World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 408

the Islamic resurgence? Or is it possible to seek different layers in which the religious/spiritual factors make sense of their presence? It may also be pertinent to ask, taking cue from the dispute on the political ambience of Islamic ideology, what makes a religion, if it is something essentially antithetical to politics, getting drawn to the realm of political intervention. Why is it the case of violence in Islam, a religion which is termed or vouched by itself an ideology and morality of peace? If there is a felt-presence of a return of religion, is only in the case of Islam that the presence becomes a problem at all? If the return of religion becomes a nagging problem, is it only so because it assumes the form of political violence? Who is actually responsible for it? Or whose problem at all it is? Why is the Question, 'Why Religion Again??
At the outset, the present-day western societies seem to be opening up more and more to the other cultures, and thereby they began to adopt an inclusive approach towards non-western beliefs and practices, making themselves pluralistic and multicultural. There has wide acceptance for non-western religious and spiritual practices. The phenomenon of so-called 'New Religious Movement' shows an emerging trend in the west in receiving religious and spiritual traditions from the east. However, it appears that the west is not only witnessing the growing presence of religion and cultures from Africa and Asia, but also being challenged by them in many ways. It is also found that many of the so-called religious revivalist movements have been taken their origin either within the territory of the west or indirectly with its support from outside. Many of the Islamic militancy are found to be creation of its own geopolitics. What the west now calls as revivalism and fundamentalism, which are perceived as being persistent threat to it, were creations of its imperialistic ambitions over the east. Sometimes, it is also viewed that, what it is being encountered by religious terrorism is nothing but a retaliation to the legacy of colonialism and imperial dominance of the west over the rest of the world. The theory of clash of civilizations must have · sprung from such crises of the west. And this could be the historical context
in which the western political powers have united to combat religious terrorism. In this sense, even though the west shows much indifference to religion or sometimes turns to civil religions, the intellectual context of the west is also marked by the preoccupation with religion. Perhaps, it might be in relation to such an intellectual context that the very perception of return of religion becomes a viable problem at all.
Apart from the dimensions of global religious wars, international political affairs, or 'clash of civilizations' of Islamist politics and the 9/11 incident, they might be taken to raise many other issues related to religion and life or culture of people. It might be taken to be provoking a rethinking on the prevalent ways of looking at the significance of religious or spiritual
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