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From Violence to Conciliationby Oliver McTernan [Unlike the other contributions, what follows was not written for this newsletter but was a paper presented, on 14th November 2002, at St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace [a CCTS member organisation]. Oliver McTernan is a Fellow of the Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs, Harvard University USA. We have included his paper because of the importance of the challenge it poses to received thinking on the role of religion in conflict. We look forward to exploring this issue further.] In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the United States western political leaders were anxious to stress that their war was not against Islam, a religion they hailed to be peace loving and tolerant. Muslim leaders in the United States and Europe endorsed this perception of their faith by quickly dissociating themselves from their coreligionists, who had claimed responsibility for the atrocities. Islam, they claimed, had been hijacked for political purposes. The media endorsed the prevailing mood, declaring that grievance, and not creed, was the rationalization behind the indiscriminate killing in New York and Washington. Laudable as these reactions may appear at first, and especially in so far as they undoubtedly helped to curtail mindless revenge attacks on the migrant Muslim communities in western societies, none do justice to the complexity of the growing phenomenon of faith based violence. Who can claim to understand fully the minds and motives of those young, educated and talented men, who spent the last months of their lives meticulously planning the destruction of themselves and thousand of others? Who can claim with certainty that it was grievance, real or imagined, and not their religious beliefs, that motivated their use of commercial aircrafts to commit mass murder? The documents found in luggage left behind at Boston's Logan airport by Mohamed Atta, the alleged ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers, clearly reveal that they were acting upon deeply held religious convictions, and that they regarded what they were doing as a sacred duty, aimed at giving glory to god. The US led coalition succeeded in ousting Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network from their strongholds in the mountains of Afghanistan, an action that undoubtedly helped to disrupt, at least temporarily, their ability to inflict similar large-scale atrocities. This success should not, however, be allowed to delude us into thinking that the war against terrorism, and in particular terrorism that is religiously motivated, can be won on the battlefield alone. It would be foolhardy to think that the world has seen the last of religious terrorists like Mohamed Atta and Richard Reid, the British 'shoe bomber' and self confessed member of al-Qaeda, who attempted to blow himself up with his fellow passengers on a flight from Paris to Miami. These two young men, who came from completely different ethnic and social backgrounds, were united in their readiness to sacrifice their own lives, evidently believing themselves to be on a sacred mission and acting on God's authority in the ultimate battle between good and evil. To single out one religion as the sole perpetrator of terror in the world would be to distort the historical record and contemporary reality, as well as to misjudge the extent and the complexity of the problem. Today in different parts of the world adherents of all the major world faiths can be found justifying atrocities on the grounds that their cause is righteous. They hold in common the belief that those who die in defending their faith will immortalize themselves. From Indonesia to the Balkans, the Middle East to Kashmir, India to Nigeria, Northern Ireland to Sri Lanka, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs justify the use of violence on the grounds that they are protecting their religious identity and interests. The American Academy of Arts and Science Project report, edited by Marty and Appleby, provides a valuable insight into the mindset of religious extremists in so far as it helps to identify several ideological and organizational characteristics that these religiously diverse groups hold in common. A concern over the erosion of religion's role in society is uppermost on each of their agendas. Their goal is to reshape society in accordance with their group's creedal and ethical beliefs. They reject ideas like relativism and individualism, which they see as threats to their personal, social, and religious identity, and yet they make effective use of modern technology to further their causes. They are highly selective in the parts of their tradition and sacred texts that they choose to highlight, and are absolute about the truthfulness of their interpretation of divine revelation. Their worldview is tainted by a dualism that sees a clear-cut division in life between good and evil. They demonise anyone who challenges or who is indifferent to their cause. They imagine themselves as part of a larger cosmic struggle and as being actively engaged in the advent of a new messianic age. Their male, authoritarian, charismatic leaders provide mandatory norms of behaviour for those chosen or elected to belong. The groups' boundaries are clearly defined and separate the members from outsiders. They acknowledge no room for compromise either with wayward coreligionists or with outsiders in their struggle to counteract the threat to their group identity or in their struggle to impose their own monolithic religious structures and norms of behaviour on a global scale. The social injustices, poverty, unemployment, and political repression, that leave millions dispossessed, provide fertile breeding grounds for militant groups but these conditions are not in themselves the prime cause