Divine Intervention: Prejudice and Religious Warfare
This is a reflection of two books: Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence by Mark Juergensmeyer and The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age by Martha Nussbaum. It was written for a class on the History of Modern Militarism at the University of Winnipeg in August 2024.
The 21st century has been an era like none other regarding the prevalence of religious warfare and fear of religious extremism. This has created an us and them mentality among people who live with or without faith, each group fearing the other. This is the basis of the two books I have examined in this essay: The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age by Martha C. Nussbaum and Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence by Mark Juergensmeyer.
Nussbaum’s book relies heavily on the teachings of Socrates, Aristotle and several other great minds of philosophy to explore the prevalence of fear towards different religions and the harm this has in modern times. Her book explores history and psychology as it discusses the causes and consequences of prejudicial thinking, citing instances of violence against religious minorities and the promotion of prejudicial ideas.
Juergensmeyer’s book is split in two halves. The first explores major acts of religious terrorism which have taken place in the last 30 years. From Timothy McVeigh’s bombing in Oklahoma City to the Aum Shinrikyo gas attack in the Tokyo subway systems to the first attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993, he paints a picture that the violence of religious terrorism has become more severe in recent decades. The second half of the book is a deeper exploration of motivating factors. Juergensmeyer relies on conversations with leaders and members of such groups who describe what motivated them to commit acts of terror.
Each book starts on the same July 2011 attack when Anders Breivik took the lives of more than 70 innocent people because they were Muslim. He released a 1,500-page manifesto explaining his actions “based on the idea that Europe must fight against the scourge of Islamization.”[1] The manifesto is described by Juergensmeyer as a “a paranoid analysis of European history and politics”[2] which included a broad range of accusations and hate as to who and what is to blame for the fall of Christianity in Europe.
Breivik epitomizes the ideas each author is exploring. Nussbaum describes how Breivik had a swarm of supporters, hungry to consume the literature he promoted and to read his manifesto. His actions are defenseless but many felt he expressed a common sentiment among many across Europe. When the attack initially took place commentators across the world were fast to call it “Islamic Terrorism,” comparing it to 9/11. Conspiracy theories were quick to flourish. This is a blatant reflection of a broad association between terrorism and Islam.
For Juergensmeyer Breivik represents the mentality of many in his book: actors taking violent action against a defined enemy for fear that their beliefs are being marginalized in place of an incoming other. When a group -or individuals- of religious extremist ideologies feel their culture is under threat is when violence becomes a valid course of action in their mind. These individuals and groups will refer to Holy Books to justify their use of violence, often citing instances where holy war was not only justified but necessary. Breivik, while not wholly devoted to Christianity, claimed to represent Christian European standards of life and morality. That July day was “a signal that a cosmic war between existential forces of good and evil had begun.”[3]
Associating Violence with Islam
Both authors refer to the association made in Western states between violent extremism and Islam. Nussbaum refers to burqa bans across Europe. Leaders argue implementing bans on burqas and niqabs is a matter of national security since an individual in a burqa cannot be identified and a niqab guards the color of one’s hair. No other head or face coverings -scarves or ski masks- are banned despite violating the same alleged concerns. This rule, applied in the name of security, targets Muslims.
The implication of burqa bans is that all people who want to wear a burqa are inherently suspicious. Nussbaum explains this association comes from a dangerous stereotype that religious extremism is a frequent occurrence in Islam, enough so that the low proportion of Muslim women who wear a burqa should be denied doing so in public for the safety of citizens. What is lost in these policies is how extremists in all faiths exist on the fringe. Many Muslims do not accept ISIS as being truly Muslim, for a true Muslim would not commit such heinous acts of violence.
ISIS does not seek the religious to join their ranks rather they seek the desperate. Granted, the organization is based on association among likeminded Muslims. Sunni leaders felt for decades they were being marginalized, creating a feeling that collective violent action was necessary. Coming together as a political entity ISIS is a collection of fringe extremists who justify violence in the name of countering suppression caused by leaders appointed by the American government such as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Juergensmeyer explains this dissonance: “Sunni Muslims in both Syria and western Iraq felt alienated from their governments, and longed to support a movement that would empower them. This is what ISIS offered, in its own demonic way.”[4]
ISIS is not Islam, a reality lost on many in the West. While such religious extremists are the minority, the power they wield, the damage they are readily capable of, causes a misperception of their size. Their representative power of the whole of Islam is miscalculated by Westerners who do not understand Islam and have been taught to be afraid of it by the rhetoric of politicians and the media. We in the West are hypercritical of cultures we are not familiar with but we assess them as though we are well informed.
