The relationship between religion and violence is a consistent topic of discussion for scholars. It is also the fuel needed to create an attractive and easy headline for the morning news. Whether it is the discriminatory behavior of Westboro Baptist Church, or the current conflict in Iraq, modern examples of religious violence are not hard to think of. To many, it is just history repeating itself.
The narrative may seem simple. It may seem that, wherever there is organized religion, there is going to be an inevitable progression towards violence. It may also be that, finally, society has reached the intellectual checkpoint at which we may leave behind the violent religions of human tradition and progress into a new enlightenment. This line of thought is similar to that of many so-called “New Atheists”. As Richard Dawkins writes, “Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where’s the harm? September 11th changed all that.”
So should we, as Dawkins and many of his colleagues argue in the public forum, remove religion from society? Is religion too dangerous to keep around? It would be wrong to let such a radical motivation for violence persist, right?
Not so fast.
Many scholars, atheist and religious alike, have opposed the idea that religion is responsible for the violence it is so often tied to. In fact, simplifying the relationship between organized religions and the violence that plagues the globe on a daily basis can be as dangerous as religious extremism. The militant atheism that has been created by the rapidly expanding popularity of Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, may not be the quick fix that those within the movement claim it to be.
As the crisis in Iraq escalates, and ISIS takes the front page day after day, consider these things before you jump to the conclusion that religion, and religion alone, is to blame:
1. Correlation does not Equal Causation
Just because two or more things seem strongly related to one another, it does not necessarily follow that one is causing the other.
Here is a fun website to better illustrate why a correlation should not be mistaken for a causal relationship: Spurious Correlations
While the presence of religion may seem to strongly correlate with violence (where there is violence, there is often religion, some people may say), it does not necessarily follow that the religion is what caused the violence. As you will see below, there are often other factors involved which mitigate any effect that religion may have.
Consider this: Where there is religion, is there often violence? I am sure that the majority of religious organizations that you have been in contact with are not making headlines for their protests and riots. What other factors must be present before faith can be developed into violence?
2. Violence Without Religion
In the previous section I wrote “may seem to strongly correlate with violence.”
The word “may” is key. Many assert that, presently and historically, there is a strong positive correlation between religion and violence. Those arguing that religion causes violence assert that most of the extreme violence in human history has been inspired by religion. You may have even heard the popular argument that “religion has killed more people than anything else in the world”
In many cases, it seems that the human hindsight bias (seeing what we desire to see in the past) has shifted our focus to specific examples of violence in history and made us see a religious cause where there wasn’t one – often for our own benefit.
William T. Cavanaugh writes about the ideas behind the category of religious violence in his book The Myth of Religious Violence. He argues, quite convincingly, that the distinction between religious violence and secular violence is nothing more than a fabrication – a created truth. In essence, by classifying the violence of another group as ‘religious’, it is being rejected, and implicitly justifying any violence used to stop it. Predictably, for example, categorizing certain acts of violence as ‘religious violence’ has given the West justification for their own acts of violence against those groups.
Put another way, it is as if someone has said, “religious violence is an irrational violence and is thus especially dangerous, therefore we must intervene with our rational violence to stop it.”
Why is it that we can reduce the violence of “the other” to being a sort of pure religious violence? This is the question that Cavanaugh tackles.
3. Ulterior Motives
There are a number of factors other than religion which have quietly been present in most examples of historical violence. It may surprise you to hear that even the most prominent examples of religious violence in North American history, such as 9/11, were not exclusively inspired by religion. I turn to the writings of Scott Atran. Atran is famous for conducting up close and personal research on the Taliban through interviews and first-hand observations.
Atran made a couple key discoveries in his research:
First and foremost Atran developed a better understanding of the difficulties in blaming acts like 9/11 on Islam as a whole. Not only because not all Muslims are extremists (a popular phrase in the media), but also because there is not a single, pure, representation of Islam. Islam, much like Christianity, is represented differently among multitudes of adherents. Each version of Islam that is practiced has, as Atran explains, been shaped by local culture, politics and geographical context. So, even those that claim to be acting violently in the name of their religion are doing so in the name of a religion that has been shaped and changed by their area.
Second, Atran discovered that, in many cases, the fight against the West was not on religious grounds but rather on political grounds. A lot of the people joining the Taliban felt that they were taking a much more defensive role than an offensive one. For example, some joined because their family members had been killed by American soldiers. Others joined to defend their communities from Western influence and values. Others saw it as the protection of quantified property. While the whole thing was thrown under the umbrella term ‘religious violence’ it is important to see where this can be problematic. Not everyone under the umbrella is there because of their religion.
4. In Group/Out Group
I have written about the in-group/out-group bias in the past. It is a psychological bias that causes an individual to be selective in their attention and favor. An individual becomes more catering and responsive to an individual that they identify more strongly with. This applies on multiple levels. First, physically. Traits such as empathy have been shown to be more accurate when applied to someone who more closely resembles ourselves. Secondly, and of interest to us, this bias applies on a social level. Research has demonstrated that people are often much more generous and caring to those people which they identify as part of their ‘in group’. Nationality, skin color, political affiliation, and, yes, religion, are all examples of the categories that can be used to create in-groups and out groups.
The argument has been made that this in-group/out-group bias, and religion’s ability to create a divide between people, is just another reason religion should be removed. The problem with this, however, is that, firstly, the in-group/out-group bias does not necessarily create violence. What it can do is, in the face of conflict, cause people to herd together with those that they are more closely associated with. In other words, the in-group/out-group bias does not inherently create conflict. What it can do is affect how conflict is handled and how the conflict affects the behaviours of the people involved.
Furthermore, there are many other ways that the in-group/out-group bias would be maintained even if religion were removed entirely. More often than not, the conscious reason for the aggression in the minds of the soldiers is nationality. Which is my second question, at what point do we just accept that people are allowed to be different from one another and that, sometimes, this can create a psychological bias? Do we eliminate nationality altogether? Social classes?
Consider this analogy: Religion is a barrel of fuel. People use it for warmth, transportation, etc. In some cases, a fool decides he will throw a match into the barrel. Do we blame the barrel, screaming on the streets that no one should be allowed to use fuel anymore? No. We punish the person that threw the match into the barrel.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, it is hard to deny that some people, in extreme situations, do act violently because of their beliefs. The issue, however, is when we start to use these examples to create general concepts of religion that become less and less accurate as the speculation grows. Not only does the work of Atran show that the reasons we hear about and focus on are not necessarily the true or exclusive reasons behind an act of violence blamed on religion, but the work of Cavanaugh shows even more clearly that the entire categorization of religious violence can be used as a dangerous scholarly weapon as well. It is much more difficult to separate religious violence from secular violence than one may initially think, and removing religion does not seem to be the quick fix some believe it to be. The individuality of the human race is as capable of creating conflict between two groups as religions can be. There is no black and white in religious studies. There is no simple answer. It is when we try and simplify something like this that we are met with difficulty. Resolutions to conflicts like the current situation with ISIS will not arise from misunderstanding, and it seems unfair that we would let the reputation of many hardworking people be tarnished because they happen to fall under the same religious umbrella. Maybe we’ve just made the umbrella too big.
Nathan Olmstead 