We live in troubled and dangerous times, with the beginnings of great wars being announced, sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly. Malraux was right to say that the next century will be religious or will not be. Indeed, we must admit that the three monotheistic religions have returned, to varying degrees, to a medieval and literal reading of the sacred texts, almost at the same time. What is the difference between the tens of millions of American evangelists who await the battle of the seven horses of the apocalypse (an apocryphal text) in Palestine and see Trump as the messiah, and the turbaned Iranians, Palestinians and others from Hezbollah who apply Sharia law to judge criminals? Not to mention the Jews, or rather the Israelis, who consider their land with an idealised vision of the past, omitting what history teaches us and the data suggesting that Jews have always lived there in large numbers. There is a good chance that it is the Palestinians who converted to Islam who are the true descendants of the Jews of that time. They are united by machismo, the relegation of women to subordinate roles, opposition to wokists and homosexuals, as well as the imperative to take the Bible and the Koran literally. Jesus must be turning in his grave (sorry, I forgot that he rose again) if he saw that he wanted to drive the rabbis out of the temple because their backward views of religion are transformed into texts that must be recited rather than accepting your neighbour and respecting everyone, including prostitutes! Of course, it cannot be denied that faith can work miracles, but it is personal faith, not religious systems.
We are witnessing a return to the period preceding the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, because ultimately, that is the goal: to forget science and knowledge, to return to the ‘uma’ of the Arabs in its modern version: one man, one woman, and authoritarian regimes. Democracy is doomed to hegemony because equality does not exist. Innate traits dominate acquired traits, and as always, it is women who suffer the consequences directly. The fact that a genocide is being perpetrated with the blessing of a real godfather, who is awaiting confirmation of 34 judgements, with the support of notorious anti-Semites such as Orban, Putin, the RN, etc., says a lot about current preferences. We are a long way from what the Jews of the diaspora have brought to the world in art, philosophy, science, etc. Being unwaveringly linked to a country is not compatible with a universal message. Wars have accompanied all periods in which religions had power, and this is equally true of the three dominant religions today, or at least.
Of course, wars are not directly religious; they are always mixed with corruption and colonialism (cf. Israel), and always aim to allow billionaires to remain so and to transform this world into a world of rentiers. Need we be reminded that Trump, Netanyahu, Putin and Orban should have been in prison for a long time for corruption? Religions serve as a convenient smokescreen, as they have throughout history. Of course, authorities and religious figures have expressed their opposition to these injustices and genocides (from the Pope to certain American rabbis in particular), but the majority of people follow the enlightened ones who advocate a bright future, and social networks with their fake news and influencers.
Never would we have believed that the United States would return so quickly to the Middle Ages with the ban on the use of the terms ‘diversity’, ‘LGBT’ and ‘transgender’, the ban on mentioning transgenesis in funding applications (they do not understand that these are transgenic mice essential for studying genetic diseases) and the sudden dismissal of great scientists, all thanks to a simplistic and evangelical version of religion. The problem is that a headwind against knowledge and the Enlightenment is blowing just about everywhere, including here (in a calmer way for the moment!). We should take advantage of the opportunity to let the United States sink into ignorance – in any case, China will dominate the world in a few years’ time – and make Europe a continent of progress by investing in research, innovation, knowledge and art, which often go hand in hand (cf. the Renaissance). Perhaps a utopia, but the alternatives, including imitating the United States, are leading us to the wall. Perhaps we will realise that unbridled American-style capitalism is leading the world to its downfall.
