Have you ever wondered why religion has so often been behind war, terrorism and tyranny? The answer lies in the way fundamentalists conduct family relations. Traditional, literalist or fundamentalist religion engenders oppressive, even abusive family environments. Fundamentalist communities are typically the harshest, most authoritarian and most violent toward women and children. And as always, the children of violence and repression grow up to embrace violence, with grave consequences that can ripple across a nation, and throughout the world. To look at the impact of religious fundamentalism on the world stage is to study the effects of mass child abuse on society at large. Fundamentalism in all faiths is a danger to humanity, first and foremost because it is a declaration of war against children.

The World Trade Centre assault and the recent spate of suicide bombings were heinous attacks that deliberately targeted civilians – in their thousands – while achieving no strategic advantage for any ‘cause’. These outrages were crimes against humanity based on little more than sadism, since they did nothing to address the grievances of the people whom the terrorists claim to represent.

What social forces gave rise to this kind of fanaticism? The key to the suicidal zeal of the terrorists lies in the perpetrators’ childhoods. Mohammed Atta, one of the ‘September 11’ terrorists, left a will requiring that no women be allowed to attend his funeral, and that anyone who washes his genitals, while preparing his corpse for burial, must wear rubber gloves. Atta suffered from a profound psychosexual disorder, based on hatred of, and fear of women. How did Atta get to be that way? Was there a cultural base to his sociopathy?

Sayyid Qutb, an Egytptian teacher and writer, was the spiritual father of the contemporary drive to Islamicize the State under Shari’a Law. Qutb developed his militancy while visiting the USA, where he was shocked and disgusted by the relative freedoms enjoyed by Western women. His indignation peaked when he witnessed men and women dancing closely together at a church meeting. According to his brand of religious zealotry, such public and physical displays of warmth between the sexes – especially in a House Of God - were an abomination, an offence against God, and an outrage that should be stamped out.

Fundamentalist religious societies in general are extreme forms of patriarchy, and Islamic fundamentalism is no exception: it is firmly rooted in misogyny. It is an anthropological fact that the more any culture leans toward patriarchal rigidity, the more violent it becomes. It is not possible for one group (men in power) to subjugate others (other men, women and children) without resorting to a perpetual vigil of violence. And without resort to authoritarian, harsh and repressive child-rearing, radical religious fervour - with its violent attitudes - could never be passed down the generations. Wherever traditional patriarchy has not been tempered by modernisation, gender roles and relations are still rigidly - and violently - delineated. According to the Dept of Public Health in Alexandria, Egypt, for example, one in four children had received injuries such as fractures, concussion or permanent disability as a result of parental ‘discipline’. Fundamentalist Islam has embraced and propagated the kind of parenting that has hacked off the sexual organs of over 100 million daughters. Is it possible for any culture to endorse such a vicious attack against it’s own children, without catastrophic social consequences, even international consequences?

Throughout the Islamic world there is modernisation, the forces of liberalisation and reform have long been at work. But wherever fundamentalist Islam is dominant, this is a breeding ground for terrorism, with violence as the answer of choice for social and political problems. Fortunately, there is a growing number of voices from within the Moslem world speaking out against oppression of women and children.

One such voice is that of Moroccan scholar, Fatna A. Sabbah, who says that fundamentalists expect women to be silent and immobile, to act meek and remain with eyes downcast, and to lead a life of near total seclusion. Women are possessed as property, shunned as temptresses, and blamed as the inspirers of lust - an evil and destructive emotion. When a mother is crushed underfoot, and when she lives under threat of violence, how can she be the kind of mother she wants to be, the mother her children need her to be? Children are the ultimate victims when their mothers live in bondage.

Palestinian researchers Haj-Yahia and Tamish echo Sabbah’s assertion that women are given a low status because traditionally, they are seen as the source of evil and anarchy. This attitude to women has disastrous ramifications in traditionalist communities. Female victims of sexual abuse are often accused of bringing the abuse upon themselves. Since a girl’s ‘loss of honour’ reflects on her whole family, even if she has been raped, she risks severe punishment for being found out. This makes girls easy targets for sexual abuse. Meanwhile boys, from a very young age, are pressured to be overly aggressive and dominant. The genders thus become polarised to extremes of hyper-masculinity and ultra-submission.

