The Crusades were a series of military campaigns fought mainly between Roman Catholic Europe and Muslims. Shown here is a battle scene from the First Crusade.
Religious violence is a term that covers phenomena where religion is either the subject or the object of violent behavior. Religious violence is violence
that is motivated by, or in reaction to, religious precepts, texts, or
the doctrines of a target or an attacker. It includes violence against
religious institutions, people, objects, or events. Religious violence
does not exclusively refer to acts which are committed by religious
groups, instead, includes acts which are committed against religious
groups.
"Violence" is a very broad concept that is difficult to define since it is used on both human and non-human objects.
Furthermore, the term can denote a wide variety of experiences such as
blood shedding, physical harm, forcing against personal freedom,
passionate conduct or language, or emotions such as fury and passion.
"Religion" is a complex and problematic modern western concept. Though there is no scholarly consensus over what a religion is,
in general, religion is conceived today as an abstraction which entails
beliefs, doctrines, and sacred places. The link between religious
belief and behavior is problematic. Decades of anthropological,
sociological, and psychological research has shown that the assumption
that behaviors follow directly from religious beliefs and values is
false because people's religious ideas are fragmented, loosely
connected, and context-dependent just like in all other domains of
culture and life.
In general, religions, ethical systems, and societies rarely promote
violence as an end in itself since violence is universally undesirable.
At the same time, there is a universal tension between the general
desire to avoid violence and the acceptance of justifiable uses of
violence to prevent a "greater evil" that permeates all cultures.
Religious violence, like all violence, is a cultural process that is context-dependent and very complex.
Oversimplifications of "religion" and "violence" often lead to
misguided understandings of causes for why some people commit acts of
violence and why most people do not commit such acts in the first
place. Violence is perpetrated for a wide variety of ideological
reasons and religion is generally only one of many contributing social
and political factors that can lead to unrest. Studies of supposed cases
of religious violence often conclude that violence is strongly driven
by ethnic animosities rather than by religious worldviews. Recently, scholars have questioned the very concept of "religious violence" and the extent to which religious, political, economic, or ethnic aspects of a conflict are even meaningful.
Some observe that the very concept of "religion" is a modern invention
and not something that is historical or universal across cultures, which
makes "religious violence" a modern myth.
Since all cases of violence include social, political, and economic
dimensions; there is no consensus on definitions of "religion", and no
way to isolate "religion" from the rest of the more likely motivational
dimensions, it is incorrect to label any violent event as "religious". Numerous cases of supposed acts of religious violence such as the Thirty Years War, the French Wars of Religion, the Protestant-Catholic conflict in Ireland, the Sri Lankan Civil War, 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, the Bosnian War, and the Rwandan Civil War were all primarily motivated by social, political, and economic issues rather than religion.
History of the concept of religion
Religion is a modern Western concept.
The compartmentalized concept of religion, where religious things were
separated from worldly things, was not used before the 1500s. Furthermore, parallel concepts are not found in many cultures and there is no equivalent term for "religion" in many languages. Scholars have found it difficult to develop a consistent definition, with some giving up on the possibility of a definition and others rejecting the term entirely. Others argue that regardless of its definition, it is not appropriate to apply it to non-Western cultures.
The modern concept of "religion" as an abstraction which entails
distinct sets of beliefs or doctrines is a recent invention in the
English language since such usage began with texts from the 17th century
due to the splitting of Christendom during the Protestant Reformation and more prevalent colonization or globalization in the age of exploration which involved contact with numerous foreign and indigenous cultures with non-European languages.
Ancient sacred texts like the Bible and the Quran
did not have a concept of religion in their original languages and
neither did their authors or the cultures to which they belonged.
It was in the 19th century that the terms "Buddhism", "Hinduism", "Taoism", and "Confucianism" first emerged.
There is no precise equivalent of "religion" in Hebrew, and Judaism does not draw clear distinctions between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities.
Definition of violence
Violence
is difficult to define because the term is a "thick concept" which
broadly carries descriptive and evaluative components which range from
harming non-human objects to human self-harm.
Ralph Tanner cites the definition of violence in the Oxford English
Dictionary as "far beyond (the infliction of) pain and the shedding of
blood." He argues that, although violence clearly encompasses injury to
persons or property, it also includes "the forcible interference in
personal freedom, violent or passionate conduct or language (and)
finally passion or fury."
Similarly, Abhijit Nayak writes:
The word "violence" can be defined to extend far beyond pain and shedding blood. It carries the meaning of physical force, violent language, fury, and, more importantly, forcible interference.
