Religion and PeaceReligion: Possibilities for Violence and Possibilities

for Peace

Fr. John D’AltonAntiochian Orthodox Priest and PhD candidate,

School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies.

Married with 2 grown-up kids, loves techno (ex-DJ), steampunk, watercolour painting, Firefly, RPGs, SF, and Traditional Chinese medicine.

• “Every religion—or secular ideology, for that matter—offers the possibility of violence and peace, oppression and liberation, depending on who is interpreting it, how, and in what particular contexts.” Shawqi Kassis, Ph.D.

Possibilities for Violence: Mis-use of religion

• Often politically- or ethnically-motivated• Eg Northern Ireland• Somalia- warring “Muslim” factions• Buddhism in Thailand is claimed by all

sides (even the military when they shoot protesters)

• Balkans conflicts• Israeli-Palestinian conflict• US in Iraq and “Crusade” language

Creating Peace

• Learn about the religions eg source texts• NB Many outsider texts are very distorting• Learn about how each religion brings

peace throughout history and today• Eg Jihad and Islam…

• Much of the Koran revealed in the context of an all-out war imposed on early Muslims by the powerful city of Mecca, and many passages deal with the conduct of armed struggle.

While one finds "slay [enemies] wherever you find them!" (e.g., 4: 89), in almost every case it is followed by something like "if they let you be, and do not make war on you, and offer you peace, God does not allow you to harm them" (2:90; 4: 90; 5: 2; 8: 61; 22: 39)

• God does not allow harm of civilians, and requests the protection of women, children and the elderly during war (4:96; 9: 91; 48: 16,17)

“If any one slew a person--unless it be for murder or for spreading mischiefin the land--it would be as if he slew the whole people; and if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people.” (5:32)

• You shall feed and protect prisoners of war, and you shall not expect a reward (4: 25,36; 5:24)

Thus, the only permissible war in the Quran is one of self-defense, you cannot kill unarmed (civilians), and you have to protect prisoners of war.

Jihad and the Conduct of War

• "There must be no coercion in matters of faith" (2: 256) • Muslims have to respect Jews and Christians, the "People of the Book,"

who worship the same God (e.g., 2:62; 29:46). "And dispute ye not with the People of the Book, except with means

better, unless it be with those of them who inflict wrong: but say, 'We believe in the revelation which has come down to us and in that which came down to you; Our Allah and your Allah is one; and it is to Him we bow.”

• In one of his last public sermons Muhammad said “God tells all human beings, "O people! We have formed you into nations

and tribes so that you may know one another" (49: 13). Do not conquer, convert, subjugate, revile or slaughter but to reach out toward others with intelligence and understanding”

Relations with other Faiths

• Sites of worship, holy places and shrines of all faiths were mostly protected.

• When Abu Bakr stood on the borders of Syria he gave very specific instructions to his soldiers: “In the desert,” he said, “you will find people who have secluded themselves in cells; let them alone, for they have secluded themselves for the sake of God.”

• Likewise, when Omar went to Syria, he actually stayed with the Bishop of Ayla and went out of his way to meet the Christian Holy Men in the town.

Possibilities for Peace: Correct teaching of religion

• “Imam and pastor” in Nigeria (IOC)• Truth and Reconciliation Commission in

South Africa- forgiveness and justice• JCMA Joint Statement on Israel and

Palestine, terrorism etc.• Muslim-Hindu-Christian Peace work in

Hyderabad (Henry Martyn Institute)• Importance of education and media

European and Islamic notions of struggle:

the opportunities in a shared history

Fr. John D’Alton, PhD candidateSchool of Philosophical, Historical, and

International Studies, Monash University

Europe and Islam

• The “Arab Spring”, bans on burqas, and recent European critiques of multiculturalism raise many questions about the role of Islam in the West.

• “In debates over Islam taking place today, no principle is invoked more often than jihad.” Bonner

Context

• The term “jihad” (means struggle, strive, battle, fight but NOT holy war) has become the main Western symbol of the Muslim response to the West. Western media often links “Muslim” with “jihadi”.

• The trope of the inevitable “clash of civilizations” has propelled the role of violent jihad into the forefront of global politics.

• The concept of jihad is often used in the West as a “proof of Islam’s innate violence” which allows for a representation of Islam as the “essentially violent enemy”.

