Category Archives: Religion

Essays, Foreign Affairs, Military, Politics, Religion

ZENDEGI-E NORMAL

After the theocracy’s fall, the search for a normal life becomes Iran’s quietest revolution.

By Michael Cummins, Editor | October 16, 2025

This speculative essay, based on Karim Sadjadpour’s Foreign Affairs essay “The Autumn of the Ayatollahs,” transforms geopolitical forecast into human story. In the imagined autumn of the theocracy, when the last sermons fade into static, the search for zendegi normal—a normal life—becomes Iran’s most radical act.

“They said the revolution would bring light. I learned to live in the dark.”

The city now keeps time by outages. Twelve days of war, then the silence that follows artillery—a silence so dense it hums. Through that hum the old voice returns, drifting across Tehran’s cracked frequencies, a papery baritone shaped by oxygen tanks and memory. Victory, he rasps. Someone in the alley laughs—quietly, the way people laugh at superstition.

On a balcony, a scarf lifts and settles on a rusted railing. Its owner, Farah, twenty-three, hides her phone under a clay pot to muffle the state’s listening apps. Across the street, a mural once blazed Death to America. Now the paint flakes into harmless confetti. Beneath it, someone has stenciled two smaller words: zendegi normal.

She whispers them aloud, tasting the risk. Life, ordinary and dangerous, returning in fragments.

Her father, gone for a decade to Evin Prison, was a radio engineer. He used to say truth lived in the static between signals. Farah believed him. Now she edits protest footage in the dark—faces half-lit by streetlamps, each one a seed of defiance. “The regime is weakening day by day,” the exiled activist on BBC Persian had said. Farah memorized the phrase the way others memorize prayers.

Her mother, Pari, hears the whispering and sighs. “Hope is contraband,” she says, stirring lentils by candlelight. “They seize it at checkpoints.”

Pari had survived every iteration of promise. “They say ‘Death to America,’” she liked to remind her students in 1983, “but never ‘Long Live Iran.’” The slogans were always about enemies, never about home. She still irons her scarf when the power flickers back, as if straight lines could summon stability. When darkness returns, she tells stories the censors forgot to erase: a poet who hid verses in recipes, a philosopher who said tyranny and piety wear the same cloak.

Now, when Farah speaks of change—“The Ayatollah is dying; everything will shift”—Pari only smiles, thinly. “Everything changes,” she says, “so that everything can remain the same.”

Farah’s generation remembers only the waiting. They are fluent in VPNs, sarcasm, and workaround hope. Every blackout feels like rehearsal for something larger.

Across town, in a military café that smells of burnt sugar and strategy, General Nouri stirs his fourth espresso and writes three words on a napkin: The debt is settled. Dust lies thick on the portraits of the Supreme Leader. Nouri, once a devout Revolutionary Guard, has outlived his faith and most of his rivals.

He decides that tanks run on diesel, not divinity. “Revelation,” he mutters, “is bad logistics.” His aides propose slogans—National Dignity, Renewal, Stability—but he wants something purer: control without conviction. “For a nation that sees plots everywhere,” he tells them, “the only trust is force.”

When he finally appears on television, the uniform is gone, replaced by a tailored gray suit. He speaks not of God but of bread, fuel, electricity. The applause sounds cautious, like people applauding themselves for surviving long enough to listen.

Nouri does not wait for the clerics to sanction him; he simply bypasses them. His first decree dissolves the Assembly of Experts, calling the aging jurists “ineffective ballast.” It is theater—a slap at the theocracy’s façade. The next decree, an anticorruption campaign, is really a seizure of rival IRGC cartels’ assets, centralizing wealth under his inner circle. This is the new cynicism: a strongman substituting grievance-driven nationalism for revolutionary dogma. He creates the National Oversight Bureau—a polite successor to the intelligence services—charged not with uncovering American plots but with logging every official’s loyalty. The old Pahlavi pathology returns: the ruler who trusts no one, not even his own shadow. A new app appears on every phone—ostensibly for energy alerts—recording users’ locations and contacts. Order, he demonstrates, is simply organized suspicion.

Meanwhile Reza, the technocrat, learns that pragmatism can be treason. He studied in Paris and returned to design an energy grid that never materialized. Now the ministries call him useful and hand him the Normalization Plan.

“Stabilize the economy,” his superior says, “but make it look indigenous.” Reza smiles the way one smiles when irony is all that remains. At night he writes memos about tariffs but sketches a different dream in the margins: a library without checkpoints, a square with shade trees, a place where arguments happen in daylight.

At home the refrigerator groans like an old argument. His daughter asks if the new leader will let them watch Turkish dramas again. “Maybe,” he says. “If the Internet behaves.”

But the Normalization Plan is fiction. He is trying to build a modern economy in a swamp of sanctioned entities. When he opens ports to international shipping, the IRGC blocks them—its generals treat the docks as personal treasuries. They prefer smuggling profits to taxable trade. Reza’s spreadsheets show that lifting sanctions would inject billions into the formal economy; Nouri’s internal reports show that the generals would lose millions in black-market rents. Iran, he realizes, is not China; it is a rentier state addicted to scarcity. Every reformist since 1979 has been suffocated by those who prosper from isolation. His new energy-grid design—efficient, global—stalls when a single colonel controlling illicit oil exports refuses to sign the permit. Pragmatism, in this system, is a liability.

When the generator fails, darkness cuts mid-sentence. The air tastes metallic. “They promised to protect us,” Pari says, fumbling for candles. “Now we protect ourselves from their promises.”

“Fattahi says we can rebuild,” Farah answers. “A secular Iran, a democratic one.”
“Child, they buried those words with your father.”
“Then I’ll dig them out.”

Pari softens. “You think rebellion is new. I once wrote freedom on a classroom chalkboard. They called it graffiti.”

Farah notices, for the first time, the quiet defiance stitched into daily life. Pari still irons her scarf, a habit of survival, but Farah ties hers loosely, a small deliberate chaos. At the bakery, she sees other acts of color—an emerald coat, a pop song leaking from a car, a man selling forbidden books in daylight. A decade ago, girls lined up in schoolyards for hijab inspections; now a cluster of teenagers stands laughing, hair visible, shoulders touching in shared, unspoken defiance. The contradiction the feminist lawyer once described—“the situation of women shows all the contradictions of the revolution”—is playing out in the streets, private shame becoming public confidence.

Outside, the muezzin’s call overlaps with a chant that could be mourning or celebration. In Tehran, it is often both.

Power, Nouri decides, requires choreography. He replaces Friday prayers with “National Addresses.” The first begins with a confession: Faith divided us. Order will unite us. For a month, it works. Trucks deliver bread under camera lights; gratitude becomes policy. But soon the whispering returns: the old Ayatollah lives in hiding, dictating verses. Nouri knows the rumor is false—he planted it himself. Suspicion, he believes, is the purest form of control. Yet even he feels its poison. Each morning he finds the same note in the intelligence reports: The debt is settled. Is it loyalty—or indictment?

Spring creeps back through cracks in concrete. Vines climb the radio towers. In a basement, Farah’s father’s transmitter still hums, knobs smoothed by fear. “Tonight,” she whispers into the mic, “we speak of normal life.”

She reads messages from listeners: a woman in Mashhad thanking the blackout for showing her the stars; a taxi driver in Shiraz who has stopped chanting anything at all; a child asking if tomorrow the water will run. As the signal fades, Farah repeats the question like a prayer. Somewhere, a neighbor mistakes her voice for revelation and kneels toward the sound. The scarf on her balcony stirs in the dark.

The old voice never returns. Rumor fills the vacuum. Pari hangs laundry on the balcony; the scarf flutters beside her, now simply weather. Below, children chalk zendegi normal across the pavement and draw birds around the words—wings in white dust. A soldier passes, glances, and does nothing. She remembers writing freedom on that school chalkboard, the silence that followed, the summons to the principal’s office. Now no one erases the word. She turns up the radio just enough to catch Farah’s voice, low and steady: “Tonight, we speak of normal life.” In the distance, generators pulse like mechanical hearts.

