Are Muslims the only perpetrators of violence? (original) (raw)
Religion and Violence: A Matter of Approach
Islamic Studies for Human Rights and Democracy, 2016
In this paper, we examine the relationship between religion and violence. The idea is that religion, as a collection of texts, is single, but various kinds of actions have been taken under its name. The reason lies in the fact that religion, as a textual entity, is prone to various interpretations. Each of the interpretations indeed, in its turn, embodies a particular approach to the religion. It is in fact the approach and its resulting interpretation that lead to actions on the part of the believers. Some of the approaches to religion may amount to violence and they have indeed amounted to such a phenomenon. We will conclude that the spiritual approach, as compared with the jurisprudential and theological ones, is less likely to give rise to violence.
Radicalism and the Practice of Violence in the Muslim World
The Canadian Journal for Middle East Studies Vol2 (1) August 2017 , 2017
Religion, politics, society and culture coexist in a melting pot; entwining and clashing amongst one another till the origins of their functions and values are debated much like the chicken and the egg. All occurrences are subject to the questioning of: Is the situation a consequence of the religion or the culture? The political dynamics or societal pressure? Under these circumstances, the inherent spirituality of religions becomes contested as the non-spiritual functions of politics, society, and culture are infused with it. Islam, a historical religion dating back to the 7th century, is under duress as the insurgence and force of radicalism and the use of violence within Muslim nations has strengthened and garnered momentum.
Religious Violence: Fact or Fiction?
The Journal of Human Rights, 2019
The main question of this article is this. Does religion itself play a role in political violence? After clarifying the meaning of relevant terms such as religion, religious violence, secular violence, voluntary action and political violence, I will examine two arguments that can be formulated in favour of the claim that religion itself is the unique cause of the so-called religious type of political violence, concluding that both of these arguments are subject to criticism and neither is successful in supporting that claim. Then I will suggest my own explanation of the real cause and origin of political violence in general and its proper solution. I will also conclude that the well-known distinction between religious and secular violence is not tenable.
An Appraisal that Religion on its Own Does Not Breed Violence
Journal of Business and Econometrics Studies, 2024
It will be rare to have a discussion on human existence without mentioning violence; but it will be unfair to see religion as the main reason for violence. Although, religion has an input in violence, but religion in isolation can't breed violence without the input of some other factors which are further explain in this article. This article adopted qualitative method and secondary data. The secondary data was collected through website, publications, journals and textbooks. The data collected through secondary data reveals that religion on its own does not breed violence but it is a component of violence that can be aided by poverty, inequality, bad governance among other factors.
Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2010
This important though uneven collection of essays is helpful in revealing how little religiously motivated violence is understood in the secular West. This misnamed book is not about dying for faith in the traditional Christian martyrs' sense, but rather about killing for faith. The editors wish to explore religiously motivated suicide (either individual or group), suicide operations in which enemy deaths are also intended, and killing that risks the death of the perpetrator (as in warfare); however, the authors of the various essays sometimes stray beyond these categories. The collection of sixteen essays is divided into three sections: six essays about theory, seven case studies, and three essays that raise special ethical questions about the relationship between the media and religious violence. Though not without its merits, the theory section is the collection's weakest. While the authors are interdisciplinary in the sense that several social sciences are represented-for example, sociology, political science, and anthropology-none of the selections are from theologians, philosophers or historians. The result is that the essays, for better or for worse, are characterized by the scientific bias of neutrality, though, of course, no one is really neutral about this topic. It may even be that neutrality hinders a full understanding of religion and religious violence. The most obvious examples of this neutrality are the authors' consistent refusal to suggest than any one religion might do better at constraining violence or have greater propensity for encouraging it. Now, it may in fact be that no one religion is more or less prone to violence than any other, but to simply assume that this is the case does not seem to me to be especially scientific, especially when both historical and sociological study could shed some light on this question.
Reflections On Violence in Asian Religions
Journal of Religion and Violence
I would like to thank Margo Kitts for the opportunity to organize and edit this special issue of the Journal of Religion and Violence, and for her helpful editorial suggestions for not only my introduction but also all the contributors of this issue. I am also grateful for my colleagues in the academy who contributed to this issue. Without their thoughtful articles, this issue would not come to fruition.
Violence and the Other in Hinduism and Islam: 1809 Lat Bhairon Riots of Banaras
Perspectives on Violence and Othering in India, 2015
Violence has been and remains the fundamental problem of all organized societies for it is rooted in the animal's survival instinct, the vital competition for food, living space and reproductive mates. 1 With the cerebral crossing of the human threshold, blind instinct becomes floating mimetic desire such that the now uncertain choice of object is increasingly determined by significant others, who risk Dedicated to all who have undergone, willingly or unwillingly, in Banaras or elsewhere, the salvific punishment of Bhairava. 1 "Aggression and human violence have marked the progress of the human race and appear, indeed, to have grown so during its course that they have become a central problem of the present. Analyses that attempt to locate the roots of the evil often set out with shortsighted assumptions, as though the failure of our upbringing or the faulty development of a particular national tradition or economic system were to blame. More can be said for the thesis that all orders and forms of authority in human society are founded on institutionalized violence. This at least corresponds to the fundamental role played in biology by intraspecific aggression, as described by Konrad Lorenz. Those, however, who turn to religion for salvation from this 'so-called evil' are confronted with murder at the very core of Christianity-the death of God's innocent son; still earlier, the Old Testament covenant could come about only after Abraham had decided to sacrifice his child. Thus, blood and violence lurk fascinatingly at the very heart of religion" (Burkert
AHP 40 REVIEW: THE ORIGINS OF RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE
Review of: Gier, Nicholas F. 2014. The Origins of Religious Violence: An Asian Perspective. Lanham: Lexington Books. xxvii + 295. ISBN 978-0-7391-9222-1 (hardcover 100USD). Nicholas S. Gier, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Idaho, has published widely on comparative philosophy and ethics, particularly Asian and Western. His last book, The Virtue of Nonviolence (2004), develops an understanding of nonviolence as "virtue ethics" by comparing Buddhist, Jainist, Hinduist, and Confucianist traditions, as well as the thought of prominent activists such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Following this lead, Gier's new study is dedicated to violence and militancy in Asian religious traditions. Because this relationship is comparably less known to most readers, Gier's book is an important contribution to the study of faith-based violence. The book is arranged in two parts with chapters one to nine ...