for why people kill in God's name. The question, 'Why do they hate us?' which obsessed the American media for months after the 9/11 attacks assumed that the prime motive for these attacks was grievance and thus diverted attention from the fact that religiously motivated terrorism is not a new phenomenon. The perceived partiality of United States policy in the Middle East and its willingness to prop up autocratic regimes that serve America's best interests may well be the root cause of a deep anger and rage among Arab populations but it is not the sole cause for the attacks that we witnessed on 9/11. People killed in god's name before the coming of modernity, secularism, globalization, cosmopolitanism and even the founding of the United States of America. The current conflict in Kashmir cannot be blamed on globalization or American foreign policy. Likewise the roots of an intensely intolerant strain of Islam are deeper than just a reaction to the existence of Israel, the autocracy of Arab regimes, illiteracy and destitution. The same is true of other faiths. The social and political milieu may act as a trigger but the roots of intolerance and militancy are found in the way in which today's violent extremists interpret their foundational or sacred texts. To curtail the spread of religiously inspired terror will require a greater willingness for self-critical reflection by both political and religious leaders than we have witnessed so far. An essential first step is for them to acknowledge that religion can be an actor in its own right. To achieve this will require a sea change in the mindset that has dominated the media and politics for most of the 20th century. The entrenched view that religion is not a cause for conflict stems from the influence that the writings of Marx, Freud and Durkheim still have on the political and social sciences. Their psychological and socio-economic explanations for religion still hold sway even in the face of evidence that the secularisation process may be in retreat. The 'reductionist' approach seeks to reduce 'what may appear complex to something simple'. When applied to conflict analysis religion is judged to be nothing more than a surrogate for political power and ambition, an effective mobilizing force that can help to gain the advantage over revivals in the competition for land or primary commodities but not in itself a cause for conflict. Religious leaders also need to reflect more critically on their own failure to provide more effective leadership and witness to the true fundamental values of their respective faiths. They need to be challenged and encouraged to be more decisive in working to eradicate the influence of the extremist groups that frequently use the anonymity of the larger faith community to disguise their distorted intentions and murderous activities. During the conflict in Bosnia, the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, spoke of the need "to restore religion to its rightful role as peacemaker and pacifier". It is true that all religions aspire to peace but it is questionable whether religion has ever fulfilled that role. The fact that all major world faiths have at times sanctioned the use of violence to protect or to promote their own sectarian interests allows religious terrorists today to claim moral justification for their actions. The faith inspired terrorist can find, in his or her religious tradition, role models that give legitimacy to their own use of violence. It is not enough, therefore, for religious leaders to disown the murderous actions of their coreligionists and to denounce these terrorists as misguided fringe groups. Those who have grown to accept uncritically the 'secularisation thesis' that has shaped political thinking for the best part of the last century find it extremely difficult to understand that theology and belief can, and indeed do, form people's political judgements. Religion is not a passive agent waiting to be ignited into a political flame by some unscrupulous political or tribal chauvinist, as Peter Berger would have us believe when he writes, 'ƒupsurges of religion in the modern era, are in most cases political movements that use religion as a convenient legitimation for political agendas based on non-religious interests, as opposed to movements genuinely inspired by religion' Religious activists are also capable of being opportunist and of using the political ambitions of nationalist or tribal leaders to gain advantage and privilege for their particular beliefs and traditions. Vjekoslav Perica puts the problem in focus when he writes, '[F]rom the globally televised scenes of the burning Bosnian government towers in Sarajevo in 1992 to the smoke, fire and death at the World Trade Center in Sept. 2001, the world seems to have experienced some kind of apocalypse rather than a religious renaissance. Religion was a factor instrumental in bringing about both these catastrophic events'. The present priority should be to lessen the risk of religiously motivated conflict by promoting confidence building and understanding among peoples of different political cultures and faiths, and especially between Islam and the West. A paradigm shift in political thinking is also essential if we are to curtail an intensification of religiously motivated violence. The political and academic world needs to out grow their secularist mindset and stop dismissing or excusing religion as a cause of conflict. There is an urgent need to develop more creative and inclusive approaches to conflict resolution and prevention. The secular and faith worlds need to unite in bringing together religious and community leaders in order to train them in the skills of working across the boundaries that currently divide them. The call for tolerance is a wholly inadequate response in the face of today's crisis.
Oliver McTernan
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