Religion  Dawn of the Caliphate & Ridda Wars

 The Ridda Wars or the Wars of

 Latin “religare” or bond between God
Apostasy (632-633 CE) were a series of
and man
military engagements between the
 Collection of cultural systems, belief
armies of the Rashidun Caliphate (632-
systems and world views that
661 CE) and the renegade tribes of
establishes symbols that relate
Arabia. The rebels had renounced their
humanity to spirituality and moral
allegiance with the nascent Islamic
values
Empire after the death of the Islamic
Age of Exploration Prophet Muhammad
 Invasion of Sassanian Persia (Iraq &
 Westerners started to travel for various Khorasan)
reasons and along their journey, they  Invasion of Syria & Levant
brought religion with them.
 Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage had The Crusades
priests and going back to the history,
 The Crusades were a series of military
when they arrived in the Philippines,
campaigns organized by Christian
they conducted the First Mass in
powers in order to retake Jerusalem
Limasawa and from then on spread
and the Holy Land back from Muslim
Christianity.
control.
The Islamic Conquest  An estimated 90,000 men, women, and
children of all classes were persuaded
 Islam arose as a religious and by political and religious leaders to
sociopolitical force in Arabia in the 7th participate in the First Crusade (1095-
century CE (610 CE onwards). 1202 CE)
 The Islamic Prophet Muhammad (l.
570- 632 CE), despite facing resistance Following key leaders and social groups:
and persecution, amassed a huge
 The Byzantine Emperor - to regain lost
following and started building an
territory and defeat a threatening rival
empire.
state.
 After he died in 632 CE, his friend Abu
 The Pope - to strengthen the papacy in
Bakr (l. 573-634 CE) laid the foundation
Italy and achieve ascendancy as head of
of the Rashidun Caliphate (632-661 CE),
the Christian church.
which continued the imperial
 Merchants - to monopolize important
expansion.
trading centers currently under Muslim
 The Islamic Prophet Muhammad started
control and earn money shipping
preaching a monotheistic faith called
crusaders to the Middle East.
Islam in his hometown of Mecca from
 Knights - to defend Christianity (its
610 CE onwards.
believers and holy places), follow the
 Medina offered Prophet Muhammad
principles of chivalry and gain material
sovereignty over the city, making him
wealth in this life and special favor in
the first ruler and king (r. 622-632 CE) of
the next one.
what was later to become the Islamic or
Muslim Empire.
As the historian C. Tyerman points out in his
God’s War, in many ways 1095 CE was the
1914 CE of the Middle Ages - a perfect
storm of moral outrage, personal gain,
institutionalized political and religious
propaganda, peer pressure, societal
expectations, and a thirst for adventure,
which all combined to inspire people to
leave their homes and embark on a perilous
journey to a destination they knew nothing
about and where they might meet glory and
death or just death.
While the Crusades ultimately resulted in
defeat for Europeans and a Muslim victory,
many argue that they successfully extended
the reach of Christianity and Western
civilization. The Roman Catholic Church
experienced an increase in wealth, and the
power of the Pope was elevated after the
Crusades ended
Among followers of Islam, however, the
Crusaders were regarded as immoral,
bloody and savage. The ruthless and
widespread massacre of Muslims, Jews and
other non-Christians resulted in bitter
resentment that persisted for many years.
Even today, some Muslims derisively refer
to the West’s involvement in the Middle
East as a “crusade.”
Secularization is a cultural transition in
which religious values are gradually
replaced with nonreligious values.
 Secularization debate have been
reframed.
 Secularization is understood as a
shift in the overall frameworks of
human condition; it makes it
possible for people to have a choice
between belief and non-belief in a
manner hitherto unknown.
 Society becomes increasingly
modern; religion becomes less and
less important.
 A decline in religious practices
within modern societies.
 Religious institutions become
separated from secular institutions
and spheres of influence.
 Religion has retreated into the
private sphere.
Migration and Religious transnationalism
 Religion plays an important role in the
organization of migration, community
building by migrants and all kinds of
transnational links between home and
host countries.
According to Vertovec (2000: 13) we should
understand transnationalism as the actual,
ongoing exchanges of information, money
and resources – as well as regular travel and
communication – that members of a
diaspora may undertake with others in the
homeland or elsewhere within the
globalized ethnic community.
 Contemporary study of migration uses
the concept of transnationalism to
emphasize the fluidity of space and
place, the (imagined) communities
created in the process, the permeability
of borders, etc., concepts that express a
shift from the ‘materialist economistic’
focus to attention on the subjective
experiences of migration (Lewellen,
2002).
 Transnational religion as it appears in
scholarly texts has not so much to do
with migration, but instead points to
