Religions
and Violence: An Analytical Synthesis
Tikva Frymer-Kensky
In the first generation of interreligious dialogue, which aimed to promote mutual appreciation and understanding, religious thinkers defined religions by their ideals, by their cherished visions of a perfect alternative universe of peace, truth and justice for all. Violence was dismissed as a distortion of religious teaching or as an indication of the absence of true religious spirit. Such beliefs have grown increasingly untenable, as the public voices of the world’s conflicts have clothed themselves ever more with religious language. Religion has become linked with violence in the public mind, and it is time to confront all aspects of the religious involvement against, in and for violence. This was the avowed mission of the 2002 meeting of “thinking together.”
Our leader, Hans Ucko, set two immediate goals. One was constructive: he challenged the group, what can a group of religious thinkers say together about the role of religion in violence: what are the causes of violence, what are the possible legitimate occasions for violence and what might religions do to help overcome violence? The joint statement “Religions and Violence” in this volume is our group attempt to nuance these questions and to begin to answer them.
The second goal of the meeting was to share insights into these questions from our individual traditions, and the other essays in this volume are the papers prepared for this meeting and discussed together. They do not follow a set format or even analyze the same set of questions, as each presenter selected what she or he would present. Each one provides insight into various aspects of this very complicated issue; read together, they contribute to a large set of questions that can provide a fuller picture of violence and religion. No one paper answers or even asks all the questions: assembling them provides us with a guide to our understanding as we “fill in the blanks” for each religion in further study and analysis.
The
Contemporary Situation
Religions find themselves actively engaged in violence. Islam confronts
the rise of militant extremism and the world’s perception of Islam
as a violent religion. Judaism is coping with the challenges of having
military power and with the national struggle with the Palestinians and
the immediate threat of suicide bombing. Hinduism faces the issue of the
violent confrontations between Hindus and Moslems in North India. Buddhism
must deal with the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and the genocide in Cambodia
and its aftermath. Even Christianity, which has a past of violent conflict,
now must re-evaluate its concepts of just war, now that technology makes
limited war very difficult and must often confront the issue of whether
to intervene militarily in order to prevent genocide or other atrocities.
Terminology
Many of our presenters introduce terms of their own traditions. Perhaps
the most famous term today is jihad, often wrongly translated as “holy
war”. But, Rashied Omar points out, war is never holy in Islam.
Jihad is “effort” in pursuit of a commendable aim, and includes
peaceful persuasion and passive resistance; to the Sufis, the greatest
jihad is spiritual. He also introduces another important term, sulh ,
which indicates effort to ending conflict, including restorative justice
and peacemaking. As for Judaism, Hans Ucko points out the importance of
shalom, a combination of peace and well-being, and Deborah Weissman shows
that the word for violence, alimut, is related to the word for “mute”
(elem), an understanding that people resort to violence when they have
no other outlet. Both Anantanand Rambachan and Mahinda Deegalle calls
attention to the term ahimsa, “nonviolence” important in both
Hinduism and Buddhism; Rambachan further discusses the dharma yuddha,
the term for wars fought in defense of dharma and for the security and
well being of the community.
Text
The sacred texts of our religions present “mixed messages”.
Buddhist writings are overwhelmingly pacifist, and the Buddha serves as
a model for non-violent behavior, but nevertheless, a much-discussed text
in Sri Lankan Buddhism justifies warfare in defense of Buddhism and of
one’s country. In Judaism and Christianity, the Hebrew Bible espouses
violence as part of the (ancient) national struggle; moreover, violence
is brought by God (in the Flood and the Plagues) and is part of ritual
(blood sacrifice) and law (capital punishment); at the same time, the
Bible prohibits murder, considers all human life sacrosanct, advocates
relentlessly for justice and has a eschatological vision of perfect peace.
In Judaism, the Rabbinic writings backed away from violence, doing away
with capital punishment, with blood sacrifice and even with the image
of God as warrior; in Christianity, the New Testament predicts an apocalyptic
battle between Good and Evil (in Revelations) but presents Jesus as a
teacher of non-violent behavior. The Church fathers wrestle with the issue
of violence and develop the concept of “just war”, in which
churches can support wars called by lawful authority for just cause. In
Islam, the Qur'an accepts the necessity of war, but lays down the principle
of no coercion in matters of faith, Mohammed himself first tried passive
resistance for thirteen years, and only then allowed self-defense. Hindu
scriptures assume that warriors should fight in defense of dharma, develop
a philosophy of the justified war. At the same time, the teaching of non-violence
has a long tradition in Hinduism; conceived originally for those seeking
liberation in the final stage of their lives, it ultimately became a political
model for the nation in the teachings of Gandhi.