Terence Fretheim writes:
For many people, ... only physical violence truly qualifies as violence. But, certainly, violence is more than killing people, unless one includes all those words and actions that kill people slowly. The effect of limitation to a “killing fields” perspective is the widespread neglect of many other forms of violence. We must insist that violence also refers to that which is psychologically destructive, that which demeans, damages, or depersonalizes others. In view of these considerations, violence may be defined as follows: any action, verbal or nonverbal, oral or written, physical or psychical, active or passive, public or private, individual or institutional/societal, human or divine, in whatever degree of intensity, that abuses, violates, injures, or kills. Some of the most pervasive and most dangerous forms of violence are those that are often hidden from view (against women and children, especially); just beneath the surface in many of our homes, churches, and communities is abuse enough to freeze the blood. Moreover, many forms of systemic violence often slip past our attention because they are so much a part of the infrastructure of life (e.g., racism, sexism, ageism).
Relationships between religion and violence
Charles
Selengut characterizes the phrase "religion and violence" as "jarring,"
asserting that "religion is thought to be opposed to violence and a
force for peace and reconciliation. He acknowledges, however, that "the
history and scriptures of the world's religions tell stories of violence
and war even as they speak of peace and love."
According to Matthew Rowley, three hundred contributing causes of
religious violence have been discussed by some scholars, however he
notes that "violence in the name of God is a complex phenomenon and
oversimplification further jeopardizes peace because it obscures many of
the causal factors."
In another piece, Matthew Rowley notes 15 ways to address the
complexity of violence, both secular and religious, and notes that
secular narratives of religious violence tend to be erroneous or
exaggerated due to over simplification of religious people, their
beliefs, thinking in false dichotomies, and ignoring complex secular
causes of supposed "religious violence". He also notes that when
discussing religious violence, one should also note that the
overwhelming majority of religious people do not get inspired to engage
in violence.
Ralph Tanner similarly describes the combination of religion and
violence as "uncomfortable", asserting that religious thinkers generally
avoid the conjunction of the two and argue that religious violence is
"only valid in certain circumstances which are invariably one-sided".
Michael Jerryson argues that scholarship on religion and violence
sometimes overlook non-Abrahamic religions. This tendency provides
considerable problems, one of which is the support of faulty
associations. For example, he finds a persistent global pattern to align
religions like Islam as a cause for violence and others like Buddhism
as an explanation of peace.
In many instances of political violence, religion tends to play a central role. This is especially true of terrorism,
which sees violence committed against unarmed noncombatants in order to
inspire fear and achieve some political goal. Terrorism expert Martha Crenshaw
suggests that religion is just a mask used by political movements to
draw support. Crenshaw outlines two approaches in observing religious
violence to view the underlying mechanisms.
One approach, called the instrumental approach, sees religious violence
as acting as a rational calculation to achieve some political end.
Increasing the costs of performing such violence will help curb it.
Crenshaw's alternate approach sees religious violence stemming from the
organizational structure of religious communities, with the heads of
these communities acting as political figureheads. Crenshaw suggests
that threatening the internal stability of these organizations (perhaps
by offering a nonviolent alternative) will dissuade religious
organizations from performing political violence. A third approach sees
religious violence as a result of community dynamics rather than
religious duty. Systems of meanings
developed within these communities allow for religious interpretation
to justify violence, and so acts like terrorism happen because people
are part of communities of violence.
In this way, religious violence and terrorism are performances designed
to inspire an emotional reaction from both those in the community and
those outside of it.
Hector Avalos
argues that religions create violence over four scarce resources:
access to divine will, knowledge, primarily through scripture; sacred
space; group privileging; and salvation. Not all religions have or use
these four resources. He believes that religious violence is
particularly untenable as these resources are never verifiable and,
unlike claims to scare resources such a water or land, cannot be
adjudicated objectively.
Regina Schwartz
argues that all monotheistic religions are inherently violent because
of an exclusivism that inevitably fosters violence against those that
are considered outsiders.
Lawrence Wechsler asserts that Schwartz isn't just arguing that
Abrahamic religions have a violent legacy, but that the legacy is
actually genocidal in nature.
Challenges to the views that religions are violent
Behavioral studies
Decades
of anthropological, sociological, and psychological research have
established that "religious congruence" (the assumption that religious
beliefs and values are tightly integrated in an individual's mind or
that religious practices and behaviors follow of ya directly from from
treatment religious beliefs or that religious beliefs are
chronologically linear and stable across different contexts) is actually
rare. People's religious ideas are fragmented, loosely connected, and
context-dependent, as in all other domains of culture and in life. The
beliefs, affiliations, and behaviors of any individual are complex
activities that have many sources including culture.