the ways in which world religions create
a transnational civil society that
challenges the nation
(Rudolph/Piscatori 1997).
 According to Schiller transnational religion
refers to the religious practices, discursive
and non-discursive, and the institutional
form of a religion, that are lived at different
places, and in which the daily practice of
both locations is part of the same social
field.
Fundamentalism and Religious Extremism
 Religious fundamentalism refers to the
belief of an individual or a group of
individuals in the absolute authority of
a sacred religious text or teachings of a
particular religious leader, prophet,
and/ or God.
 These fundamentalists believe that
their religion is beyond any form of
criticism, and should therefore also be
forced upon others.
 It is worth noting that even though the
notion of fundamentalism first emerged
in the beginning of the 20th century in
the context of disputes within American
Protestantism, it did not become
prevalent in political rhetoric or
academic discourse until the end of the
1970s and the revolution in Iran
(Haynes 2010).
 The term “fundamentalists” is
nowadays used to refer, almost in the
same breath, to American Protestants
of the end of the 19th century and the
Islamists of the turn of the 20th and
Jihad
21st centuries.
 The term “fundamentalist” was first
used in the United States to describe
the proponents of a series of Protestant
publications entitled The Fundamentals,
which defended a literal interpretation
of the Scripture.
 Religious fundamentalist is simply
someone who accepts religion in its full
form as the foundation of knowledge
about reality, without attempting to
“bend” or relativize, compromise or
mitigate (Sacks 1991), one who
represents “strict adherence” to
religious doctrine (Rausch 2015, p. 29)
while believing that its doctrine
represents the fundamental truth about
God and the human condition.
 UNESCO defines religious extremism as
beliefs and actions that support
violence to attain religious goals.
 All too often, religious extremists have
led their followers to commit atrocities
through a dogmatic belief in inhumane
ideas.
 One prominent definition of extremism
as a motivation for terrorism is that
extremism comprises ideological beliefs
about an obligation to bring back the
political system to a form suggested by
religious norms through violence (Arena
and Arrigo, 2005).
 The Islamic religion does not permit to
do extremist or terrorist acts, in any of
the harsh conditions. According to its
teachings, bloodshed is a grave sin,
regardless of whose blood it is. Here is a
reference to the holy sources: "...that
whoever kills a person -unless it is for
murder or corruption on earth -it is as if
he killed the whole of mankind; and
whoever saves a person, it is as if he
saved the whole of mankind."[2].
 Many modern writers claim that the
main meaning of Jihad is the internal
spiritual struggle, and this is accepted
by many Muslims.
 However, there are so many references
to Jihad as a military struggle in Islamic
writings that it is incorrect to claim that
the interpretation of Jihad as holy war is
wrong.
  The literal meaning of Jihad is struggle
or effort.
Muslims use the word Jihad to describe
three different kinds of struggle:
 A believer's internal struggle to live
out the Muslim faith as well as
possible
 The struggle to build a good Muslim
society
 Holy war: the struggle to defend
Islam, with force if necessary
Globalization and Religion
 The position and place of religion is
problematized within the context of
globalization
 This problematic concerns with the
relations and the impact of
globalization upon religion
 From this point of view, even religions
that are not conventionally considered
“global” are nevertheless influenced by
globalization.
RELIGION VS. GLOBALIZATION
 Globalization as a threat to religion
 Religion as the greatest resistance
to globalization
The relationship between religion and
globalization is complex
Religions of the World
JUDAISM
 Judaism is a strictly monotheistic
religion practiced by the Jewish people,
an ethnic and religious nation
descended from the historic peoples of
Israel and Judah.
 Originated in the Middle East in at least
the 500s BCE.
 God – Yahweh
HINDUISM
 Hinduism is by many accounts the
oldest religion in the world, due to its
origins in Vedic beliefs dating as far
back as the 1500s BCE.
 The religion has no founder.
 World's third largest religion.
The son of Shiva and Parvati, the pot-bellied
elephant god Ganesha is the lord of
success, knowledge, and wealth.
 Shiva represents death and dissolution,
destroying worlds so they may be
recreated by Brahma. He is the
destroyer.
One of the most beloved of Hindu gods,
blue-skinned Krishna is the deity of love
and compassion.
The peace-loving deity of the Hindu Trinity,
Vishnu is the preserver or sustainer of life.
His consort is Lakshmi, the goddess of
domesticity and prosperity.
Brahma is the Hindu Creator god. Brahma is
supreme in the triad of great Hindu gods
which includes Shiva and Vishnu
ISLAM
 Islam is a strictly monotheistic faith
founded by the prophet Muhammad in
the year 607 in present-day Saudi
Arabia.
  World's second largest religion, mostly
concentrated in the Middle East and
Southeast Asia.

