The Oppression of Shudras/Dalits in India, Part VI: A Hindu Liberationist Perspective

Finally, I've finished the series! The last time I posted a blog in this series was Part V on Oct. 28, 2006. I've been swamped with school and working for the newspaper, but I'm on break now until Jan. 24, 2007. So I'll also be working on my Mespotamia Burning series as well (which I also haven't done in a long time due to college and newspaper work).

‘So knowing this, and becoming calm, self controlled, quiet, patient and concentrated, he sees the self in himself, sees the self as all. Evil does not overcome him: he overcomes all evil. Evil does not burn him: he burns all evil. Without evil, without dust, free from doubt, he becomes Brāhmana. This is the world of Brahmā.’
-Brhadāranyaka Upanisad IV.5.23

The actual word, “Dalit,” means “crushed underfoot” or “broken into pieces.” The word comes from the 19th century activist Jotirao Govindrao Phule (1827-1890) who fought to remove the stigma of “untouchability” in India. The term also comes from the writings of the Dalit Panthers, a radical Dalit rights movement founded in 1972 in the state of Maharashtra.(1) And indeed, for Dalits, Sudras, and SC/ST peoples all over India this is the reality they still find themselves in today (by no fault of their own). For thousands of years Dalits and ST peoples had no right to property, were only allowed to eat food thrown away by higher caste Hindus, could not drink from town and village wells, weren’t allowed to enter Hindu temples, were denied access to education, performed menial jobs for upper caste Hindus, and were not allowed to live in the main towns and villages. They had to live on the outside, and since they couldn’t live in towns they had no right to ownership of property and thus “leading to [a] lack of access to all sources of economic mobility” which further caused “social exclusion and economic discrimination over the centuries.”(2)

Yet, still today, despite Indian independence in 1947 and a plethora of legislation outlawing caste discrimination against Dalits, SC/ST, and Other Backward Caste (OBC) peoples are just as thoroughly oppressed as they have been since before the founding of the modern state of India. Today, Dalits, SC/ST, and OBCs comprise about 52 percent of the Indian population,(3) and including lower caste Shudras, 77% of the population.(4) The reasons for the Dalits continued oppression are many, some of them religious, others economic, and still others political, with each category constantly melding into the next. Sagarika Ghose explains the situation of the Dalits quite well:

The dalit's pariah status derives its strength and justification from religious texts. In the Manusmriti, the dalit is described as "polluted," in the same way as a menstruating woman, a widow, or a person who has recently been bereaved is polluted. The dalit is "unclean" from birth. He violates, by his very existence, the brahminical obsession with hygiene...While the "untouchability" of the menstruating woman or the bereaved is temporary and he or she can escape the Untouchable condition after the period of "pollution" is past, the dalit can never escape his status: he is perpetually filthy.(5)

This “pariah status” thrust upon the Dalits by greater powers has caused much of the suffering we see today. In a census taken in 1991 it was found that 70% of all Dalit and SC households were landless, by the year 2000 it had increased to 75%,(6) this despite the fact that in 1990 the V. P. Singh government decided to implement the policies of the Mandal Commission Report of the Backward Classes Commission, a commission on how to deal with Dalits, SC/ST, and OBCs that came out with their report in 1980 (part of the report called for reserving 27% of all services and public sector undertakings and 27% of all higher education slots for students, to Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs).(7) This landlessness and lack of property causes many problems for Dalits; because they have no property (that they own) they are often bonded-laborers and their children are forced to work as well, this causes many Dalits to be dependent on waste-land for grazing. A study in 1992 showed that in the state of Rajasthan, that as many as 89% of Dalits were involved in scavenging to make ends meat.(8) On top of land issues in 2000 49.06% of the working Dalit and SC population were agricultural workers with 32.69% being STs and only 19.66% being labeled as “other” which shows a “preponderance of dalits in agricultural labour.” Not only that but from 1991-2001 the number of agricultural workers increased. As for child labor, around 60 million children (reported) work in India, 40% of the labor force comes from Dalits and ST peoples.(9) Across all levels the situation for Dalits has been getting worse, not better, for all those statistics you can look at parts II and III on my blog series “The Oppression of Shudras/Dalits in India.” Now that the situation of Dalits in India is established (again, for more, see parts II and III) we can go on to what Hindus and Dalits have done since the late 19th century in fighting against caste discrimination and untouchability and how the Hindu religion can play a liberating role in the emancipation of Dalits instead of an oppressive role, by looking at the actions of Vivekananda, Gandhi, Ambedkar, and other Indian movements.

One of the early reformers of the Hindu religion (especially in relation to Dalits and women’s rights) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was Narendranath Datta, also known as Vivekananda (1863-1902). Vivekananda was born into an upper caste Ksatriyas family in Bengal and was educated in a Western-style university where he learned about Western philosophy, Christianity, and Western sciences. Latter on he joined the Brahmo Samaj (Society of the Brahma) which was “dedicated to eliminating child marraige and illiteracy” and was “determined to spread education among women and the lower castes.” Latter on he became a disciple of Ramakrishna (who preached on the unity of all of the world religions). Instead of adhering to the Vedas in a dogmatic way Vivekananda stressed the humanistic side of the Vedas and thus became a prevailing force in preaching the Vedanta school of thought to the United States and England.(10) The Vedanta school is one of the six orthodox philosophies of Hinduism which based itself on the “speculative portion of late Vedic literature” and is chiefly concerned with the knowledge of Brahman and the unification of oneself with her or his atman to attain the truth.(11) In 1897 he founded the Ramakrishna Mission at the monastery of Belur Math which sat on the Ganges River near Calcutta which was dedicated to social work for many in India, including Dalits.(12) Yet despite his work he had done very little as a whole for the Dalits and for emancipating the Dalits from caste oppression. What Vivekananda showed us (as did the other Hindu reformers I mentioned in Part V of my blog) was that one did not have to dogmatically adhere to the Vedas to be Hindu. Vivekananda was just as Hindu as anyone from the BJP or the RSS today (even more so) and yet he was able to fuse diverse philosophical beliefs and to reject the uglier forms of Vedic Hinduism in order to help out those of the lower caste and of the female sex. Yet Vivekananda was of the upper castes and his view was very much influenced by Western white beliefs. Despite his reforms he still was afflicted with an upper caste and bourgeois mentality that hindered him from truly offering an alternative to Hindus and to truly uplifting the lower castes and Dalits from oppression.

After Vivekananda, one of the last reformers during a significant period of reform for the Hindu religion in the 19th century (for more see Part V), came Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956) whom, states Ghose, emerged “from the context created by these nineteenth-century movements as well as deeper traditions of anticaste protests by Buddhism, Jainism, and the Bhakti culuts.”(13)

As a child Gandhi grew up in a Vaisya caste household where his mother was a strict adherent to Vaisnavism, a Hindu sect which worships the god Vishnu and his incarnations, especially those of Rama and Krishna. His religious life was also influenced by stands of Jainism and ahimsa (non-injury to all living beings), so the tenets of non-violence and that everything in the universe is eternal surrounding the young Gandhi all the time,(14) which helps us better understand his religious and moral philosophy latter in his life.

After growing up in India and being educated in England Gandhi’s first boat of fighting for those who were oppressed was during his time in South Africa, which won him acclaim in India and England. He studied the deplorable conditions Indians lived in and founded the Natal Indian Congress in 1894 which took up Indian grievances to South Africa and England (since South Africa was a colony of England). Yet despite all this Gandhi still had many bourgeois tendencies that he would carry with him throughout his life (all though they would be morphed into more high-caste Hindu tendencies), in 1899 Gandhi argued all Indians that it was their duty as citizens under the English crown to defend South Africa during the Boer War. Yet after the war Gandhi continued to fight for the rights of Indians and took up more confrontational non-violent mass actions.(15) These battle in South Africa further more shaped his thinking just as his mother’s religious devotions had shaped his thinking in his youth. With this we will look at Gandhi’s actions relating to the Dalits and what he did (and didn’t do) for them and how, despite the fact that he was a very conservative and strictly observant Hindu (with upper-caste tendencies), he fought against the stigma of untouchability and urged reform all across India to help out the Dalits.