In Saudi Arabia, the results of two extensive and independent surveys of Saudi Arabian families were recently published by Arab academics Soraya Altorki (1986), and Mona AlMunajjed (1997). Both reported a kind of sexual apartheid, where women are segregated from men at home, in most public buildings and in public transport. Even at university, male teachers are viewed by female students through closed circuit TV. At the time of conducting her survey in the 1970’s, Altorki was not even able to move around on her own, unchaperoned. As an anthropologist, she considered Saudi Arabia one of the most closed cultures in the world.

Saudi Arabia shares the fundamentalist view that family’s honour is tied to women’s sexual conduct, and to the males’ capacity to control their women. As in other dominions of old-time religion, strict codes of honour are the prime responsibility of women, and the slightest infractions - which include talking or flirting with unrelated males - bring shame upon their family. Women are severely punished by their own male relatives, and the penalty for adultery is death. If sex occurs outside the rigidly prescribed boundaries, the woman is invariably blamed for leading the man astray. In marriage, her duty is to be sexually available to her husband – whether or not she chose, through love, to be his betrothed.

The suspicion and disgust with which feminine sexuality is viewed by fundamentalists is unfathomable. Only recently, religious police in Saudi Arabia forced 15 girls back into a burning building. Their crime? Trying to escape with their lives, uncovered by traditional dress. For this infraction they were scorched to death.

In Saudi homes, obedience to the father or husband is the overriding principle. Children and women never leave their homes without permission - a privilege which is infrequently granted. From both women and children, total obedience is expected, and children are obligated to their parents for life. They are told that they are doomed to hell, after Judgement Day, if they displease their parents. At the time of Altorki’s survey in the 1970’s, children were still expected to demonstrate submission by standing when adults entered the room, kissing their hands in the morning, and not laughing excessively. The Saudi Father loomed as a distant and aloof disciplinarian. His children were never observed by the researchers to defy him.

Though there are signs of change toward liberalisation, until recently all Saudi marriages were arranged, based on commercial or status-related considerations. A ‘dowry’ was paid for the bride by the groom’s father, and partners did not see each other until their wedding day. Obedience, instead of love, was the glue that kept the family together.

Patriarchal tribalism has distorted the true message of Islam, which originally was infinitely more liberal toward women. Shari’ah law erases many of the egalitarian teachings of the Koran, which explicitly recommends the empowerment of women in the spheres of politics, religion, commerce, and education. The Koran actually guarantees women rights to inheritance, independent property, divorce, and the right to testify in a court of law, and it forbids violence against women and girls. Edicts such as these go completely unheeded in all conservative Islamicist regimes. In fact, the puritanical imposition of Shari’ah law, which ensnares countries like Sudan and Saudi Arabia in a medieval quagmire, is not based on the teachings of the Koran, but was socially constructed between the 8th and 13th centuries.

Elsewhere, in Afghanistan, a recent survey of women conducted by ‘Physicians For Human Rights’ found that under the yoke of the extremist Taliban regime, 78% suffered symptoms of a major depression. More than one in every three women had suffered at least one incident of serious physical abuse, such as beating, rape or detention. Even in parts of Afghanistan not controlled by the Taliban, over half of all women suffered from symptoms of major depression. Societies that condone or accept violence toward women impair their capacity to properly nurture their children. With children as the secondary victims, a vicious cycle of violence is perpetuated in the society. The members of the brutal Taliban were children of radical violence and neglect. It’s no surprise that they grew to be predisposed to settling differences with the sword. The same can be said of all terrorists: they are not just the product of social and international injustice. First and foremost they are the product of severe abuse and neglect, and the most repressive codes for gender relations.

A manual for combating the endemic problem of family violence in Islamic nations was recently compiled by a group of Moslem women. This manual highlights the existence of stoning for adulterous women, polygamy, child marriage, and grossly unequal grounds for divorce; across a range of countries where fundamentalist Islam is powerful. The manual also exposes the loathsome custom of ‘Honour-Killing’, which is common in Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf Countries and in Palestinian territories. As an example of honour-killing: in Jordan a father stabbed his daughter in the groin because she had gone unaccompanied to talk to a boy. She was left to bleed to death. This kind of incident is not unusual, and is currently on the increase in the Middle East.

