Milford Daily News, MA
06-10-06
While prayer is peaceful, violence is often in name of God0-6312
By Jon Brodkin
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but
a sword."
Jesus Christ, as quoted in the Gospel of Matthew.
"Those who reject our signs, we shall soon cast into the fire."
The Koran, Islam’s holy book.
"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of
thy bosom... entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods...thou
shalt surely kill him,"
Deuteronomy, from the Torah
Violence in the name of religion is often portrayed as the purview of psychopaths
who twist the divine word of God to suit their own destructive purposes.
Christians today denounce atrocities committed by their religious forebears
during the Inquisition and Crusades. President Bush calls Islam a "religion of
peace," despite the murder of American innocents on 9/11 in the name of Allah.
But is religious violence a problem of people, or a problem of scripture?
Throughout known history, murderers have found inspiration for their deeds in
the words of God, as relayed to humans in books like the Torah, Koran and the
Christian Bible. Yet most religious people are peaceful, and many are spurred by
religion to commit great acts of compassion.
The scripture of the world’s major religions provide justification for both good and
evil, according to Hector Avalos, author of the 2005 book "Fighting Words: The
Origins of Religious Violence."
"You have violence in every one of these scriptures, whether it’s what you call
the Old Testament, the New Testament or the Koran. The endorsement of
violence is there," said Avalos, a professor of religious studies at Iowa State
University.
Mainstream followers of religion point out that holy texts also endorse peace and
love, and claim perpetrators of religious violence are not following the true path of
God.
"The problem is that picking the violent passages as the true representation of a
religion is just as much a theological judgment as picking the peaceful ones,"
Avalos said. "There’s really very little difference in the justification for picking one
passage over another."
Many clerics, however, say there are sound theological reasons to reject violence
in favor of peace.
In chapter 13 of Deuteronomy, a book that is part of both the Christian and
Jewish Bibles, there is a passage in which God seems to instruct believers to
murder non-believers, even if they happen to be immediate family members.
"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of
thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying,
Let us go and serve other gods...thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be
first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And
thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust
thee away from the Lord thy God."
But this passage cannot be seen as an instruction to kill, because the Bible is
further illuminated by oral tradition which prevents Jews from taking the law into
their own hands, according to orthodox Rabbi Levi Fogelman of the Chabad
Center in Natick.
The written Bible in the Jewish tradition is like Cliffs Notes. It is like Cliffs Notes
and it can only be understood through the oral tradition that was transmitted (at
Mount Sinai) and ultimately written down to become the Talmud," Fogelman said.
Murder and kidnapping are punishable by death in Jewish law, but only after trial
in front of a 23-judge court, which can convict someone if there are witnesses
and if the alleged criminal was warned immediately before committing the crime,
Fogelman said.
Such a court no longer exists. "Those laws of capital punishment don’t apply
nowadays. There is no Jewish court for capital offenses since the destruction of
the temple 2,000 years ago," Fogelman said. "According to Jewish law, no
Jewish court is permitted to deal with capital punishment in today’s times."
Slavery, which is accepted in the Torah, is also no longer allowed under Jewish
law because of the absence of this court, Fogelman said.
’Christ commands it’
Jesus Christ, a Jewish rabbi who is considered the Son of God by Christians, is
praised to this day for spreading a message of peace. Yet some have invoked
Christ’s name to justify violence.
In a 1095 speech that launched the First Crusade to reclaim Jerusalem from the
Muslims, Pope Urban II asked Christians to "destroy that vile race."
"Christ commands it," Urban II proclaimed.
Christ himself told followers he did not come to Earth to pursue peaceful aims.
In Matthew, Chapter 10, Christ says: "Whosoever shall deny me before men, him
will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven. Think not that I came to
send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to
set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother,
and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be
they of his own household.
"He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that
loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not
his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall
lose it."
Bruce Daggett, an associate pastor at Westgate Church in Weston, believes the
Bible is the literal word of God. But God’s words must often be interpreted
figuratively, Daggett said.
"When you say ’literal word of God,’ you have to understand there are certain
figures of speech, there are certain hyperbole," Daggett said.
Daggett reads the Matthew passage to mean not that violence is the purpose
of Jesus’s arrival but the result, because people who reject Christ’s teachings
attack him. The sword Christ said he will bring is figurative, Daggett said.
"We’re not reading those passages in the congregation and saying ’take up
arms!,’" Daggett said. "There’s nothing in Jesus’s words in any way, there’s no
commission in Christ to say, ’take up arms and force people to become
believers.’ It’s the exact opposite."
In Revelation, Chapter 2, Jesus condemns Jezebel for committing adultery and
not repenting for her fornication. To punish her, Christ says, "I will kill her children
with death."
Instead of seeing this as an endorsement of murdering children, Daggett says
Jesus is picturing an end time when there will be judgment against Jezebel, and
that her "children" are not her literal offspring but those who follow her path.
