Why do religions clash

I gave her some sausages and she ate them right up! Then again, humans also fight over small bits of compressed carbon, tracts of dirt, addictive mind-altering substances and soccer matches. It's not just religious ideology that causes problems — state-imposed atheism was a defining feature of brutal 20th century regimes led by Stalin, Tito, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot among others, which resulted in the suffering and murder of millions.

Tens of thousands of Russian Christians alone were executed for their beliefs by atheists intent on purging religion from the Soviet Union. Yet it's true, religion has been a major feature in some historical conflicts and the most recent wave of modern terrorism. Religion has taken on extra significance today because globalisation is challenging and changing everything.

Religious identity not only survives but can take on heightened significance when national and political alliances break apart, as happened in the former Yugoslavia in the early s, when Serbs, Croats and Bosniacs were divided along Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim fault lines. The Qur'an recognises the human propensity for conflict and gives permission for defensive warfare. Muslim scholars developed a just-war theory although admittedly in the ensuing centuries jihad was also used to further the territorial ambitions of ruthless leaders, just as today it's distorted to justify terrorist bombings.

Like both law and politics, religion can be used to defend the oppressed and to oppress the defenceless. The problem of corrupt religion has attracted the criticism of many prophets and saints. The Qur'an censures religious hypocrites:. Among the people there is he whose discourse on the life of the world pleases you, and he calls on God as witness to what is in his heart, yet he is an unyielding and antagonistic adversary.

When he turns and leaves, he walks about corrupting the earth, destroying crops and livestock — God loves not corruption Q— The verse could well apply to Saddam Hussein, who made a show of praying on television, but gassed and bombed Kurds and was a tyrannical dictator.

Religion, unfortunately, provides a useful cover and powerful motivator for the evil-hearted. That religion can be so markedly different in the hands of the power-hungry, as opposed to the altruistic and virtuous, really says more about human psychology than it does about religion. That's why so many human conflicts unfortunately involve religion. Alain de Botton, philosopher and author of Religion for Atheists, is worried about fundamentalism. This is a very odd moment in our culture.

Neo-atheism, the belief that science is the only path to truth and all religions are equally deluded and destructive, has taken hold in much of the debate over atheism. The movement, whose keys figures include Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett, is an ideology that arrogantly celebrates an understanding of everything through supposed reason and proof.

It allows little doubt or questioning about the unknown. It also happens that some of these key figures, including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, are backers of state violence against Muslim countries since 11 September In a book on public religion, Politics, Religion, and the Common Good , Marty argues that religion has a particular tendency to be divisive and therefore violent. Religion focuses our ultimate concern, and so does politics.

Religion builds community, and so does politics. One would think that he would draw the obvious conclusion that zealous nationalism can cause violence. Religion can cause all kinds of trouble in the public arena. Religion-and-violence theorists inevitably undermine their own distinctions.

According to Juergensmeyer, religion exacerbates the tendency to divide people into friends and enemies, good and evil, us and them, by ratcheting divisions up to a cosmic level. Religious violence differs from secular violence in that it is symbolic, absolutist, and unrestrained by historical time.

Juergensmeyer undermines this distinction in the course of his own analysis. For example, what he says about cosmic war is virtually indistinguishable from what he says about war in general:. Looking closely at the notion of war, one is confronted with the idea of dichotomous opposition on an absolute scale.

War suggests an all-or-nothing struggle against an enemy whom one assumes to be determined to destroy. No compromise is deemed possible. Such certitude on the part of one side may be regarded as noble by those whose sympathies lie with it and dangerous by those who do not.

But either way it is not rational. War provides an excuse not to compromise. This is true even if the worldly issues at heart in the dispute do not seem to warrant such a ferocious position. At times Juergensmeyer admits the difficulty of separating religious violence from mere political violence. If true, however, they subvert the entire basis of his argument, which is the sharp divide between religious and secular violence. Other theorists of religion and violence make similar admissions.

According to Parekh,. Although religion can make a valuable contribution to political life, it can also be a pernicious influence, as liberals rightly highlight. It is often absolutist, self-righteous, arrogant, dogmatic, and impatient of compromise.

It arouses powerful and sometimes irrational impulses and can easily destabilize society, cause political havoc, and create a veritable hell on earth. It often breeds intolerance of other religions as well as of internal dissent, and has a propensity towards violence.

People create absolutes out of fear of their own limitations. Absolutes are projections of a fictional limited self, and people react with violence when others do not accept them. Religion has a peculiar tendency toward absolutism, says Wentz, but he casts a very wide net when considering religion.

The price of consistency, however, is that he evacuates his own argument of explanatory force or usefulness. The capitalist knows that money is just a human creation, the liberal democrat is modest about what can be known beyond human experience, the nationalist knows that a country is made of land and mortal people, but the religious believer puts faith in a god or gods or at least a transcendent reality that lays claim to absolute validity.