By autumn of 1920 Gandhi had become a very important figure in Indian politics and he had even managed to help refashion the Indian National Congress (founded in 1885) into a very formidable political tool for the fight against British rule, having the Congress Party branch out all over India by entrenching itself in Indians small towns and villages. In 1932, during a bout in prison, Gandhi started a fast (which his mother had done many times in his youth) to protest the British government’s move to segregate the Dalits by assigning them separate elections in the new constitution of India. His fast caused upheaval in the country and worked, thus starting Gandhi’s actions to remove the stigma of untouchability from the Dalits within Hinduism and the state of India. In 1934 Gandhi had resigned from his position in the Congress Party and also resigned as a member. Instead he wanted to build up national unity “from the bottom up” by setting up programs in rural India (85% of the population back than was rural) and educating around the countryside through himself and others. A part of this building “from the bottom up” included fighting against untouchability.(16)

Gandhi’s fight for Dalits was very much steeped in Hinduism. Instead of Hinduism being a barrier for him (or an excuse) in helping Dalits and coming in contact with them it was instead used as a jumping off point, a platform, for trying to remove the stigma of untouchability and it was something he used to the fullest. After resigning from the Congress Party his new mission, and revolution, was not necessarily home-rule for Indians by Indians (but he did fight against British rule) but was an “exercise in the autonomy, the dignity, and the freedom of the ‘non-subject’ by being neither colonizer nor colonized, neither oppressor nor oppressed, neither hawk nor dove...”(17) In the Brhadāranyaka Upanisad IV.5.23, which I quote above, it states that if one lives a righteous Hindu life one can become Brahmā, unified with Brahman. This was essentially how Gandhi saw the Dalit question. Because Dalits (or harijan as he called them, that is “Children of God”) where Hindu and because they were fully human and could indeed become unified with Brahman just as the Brahman caste could become unified, than one should treat Dalits with respect, and old traditions, such as untouchability, were misguided and hurtful. Gandhi said that “[t]he taint of Untouchability is an intolerable burden on Hinduism. Let us not deny God by denying to a fifth of our race the right of association and on equal footing.” The culmination of centuries of anti-Brahmin thought in Hinduism and different Hindu sects (such as Jainism) essentially meet each other in the figure of Gandhi (for more on this see Part V). Unlike Vivekananda he had actively tackled the question of the Dalits and had done much to try and reform Hindu’s in their thinking. Yet, as we can see today, very little has changed for the Dalit and her or his situation. Yet Gandhi was very much effected by strands of upper-caste conservative Hinduism, even though he showed us that one can still practice such strands without oppressing Dalits and other ST/SCs and OBCs. This is where Ambedkar comes into play.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, born into a Dalit Mahar family in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, was a contemporary of Gandhi’s, and, like Gandhi, campaigned for the rights of Dalits all across India. Except his was a much more involved and militant campaign seeking the emancipation of all Dalits across India and one that scourged upper-caste Hindu practices and any semblance of elitist thinking and help from those who carried Brahminic tendencies. Unlike Gandhi who had been born into a well off family (Gandhi’s father served as a dewan, or chief minister, in Porbandar and Rajkot) Ambedkar was a Dalit and grew up being humiliated by his fellow school mates whom where high-caste. As a Mahar, Ambedkar’s duties traditionally were cutting wood for cremation, getting rid of dead cattle, washing wells, delivering messages over long distances, and other menial and degrading tasks. Also, all Mahar’s were to live in segregated areas outside of the villages and towns that they served.(18) Ambedkar was able to study abroad in Great Britain, Germany, and the United States, where he meet such thinkers as John Dewey, one of the original founders of the school of pragmatism and a pioneer in functional psychology. His education abroad (which was due to a scholarship given to him by the gaekwar, or ruler, of Baroda)(19) greatly influenced his thinking, just as Gandhi’s education abroad. Yet his education abroad wasn’t the only thing that influenced his thinking, it was also his life as a Dalit, being treated as dirt by other Hindus, as well as a history of “powerful 19th century anti-caste movements in his own province” and “the histories of numerous heterodox, anti-Vedic, materialist sects/schools that have always existed on the fringes of Hinduism.”(20) (For more on this see Part V).

Originally Ambedkar was optimistic about the political and economic emancipation of his peoples, the Dalits, and that they would eventually be integrated into mainstream Indian society. Soon though he would come to realize that this was not the case, and while originally religion didn’t play an initial factor in his political struggles it soon would loom large. After intense struggles with getting rights to access drinking water from village wells, the right to enter temples, and the a struggle in voting rights in 1932 in where he held intense debates with Gandhi who opposed separate voting rights for Dalits, he quickly came to realize, in his mind, that the struggle for Dalit rights was essentially a struggle that was not only political and economic, but also had to do with the ingrained bigotry within the Hindu caste-system itself. He also became disillusioned with the Congress Party, which he saw as filled with upper-caste nationalism that cared more for home rule than for the emancipation of the Dalits. This led him to declare in 1935, “I was born a Hindu, but I will not die a Hindu.(21)

One large weakness that Gandhi had (all though it didn’t undermine his belief in Hinduism and it didn’t make his belief in Hinduism wrong) was that while he was indeed campaigning for the removal of untouchability from Dalits he was, as the same time, publically lauding the caste system as being divinely sanctioned and a source that brought harmony and community to Indian society, as supposed to the capitalistic and individualistic system of the West.(22) Yet what Ambedkar saw and what Gandhi saw, were to different things. Because Ambedkar lived the life of a Dalit he saw first hand how the opposite was actually the case. The caste system couldn’t be divinely sanctioned because it brought so much trauma and pain and suffering to so many people, this was something Ambedkar had experienced first hand while Gandhi, because of his caste privilege and economic privilege as a youth, never experienced. Essentially Gandhi was blind to the deep and inherent flaw in his statements lauding the caste system. If anything, the caste system only brought about social harmony through the oppression of Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs, it was through their pain that society was able to “gain.” Because of this, Ambedkar was one of Gandhi’s harshest critiques. “Examine the Gandhian attitude to strikes,” stated Ambedkar, “the Gandhian reverence for caste and the Gandhian doctrine of Trusteeship of the rich...Gandhism is the philosophy of the well-to-do and leisured class.”(23) Ambedkar was able to see aspects of the Gandhian movement that others couldn’t (or refused to) see because of their caste background. What Ambedkar saw was a movement that was conservative, upper-caste, and bourgeois. Because Gandhi was upper-caste and because most of his leadership was upper-caste Ambedkar wanted nothing to do with Gandhi, his movement, or the upper-caste dominated Congress Party. Not that they would want anything to do with Ambedkar either since he argued that political democracy was meaningless without radical social transformation and a repudiation of the caste system.(24) Ambedkar stated that the “‘monster of caste’ crosses everyone’s path alike, every which way you may turn: ‘you cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill the monster [of caste].’”(25) Ghose states, “For Gandhi, Hinduism and the caste system were not negotiable. But Ambedkar rejected both Hinduism and the caste system as well as the claims of any upper caste to represent the dalits. For Gandhi, Untouchability was an evil within Hinduism, to be reformed by Hindus. For Ambedkar, upper-caste leadership of dalits was abhorrent.”(26) In his 1936 book, Annihilation of Caste, Ambedkar stated that upper-caste Hindus and supporters of caste did not deny Dalits a way of life because they were “inhuman or wrong headed...but because they are deeply religious. The myriad hierarchies and taboos of caste have the sanctity of the shastras [scriptures]...people will not change their conduct unless they have ceased to believe in the sanctity of the shastras.”(27) So the real enemy is not the people observing caste but the shastras that teach people to observe the caste system.

With Gandhi, despite his flaws, we saw a devout and observant Hindu fighting to alleviate the Dalits of their plight. With Ambedkar we saw a Dalit militantly, and without remorse, completely take on the system of caste at full speed in order to emancipate his people by any means necessary. In fact, on October 14, 1956 Ambedkar, along with 200,000 or so of his followers, renounced Hinduism and converted to Buddhism in Nagpur, India in a final repudiation of Hinduism and of the caste system.(28)

Because of Gandhi and Ambedkar the constitution of India outlawed discrimination based on caste and also created “reservations” (affirmative action policies).(29) Yet despite the legal emancipation of Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs, Dalits are still harshly discriminated against. Gail Omvedt wrote in The Hindu that:

The reservation system was instituted not so much on the basis of the Constitution as on that of the decades-old elite resistance to restructuring public employment. It serves several purposes. It allows the elite to maintain the facade of a generous patron of Dalits while continuing to deprive them of mas-level education and access to resources. It provides a process to absorb some of their brightest members into a system still based more on extortion and corruption than true public service. Finally, it continues to block true representation of the majority of the nation’s population.”(30)

Yet, even with these factors Dalits are still fighting as they have been since the death of Ambedkar. In 1972 emerged the Dalit Panthers (borrowing their name from the American Black Panther Party for Self Defense) which was made up mostly of militant poets and writers seeking full emancipation of Dalits in India. Yet within a few years the movement splintered and became coopted by the government elite as its members joined several government committees and panels. In 1984 the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was formed after Dalit leaders Kanshi Ram and Mayawati Kumari broke away from BAMCEF (All-India Backward and Minority Employees Federation, set up as a “talent bank” for Dalits in 1976). The BSP was set up to represent Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs in the government of India. Yet despite their rise in power in key states such as Uttar Pradesh it has fromed governments with and has allied itself with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the utter embodiment of conservative caste worshiping Hindu nationalism, especially when it attacks Muslims, Dalits, and others whom are not high-caste Hindus. Ghose explains that their hasn’t been able to be a solid Dalit and “society of the backward” movement because of the nature of the caste system (because of the many diverse states Dalits from different parts of India can’t even speak to each other due to language barriers) and “because of the nature of agrarian relations, which pits backward castes against each other and thus divides the society of the backward.” Also, “[s]ince brahmins have become urbanized, it is the intermediate backward castes (those just above the ‘pollution line’) who have become owners of the land on which the dalit is a laborer. This has led several dalit intellectuals to argue that the greater enemy of the dalit is no longer the brahmin but the intermediate castes,”(31) which I’m sure delights many of the Brahmin caste.

