THE NUMBER of conflicts in which religion is a salient factor has soared in the past 20 years. In 1980 religious groups scarcely registered on the US Government’s list of international terrorist groups. But by 1998 at least half of the 30 most dangerous groups in the world were religious.
The political world was ill prepared to tackle this growing phenomenon because most theories link conflict with greed or grievance, while most theorists dismiss religion as irrelevant or as a surrogate for other causes. In academic and political literature it is often described as an “effective mobilising force” that can serve the ambitions of political entrepreneurs. Theorists, who have accepted the “secularisation” thesis that has shaped modern thinking since Freud and Marx, cannot understand how belief and theology can inform political judgments and determine people’s actions.
Religion is not a passive agent waiting to be ignited by an unscrupulous political or tribal chauvinist. To single out one religion as the sole perpetrator of terror would be to distort historical records and contemporary reality, as well as to misjudge the extent and the complexity of the problem.
Numerous conflicts exist in different parts of the world in which adherents of the major world faiths justify atrocities on the ground that their cause is righteous. Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs all justify their acts of violence, claiming that they are protecting their religious identity and interests. The war against religiously motivated terrorism cannot be won on the battlefield alone. Social injustices, poverty, unemployment and political repression that leave millions dispossessed unquestionably provide fertile breeding grounds for militant groups. These conditions are not themselves, however, the prime cause of faith-inspired violence. People were killed in God’s name long before secularism, globalisation and the founding of the United States.
A key factor in the formation of the religious mindset that fosters terrorism is the attitude to revelation, especially when its interpretation is used to underline claims of exclusivity and spiritual superiority. The conviction that any one group has exclusive possession of truth and goodness is a root cause of prejudice and boundaries that allow for discrimination and worse. An immediate shift in academic, political and media thinking is needed.
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To underestimate the power of religious conviction is to misjudge the seriousness of the threat that faith-motivated terrorism poses. Political and religious leaders need to question their own basic beliefs and loyalties — a process that can cause distress and resentment. Religious leaders, in particular, need to reflect more critically on their failure to provide more effective witness to what they claim are the true values of their faith. During the Bosnian conflict, the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, spoke of the need “to restore religion to its rightful role as peacemaker and pacifier”. It is questionable whether religion has ever fulfilled that role. All major world faiths have, at various times, sanctioned the use of violence to protect or to promote their sectarian interests.
It is not enough, therefore, for religious leaders to disown the murderous actions of their co-religionists and to denounce these terrorists as misguided fringe groups. The threat of religious terrorism may never be eliminated completely but it can be contained more effectively if political and religious leaders are prepared to deliver an effective response to those communities that act as breeding grounds for discontent. This requires a willingness to acknowledge and to work with leadership from multiple positions within these communities. Until each faith group is prepared to promote respect for human life above all other beliefs and interests, religion will always have the potential to be a divisive and destructive force.
To speak only of the need for tolerance is a wholly inadequate response to the terror that is now perpetrated in the name of God. The world requires willingness from those with and without faith — not only to acknowledge but also to protect more vigorously the right of others to believe and to act differently.
Violence in God’s Name by Oliver McTernan; Darton, Longman and Todd, £10.95