Sacred Causes - Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to al-Qaeda

Sacred Causes - Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to al-Qaeda

by Michael Burleigh

Harper Perennial, HK$153

Totalitarian regimes are an extreme form of political religion, as is the fanaticism of groups such as al-Qaeda, which fuses politics and religion into its most extreme form. In Sacred Causes - Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to al-Qaeda, Michael Burleigh makes a compelling, if overly passionate, case for the re-emergence of religion as a force following what many had hoped was an irresistible shift towards an increasingly secular society. He looks at the Nazism, fascism and communism of the past century, and the religious conflicts of Northern Ireland and elsewhere, in an overview of the continuing role of religion in European politics. But in pursuing his argument, Burleigh finds it necessary to spend rather a lot of time (a third of the book) defending Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church for the Vatican's silence as Hitler embarked on the Holocaust. Indeed, he all but ignores the historical horrors and persecution inflicted by the church itself that led to the secular quest in the first place. He also pays no heed to the US role in nurturing Islamic fundamentalist movements. Still, he's right that religion is back in play, and there's the rub.