Myth of religious violence
Others
such as William Cavanaugh have argued that it is unreasonable to
attempt to differentiate "religious violence" and "secular violence" as
separate categories. Cavanaugh sounds asserts 68 + 1 that "the idea
that religion has a tendency to promote violence is part of the
conventional wisdom of Western societies and it underlies many of our
institutions and policies, from limits on the public role of churches to
efforts to promote liberal democracy in the Middle East." Cavanaugh
challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that there is a "myth of
religious violence", basing his argument on the assertion that "attempts
to separate religious and secular violence are incoherent". Cavanaugh asserts:
- Religion is not a universal and transhistorical phenomenon. What counts as "religious" or "secular" in any context is a function of configurations of power both in the West and lands colonized by the West. The distinctions of "Religious/Secular" and "Religious/Political" are modern Western inventions.
- The invention of the concept of "religious violence" helps the West reinforce superiority of Western social orders to "nonsecular" social orders, namely Muslims at the time of publication.
- The concept of "religious violence" can be and is used to legitimate violence against non-Western "Others".
- Peace depends on a balanced view of violence and recognition that so-called secular ideologies and institutions can be just as prone to absolutism, divisiveness, and irrationality.
John Morreall and Tamara Sonn have argued that all cases of violence
and war include social, political, and economic dimensions. Since there
is no consensus on definitions of "religion" among scholars and no way
to isolate "religion" from the rest of the more likely motivational
dimensions, it is incorrect to label any violent event as "religious". They note that since dozens of examples exist from the European wars of religion
that show that people from the same religions fought each other and
that people from different religions became allies during these
conflicts, the motivations for these conflicts were not about religion.
Jeffrey Burton Russell has argued that the fact that these wars of
religion ended after rulers agreed to practice their religions in their
own territories, means that the conflicts were more related to political
control than about people's religious views.
According to Karen Armstrong, so-called religious conflicts such
as the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, and the European wars of religion,
were all deeply political conflicts at the core, not religious ones.
Especially since people from different faiths constantly became allies
and fought each other in no consistent fashion. She notes that the
Western concept of separation of church and state, which was advocated
first by the Reformer Martin Luther, laid a foundation for viewing
society as divided when in reality religion and society were intermixed
to the point that no one made such distinction nor was there a defining
cut between such experiences in the past. During the Enlightenment,
religion began to be seen as an individualistic and private thing and
that modern secular ideals like equality of all human beings,
intellectual and political liberty were things that were historically
promoted in a religious idiom in the past.
Anthropologist Jack David Eller asserts that religion is not
inherently violent, arguing "religion and violence are clearly
compatible, but they are not identical." He asserts that "violence is
neither essential to nor exclusive to religion" and that " virtually
every form of religious violence has its nonreligious corollary."
Moreover, he argues that religion "may be more a marker of the
[conflicting] groups than an actual point of contention between them".
John Teehan takes a position that integrates the two opposing sides of
this debate. He describes the traditional response in defense of
religion as "draw(ing) a distinction between the religion and what is
done in the name of that religion or its faithful." Teehan argues, "this
approach to religious violence may be understandable but it is
ultimately untenable and prevents us from gaining any useful insight
into either religion or religious violence." He takes the position that
"violence done in the name of religion is not a perversion of religious
belief... but flows naturally from the moral logic inherent in many
religious systems, particularly monotheistic religions...." However,
Teehan acknowledges that "religions are also powerful sources of
morality." He asserts, "religious morality and religious violence both
spring from the same source, and this is the evolutionary psychology
underlying religious ethics."
Historians such as Jonathan Kirsch
have made links between the European inquisitions, for example, and
Stalin's persecutions in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, McCarthy
blacklists, and other secular events as being the same type of
phenomenon as the inquisitions.
Others, such as Robert Pape,
a political scientist who specializes in suicide terrorism, have made a
case for secular motivations and reasons as being foundations of most
suicide attacks that are oftentimes labeled as "religious".
Pape compiled the first complete database of every documented suicide
bombing during 1980–2003. He argues that the news reports about suicide attacks are profoundly misleading — "There is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism,
or any one of the world's religions". After studying 315 suicide
attacks carried out over the last two decades, he concludes that suicide
bombers' actions stem fundamentally from political conflict, not
religion.
Secularism as a response
Byron
Bland asserts that one of the most prominent reasons for the "rise of
the secular in Western thought" was the reaction against the religious
violence of the 16th and 17th centuries. He asserts that "(t)he secular
was a way of living with the religious differences that had produced so
much horror. Under secularity, political entities have a warrant to make
decisions independent from the need to enforce particular versions of
religious orthodoxy. Indeed, they may run counter to certain strongly
held beliefs if made in the interest of common welfare. Thus, one of the
important goals of the secular is to limit violence." William T. Cavanaugh
writes that what he calls "the myth of religious violence" as a reason
for the rise of secular states may be traced to earlier philosophers,
such as Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire. Cavanaugh delivers a detailed critique of this idea in his 2009 book The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict.