Yet despite all of this we have seen in Parts V and VI how Hinduism, instead of being a tool for oppression, can instead be used as a tool for liberation. Instead of taking the Vedas and other religious texts at their word many Hindus have been able to reject certain aspects of sacred Hindu literature that have Brahminic supremacist tendencies, and have still be able to hold onto their core Hindu beliefs, but without harming themselves or others. Also, we have seen, especially in the example of Ambedkar, how Dalits have taken their destiny into their own hands in order to liberate themselves. We see that Dalits can see certain aspects of so called “reformed” Hinduism that others can’t, mainly that many of these “reformed” Hindus were actually still perpetuating high-caste tendencies and were in effect, talking down to Dalits (such as Gandhi’s term “harijan,” which Ambedkar and other Dalits found utterly repugnant). Because of this, Dalits are the ones who are to liberate themselves and no one else, anyone other than a Dalit actively trying to lead Dalits is essentially perpetuating their upper-caste privilege and in turn is doing more harm than good. No one can claim (without being ignorant to history, caste oppression, and utterly arrogant) to be a leader of Dalits except a Dalit. Hindu’s can, and should, fight for Dalit rights. By saying that Dalit’s are the only ones who can liberate themselves however doesn’t mean that upper-caste Hindu’s are off the hook. In fact, the opposite is true. Because many upper-caste Hindu’s enjoy benefits in a society that is based on caste oppression and the exploitation of Sudras, Dalits, SC/STs, and OBCs, they must critically look at themselves and at the caste system in place that keeps them propped up in a life of privilege. Upper-caste Hindus (who don’t need to loose their religious beliefs, all though for some that may be impossible, and others, at no fault of their own, may find losing their belief to be a benefit, and I don’t fault them for it) must actively help out Dalits by speaking to others within society about the plight of the Dalits and by speaking about caste privilege and its necessary destruction. I cannot know where the struggle for Dalit rights will head since I am an outsider but I do know that as Dalits take charge (as they have for many decades now) and as fellow Hindus continue to use their religion in a liberating manner (and to attack those aspects of Hinduism that are oppressive) there can be a strong liberating voice that will demand, and get, revolutionary change in the system. As an outsider I will wait and see how this continues to unfold.

Notes

1. Ghose, Sagarika. “The Dalit in India.” Social Research 70, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 85.
2. Communist Party of India (Marxist). “Resolution Adopted At The All India Convention On
Problems of Dalits” (New Delhi: February 22, 2006), 1. See also part II of this series in my blog post http://mustardkernal.blogspot.com/2006/09/opression-of-shudras-in-india-part-ii.html.
3. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 84.
4. See http://mustardkernal.blogspot.com/2006/08/oppression-of-shudras-in-india-marxist.html.
5.Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 84.
6. Communist Party India (Marxist), “Problems of Dalits,” 5.
7. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 97-98.
8. Grey, Mary. “Dalit Women and the Struggle for Justice in a World of Global Capitalism.”
Feminist Theology: The Journal of Britain & Ireland School of Feminist Theology 14, no. 1
(Sept. 2005): 135-136.
9. Communist Party India (Marxist), “Problems of Dalits,” 5.
10. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2006, “Vivekananda,” available at Encyclopedia Britannica Online
http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9075594.
11. Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. “Vedanta,” available at FirstSearch
http://firstsearch.oclc.org.ezproxy (accessed Nov. 25, 2006).
12. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Vivekananda.”
13. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 92.
14. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand,” available at Encyclopedia
Britannica Online http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9109421.
15. Ibid., http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-22634.
16. Ibid., http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-22636.
17. Prakash, Madhu Suri. “Remaking Our Soil: Gandhi’s Revolution for the 21st Century.”
Encounter 15, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 23-24.
18. Meera, Nanda. “A ‘Broken People’ Defend Science: Reconstructing the Deweyan Buddha of
India’s Dalits.” Social Epistemology 15, no. 4 (Oct. 2001): 348.
19. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji,” available at Encyclopedia Britannica
Online http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9006040.
20. Meera, “A ‘Broken People’ Defend Science,” 336-337.
21. Ibid., 349.
22. Ibid., 350.
23. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 94.
24. Ibid., 95.
25. Meera, “A ‘Broken People’ Defend Science,” 351.
26. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 96.
27. Ambedkar, B. R. Annihilation of Caste (Jalandhar: Bhim Patrika Publications, 1936), 111.
28. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji,”; and Meera, “A ‘Broken People’
Defend Science,” 348.
29. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 96.
30. Omvedt, Gail. “Caste, Race and Sociologists.” The Hindu, 14 March 2001.
31. Ghose, “The Dalit in India,” 100-101.

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Announcement: A New Blog

Just a short announcement. I've started a new blog project with my good friend Carlo Montemayor. The blog is called "Double Consciousness" and its purpose is towards the study and refutation of white supremacy and white privilege in American society and the study of contemporary racist thought and how it effects people of color and whites. This is a political blog meant more for personal comment than in depth political analysis (so, basically the opposite of this blog that is more focused on in depth political and theological analysis), although we will occasionally have blogs with in depth political analysis.

Double Consciousness is a term that comes from the pen of W. E. B. Du Bois which was made popular in his book The Souls of Black Folk. For Du Bois it meant “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” and of having two identities, one being American and the other being a person of color. “Two warring ideals in one dark body.” The title is also a pun on the fact that the Carlo and I, are of different ethnicities which obviously effects the way we perceive the world. I'm white (three-quarters Irish and one-quarter Guatemalan) and Carlo is Pilipino. Despite this fact we are both unified in our thought on critiquing white privilege in American society and in combating its effects on people of color.

Muslims and Sharia: The Real Sharia, Democracy, and Patriarchy

By Mona Eltahawy

This essay first appeared on Saudi Debate and then on Muslim WakeUp!, a Muslim blog which “seeks to bring together Muslims and non-Muslims in American and around the globe in efforts that celebrate cultural and spiritual diversity, tolerance, and understanding." On Muslim WakeUp! it was titled “Copenhagen Sharia Conference Celebrates ‘Heresy.’” Mona Eltahawy has worked for Reuters and is a commentator and an internaitonl lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues who is based in New York.

The views and opinions expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect those of the creator of this blog and are the sole responsibility of the author. Essays expressing opinions similar to and counter to those of the creator of this blog are strictly for diversity and to start thoughtful and meaningful discussion.

This summer at the end of a day-long conference in Copenhagen on freedom of expression in the Arab world a young man with slightly faltering Arabic asked to speak to me.

“Would you give me one example of why freedom of expression and democracy are good things?” he asked after introducing himself as Abdel-Hamid. He apologized for what he described as his basic Arabic, explaining that he was born and raised in Denmark to Arab parents.

At first I thought his question was a joke. The other conference speakers and I had spent hours explaining how the sorry lack of freedom of expression had harmed Arab civil society. And surely as a Dane he appreciated the democracy and freedoms he enjoyed?

“No, really, tell me,” he persisted. “Democracy is the rule of the people. Islam is the rule of the Sharia. So what’s good about democracy and freedom of expression?”

When I realized he was serious – and when I began to see the direction his argument was heading – I dragged out my usual defense to his line of thinking: whose version of Sharia, I asked him? Iran? Turkey? Saudi Arabia? Egypt, my country of birth?

“The Sharia of God,” he adamantly replied.

“There is no such thing,” I told Abdel-Hamid.

That was essentially the message at another conference that took me back to Copenhagen in November at which speaker after speaker bemoaned the Muslim fundamentalist reduction of Sharia to a set of laws.

It has become fashionable among radical Muslims in the West to long for the application of Sharia. Abdel-Hamid, my summer Copenhagen interlocutor and adherent to the idea that there was only one kind of Sharia – that of God -, identified himself as a member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the radical Islamist group that wants to reestablish the Caliphate and does not believe Islam is compatible with democracy.

In many parts of the Muslim world, what the State has deemed Islamic is slapped with the label “Sharia”. So when a murderer or a drug dealer is beheaded in Saudi Arabia, it is ostensibly out of adherence to Sharia.

When a dictator or a regime feels the need to burnish their Islamic credentials – often at a time of growing radical Muslim opposition – they make their country’s legislation “more Islamic”. Take Pakistan’s late President General. Zia ul-Haq who in 1979 introduced the Hudood Ordinances, notorious not so much for making Pakistan “more Islamic” but for punishing rather than protecting women who have been raped.

Under the Hudood Ordinances, a rape victim had to produce four male witnesses to prove the crime or face the possibility of prosecution for adultery. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on Dec. 1 signed into law an amendment to the controversial rape statute to make it easier to prosecute sexual assault cases. Thousands of Islamists gathered at separate events throughout Pakistan to protest the changes.

One has to wonder what kind of Islam those protestors follow and how it came to be so shamefully reduced to an obsession over sex and women.

As the Associated Press reported, under the new law, called the Protection of Women Bill, judges can choose whether a rape case should be tried in a criminal court - where the four-witness rule would not apply - or under the old Islamic law, i.e. the Hudood Ordinance.

And that is exactly the lie at the heart of the calls for Sharia. Why are there criminal courts in which the old Islamic law does not apply? In many Muslim countries, the justice system has been modernized and has adopted either Roman or Napoleonic law, with the exception of one area which stubbornly remains caught in the cobweb of edicts issued by Muslim scholars who lived centuries ago – family law. In other words, in many Muslim countries Sharia is used only to govern the lives of women and children with regards to marriage, divorce and custody of children.