The idea that Islam as inherently violent stems from being in an era of a war against terrorism. This has not only villainized an entire religion but it has put people on high alert to anything that reflects Islam. To the point of the burqa ban, Nussbaum is quick to say that any terrorist looking to commit an attack would never dawn a burqa due to the amount of immediate attention they would draw to themselves. Nussbaum also confronts the argument that the burqa is a sign of the objectification of women. She states such arguments comes from ignorance of Islam in addition to “the more glaring flaw in the argument is that modern societies are suffused with symbols of male supremacy that treat women as objects.”[5] From clothing to advertising, the plastic surgery industry, television, movies and social media, women are objectified in the West. Alcohol, Nussbaum continues, is responsible for more violence and objectification of women than anything in America yet there is not nearly as much open objection to alcohol as there is towards Islam.
Fear of Others and the End of Times
To understand the frequency with which individuals act out of fear to defend themselves against perceived threats is vitally important to understanding the cause of religious violence as well as prejudicial policies enacted by governments. It is here worth noting that the fear of outside influences, the fear of another group which will rob one of their culture and identity, ravaging one’s faith and beliefs in order to pursue the proliferation of harmful practices, is ultimately at the root of both books.
Nussbaum explains how common it is for prejudicial theories of others coming from binding real-world issues with a group of people, a particular faith. Issues of national and economic security are connected to supposed threats of religious minorities as a result of “ignorance and fantasy propelled by political rhetoric.”[6] A real world problem, articulately associated with a scapegoat -often times Muslims- leads listeners to believe if the target group is removed or destroyed the problems will be resolved.
Fear is a natural occurrence that prejudicial ideologies latch onto when making an enemy of another faith. Fear is biologically engineered to cause a reaction to danger. When fear becomes habituated, associated with a readily available target group, it is very difficult to reverse because of the biological depth of fear. As we are taught to be afraid of something or someone we perceive as dangerous it is impossible to fully undo this fear without honest and rigorous confrontation with the fear. Not the group itself, but the emotion of fear the group has come to cause.
Nussbaum refers to Stuart Mill saying fear is a selfish response meant to protect the self and those near to us. As a result of being inherently selfish it is not a reliable means of creating policy or understanding the reality of other groups and faiths. When we fear others it is based on the presumption that they have both the power to harm us as well as the intent to do so. Nussbaum reports that according to Aristotle political speakers are very capable of inducing fear in the public by suggesting there is a real risk that will harm the public, the danger is proximal and by making people feel the danger is beyond their control. This is how fears which are not inherent are fostered. Nussbaum quotes Aristotle saying fear is “a kind of pain or disturbance resulting from imagining an impending bad event that is destructive or painful.”[7] Nussbaum thoroughly explores how fear is enhanced and influenced by culture and politics. We are not born afraid of Muslims; we are taught to be.
Jeurgensmeyer talks about a feeling common among groups who undertake religious violence is they have pure hearts and they kill as an act to defend God. Based on a selective interpretation of religious scripture people convince themselves they must personally take up arms to defend the word of God or else what is right in the world is doomed. This argument is not only difficult to counter but seemingly impossible to dissuade as it requires both an articulate understanding of the faith being referred to -as such ideas of prophetic violence have been drawn from many religious books- as well as an understanding of how to properly supersede one’s greatest fears; that God’s will is being ignored. The foundation of fear, as is described in Nussbaum’s book, is instrumental to the survival of a biological being, making it an incredibly difficult emotion to mute or change. Nussbaum suggests this makes xenophobia and religious prejudice difficult to confront, but what does it mean from the perspective of religious terrorism?
A common theme among acts of terror in the name of God is a defence against oppression often accompanied by references to wars in holy scriptures. Often too is the prophetic expectation of a coming war or a current war believers must fight. There is fear of a great replacement among all faith experiences referred to throughout Juergensmeyer’s book. Juergensmeyer says “what makes religious violence particularly savage and relentless is that its perpetrators have placed such religious images of divine struggle- cosmic war- in the service of worldly political battles.”[8] Metaphysical wars are being brought to life.
Juergensmeyer describes how religious language revolves around “ideas of an intimate and ultimate tension… described as the distinction between the sacred and the profane.”[9] Truly the ideas promoted by those who undertake religious violence is that of Good versus Evil in the most extreme sense. These ideas implanted into reality create the pretense for immense violence. When an individual believes he is legitimately fighting the powers of biblical Evil and has divine forces supporting the bloodshed he becomes an unresolvable force of harm.