Nouri, now called Marshal, prefers silence to titles. He spends mornings signing exemptions, evenings counting enemies. Each new name feels like ballast. He visits the shrine city he once scorned, hoping faith might offer cover. “You have replaced revelation with maintenance,” a cleric tells him.
“Yes,” Nouri replies, “and the lights stay on.”

That night the grid collapses across five provinces. From his balcony he watches darkness reclaim the skyline. Then, through the static, a woman’s voice—the same one—rises from a pirated frequency, speaking softly of ordinary life. He sets down his glass, almost reaches for the dial, then stops. The scarf lifts somewhere he cannot see.

Weeks later, Reza finds a memory stick in his mail slot—no note, only the symbol of a scarf folded into a bird. Inside: the civic network he once designed, perfected by unseen hands. In its code comments one line repeats—The debt is settled. He knows activation could mean death. He does it anyway.

Within hours, phones across Iran connect to a network that belongs to no one. People share recipes, poetry, bread prices—nothing overtly political, only life reasserting itself. Reza watches the loading bar crawl forward, each pixel a quiet defiance. He thinks of his grandfather, who told him every wire carries a prayer. In the next room, his daughter sleeps, her tablet tucked beneath her pillow. The servers hum. He imagines the sound traveling outward—through routers, walls, cities—until it reaches someone who had stopped believing in connection. For the first time in years, the signal clears.

Farah leans toward the microphone. “Tonight,” she says, “we speak of water, bread, and breath.” Messages flood in: a baker in Yazd who plays her signal during morning prep; a soldier’s mother who whispers her words to her son before he leaves for duty; a cleric’s niece who says the broadcast reminds her of lullabies. Farah closes her eyes. The scarf rises once more. She signs off with the whisper that has become ritual: Every revolution ends in a whisper—the sound of someone turning off the radio. Then she waits, not for applause, but for the hum.

By late October, Tehran smells of dust and pomegranates. Street vendors return, cautious but smiling. The murals are being repainted—not erased but joined—Death to America fading beside smaller, humbler words: Work. Light. Air. No one claims victory; they have learned better. The revolution, it turns out, did not collapse—it exhaled. The Ayatollah became rumor, the general a footnote, and the word that endured was the simplest one: zendegi. Life. Fragile, ordinary, persistent—like a radio signal crossing mountains.

The scarf lifts once more. The signal clears. And somewhere, faint but unmistakable, the hum returns.

“From every ruin, a song will rise.” — Forugh Farrokhzad

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED UTILIZING AI

Essays, History, Philosophy, Religion, Science

THE LAST LIGHT OF ALEXANDRIA

How Hypatia of Alexandria’s murder marked the moment reason fell to zeal—and why her lesson still echoes in an age ruled by algorithms.

By Michael Cummins, Editor, October 5, 2025

In the waning light of Alexandria’s golden age, a woman stood at the threshold of the cosmos. Draped in the robes of a philosopher, Hypatia of Alexandria taught mathematics as if it were music, astronomy as if it were prayer, and philosophy as if it were the architecture of the soul. She wrote no manifestos and led no armies. She taught. She reasoned. And for this—for the audacity of clarity in a world turning toward dogma—she was torn from the world. Her death was not merely a murder; it was a cultural wound, a severing of the classical from the medieval, of inquiry from ideology. The light she guarded—the flickering flame of secular, public reason—was extinguished in the very place conceived to protect it.

To speak of Hypatia is to speak of a city that believed knowledge could civilize the human spirit. Alexandria, founded by Alexander and tended by the Ptolemies, was the ancient world’s neural network, an experiment in global curiosity. Within its Library and Museum—the first great research institute—scholars mapped the heavens, dissected geometry, and debated the soul’s immortality under vaulted ceilings that smelled of parchment and sea salt. It was in this monumental, decaying marble world that Hypatia was born, around 370 CE, to Theon, the Library’s last known scholar. Her father taught her what Euclid and Eratosthenes had discovered, but she learned what they had meant: that geometry was not sterile abstraction but a form of devotion, a way of approaching perfection through reason.

She inherited the lineage of the ancients—the serene logic of Euclid, the restless measurement of Eratosthenes, the astronomical audacity of Ptolemy—and fused them into something both rigorous and spiritual. In late antiquity, knowledge still shimmered with moral purpose. Neoplatonism, the philosophy she championed, held that all things emanated from a single divine source, and that the human mind could ascend toward it through contemplation and mathematics. Numbers were not quantities but metaphors of being; to trace a circle was to imitate eternity. For Hypatia, geometry was not an escape from the world but its transfiguration—each theorem a small proof of cosmic coherence. It was not rebellion but refinement, a path to God that required no priest—and therefore could not be permitted.

Her genius lay in making the abstract visible. She wrote commentaries on Diophantus’s Arithmetica, clarified Ptolemy’s Almagest, and edited Apollonius’s Conics, ensuring future astronomers could still plot the curves of planets and light. Yet her intellect was not confined to parchment. She improved the astrolabe, designed hydroscopes to measure fluid density, and demonstrated that science was not the enemy of spirituality but its instrument. In Hypatia’s hands, philosophy became a navigation system—an attempt to chart truth in a universe governed by reason.

Imagine her in the lecture hall: morning light slanting through the colonnade, dust motes rising like miniature stars. A semicircle of students—Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, Jews, Christians—sit cross-legged at her feet. “You see,” she tells one, “a circle is not only a form—it is an argument for eternity.” Another asks, “And where is the soul in all this?” She pauses, chalk in hand. “In the harmony,” she says, smiling. The air hums with the audacity of free exchange. In an age dividing along creeds, her classroom was a sanctuary of synthesis.

At night, when the city’s noise dimmed and the harbor lanterns shimmered against the water, she would walk the colonnade alone. The scrolls in her study carried the scent of dust and oil. She read by lamplight until her fingers grew black with soot. To her students, she was certainty incarnate; alone, she seemed to understand that clarity provokes envy—that serenity itself is a kind of heresy. Even the stars she charted seemed to dim slightly under the weight of her foresight.

Her authority rested not on birth or ordination but on rational mastery—an unsettling legitimacy that bypassed both patriarchs and priests. She was an unmarried woman commanding reverence in a public space. Her followers were loyal not to a doctrine but to the discipline of thought itself. That was her heresy.

By the early fifth century, the harmony she embodied had begun to collapse. Alexandria had become a city of sharpened edges: pagan temples shuttered, Jewish enclaves under siege, imperial statues toppled and replaced by crosses. The Roman Empire was disintegrating; in its vacuum rose new centers of power, most formidable among them the Church. Bishop Cyril, brilliant and autocratic, sought to consolidate both spiritual and civic control. The imperial prefect Orestes—Hypatia’s friend and intellectual peer—defended the older ideal of the secular city. Between them stood the philosopher, calm and unarmed, the last civil defense against clerical supremacy.

The city had become a mirror of the empire’s exhaustion. Pagan artisans carved crosses beside the fading faces of their old gods; traders whispered prices under the sound of sermons. In the streets, theology replaced law. Orestes issued decrees that no one obeyed; Cyril’s sermons moved armies. The parabalani patrolled the harbor, their tunics stained from tending the sick and, at times, from beating the unbeliever. What began as civic unrest curdled into ritual violence—not just a fight for power, but for the right to define what counted as truth.

The conflict between Hypatia and Cyril was more than political. It was metaphysical. She represented individual, discovered truth; he, collective, inherited truth. Her worldview required no mediator between human reason and the divine. His authority depended on the indispensability of mediation. To Cyril, Neoplatonism’s notion that one could approach God through geometry and contemplation was blasphemy—it made the soul its own priest. The Church could not tolerate such independence.