It is this absolutism that makes obedience blind and causes the believer to subjugate all means to a transcendent end. Of course Christian orthodoxy would make the theological claim that God is absolute in a way that nothing else is. The problem is that humans are constantly tempted toward idolatry, to putting what is merely relative in the place of God. It is not enough, therefore, to claim that worship of God is absolutist.

The real question is, what god is actually being worshiped? However, the question is not simply one of belief, but of behavior. Matthew personifies Mammon as a rival god, not in the conviction that such a divine being really exists, but from the empirical observation that people have a tendency to treat all sorts of things as absolutes.

Suppose we apply an empirical test to the question of absolutism. Now let us ask the following two questions: What percentage of Americans who identify themselves as Christians would be willing to kill for their Christian faith?

What percentage would be willing to kill for their country? For most American Christians, even public evangelization is considered to be in poor taste, and yet most endorse organized slaughter on behalf of the nation as sometimes necessary and often laudable.

In other countries or other traditions the results of this test might be very different. Yet the outcry over Abu Ghraib shows that there is widespread resistance to using torture even against alleged terrorists.

What seems clear, however blurred the practice, is that the world still recognizes a distinction between a terrorist and a soldier, a war and a massacre. Terrorists commit crimes against non-combatants and soldiers do battle with other soldiers.

War has publicly declared political objectives and is fought to attain them. Modern terrorism is more of a media event with no clear relationship between the act and a political aim.

Religion has often been used to legitimate terrorism, i. However there is a distinction between using religion in war as either a pretext or cause for criminal activity. This paper is about religion and war; terrorism is not war in spite of much recent semantic confusion. The great religions of the world — our focus will be on Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism - proclaim their aim as bringing peace but have used their sacred writings to legitimate war.

War against evil becomes part of the nature of creation. I will begin with the Bible because war is deeply imbedded in both testaments and my audience here is mostly Christian or Jewish. Often worldly war is related to a cosmic struggle between good and evil. The Genesis, Exodus, and Job stories draw upon Babylonian myths where Marduk wars against the forces of chaos to bring order to the world.

Still, in Genesis God does not actually war; the story has been, so to speak, baptized. God alone gains the victory against the Midianites and Jericho, though humans do ritual acts and mop up after Yahweh acts.

During the Persian and Greek empires, holy war evolved into apocalyptic war in the books of Ezra and Daniel evolved into apocalyptic war and was utilized and was reinvigorated or reinterpreted again in the struggles of the Maccabees.

In apocalyptic war, an oppressed people without power living in a totally corrupt world is delivered by a heavenly host of angels after a climatic battle. The present time of troubles is a sign of the impending eschaton. Then a time of peace under a restored Davidic king could come on under the reign of God at the end of time.

Except in messianic revolts against Rome in 4 b. The belief in an apocalyptic war before the end of time permeates the New Testament in the synoptic gospels and the book of Revelation. John Howard Yoder, such a war does not negate our responsibility for pacifism — since it is initiated and fought by God and angels against the forces of the antichrist. Many Fundamentalists do not worry about the pestilence, famine, and war accompanying the final battle even if it is initiated by a nuclear war allegedly prophesied in First Peter , because they will be taken up to heaven in the rapture.

However, modernist or liberal Christians seeking to reconcile the warrior, judge Jesus with their image of a non-violent peaceful Savior have to do a selective exegesis. Those who make Christianity approve war face the difficulty that Jesus did not fight, died a non-resistant, forgave his crucifiers, and advised love of enemy and martyrdom.

So far as we can tell, the disciples and early church members did not join the army, either because they were exempt as a sect of Judaism, or as believers in the imminent end of the world, or because they took seriously love of enemy teaching. Paul and the John of Revelation disagreed about the status of Rome, whether it represented just government ordained by God or the antichrist.

By the second century Christians began praying for the success of Roman arms and, even before they were tolerated, some joined an army where service for the divine emperor occurred daily. Before the conversion of Constantine, the Church fused Roman war with Jewish holy war. Constantine became a new King David, fighting under the sign of the cross and allegedly carrying a fragment of the true cross into battle. Justinian could be pictured as a thirteenth apostle. Augustine — a man should not pick up the sword for oneself but could to protect a neighbor.

Until he obtained true peace in heaven, a Christian soldier had an obligation to support the fragmentary peace of a well-ordered society.

Yet at his death, the realm of Islam did not extend beyond the Arabian Peninsula. Only after the spread of Islam from Spain to India, the rise and fall of the Umayyad dynasty, and the coming to power of the Abbasids would a normative theory of war and peace emerge.

