nearly 7,000 years of history. But maybe that’s the point: Humans talk in frameworks. People see the world through cultural associations and narratives of history, even if they’re not apparent; that’s why the attendees of Armstrong’s book talks can intellectually understand that religion hasn’t caused all the major wars in history while still almost subconsciously believing religion to be inherently violent. Fields of Bloodcan’t debunk the rhetoric about religion that has built up over decades, but “the point is to sow a little seed of doubt, to muddy the waters,” Armstrong told me. Perhaps that’s all one book can hope to do.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 17:49:33 +0000