The author begins the paperback edition, written after
9/11, with a quote :
I will send my terror before you,
And will throw into confusion all the people.
--- Exodus 23:27
Mark Juergensmeyer, Professor of Sociology and Director of
Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
faces the question, "How could religion be involved in such vicious acts?"
This book is the not the work of an armchair academician.
Well before 9/11, fortunately for us, Mark had visited people involved in
violence with a religious component. In 1996 Mark talked with the Rev.
Michael Bray, one of those who bombed or supported the bombing of abortion
clinics. In 1997 he talked twice at the maximum-security prison at Lompoc,
California with Mahmud Abouhalima, the ‘mastermind’ of the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing. He also visited in Gaza with Dr. Rantisi, one of the
founders of the Hamas movement in Palestine.
He first deals with Cultures of Violence, including
Soldiers for Christ in the U.S. and Ireland. He then outlines them in
Israel, in Islam’s Neglected Duty, The Sword of Sikhism and finally Armageddon
in a Tokyo Subway.
This review uses Professor Juergensmeyer’s own clear
statements to support his thesis. As he talked with its proponents and
examined all these cultures of violence, he states: "The idea of warfare has
long had an eerie and intimate relationship with religion." (p. 156) "One
can argue that the task of creating a vicarious experience of warfare—albeit one
usually imagined as residing on a spiritual plane—is one of the main businesses
of religion." (P. 156) "Images of spiritual warfare are even more common.
The Muslim notion of jihad is the most notable example, but even in
Buddhist legends great wars are to be found." (Pps. 156-157) "More than
the Vedic rituals, these martial epics define subsequent Hindu culture.
Whole books of the Hebrew Bible are devoted to the exploits of great
kings….Though the New Testament did not take up the battle cry, the later
history of the Church did, supplying Christianity with a bloody record of
crusades and religious wars…..Though the reformed tradition is strongly
pacifist, martial images abound… Protestant preachers have encouraged their
flocks to wage war against the forces of evil and their homilies are followed
with hymns about ‘Christian soldiers,’ fighting ‘the good fight,’ and struggling
‘manfully onward.’ This appeal to combat is spiritual rather than
material." (P. 159)
"Religion has dealt with violence, therefore, not only
because violence is unruly and has to be tamed, but because religion, as the
ultimate statement of meaningfulness, must always assert the primacy of meaning
in the face of chaos. For that reason, religion has been order restoring
and life affirming even though it has justified the taking of life in particular
instances." (P. 159)
"The question of why images of cosmic struggle are
translated into real acts of violence is complicated because the line between
symbolic and actual violence is thin." P. 160)
The following three conditions need to be present when the
above happens:.
"The cosmic struggle is understood to be occurring in
this world rather than in a mythical setting.
"Believers identify personally with the struggle.
"The struggle is at a point of crisis in which
individual action can make all the difference." (P. 161)
"When the struggle is perceived as a defense of basic
identity and dignity, it is likely to be characterized as ‘cosmic.’ (P. 161)
"Losing the struggle would be unthinkable." "The struggle is blocked and
cannot be won in real time or in real terms." (P.162) "When a struggle becomes
sacralized, ….the use of violence becomes legitimized, and the slightest
provocation or insult can lead to terrorist assaults. The process of
satanization can transform a worldly struggle into a contest between martyrs and
demons." (P. 163)
Religious activist terrorists have at some deep sense felt
their lives slipping out of control, and they have created new religious forms,
using the language of traditional religion to create new religious forms as
ancient ones to protect themselves from abandonment by religion. To be
abandoned by religion in such a world would mean a loss of their own individual
identities, their own personal, imperiled selves. (P. 223)
Postmodern Terror
The secular state is opposed to the idea that religion
should have a role in public life and the earlier proponents had taken Church
religion out of public life. This made it easier for modern terrorists to
be against the government. Most terrorist attacks, no matter horrendous
and not leading to accomplish their immediate goals, focus on the government in
power. They then becomes martyrs, whether suicide bombers, or car bombers
and in other self-destructive ways they feel they are advancing the cosmic
struggle, making their lives count in the cosmic struggle.