How refreshing therefore it was to hear Emory University law professor Abdullahi An-Nai’m point out that lie at the heart of the calls for Sharia by saying it was essentially an attempt to “protect a patriarchal system by calling it Sharia”.

“I need a secular state to be the kind of Muslim I need to be,” he told the conference.

As Egyptian liberal Muslim scholar Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid noted, “Sharia” these days means nothing more than the “haram” (forbidden) and the “halal” (permissible).

The definition of Sharia as law is based on 500 verses of the Quran, Abu Zeid reminded us – that is just 16 percent of the Quran.

It was a relief to hear Abdel-Hamid’s adamant theory debunked in his own city – and how I wish he was there to hear. But more importantly, Abu Zeid, An-Nai’m and their fellow speakers were crafting the instruments by which all of the Muslims who were present could take the Sharia argument apart.

In a climate of growing right-wing anti-Muslim rhetoric, particularly in Europe, some in the Muslim community find it difficult to stand up to radical Islamist posturing on Sharia. Such hesitation is often based on a mix of reluctance to openly criticize fellow Muslims – so as to not contribute to a further demonization of Muslims – and ignorance as to exactly what the word Sharia means and what the concept entails.

The conference, called “Sharia in a modern context”, was organized by Democratic Muslims, a liberal Muslim group that was launched as an alternative to the voices of radical imams in Denmark during the controversy that surrounded publication of cartoons featuring Prophet Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten.

If the talks given by each speaker represented the tools which we could use to dismantle the Sharia argument, then the lives of the speakers themselves were the starkest examples of the danger of Islamist ideology run amok.

None of the speakers lives in his country of birth. That is a sad testament to the dangerously conservative environment in many Muslim countries today. But the speakers’ presence at the conference and at the various western universities where they teach were testaments to their courage and determination to continue their fearless work.

Abu Zeid, Ibn Rushd Chair of Humanism and Islam at the University of Leiden in The Netherlands, is former Professor of Arabic literature at Cairo University. In 1995 a Cairo appeals court sided with Muslim fundamentalists who raised a case to demand Abu Zeid divorce his wife on the ground of his alleged apostasy. The fundamentalists accused Abu Zeid of apostasy because of his liberal theories on Islam.
The day the appeals court issued its verdict, I was a correspondent with Reuters News Agency in Cairo. I clearly remember typing an urgent bulletin announcing the verdict while thinking it was time to buy a one-way ticket out of my country.

After the court’s verdict against Abu Zeid, Ayman al-Zawahri – who is today al-Qaeda’s number two but in 1995 was head of the Egyptian terrorist group Islamic Jihad – called for the scholar’s murder. Abu Zeid and his wife, fellow academic Ibtihal Younes, left for The Netherlands where they have lived and taught since.
An-Nai’m, an internationally recognized scholar of Islam and human rights, and Mohamed Mahmoud, who teaches comparative religion at Tufts University in Boston, were both students of Sudanese Muslim reformer Mahmoud Taha who was publicly executed for his liberal views by then President Jaafar Nimeri whose introduction of Sharia was opposed by Taha.

Bassam Tibi, a Syrian-born German political scientist who is Professor of International Relations in Goettingen, received a death threat in Karachi when he told a conference that Sharia was not divine.

His points were particularly pertinent to a Europe increasingly struggling with ways to react to radical Islamists. While lamenting European governments’ habit of turning to the most conservative in the Muslim community to speak on its behalf he vowed “In the name of multiculturalism I will not accept cultural rights as a cover for Sharia”.

“I believe in Sharia as morality not as state law,” he said. “I am not willing to shut up about human rights abuses by Islamists just because of the right wing. They are my enemy too.”

“Islamophobia is the weapon of Islamists to silence critics. I do not believe Europe will become Islamist – that is the fantasy of both Islamists and the right wing,” Tibi said. “Are European Muslims committed to democracy or political Islam and Sharia? The debate should take place in Europe.”

One of the best ways to stimulate such a debate is to highlight the views of the scholars who spoke at the conference both within the Muslim community and outside it.

It is imperative that non-Muslims hear the vigorous debates that are taking place between Muslims over controversial issues such as Sharia. The argument between Abdel-Hamid and me is the best proof that Muslim thought is not monolithic.

How representative are we? That is the question most often asked of those of us who call ourselves liberal Muslims. I will let An-Nai’m and Abu Zeid reply:

“Is my voice the minority or the majority? That is a value judgment,”An-Nai’m said. “The question instead should be is my voice loud enough? Islamists blow themselves up and they make the news. My lecture on human rights doesn’t make the news.”

“Islamic transformation is underway,” he added. “My view is demographically representative of the majority of Muslims but it is not very loud……Who defines what Islam is? Islam is what Muslims make of it. Heresy? I celebrate heresy.”

Abu Zeid simply asked “Who said reformation comes out of the majority?”

“We shouldn’t be ashamed of being the minority,” he added. “Mohammed and his people were a minority at first.”

And if you’re wondering what example I gave to prove to Abdel-Hamid that democracy and freedom of expression were good things, all I had to do was point to him and say “you are my proof”.

Hizb-ut-Tahrir is banned in most Muslims countries whereas in Denmark the organization is legal and operates openly.

Image From:
Middle East Institute

Iraq In Reverse

By Rorik Strindberg

Rorik Strindberg, a regular contributor to this blog, is a junior at San Diego State University and studies history. This is an opinion piece on the justificaiton of the invasion of Iraq and how American foreign policy can be a force for positive change in the world. I will be continuing my blog series “Mesopotamia Burning,” within the next week. Part I was an overview of my ten part series and part II was on the coup in Iran and the Iran-Iraq War leading up to the invasion of Kuwait. The views and opinions expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect those of the creator of this blog and are the sole responsibility of the author. Essays expressing opinions similar to and counter to those of the creator of this blog are strictly for diversity and to start thoughtful and meaningful discussion.

In Kurt Vonnegut's slaughter house 9 there is an interesting section where the main character watches the bombing of Dresden in reverse. Thought Vonnegut incorrectly identifies the British action for an American one the message is still the same. Bomber send out metal objects that vacuumed up the fire on the city, take the fire home and store them deep in the mountains, never to harm any one again. All the while forgetting the fact that the reverse would include, a dead Hitler pulling a strange object out of his head, and siring to life, and a return of the Jews and gypsies to the constriction camps and death camps.

The "reverse" Iraq would be much the same; a bearded Saddam would be taken from his court room and jail cell, and escorted by American troops to a hole in the ground. F-16 would fly over the burning Mr. Zarqawi, and again he would live to torture, later Zarqawi would return to Northern Iraq, to assassinate Kurdish leaders. A-10 warthogs would suck the lead out of Saddam's demonic sons, and they would spring to life. The new parliamentarians would leave the capital, some returning to exile in foreign nation, others to torture chambers. Vote would be taken out of the hand of the civil servants who counted them, returned to the Iraqi citizens where they would wipe out their votes. Slowly Saddam would make his triumphant return to Baghdad. The mass graves for Iraqi decedents would be covered again, for no one to find again. The first elections in Egypt and Saudi Arabia would fallow the same pattern as the Iraqi ones. Moammar Qaddafi would take back the information on the Khan nuclear Wall-Mart. American troops would amass in the streets of Baghdad to erect the statue of Saddam. Finally silencing the cheers of the Iraqi masses as an American flag is used to polish the face of Saddam. Side by side Saddam and his sons would reign over the Iraqi people as the American troops left.

This is not a reality that I want to see, thank god that this is not possible for many would like to see it. War is bad but the alternative is often worse. True many valiant young boys died fighting the destruction of Hitler, but how many would have died if we did not fight Hitler?

Image From:
Kurdistan Democratic Party

The Worship of Mammon: The Fetishism of Capital in the Theological Thoughts of Creflo Dollar and Michael Novak, Part II

This is part II (and the final part) in my series on my critique of “Prosperity Theology.” Part I focused on the Rev. Creflo Dollar, who represents the micro aspects of prosperity theology. For this part, and my wrap-up, I will focus on neo-conservative Catholic theologian and classical economic proponent of the free market, Michael Novak. Who represents the macro aspects of prosperity theology.

Like Dollar, Novak subscribes to a Prosperity Theology, yet a different branch of Prosperity Theology. Instead of focusing too much on the accumulation of commodities through money and being a cheerleader, Novak uses his theology as a jumping off point for the justification of the system of capitalism and to justify laissez-fair free market capitalistic policies.