One March afternoon, the mob found her carriage. They dragged her through the streets to a church—irony as architecture. Inside, beneath mosaics of saints, they stripped her, flayed her with oyster shells, and burned what remained. Socrates Scholasticus, a Christian historian, wrote simply: “Such a deed brought great disgrace upon Cyril and the Church of Alexandria.” It was not a killing; it was an exorcism. By tearing her apart, they sought to purge the city of its final pagan ghost—the living remnant of Athens’ rational soul.

Orestes, her ally, could not avenge her. The Empire, hollowed by decay, turned away. Cyril triumphed, later sanctified as a saint. The rule of law yielded to the rule of zeal. And so, with Hypatia’s death, an epoch ended. The library’s embers cooled, the lamps of the Museum darkened, and Europe entered its long medieval night.

For nearly a thousand years she survived only as rumor. Then the Enlightenment rediscovered her. Gibbon saw in her death the moment “barbarism and religion triumphed.” Voltaire invoked her as evidence that superstition kills what it cannot comprehend. Hypatia’s revival became part of a broader reckoning—a rebellion against inherited authority. To Enlightenment thinkers, she was the prototype of their own project: the reclamation of reason from revelation.

To later feminists, she became something more. Her murder revealed a longer pattern—the way intellectual women are punished not for ignorance but for illumination. Mary Wollstonecraft read her story as an ancestral warning; Simone de Beauvoir as a prelude to every modern silencing of the female intellect. To them, Hypatia was not just the first martyr of reason but its first woman martyr—the proof that wisdom in a woman’s voice has always been political.

Even now, her image flickers at the edge of cultural memory: the philosopher as secular saint, the teacher as threat. She has become the emblem of every rational mind undone by hysteria. Yet her deeper legacy lies not only in her martyrdom but in her method—the belief that the world is comprehensible, and that comprehension is a moral act.

And what, sixteen centuries later, does her story demand of us? We, too, live in an Alexandria of our own making, a world of infinite information and vanishing wisdom. Our libraries are digital, our mobs algorithmic. The algorithm has become the modern parabalani, shredding context and nuance for the sake of engagement. Knowledge no longer burns by fire; it corrodes by speed. We scroll instead of study, react instead of reflect. What once was a civic agora has become a coliseum of certitude.

Somewhere in a dim university office, a woman corrects her students’ proofs by the light of her laptop. She teaches them to think slowly in a world that rewards speed, to doubt the easy answer, to hold silence as rigor. Outside, the din of the feed hums like an approaching crowd. She doesn’t know it, but she’s teaching Hypatia’s lesson: that the mind’s true courage lies not in certainty but in patience.

Her challenge endures. The purpose of philosophy is not to win the argument but to chart the truth, even when the world insists on remaining lost. She reminds us that every age must relearn how to think freely, and that freedom of thought, once lost, returns only through vigilance.

To honor Hypatia is not merely to remember her death but to practice her discipline: to teach, to reason, to listen. The world will always be noisy, half-mad with conviction. Somewhere, in the imagined quiet of that vanished library, a woman still draws circles on marble, tracing the harmonies of a cosmos we have not yet earned. If she could look up now, she would find the same constellations unchanged—Orion still hunting, Cassiopeia still boasting, the curve of the moon unbroken. The geometry she once traced on marble persists in the heavens, indifferent to history’s convulsions. That, perhaps, was her final comfort: that reason, like starlight, travels slowly but never dies. It only waits for another mind, somewhere in the future, to lift its face and see.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED UTILIZING AI

Essays, Literature, Philosophy, Poetry, Religion

RELIGION, REIMAGINED

In the third-floor study of his home, in wartime Hartford, Wallace Stevens drafted his modernist poem and philosophical meditation “Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction“, as a secular creed—abstract, changing, and meant to give pleasure—to stand where a worn-out faith once stood.

Begin, ephebe, by perceiving the idea
Of this invention, this invented world,
The inconceivable idea of the sun.

By Michael Cummins, Editor, September 6, 2025

He never learned to drive. For decades, Wallace Stevens walked the two miles from his home on Westerly Terrace to the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company on Asylum Avenue. The walk itself became a kind of poem: a solitary procession through the stoic, brick-lined streets of a New England city, the rhythm of meter embedding itself in the movement of his body. The crunch of gravel underfoot, the feel of cold air on his face—these were the metronome that set the cadence for his thoughts. He would arrive at the office with lines already formed, phrases taking shape in the quiet hum of his stride.

But what kind of poetry emerges from a man who spends his days pricing catastrophe? During office hours, Stevens turned to policies and claims, reducing calamity to columns of numbers. He knew the language of indemnity, the actuarial calm that measured and priced chaos. Yet outside, the world was burning in ways no policy could contain. The radio spoke of Warsaw reduced to rubble, of Coventry turned to ash. What was a deductible against Dresden? What was a premium against Auschwitz? The ledger comforted, but it lied.

And when the day ended, where did he go to reconcile the irreconcilable? At night, Stevens climbed the narrow staircase to the top floor of his house, entering a space that felt half withdrawn from Hartford itself, as though it belonged more to sky than to street. Down below, trolley bells rang, dogs barked, radios crackled with war bulletins. Up here, only the radiator ticked. The air smelled of paper, tobacco, and ink. On his desk lay a folder carried home that afternoon: typed pages, the ribbon-black letters crisp and uniform. His secretary had produced them that morning, slotting them into a manila folder marked Notes. They sat now in the lamplight, more mysterious than any insurance claim, more charged than any policy.

What could a poem do in 1942? Certainly not repair the world. Yet Stevens felt imagination had to answer catastrophe with something larger than despair. Eliot had turned to Anglican certainty in Four Quartets, weaving fragments into a tapestry of faith. Admirable, yes. But Stevens could not follow him. He could not put belief in a myth while knowing it to be a myth. What remained? Only candor. Only imagination itself.

He opened the folder. The Preface came first, a modest eight lines. He whispered them into the quiet, testing their balance. They were not a commandment but a confession. The “you” of those lines was no person but the project itself: the supreme fiction, imagination’s own power to refresh. “And for what, except for you, do I feel love?” The words startled him even now, black against white, plain as a typed invoice yet trembling with a kind of vulnerable devotion. They challenged every idol: money, power, even the “extremest book of the wisest man,” perhaps Plato, perhaps the Bible, dryly possessed and hidden away in the self. No, he thought, a truly lived truth could not be static. It was a “living changingness,” an “uncertain light” that could nonetheless offer “vivid transparence,” a kind of peace. Here, typed cleanly in a bureaucratic font, was his prayer for a godless age.

But how does one begin such a prayer? He turned the page and entered the first law. Begin, ephebe, by perceiving the idea. The command still startled him. The ephebe: always a novice, always beginning again. Yes, to begin meant stripping away what was inherited—cathedrals thick with guilt, Phoebus in his chariot, Protestant hymns murmured in childhood pews. They no longer held. The old scaffolds collapsed into dust. The voice told him: see the sun again with ignorant eyes. Not Phoebus, not god, not myth—only the sun, bare and difficult.

And what happens when even the sun loses its name? The section closed with the line that haunted him: Phoebus is dead, ephebe. But Phoebus was / A name for something that never could be named. He felt the candor of it. Nietzsche’s cry without Nietzsche’s frenzy. Not a madman in a square, but a quiet verdict written at a desk. The god dead, but the sun still burning. What died was not the light, but the comfort of a name.

Could metaphor survive the death of myth? Another page: It is the celestial ennui of apartments… The phrase made him smile. Ennui of apartments, the weariness of modern rooms, pressing us back toward origins. Yet the origins themselves could be poisonous. So poisonous are the ravishments of truth, so fatal to / The truth itself, the first idea becomes / The hermit in a poet’s metaphors. Truth seduced, then withdrew. Desire was never sated; it renewed itself endlessly, only to vanish again. Schopenhauer lurked here, his vision of the world gnawed by will. Yet where Schopenhauer had seen only despair, Stevens found material for candor. Truth had to retreat into metaphor, glimpsed and lost. Desire itself was not shame but rhythm, the cycle by which imagination endured.

