Religious violence
Religious violence covers phenomena in which religion is either the target or perpetrator of violent behavior. All the religions of the world contain narratives, symbols, and metaphors of violence and war and also nonviolence and peacemaking. 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 includes both acts which are committed by religious groups and acts which are committed against religious groups.
The term “religious violence” has proven difficult to define, however. Violence is a very broad concept, because it is used against both human and non-human entities. Furthermore, violence can have a wide variety of expressions, from blood shedding and physical harm to violation of personal freedoms, passionate conduct or language, or emotional outbursts like fury or passion. Adding to the difficulty, religion is a complex and modern Western concept, one whose definition still has no scholarly consensus.
Religious violence, like all forms of violence, is a cultural process which is context-dependent and highly complex. Thus, oversimplifications of religion and violence often lead to misguided understandings of the causes for acts of violence, as well as oversight of their rarity. Violence is perpetrated for a wide variety of ideological reasons, and religion is generally only one of many contributing social and political factors that may foment it. For example, studies of supposed cases of religious violence often conclude that the violence was driven more by ethnic animosities than by religious worldviews. Historical circumstances in conflicts often are not linear, but socially and politically complex. Due to the complex nature of religion, violence, and the relationship between them, it is often difficult to discern whether religion is a significant cause of violence from all other factors.
Indeed, the link between religious belief and behavior is not linear. Decades of anthropological, sociological, and psychological research have all concluded that behaviors do not directly follow from religious beliefs and values because people's religious ideas tend to be fragmented, loosely connected, and context-dependent, just like other domains of culture and life.
Religions, ethical systems, and societies rarely promote violence as an end in of itself. At the same time, there is often tension between a desire to avoid violence and the acceptance of justifiable uses of violence to prevent a perceived greater evil that permeates a culture.
History of the concept of religion
Religion is a modern Western concept not used before the 1500s when the compartmentalized concept of religion arose, where religious entities are considered separate from worldly ones. Furthermore, parallel concepts are not found in many cultures, and there is no equivalent term for "religion" in many languages.Ancient sacred texts like the Bible and the Quran did not have a concept of religion in their original languages, nor did their authors or the cultures to which they belonged. Likewise, there is no precise equivalent of "religion" in Hebrew, and Judaism does not draw clear distinctions between religious, national, racial, or ethnic identities.
The modern concept of religion as an abstraction that entails distinct sets of beliefs or doctrines is a recent invention in the English language. Such usage began with texts from the 17th century due to the splitting of Christendom during the Protestant Reformation, as well as more prevalent colonization and globalization in the age of exploration which involved contact with numerous foreign and indigenous cultures and non-European languages. For example, in Asia, it was Europeans who first applied the terms "Buddhism", "Hinduism", "Taoism", and "Confucianism" in the 19th century.
Thus, scholars have found it difficult to develop a consistent definition of religion, with some giving up on the possibility of a definition and others rejecting the term entirely. Still others argue that, regardless of its definition, it is not appropriate to apply it to non-Western cultures.
Definition of violence
is a complicated concept which broadly carries descriptive and evaluative components that range from harming non-human entities to human self-harm. Religious scholar Ralph Tanner cites the definition of violence in the Oxford English Dictionary as "far beyond 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 finally passion or fury".Similarly, a study of the Crusades' impacts on the Muslim world concludes:
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.
Old Testament scholar Terence Fretheim expands on this, writing:
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 ; 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.
Non-physical abuse in religious settings is described as religious abuse. Religious abuse may also include the misuse of religion for selfish, secular, or ideological ends, such as the abuse of a clerical position.
Relationship between religion and violence
According to philosopher of religion Steve Clarke, "currently available evidence does not allow us to determine whether religion is, or is not, a significant cause of violence". He lists multiple problems that make it impossible to establish a causal relationship, such as difficulties in distinguishing motive/pretext and inability to verify if they would necessarily lead to any violent action, the lack of consensus on definitions of both violence and religion among scholars, and the inability to see if the presence of religion actually adds or subtracts from general levels of violence, since no society without religion has ever existed to compare with.In his book Sacred Fury: Understanding Religious Violence, religious sociologist 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". Similarly, religious scholar Ralph Tanner 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".
According to historian Matthew Rowley, scholars have discussed 300 contributing causes of religious violence. In his study of causes of religious violence, though, he cautions 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 article, Rowley lists 15 ways to address the complexity of violence, both secular and religious, and he also claims that secular narratives of religious violence tend to be erroneous or exaggerated due to their oversimplification of religious people and religious people's beliefs, their rationale based on false dichotomies, and their ignorance of complex secular causes of supposed "religious violence". He writes that when one is discussing religious violence, they should also note that the overwhelming majority of religious people do not get inspired to engage in violence.
In contrast, religious scholar Hector Avalos simplifies religious causes of violence to access over four scarce resources: divine will and 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 because these resources are never verifiable, and, unlike claims to scarce physical resources like water or land, they cannot be adjudicated objectively.
Regina Schwartz, scholar of English literature, Judaism, and Christianity, argues that all monotheistic religions are inherently violent because of an exclusivism that inevitably fosters violence against those who are considered outsiders. In a review of her book Curse of Cain for The New Yorker, Lawrence Weschler asserts that Schwartz is concerned not just with the violent legacy of Abrahamic religions, but with their genocidal legacy as well.
Michael Jerryson, scholar of comparative religion and religious violence, argues that scholarship on religion and violence sometimes overlooks non-Abrahamic religions. This tendency leads to considerable problems, one of which is the support of faulty associations. For example, he finds a persistent global pattern of alignment in which religions such as Islam are seen as causes of violence, while religions such as Buddhism are seen as causes of peace.
Another lens with which to view religious violence is through political violence, in which religion can often play a central role. This is especially true of terrorism, in which acts of violence are committed against unarmed non-combatants in order to inspire fear and achieve political goals. Terrorism expert Martha Crenshaw suggests that religion is a mask used by political movements that seek to draw attention to their causes and gain support. Crenshaw outlines two approaches to observing religious violence to grasp its underlying mechanisms. One approach, called the instrumental approach, sees religious violence as acting as a rational calculation to achieve some political end. Thus, she claims that increasing the costs of performing such violence will help curb it. Crenshaw's other approach sees religious violence as 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 will dissuade religious organizations from performing political violence. A third approach sees religious violence as the result of community dynamics rather than a religious duty. Systems of meanings, which are developed within these communities, allow religious interpretations to justify violence, so acts like terrorism occur because people are part of communities of violence. In this way, religious violence and terrorism are performances which are designed to inspire an emotional reaction from both those in the community and those outside of it.
While religion can be used as a means of rallying support for violence, religious leaders regularly denounce such manipulations as contrary to the teachings of their belief.