El 11 de septiembre o la nueva guerra religiosa

Andrew Sullivan cree que lo que ocurrió hace siete años es el inicio de una nueva guerra religiosa, pero no entre el islam y el cristianismo como pensarían algunos, sino entre el fundamentalismo y los valores de la modernidad, y creo tiene mucha razón. Cada día vemos que el fundamentalismo islámico, cristiano, budista, judío... las sectas como la cienciología o MexWorks se unen contra los valores liberales de la Ilustración. La ciencia, la libertad de expresión y de enseñanza les molestan, como lo hacen los derechos de las mujeres o de homosexuales, y todo el laicismo en general. La guerra actual es entre dos modelos de civilización, uno abierto, y uno cerrado, uno tolerante y otro basado en el control del pensamiento y se batalla en todo el mundo, en todas partes. El ensayo de Sullivan sigue siendo muy actual. Copio un fragmento de This is a Religious War:

Perhaps the most admirable part of the response to the conflict that began on Sept. 11 has been a general reluctance to call it a religious war. Officials and commentators have rightly stressed that this is not a battle between the Muslim world and the West, that the murderers are not representative of Islam. President Bush went to the Islamic Center in Washington to reinforce the point. At prayer meetings across the United States and throughout the world, Muslim leaders have been included alongside Christians, Jews and Buddhists.

The only problem with this otherwise laudable effort is that it doesn't hold up under inspection.

The religious dimension of this conflict is central to its meaning. The words of Osama bin Laden are saturated with religious argument and theological language. Whatever else the Taliban regime is in Afghanistan, it is fanatically religious. Although some Muslim leaders have criticized the terrorists, and even Saudi Arabia's rulers have distanced themselves from the militants, other Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere have not denounced these acts, have been conspicuously silent or have indeed celebrated them. The terrorists' strain of Islam is clearly not shared by most Muslims and is deeply unrepresentative of Islam's glorious, civilized and peaceful past. But it surely represents a part of Islam -- a radical, fundamentalist part -- that simply cannot be ignored or denied.

In that sense, this surely is a religious war -- but not of Islam versus Christianity and Judaism. Rather, it is a war of fundamentalism against faiths of all kinds that are at peace with freedom and modernity. This war even has far gentler echoes in America's own religious conflicts -- between newer, more virulent strands of Christian fundamentalism and mainstream Protestantism and Catholicism. These conflicts have ancient roots, but they seem to be gaining new force as modernity spreads and deepens. They are our new wars of religion -- and their victims are in all likelihood going to mount with each passing year.