"When the shy young man grinned into the video camera the
day before he was to become a martyr in a Hama suicide operation, proclaiming
that he was ‘doing this for Allah,’ he was demonstrating one of the remarkable
facts about those who have committed acts of terrorism in the contemporary
world: they would do virtually anything if they thought it had been sanctioned
by divine mandate or conceived in the mind of God." (P. 216)
"Only rarely does this thinking justify acts of violence,
these rare occasions have appeared in virtually every religious tradition.
(P, 218) With these justifications for violence in mind, the religious
activists cited in this book have been able to go about their business of
killing with the certainty that they were following the logic of God.
Their violence has been in part a counterbalance to their marginality, a way of
empowering them within their own religious communities.
"In America members of Christian militia groups have
disdained liberal Protestantism and even mocked Christian conservatives.":(P.
219)
"The tension between militant and mainstream religion has
existed within virtually every tradition." P. 219
"Yet violence alone does not allow marginal religious
groups to enjoy positions of prominence, at least not for very long …… they have
represented wildly held feelings of alienation and oppression." (P. 221)
"The radical religious movements that emerged from these cultures of violence
throughout the world are remarkably similar, be they Christian, Jewish, Muslim,
Buddhist, or Sikh.
"They each have three things in common. First they
have rejected the compromises with liberal values and secular institutions that
were made by most mainstream religious leaders and institutions. Second,
they refuse to observe the boundaries that secular society has imposed around
religion—keeping it private rather than allowing it to intrude into public
spaces. And they have replaced what they regard as weak modern substitutes
with the more vibrant and demanding forms of religion that they imagine to be a
part of their tradition’ beginnings." (P.221)
"They have used the language of traditional religion to
build bulwarks around aspects of modernity that have threatened them and to
suggest ways out of the mindless humiliation of modern life." (P. 223) ".
. .they sensed that their lives were slipping out of control and they felt
responsible for the disarray and a victim of it."(P. 223) It was their own
personal, imperiled selves that impelled them to create a "traditional religion"
of their own.
Professor Jurgensmeyer asks the question, ‘How will it all
end?" (P. 229). He suggests five possible endings:
1) Destroying Violence, a solution forged by force
2) Terrifying terrorists
3) Violence wins
4) Separating Religion from Politics
5) Healing Politics with Religion
He discusses the possibilities of each solution and the
hope of healing politics with religion.
‘Why, in a few extreme instances, violence has accompanied
religion’s renewed presence in politics is something this book has tried to
explain. My conclusion is that it has much to do with the nature of
religious imagination, which always has had the propensity to absolutize and to
project images of cosmic war." (P. 242) "Religion gives spirit to public
life and provides a beacon for moral order. At the same time it needs the
temper of rationality and fair play that Enlightenment values give to civil
society." Some assertion of moderation in religion’s passion, and some
acknowledgement of religion in elevating the spiritual and - oral values of
public life. In a curious, then, the cure for religious violence may ultimately
lie in a renewed appreciation of religion itself." ( P. 243 )
This reviewer’s conclusions: In World War I and in World
War II we were convinced that God was on our side. "Praise the Lord and
pass the ammunition." As a WW II veteran and of the "incident" in Korea we
felt the same way, it was a just war, but not to many of the reservists called
back to active duty. At first the Vietnam war was presented as a threat to
our values, it was a way to stop the domino effect of communism. Yet it
did not arouse most of the US public to feel that it was a "just’ war. The
video tape images of the actual fighting showed the horrors of combat, and the
emphasis on "body count" finally turned many Americans away from its support.
The two Gulf Wars and the latter’s situation in 2003 in relation to weapons of
mass destruction and Iraq as the source of 9/11 terrorism have been discredited.
In America the 2004 Presidential election saw the
resurgence of religion into politics at several levels. The President’s
current crusade for democracy in the Middle East versus the part of Islam that
is fundamentalist, while in the context of "our manifest destiny" to spread
democracy, has not yet been pushed to a cosmic level. But it carries the
seeds of "religious violence" to the victims, both civilian and military of the
killings in Afghanistan and Iraq wars. It has also gives a sense of
meaning to some of thousands, both civilians and military, who have lost loved
ones in the conflict.
In a recent personal communication with Mark Jurgensmeyer
he indicates his next book will look at Religion and War. I think he has
made an excellent start with this volume.
--- Reviewed by John R. Thomas, who was both
Mark’s and Michael Cordner’s ( PCNSR Editor) CPE supervisor at Mendota State
Hospital, Madison Wisconsin in the summer of 1963.