In Capital, Vol. III Marx states, “We have already shown in connection with the most simple categories of the capitalist mode of production and commodity production in general” the mystifying character of money and commodities and the fetishes that arise out of them. “In the capitalist mode of production, however, where capital is the dominant category and forms specific relation of production, this bewitched and distorted world develops much further.”(1) With an ever deepening capitalist system commodity and money relationships widen their scope to include means of production as well the working classes of society. “As money becomes capital,” Hinkelammert says, “it becomes obvious how commodity relationships in their very workings are in a position to decide not merely how much of what material goods shall be produced but even whether producers will live or not.”(2) Now everyone is affected by commodities and money through the accumulation of capital (surplus value). Those who work for corporations and manufacturers no longer control their own lives. Their livelihood is now based on the conditions of where they work and are determined by the way commodities interact with each other in the free market. Depending how commodities such as oil and high grade steel battle with each other, etc., this will affect the worker at her or his job. If one is an employee for American Airlines and the prices of oil skyrocket one will loose her or his job due to increased costs at American Airlines (for fueling the airliners) and if another is working at an Exxon-Mobil oil rig than that one will be able to keep her or his job, and maybe even make a little more money. Both of those workers jobs depend on how capital is built up and how commodities battle and interact with each other. “Unfitted by nature to make anything independently, the manufacturing worker develops his productive activity only as an appendage” of the corporation. “As the chosen people bore in their features the sign that they were the property of Jehovah,” says Marx, “so the division of labour brands the manufacturing worker the property of capital.”(3) Now, due to circumstances beyond a workers control, he or she must give their allegiances to the corporation and must submit to the interaction of commodities and capital. Miller states that the First Commandment not only applies to “other gods” but also “to multiple claims on your obedience.”(4) But this wouldn’t be the fault of the worker, the worker must work in order to live, if the worker chooses not to submit to commodities he or she will die. The fault doesn’t lie at the feet of the worker and the exploited but rather at the feet of the capitalist and those who justify capitalist oppression, such as Michael Novak. The prophet Jeremiah states that:

Like fowlers they set a trap; they catch human beings. Like a cage full of birds, their houses are full of treachery; therefore they have become rich, they have grown fat and sleek. They know no limits in deeds of wickedness; they do not judge with justice the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper, and they do not defend the right of the needy. (Italics mine, Jer. 5:25-29, NRSV)

For Novak the corporation is “the best secular analogue to the church.”(5) “Viewed in the long run of history, the business corporation is a fascinating institution. It is a social institution” and “[i]ts legal existence is transgenerational.” and it “is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the success of democracy” because the Founding Fathers “saw quite clearly that democracy would be safer if built upon the commercial and industrial classes.” Novak also writes that “[i]ts members come to it voluntarily. They do not give it all the commitment and all the energies of life.”(6) Finally, “the business corporation is, in its essence, a moral institution of a distinctive type” which imposes its “moral obligations that are inherent in its own ends, structure, and modes of operation.”(7) Hinkelammert argues that in order for capital and corporations “to live, the worker must be kept alive. Capital gets its life from the worker and therefore has to keep the worker alive in order to stay alive itself.”(8) Yet it seems that corporations (guided by capital), that is, capital, only care about the bare necessities in order for their worker to live. “In manufacture,” Marx says, “the social productive power of the collective worker, hence of capital, is enriched through the impoverishment of the worker in individual productive power.”(9) Corporations are vehicles meant to build up capital and it needs workers to consume to build up that capital. They are not seemingly guided by the welfare of human beings or of its workers but instead guided by one single force, to accumulate capital, to build wealth. This capital fetish, the wanting (needing) to build up capital is something that the prophet Amos criticizes when he chides the leaders and the rich of Yis’srael by stating:

Hear this, you that trample the needy and bring ruin to the poor of the land saying: “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great...buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.” Yhwh has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. (Italics mine, Amos 8:4-7, NRSV)

Novak’s capital fetish blinds him to the fact of this reality. In fact, it blinds him so much that he actually equates the corporation for the Body of Christ, the church, by stating it is “the best secular analogue to the church.” Instead of pledging his allegiance to God he is pledging his allegiance to an entity who’s sole purpose is to build up capital (money), which leads to a further intensification of idolatry by further delving into the commodity and money fetish and by putting one’s faith in money and by imbuing money and commodities with divine like qualities; this then leads to the ultimate heresy in claiming that a corporation is in essence a church, the Body of Christ. Which for those accepting those principles, makes sense, since they project divine characteristics onto commodities and money.

Novak also states that a corporations members come to it voluntarily. Yet Novak does not expound who its members are. Are the members the boardroom members, the janitors, cubicle workers, shareholders, sweatshop workers? Also, the idea of choice within a capitalists system,(10) as we have seen above, depends on one’s position in that system. But even if one is an owner of capital in the system he or she does not direct how capital should be used since it is commodities, made by human beings, that seem to direct the flow of capital (as we have seen above). Marx states that for the owner of capital one only hears:

Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!...If, in the eyes of classical economics, the proletarian is merely a machine for the production of surplus-value [the building of capital], the capitalist too is merely a machine for the transformation of this surplus value into surplus capital.(11)

We can also see how instead of being a beacon for freedom, as Novak states the corporation is, we now see that many Americans (and Europeans) are working longer hours for lesser pay (since inflation is rising faster than wages).(12) Novak’s main theological flaw is putting his trust in an institution of capitalism which its only goal is the consumption of human life in order to accumulate capital, the Anti-Christ, as Marx states. This then puts Novak on the opposite side of the theological divide between those whom fight for God and His people and on the side of those whom fight against God and for capital (all be it both sides claim to fight for God).

This trust in the corporation for Novak is only possible because of his trust in the capitalist free market which he views as the best vehicle for the common good of humanity. “I believe in sin,” stated Novak in a Washington Post column in March of 1976, “I am for capitalism, modified and made intelligent...It allows human beings to do pretty much what they will...Capitalism is a system built on belief in human selfishness; given checks and balances, it is near always a smashing, scandalous success.”(13) What Novak is doing here is framing his argument for capitalism in a theological way which will “protect” him from the criticism of fellow Christians (mainly liberation theologians) by relying on old Mediaeval beliefs on the concept of sin. Yet through out much of the Tanakh (the Hebrew bible, known as the Old Testament to most) and the New Testament we see many of the prophets, evangelists, and Jesus, framing the concept of sin in economical terms of those exploiting the masses (Ex. 3:7-10; Neh. 5:1-5; Ps. 10:1-3; Is. 10:1-3b; Sir. 34:18-22; Matt. 6:19-21; Lk. 1:46-55; Jam. 5:1-6, etc.). To uplift the masses Novak sees the capitalist system, the free market, as the perfect means to do this. Speaking of the time period of Adam Smith Novak states, “If you face a world of 800 million people, most of them poor...and you can produce new wealth, then you must produce new wealth. If you can do it, you must, give the widespread poverty in the world.”(14) One shouldn’t focus on the poor whom are poor due to the free market’s constant obsession with amassing more capital since that is the “[w]rong question. I mean, supposing somebody figured out the causes of poverty. So now that you know how to make poverty who wants it? I mean it is absolutely the wrong question. It is just an insane question.”(15) Novak seems to be blinded by his fetish for capital to see the contradictory terms in his statement in a world where the pursuit for capital inevitably leaves many people in poverty due to the aftereffects of pursuing capital in the free market. This is where we can clearly see Novak’s apostasy in relation to his belief in God. To question the free market is to question the divine will of God (even though Novak has admitted that the free market is “capitalistic hell”(16) ). Novak sees the commodities and money (capital) built up in the capitalist system as divine objects of God, which is the same mistake that Dollar makes, and because of this, Novak sees the free market as being set up by God for common good purposes despite the fact that Novak states it is an imperfect system.(17) Using terms from Hinkelammert, Novak, instead of having a faith in the Christian God of the Bible, has:

faith in money, which is the Holy Spirit immanent in the commodity world...faith in the preestablished order of the relationships of production—faith that they will continue eternally...[and] faith that the agents of production are, and will continue to be personifications of capital.(18)

With this Novak has fallen into sin, which is what the author of 1st Tim. talks about when he states that “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.” (1 Tim. 6:9-10, NRSV). Not only is Novak wrong in the theological realm but his thinking in the secular realm is also off. Here, we see a circular justification for the oppression and grinding poverty of millions of people around the world due to free market and neoliberal policies. Since there are poor people in this world society must “produce more wealth” and because of the building up of capital this will adversely affect the poor, thus causing them to slip further into poverty,(19) which in turn, according to Novak, will require us to make more capital.

Novak always goes back to Adam Smith in his analysis of free market capitalism. He always states that free markets are the best system because they lead to democracy and free societies.(20) Yet his outlook either ignores (on purpose) or fails to realize that while “economies become more and more modernized, the direct association between production and use gets increasingly obscured for exchange.”(21) In early 19th and late 18th century America’s economies were more local and means of production more spread out which lead to a more “democratic” market since there was yet any national and transnational corporations and large businesses. If you were in a town you got your meat from a butcher who knew you, clothes from a tailor who knew you, and grain from a merchant who more than likely knew you. Yet when the distance between service and profit increased, and commodity and monetary relations became less personalized and more impersonal, the market became more and more “obsessed” with the accumulation of capital and less for the benefits of human beings.(22) We can see with the advancement of capitalism through neoliberal globalization the effects it has on those of the lower classes; such as an increase of suicides in India by local farmers(23) due to an increase in large scale industry farming. “For thousands of years, land in” areas such as India and Guatemala were “used for subsistence farming. As capitalism expands into the third world, however, land is seen as too commercially viable to remain outside the cycle of exchange.”(24) Capital has now reached a point where it is now consuming land in order to continue its massive growth, and with that growth it is consuming those who used to farm the land. Now these farmers have become “dependent on the money economy” instead of themselves for subsistence.(25) Novak, instead of condemning this action based on his faith actually applauds these policies and he justifies them religiously. The prophet Isaiah states, “It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor? Says the Lord God of hosts” (Is. 3:14b-15, NRSV). And yet Novak seems to be ignoring this piece of scripture, and others, for the benefit of the capitalist. If Marx says that “[j]ust as man is governed, in religion, by the products of his own brain, so, in capitalist production, he is governed by the products of his own hand”(26) than we can also state the reverse for Novak: Just as in capitalist production human beings are enslaved by products of their own hands, they project this slavery onto a religious world, in which they are dominated by products emanating from their own brains. This gets to the heart of the matter of Novak’s true heresy and mistake. Novak’s religious thought is controlled by his capital fetish, in order to justify the accumulation of capital he twists the texts of the Bible to satisfy his own fetish instead of looking critically at the world around him and himself, to see if he is staying true to his professed Christian God. Also, criticizing Novak’s belief that the free market creates a common good, Thomas R. Rourke points out that how is the common good being meet when “Nike corporation...paid an average female worker in Indonesia approximately $.82 per day in 1991" and charged consumers more than 100 times that much for the shoe produced and “paid Michael Jordan $20,000,000.” Which was a figure higher than all of the workers who produced shoes in Indonesia combined.(27) This oversight by Novak can only be explained by his being guided by the capital fetish instead of being guided by the Holy Spirit (a being he believes in and professes to be guided by).