In Islam, all humanity desires peace. True peace will come only after submission to God and this is accomplished through personal struggle or jihad. The spread of the faith can be done peacefully or by the sword.

The use of military force is not to convert a person this submission must be voluntary but to create a government of Muslims that will rule in accordance with. People of the book, Jews and Christians, can be tolerated and given some self rule if they pay special taxes.

The only legitimate jihad war is a religious war to expand the rule of God. Only the caliph can declare an offensive jihad after an invitation to submit to the opponent has been issued and should be fought only by Muslims free of debt. A defensive jihad is when Islam is under attack and is a duty incumbent on all Muslims. Those within the realm of faith the dar es islam are in perpetual conflict with those outside the dar el harb , though the Prophet allowed truces of up to ten years.

In theory at least Islam did not recognize the existence of several states; in practice there soon came to be multiple kingdoms taking their legitimacy by being recognized by the caliph and Muslim states often engaged in wars quital that were not religious in nature.

In fact, jihad was rarely invoked in civil wars and even in wars against the Christian Byzantines and the crusaders. While Muhammad had cautioned against war over minor differences within Islam, even during the reign of the first four good or paradigmatic caliphs, reformers appeared who attempted by armed revolution or assassination to purify the realm of allegedly corrupt rulers. As will become apparent shortly, the teachings of Muhammad were interpreted to create a kind of holy war as well as justice in the conduct of war similar to medieval Christian just war theory.

Hinduism is a term invented by outsiders to describe the indigenous religions on India and was used in the nineteenth century by nationalists to distinguish all these from the foreign imports, Islam and Christianity. In Hinduism, unlike Christianity and Islam, there is no one founder or normative canon or myths but layers of traditions contained in Vedas, Puranas, and epics. In the earliest Vedas Indra is a war god who subdued the monster and fights for or even becomes the king in battle.

Over centuries the king or warrior caste became subordinate to the Brahmin or priest caste who led pure lives and conducted the rituals necessary to please the gods and guarantee victory in battle. The warriors or kings granted money to the Brahmins and they occupied a privileged position, as a caste above merchants, tradesmen, and farmers. The founding epic of Hinduism is the Mahabharata, a poem that purports to be the story of the struggle for their rightful throne by the Pandavas against their usurping cousins, the Kurovasa.

In spite of many vicissitudes, the Pandavas — because they have the gods on their side — will prevail. The most influential part of the Mahabharata is a long section termed the Bhagavadgita occurring just before the climatic battle scene.

Arjuna, a mighty Pandava warrior who has never before in the epic shown any ethical sensitivity, now hesitates to fight because he will be shedding the blood of his relatives.

The carnage of battle is irrelevant because death is not ultimate but is part of the karmic cycle of rebirth. Although Arjuna will gain material rewards, he must fight with a right attitude of detachment in which life and death are ultimately meaningless. Eventually the Pandavas are restored to the throne through means allowed by Krishna that violate the just practices of war and contribute to their own downfall.

The end of the epic is a sort of Gotterdammerung in which the gods pass away to be replaced by kings whose caste duty legitimated fighting in a world where an ethical means of war is no longer possible. Buddhism seems the least likely of a major religion to legitimate war. The Buddha taught non-killing and detachment, accepted no political office, and dismissed war as of no importance. Yet Siddhartha came from a warrior caste, accepted kings as his followers, and allowed them to build and endow monasteries as a way of earning merit.

The ideal kingdom was a dharma realm, a place where the king should practiced non-violence, harm nobody, and try to preserve peace and avoid war. An ideal king in this imperfect world should exemplify the dharma and by his charisma can bring order out of chaos and do violence to obtain justice. A normative pattern of kingship, exemplified by Asoka in India and Duttagamini in Ceylon was for a claimant to the throne to wage war against evil men and, after victory, to donate to the monks as expiation while promoting the dharma realm.

Duttagamini showed sorrow for killing Tamils, but was assured by the monks that, because his opponents were not Buddhists, their deaths were equivalent to those of beasts and equaled only one and one-half a Buddhist. In other words, using violence as a means to create peace.

This teaching allowed kings to wage war even against other Buddhist kings. A second way of linking Buddhism to war came in late medieval Japan when Zen became the ideology of samurai warriors. Zen was a non-ritual and anti-intellectual form of Buddhism for samurai who found in its asceticism, discipline, and emphasis upon mindlessness the means to become totally focused in battle.

Killing an opponent was not evil because his death was only a fulfilling of karmic destiny caused by misdeeds in an earlier life. Zen proved adaptable to warrior life when they fought and, after , when the samurai became bureaucrats who also wrote poetry and arranged flowers. This brief survey illustrates that built into the formative documents and practices of the five major religions of world is an acceptance of war. There may be countervailing emphases as well, but frequently in history religious and political authorities have called upon traditions that legitimate war.