• Some recent Western academic representations of Islam have even described jihad as an Islamic invention with “no historic equivalents”. 

• This has enabled some non-Muslim authors to claim that the concept of jihad as "internal spiritual struggle" is a 9th century CE Muslim invention constructed to hide Islam’s “fundamentally violent nature”.

True Islam: Rumi or Osama bin Laden?

Hadith

• A number of fighters came to the messenger of Allah, and he said: “You have done well in coming from the ’lesser jihad’ to the ‘greater jihad’.” They said: “What is the ‘greater jihad’?”. He said: “For the servant [of God] to fight his passions.”

Competing Views-1

• Badawi says that “…the reputation of Islam itself as a peaceful and tolerant religion has been damaged. Because Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders use an historically inaccurate and distorted view of the Islamic concept of just war (jihad) to justify their actions, Islam itself has been depicted by its enemies and estranged friends as condoning unethical, unlimited and almost unthinkable acts of violence and terrorism, which it does not.”

Competing Views-2

• Cook argues that the real meaning of jihad is violent. He asserts, contrary to historical evidence, that the idea of the greater jihad as peaceful internal spiritual struggle was a ninth-eleventh century CE distortion.

• “Clearly this tradition is an attempt to radically reinterpret the originally aggressive nature of the Qur’an and the hadith literature in order to focus on the waging of spiritual warfare”.

Q and A

• Q. Was and is jihad unique to Islam?• A. Jihad (struggle/fight/contest/strive) was

a key concept in early Islam’s contemporary Syrian Christian world, and in ancient Greece, and still is in modern European cultures.

• Metaphor: Life is struggle

• In Syriac, Agona (struggle/strive/fight), cf Jihad, and a cluster of related concepts like shahid (martyr), were in widespread use for 300 years prior to Islam, in the Syrian Christian tradition. In both pre-Islamic Syriac and early Sufi Islam, jihad or agona meant primarily the internal spiritual battle against the passions rather than the external forms of battle. It was also applied to political, social and other domains.

• Far from being an indictment of Islam, a full understanding of jihad provides a bridge between the West, Christianity and Islam.

Cognitive Metaphor theory• My research uses cognitive metaphor theory,

analysing the semantic range of key words, and their semantic fields.

• Cognitive metaphors are more than linguistic; they shape perceptions and actions.

• Jihad/Struggle used in fields of:• Sport• Physical conflict/battle• Intellectual conflict• Psychological• Political and social

Cognitive Psychology

• The struggle metaphor arises from the foundational experience of the baby under 1 year old, struggling to sit upright, striving to reach an object, fighting against gravity and (later) siblings etc.

• This experience of struggle is then generalised into various domains eg sport, politics, intellectual debate.

The agon in Ancient Greece

• Burkhardt says that agon (struggle, fight) is the central idea in Greek culture

• Sport eg 5 core Olympic events• Music contests• Physical conflict/battle• Intellectual conflict• Psychological eg Greek tragedies• Political and social eg Creon in Sophocles

4-9th Century CE Syrian Christians

• Agona (Syriac for striving or struggle) (derived from agon) is a complex idea intertwined with Sahda (cf. shahid) (martyr) and other words related to spiritual struggle such as combat, victory, contests, fighting, contending etc.

• Dictionaries at the time equate Syrian agona with Arabic jihad.

• Different range of meaning to q-t-l (both Syriac and Arabic) (kill/murder/massacre)

Previous uses of terms• Christian Martyrs 3rd-4th century were described

as “soldiers of the arena” and “athletes (athloi) of God” for their willingness to undergo struggles and agonies (Greek agon; Syriac agona) for their faith.

Jihad and agona in Arabic and Syriac Bibles

• 1Tim 6:12• Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold onto

the eternal life to which you are also called, and have professed a good profession before many witnesses.

• ِجهَادَ .verb and noun Arabic: jihad َجاهِدْSyr. Agona (cf Greek agon)

Jihad and agona in Arabic and Syriac Bibles

• Luke 22:44 Jesus in Garden of Gethsemane

• “And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”

• Arabic: jihad. Syr. agona ِجهَادٍ

Anthony, Evagrius etc.

