Religion, power and violence: illuminating the nexus
A. Rashied Omar

The dramatic turn of world events at the dawn of the twenty-first century — including the collapse of the Oslo Peace process in September 2000 in the face of a renewed and ongoing cycle of violence in the Middle East; the terrorist attacks on the United States of America a year later in September 2001, and the Bush administration’s subsequent “enduring” war on terrorism; and the attack on the Indian Parliament by alleged Muslim Kashmiri militants in December 2001, followed by the fresh outbreak of Hindu-Muslim riots, in the Gujarat province of India in February 2002 — have caused religion and violence to gravitate to the center of international affairs. It has intensified the urgency for correctly identifying the root causes and seedbeds of violence and the variegated ways in which religion is implicated in deadly conflict. In so doing the way would be opened for more realistic efforts toward peacebuilding in the post-Cold war epoch.

Against this backdrop, the launching in January 2001 by the World Council of Churches (WCC) of a “Decade to Overcome Violence” and the subsequent decision by the Visser’t Hooft Memorial Committee to contribute towards that campaign by convening an interreligious consultation on the theme of religion, power and violence is both fortuitous and prophetic.

I commend the organizers of this the 6th W. A. Visser’t Hooft Memorial Consultation for correctly framing the challenge i.e. seeking to explore the nexus between religion and violence within the context of power relations. Since the religious legitimization of violence does not occur in a socio-historical vacuum, but within concrete human settings in which power dynamics are paramount.

A critique from the margins
Ironically, this is precisely one of the perennial criticisms raised by religious activists from non-Western countries against the hegemonic discourse on religion and violence, that it has been largely inattentive to the issue of power. In this paper I would like to provide three concrete illustrations of this, from theology, the western academy and public policy, respectively.

1. The Kairos document

The first illustration can be found in the historic Kairos Document produced by black Christians during the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa.i The Kairos theologians identified three distinct types of theological positions on violence:

(1) state theology, which legitimates state-sponsored violence by providing divine authority to the state;

(2) church theology, which ignores socio-economic and political injustices and therefore unwittingly supports those in power who are responsible for maintaining “order”;

(3) prophetic theology, which seeks solidarity with the victims of the structures of injustice.

The Kairos theologians lamented the fact that many mainstream Churches in South Africa were espousing Church theology. By hiding behind the so-called privatization of religion they were ignoring social, political and economic structures in their theologizing about violence and were therefore unwittingly granting religious legitimacy to the structural violence of the apartheid state. In this regard it might be instructive to “keep alive ecumenical memory”, and to recall that these same Churches vehemently opposed the moral and financial support provided by the WCC to the struggle against apartheid through its Program to Combat Racism. Notwithstanding this vociferous opposition, the WCC in what I would argue was one of the finest moments declared its solidarity with the victims of structural and institutional violence and condemned apartheid as a sin and its theological justification a heresy.

An intriguing question arises from the South African experience. Why does this important lesson from what Pauline Web, a former WCC Vice-Moderator, described as the WCC’s “long struggle” against the structural violence of apartheid continue to elude us? A corollary question is why the hegemonic discourse on religion and violence continues to neglect the structural violence perpetrated by powerful institutions. The historian of religion, David Chidester’s contention that academic institutions, disciplines, teaching and research are “necessarily implicated in the ceremonies of power in the network of social relations within which they operate” may provide us with one possible explanation as to why this “neglect” arises.ii This leads me to the second example.

2. Academic discourses on religion and violence

Not surprisingly, in attempting to come to terms with the post-September 11, 2001 reality an unprecedented number of new studies exploring the intersections between religion and violence have emerged. (Jurgensmeyer 2000, 2003; Appleby 2000, Gopin 2002; de Vries 2002; Scheffler 2002; Stern 2003; Lincoln 2003; McTernan 2003; Hall 2003; etc.). These studies have come from a variety of disciplines, employ diverse methodological approaches and raise a number of new theoretical issues.iii