Ultimately people such as Novak, who justify free market systems by using the Bible, and Dollar, who justify wealth building by using the Bible and who states God shows his blessings through money, are blinded by their fetishes for capital, money, and commodities. It’s these fetishes which guide their theological perspectives, instead of the Bible guiding their theological perspectives. Because of this, no matter how much they justify their views, they will always be lead down the wrong path by their fetishes, and that path will lead them to idolatry by worshiping commodities, money, and the capitalist system. Instead of God being their concrete reality (which they proclaim God is), their concrete “reality” will be what they see (yet they will see it in a perverted sense), and what they see is commodities and money, which is one thing the Bible is very clear on and one thread of the Bible that connects the New Testament and the Tanakh. That thread is the condemnation of money and commodities which distract people from God, and since they are distracted from God they are ultimately distracted from each other and the common good of their fellow human beings.

“They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.”
-Isaiah 65:21-22

Notes

1. Quoted in Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 27.
2. Ibid., 28.
3. Marx, Capital, 482.
4. Miller, The God You Have, 21.
5. McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon,” 460, n. 42.
6. Michael Novak, Three in One, 233.
7. Ibid., 241.
8. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 30.
9. Marx, Capital, 483.
10. For more on choice and the setting up of the capitalist system and how people merely are only making choices based on what the free market dictates to them see Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (London: Verso, 2002).
11. Marx, Capital, 742.
12. On wages and working hours see Jeffrey E. Hill, et. al., “Finding an Extra Day a Week: The
Positive Influence of Perceived Job Flexibility on Work and Family Life Balance,” Family
Relations 50, no. 1 (Jan. 2001): 49-54; Lynne Lamberg, “Impact of Long Working Hours
Explored,” Journal of the American Medical Association 292, no. 1 (July 2004): 25-26; Jeremy Reynolds, “When Too Much Is Not Enough: Actual and Preferred Work Hours in the United States and Abroad,” Sociological Forum 19, no. 1 (March 2004): 89-120; Amy S. Wharton and Mary Blair-Loy, “Long Work Hours and Family Life: A Cross-National Study of Employees’ Concerns,” Journal of Family Issues 27, no. 3 (March 2006) 415-436.
13. Novak, Three in One, 4.
14. Ibid., 57.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 4.
17. Ibid., 56.
18. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 44.
19. For more on the adverse effects of neoliberal policies on the lower classes around the world see Edmund Amann and Werner Baer, “Neoliberalism and its Consequences in Brazil,” Journal of Latin American Studies 34, no. 4 (Nov. 2002): 945-959; Werner Baer and William Maloney,
“Neoliberalism and Income Distribution in Latin America,” World Development 25, no. 3 (March 1997): 311-327; Rubiana Chamarbagwala, “Economic Liberalization and Wage Inequality in India,” World Development 34, no. 12 (Dec. 2006): 1997-2015; and Warwick E. Murray, “Neoliberal Globalisation, ‘Exotic’ Agro-exports, and Local Chance in the Pacific Islands: A Study of the Fijian Kava Sector,” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 21, no. 3 (Nov. 2000): 355-373.
20. On the fallacy of capitalism leading to democracy in the 21st century see Bruce Bueno de
Mesquita and George Downs, “Development and Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 5 (Sept/Oct2005): 77-86.
21. Thomas R. Rourke, “Michael Novak and Yves R. Simon on the Common Good and
Capitalism,” Review of Politics, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 249.
22. Rourke, “Michael Novak and Yves R. Simon,” 249.
23. Somini Sengupta, “On India’s Despairing Farms, a Plague of Suicide,” New York Times, 19
Sept., 2006, A1.
24. Rourke, “Michael Novak and Yves R. Simon,” 249.
25. Ibid., 250.
26. Marx, Capital, 772.
27. Rourke, “Michael Novak and Yves R. Simon,” 250.

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Barcelona Independent Media Center

Rattling the Cage: Holocaust Denial and Jewish Liberals

By Larry Derfner

This opinion piece appeared in the Dec. 13, 2006 issue of the conservative Israeli newspaper the Jerusalem Post.

The views and opinions expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect those of the creator of this blog and are the sole responsibility of the author. Essays expressing opinions similar to and counter to those of the creator of this blog are strictly for diversity and to start thoughtful and meaningful discussion.

Along with any number of other Jewish liberals, I have written often, and heatedly, against the exploitation of the Holocaust by official Israel, the Diaspora Jewish establishment and ordinary Jews who identify with them.

I get incensed that every official visitor to Israel has to stop first at Yad Vashem - to be softened up and put on the defensive before the give-and-take of diplomacy with Israel can begin. The March of the Living, where Israeli high school students visit concentration camps and then march through the Polish streets with Israeli flags, seems like a pre-army motivational camp more than anything else.

It angers me when the professional and amateur politicians of Israel and the Diaspora bring up the Holocaust to justify any Israeli military action against Arabs, when they invoke the Holocaust to silence Israel's critics, when they make political statements in the name of the Jews killed by the Nazis, when they wrap Israel - and, by extension, themselves as Israel's spokesmen - in the martyrdom of the Six Million.

So what is it that makes me, or the many Jewish liberals who share this attitude, any different from the people at this week's Holocaust denial conference in Teheran? Exploitation of the Holocaust by Israel and its supporters was one of the major themes there, along, of course, with the claim that the Holocaust never happened, or, if it did, that it wasn't remotely as bad as people think. (The real message of the Holocaust deniers - that the Holocaust was a good thing - was no doubt only mentioned quietly, when the conferees were chatting among themselves, and out of earshot of the collaborators from Natorei Karta.)

Are we Jewish liberals who criticize our own for exploiting the Holocaust in the same boat with those Jew-haters and Israel-haters in Teheran - or, at the very least, are we giving them aid and comfort? With Israel's worst enemies using the Holocaust as a weapon against it, shouldn't liberal Jewish critics of Israel finally realize the wisdom of keeping quiet on this subject?

I imagine a lot of Jews, probably most Jews, think we should. There is a taboo in the Jewish world against challenging how Jewish leaders and the Jewish mainstream treat the Holocaust, and that taboo went into force long before Ahmadinejad came around.

BUT WHAT happened this week in Teheran wasn't new. Those 50 or 60 individuals at that conference are not the first to deny the Holocaust, and Ahmadinejad is not the first Muslim leader to do so, or to use the Holocaust against Israel.

Jews have always had enemies and we always will. But Jews have to understand the difference between enemies and critics, especially Jewish critics.

Along with, I imagine, every other left-wing Zionist who's ever been appalled at the way Israeli and Diaspora Jewish leaders exploit the Holocaust, I would have been filled with joy if a bolt of lightning had struck that conference in Teheran and killed everybody inside, starting with Ahmadinejad.

With the exception of the collaborators from Natorei Karta, those people are modern-day Nazis. They want for the Jews what Hitler wanted.

What can I tell you? - Jewish liberals, left-wing Zionists, Jewish critics of Israel are not David Duke. Speaking for myself, when I criticize the enlistment of the Holocaust for Israeli nationalist causes, or to strengthen the Diaspora Jewish establishment, or to place modern-day Jews above criticism, it's because I think this trivializes what happened back then. I think the memory of the Six Million should fill modern-day Jews with humility; the last thing we should be doing is marching and waving flags, cheering ourselves.

So there's no meeting point between Jewish liberals like myself and the Holocaust deniers in Teheran. They want the worst for the Jews, and we want the best. They are coming from the opposite direction that we're coming from, and they're going in the opposite direction, too.

But I'm afraid that there is something to the charge that when Jews criticize Israel and Diaspora Jewry for exploiting the Holocaust, it can become a weapon in the hands of Holocaust deniers and other Jew-haters. "You see?" they can then say, "even Jews admit it!" This is the strongest argument that can be made against freedom of dissent in any circumstances - that when you use that freedom to level serious moral criticism at your own society, it can be used against your society by your enemies. The unfortunate truth is that freedom of dissent is not free; it comes at a heavy price. And societies willing to pay that price are called democratic, while those unwilling to pay it are called totalitarian.