And if truth could be rhythm, could nonsense be revelation? He read the third section slowly: The poem refreshes life so that we share, / For a moment, the first idea… There it was—the poem’s task. Not to console, not to preach, but to refresh. To make perception vivid again. Even nonsense could do it. At night an Arabian in my room, with his damned hoobla-hoobla-hoobla-how… He laughed aloud in the quiet. Nonsense syllables as a kind of truer candor, doves chanting, seas howling hoo. Life’s nonsense pierced us with strange relation. What if absurdity was not opposed to truth but its heartbeat? What if laughter was the sharpest candor of all?

But what if even our myths were secondhand? The fourth section sobered him: The first idea was not our own. Yes. Adam in Eden, Eve with her mirror of air—they had not created anything. They had only encountered what was already there. There was a muddy centre before we breathed. There was a myth before the myth began. He stared at those lines. How blunt they looked, typed like any memorandum, yet carrying the weight of cosmology. Existence preceded language. Clouds had been clouds long before anyone called them gods. We were mimics, not originators, adding our metaphors onto a world that was always other. The clouds were pedagogues, teachers by their very indifference. The air was not a mirror but a board on which we scribbled meanings. How hard it was to admit: the first idea was not ours, never ours.

And if we are not originators, what kind of hero can we be? He turned to the fifth section: The lion roars at the enraging desert… Heroic animals filled the page. Lion, elephant, bear—creatures asserting themselves against emptiness. But then came the turn, the line that caught him like a mirror: But you, ephebe, look from your attic window… Yes, the attic window was his own. Not desert roars but a man clutching his pillow, writhing with dumb violence, cowed by rooftops. The modern hero was not lion or elephant but the solitary human in his narrow room. Yet perhaps this was truer heroism: to lash lions, to teach bears, to turn raw force into candor. Heroism now belonged to ordinaries, to those who endured the attic’s silence.

And what does the eye see when it learns to unsee? He lingered over the sixth section: Not to be realized because not to be seen… The weather itself became abstraction. Franz Hals brushed in clouds, winds moving in strokes. It must be visible or invisible, / Invisible or visible or both: / A seeing and unseeing in the eye. He felt the paradox, the resonance of Zen: to see was also to unsee, to let go in order to glimpse. Truth flashed, vanished, reappeared. Forsythia yellow, northern blue—beauty glimmered, then was gone. Yes, he thought, Okakura Kakuzō was right: truth glimpsed was truer than truth claimed.

But could architecture hold what abstraction revealed? Truth happened not in argument but in rhythm, in breath, in the gait of a body moving. Perhaps there are moments of awakening… Yes, truth came not as achievement but as gift. A balance stumbled into, two people falling into love, a cock announcing absurd perfection. Philosophy as choreography. Doctrine as breath. The eighth section brought architecture: Can we compose a castle-fortress-home, / Even with the help of Viollet-le-Duc…? He thought of Gothic cathedrals restored to an imagined perfection, never as they had been, always as they might have been. That was his work too—not theology restored, but poetic structure remade. The first idea is an imagined thing. Even MacCullough, reading by the sea, might at last hear the waves say what language had always stammered. Logos was only language. And yet language could awaken, could suddenly ease into saying what it had labored to speak.

But what if language, once awakened, began to preach? In the ninth section he heard a warning: The romantic intoning, the declaimed clairvoyance… Apotheosis was a danger. Romantic grandeur could seduce but not sustain. He is and may be but oh! he is, he is… He smiled at the heat in that line even as he resisted its drift toward sanctity. The figure must remain human, a foundling of the infected past, bright and ordinary, precious for the touch that wakes him and the hum of thoughts evaded in the mind. Better to keep him close to candor than to crown him with vision. Give him no names. Dismiss him from your images. Let him be felt in the heart, not embalmed in the eye.

And what, at last, could stand in place of the gods? The tenth section steadied him: The major abstraction is the idea of man / and major man is its exponent. Not a divine figure, not a hero in bronze, but the ordinary walker at the edge of town, trousers sagging, coat worn thin. He could almost see him in Hartford’s dim streets. Cloudless the morning. It is he. The man / In that old coat, those sagging pantaloons… It was of him, he read again, “to make, to confect / The final elegance, not to console / Nor sanctify, but plainly to propound.” No incense, no altar—only candor. The poem would not save; it would say. And in saying plainly, it would give back a kind of dignity to the commonal, to the difficult visage of the everyday.

The attic grew darker. The lamp made a circle of light over the typed sheets. The radiator hissed steadily. From this high room, Stevens whispered the creed that would govern the work to come: It must be abstract. It must change. It must give pleasure. Three laws, enough for a new religion. Not revelation but ethic. Not theology but candor.

He stacked the pages neatly, slid them back into their folder. Tomorrow his secretary would type more, never guessing she was transcribing scripture for an age without gods. The notebook felt less like a book than a reliquary—a vessel for the sacred ordinary. He had reviewed the first law, It Must Be Abstract. Tomorrow—or another night—he would face the second: It Must Change. The world would move; the poem must move with it.

He closed the folder. The command still echoed, inexhaustible: Begin, ephebe, by perceiving the idea. And so he would. Again.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED UTILIZING AI

Arts & Literature, Culture, Essays, History, Religion

The Multi-Faith Prosperity Of 10th-Century Córdoba

By Michael Cummins, Editor, August 13, 2025

While much of Christian Europe was mired in the intellectual and economic stagnation of the so-called “Dark Ages,” 10th-century Córdoba, the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate of al-Andalus, blazed as a singular exception in the medieval world. It was not merely its population of over 250,000, its paved streets, or its public baths that made it a marvel. The true marvel of Córdoba lay in its unprecedented model of intellectual and economic collaboration, a model that harnessed the talents of its diverse Muslim, Jewish, and Christian populations. While modern historians like [suspicious link removed] have rightly challenged the romanticized notion of a perfect convivencia—or coexistence—there is no denying that the collective contributions of its Jewish and Christian communities were not peripheral. They were, in fact, integral to the caliphate’s rise as a preeminent power, forging a society so unique that it stands apart in human history.

This era’s success was a testament to a pragmatic, collaborative environment. As scholar María Rosa Menocal eloquently argued in her book, The Ornament of the World, the period was defined by a culture where “tolerance was an inherent aspect of Andalusian society,” allowing for an extraordinary degree of exchange and innovation. In this multi-faith environment, Jewish and Christian communities were not simply tolerated subjects; they were indispensable collaborators. Their contributions were so intertwined with the caliphate’s achievements that its success would have been impossible without them. This collaborative ethos also extended to the roles of women, who, despite the era’s patriarchal legal framework, rose to prominence as scholars, poets, scribes, and even political figures, further enriching the city’s intellectual and cultural life.

The Engine of Scholarship: A Shared Knowledge Base

The intellectual life of 10th-century Córdoba was a testament to the power of a shared, multilingual knowledge base, a system that was virtually without parallel in the medieval world. The Umayyad rulers, particularly Caliph al-Hakam II, created the institutional framework for learning. A dedicated bibliophile, al-Hakam II amassed a caliphal library that some sources claim numbered as many as 400,000 volumes, commissioning scribes and bookbinders to produce new copies.

While monastic libraries in Christian Europe contained only a few hundred manuscripts, often focused on religious dogma, the caliphal library was a dynamic workshop where scholars of all faiths worked side by side to translate ancient Greek and Latin texts, a process that preserved and expanded upon classical knowledge largely lost to the rest of Europe. The caliph’s agents were dispatched across the Islamic world and beyond to acquire rare manuscripts on every conceivable subject, from medicine and astronomy to poetry and philosophy.

