What drives people to extremes? Why do the people behind al Qaeda or Islamic State (IS) get so charged up and angry? Perhaps to understand we should go back to the 16th century in Europe and the furious debate about the “divine right of kings”. For decades the royal houses of Europe had been becoming less accessible to their subjects. William of Orange, ruler of the powerful Netherlands, said he had “received his power from God and God alone”.
Philip II of Spain was also a principle protagonist of this theme. Indeed, when Spain conquered Holland, Philip tried to squash the new Protestant “heresy”, using the brutal practices of the Spanish Inquisition. It is no wonder that the Dutch were ready for a bloody revolt. They would no longer accept the prerogatives of rulers who claimed a “divine right”. In 1581, the Dutch withdrew their allegiance from Philip II. Accountability of a ruler to his subjects, not to his God, was the new dispensation.
Meanwhile, England, under the rule of Elizabeth I and James I, continued to believe in the divine right of the monarch. Only when James’s son came to the throne, Charles I, was the belief overturned. Parliament raised an army. Seven years of war was followed by the king’s trial, conviction and execution in 1649. The poet John Milton wrote at the time, “All men naturally were born free.” John Locke wrote 40 years later that “The very objective of government is setting up a known authority to which everyone of that society may appeal upon any injury received… The legislative power should be placed in collective bodies of men, call them senate, parliament, or what you please”.
From then on, over the course of two centuries, very much influenced by Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers, a constitutional form of government was slowly built across much of Europe. However, it was the US that first became a full democracy, with separation of church and state. But, despite the great advance from the days of “divine rule”, parliaments and governments regularly failed the people. Parliaments were often dominated, or at least greatly influenced, by those with inherited titles, people with money, the army and even criminal gangs.
Much of the struggle against the divine right of kings and the corrupt policies of the Pope in Rome led Martin Luther in 1517 to nail his handbill to the doors of a church in Wittenberg in Germany. Faith in God, not in pope or king, was the only way to gain heavenly salvation, he preached. No wonder that Philip II savagely repressed the profession and declarations of Protestant faith in Holland. It was in Holland that some Protestants became extremists. In the late 1560s, Protestant iconoclasts went into the catholic churches and destroyed the statues of Mary and the saints. They also destroyed any manifestation of the wealth and riches that the church had been extorting for so long. Their anger was such that we would call them today “violent, religious extremists”.
Sarah Chayes points out in her excellent new book, Thieves of State, “We can see parallels between the 16th century struggles in Europe against the kings and Catholic church, and the religious militancy of al Qaeda and IS. The resemblance between the language used to explain their violence and that of the earlier Protestant insurrectionists castigating the acute corruption of the Catholic Church and its royalist allies (with their belief in the divine right of kings) is unmistakable.”
Al Qaeda and IS are as puritanical as some of these early Protestants. They frown on liquor, dancing, romance and festivities, and impose gruesome punishments on non-conformists. Al Qaeda-linked rebels invaded Timbuktu and trashed historic shines dedicated to Sufi saints. The two movements have fought against the authoritarianism of Middle Eastern, Afghani and Pakistani rulers.
The Islamic militants of today rage against the kleptocratic and corrupt (apart from Jordan and Morocco) kings of the Middle East (who act as if they have a divine right to rule), and against the governments of the US and Europe who, they believe, help keep them in power. They also rage against autocratic, secular leaders such as President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and presidents Hamid Karzai and Mohammad Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan.
In Europe, governments, royalty and the Catholic Church (look at Pope Francis) gradually have discarded much of their old anachronistic beliefs (although that did not stop their governments precipitating the two great wars of the 20th century or their tolerating corruption today and allowing the wealthy to call the shots in the US elections).
Al Qaeda, IS and their like will start to go quiet only when the authoritarians and kleptomaniacs in power (supported by their western friends) purge themselves of financial excess, the false claims of absolute rulers and open themselves to root and branch democratic political reform.
The writer has been a foreign affairs columnist for the International Herald Tribune for 20 years and author of the much acclaimed new book, Conundrums of Humanity — the Big Foreign Policy Questions of Our Age. He may be contacted at [email protected]