The story of war, the cosmic war, is one that supersedes the boundaries of mortal life. There is not a spec of doubt among religious terrorists that one day divine intervention will bring peace to the world but their detonation of a bomb strapped to their chest is necessary in the meantime. Again, a frightening proposition for anyone who believes that this world, this existence, is paramount to any other plain which may or may not exist in the afterlife. An enemy ready to meet their God is more frightening than any man who sees greater value in this tangible life. That said we in the West may be perceived with similar repulsion due to our propensity to drop bombs across the world.
In order to wage a war you must first define an a worthy opponent, what Juergensmeyer describes as Satanizing the enemy. The same idea is seen in Nussbaum’s book; in order to protect your own there must be a perceived danger, a threat to be denied entry or acceptance. This creates enemies of innocent people. When all Muslims or non-Muslims are the enemy, the world could not appear more like a battlefield. When all Muslims are the enemy, we have allowed a faith based and racially reinforced prejudice to have its way with our better thinking.
We inherently have little respect for the lives of our enemies, especially those we perceive has dangerous. Their blood weighs less than the blood of our own, a mentality which allows for vicious hatred to be expressed through the actions of people engaging in war and faith-based terrorism. Ridding the individual of personality in order to exact an immeasurable sort of violence against them makes the action of bombing or killing more conscionable. The death of the other is justified by the violence and the rejection of God they represent, or are made to represent by the rhetoric of the assaulting party. Making a monster of an enemy, villainizing the enemy and enhancing the perception that they are objectively bad and we are objectively good is a treachery with no boundaries, a bottomless pit of depravity and unfixable harm.
Contrasting Perspectives
While Nussbaum explores histories and media as well as philosophers for her book, Juergensmeyer’s book is an exploration through the history of religious violence but is largely based on personal conversations had with individuals directly involved in acts of religious violence. This first-hand approach to the book creates a personalized dialogue between the perpetrator and the reader. There is no need to speculate when the person who orchestrated the intense violence describes why they chose to plant bombs at the World Trade Centre or shoot an abortion doctor.
A primary focal point for Nussbaum is that we must above all accept there are many among us with different religious beliefs. It would do us collectively well to understand their perspective as best as we can to garner a greater appreciation of their culture and life experiences, the importance of their faith, and what various pieces of religious clothing represent. None of this is achieved by abiding by stereotypes created by others who know as little as we do. This is what creates assumptions that women are being abused in their homes if they wear burqas or that a person is violent because they are Muslim. Rather than allowing baseless prejudice to expand in echo-chambers we should address our differences with respect. To this point empathy works as a valuable tool for understanding each other and reducing prejudice between us.
A noteworthy piece I took from of Juergensmeyer’s book is that sometimes inherently violent or unstable people will use faith to justify their violent actions. Some attacks in the name of religion are disingenuous in their claim of having been a religious act. Shoko Asahara, founder of Aum Shinrikyo, took a pre-emptively defensive position by using nerve gas in a subway station to insight fear that war was upon Japan. Asahara picked through various religions and ancient texts, both real and unreal, in order to justify his violent actions. He had a God complex and described himself as having divine powers. To describe Asahara’s personal vendetta as having been a Buddhist attack is disingenuous. He was less a man seeking cosmic battle so much as a lost man seeking a justification for his violent acts.
In Conclusion
This pairing of books creates an articulate picture of what modern religious warfare has become. It implores ideas looked upon earlier in the course about a hidden enemy and a perennial war. While we looked at this from the perspective of Western governments and militaries in the war on terror, the perennial battles discussed between these two books revolve around spiritual wars which appear timeless and unending.
When we discussed war from the perspective of Western militaries we discussed whether these wars are winnable whereas these books clearly show that these wars are likely to be fought longer than any of us presently on earth will live to see. So long as there are groups of faith who are persecuted there will be us and them scenarios across the world. And, as long as there are groups who believe they are being persecuted or that their faith is being infringed -regardless of if this is true or not- there are people ready to take up arms to defend themselves against enemies, real and imagined. These two factors tie a tight knot and so long as people with ideas exist there will remain people with different ideas. Faith groups will continue to fracture and blame each other for bringing Evil upon the world. This cycle will not slow down but, as we have seen, it has become much better armed in the war for purity, righteousness and Godliness. All who bear arms allege they are fighting for peace but with each soldier of God’s war comes another step further from achieving it.
[1] Nussbaum; page 6
[2] Juergensmeyer; page 20
[3] Juergensmeyer; page 22
[4] Juergensmeyer; page 70
[5] Nussbaum; page 115
[6] Nussbaum; page 21
[7] Nussbaum; page 30
[8] Juergensmeyer; page 184
[9] Juergensmeyer; page 211