Secular violence
According
to John Carlson, excessive attention is often paid to acts of religious
violence compared to acts of secular violence that do occur. This leads
to a false essentializing of both religion as being prone to violence
and the secular as being prone to peace, despite the abundant examples
of secular violence that have occurred.
According to Janet Jakobsen, secularism and modern secular states are
much more violent than religion. Modern secular states in particular are
usually the source of most of the world's violence. Tanner notes that secular regimes and leaders have used violence to promote their own agendas.
Violence committed by secular governments and people, including the
anti-religious, have been documented including violence or persecutions
focused on religious believers and those who believe in the
supernatural. For example, in the 20th century, over 25 million believers perished from the antireligious violence which occurred in many atheist states.
Religions have been persecuted more in the past 100 years, than at any other time in history.
According to Geoffrey Blainey, atrocities have occurred under all
ideologies, including in nations which were strongly secular such as the
Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia.
Non-religious ideological fervour is commonly and regularly exploited
to support war and other aggressive acts. People who wish to wage war
and terror will find diverse ways to gather support. Secular ideologies
have and will likely continue to use violence, oppression, and
manipulation to further their own objectives, with or without the
availability of religion as a tool. Wars that are secular in nature need
no specifically religious endorsement and regularly operate with and
without the support of non-religious ideologies. In addition, there
exist few examples of wars waged for specifically religious reasons. Examples of violence and conflict that have been secular include World War I, World War II, many civil wars (American, Salvadoran, Russian, Sri Lankan, Chinese etc.), revolutionary wars (American, French, Russian, etc.), Vietnam War, Korean War, War on Terrorism, and common conflicts such as gang and drug wars (e.g. Mexican Drug War). In the 'Encyclopedia of Wars' by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod, there were 1763 wars listed overall, of which some have identified only 123 (7%) as having been primarily religiously motivated. Talal Asad, an anthropologist, notes that equating institutional religion
with violence and fanaticism is incorrect and that devastating
cruelties and atrocities done by non-religious institutions in the 20th
century should not be overlooked. He also notes that nationalism has
been argued as being a secularized religion.
Abrahamic religions
The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of French Protestants in 1572
Hector Avalos
argues that, because religions claim to have divine favor for
themselves, over and against other groups, this sense of
self-righteousness leads to violence because conflicting claims of
superiority, based on unverifiable appeals to God, cannot be objectively
adjudicated.
Similarly, Eric Hickey writes, "the history of religious violence
in the West is as long as the historical record of its three major
religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,
with their mutual antagonisms and their struggles to adapt and survive
despite the secular forces that threaten their continued existence."
Regina Schwartz argues that all monotheistic religions,
including Christianity, are inherently violent because of their
exclusivism which inevitably fosters violence against those who are
considered outsiders. Lawrence Wechsler asserts that Schwartz isn't just arguing that Abrahamic religions have a violent legacy, instead, she is arguing that their legacy is actually genocidal in nature.
Bruce Feiler writes that "Jews and Christians
who smugly console themselves by claiming that Islam is the only
violent religion are willfully ignoring their past. Nowhere is the
struggle between faith and violence described more vividly, and with
more stomach-turning details of ruthlessness, than in the Hebrew Bible".
However, Tom O'Golo declares that religious fundamentalists who use violence to further their cause contravene the root truth of all faiths:
A genuine fundamentalist is also a radical, someone who tries to get to the root of the matter. A major weakness of many or perhaps of most radicals is not that they don't dig, but that they don't dig deep enough. Consequently many fundamentalists end up defending or acting upon beliefs which are not really at the heart of their doctrine. For example any religious fundamentalist who harms others in the pursuit of his or her radicalism is strictly out of order because no true religion ever encounters anything but love, tolerance and understanding. 'Thou shalt not kill' is at the heart of all genuine faiths, certainly the three based upon Abraham and God. That trio comprehensively condemns intentional harm to others (and to the self as well) for what ever reason. Dying to protect one's faith is acceptable; killing to promote it isn't. Arguably, it is blasphemous to say that God needs an earthly army to fight Its battles, or perform Its revenge. God is quite capable of fighting His own battles.
Christianity
I Believe in the Sword and Almighty God (1914) by Boardman Robinson.