No matter how often we may emphasize the teachings about the value of peace in early traditions and canonical documents, the potential for making war a religious duty will always be there. Holy war is a basic ingredient for Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism and both the devout and those who want to exploit the traditions for political ends will find in the canon fodder for another kind of cannon.

It is not clear whether this section on limiting the cause and conduct of war should be included in this paper on religions facilitating war or in the next paper on religion and peace.

This is because we cannot prove whether establishing restraints on war prevents it or instead by making it more religiously and morally acceptable facilitates war by giving it legitimacy and prevents the human costs from being calculated. There is, by contrast, considerable evidence that just war theories have on many occasions established restraint by professional soldiers in regular armies in the conduct war. The critics of Christian just war theory, from Erasmus to our time, have complained about the ambiguity of the tenets and the ease of misrepresentations by government and its apologists.

The various responses of social ethicists to Vietnam and the two Gulf Wars show how difficult it is to reach consensus on the meaning of justice in the cause of war or of proportionality, that the evil done in war will not be greater than harm done by the original fault. John Howard Yoder concluded that modern theories require a well-informed citizenry to judge, and because governments lie, the theories have become useless.

Quaker James Childress says since just war theories do provide a language used by politicians and the military, it does provide a language for which pacifists and other opponents of a war can communicate to the generals and politicians, in Quaker jargon, speak Truth to Power.

Even if not efficacious in preventing or stopping war, the categories provide a way before, during, and after to evaluate a conflict and becomes, what Michael Walzer terms a moral equivalent for military strategy.

All major religions that legitimate war establish standards for right cause and right conduct. Unchecked violence for its own sake is universally condemned. So it is a mistake to view justified war theories as a solely Christian, Western, or European contribution to world civilization.

In additional to Geneva Conventions and the U. All these theories arise from the same basic insight famously described by Plato and Aristotle: war is not for the sake of war; it is fought for the sake of peace. Peace means a well-ordered society, and it is legitimate to defend that well-ordered society. Self-defense is a natural right for individuals and can be extended to the state. Religion according to Christian theory was not a sufficient cause for war, even though often used in crusades against Islam, heretics, and in post-Reformation struggles between Catholics and Protestants that restriction was ignored.

After the crusades ended and certainly by , religious differences alone were no longer acceptable as a just cause and reinterpretations of jihad appeared in some but not all Muslim theorists by the nineteenth century. A second element that has been dropped in just war theories was the requirement for purity of motive by rulers and soldiers. A desire for power or wealth or adventure was, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, enough to make a war caused by a sufficient major fault unjust.

Note that the same purity of motive was required or Arjuna in his dialogue with Krishna. And while in medieval Islam and Christianity, there were elaborate rules for division of booty, both religions condemned making war for the sake for getting riches. The primary contribution of just war theory was the belief, even if often violated, of the immunity of civilians. Soldiers were and are to be the target of other soldiers, not those who do not carry weapons.

This portion of the ethics of war was not dictated by military needs of soldiers, but by religious and moral insight. We have anecdotal evidence that protecting peasants was observed in ancient Indian warfare. And groups like Islamic Relief, among others, have long supported mediation and reconciliation activities in war-torn communities. Faith-based groups have also frequently led the way in shaping international treaties and social movements to make the world safer.

While far from the media headlines, Quakers, for example, have helped launch treaties banning landmines and other weapons of war , supported the development of protocols to outlaw child soldiers , and instigated action on conflict prevention, peace-building and human rights. While religious groups have adopted varying positions toward capital punishment, many of them are unified in their opposition to the use of torture , advocate for banning nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, and support grassroots campaigns to promote human rights and reconciliation.

With notable exceptions, interfaith efforts to prevent violence and promote peace suffer from a credibility problem. In the end, religious groups must hold themselves to the highest standard. This requires, at a minimum, doing no harm. It also means being accountable about what strategies work, and which do not.

A related challenge is that most interfaith measures to promote peace and reconciliation are seldom documented, much less evaluated. As a result, the persistent and patient support provided to high-level policy initiatives goes unrecorded, with other organizations often quick to take the credit. This gap could be bridged, however, by developing partnerships with universities and undertaking robust monitoring and evaluation.

This way, interfaith groups could better understand what aspects of the peace architecture are working, and which activities to discard. Finally, religious groups and the interfaith community could usefully get more proactive about peace-making. This will require leaving the safe zone of like-minded religious organizations and engaging more fulsomely with international agencies and the business community. Religious leaders should also become more literate with new technologies, not least social media, finding ways to promote positive values both on- and offline.

And successful instances of interfaith cooperation - including through powerful networks like Religion for Peace - need to be better marketed. This is because signals and symbols of collective action across religious divides are needed more than ever in our disorderly and fractured world. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.