Recent religiously-motivated hatred, conflict & violence by followers of Abrahamic religions

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Background:

Abrahamic religions include those faiths that revere the patriarch Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Sometimes, the Bahá’í faith is also included. Together, they include slightly more than half of the world's population. This essay will focus on Christianity and Islam; these religions are global in scope, and are linked closely with some of the world’s political structures.

One of the major contributors to the world's religiously motivated hate, conflict and violence is the concept of collective responsibility:

"Humans seem to have a natural tendency to attribute collective guilt, usually with tragic results. History is filled with examples of a wronged man who tried to avenge himself, not on the person who has wronged him, but on other members of the wrong-doer's family, or ethnic group, or religion, or nation, or tribe, or army [or gender, or sexual orientation, or age group, etc]. ... Terrorism is commonly rationalized by its practitioners on ideas of collective guilt and responsibility." ₁

Thus, a perceived injustice by one person is too often seen as justification for retaliation against an entire group of uninvolved individuals who are connected to the injustice only by their religion, skin color, hair covering, language, ethnicity, or some other factor. Sometimes, centuries can pass between the injustice and the terrorist act.

Islam:

The most distressing feature of Islamic extremist terrorism is that that the perpetrators believe that they have the right to murder people in order to achieve religious and political goals. It is especially the theological framework developed by the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb in the 1950s and 1960s that made the killings committed by terrorist groups seem reasonable and necessary. Sayyid Qutb himself was hanged in 1966. The assumed right to kill is an extension of traditional Islamic rules concerning apostasy, which historically called for the death penalty.

It is of vital importance that the perpetrators are precisely identified. To judge by the E-mails that this web site receives, a significant percentage of North Americans blame all Muslims and/or all Arabs for terrorist acts. Others blame all Fundamentalists within Islam. But in fact, the responsibility lies with extreme, radical, violent, Fundamentalist Muslims, a numerically small group among the world's approximately 1.2 billion Muslims.

One such group claiming the right to kill is Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya), which is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist militant organization. They are listed as terrorist organization by Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Israel, and the United States. Hamas attacks against Israel have included large-scale suicide bombings, such as that of the Netanya hotel in 2002, in which 29 people were killed and 133 were wounded. Hamas has used female suicide bombers, including a mother of six. In recruiting the bombers, Hamas leaders taught that the perpetrators of suicide missions would receive in heaven seventy virgins and seventy wives (some put the numbers at seventy-two; others suggest that promised virgins are a mistranslation of the Qur'an; the actual reward is seventy dates or an other fruit). Their families received a cash payment that used to be worth 12 to 15 thousand US dollars. In 2002, funds from Iraq and Saudi Arabia doubled this amount.

The Shi’a Iranian leader and holy man Ayatollah Khomeini is quoted by Amir Taheri to have said:

"Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males, provided they are not disabled and incapacitated, to prepare themselves for the conquest of countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country of the world. But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those (who say this) are witless. Islam says: Kill the unbelievers just as they would kill you! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured? Islam says: Kill them, put them to the sword and scatter. … Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! … Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other psalms and Hadiths urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who made such a claim." ₂

Other Muslim leaders frequently refer to other passages in the Qur'an which considers the unjustified murder of one person as being as serious as if the entire human race was destroyed.

Iran (together with Syria) control the Shi’a terrorist group Hezbollah (also called Hezb Allah and many other transliterations).

The religiously motivated bombings and attacks by terrorist Muslim groups are too numerous to be listed. Among them are:

Terrorist attacks also occur within predominately Islamic countries -- generally between the Sunni and the Shia in both Iraq and Pakistan.

Judaism:

Jewish terrorist actions are performed on a much smaller scale, and are limited to the Near East. (The Jews comprise only 0.2% of the world population.) However, the sentiment behind those actions appears to be similar to the sentiment governing the Islamist attacks:

Karen Armstrong notes that in 1980 Rabbi Israel Hess published an article entitled "Genocide: A Commandment of the Torah" in the official magazine of the Bar-Ilan University. In it he argued that:

"the Palestinians were to the Jews what darkness was to light, and that they deserved the same fate as the Amalekites". ₃

And just what fate is that? According to 1 Samuel 15:3 the Hebrews were told:

"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."

Among the best known cases of Jewish terrorism is the 1994 machine-gunning of Moslem worshippers at a mosque in the town of Hebron. A single terrorist killed 29 people and wounded about 150 before being killed himself. The killer, Baruch Goldstein, was an American medical doctor and a devoted follower of Rabbi Meier Kahane. He became a hero to the extremists, and the marble plaque on his grave reads: "To the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah, and the Nation of Israel".

Among the cases involving less loss of life are:

Verbal expressions of intolerance in Christianity:

While religiously motivated terrorist actions by Christians are relatively rare in the West, verbal expressions of intolerance are far more widespread. Consider the following pronouncements by American and Northern Irish church leaders, politicians, and para-church organizations:

Violent attacks by Christians:

Although most expressions of intolerance by Christians have been verbal, there have been some instances of violence, including:

The members of the Christian organizations perpetrating these crimes seem to be convinced that the forces of truth wage a perennial, cosmic battle with the forces of falsehood, and that they face the challenge of protecting Christian truth by any methods available. That they are allowing Jesus’ cross to become Mithras’ sword does not occur to them. There are fewer attacks by Christians than by Muslim terrorists apparently because the former organizations are less numerous, their individual agendas differ, and that there is a lack of cooperation; their actions are not coordinated.

North American Christian groups engaged in violent action are often inspired by the theology of at least two major fundamentalist organizations: The Reconstructionist  ₅ and the Christian Identity movements.

A special chapter could be written about terrorism in Ulster: Between 1968 and 1998, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) killed an estimated 728 civilians (most of them Protestants – not counted are military personnel and police)), compared with estimated 864 civilians (mostly Catholics) killed by loyalist paramilitaries. However, the conflict between the IRA, which wants to unify Ulster with the Republic of Ireland, and the three main Protestant paramilitaries that want to stay loyal to the British Crown [the Ulster Defence Association (UDA); the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF); and the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF)], appears to be inspired more by political ideology than by religious beliefs. Many Catholics feel like second-class citizens in Ulster, and there is violence, harassment, intimidation, and abuse (not to mention revenge killings), but, with the possible exception of Rev. Paisley, there seem to be little religion in all of it. Nowadays, the terror groups are involved in moneymaking activities.

Additional notes:

References used:

1. "Guilt," Answers.com, at: http://www.answers.com/

2. Amir Taheri. "Holy Terror. Inside the World of Islamic Terrorism," Adler & Adler, (1987).

3. Karen Armstrong, "The Battle for God," HarperCollins, (2001).

4. Mark Juergensmeyer, "Terror in the Mind of God," University of California Press, (2003).

5. Anson Shupe, "The Reconstructionist Movement on the New Christian Right," Christian Century, 1989-OCT-04. Online at: http://www.religion-online.org/

6. Michael Barkun, "Religion and the Racist Right," University of North Carolina Press, (1997).

7. Brenda E. Brasher, Ed., "Encyclopedia of Fundamentalism," Routledge, (2001).

8. Bruce Hoffman, "Holy Terror: The Implications of Terrorism Motivated by a Religious Imperative," RAND Paper P-7834, (1993).