So if I learn that an out-of-context quote from this column ends up on some Holocaust-denial Web site, I will not be happy about it, but it won't get me to start observing the Jewish taboo on this subject. That would be a cowardly reaction. A few dozen mutts at a conference in Teheran shouldn't scare anybody out of writing - or reading - anything.

The Worship of Mammon: The Fetishism of Capital in the Theological Thoughts of Creflo Dollar and Michael Novak, Part I

It has been a while since my last post that I fully authored myself. This essay is Part I of a two part series on my critique of "Prosperity Theology" which is a branch of Christian thought that states that God showers His blessings on people through money and that those who believe in the Bible and Jesus Christ (as well as tithing to a church) will also recieve finnancial blessings and have all their problems in life answered. Part I on this series will focus on the Rev. Creflo Dollar (his real name believe it or not) while Part II will focus on neo-conservative Catholic theologian and classical economic propent of the free market, Michael Novak.

“As a stake is driven firmly into a fissure between stones, so sin is wedged in between selling and buying.”

-Sirach 27:2(1)

Over the years the concept of “Prosperity Theology,” in where God shows his blessings to His people by showering them with riches, has obviously attracted many followers, and seems to be gaining more momentum by the day. The poster child of this movement, in all of his excessive and over the top glory, is the Rev. Creflo Dollar of Creflo Dollar Ministries and who is the reverend of the World Changers International World Dome church in southwest Atlanta. Dollar preaches all over the United States about how God wants to shower all of his faithful with money (of course, Dollar is quick to point out that he also means spiritual wealth) and one of his biggest selling points is the fact that he flaunts his own wealth to prove God is blessing him. He unabashedly shows his congregants, and anyone else for that matter, “his custom-tailored suits and alligator shoes, his Rolls-Royces, his private airplanes” and has no problems demanding from his congregation 10% of their income for tithes, and if they decide to give less they might as well not even bother and instead, “Go buy a Happy Meal.”(2) The concept of Prosperity Theology arose out of the capitalist system and indeed is the religious byproduct of the capitalist system. Without the unrestrained capitalist system and its forms of perversion there would more than likely be no Prosperity Theology to be preached upon. Prosperity Theology, as preached by Creflo Dollar, is the religious justification of capitalism and of capitalism’s systems. While Creflo Dollar speaks on a more simplistic level, stating that people who follow the Bible and follow God will soon become rich, or at least financially comfortable, neo-conservative Catholic Theologian Michael Novak takes a more nuanced approached to capitalism and the building of capital (wealth). Novak’s belief is that because everyone is affected by original sin and is in nature sinful and imperfect, the capitalist system is the most logical choice for human kind, in fact, he sees the capitalist system as practically ordained by God.(3) For Novak, the capitalist market system is the best vehicle for making sure that the common good of humanity is meet. Novak’s fetishistic trust in the “free” market I argue is just as flawed as Dollar’s fetishistic trust in God’s love through the form of money and that both are inherently wrong in their interpretation of the Bible on their views of money and capitalism. To show how their relationship between the Bible and the free market is inherently incorrect I will be using liberation theologian Franz J. Hinkelammert’s theological critique of capitalism and his use of Marx’s theory of fetishism in order to critique the microeconomic fallacies of Dollar and the macroeconomic fallacies of Novak and how their trust and Biblical justification in the free market and the capitalist system undermines their Biblical message.

In order to understand the theological perversities of Dollar’s preachings on money and the luxurious commodities people can acquire with money we must first look at Marx’s theory of the fetish which first comes to us in the form of the commodity fetish since the commodity fetish is “[t]he basis of the whole analysis of [Marx’s theory of] fetishism.”(4) Hinkelammert describes the capitalistic world as “a world that is bewitched” and that the analysis of the commodity fetish is a way to unveil this world of enchanted commodities.(5) Marx states, quite rightly, that wealth in societies that have a “capitalist mode of production...appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities.’”(6) In order to begin his investigation of “political economy” Marx begins his investigation with this mass of commodities.(7) Marx states that “[a] commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.”(8) Its these subtleties and niceties that end up taking “‘metaphysical’ and ‘theological’ guises” because capitalist industry obscures and hides the fact that commodities are created by human labor.(9) This is do to the fact of capitalist production which separates the manufacturing process through the division of labor; which happens quite naturally under capitalism and nearly all forms of trade and commerce. Because people don’t see commodities for what they are, that is, products of human labor (all though they do “sense” what they are to a point, as Marx states(10) ), instead they ascribe to them human like traits. Commodities appear to come from nowhere and materialize themselves onto the market scene and act on their own. It is the commodity that is talked about, not the producers of the commodity, by market analysts. Hinkelammert states, “Commodities now set up social relationships among themselves. For example, artificial nitrate battles natural nitrate [on the market] and defeats it. Oil fights with coal, and wood with plastic. Coffee dances on world markets while iron and steel get married.” The producer of the commodity becomes controlled and dominated by the commodity itself, not the other way around. Depending on the fluctuations of the stock market during a day steel, silicone, and plastics will either become more valuable or less, and thus creating cheaper commodities or more expensive commodities, which in turn affects workers who will either keep their jobs or lose them depending on costs and expenditures. In essence, the workers life depends on the commodity. Today, there is much talk of oil prices and their continued rise in the marketplace, there seems to be little control over the price of oil by human beings, instead it is controlled by the supply and demand of it, which are not concrete sciences but rather philosophical and economical guesses based on either rational or irrational human behavior and the process of production.(11) For Hinkelammert “[t]he decision to continue to produce commodities is always at the same time the decision to accept being determined by the sum of commodities.” He goes on to say that “[c]ommodities begin to move although no one wanted or intended them to do so, and even though any movement on their part comes from some movement of human beings. The effects are completely beyond all human intention” and control.(12) This whole effect of commodities on the lives of human beings are “products of the human brain” which make commodities (commodities that Dollar tells his congregation to seek and which he seeks himself) “appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations” with human beings on the market system and their everyday lives. Marx calls “this...fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities, and therefore inseparable from the production of commodities” the “fetishism of the world of commodities.”(13)

In order to better understand and illustrate the commodity (and money and capital) fetish Marx stated that, “we must take flight into the misty realm of religion.”(14) Because of their alienation from the products they make, human beings invest into commodities their own hopes and dreams, fears and longings. They don’t see a Nike shoe as a product made of rubber, phylon, and polyurethane which is wholly overpriced compared to its production value and labor expenses, they instead see a product which they must buy in order to obtain a certain “status” amongst their peers or to make themselves feel better about who they are. In this way they “enchant...commodities with hopes of gratification and justice”(15) that these commodities obviously can’t fulfill them with. This is the fundamental flaw of Creflo Dollar’s preaching and theology. He tells his congregation that God showers blessings onto His people through the forms of money and commodities. Dollar states he is blessed by God because of his wealth in commodities. “I own two Rolls-Royces and didn’t pay a dime for them,”( they were given to him through donors), “Why? Because while I’m pursuing the Lord those cars are pursuing me.”(16) Because Dollar has yet to demystify the commodities around him he sees commodities as blessings and as signs that he is doing the right thing. One could take the opposite view of his mind set that instead of gifts from God they were the gifts of a very generous congregation (his own) and a very generous group of his own workers through their own money. This is the commodity fetishism in a nutshell. Instead of using religion as an analogy Dollar actually really does see the commodities as having suprasensual qualities and having been enchanted with divine properties. And this is what leads Dollar away from the true God(17) and towards false gods, the gods of commodities. Max Weber wrote that despite being defeated by the proclamation of the Christian religion by being declared the official religion of the Roman Empire and the Christianization of the European world and of the Americas, the old polytheistic gods were resurrected in the form of capitalism and of commodities. Eugene McCarraher states, “Observing how ‘many old gods ascend from their graves’ to become the laws of nature of the market, [Weber] called upon his fellow modern intellectuals that ‘we live as did the ancients when their world was not yet disenchanted of its gods and demons’ [author’s italics] ‘only we...live in a different sense.’”(18)