• For Evagrius, as for most early monks, the ascetic life is a battle, a “striving after virtue”, and specifically a “fight with the demons”.

• Daily spiritual life is a “combat” and an “open fight”. Even anger is a tool used to “fight against the demons and strive for every pleasure”.

Theodoret• bishop of Cyrrhus, Syria (423-457CE)• Wrote “A History of the Monks of Syria”• In his praise of James of Cyrrestica, Theodoret

links athletes and war in an extended metaphor. • “Now that we have proceeded through the

contests of the athletes of virtue described above, narrating in summary their laborious exercises, their exertions in the contests and their most glorious and splendid victories, let us now record … the way of life of those … who contend magnificently and strive to surpass their predecessors in exertion”. James, “unceasingly under the eyes of spectators … strives in combat and repels the necessities of nature”.

Isaac: bishop of Nineveh

• c. 660-680 CE - wrote an extremely popular treatise on the spiritual life “On the Ascetical life”

• He describes the spiritual effort as “struggle”, “the time of conflict”, “hidden attacks” and a “secret war”. The Christian is meant to “arm your soul” with the “armour of fasting” so as to “conquer” the “Adversary” and not be “defeated”.

• “Better for us is death in the battle for the love of God than a life of shame and debility.”

Early Sufis

• Muhasibi (c. 164- 242 AH) 781-857 CE• “God has appointed self-mortification for

the seeker, for the training of his soul”.• The nafs (lower soul) is the “enemy

within”, the “pleasures and lusts” which must be “fought and overcome”.

• Also, “the enemy of God, Iblis, …(God) has commanded you to fight him, and to strive against him”.

Ghazali (d.1111CE 505AH)

• Quotes al-Razi: “Fight your soul with the swords of self-discipline”.

• Quotes Prophet Mohammed: “Make war on your souls with hunger and thirst, for the reward which this brings is that of participation in the jihad.”

• His work in summary: Struggle (jihad) against the lower soul (nafs)

Modern European usage

• The metaphor of struggle is similarly used in many languages in the domains of:

• Sport• Physical conflict/Battle• Intellectual conflict• Psychological • Political and social

French

• lutter, la lutte• struggle, fight, battle, contend, wrestle• Sometimes overlaps with efforçant (effort) • News articles from Le Monde online

Sport

• Le Géorgien parle très fort, mais sur le terrain il est très rude ; avant d'être rugbyman, il a souvent pratiqué la lutte

• Géorgien speaks very extremely, but on the ground it is very hard; before being a rugby player, he often practised the fight

Political/Social

• M. Hunt doit annoncer ce soir un nouveau plan de lutte contre le téléchargement illégal

• Mr. Hunt will announce tonight a new plan to combat illegal downloading

• In relation to education: de lutte et pour l'égalité contre les discriminations

• combat for equality against discrimination

Psychological

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte • Ce fut pour moi une lutte fatigante contre toutes

sortes dedifficultés.• It was for me a tiring fight/struggle against all

kinds of difficulties • j'aurais eu à un moment une lutte douloureuse

contre la jalousie et le désespoir • I should have had one vital struggle (fight) with

two tigers--jealousy and despair

• She has “vie incertaine et pleine de luttes”

• uncertain struggling life • But Je désirais le combat • I desired the combat• il fallait lutter encore, m'efforcer de vivre• I must struggle on: strive to live • Ie “Life is struggle”

German

• kampf – struggle, fight, contend, battle, combat  conflict; streben - strive, struggle

• Alles ist ein Kampf - Wichtig ist wofür man kämpft!

• Life is always a fight - Important is what you fight for!

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:• Das leben ist ein kampf. Alles ist Kampf.• Living is a struggle. All is struggle.

Psychological• Die Leiden des jungen Werther: The Sorrows

of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• ...brachte die widrigsten Wirkungen hervor und ließ ihm zuletzt nur eine Ermattung übrig, aus der er noch ängstlicher empor strebte,

• …produced the saddest effects upon him, and rendered him at length the victim of an exhaustion against which he struggled with still more painful efforts than he had displayed,

• als er mit allen Übeln bisher gekämpft hatte.• even in contending with his other misfortunes.

