The one-God thesis leads us to ideological disaster; time to think beyond ideology and find better truths and solutions

The heroics of an Indian pilot and some passengers on a Flydubai flight prevented a suicidal co-pilot from creating another 9/11 incident. This should force the world to think again on the downsides of ideology. Ideology, whether based on religion or something else, is a trap, and ultimately will lead us to disaster. While we can let the investigators decide whether or not the co-pilot, Hammam al-Hammami, was indeed a radicalised Islamist or not, the early indications are pointing in that direction.

What we should really worry about is not just radical Islamism, but all radical or exclusivist ideologies in general, whether these get by as “universal” religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) or economic and social ideologies (capitalism, communism, liberalism, conservatism, feminism, environmentalism or libertarianism). This is not to deny the violation of rights and discrimination against people – whether defined by gender, caste, race, religion, ethnicity or ideology – but once you treat the ideology itself as beyond question, you are bound to wade into another form of tyranny and exclusion. Why else would “liberals” want to cancel those who disagree with them?

Ideological lenses help us up to a point by giving us a framework in which examine reality, but they also prevent us from seeing the other “truths” when the framework itself may be partly or fully faulty. Belief in some ideology or “ism” prevents us from seeing what is real. The truth, whether ultimate or intermediate, will always be messy, and ideology is what prevents us from looking for larger and better truths.

The problem is never the follower of an ideology; it is the ideology itself. Al-Hammami is just another human being with his own good and bad points, but it is his ideology that converts him into a radical suicidal pilot. It flows from the idea that only one God is the right one, and that everyone else is on the wrong path and thus not deserving of equal respect. Or even life. Feminism is supposed to deliver women equal rights, but often some feminists think it is men who are the enemy, thus denying humanity to those who were indeed party to discriminatory acts against women. Fighting for women’s rights is good, but feminism can become an end in itself, and ultimately self-destructive. Discrimination on the basis of caste is bad, but is the current law, which allows general category castes to sometimes be unfairly targeted by those belonging to the SC/ST groups, really about fighting discrimination, or just reversing the direction of discrimination? Any law can be weaponised once it congeals into an ideology that cannot be questioned.

The problem began with the Abrahamic thought process of creating a jealous god who brooks no rivals. Once large groups of humans started believing that only one God, one truth can exist, it becomes essential for believers to reach the logical conclusion that others are wrong, and must not be given equal respect or rights. While the Jews invented the basic idea, they did not weaponise it till the modern Jewish state of Israel was established. The Jews of yore did not choose to think beyond the claim that they were a chosen people created by God. Their exclusivism prevented them from imposing their One-God hypothesis on others, but once Christianity was invented and taken out of its Jewish confines, ideological exclusivism and extremism took on a life of its own, smashing everything in its path. Violence and exclusion are the only two ways in which such beliefs can be sustained. Islam borrowed the same idea of one-true-God and took it to another level. The problem is not the idea of which god you believe in, but the corollary, that believing anything else is blasphemy, worthy of destruction.

The ideologies that emerged from the destructive tendencies of these religions – communism, liberalism, feminism, and modern-day their derivative ideas like critical caste theory intersectionality - merely carried forward the notion of the exclusive truth that only their ideology can truly represent. Even Gandhian pacifism can be seen as an extreme version of non-violence that cannot end well – as it did not during partition and even afterwards.

Indian religions (or rather, the ideas that transcend the narrow western idea of religion) like Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism have broadly tried to avoid the traps set by exclusivist truths. At least in theory, though charismatic individuals can weaponise even pluralist ideas. But the core acceptance of diversity and difference is real. In Hinduism, pluralism and choice of gods is central. In Buddhism, the search is for a middle path, and right thought and action. “Seeker” religions like Hinduism and Buddhism are different from religions that start with the assumption that the truth is already established.

So how did the Abrahamic religions try to reconcile the revealed truth with newly emerging truths?

In the west, the threat posed by religious narrowness was sought to be mitigated by the so-called separation of church and state, but when the target of each side’s actions is the same person, exclusive spheres of operation for church and state are just two forms of extremism. Reason: at the level of the individual human being, the temporal and the spiritual cannot be separated for there is only one person involved. Islam denies this separation and integrates the spiritual, political and the temporal into one centralised thought process. It forces the human being to choose only one thing, the right god and the right religion, when all these are merely human creations and claims.

The Hindu idea of the four purusharthas, dharma, artha, kama, and moksha, is more sensible, for it leaves it to the individual to decide how he apportions his life and work between these four conflicting human needs.

What one is getting at is the reality that solutions to human problems live beyond ideology and revealed truths, and every decision we take involves some tradeoff with another possibly good or bad objective. As American public intellectual Thomas Sowell has noted repeatedly, there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. When we choose an action, we simultaneously leave out another, and only posterity will tell us if the tradeoff was good or bad. We have to find acceptable tradeoffs when we make choices, and when these choices themselves lead to other problems, we must think of better tradeoffs. There are no perfect solutions to any problem, and the world must accept the fact that the ultimate truth may be elusive, and what we should be aiming for is better truths, better solutions, repeated engagement with the current truth and its limitations.

The idea that there must be one perfect solution to any problem is a derivative of the idea that there must be only one true God, and one truth. Since no God has actually turned up to prove this claim, and no truth is beyond dispute when more facts come to light, we need to think beyond ideology and final truth. There is no such thing. We are doomed to find messy solutions and temporary workarounds, and the only truth is that we must try better next time. The one-God hypothesis has lived past its sell-by date, but it has now mutated into the one true ideology thesis. Both are wrong.