Karen Armstrong is one smart, articulate sociological historian.  We need to listen to her.

We now take the secular state so much for granted that it is hard for us to appreciate its novelty, since before the modern period, there were no “secular” institutions and no “secular” states in our sense of the word. Their creation required the development of an entirely different understanding of religion, one that was unique to the modern west. No other culture has had anything remotely like it, and before the 18th century, it would have been incomprehensible even to European Catholics.

via The myth of religious violence | Karen Armstrong | World news | The Guardian.

the only tradition that satisfies the modern western criterion of religion as a purely private pursuit is Protestant Christianity, which, like our western view of “religion”, was also a creation of the early modern period.

One can sense the palpable confusion of people who have known only this dualism of Church and State.  The “keep it separate” is a necccessity; almost a PLEA, otherwise all hell will break loose.  The notion that a healthy vision of the common good;  of a commons that truly reflects an ideal of human society that is unmistakably positive , just,  and peaceful would come from anything “relgious”  (that dirty word “Theocracy”;  I still have an adverse reaction to it;  it seems that even the Old Testament authors had their misgivings about the idea of a “Kingdom of Israel”,  and much of what transpired once “God gave in and decided to ‘OK’ that idea for the ‘Kingdom of Israel'” was apparently just the kind of ‘told you so” scenario God may have had in mind when the idea was first suggested. But somehow,  the prophets of Israel kept an ideal Kingdom concept alive in their writings,  and Jesus clearly had something in mind with what he proclaimed as “The Good News”.  And that “Good News” was that “The Kingdom of God is at hand”.  The commons demands a politic that reflects a society geared toward justice, not a “Theocracy” in the sense of an oppressive, punitive, fundamentalist , legalistic clerical rule (as is reflected in historical religious formations of political power,  most recently in “Caliphates” as often expressed in “repressive Muslim clerical rules”.

Traditional spirituality did not urge people to retreat from political activity. The prophets of Israel had harsh words for those who assiduously observed the temple rituals but neglected the plight of the poor and oppressed.

and,  what is this? Perhaps a “Progressive” Concept of Sharia? :

The bedrock message of the Qur’an is that it is wrong to build a private fortune but good to share your wealth in order to create a just, egalitarian and decent society.

Indeed.  Gandhi envisioned the same sort of thing for Hinduism:

Gandhi would have agreed that these were matters of sacred import: “Those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.”

More likely accurate is that Gandhi envisioned this for ALL religions,  not just Hindu but Muslim, Jew, Christian, Buddhist.

So,  as for the “violence” moderns tend to associate with religion,  this seems to cordon off “religion” from the larger context of nation-state formation and maintenance.

the European wars of religion and the thirty years war were certainly exacerbated by the sectarian quarrels of Protestants and Catholics, but their violence reflected the birth pangs of the modern nation-state.

The book looks to be another of those must-haves,  especially given the context of today’s renewed angst regarding “the problem of Islam”.  I see it as yet another liberal nation-state confusion/concern over the separation of church and state.  This is also a really long article, and so I will stop my thoughts for this post at this point and read on,  and post again about the rest of it.

Part 2 of this series on The Myth of Religious Violence