The caliph’s patronage extended to a diverse group of intellectuals who curated the collection, and the role of women in this intellectual flowering was particularly striking. Among them was Lubna of Córdoba, a remarkable intellectual, poet, and mathematician who rose from slavery to become one of al-Hakam II’s most trusted secretaries, instrumental in the administration of the library itself. Her story is a powerful example of the city’s unique meritocratic ethos, where talent and intellect could transcend social barriers.

The contributions of women in scholarship were not limited to Lubna; records show that hundreds of women worked as professional scribes and copyists, transcribing books and manuscripts for the royal library. Beyond the library, the era produced celebrated female poets and scholars whose work was highly regarded, such as ‘A’isha bint Ahmad al-Qurtubiyya, a renowned poet and calligrapher, and the poet Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, famous for her sharp wit and love poems.

The Great Mosque of Córdoba served as the city’s de facto university, a hub of religious and secular learning where scholars and students from diverse backgrounds gathered for instruction. The caliphs funded chairs for distinguished professors, and the mosque’s courtyards provided a space for open intellectual exchange, fostering a culture of critical inquiry and debate. As Dr. Nowar Nizar Al-Ani and his colleagues noted, this institutional framework was designed to “foster a kind of intellectual pluralism that was revolutionary for its time.”

It was in this environment that Jewish and Christian scholars were not just conduits for old ideas but active contributors to new ones. The Jewish community, in particular, experienced a golden age under this system. Hasdai ibn Shaprut, a Jewish court physician and scholar, was at the forefront of medical research and botanical studies. He was also a major patron of Jewish intellectual life, sponsoring scholars and poets who would compose masterpieces of Hebrew literature and helping to establish Córdoba as a new center for Jewish scholarship, eclipsing the traditional academies in Baghdad.

This era also produced pioneering scientific advancements, such as those of the physician Abulcasis (Al-Zahrawi), a key figure of the late 10th century. He wrote a comprehensive 30-volume medical encyclopedia, Al-Tasrif, which was revolutionary for its detailed descriptions of surgical procedures and instruments, many of which he invented. His work would become a standard medical text in Europe for centuries, directly influencing the development of surgery.

The fusion of knowledge and faith led to a unique intellectual environment where, as Jerrilynn D. Dodds‘s edited volume, Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain, suggests, “the arts of the mind were as celebrated as the arts of the hand.” This collaborative spirit permeated scholarly life: a Christian monk might have been translating a Greek medical treatise in one corner of a library while a Jewish botanist analyzed a new plant in another. It was this cross-pollination of ideas, made possible by the linguistic and cultural fluency of the Christian and Jewish communities, that truly powered Córdoba’s intellectual engine.

The Foundation of Prosperity: Economic and Diplomatic Contributions

The wealth and political stability of the Umayyad Caliphate did not emerge in a vacuum; they were built on the contributions of its non-Muslim subjects, who served as a vital economic and diplomatic backbone. In a period when European feudal society was strictly hierarchical and exclusive, Córdoba’s pragmatic approach was historically unique.

The Jewish community was essential to Córdoba’s sophisticated diplomatic network, with its members highly valued for their linguistic skills and relative neutrality in disputes between Muslim and Christian rulers. The elevation of Hasdai ibn Shaprut to a position of such immense influence—a Jewish diplomat and physician serving as a key advisor to the caliph—was a political innovation without parallel in the medieval West. Fluent in Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin, Hasdai was an indispensable intermediary in diplomatic missions to Christian kingdoms like León and the Holy Roman Empire, skillfully navigating political tensions and securing alliances. He also served as the head of the Jewish community, centralizing cultural life in Córdoba and fostering its independence from the Jewish academies in Baghdad.

The economic engine of Córdoba was also powered by its minorities. The Jewish community was instrumental in the city’s robust international trade, acting as merchants and financiers. Their extensive networks across Europe and the Mediterranean were crucial to Córdoba’s commercial success, helping to establish trade routes that brought precious silks, spices, and other luxury goods into al-Andalus. This immense wealth funded the caliphate’s ambitious building projects. As L. P. Harvey notes in his work, Islamic Spain, 1250 to 1500, the caliphate’s political authority rested on a “pragmatic reliance on a professional class of civil servants, many of whom came from the dhimmi communities, whose loyalty and expertise were a cornerstone of the administrative apparatus.”

Christians, known as Mozarabs, also played critical, though often different, roles. While the highest offices were reserved for Muslims, some Christians rose to positions of influence. For example, a Christian cleric named Recemund served as a civil servant for ‘Abd al-Rahman III and even undertook a diplomatic mission to the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I. However, the majority of the Christian population was essential to the agricultural economy in the surrounding rural areas. Their contributions as farmers and artisans, who continued many of the traditions and techniques from the Visigothic period, were fundamental to the food supply and wealth of the caliphate.

The Unique Fabric: Cultural and Artistic Synthesis

The artistic and cultural identity of 10th-century Córdoba was a magnificent tapestry woven from the threads of all three religions. The caliphs’ patronage of the arts led to a unique blending of styles that is most famously showcased in the Great Mosque. Its most significant and elaborate expansion, led by Caliph al-Hakam II, featured intricate polylobed arches, ribbed domes, and the lavish use of mosaics—a technique learned directly from Byzantine Christian craftsmen. According to the article “Historical restorations of the Maqṣūrah glass mosaics from the Great Mosque of Córdoba” by J. V. Tarín et al., the caliph specifically sought out Byzantine craftsmen, a profound act of cultural confidence that integrated Christian artistic tradition into the very heart of Islamic worship. In a world often defined by sectarian art, this was a revolutionary aesthetic vision.

Beyond the grand monuments, this cultural synthesis permeated everyday life. The “Mozarabic” style of art and architecture—a blend of Christian and Islamic design—flourished. Christian artisans were not only employed on royal projects but also developed their own unique style that incorporated elements of Islamic geometric patterns and calligraphy. This fusion was also evident in language and literature. Many Christians and Jews adopted Arabic as their language for daily life and scholarship, leading to a unique body of work where Jewish poets composed in a sophisticated Hebrew deeply influenced by Arabic meter and rhyme schemes. As the volume Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain captures, the art of the period was a “visual dialogue between cultures.” The result was a truly syncretic culture, a unique and irreplaceable expression of the people who created it.

The caliphate’s immense wealth also fueled a boom in refined artistic crafts. Cordoban artisans were celebrated for their skills in calligraphy, which adorned not only architecture but also the lavish ivory caskets and boxes that were prized possessions of the caliph’s court. These caskets, often carved with intricate scenes and calligraphic inscriptions, are a perfect example of how different artistic traditions were fused. Similarly, the city was famous for its fine metalwork, glazed tiles, and high-quality textiles, which were not only major economic drivers but also expressions of a sophisticated and cosmopolitan taste. The creation of the palatine city of Madinat al-Zahra, a new capital built by ‘Abd al-Rahman III, further exemplified this artistic ambition. Its lavish palaces and gardens, described in scholarly works as “a testament to the state’s power and artistic ambition,” were a massive undertaking that drew on the combined skills of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian artisans, cementing the visual legacy of the golden age.

Conclusion

Córdoba in the 10th century was more than just a powerful city; it was a testament to the potential for a pluralistic society to flourish. Its success was a collaborative endeavor, with Jewish, Christian, and female communities providing the crucial intellectual, economic, and cultural components that enabled the Umayyad Caliphate to achieve its zenith. Through their roles as translators, scholars, diplomats, merchants, and artisans, these groups were not simply tolerated subjects but indispensable collaborators in the creation of a sophisticated civilization.