Sport

• FC Bayern zu rechnen sein im Kampf um den Titel

• fight for the title

• Intellectual/Cultural: • Kampf der Kulturen  • Clash of Civilisations

Political/Social

• Kampf gegen Korruption • Fight against corruption• EU Commision president José Manuel Barroso

„Dies sei ein Kampf um Arbeitsplätze und Wohlstand, um die wirtschaftliche und politische Zukunft Europas, ein Kampf um die europäische Integration selbst.“

• “This is a fight for jobs and prosperity, for the economic and political future of Europe, a fight for European integration.”

Political/Social

• "Titanenkampf" gegen den Staatsbankrott• “Titanic” fight against the national

bankruptcy • Als Motiv gab der Rechtsextremist seinen

Kampf gegen Multikulturalismus und die "muslimische Invasion" an.

• As motive the right-wing extremist gave his fight against multiculturalism and "Muslim Invasion"

Spanish

• Lucha (n), luchar (v) - fight, struggle .

• Sport: • lucha libre: free-style wrestling• Lucha por la ventaja de campo en

playoffs en la Superliga de voley• Fight for the advantage of the field in

playoffs in Volleyball Superleague

Political/Social

• lucha de clases : class struggle• lucha contra la contaminación atmosférica• fight against the air pollution• la lucha judicial de España contra los

yihadistas • the judicial fight of Spain against the

jihadists. • Also lucha mental – intellectual struggle

Finnish

• Taistelu. Struggle, fight

• Sport: motorcycle World Championships• Seuraavista sijoista käytiin tiukempi

taistelu • A tighter battle was fought from the

following places

Political/Social

• taistelu byrokratiaa vastaan • battle against bureaucracy. . • Taistelu Peltomäen seuraajasta alkoi• The fight for the successor of Peltomäki began • War on Drugs: Tamaulipasin taistelu on ennen

kaikkea taistelu hiljaisuutta vastaan • Tamaulipas is a struggle, above all, the battle

against the silence

Conclusions• Many cultures have similar conceptions of

life as struggle, and histories of struggle.• Jihad is not a unique Islamic invention. • Jihad/struggle is historically primarily

internal, intellectual, political or social, and only secondarily violent.

• Thus, rather than being an indictment of Islam, the notion of jihad in fact has the potential to be a bridging concept between Islam and Europe.

• A deeper understanding of the commonality of the “life is a struggle” metaphor and the similarities in the words jihad/ struggle/ agon/ lutter/ kampf/ lucha/ taistelu etc. is an opportunity for cultures to appreciate each other and their common worldview, to foster a more maturely multicultural Europe, and to be better “united in diversity”.

Conclusions & Implications

• Spiritual war on the passions (jihad) is not an Islamic invention.

• Jihad must be understood in context of previous Syriac Christian usage.

• This should transform how the West understands the meaning of jihad.

• Ascetic practice is actually a bridge concept

More good examples of religion and peace-making

• St Egidio lay religious community based in Italy with around 50,000 members.

• Brokered peace (meetings from 1990-1992) between government of Mozambique and Renamo rebels, ending civil war started in 1980s.

• Indonesia: “Peacebook”- Muslims and Christians together.

• Afghanistan: misunderstanding by the West of importance of hospitality increased the conflict!

• Joint Christian-Muslim work in refugee recovery

• JCMA schools program in Victorian secondary schools- multi-faith presenters

• Parliament of World’s Religions

Does religion cause war?

• 5 largest atrocities in 20th century account for over 75% of all casualties- none caused by religion (WW1, WW2, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Russian Civil War, Holocaust), although there were religious people on all sides.

• Religious people were actually the targets of many of these atrocities eg Jews in Germany and Eastern Europe, Christians and Muslims in Russia.

Some questions

• Rwanda: What was the role of religion?• How could the deaths of 800,000 in the

1994 genocide been avoided?• Why did the West do virtually nothing?• Two “Muslim” countries with atrocities, yet• Why has the West intervened in Libya but

not Somalia?

Last words• “True religion does not cause wars; it is our best

guarantee against war. In the modern world, religion does not cause wars, religion causes peace.

• “The only way to stop religious fanaticism is to teach true religion: namely, the virtue of love, the quest for holiness…

• “No holy person of any religion would commit a terrorist act”.

• Abbot Christopher Jamison