Will Fundamentalism Win?

Will fundamentalism " win"?

After spending time inside one of the world's most beautiful and unusual holy places, the Great Mosque of Cordoba (which contains within it a magnificent Catholic Cathedral) we lingered over lunch in a cafe in the shadow of a statue of the Muslim philosopher Averroes. Averroes advocated in the 13th century for ideas very familiar to 21 st century Unitarian Universalists, particularly that faith and reason are not incompatible, but are both gifts that humans receive as part of this life which should be enjoyed and explored together. Averroes lived in Cordoba in the same century as the Jewish philosopher Maimonides, who also has a statue in Cordoba and streets in Spain dedicated to his memory. Maimonides represents within Judaism a flowering of reason that transcends the culture and century in which he lived and that was not incompatible with his faith.

Both Maimonides and Averroes were defeated in their lifetimes by fundamentalism. Maimonides family was driven out of Cordoba by a rising wave of Catholic fundamentalism and anti-Semitism that ultimately drove all the Jews out of Spain and resulted in the Spanish Inquisition. Averroes is regarded as the last of the "liberal" Muslim philosophers. His successors were far more skeptical about the role of reason in religion.

The two great surviving monuments to Muslim Spain that you can visit in Cordoba and Seville are like architectural bookmarks of the centuries of Muslim rule where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived in relative harmony, sharing in the creation and enjoyment of a single Andalusian culture within which all could practice their faiths. Several generations lived their lives within that culture, and could not imagine that the values it represented would deteriorate and be destroyed by resurgent fundamentalist beliefs or armies. But they were. In the "Reconquista" Spain became a conservative, monolithic, and imperialist Catholic culture. The Christian winners in this battle tore down the mosque in Seville and replaced it with the 3rd largest Cathedral in the world. In Cordoba, they literally plopped a cathedral into the center of one of the world's most beautiful mosques. Both Muslims and Catholics began to persecute Jews and eventually they were driven out Andalusia. The fundamentalists won.

Their victory did not last, however. In the Spain we experience today, secularism seems dominant, and the power of the Catholic church is in decline. The metaphor of tides is used so often to speak of the patterns in history because ideologies do seem to rise and fall. Religious liberals , especially the 19th century ones who inspired Unitarian Universalism, liked to believe that the despite the tides, the ocean that we float upon is our untapped potential of depth in knowledge and understanding of our common humanity. The jury is still out on that belief. It is an article of faith for UU's and a study if history doesn't necessarily provide a rational justification supporting it.

There are reasons within the architectural monuments for hope, however. When Charles V decided to build a Cathedral in Cordoba after the Muslims were defeated, it would have been easier to just tear down the Great Mosque, as they did in Seville. Instead he preserved its beauty and much of its integrity by building his cathedral into the center of the mosque. When Pedro the Cruel decided to build his palace, he recognized and preserved and adopted the beauty of the Arab architecture in his Alcazar. The "mashup" experience of visiting these places is both heartbreaking and thrilling. We wandered amazed under the red and white columns where Muslims prayed in the Grand Mosque, listening to the chants of a priest offering a Catholic mass. We stepped outside the Moorish gardens and found Maimonides and Averroes waiting for us. Did fundamentalism win? Will it win? Not yet...not yet...