The modern scholarship of historians like Kenneth Baxter Wolf has rightly challenged the romanticized “myth of coexistence,” pointing to the complex realities of power dynamics. But even with this more critical lens, the story that emerges is not one of a failed paradise, but a more compelling and historically significant narrative: a society where, for a sustained period, deep cultural and intellectual collaboration was possible. The lessons of Córdoba continue to resonate today, reminding us that cultural exchange is often the true catalyst for progress.

This legacy is perhaps best captured by a post on the Jewish Andalusian Heritage Route, which describes how the Jewish sages of Andalusia “loved the Torah but understood existence and Judaism as a whole that encompassed religion, spirituality, science, poetry and literature, music, medicine and philosophy.” This powerful insight tells a more complete and hopeful story of how diverse people, bound together by a shared quest for knowledge and prosperity, can build an enduring legacy.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED UTILIZING AI

Arts & Literature, Essays, Philosophy, Religion, Society

The Humanist Genius Of Boccaccio’s “Dirty Tales”

By Michael Cummins, Editor, August 8, 2025

The enduring literary fame of the Italian writer and humanist Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) is a monument to paradox. His name has been synonymous with the ribald, lascivious, and often obscene tales of the Decameron, a reputation that stands in stark opposition to the scholarly humanist who devoted his life to promoting Dante, meticulously copying ancient manuscripts, and writing a monumental work of literary theory. This seemingly irreconcilable contradiction, however, was not a sign of a conflicted personality but a masterfully deployed strategy.

Boccaccio’s genius lay in his ability to harness this paradox—juxtaposing the vulgar with the profound, the entertaining with the intellectual, the vernacular with the classical—to achieve his most ambitious goals. As Barbara Newman writes in her review “Dirty Books,” Boccaccio “used the irresistible allure of obscenity as a Trojan horse” to advance a revolutionary literary and intellectual agenda, ultimately establishing a new standard for vernacular literature and its relationship with the reader. He even feared this reputation, fretting that female readers, to whom he had dedicated the book, would consider him:

“a foul-mouthed pimp, a dirty old man.”

It was this very anxiety, however, that Boccaccio would so expertly exploit. His work, far from being a moral compromise, was a brilliant act of subversion. It offered a compelling blend of popular entertainment and intellectual rigor, creating a new literary space that transcended the rigid social and intellectual hierarchies of his time. The Decameron was not just a collection of tales but a comprehensive literary project, a direct challenge to the staid Latin humanism of his peers, and a deliberate attempt to shape the future of a nascent Italian literary tradition.

The “Light Fare” of Romance

Boccaccio’s first and most crucial strategic maneuver was the deliberate choice to write for an audience that had been largely ignored by the literary establishment: the common people, and especially women. In an era dominated by humanists who saw the Latin language as the only worthy vehicle for serious intellectual thought, Boccaccio’s decision to compose his masterpiece in the Italian vernacular was a revolutionary act. The review of his biography notes that few women could read Latin, and that his vernacular works were, in part, a response to their plight, offering them a mind-broadening occupation beyond their cloistered chambers. The “light fare” of romance and other stories was the key that unlocked this new readership, and Boccaccio brilliantly understood that the most effective way to captivate this audience was through sheer entertainment.

The scandalous and titillating stories, such as the tale of Alibech and Rustico, served as an irresistible hook. These seemingly frivolous tales were the attractive exterior of the Trojan horse, designed to slip past the defenses of literary elitism and cultural propriety, and gain access to an audience that was hungry for engaging material. In doing so, Boccaccio laid the groundwork for a literary future where the vernacular would reign supreme and where the lines between high art and popular entertainment would be forever blurred. He openly admitted to this strategy, telling his critics:

“the fact is that ladies have already been the reason for my composing thousands of verses, while the Muses were in no way the cause.”

This statement, with its characteristic blend of humility and boldness, was both a gracious dedication to his female audience and a powerful declaration of his revolutionary purpose: to create a new form of literature for a new kind of reader.

Once inside the gates, Boccaccio’s Trojan horse began its true work, embedding profound scholarly and social critiques within the entertaining narratives. The first of these, and one of the most powerful, was his use of satire to expose the hypocrisies of popular piety and clerical corruption. The tale of Ser Ciappelletto, the heinous villain who, on his deathbed, fakes a pious confession to an unwitting friar, is not merely a funny story. It is a brilliant, inverted hagiography that exposes the emptiness of a religious system based on appearances rather than genuine faith.

“a scholarly and theological examination of popular piety, raising serious questions about the nature of sin, redemption, and the efficacy of the Church’s authority.“

Boccaccio’s meticulous description of Ciappelletto’s fabricated saintliness and the friar’s unquestioning credulity is a scathing critique of a society that would venerate a man based on a convincing lie. This tale, disguised as a vulgar joke, functions as a scholarly and theological examination of popular piety, raising serious questions about the nature of sin, redemption, and the efficacy of the Church’s authority. This intellectual core is hidden beneath the surface of a simple, bawdy tale, a testament to Boccaccio’s strategic genius.

Entertaining Tales to Present Shockingly Progressive Philosophical Ideas

Boccaccio also used his entertaining tales to present shockingly progressive philosophical ideas. The story of Saladin and the Jewish moneylender Melchisedek is a prime example. The core of this story is the “Ring Parable,” in which a father with three equally beloved sons has three identical rings made, so that no one son can prove he holds the “true” inheritance. Melchisedek uses this parable to cleverly sidestep Saladin’s theological trap about which of the three Abrahamic religions is the true one. This tale, with its message of religious tolerance and the indeterminacy of religious truth, is an astonishingly modern concept for the 14th century.

Boccaccio’s decision to embed this complex philosophical lesson within a compelling narrative about a clever Jewish moneylender and a benevolent sultan was a stroke of genius. It made a difficult and dangerous idea palatable and memorable, allowing it to be discussed and absorbed by an audience that would likely never have read a dry theological treatise. It is no wonder that centuries later, Gotthold Lessing would make this same parable the centerpiece of his own play, Nathan the Wise, an impassioned plea for interreligious peace.

“a Jewish man who converts to Christianity despite witnessing the total debauchery of the pope and his clerics. He reasons that no institution so depraved could have survived without divine aid.”

The most politically charged of Boccaccio’s embedded critiques is the tale of the Jewish man Abraham, who, after a visit to Rome, converts to Christianity despite witnessing the total debauchery of the pope and his clerics. He reasons that no institution so depraved could have survived without divine aid. While the tale is a humorous inversion of the traditional conversion story, its message is deeply subversive and profoundly serious.

It serves as a devastating critique of clerical corruption, an attack so potent that it resonated for centuries, even finding an admirer in the less-than-tolerant Martin Luther. The review notes that Luther preferred this story for its “vigorous anti-Catholic message,” a clear indication that Boccaccio’s seemingly simple tale had a scholarly and political weight far beyond mere entertainment. This tale, along with the others, reveals that the Decameron was not just a collection of stories but a well-orchestrated assault on the religious and social institutions of his day, all delivered under the guise of an amusing “dirty book.”

Shifting Moral Blame

Boccaccio’s most explicit defense of his method can be found in his own writings, where he articulated a revolutionary literary theory that placed the moral responsibility for a work squarely on the reader. In the introduction to Book 4 and his conclusion to the Decameron, Boccaccio confronts his prudish critics head-on. He disarmingly accepts their accusations that he wrote to please women, arguing that the Muses themselves are ladies. But his most significant contribution is his groundbreaking theory of “reader responsibility.” Drawing on St. Paul, he argues that “to the pure all things are pure,” and that a corrupt mind sees nothing but corruption everywhere. This was not a flimsy excuse for his bawdy tales but a serious philosophical statement about the nature of interpretation and the autonomy of fiction. He drove this point home with a pointed command to his detractors:

“the lady who is forever saying her prayers or baking… cakes for her confessor should leave my tales alone,”

Boccaccio was, in effect, defending the right to write for amusement while simultaneously ensuring that those who sought a deeper meaning would be rewarded with profound truths.

