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Does religious faith inspire acts of violence?
Well, if it's supporters are to be beleived, religion in all it's forms can inspire people to do all sorts of things.
On the one hand, look at the stories of the Judaeo/Xtian saints and prophets who stood up to the Romans, look at the Greek heroes who were spurred on by the gods, or look at people like Martin Luther King and Ghandi, who both said they were inspired by religion.
On the other hand: the Crusades, the Inquisition, the terrible partition between India and Pakistan.
It seems fair to say that religious faith played a part in all these acts; many of them involve people commiting violence. So yes, RF certainly does seem to have inspired acts of violence. But not on it's own.
In each of these above examples, a part is played by race, nationalism, poverty, government- I can't think of an example where religious faith is the only inpiration to violence.
Do certain religions tend to inspire especially fanatical followers?
1
Let's just get this right straight away: there have been fanatical (strongly conservative and proactive) elements in all modern religions. Flagellants, Taliban, Thugee- these are the most obvious and well known examples.
Again, however, I think fanaticism (a swing towards the conservative & proactive branch of the given religion) occurs because of political (or other) reasons beyond the religion itself. The Taliban became more powerful when their land was threatened by the Soviets, for example; the Thugee cult arguably gained power when the British invaded India.
My point being that any perceived fanaticism in Islam should be considered in a sociopolitical context; this will clearly show that to say "Islam produces more fanatics than Christianity", for example, is an invalid statement, because they are not under the same ammount of pressure: no-one is invading Christian countries, no-one is asserting that Christians are terrorists. At a more local level, the European far right is not trying to bad-mouth Christianity.
Were "the West" Islamic and "the East" Christian, it would be the same story today. In summarry:
It is untrue to say that there is more inclination to fanaticism in any given modern religion than in any given other.
2
While I think it is untrue to say that there is more fanaticism in any given modern religion than in any given other, I do think that a case can be made for an increase in religion as a factor in conflict in the post-Christian world, at least in Europe, N. Africa and western Asia**.
What I mean by this is that (for example) the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, while they may have warred, actually shared many gods. Isis is a version of Astarte. Not just archetypes, but definite, strongly differentiated godforms were worshipped across these three regions and were not fought over; the Imperial wars may have sought the blessings of the gods but, crucially, they were not fought in their name. Similarly, the Brigantes fought sporadically with the Caledonians in pre-Christian Britain, but both worshipped Brigidda (among others).
Whereas, after that, we see the fall of the classical Roman Empire, and the rise of several warring and heavily religious political entities: first of all, the Christian Holy Roman Empire and Byzantium. Later, the by now strongly Islamic Persia increased it's empire, and the Turks rose to power.
These entities and others all fought eachother in various combinations: as they always had since BC/BM. The difference was that they now considered themselves "religious" as opposed to "heathen". Wars were fought not just over land but over religious ideals as well*.
So the summary now reads:
It is untrue to say that there is more inclination to fanaticism in any given modern religion than in any given other. However, there is evidence to suggest that religion is more a factor in conflict in the modern period than it was in the ancient world.
I beleive this addition is important because it reminds us that any fanaticism in Islam today has it's roots in a historic trend that is not local to Islam.
* (Earlier I argued that religion is not the only factor in "religious violence"; here is where we see it become one of these factors.)
** (The Incas and other South American civilisations ran holy wars, as did doubtless others around the globe.) |
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