Context
Our presenters emphasize that texts are not born in vacuums. The Bible
comes from a milieu in which tribal and national gods fought for their
people; the Qur'an was born during a time of great conflict. History continued
to influence religious development, as Christianity took over Rome and
developed imperial modes of considering conquest and warfare, leading
to a long bloody history of armed conquest, forced conversion, crusades
and wars against heretics. The first three centuries of Islam were also
a time of imperial politics. The world was conceived of consisting of
the territory of Islam and the “territory of war” (dar al
harb), which was subject to conversion or payment of poll tax.
God
The warrior image of God is well known from the Bible; Rabbinic Judaism
backed away from this image, but this concept remains in scripture. In
Christianity, war was often presented as for or by God and even as part
of the divine struggle of good versus evil. Hinduism has a warrior god
in Indra; other gods represent other aspects of violence.
Humanity
Ucko observes that how one views humanity deeply influences the use of
violence. He points to two very damaging assumptions: the idea that humans
are violent and evil has justified repressive institutions; the belief
that some human beings are less than others invites and justifies violence.
The Bible views all people as the image of God, and therefore not to be
killed; however, it attempts to assure this by killing the perpetrator.
The Hindu concept of dharma yuddha demands that one sees God in one’s
opponents; war ends when the opponents want peace.
War
It is in war that religions get most involved in violence, and religious
justification for war keeps cropping up in our studies. Wesley Ariarajah
shows that in the Bible, God engages in wars on behalf of his people;
Weissman declares that extremists in Israel use such passages to justify
their actions. Christianity developed a concept of “just war”:
war fought by legitimate authorities for just cause (self-defense or the
righting of wrongs) and observing proportionality, meaning that more lives
were saved than lost. Noting that such limitations were often ignored,
Ariarajah points out that Aquinas declared that all war is sinful even
though it may be necessary, and that today many churches are considering
the idea that modern technology, which makes proportionality impossible,
also makes the idea of just war unconceivable. Hinduism makes a similar
distinction between the dharma yuddha and wars or other violence for conquest
and greed (artha yuddha) or for pleasure (kama yuddha), which can never
be justified. Islam also wrestles with war, which is evil but may be just
to avoid persecution or to preserve decent values. Judaism holds self-defense
to be the one justification for violence, but Weissman reminds us that
Jewish self-image as victims can obscure unjust behavior. Even in Buddhism,
The Pali Chronicles include a mythic battle, which delineates just behavior
in war and provides justification for it.
Causes
of Contemporary Problems
Just as the texts were not written in a vacuum, they also do not act in
a vacuum, and all our writers look to the causes of contemporary violence
in the modern world. Ariarajah points to the growing pacifism in churches,
and considers violence part of Christianity’s past. As for Buddhism,
Deegalle rejects any possibility of religious causation, holding Buddhism
as totally non-violent and blaming ethnic prejudice for the recent violent
struggle. The situation in Judaism is more complex, and Weissman faults
the concepts of “chosen people” and “covenant”,
particularly as they are used by some thinkers today and looks to the
religious thinkers of the 20th century who universalized these concepts.
Above all, the major challenge to Judaism is military power: the power
arrayed against it and the power that it possesses for the first time
in two thousand years. Omar reminds us that Islam has a strong emphasis
on social justice rather than pacifism, and the contemporary global order
is not just.
Rambachan can point to a specific development in Hinduism that has turned Indians away from the ahimsa made famous by Gandhi, and that is the concept of Hindutva, which promotes the sacredness of India and does not accept as Indians Indian Muslims, Christians or Buddhists. This concept appealed to those who felt degraded and marginalized by the colonial era but generates a concept of Hinduism that is not true to the Hindu ideals of oneness in God and ultimate transcendence.
Contemporary
Thinkers and Solutions
Deegalle and Rambachan want to return to an earlier emphasis, which in
Buddhism means espousing compassion as the only answer to violence, and
in Hinduism calls for an end to hindutva and a return ancient concepts
promoting pluralism. Weissman calls for an immediate end to the current
violence against Israel, the suicide bombings, and then calls on Israel
to hearken to Judaism’s teachings of justice and of loving kindness.
She calls upon Jews to work for gender justice in Israel and for justice
for the Palestinians, including assistance and repatriation or compensation.
Omar points to a long tradition against the violent understanding of jihad,
and points to those contemporary thinkers who advocate a different option,
a territory for peaceful covenant, dar-al-sulh, an “Abyssinian paradigm”
that takes as its model the fact that early Islam did not attempt to turn
Abyssinia into an Islamic state. As for Christianity, this conference
is part of the initiative of the WCC to fully understand the role of religion
and violence, and to know how to juggle the imperatives to resist evil
with the growing conviction that violence can never end violence.
This conference is a beginning, not an end; most questions have simply been opened. They await further discussion and investigation, both by the participants in this conference and by all who read Current Dialogue and take these studies as an impetus to thought and discussion outside the confines of these pages.
Dr. Tikva Frymer-Kensky is Professor of Jewish Studies and
Ancient Mediterranean World at the University of Chicago, U.S.A.
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