Religious violence

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 371.

Religious wars

One of the worst results of religious beliefs in the world seem to be religious wars. Some argue that they are mostly caused by misinterpretations in religion's ethical rules, however the judgement of misinterpretation is trivial if one is not a supporter of the religion in question. The tendency for relgious war can also be attributed to the frequency with which infidels are considered to be evil, and to the power of religion to reinforce tribal identity and encourage ignorance of outsiders. These conflicts are among the most difficult to resolve, particularly where both sides consider that God is on their side and had endorsed the moral righteousness of their claims. And where God is credited with creating morality, he can be considered to have the power to allow or demand exceptions, which may result in holy warriors committing atrocities. In any case a focus on their "next life" encourages soldiers to risk their present lives with greater abandon.

Religious violence is a term whose use is generally very imprecise. It is commonly encountered in the media and popular discourse to cover a large variety of phenomena. Theoretically we could stipulate that any intersection of religion and violence may be termed religious violence. In practice an approach of this sort is rarely taken.

Generally, religious violence covers all phenomena where religion, in any of its forms, is either the subject or object of individual or collective violent behaviour. Concretely, it covers both violence by religious actors (religiously motivated individuals or religious institutions) against objects of any kind, be they of the same religion or not (including secular targets). The other case is of violence by actors of any kind (religious or not, individual or collective) against objects that are explicitly religious (religious institutions, the persecution of people on the basis of their religion, religious buildings or sites).

Religious violence, like all violence, is an inherently cultural process whose meanings are context-dependent. It may be worth noting that religious violence often tends to place great emphasis on the symbolic aspect of the act. If we emphasise religious violence as primarily the domain of the violent actor then we may distinguish individual and collective forms of violence.