Yet the big selling point for Dollar isn’t the commodities per se, but the item that gets people those “luxurious” commodities: money. Dollar tells his congregants and viewers that they must “‘speak debt-canceling Scriptures’ every day, in order to help make God’s promise real” in order for them to get more money(19) to buy the commodities they want and need and in order to live a comfortable(and possibly a lavish) life. Which brings us to the next stage of Marx’s theory of fetishism, and another fundamental (and idolatress) flaw, the money fetish. Hinkelammert sums up Marx’s views on money by stating, “Money is a commodity. But it is not a commodity like the rest; it is the commodity that stands out above all the rest.”(20) Money is not meant to be consumed like other commodities such as sneakers that you wear and get old or cars you drive that must be scrapped after their “life span” exceeds its limit. Instead money is the common denominator between all commodities, with this “the process of [the] commodity [fetish] intensifies.”(21) For Marx, it is at this stage of the money fetish, an intensification of the commodity fetish, that money is “endowed with the attributes of a conscious subject,”(22) as Hinkelammert puts it. With commodities there was no hierarchy with one commodity representing an equivalent for another, but with money there is now a hierarchy, money is the “king”in the polytheistic commodity world. Marx states that through the actions of capitalists and consumers, money “ has been set apart to be the universal equivalent”(23) in where one commodity is brought “into an opposing relation with some other commodity.”(24) So now the human being, which is brought under the power of commodities of their own making, having their lives ruled by commodities, are now ruled by a universal equivalent to commodities that can transcend individual commodities and represent all commodities (i.e., $10 can buy a CD, a few snow cones, a movie ticket, etc.). This causes Marx to label money as the “Mark of the Beast” by quoting the Latin text of the Book of Revelations in the New Testament(25) which states: “These are united in yielding their power and authority to the beast...so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.” (Rev. 17:13, 13:17, NRSV). Analyzing Marx’s use of this Christian image Hinkelammert goes on to say that “[t]he other reference to Christianity in the text links the commodity world, and specifically money, with the apocalyptic tradition of the beast, the Antichrist—that is, the antihuman.”(26) In Grundrisse (written a decade before Capital Volume I) Marx wrote that when money was first minted it was stored in the temples of antiquity, with this Marx took the analogy that money was “the god among commodities” and “the real community” of capitalist society.(27)

Patrick D. Miller puts it this way, “In the case of Jesus’ radical instruction...there seems to be no tension, only the assumption that property and wealth are another god, an alternative master in whom one is always at risk of putting one’s trust and finding a place of ultimate refuge.”(28) Dollar puts not only himself, but his congregants, at risk when he preaches about the gods of wealth and projects divine qualities onto money and onto commodities. We see that when he speaks of not only spiritual but “financial increase.” All one has to do is tithe to the church,(29) read their Bible, and be good Christians and they will become prosperous and rich. With this thinking being indoctrinated into oneself regularly one could not be held at fault for thinking that those whom are poor are not blessed by God while those who are rich are blessed by God. Quickly one begins to mix up the polytheistic world of commodities and the Anti-Christ of money with the realities of the true God. Money are blessings which give one precious commodities. Precious commodities are received because one is blessed by God. Money is now one’s god, the false god. In fact, Dollar and his ministry are seemingly mixing up the world of the fetish with God everyday. Kelefa Sanneh stated in a piece in the New Yorker that during his stay at the World Changers campus things started:

to get mixed up: the shareholders are the customers are the employees, and the corporate commitment to excellence comes to seem indistinguishable from the religious commitment to righteousness. It is a vision in which everyone will go on becoming more righteous and more excellent and more prosperous, forever and ever.(30)

The First Commandment states, “I am Yhwh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt...you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make yourself an idol...You shall not bow down to them or worship them...” (Ex. 20:2-5, NRSV). For the world of the people of Yis’rael (Israel), to worship other gods did not just mean to worship a bunch of divine beings up in the sky or on a mountain, but to put ones trust in certain gods because they gave people certain things, or commodities. If one put trust in other gods they did so to receive money, property, commodities, etc. One of those gods, in the ancient Near East, was Ba’al, a Canaanite god who’s name in Aramaic was Mammon (which has also been translated as “Wealth”). The word Mammon has been seen by some etymologists as coming from the word ’āmana which means “that in which one trusts.”(31) This etymological root can help us better understand Jesus’ parable on serving two masters better, and put into context Dollar’s (such an apt name if I do say so myself) heresy. “‘No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Wealth.” Jesus then goes on to condemn the religious establishment “who were lovers of money” by saying, “‘You are those who justify yourself in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts, for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.’” (Luke 16:13-15, NRSV) This quote from Jesus, the man Dollar states he serves and speaks to on a regular basis, gets to the heart of the matter. Dollar misguidedly preaches a heretical message to his people based on his fetishistic view of commodities and money. Because his vision is so simplistic and narrow minded, instead of preaching about the true God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which Christians state is their true god, he preaches a fetishistic gospel based on the perversities of the capitalist system. One no longer puts her or his trust in God but now one puts her or his trust in money, from which one has access to multiple gods, the gods of the commodities (money in the Hindu sense can almost be seen like a perversion of the god Ganesh, whom gives many Hindus access to the gods they want to pray too).

Norman O. Brown’s 1959 book Life Against Death “is perhaps the most searching psychoanalytical critique of capitalism ever written,” states McCarraher.(32) With capitalism, Brown writes, the “power over this world has passed from God to God’s ape, the Devil.” With money Brown sees “the essence of the secular, and therefore of the demonic.” Writing on Brown McCarraher states, “The ‘money complex,’” which Dollar falls under and what Marx “considered the animating spirit of commodity fetishism—is, in Brown’s words, ‘the heir to and substitute for the religious complex, an attempt to find God in things.’ Capitalism, we might add, was a new form of enchantment.”(33) As I have stated above for commodities, Dollar appears to be putting divine characteristics of enchainment into money, he’s trying to find God in commodities and money instead of trying to find God in the presence of human beings, which is a subject that Gustavo Gutiérrez talks at length about.(34) He’s putting money above all else, even commodities. This is Dollar’s downfall and his largest weakness. While he may be preaching a theology that many want to hear (especially the rich) he is preaching a false theology that only can exist under the pretenses of the commodity and money fetish. Yet these fetishes wouldn’t be as intense unless it had to do with the capitalistic market economy. Pablo Richard and Raul Vidales write that:

With the advance of the capitalist system money is transformed into capital...In the transformation of money into capital it becomes obvious that commodity relationships in their very operation have the power of decision not only over the proportions of material goods to be produced but even over the life or death of the producer.(35)

With this we now enter the capital fetish and into the thoughts of the neo-conservative Catholic theologian, and neo-classical proponent of capitalism, Michael Novak, whom also uses religion and the Bible to justify capitalism and the building of capital (wealth). Which we will go over in Part II of this blog series.

Notes

1. All quotes from the Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant Bible are taken from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translation. The Bible in use is Michael D. Coogan ed., The New Oxford Annotated Bible Third Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
2. Kelefa Sanneh, “Pray and Grow Rich.” New Yorker 80, no. 30 (Oct. 11, 2004): 48-57,
http://0-web.ebscohost.com.opac.sfsu.edu/ehost/detail?vid=5&hid=6&sid=ccbc98f3-5524-4684-9d
58-475fec862823%40SRCSM2 (accessed Oct. 5, 2006).
3. Michael Novak, Three in One: Essays on Democratic Capitalism, 1976-2000 (Lanham, Md:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001), 4.
4. Franz J. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death: A Theological Critique of
Capitalism, trans. by Phillip Berryman (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1986), 5.
5. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 5.
6. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, trans. by Ben Fowkes (London: Pelican Books, 1976. Reprint, New York: Penguin Classics, 1990), 125.
7. Mike Wayne, “Fetishism and Ideology: A Reply to Dimoulis and Milios,” Historical
Materialism 13, no. 3 (2005): 201.
8. Marx, Capital,163.
9. Eugene McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon: Notes Toward a Theological History of
Capitalism,” Modern Theology 21, no. 3 (July 2005): 437.
10. The commodity, for Marx, “is a sensuous [thing] which...at the same time [is] suprasensible or social...the impression made by a thing on the optic nerve is perceived not as a subjective excitation of that nerve but as the objective form of a thing outside the eye. In the act of seeing...is a physical relation between physical things...As against this, the commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labour within nature of the commodity and the material [dinglich] relations arising out of this.” (Marx, Capital, 163)
11. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 6.
12. Ibid., 7.
13. Marx, Capital, 165.
14. Ibid.
15. McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon,” 438.
16. Quoted in Sanneh, “Pray and Grow Rich.”
17. By “true” God I don’t mean to state that the Christian God is the only true God and all other
gods are false gods and that all other religions are demonic, false, and evil, etc. By “true God” I
mean the true God in the sense that Dollar sees, or thinks he sees, it. The god of the Christian
religion, which Dollar holds to be his god. I will argue that Dollar no longer worships the god he
sees as true but now worships a plethora of false gods in the forms of commodities and the ultimate false god, the anti-Christ, in the form of money, which is the unifier of commodities on the free market.
18. McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon,” 435.
19. Sanneh, “Pray and Grow Rich.”
20. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 16.
21. Pablo Richard and Raul Vidales, “Introduction,” ibid., xvii.
22. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 19.
23. Marx, Capital, 181.
24. Ibid., 180.
25. The text he quotes is: “Illi unum consilium habent et virutem et potestatem suam bestiae
tradunt...Et ne quis possit emere aut vendere, nisi qui habet charactereum aut nomen bestiae,
aut numerum nominis eius.” (Marx, Capital, 181).
26. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 19.
27. McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon,” 437.
28. Patrick D. Miller, The God You Have: Politics, Religion, and the First Commandment
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 31.
29. Members must tithe 10% of what they make and in order to become a member they have to meet numerous requirements, among which is to give the church their social security number (Sanneh, “Pray and Grow Rich).
30. Sanneh, “Pray and Grow Rich.”
31. Miller, The God You Have, 25.
32. McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon,” 442.
33. Ibid., 443.
34. See Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: 15th Anniversary Edition, trans. by Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988), 106-120, specifically 106-107.
35. Pablo Richard and Raul Vidales, “Introduction,” The Ideological Weapons of Death, xviii.

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