Religion is fascinatingly still alive

When an adviser once warned him against conflict with the Catholic Church, Josef Stalin contemptuously demanded "How many divisions does the pope have?"

It was a rhetorical question, and presumed the obvious: With no army at all, what threat could the pope pose to Soviet tyranny?

Stalin's presumption was wrong. Less than three decades after his death, the Catholic Church elected a Polish pope, and this was a vital factor in the collapse of communism, not only in Poland but throughout eastern Europe. The triumphant homecoming of John Paul II in 1979 demonstrated that the pope actually has many powerful "divisions."

Blindness to the continuing power of religion isn't limited to Kremlin atheists. In the mid- to late-1970s, as discontent with the rule of the shah in Iran began to boil, both government and academic experts on the Middle East routinely downplayed it.

After all, who were the shah's opponents? A ragtag alliance of bazaar merchants, led by Islamic clergy who, it seemed to some, had scarcely emerged from the Middle Ages. The shah, by contrast, had a large and well-trained army. He had tanks. He had jet fighter aircraft. In a struggle between the 20th century and the seventh, who could doubt the outcome?

For three decades now, the West has struggled to cope with the Islamic Republic of Iran. We've faced militant Islam in Algeria, in the Sudanese civil war, in Afghanistan, in Beirut and south Lebanon, in Iraq, in Indonesia and at the World Trade Center. It's clear that Islamic fundamentalism will challenge us for years to come, abroad and at home.

The notion that the world is growing more secular — that, as technology and prosperity increase, religion inevitably loses its influence — is simply wrong. While Stalin and his successors are gone, the pope remains. Even in the State Department, an awareness of religion as a forgotten dimension of diplomacy and political analysis is now an important factor in strategic deliberations.

The realization has hardly come too soon. Around the world, religions and religious people exercise not a diminishing but an increasing influence on public affairs. India and Pakistan exist as separate countries because of divisions between Hindus and Muslims. Now Sikh activism complicates the scene. Extremist Catholics and Protestants in northern Ireland were engaged in bloody conflict for decades. Ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel confront an ever more militant Palestinian Islamic movement. U.S. politicians court the Christian Right, while "New Atheists" propose a radical secularization of all societies.