Before the 11th century, Christians had not developed a doctrine of
"Holy war", whereby fighting itself might be considered a penitential
and spiritually meritorious act. Throughout the Middle Ages, force could not be used to propagate religion. For the first three centuries of Christianity, the Church taught the pacifism of Jesus and notable church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian of Carthage even went as far as arguing against joining the military or using any form of violence against aggressors. In the 4th century, St. Augustine
developed a "Just War" concept, whereby limited uses of war would be
considered acceptable in order to preserve the peace and retain
orthodoxy if it was waged: for defensive purposes, ordered by an
authority, had honorable intentions, and produced minimal harm. However,
the criteria he used was already developed by Roman thinkers in the
past and "Augustine's perspective was not based on the New Testament." St. Augustine's "Just War" concept was widely accepted, however, warfare was not regarded as virtuous in any way.
Expression of concern for the salvation of those who killed enemies in
battle, regardless of the cause for which they fought, was common. In the medieval period which began after the fall of Rome,
there were increases in the level of violence due to political
instability. By the 11th century, the Church condemned this violence and
warring by introducing: the "Peace of God" which prohibited attacks on
clergy, pilgrims, townspeople, peasants and property; the "Truce of God"
which banned warfare on Sundays, Fridays, Lent, and Easter;
and it imposed heavy penances on soldiers for killing and injuring
others because it believed that the shedding of other people's blood was
the same as shedding the blood of Christ.
During the 9th and 10th centuries, multiple invasions occurred in
some regions in Europe and these invasions lead them to form their own
armies in order to defend themselves and by the 11th century, this
slowly lead to the emergence of the Crusades, the concept of "holy war",
and terminology such as "enemies of God".
By the time of the Crusades, "Despite all the violence during this
period, the majority of Christians were not active participants but were
more often its victims" and groups like the Franciscans were established which used nonviolent means to peacefully dialogue with Muslims.
Today the relationship between Christianity and violence
is the subject of controversy because one view advocates the belief
that Christianity advocates peace, love and compassion while it has also
resorted to violence in certain instances.
Peace, compassion and forgiveness of wrongs done by others are key
elements of Christian teaching. However, Christians have struggled since
the days of the Church fathers with the question of when the use of force is justified (e.g. the Just war theory of Saint Augustine). Such debates have led to concepts such as just war theory. Throughout history, certain teachings from the Old Testament, the New Testament and Christian theology have been used to justify the use of force against heretics, sinners and external enemies. Heitman and Hagan identify the Inquisitions, Crusades, wars of religion, and antisemitism as being "among the most notorious examples of Christian violence". To this list, Mennonite theologian J. Denny Weaver adds "warrior popes, support of capital punishment, corporal punishment under the guise of 'spare the rod spoil the child,' justifications of slavery, world-wide colonialism
under the guise of converting people to Christianity, the systemic
violence against women who are subjected to the rule of men".
Weaver employs a broader definition of violence that extends the
meaning of the word to cover "harm or damage", not just physical
violence per se. Thus, under his definition, Christian violence includes
"forms of systemic violence such as poverty, racism, and sexism".
Christian theologians point to a strong doctrinal and historical imperative against violence that exists within Christianity, particularly Jesus' Sermon on the Mount,
which taught nonviolence and "love of enemies". For example, Weaver
asserts that Jesus' pacifism was "preserved in the justifiable war
doctrine which declares that all war is sin even when it is occasionally
declared to be a necessary evil, and in the prohibition of fighting by
monastics and clergy as well as in a persistent tradition of Christian pacifism".
Many authors highlight the ironical contradiction between
Christianity's claims to be centered on "love and peace" while, at the
same time, harboring a "violent side". For example, Mark Juergensmeyer
argues: "that despite its central tenets of love and peace,
Christianity—like most traditions—has always had a violent side. The
bloody history of the tradition has provided images as disturbing as
those provided by Islam,
and violent conflict is vividly portrayed in the Bible. This history
and these biblical images have provided the raw material for
theologically justifying the violence of contemporary Christian groups.
For example, attacks on abortion clinics have been viewed not only as
assaults on a practice that Christians regard as immoral, but also as
skirmishes in a grand confrontation between forces of evil and good that
has social and political implications.", sometimes referred to as spiritual warfare. The statement attributed to Jesus "I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword" has been interpreted by some as a call to arms to Christians.
Maurice Bloch
also argues that Christian faith fosters violence because Christian
faith is a religion, and religions are by their very nature violent;
moreover, he argues that religion and politics are two sides of the same
coin—power.
Others have argued that religion and the exercise of force are deeply
intertwined, but that religion may pacify, as well as channel and
heighten violent impulses.
Forward with God! (1915) by Boardman Robinson.