What is striking about many of these contemporary studies on religion and violence is that they define violence narrowly as direct physical harm to persons or property and largely ignore structural or institutional violence. Moreover, the ethical evaluations that undergird many of these studies define violence as “illegitimate force”. The Harvard based Professor of Religion and International Conflict, David Little, for example, defined violence as “the illegitimate use of force”.iv By illegitimate force he means the extralegal use of force against the “other”. By implication, therefore, the force employed by the state, even if it resulted in direct physical harm, could not be regarded as violence since it was employed in order to enforce the law.v

A salient example of this can be found in the award winning book, Terror in the Mind of God: the Global Rise of Religious Violence by the American sociologist, Mark Jurgensmeyer. After September 11, 2001 the book rapidly became a best-seller necessitating a revised edition in 2003. Jurgensmeyer for example, despite acknowledging that disenfranchised groups “cannot kill on the scale that governments with all their military power can”, chooses rather to deal in great depth with the distinguishing characteristics of antistate “religious terrorism”.vi

The historian of religion, Scott Appleby has usefully captured the key theoretical inquiry generated by the assumption underlying the existing theoretical evaluations of violence when he avers, “Who ultimately, is to decide which uses of violence are justified when moral and legal considerations diverge?” He furthermore correctly argues that:
“Notwithstanding Max Weber’s definition of the modern state as ‘the association that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence,’ religious leaders have often refused to yield authority on the question: the state’s legal monopoly of violence does not render moral its every use of violence.”

Such a challenge is most provocatively illustrated in my third example, the current war in Iraq.

3. The war in Iraq

Despite the commendable opposition expressed by the Vatican, the WCC and other religious bodies to the current United States led war in Iraq; we have not heard many calls by institutions and religious leaders aligned to these world bodies for their members to refuse to join the army in this ill-conceived adventure. Or yet more fittingly we are not aware of a single religious chaplaincy associated with these institutions calling on US soldiers to become conscientious objectors.

To put the matter starkly, the irony is that many religious institutions are firm in their pro-life stance and oppose any form of abortion.viii On the other end of the spectrum however, notwithstanding unequivocal fatwas/religious decrees that the US led war in Iraq is immoral and does not in any way conform to the criteria of a just war, we have not heard any religious institutions calling upon their members to refuse to kill in the cause of a war that its highest authorities have declared to be immoral, illegitimate and unjust. Here again we are intrigued to discover why such a blatant contradiction exists and continues to elude religious leaders as well as academics.

In the last part of my paper, I would like to make a modest proposal with regard to the role religion plays in counterbalancing the tendency towards the absolutization of the power of the state. My proposition emerges largely from my own experience in the struggle against apartheid and the creation of a non-racial and democratic South Africa.

The relationship between religion and the state

In the transition period leading up to the demise of apartheid and the 1994 non-racial democratic elections in South Africa, that country’s religious leaders and organizations were engaged in a number of interfaith consultations and conferences aimed at defining a progressive relationship between organized religion and the democratic state. A number of probing questions occupied their minds. How should religion relate to public policy in a modern secularized society? Should there be a significant relationship at all, or should religion be privatized? Alternatively, is religion so important that it should dominate public policy? Which, if any, of the competing religious discourses should be privileged by public policy formulators? What would be the political implications of such religious privileging? In the ensuing discussions and debates the following typology of constitutional models were considered as possible options.ix

Religion/state typologies x

1. A theocratic model, where the state and public policy is completely determined by one particular religious denomination and the identities of both state and religion are fused.

2. A repressionist model, where the state acts to suppress religion. In such a model, the state would operate to marginalize or eliminate religion completely from the public domain.

3. A separationist model, where the state attempts to maintain a strict wall of separation between the secular public arena and the private religious sphere. In this model; there is little or no overlapping or joint activity between religion and the state, and little or no consideration is given to religious standpoints in the formulation of public policy.

4. A co-operative model, where the state actively promotes a policy of interreligious harmony and encourages religious institutions to play a role in civil society. In this model, while ensuring the protection of citizens from religious discrimination or coercion, the state seeks to engage religious groups in areas of common interest and concern.