The “Feminine” Chain

This revolutionary theory was not an isolated thought but was, as the review so eloquently puts it, “braided together and gendered feminine.” This final act cemented his position as a far-sighted innovator, one who saw the future of literature not in the elitist cloisters of humanism but in the hands of the wider public. Boccaccio’s defense of vernacularity, writing for entertainment, and reader responsibility all coalesced into a single, cohesive argument about the nature of literature. In his Latin masterpiece, the Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, Boccaccio defined poetry as a:

“fervent and exquisite invention” proceeding from the bosom of God.

By dedicating his works to women, by championing the vernacular language they could read, and by giving them the power to interpret the stories for themselves, Boccaccio was creating a new and enduring literary canon. He was not only writing for a new audience; he was creating it, and he was giving it the tools to appreciate literature on its own terms, free from the conservative constraints of his era.

Conclusion

Boccaccio’s reputation as a purveyor of “dirty” tales is not a stain on his scholarly legacy, but the very tool he used to forge it. His strategic use of popular, entertaining stories was a brilliant, multilayered gambit to achieve his most ambitious goals: to create a new literary audience, to disseminate challenging intellectual and philosophical ideas, and to articulate a groundbreaking theory of literature itself. By packaging his sharp wit, profound social critiques, and revolutionary ideas within the guise of a “commedia profana,”

His genius, as a biographer would later note, lay in his “psychological fragility” that led to a restlessness and a willingness to “experiment in genre and style.”

Boccaccio bypassed the conservative gatekeepers of his time and proved that literature could be both enjoyable and intellectually rigorous. His genius, as a biographer would later note, lay in his “psychological fragility” that led to a restlessness and a willingness to “experiment in genre and style.” This willingness, combined with his strategic mind, secured his place as a foundational figure of the Renaissance and as a truly modern writer—one who understood that the most effective way to change minds was to first capture hearts and imaginations, even with the “dirtiest” of stories.

Boccaccio’s influence stretches far beyond his immediate contemporaries. His work became a cornerstone for a new literary tradition that valued realism and human psychology. Writers like Chaucer, despite his reluctance to name him, were clearly influenced by Boccaccio’s narrative structures and characterizations. Later, in the English Renaissance, Shakespeare drew inspiration from Boccaccio’s plots for plays like All’s Well That Ends Well and Cymbeline. The development of the modern novel, with its emphasis on detailed character portraits and the use of dialogue to drive the plot, owes a significant debt to Boccaccio’s innovations. He was among the first to give voice to the full spectrum of humanity, from the most pious to the most profane, laying the groundwork for the rich, multifaceted characters we see in literature today. His legacy is not merely that of a storyteller, but of a literary architect who built the foundations of a new, more expansive, and more humanistic form of writing.

Works Cited: Newman, Barbara. “Dirty Books.” Review of Boccaccio: A Biography, by Marco Santagata, and Boccaccio Defends Literature, by Brenda Deen Schildgen. London Review of Books, 14 August 2025.

THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN AND EDITED UTILIZING AI

Essays, Opinion, Religion

Organized Religion and the Quest for Autonomy

By Sue Passacantilli

Despite the rise of science and secularism, organized religion, particularly Western and Abrahamic faiths like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, continues to exert immense influence on individuals and societies worldwide. From shaping political discourse to dictating moral codes, its reach is undeniable. But is this influence always benign?

This essay argues that organized religion, while often presented as a source of divine truth for its adherents, is fundamentally a human construct with a complex history. It has led to significant negative consequences and poses risks that demand critical examination. We’ll explore its origins as a means of social control, analyze the harm it has inflicted throughout history, assess the dangers of its unchecked power in the modern world, and finally, consider alternative paths to spiritual fulfillment that prioritize reason, compassion, and individual autonomy.

Origins as a Tool of Social Control

The earliest organized religions didn’t emerge solely from spiritual yearning; they were deeply entwined with the rise of centralized power. In ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley, religious systems were meticulously crafted to reinforce political hierarchies and legitimize authority. Gods weren’t invoked as private sources of transcendence but as public affirmations of rule. Kings and pharaohs claimed divine sanction, and priesthoods became custodians of not only spiritual knowledge but also civic obedience. In these societies, religion wasn’t merely a personal belief system—it was a powerful mechanism for maintaining order and regulating behavior through divine surveillance.

Perhaps the most emblematic example is Hammurabi’s Code, inscribed in Babylon around 1754 BCE. Hammurabi declared that these laws had been bestowed upon him by Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice, thereby framing the legal code as a divine mandate rather than a human decree. The image of Hammurabi standing before Shamash, etched into the stele itself, visually elevated the law’s legitimacy by binding it to celestial authority. The Code governed issues ranging from property and trade to family and criminal justice, and its harsh penalties—like “an eye for an eye”—weren’t simply deterrents but reflections of cosmic balance. Justice was seen as divine reciprocity, and violating the law was tantamount to offending the gods themselves.

In ancient Egypt, the concept of Maat embodied truth, order, and divine equilibrium. The pharaoh, regarded as a living god, was tasked with maintaining Maat through just governance. Legal edicts issued by the pharaoh were seen as spiritual imperatives, and judges, often priests, were instructed to uphold these standards in their decisions. The vizier Rekhmire, under Thutmose III, recorded his duty to be impartial and reflect the divine wisdom of Maat in all judgments. In local settings, Kenbet councils, composed of elders and religious figures, handled minor disputes, merging communal norms with sacred oversight. Disobedience was more than a civic offense—it was a disruption of cosmic order.

These ancient legal-religious structures made law inseparable from morality and morality inseparable from religious dogma. Religion functioned as an instrument of social engineering, institutionalizing norms that were framed as sacred, thereby discouraging dissent and ensuring conformity. Obedience wasn’t just expected; it was sanctified.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s haunting question—“Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man?”—forces us to reconsider the origins of divine authority and whether it reflects genuine spiritual insight or simply projections of human need. Thomas Paine, echoing this skepticism in The Age of Reason, wrote that “It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.” Paine’s indictment highlights how institutionalized texts, when shielded from critique, have historically served to justify violence and suppress alternative perspectives. When religion is codified into law, it becomes more than belief—it becomes a scaffold for society, morality, and power.

Historical Harms and Conflicts

Organized religion hasn’t only shaped societies; it has scarred them. Major historical events like the Crusades and the Inquisition weren’t merely spiritual endeavors; they were deeply political and economic campaigns cloaked in religious rhetoric. The Crusades, traditionally described as holy wars to reclaim sacred territories, were motivated by a complex blend of faith, ambition, and desire for material gain. While many participants earnestly believed they were undertaking a divine mission, this conviction was often stoked by papal promises of spiritual rewards and absolution of sins.

Beneath the spiritual fervor lay strategic political goals: European monarchs and nobles viewed the Crusades as opportunities to expand their realms, assert dominance, and gain prestige. The promise of new land, wealth, and access to lucrative trade routes added powerful economic incentives. Even the Church benefited, using the movement to unify Christendom and bolster its supremacy over secular rulers. The First Crusade culminated in a gruesome massacre during the sack of Jerusalem, while the Fourth Crusade didn’t even reach the Holy Land—it ended in the plundering of Constantinople, a Christian city, explicitly exposing the secular aims masked by religious zeal.

The Inquisition, particularly in its Spanish and Papal forms, offers another chilling example of institutional religion weaponizing faith for control. At its core was a profound fear of heresy—not only as a spiritual deviation but as a direct challenge to ecclesiastical and political authority. The Church saw doctrinal purity as essential for its survival, and any deviation threatened its claim to divine legitimacy. Thus, heresy became synonymous with rebellion. The Inquisition was engineered to enforce uniform belief, employing surveillance, coercion, and torture to suppress dissent. It disproportionately targeted Jews, Muslims, and Protestants—not just for theological reasons, but also to solidify national and religious identity in post-Reconquista Spain. Social engineering played a central role: religious orthodoxy became a means of homogenizing the population under Catholic rule. Monarchs found the Inquisition a useful tool for eliminating opposition, cloaking political suppression in the sanctity of faith. Public spectacles like the auto-da-fé reinforced obedience through fear, making salvation contingent on submission.

Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, famously described the God of the Old Testament as “a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak… a capriciously malevolent bully.” Though intentionally provocative, his critique draws attention to the dangers of institutionalized belief—how sacred texts and doctrines, once embedded in systems of power, can become instruments of cruelty. Similarly, Napoleon Bonaparte’s assertion that “Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich” reveals a more cynical view: religion not as a moral compass, but as a societal pacifier, preserving hierarchies and muting dissent. These historical episodes illustrate that organized religion, far from being a universal balm, has often served as a catalyst for division, violence, and authoritarian control.

Why Organized Religion Endures Despite Secularism

Despite the rise of secularism and scientific rationality, organized religion has endured—and in many regions, even flourished—due to its multifaceted role in fulfilling deeply rooted human needs. While critics rightly scrutinize its historical and political abuses, religion’s resilience is partly explained by its unparalleled capacity to offer meaning, belonging, and psychological stability. In times of uncertainty or suffering, religion provides a structured worldview that assures adherents of cosmic order and moral purpose, offering comfort in the face of death, injustice, or randomness. For many, faith communities serve as crucial social safety nets—providing charity, companionship, and guidance in ways secular institutions often struggle to replicate.

For instance, throughout history, religious institutions have often been at the forefront of social welfare, establishing the first hospitals, orphanages, and schools, and continuing to operate food banks and aid organizations today. Religious rituals, holidays, and sacred texts also create a powerful sense of continuity and identity across generations, fostering not only individual solace but strong communal cohesion.

In this light, the persistence of religion can’t be attributed solely to dogma or coercion, but to its symbolic richness and emotional resonance. The challenge, then, is not merely to reject religious institutions for their excesses, but to understand the existential vacuum they often fill. Any secular alternative aspiring to replace organized religion must grapple with these fundamental human functions—offering connection, ceremony, and a shared moral language—without reverting to authoritarian or exclusionary structures.

Modern Dangers of Institutional Power

In the contemporary world, organized religion continues to wield significant influence—often in ways that challenge democratic principles and individual freedoms. Religious institutions actively lobby for legislation that aligns with their moral doctrines, particularly on issues like reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ equality.

One of the most visible examples is the role of Evangelical Christian and Catholic organizations in shaping abortion policy in the United States. Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, religious lobbying intensified across multiple states. Groups such as the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and the Family Research Council (FRC) have supported laws that ban or severely restrict abortion access, often without exceptions for rape, incest, or maternal health. These organizations frame abortion as a moral and religious crisis, equating it with murder and advocating for fetal personhood amendments. In states like Texas and Mississippi, religious activists have successfully lobbied for near-total bans, and in some cases, have influenced the removal of medical exceptions, leaving women with life-threatening pregnancies without legal recourse.

Similarly, religious institutions have been central to opposition against LGBTQ+ rights, particularly through legal challenges and lobbying efforts that invoke religious liberty. In the landmark case Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, Catholic Social Services argued that their refusal to place foster children with same-sex couples was protected under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the agency, setting a precedent that allows religious organizations to bypass anti-discrimination laws in certain contexts. Other cases, such as 303 Creative v. Elenis, involved Christian business owners seeking exemptions from serving LGBTQ+ clients, claiming that doing so violated their religious beliefs.

These legal victories have emboldened religious lobbying groups to push for broader “Religious Freedom Restoration Acts” (RFRAs) at the state level. While originally intended to protect minority faiths, these laws are now often used to justify discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals in areas like healthcare, education, and employment. For example, some states allow therapists or teachers to refuse services to LGBTQ+ youth based on religious objections, even when such refusals violate institutional nondiscrimination policies.

Bertrand Russell, a staunch advocate of rational inquiry, observed, “Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.” He argued that religious belief often arises not from evidence or reason, but from existential anxiety and the human desire for certainty. This fear-based foundation can lead to intolerance. When religious dogma is treated as absolute truth, it leaves little room for pluralism or dissent.

George Carlin, with characteristic wit, noted, “I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. These two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.” His humor belies a serious concern: when religious institutions gain political power, the result is often authoritarianism disguised as moral governance. In some regions, religious extremism has led to terrorism and sectarian violence. The danger lies not in belief itself, but in the institutionalization of belief as unchallengeable truth.

Toward a More Liberated Spirituality

Rejecting organized religion doesn’t mean rejecting spirituality. In fact, many individuals find deeper meaning and connection outside institutional frameworks. Secular humanism, nature-based spirituality, meditation, and philosophical inquiry offer paths to transcendence that prioritize autonomy and compassion.

Deepak Chopra distinguishes between religion and spirituality: “Religion is believing someone else’s experience, spirituality is having your own experience.” This shift—from external authority to internal exploration—marks a profound evolution in how we seek meaning.

Carl Sagan, in Pale Blue Dot, wrote, “Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.” For Sagan, awe and wonder arise not from dogma but from the vastness and beauty of the cosmos—a spirituality rooted in reality.

Spirituality, when divorced from rigid doctrine, becomes a deeply personal journey. It encourages introspection, empathy, and ethical living without coercion. Practices like mindfulness, journaling, and philosophical reflection allow individuals to cultivate inner peace and moral clarity without intermediaries.

As Thomas Jefferson asserted, “Question with boldness even the existence of a god.” This call to intellectual courage invites us to examine inherited beliefs and forge our own understanding of existence.

In this liberated model, spirituality becomes inclusive rather than exclusive. It welcomes doubt, celebrates diversity, and honors the complexity of human experience. It is not a system to be obeyed, but a path to be walked—one that evolves with each step.

While secular spirituality offers personal freedom and introspective depth, critics often point out that it can lack the communal bonds and time-honored rituals that organized religion provides. Traditional religious institutions have long served as hubs of social connection, shared values, and intergenerational continuity. However, this sense of belonging isn’t exclusive to religious frameworks.

Many individuals are now finding community through secular congregations like Sunday Assembly, which mimic the structure of religious gatherings—complete with music, storytelling, and shared reflection—without invoking the divine. Others turn to meditation groups, ethical societies, or nature-based retreats, where collective practice fosters connection and shared purpose. Online platforms have also become fertile ground for spiritual communities, allowing people to engage in dialogue, rituals, and support networks across geographic boundaries.

As for tradition, new rituals are emerging—rooted in seasonal cycles, personal milestones, or collective values—that offer continuity and meaning without dogma. These evolving practices reflect a desire not to abandon tradition, but to reimagine it in ways that honor authenticity and inclusivity.

Conclusion

Organized religion, with its rituals and revelations, undeniably offers comfort and community to countless individuals. Yet, our exploration has illuminated its deeply human origins, its historical complicity in profound harms, and its continued entanglement with political power. When personal belief becomes institutionalized dogma, it risks becoming rigid, coercive, and resistant to the very human flourishing it often claims to foster.

The critical examination of these structures reveals the profound importance of distinguishing between genuine personal faith and the often-oppressive grip of institutional authority. The former can uplift and guide; the latter, as history shows, frequently seeks to control and suppress.

By embracing reason, empathy, and above all, individual autonomy, we empower ourselves to forge spiritual paths untethered from external mandates. These paths honor our inherent humanity, encourage ethical living, and allow us to reach for transcendence on our own terms. As Carl Jung wisely observed, “Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

In awakening to our own inner truths, we reclaim the sacred from the hands of hierarchy and return it to the realm of personal meaning. That, perhaps, is the most divine act of all.

*This essay was written by Sue Passacantilli and edited by Intellicurean utilizing AI.