Book Analysis and Educational Issues

Educational Issues
A former nun, by the name of Karen Armstrong, abandoned her faith during her time at Oxford and later devoted years to toeing a different career path as a TV presenter and an academic. For some time, Karen was viewed as a source of controversy and a professional who was criticizing the Roman Catholic Church. However, her publications and opinions about the various religions across the word have helped her find a new drive after the famous September 11 terrorist attacks. Armstrong is sad about the statements made by a number of conservative Christians after the 9/11 attack. "Some of their responses have been very ugly. In the Bible-belt there are preachers preaching to 5,000 people saying that Islam is a violent religion. Jerry Falwell, 2014, eventually had to recant his statement that Muhammad was a terrorist. But those words are still out there." A more personal and dangerous incident occurred when her statements were misinterpreted during a newspaper interview for an Arab media house, where she was erroneously said to back suicide bombers.
Her latest book, titled “The Case for God”, focuses on how religion started as a practical phenomenon which helped people understand the ways of uncovering new heart and mind abilities and also how its principles have been changed by humans over time into moral actions and diverse rituals. According to her, religion needs perseverance. She debates that believing God is a supreme being means he is just like us, only larger, better and bigger and the one at the end of the line while this divine person present in the Holy Bible was simply seen, for centuries, as a sign of a divine existence after the end. During her interview, Karen expatiates on this search for religion and she reveals that the Indians have a huge head start as far as the 10th century preceding the birth of Christ, a number of the priests of Brahman created a ritual, which took the form of a competition. Karen explained that they entered the forest where they withdrew from their normal lives and took on another mental frame (Armstrong, 2010). 
In Karen’s book, she debates that in a large part of man’s history, religion has always been integrated into several other activities by people with a notable example being their form of government. According to her, this was “not because ambitious churchmen had ‘mixed up’ two essentially distinct activities, but because people wanted to endow everything they did with significance”. This participation in politics then means religion has always been involved in violence: jihadists, conquistadors, Crusaders, the list goes on and on. However, something Armstrong makes an huge effort to point out, specifically, by mentioning it severally, is that, this violence is often engendered by the political leaders and then spreads to religion and the other way round. According to her, this is due to the fact that any government, either peace-loving or focused on expansion, democratic or autocratic “was obliged to maintain at its heart an institution committed to treachery and violence,” and also because “violence and coercion, lay at the heart of social existence.” The first nations needed force to sustain their agricultural systems while the developed ones realized that an atmosphere of fear both from the police internally and armies externally was, quite unfortunately, the most effective method of keeping the society peaceful (Fallows, 2014).
Karen also explains that the state’s citizens then find themselves having to face and attempt to manage the violence done on behalf of the state, with religion seen as uninvolved or with the belief that a more defined separation of the state from the church is the solution. This also requires the knowledge of the basics of the terrorism or violence they are facing: “As an inspiration for terrorism . . . nationalism has been far more productive than religion.” Religions thus, are faced with the choice of accepting state protection and the ever present risk of terrorism that this means or to exist in isolation (Fallows, 2014).
Since the time of the Crusades, where West European Christians were waging holy wars with the Eastern Muslims, the people of the West have adopted the belief that Islam is violent and fanatical – irrespective of the fact that when this belief was adopted, Islam was more tolerant than Christianity. The recent terrorist attacks have fortified this belief, however if we desire a world filled with peace, we have to adopt a more impartial mindset. There is no way we can triumph in the “battle for hearts and minds” if we don’t know exactly what they contain. In the same vein, we can’t expect the Islamic faithful to be taken by our open-minded principles if we accept without question, a barbaric mindset which was created in the days of radical Christian aggression (Armstrong, 2012).














References
Armstrong, K. (2010). The case for God. Toronto: Vintage Canada.
Armstrong, K. (2012, January 22). Prejudices about Islam will be shaken by this show | Karen Armstrong. Retrieved August 29, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/22/prejudice-islam-hajj-british-museum
Fallows, J. (2014, December 10). 'Fields of Blood,' by Karen Armstrong. Retrieved August 29, 2017, from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/books/review/fields-of-blood-by-karen-armstrong.html?mcubz=1
Wroe, N. (2004, April 09). Profile: Karen Armstrong. Retrieved August 29, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/apr/10/society.philosophy