The prophetic role of religion as the moral conscience of society

In the ensuing interreligious discussions South African interreligious leaders embraced the third option, namely that of a secular democratic state, while at the same time welcoming an important role for religion in public life. It was strongly felt that religion should continue is prophetic role as the moral conscience of the democratic South Africa, in the same way that it had done during the anti-apartheid struggle. Religion it was argued has a duty to exhort and challenge government whenever the latter is perceived to be failing in its moral and political mandate. Religious institutions need to resist temptations of merely being apologists for the political authorities, of simply being co-opted by government onto any seemingly good cause. Genuine support and critical distance should not be opposed positions in our relationship with the state. Such a position is complex and demanding but it is free of the expediencies and political opportunism of opposition political parties.

My proposal is that religious institutions should align themselves with progressive forces within civil society in launching counter-hegemonic projects in order to counter-balance the pervasive influence of the state. The guarantee for a sound democracy and ensuring that the state is responsive to the needs and demands of the people is by the establishment of a strong and independent civil society.

While this may not be a perfect solution, I contend that the prophetic role of religion liberates it from Church theology and the consequent unwitting justification of the invariable excesses of state power. Even more importantly, I contend that contemporary religious traditions need a paradigm shift; a shift in thinking and action. What is desperately needed is to rid them of the ill-founded obsession that the fate of humanity lies with the state. The pervasive power of the modern state has disempowered the masses and led to their political marginalization. Real people become a faceless electorate and mere statistics devoid of the ability to act in the modern state. The modern state has bred in individuals and groups low social and political ambitions and inertia. Religious activists need to focus their energies and resources away from the state in their search for solutions to our myriad of problems.

Conclusion

This paper has argued that is important to understand that the religious legitimization of violence does not occur in a power vacuum. In particular, it has sought to illustrate that the hegemonic discourse on religion and violence largely ignores the issue of power. Thus by illuminating the triangular nexus between religion, power and violence, I believe that this consultation can make a modest but significant contribution to balancing the available diagnoses of the problem of violence and thereby contribute to its correct prognosis.

The paper concluded with a proposal for a prophetic role for religion to counterbalance the awesome power of the modern state. This will enable religious activists to devise more fruitful peace-building strategies.

A. RASHIED OMAR is an imam from Cape Town, South Africa and currently serves as coordinator of the Kroc Institute’s Project on Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame. This paper was presented at the 6th W. A. Visser’t Hooft Memorial Consultation on religion, power and violence: an interreligious consultation for peace, 8-13 June 2004, Ecumenical Institute Bossey, in cooperation with the World Council of Churches.

NOTES
i. The Kairos Document: Challenge to the State, 1985.
ii. Chidester, David. 1988. Patterns of Power: Religion & Politics in American Culture. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, pp. x.
iii For a general idea of the proliferation of works on religion and violence see: Christopher Candland 1992, The Spirit of Violence – An Interdisciplinary Bibliography of Religion and Violence. New York: Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. See also Mark Jurgensmeyer (1994 & 2000), David Little (1997), Stanley Tambiah (1992), Scott Appleby (2000) & Marc Gopin (2000 & 2002) et.al. For more recent studies see the bibliography to this paper.
iv. Little, David. 1996. “Religious Militancy” in Managing Global Chaos, edited by Chester A. Crocker & Fen Osler Hampson with Pamela Aall. (USIS, 1996), pp. 79-92.
v. Scheffler, Thomas. 2002. Religion Between Violence and Reconcilation. Beirut.
vi. Jurgensmeyer, Mark. 2000. Terror in the Mind of God
vii. Appleby, Scott. 2000. The Ambivalence of the Sacred. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 34.
viii In fact their position is so strong that a handful of US Catholic Bishops have been exploring whether US politicians including, presidential candidate John Kerry should be refused communion because of their pro-choice positions on abortion. Such a denial is tantamount to excommunication.
ix. Albie Sachs, ‘To Believe or Not to Believe’, in Believers in the Future: Proceedings of the National Interfaith Conference on Religion-State Relations, ed. J.N.J. Kritzinger, Johannesburg: World Conference on Religion and Peace, 1991, pp. 91-98.
x. Albie Sachs, Protecting Human Rights in a New South Africa. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1990, chapter 3.

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