JAINISM

 a nontheistic religion founded in India

in the 6th century BC by the Jina
Vardhamana Mahavira as a reaction
against the teachings of orthodox
Brahmanism.
 The Jain religion teaches salvation by
perfection through successive lives, and
non-injury to living creatures, and is
noted for its ascetics.
CHRISTIANITY
 Christianity is a monotheistic religion
centered around the personage of
Jesus of Nazareth, or Jesus Christ.
 Christianity arose in the 30s– 50s CE as
a religious offshoot of Judaism
SHINTO
 The word Shintō, which literally means
“the way of kami”
 Worshiping the forces of nature.
Meaning the way of God, Shinto has
animistic and shamanistic beliefs that
are based on respect for kami.
 The purpose of most Shinto rituals is to
keep away evil spirits by purification,
prayers and offerings to the kami.

BUDDHISM

 Buddhism is a religious tradition

founded by Gautama Buddha in the
early 400s BCE.
 Buddhism is today the fourth largest
religion in the world, being the majority
religion of many countries in Southeast
Asia. WHEN DID GLOBALIZATION START TO
INFLUENCE RELIGION?
Buddha’s Four Noble Truths:
 Evolving trade routes led to the
1. Life has inevitable suffering
colonization of the Asia, Africa, Central
2. There is a cause to our suffering
and South America.
3. There is an end to suffering
 Religion became an integral part of
4. The end to suffering is contained in
colonization and later on globalization.
the eight-fold path
 Religion has been a major feature in
some historical conflicts and the most
recent wave of modern terrorism.

Tools uniting people all over the world on

religious basis

 Books (Printing press)

  Movies protection which are uphold
 Cellphone apps by religious traditions.
 Social networks
In terms of economics
 Charity funds
 Special internet sites (websites)  Many religions have also grown
 Religious schools financially, providing more financial
 Ease to travel resources for religions to spread their
 Information technologies beliefs.
 Modern transportation
 The media are deemed important
means for dissemination of religious In media as information superhighway
ideas.
 Websites
EFFECTS  Television
 MEDIA and Religion
 PROSELYTIZATION (Promotion of
 In short, globalization allows for
religion)
religions previously isolated from one
 RELIGIOUS MARKET (Oliver Roy)
another to now have regular and
 Worldwide circulation of religion
unavoidable contact. As a result,
 De- ethnicization of religion
globalization brings to the light the fact
Religious transnationalism is going to continue that since religions have similar values,
to attract the attention of new generations of not one of them is “correct” and,
researchers and scholars. therefore, can be changed.

Globalization Engendering Greater Religious Religion in Global Conflict

Tolerance
 brings a culture of pluralism
 world’s leading religious traditions
— Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam—teach
values such as human dignity,
equality, freedom, peace, and
solidarity.
In political areas
 Globalization has integrated cultural,
ethnic, and religious differences,
through a large number of international
organizations such as
 United Nations (UN)
 discuss issues like
international peace and
security, health issues,
equality, and environmental
 The era of globalization brought
enormous problems such as
 Disruption of traditional
communities,
 causes economic marginalization;
 brings mental stress
 Globalization is associated with
 Westernization
 Americanization.
The dominance and hegemony exerted
by these two processes, particularly on
the Third World countries, makes
religions related cultures and identities
take defensive measures to protect
themselves.
CONFLICTS INVOLVING DIFFERENT RELIGIONS
AND RELIGION-LINKED TERRORIST ATTACKS

Expansion of Terrorism on religious basis
 Videos and audios in the internet of
sermons read by missionaries which
contain extremist ideas, call for crimes,
murders, terrorist attacks
 The possibility of communicating with
anyone across the world and sharing
ideas provoke the spread of terrorists
and expansion of their band
REASONS OF SYRIAN WAR
 Syrian geo-political importance
 The Main Players in the Conflict (Bashar
al-Assad and other Islamic groups)
 Syria’s Religious Conflict
 The Role of Foreign Powers
REFUGEE PROBLEM
Islamic Culture
 Incompatible to values that accompany
globalization like liberalism,
consumerism, rationalism, etc. which
advocate scientism and secularism.
 “Globalization is not only seen as a rival
of Islamic ways, but also as an alien
force divorced from Muslim realities.
Southeast Asia – Regionalism
 HUDHUD LAW
 Malaysia
 Muslims are no longer allowed
to change their religion
 Only an adolescent & fair male
can stand as a witness in cases
of Zina (illicit sex) & Liwat
(Sodomy)
 Indonesia
 Prohibits inter-religious
marriage
 Brunie
 Imposes severe punishments for
offenders
CONCLUSIONS
 Religion is definitely the integral part of
globalization, thus they should not be
studied separately
 The situation of religion in the world of
today is twofold
 (TWO TRENDS: secularization and
conservative offense)
 The globalization is a reason to
integrate the society around the world
including the religion issue
 Multiculturalism, immigration
 An increased understanding and respect
for other cultures
 However, religion-based conflicts are on
the rise