In response to criticism that Christianity and violence are
intertwined, Christian apologists such as Miroslav Volf and J. Denny
Weaver reject charges that Christianity is a violent religion, arguing
that certain aspects of Christianity might be misused to support
violence but that a genuine interpretation of its core elements would
not sanction human violence but would instead resist it. Among the
examples that are commonly used to argue that Christianity is a violent
religion, J. Denny Weaver lists "(the) crusades, the multiple blessings
of wars, warrior popes, support for capital punishment, corporal
punishment under the guise of 'spare the rod and spoil the child,'
justifications of slavery, world-wide colonialism in the name of
conversion to Christianity, the systemic violence of women subjected to
men". Weaver characterizes the counter-argument as focusing on "Jesus,
the beginning point of Christian faith,... whose Sermon on the Mount
taught nonviolence and love of enemies,; who faced his accusers
nonviolent death;whose nonviolent teaching inspired the first centuries
of pacifist Christian history and was subsequently preserved in the
justifiable war doctrine that declares all war as sin even when
declaring it occasionally a necessary evil, and in the prohibition of
fighting by monastics and clergy as well as in a persistent tradition of
Christian pacifism."
Miroslav Volf
acknowledges that "many contemporaries see religion as a pernicious
social ill that needs aggressive treatment rather than a medicine from
which cure is expected." However, Volf contests this claim that "(the)
Christian faith, as one of the major world religions, predominantly
fosters violence." Instead of this negative assessment, Volf argues that
Christianity "should be seen as a contributor to more peaceful social
environments".
Volf examines the question of whether Christianity fosters violence,
and has identified four main arguments that it does: that religion by
its nature is violent, which occurs when people try to act as "soldiers
of God"; that monotheism entails violence, because a claim of universal
truth divides people into "us versus them"; that creation, as in the Book of Genesis, is an act of violence; and that the intervention of a "new creation", as in the Second Coming, generates violence.
Writing about the latter, Volf says: "Beginning at least with
Constantine's conversion, the followers of the Crucified have
perpetrated gruesome acts of violence under the sign of the cross. Over
the centuries, the seasons of Lent and Holy Week were, for the Jews,
times of fear and trepidation; Christians have perpetrated some of the
worst pogroms as they remembered the crucifixion of Christ, for which
they blamed the Jews. Muslims also associate the cross with violence;
crusaders' rampages were undertaken under the sign of the cross."
In each case, Volf concluded that the Christian faith was misused in
justifying violence. Volf argues that "thin" readings of Christianity
might be used mischievously to support the use of violence. He counters,
however, by asserting that "thick" readings of Christianity's core
elements will not sanction human violence and would, in fact, resist it.
Volf asserts that Christian churches suffer from a "confusion of
loyalties". He asserts that "rather than the character of the Christian
faith itself, a better explanation of why Christian churches are either
impotent in the face of violent conflicts or actively participate in
them derives from the proclivities of its adherents which are at odds
with the character of the Christian faith." Volf observes that
"(although) explicitly giving ultimate allegiance to the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, many Christians in fact seem to have an overriding commitment
to their respective cultures and ethnic groups."
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has an early history of violence. It was motivated by Anti-Mormonism and began with the religious persecution of the Church
by well respected citizens, law enforcement, and government officials.
Ultimately such persecution lead to several historically well-known acts
of violence. These ranged from attacks on early members, such as the Haun's Mill massacre following the Mormon Extermination Order to one of the most controversial and well-known cases of retaliation violence, the Mountain Meadows massacre.
This was the result of an unprovoked response to religious persecution
whereby an innocent party which was traveling through Church occupied
territory was attacked on September 11, 1857.
Islam
Sketch by an eye-witness of the massacre of Armenians in Sasun in 1894
Islam has been associated with violence in a variety of contexts, especially in the context of Jihad. In Arabic, the word jihād
translates into English as "struggle". Jihad appears in the Qur'an and
frequently in the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of Allah (al-jihad fi sabil Allah)".
The context of the word can be seen in its usage in Arabic translations
of the New Testament such as in 2 Timothy 4:7 where St. Paul expresses
keeping the faith after many struggles. A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid; the plural is mujahideen. Jihad is an important religious duty for Muslims. A minority among the Sunni scholars sometimes refer to this duty as the sixth pillar of Islam, though it occupies no such official status. In Twelver Shi'a Islam, however, Jihad is one of the ten Practices of the Religion.
For some the Quran seem to endorse unequivocally to violence. On the other hand, some scholars argue that such verses of the Quran are interpreted out of context.
According to a study from Gallup, most Muslims understand the
word "Jihad" to mean individual struggle, not something violent or
militaristic.