A girl’s own father, brother or uncle can kill her if she is perceived to have brought shame upon her family. The dishonourable acts which merit her murder range from chatting to a neighbour, holding hands with a man other than her husband, flirting, indulging in illicit or pre-marital affairs, committing adultery, and in some places being the victim of rape. In the community’s eyes, the family’s name and reputation will not be cleansed until the ‘offending’ girl is brutally killed. The more brutal the killing, the more complete the restoration of the family’s honour, and so victims tend to be strangled, knifed or hacked to death. Only those whose hearts are already brutalised through years of abuse could possibly accept this kind of atrocity in their community, let alone perpetrate it.

Honour killings are most common in Pakistan, where the government is stubbornly indifferent to this barbaric custom. Most cases go unpunished, and even those who are prosecuted receive lenient sentences. Several hundred honour killings are reported each year in Pakistan, and it is estimated that many more go unreported. Honour killing is also found in Palestinian territories. In 1997, Khaled Al-Qudra, Attorney General of the Palestinian National Authority, said that he suspected 70% of all murders in Gaza and the West Bank were ‘honour killings’. In Jordan, the law explicitly exonerates the murderer of a woman seen committing adultery. ‘Honour’ in this twisted form, is valued above love and life.

Pakistan is a poignant example of the way in which child-rearing decides the destiny of any society. A recent Pakistani Conference on Child Abuse reported a huge incidence of infanticide, abandonment, and violent physical abuse throughout the nation. Islamic schools in Pakistan are found to practice severe forms of corporal punishment. According to ‘The State of Pakistan’s Children - 1998’, Pakistan tolerates a very large number of child workers: 3.3 million aged between 5 and 14, or one in twelve of all in this age bracket. The female literacy rate is 24% - half of the male rate. The State of Balochistan has the lowest level of female education in the world: 2%. From 1990-1997, Central Government Expenditure was 31% for Defence, 2% for Education, and 1% Health. A conservative estimate of Pakistan’s Infant Mortality Rate is 9.5% - the highest in the world. This appalling level of interest in children’s physical and psychological wellbeing will ensure that Pakistan will be plagued with violence for a long time to come. Enclaves of such dire social standards become the fonts of militancy and fanaticism. This is why certain regions of Pakistan harbour such a popular support for the monstrous Taliban, and other fanatical groups.

For several years now, Pakistan and India have been on the brink of nuclear war with each other. If national violence is an expression of family violence, than we should not be surprised. Fundamentalism - of the Hindu variety - blights a number of Indian provinces, where, in accordance with religious Scripture, each year several thousand women are burned alive, where female infanticide continues, and where, to a much lesser degree, even child sacrifice is not unheard of. Though much of India is progressive and modern, religious fundamentalists today enjoy considerable political influence. Until fundamentalism, with its barbarous codes of relationship, all but disappears from India and Pakistan, there is no chance that these two antagonistic nuclear-capable powers will make peace.

Actually, fundamentalism in any religion is associated with violence toward children. This holds true for religion per se, not just in the Muslim or Hindu worlds. In the Christian world, fundamentalist families tend to follow more violent child-rearing methods. American social researchers have consistently found that literalist Christians are significantly more inclined to hit their children. In a recent (2002) publication, psychologist Elizabeth Gershoff cited 7 studies demonstrating that conservative Christian parents hit their children more. In the USA, the corporal punishment of children is most favoured in the southern states known as the ‘Bible Belt’. Little wonder, since there are numerous Biblical passages that seemingly encourage parents to beat their children. Such passages are plentiful, they include: Proverbs 13:24, 19:18, 22:15, 23:13-14, 29:15. The most well-known one of these is Proverbs 13:24, which says: ‘He who spares his rod hates his son’. The Book of Deuteronomy contains a recommendation that rebellious sons should be stoned to death (21:21).