Incompatible beliefs
In his 2004 book "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason,"
Sam Harris argues that intolerance is intrinsic to religion because of the exclusive
claims of infallibility made in each holy text. The incompatible beliefs expressed
by our many gods lead us inexorably to kill one another, Harris says.
"Once a person believes -- really believes -- that certain ideas can lead to eternal
happiness, or to its antithesis, he cannot tolerate the possibility that the people
he loves might be led astray by the blandishments of unbelievers. Certainty
about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one," Harris wrote.
Harris argues that despite the enormous role religion plays in public and private
life, mainstream society considers the criticism of a person’s faith to be taboo.
When Muslim suicide bombers blow themselves up and kill innocents,
commentators ignore religious motives and instead attribute the murders solely
to political and economic goals, Harris writes.
The author, an atheist who has studied philosophy, religion and the neural basis
of belief, writes extensively on the horrors of the Inquisition, and criticizes Israeli
settlers in the West Bank and Gaza for thwarting peace by claiming a Biblical
right to Palestinian land.
But he reserves his harshest criticism for Islam, which he says is inspiring more
violence than any other creed in today’s world. He quotes a New York Times
story about violence between Hindus and Muslims in India in 2002 that was
triggered by religious differences:
"Mothers were skewered on swords as their children watched. Young women
were stripped and raped in broad daylight, then...set on fire. A pregnant woman’s
belly was slit open, her fetus raised skyward on the tip of (a) sword and then
tossed onto one of the fires that blazed across the city."
Moderate Muslims and American politicians are quick to say there is no direct
link between Islam and terrorism, Harris writes, but the Koran specifically
instructs Muslims to wage war on infidels.
The following quotes from the Koran illustrate this point:
"Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Deal firmly with them.
Know that God is with the righteous" - Koran 9:123.
"Those who reject our signs, We shall soon cast into the Fire: as often as their
skins are roasted through, We shall change them for fresh skins, that they may
taste the penalty: For Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise" - Koran 4:56.
"Fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer
them, and lie in wait for them" - Koran 9:5.
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a
civil rights group in Washington, D.C., declined to discuss specific passages from
the Koran but said descriptions of violence in the book are merely "references to
struggles," not instructions to kill.
"The Muslim community gets hit with these alleged violent verses in the Koran
and this means Muslims are ordered to be violent from the beginning to the end.
It’s ridiculous," Hooper said. "You can pick apart any religious text with ill will and
try to distort it to mean something it doesn’t mean for the followers of that text."
But Ibn Warraq, the pseudonym for a man born in India who discarded Islam and
wrote the book, "Why I am Not a Muslim," rejected the notion that terrorism and
Islam are not connected in a statement he issued after the 9/11 attacks.
"To pretend that Islam has nothing to do with Terrorist Tuesday is to willfully
ignore the obvious and to forever misinterpret events," Warraq wrote. "Without
Islam the long-term strategy and individual acts of violence by Usama Bin Laden
and his followers make little sense."
Underpinnings of war
Avalos believes all violence is caused by a scarcity of resources. Religion,
according to his theory, creates scarce resources in several ways: by assigning
Biblical importance to otherwise unremarkable land, awarding benefits only to
people who believe in a certain God, and promising salvation only to those who
follow a certain creed.
In Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jews and Palestinians fight over land that is
granted value almost entirely by religious belief, Avalos said. Osama bin Laden
complains that the United States defiles sacred land by placing bases in Saudi
Arabia.
Israel’s "Law of Return," which allows Jews but not Palestinians to claim
citizenship there, relies on religious division to deny a resource to an entire
people, he said.
"The Law of Return is sort of a group privilege conferred on you that Palestinians
don’t have. That is a scarcity that is going to cause conflict. You can see that
religions create scarcity that is just as powerful as oil or money," Avalos said.
Different interpretations
Thousands of years after man first began worshiping gods, religion continues to
have a profound effect on society and the personal lives of its adherents. The
interpretation of religious scripture for the purposes of both good and evil will
continue to shape the world for many years to come.
One thing we can be sure of is that a single passage in the Bible or Koran can
have many different interpretations. Each translation can be considered an
interpretation itself, said Rabbi David Thomas of Congregation Beth El, a reform
synagogue in Sudbury.
For each passage of violence in the Bible there are passages of "great
compassion," Thomas said. But he believes it is important not to ignore the
politically incorrect parts of scripture.
"We all tend to read around some of the more challenging and difficult
passages," Thomas said. "I think it’s important to strive not to do that."
Without the proper context, Rabbi Fogelman said it is possible readers of the
Torah might take its words as instructions to commit violence.
"If they don’t have the background of the way the Bible works, yes, I could see
people doing that," Fogelman said. "Anything could be taken out of context."
Thomas believes the Bible is a human work, not the literal word of God. He
rejects the book’s prohibition of homosexuality, and says Deuteronomy’s call for
killing non-believers is "a very problematic passage."
The chapter’s controversial nature, Thomas said, can be seen in a first century
translation that changes the text so it instructs Jews to "report" non-believers,
instead of killing them.
"It seems," Thomas said, "we’ve been uncomfortable with this text for a good
2,000 years."