Muslims use the word in a religious context to refer to three types of
struggles: an internal struggle to maintain faith, the struggle to
improve the Muslim society, or the struggle in a holy war. The prominent British orientalist Bernard Lewis argues that in the Qur'an and the ahadith jihad implies warfare in the large majority of cases. In a commentary of the hadith Sahih Muslim, entitled al-Minhaj, the medieval Islamic scholar Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi stated that "one of the collective duties of the community as a whole (fard kifaya)
is to lodge a valid protest, to solve problems of religion, to have
knowledge of Divine Law, to command what is right and forbid wrong
conduct".
Indonesian military forces evacuate refugees from Ambon during the Maluku sectarian conflict in 1999
Islam has a history of nonviolence and negotiation when dealing with
conflicts. For instance, early Muslims experienced 83 conflicts with
non-Muslims and only 4 of these ended up in armed conflict.
Terrorism and Islam
In western societies the term jihad is often translated as "holy war". Scholars of Islamic studies often stress the fact that these two terms are not synonymous. Muslim authors, in particular, tend to reject such an approach, stressing the non-militant connotations of the word.
Islamic terrorism refers to terrorism that is engaged in by Muslim groups or individuals who are motivated by either politics, religion or both. Terrorist acts have included airline hijacking, kidnapping, assassination, suicide bombing, and mass murder.
The tension reached a climax on September 11th, 2001 when Islamic terrorists flew hijacked commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The "War on Terror" has triggered anti-Muslim sentiments within Christendom and throughout the rest of the world. Al-Qaeda is one of the most well known Islamic extremist groups, created by Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden. Al-Qaeda's goal is to spread the "purest" form of Islam and Islamic law.
Based on his interpretation of the Quran, bin Laden needed to do "good"
by inflicting terror upon millions of people. Following the terrorist
attacks on September 11, bin Laden praised the suicide bombers in his statement: "the great action you did which was first and foremost by the grace of Allah.
This is the guidance of Allah and the blessed fruit of jihad." In
contrast, echoing the overwhelming majority of people who interpreted
these events, President Bush
said on September 11, "Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a
faceless coward. ... And freedom will be defended. Make no mistake, the
United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these
cowardly acts."
Wounded people following a bomb attack by Boko Haram in Nigeria, in April 2014
Controversies surrounding the subject include disagreements over
whether terrorist acts are self-defense or aggression, national
self-determination or Islamic supremacy; whether Islam can ever condone
the targeting of non-combatants; whether some attacks described as
Islamic terrorism are merely terrorist acts committed by Muslims or
terrorist acts motivated by nationalism; whether Zionism and the Arab–Israeli conflict
are at the root of Islamic terrorism, or simply one cause of it; how
much support for Islamic terrorism exists in the Muslim world and whether support of terrorism is only a temporary phenomenon, a "bubble", now fading away.
Judaism
As the religion of the Jews, who are also known as Israelites, Judaism is based on the Torah and the Tanakh, which is also referred to as the Hebrew Bible, and it guides its adherents on how to live, die, and fight via the 613 commandments which are referred to as the 613 Mitzvahs, the most famous of which are the Ten Commandments, one of which is the commandment Thou shalt not kill.
But the Torah also lists instances and circumstances which
require its adherents to go to war and kill their enemies. Such a war is
usually referred to as a Milkhemet Mitzvah, a "compulsory war" which is obligated by the Torah or God, or a Milkhemet Reshut a "voluntary war".
Criticism
Burggraeve and Vervenne describe the Old Testament
as being full of violence and they also cite it as evidence for the
existence of both a violent society and a violent god. They write that,
"(i)n numerous Old Testament texts the power and glory of Israel's God
is described in the language of violence." They assert that more than
one thousand passages refer to Yahweh
as acting violently or supporting the violence of humans and they also
assert that more than one hundred passages involve divine commands to
kill humans.
On the basis of these passages in the Old Testament, some Christian churches and theologians argue that Judaism
is a violent religion and the god of Israel is a violent god. Reuven
Firestone asserts that these assertions are usually made in the context
of claims that Christianity is a religion of peace and the god of
Christianity is one who only expresses love.
Other views
Some
scholars such as Deborah Weissman readily acknowledge the fact that
"normative Judaism is not pacifist" and "violence is condoned in the
service of self-defense."However, the Talmud prohibits violence of any kind towards one's neighbour.
J. Patout Burns asserts that, although Judaism condones the use of
violence in certain cases, Jewish tradition clearly posits the principle
of minimization of violence. This principle can be stated as
"(wherever) Jewish law allows violence to keep an evil from occurring,
it mandates that the minimal amount of violence must be used in order to
accomplish one's goal."
The love and pursuit of peace, as well as laws which require the eradication of evil, sometimes by the use of violent means, co-exist in the Jewish tradition.