Twenty-three American states still allow corporal punishment of children in schools, where teachers favour the use a long-handled wooden paddle to redden their pupils’ buttocks. The states that hold on to this archaic and warped idea about ‘discipline’ seem to coincide with strongholds of Christian fundamentalism. Children who are hit or otherwise mistreated tend to behave more violently later, (the evidence for this is overwhelming), and communities that favour physical punishment of children suffer more social violence as a result. The states which use corporal punishment in schools most frequently have a higher murder rate, and a higher incarceration rate. When a state like Kansas scales back the teaching of Darwinian evolutionary theory in favour of the Biblical Creation Myth, this should be considered a cause for alarm, since old-time religion and violence toward children go hand in hand. When fundamentalism begins to invade the education system, social violence is sure to follow.

In the USA, the towering rates of gun ownership, youth and racial violence, and its capriciously arrogant and belligerent foreign policy, these are the legacy of authoritarian and punitive attitudes towards children. This is not surprising, given the enormous presence of religious fundamentalist families in the USA. Two out of five Americans still hold to the literal interpretation of the Biblical Creation story, since fundamentalists have exerted considerable influence over educational policy. Here’s an eye-opener: the fundamentalist Attorney General, John Ashcroft, actually backs a relaxation of American gun-laws!

This fundamentalist omnipresence in the USA explains, at least in part, the social-evolutionary stagnation of today’s America. The USA belongs to a small minority of countries that has refused to support the UN Convention on the Rights of Children, the UN Convention Against Discrimination of Women, the Kyoto Protocol on Greenhouse Gas emission control, the International Criminal Court at The Hague, the international ban on the use of Land Mines, and many other key, progressive international initiatives. It is one of only four countries on earth to maintain the death penalty for minors. It is regrettable to see such developmental arrest in a nation which was once loved as a world leader in democratic and social evolution.

Nevertheless, I do not believe that religious scriptures can be blamed for the believers’ attitudes. We all interpret according to our personal predispositions, and therefore we each should be held responsible for our interpretations. Those who favour violence will find justifications for violence in any text. The rage of the battered and maltreated child lives on in an adult body, hiding itself behind this or that Scriptural justification, insatiably seeking others to punish. We give our hatred a religious rationale, but always what underlies it is childhood pain. Thus we persecute the infidel, or in the name of God and good discipline, we torture the next generation. And so, on and on it goes. What is written here is not a general comment about Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, or any other religious adherents. I believe there is a clear distinction between violently patriarchal fundamentalists and their progressive, liberal and moderate counterparts.

Terrorist activity seriously damages any claim to a legitimate cause. Nothing can justify the vulgar and abominable terrorist attacks on innocent civilians, nor the insanity of recent suicide bombings. And tragically, in the case of Palestinians, many of their grievances are legitimate: for decades they have endured injustice, displacement, human rights violations and atrocities.

On the other side of the fence is Israel, a country where, despite a strong democracy and a majority population of progressive, liberal, and secular individuals, Jewish Fundamentalism remains powerful. Only 20% of Israelis are considered religious, but fundamentalists have wielded a very disproportionate influence over both politics and education. The majority population of reformist, liberal or secular individuals hotly resent the fundamentalists’ stranglehold over Israeli foreign and domestic affairs (Tel Aviv hosted one of the largest peace demonstrations in human history).

Under Israeli occupation, innocent civilians have been massacred (Deir Yassin, Lydda, Ramle, and Doueimah in 1948, Sabra and Shatilla in 1982, Hebron 1994, Qana 1996), villages have been evacuated and razed, thousands of refugees have been forced to flee their homes in terror. According to Jewish theologian Marc Ellis, powerful ultra-Orthodox rabbis maintain that Israel is under the obligation of Holy Scriptures to conduct a campaign of expulsion of non-Jews from the ‘promised land’.

