As for the same book below, please refer to my previous postings dated 22 August 2010, 8 September 2010, 2 October 2010, 16 October 2010, 29 October 2010, 28 November 2010, 23 April 2011 respectively. (Lily)
（http://galvestondailynews.com/story/285978）
Tenth Parallel’ is where religions wage battle, 15 January 2012
by Dr. Melvyn H. Schreiber（Correspondent）
“The Tenth Parallel,” by Eliza Griswold, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 317 pages, $27.
Eliza Griswold, a brave young journalist and investigative reporter (born in l973), spent seven years of her life exploring the lands between the equator and the 10th parallel of latitude, a land where more than half of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims live, as do 60 percent of the world’s 2 billion Christians.
The countries she covered are Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. In all but the Philippines (where the north-south axis is reversed), the Muslims lived on the north, the Christians on the south. What she explored, at no small risk to herself as a young white woman, was the conflict between Islam and Christianity along this fault line.
Religious identity was often the defining factor in political and economic conflict. Each faith was out to save souls by proselytizing vigorously, believing that only their religion’s way to salvation was dependable.
What that meant in Africa was that while Islam descended in holy jihad from the north, Christianity spread its message to the tribal people just to the south. Conflict was inevitable; where Muslims controlled, other religions were not permitted to spread, and where Christians controlled, their dominance was made clear.
Griswold states an important lesson: People will idealize religious law until they experience the limits of its application. Neither Sharia nor Christian dedication has stanched corruption, and religious zealots have pressed on with their contentions even in the face of failure and rejection.
The more one reads and understands, the clearer it becomes that not far under religious zeal lies a desire for power, authority over other and the economic means to accomplish that.
Billy Graham’s son Franklin is quoted on several occasions. On one of them, he is asked if trying to save people’s souls for Christ could actually result in their deaths. He replies if one does not tell people what God has done for them, they’ll live out their lives and die and go to hell. But if he tells them about God’s son and if they receive Christ, then he knows their souls are in God’s hands. Clearly, Franklin Graham’s interest is in saving souls, not politics or economics. But the implications of his ministry are both political and economic.
On the other hand, Osama bin Laden’s spiritual mentor, Abdullah Azzam, “believed that every Muslim was duty bound to fight in — or pay for — global jihad until the holy lands of Islam were restored to their former glory. He preached that Islam’s future lay in reviving its ideal, seventh-century past by whatever means necessary.”
The contrast between Franklin’s ideal and Azzam’s was not in kind — each believed his version to be correct — but in the inheritance of a tradition and teachings that could not be denied and in the unquestioned acceptance of fixed but contrary convictions.
How could conflict be avoided in such circumstances?
In the end, religion legitimizes a conflict over resources and political hegemony in this curious corridor of the world, a band across Africa and Asia where two cultures collide.
The author, also a published poet, writes splendid, readable prose. She is a storyteller of great gifts, and the book is worth reading for her observations and elegant tale telling as well as the compelling story of religious communities in conflict.
・Dr. Melvyn H. Schreiber is a physician at the University of Texas Medical Branch.
(End)