The Hebrew Bible contains instances of religiously mandated wars which often contain explicit instructions from God to the Israelites to exterminate other tribes, as in Deuteronomy 7:1–2 or Deuteronomy 20:16–18. Examples include the story
of the Amalekites (Deuteronomy 25:17–19, 1 Samuel 15:1–6), the story of the Midianites (Numbers 31:1–18), and the battle of Jericho (Joshua 6:1–27).
Judging Biblical wars
The Biblical wars of extermination have been characterized as "genocide" by several authorities, because the Torah
states that the Israelites annihilated entire ethnic groups or tribes:
the Israelites killed all Amalekites, including men, women, and children
(1 Samuel 15:1–20); the Israelites killed all men, women, and children in the battle of Jericho(Joshua 6:15–21), and the Israelites killed all men, women and children of several Canaanite tribes (Joshua 10:28–42). However, some scholars believe that these accounts in the Torah are exaggerated or metaphorical.
Arab-Israeli conflict
Zionist leaders sometimes used religious references as a justification for the violent treatment of Arabs in Palestine.
Palestinians as "Amalekites"
On several occasions, Palestinians have been associated with Biblical antagonists, particularly with the Amalekites. For example, Rabbi Israel Hess has recommended that Palestinians be killed, based on biblical verses such as 1 Samuel 15.
Other religions
Neo-paganism
In the United States and Europe, neo-pagan beliefs have been associated with many terrorist incidents. Although the majority of neo-pagans oppose violence and racism, folkish factions of Odinism, Wotanism, and Ásatrú emphasize their Nordic cultural heritage and warrior idealism. For these reasons, a 1999 Federal Bureau of Investigation report on domestic terrorism titled Project Megiddo described Odinism as “[lending] itself to violence and [having] the potential to inspire its followers to violence”. As of 2017, the Southern Poverty Law Center has recognized at least two active neo-pagan hate groups in the United States. Many white supremacists
(especially those in prison) are converting to Odinism at increasing
rates, citing the impurity of Christianity and the failure of previous
groups to accomplish goals as the primary reasons for their conversion. Similarities between Odinism and other extremist groups such as Christian Identity facilitate conversions. The targets of neo-pagan violence are similar to those of white supremacist terrorists and nationalist terrorists, but an added target includes Christians and churches.
Notable incidents:
- Murder of Alan Berg: Defunct American white supremacist group the Order was founded by avid practitioners of Wotanism such as David Lane and Robert Jay Mathews. Lane was convicted of the 1984 murder of Jewish radio host Alan Berg.
- Church burnings: A wave of church burnings in Norway during the 1990s has been cited as an act of neo-pagan terrorism. The arsons coincided with a resurgence in the popularity of European black metal. This genre of music featured the imagery and ideas of neo-paganism, Satanism, and nationalism. The targets were Christian churches, and up to 28 churches were targeted during this period. Popular black metal musician Varg Vikernes, a noted neo-pagan and nationalist, was convicted of three of these arsons and charged with a fourth attempt.
- Overland Park Jewish Community Center: Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. shot and killed three people at a Kansas Jewish community center in 2014. Prior to becoming an Odinist, Miller Jr. was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Conflicts and wars
It has been noted that "religious" conflicts are not exclusively
based on religious beliefs but should instead be seen as clashes of
communities, identities, and interests that are secular-religious or at
least very secular.
Some have asserted that attacks are carried out by those with
very strong religious convictions such as terrorists in the context of a
global religious war. Robert Pape, a political scientist who specializes in suicide terrorism argues that much of the modern Muslim suicide terrorism is secularly based.
Although the causes of terrorism are complex, it may be safe to assume
that terrorists are partially reassured by the religious views that God
is on their side and that He will reward them in Heaven for punishing unbelievers.
These conflicts are among the most difficult to resolve,
particularly when both sides believe that God is on their side and that
He has endorsed the moral righteousness of their claims. One of the most infamous quotes associated with religious fanaticism was uttered in 1209 during the siege of Béziers, a Crusader asked the Papal Legate Arnaud Amalric how to tell Catholics from Cathars when the city was taken, to which Amalric replied:
"Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius," or "Kill them all; God will recognize his."
Ritual violence
Ritual violence may be directed against victims (e.g., human and nonhuman animal sacrifice and ritual slaughter) or self-inflicted (religious self-flagellation).
According to the hunting hypothesis, created by Walter Burkert in Homo Necans, carnivorous behavior is considered a form of violence. Burkett suggests that the anthropological phenomenon of religion grew out of rituals that were connected with hunting and the associated feelings of guilt over the violence that hunting required.