Ultra-Orthodox groups such as the Haredim, passionately and obstinately hold to literal interpretations of ancient Talmudic Scriptures and Codes of Law, some of which contain passages that seemingly justify the killing of non-Jews, and the confiscation of their lands. Throughout Israeli history, the more fanatical rabbis have invoked Scripture to justify massacres of Arab villagers. If the Scriptures in question are to be taken literally, as the fundamentalists do, then non-Jews are inferior, since their souls are explicitly said to come from Satanic realms, whereas only Jewish souls are Divine. And a land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians would be tantamount to giving Holy Land to the devil. Fundamentalists claim a Divine right to aggressive territorial expansion way beyond present Israeli borders – to the ancient Biblical borders. When Yigal Amir assassinated Israeli President Yitzhak Rabin for bringing Israelis closer to a just peace with Palestinians, he was convinced he was acting according to Scripture. Amir was a religious zealot, as was Baruch Goldstein, the madman who machine-gunned worshippers in a Hebron mosque. To this day, both are openly revered by fundamentalists.

As with all fundamentalists, the Jewish-fundamentalist hostile and racist worldview has its psychological roots in repressive family relations. Haredim follow a system of law called the Halacha (the Jewish parallel to Shari’a Law), which they advocate should become State law. Like every fundamentalist code of practice, it is riddled with misogyny. The Haredi repeatedly refer to women engaged in politics as witches, bitches or demons. Based on this archaic system of law, traditionalists forbid women from driving taxis or buses, or from taking up any employment where they might lead or oversee men. As a further dis-empowerment of women, they prohibit them from being taught from the Bible or Talmudic literature. Haredim even advocate the separation of men and women in public places. In Haredi neighbourhoods, women who go about immodestly dressed are insulted or beaten. Men are forbidden to listen to the voices of women singing, for this is a sin as grave as adultery. The fundamentalists’ contempt for women finds endorsement in Talmudic references to the beating of women, and the use of women as sexual objects. A particularly telling Scriptural passage quoted by Israel Shahak (ex-chairman of the Israeli League for Human Rights) is: ‘A woman is a sack full of excrement’. No wonder that for the male devotee, a daily morning prayer must include blessing God for not making him a woman. This abhorrence of the feminine is reminiscent of fundamentalist Islam, and for that matter all radical and joyless patriarchies that shun pleasure, freedom and progress.

The families of the ultra-Orthodox are extremely patriarchal domains, where education of children is dominated by the grandfather and women ‘know their place’. The reverence toward male power translates naturally to the glamorising of rabbis, some of whom are attributed to have magical powers.

The children of the ultra-Orthodox are entrapped in religious schools where ‘secular’ subjects such as mathematics, science and literature are eclipsed, and where they are forced daily to cram religious Scriptures for hours on end. Girls are believed not to need education, and are forbidden from many subjects. The head of the yeshiva (scriptural school) has absolute authority. He arranges marriages for the students – in direct violation of international human rights conventions. Students are barred from the outside world and are forbidden contact with ‘unbelievers’. Once they reach 16 years of age, they are indoctrinated with scriptural texts for 12 to 14 hours a day. Each day contains tedious study of every minutiae of horrible punishments meted out by God, to those who have the temerity to break their old-fashioned and draconian rules. The souls of ultra-Orthodox children are imprisoned, their normal childhood impulses are asphyxiated under a daily rehearsal of God’s vengeful wrath - with disastrous psychological consequences.

With so much religious fanaticism on both sides, it is easy to see why neither gives peace a chance. Fundamentalist-religious parenting and education at best prevents any society’s progress, at worst it dooms it to chaos, poverty and endless war.

George Bush’s ‘War Against Terrorism’ will be a failure in the long term because it misses the mark. The foundation for international violence is and always has been child-abuse, regardless of what political machinations are guessed to be the cause. Unless measures are taken to eliminate violence toward children in the strongholds of fundamentalism, bombing will only shift the problem from one place to another. Too often, bombing fails to discriminate between the innocent and the legitimate targets, which helps to make violent extremists more popular. In the long run, terrorism will not be stopped by American or Israeli combativeness, but by reforms to gender relations, and reforms to child-rearing and education in societies where backward religion dominates government policy. Just as democracy is defined by strict separation between religion and State, education must also be freed from religious control. Lasting and worthwhile change can only happen at the level of culture, that is, in the domains of family relations, child-rearing and education. Gender-egalitarian societies raise their children less violently, and until such societies become the norm, international disputes will be managed via the gun.

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