Best of times, the worst of times – and you’d better believe it

We live in dangerous times.

Close to home, there’s been another round of controversy, regular as clockwork, concerning some religious leaders: ministers, muftis and all that.

They want to enact laws that (surprise surprise!) will give them huge, unchecked (and uncheckable) powers over many Muslims in Malaysia.

That the forces of conservative Islam in Malaysia are powerful is well known. Religious leaders, here and everywhere and throughout history, have always sought to convert their influence into tangible political power. It can get difficult to push back against them.

The people who shout “it’s unconstitutional!” are often outnumbered, and out-shouted, by their opponents who in turn shout variations of “race, religion, royalty”.

To accusations that they have power without accountability, such religious leaders always reply they’re accountable to God in the hereafter, and not to their fellow human beings in the here and now.

And that’s that. Very convenient I’d say. But the democratic process cannot work if there’s no accountability. We do have accountability – somewhat – for our political leaders, but not for those who claim to have a direct mandate from God.

The tide will turn

However, to anyone depressed by the internecine political battles here in Malaysia, I’ll say this – chill a bit. The tide will turn, and perhaps it has begun to turn, against the ultra-conservative Islamic forces.

In the world at large, except for minor (but noisy) countries like Afghanistan, and big (and noisy, and failing) countries like Pakistan, the trend seems to be one of liberalisation, as we’ve seen in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

So have hope, keep up the pressure, protect the rights given to us by our constitution, and don’t allow these zealots to win. Sabah and Sarawak, we’re especially looking at you for help with this.

But the real danger is out there.

For those who are looking for what could possibly doom the world, you need to look west, past Delhi, past Mecca, and past Rome too, all the way to the heartland of the United States.

Doomsday machine

While the proportions of those who call themselves Christians in Europe and the US have been steadily declining – going below 50% for the first time in the UK in 2022 – the power of the hugely conservative American evangelicals, or what are now called Christian Nationalists, has been growing.

Estimated at between a quarter or a third of the US population, these are people who see everything in the world in simplistic terms – as good-versus-evil, light-versus-darkness etc – something made easier given that the rising power threatening US dominance is from the east – the scary “Yellow Peril” of China.

The evangelicals have been the bedrock of getting US presidents elected, especially Republican ones. They’ve become the critical calculus that must be pandered to. And for that, they’re being courted by people like Trump, who knows that the path towards the White House runs through this crowd.

Their impact is especially felt in the Middle East. Together with Israel, the evangelicals were behind the disastrous decision to invade Iraq under the false pretence of the country hiding weapons of mass destruction.

That claim was, of course a lie, one that cost the lives of a few million people in the region. And the US went unpunished for it, reminding one of Stalin’s quips that one death is a tragedy, while a million is just statistics. Or as an American general in World War II said, it’s only a war crime if you lose.

Their power is especially telling in the current war between Israel and the Palestinians, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran. Their support for Israel has become the bedrock of policy for both major political parties.

Towards the end times

What exactly do they want?

Well, not much – just to have the mother of all wars there: Armageddon, when good will triumph over evil and there will be peace on Earth forever and ever and ever.

For that to happen, they need Israel to exist (1948 – done) and the Dome on the Rock to be destroyed (work in progress) and the Second Temple be constructed there (aspirational goal – working towards it).

The Israelis caught on to the possibility of a mutual agreement crucial for the creation and survival of Israel, even turning a blind eye to the unpleasant fact that many evangelicals actually believe the Holocaust was a necessary step in the fulfilment of their prophecy.

It’s ironic that the evangelicals also believe the Jews will have to be destroyed or converted after the final battle. If that isn’t the ultimate form of antisemitism, then I don’t know what is. And the rest of us don’t have much to look forward to, either.

Obviously the Zionists knew this, too, but for now both sides just ignore their differences in support of a mutual goal – the survival of Israel.

Threats to the planet

All I can say is, this will end badly. Right now, it’s ending badly for the Palestinians, but it’s also going to end badly for all of us, because if we get dragged into a third world war, there’ll be total devastation by nuclear bombs. For that, you don’t need religious prophecies, as science has already predicted it.

This extreme version of eschatology – this “science” of the last days – obviously isn’t supported by the Muslims, or Buddhists, or Hindus, or even many Catholics or Protestants, and certainly not by the atheists and agnostics or pagans or animists.

But hey, this is not a popularity contest. And unfortunately, those who do believe in it are impacting all of us in other ways, too.

James Watt, an evangelical nominated by President Ronald Reagan to be the Secretary of the Interior of the US in 1980, said openly in Congress that he doubted there’ll be many more years before the final destruction – Armageddon – of the Earth. So basically, why worry about the environment?

Tyranny of minority

To me this is just as scary as nuclear wars; that powerful figures don’t quite see the need to conserve and preserve life on Earth, whether from pollution or climate change or gross exploitation, because our time will come soon.

Just as much of this explains the carnage in the Middle East, this notion also explains why we can’t get our act together to fight the many threats to our planet. It is a case of how minority beliefs can influence the fate of the planet, especially if the minority has their finger on the nuclear button.

Compared to all these, our current issues with the religious zealots in our own country, or even the Stone Age beliefs of the Taliban, appear shallow and thin, as shallow and as thin as the zealots themselves.

We should be afraid of them. But we should be even more afraid of a chunk of humanity actively working to bring about global wars to fulfil their most fervent desires.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.