Myth Of Religious Violence Research Articles

Aristotle Meets Augustine in Fourteenth-Century Liège: Religious Violence in the Chronicon of Jean Hocsem

As William Cavanaugh has remarked, the scholarly notion of religion “should often be surrounded by scare quotes. Its flexibility and occasional nebulousness make evaluating its role in conceiving of, effecting, and justifying violence even more difficult. At the same time, it sticks around and remains a vital category of contemporary analysis. What if getting behind the Wars of Religion—the period to which Cavanaugh traces the emergence of his “myth of religious violence”—could plant the seeds for a new paradigm in understanding the relationship between religion and violence? In this article, I analyze the Chronicon of Jean Hocsem, a fourteenth-century canon from Liège. Untranslated into English and rarely written about, Hocsem’s text offers an unexpectedly political perspective on this question. Combining insights from Augustine’s City of God as well as Aristotle’s Politics and basing his ideas on his own experience of nearly constant conflict, Hocsem develops the idea that class antagonisms and human frailty make violence—especially political violence—inevitable. He takes this approach within a polity ruled by a prince-bishop, though one he would not have thought of as “religious”. Hocsem’s solutions are thus avowedly political. His pessimism about such questions leads to an emphasis on mitigating violence through the institution of proper socio-political structures. This reading of Hocsem and his politicizing of the question of violence opens new possibilities for scholars, further calling into question any easy relationship between the modern categories of “religion” and violence.

The myth of Muslim violence: Theorizing religion in the war on terror

Both inside and outside the academy, identifications of Islam as a terrorist threat have gained traction during the on-going War on Terror. William Cavanaugh’s conceptualization and critique of what he calls “the myth of religious violence” claims to offer a critique of these identifications. This critique has been influential across a variety of disciplines. In this article, I assess both his more philosophical-critical and his more theological-constructive accounts of religion to argue that Cavanaugh’s myth is, essentially, apologetics. Cavanaugh’s apologetics for the church camouflages the differential treatment of religions during the War on Terror. If it has been about a myth at all, then the War on Terror has been about the myth of Muslim violence. Christianity past and present has condoned and contributed to this very myth. What is needed, then, is a conception and a critique of “religion” that, in contrast to Cavanaugh’s analysis, can account for the significance of Christianity for the differential treatment of religions in the public square, both descriptively and prescriptively.

Speaking “religion” through a gender code: The discursive power and gendered-racial implications of the religious label

Drawing on the scholarship of Critical Religion, this article shows how the modern category “religion” operates through a gender code which upholds its discursive power and enables the production of religious—and therefore racial—hierarchies. Specifically, it argues that mentioning religion automatically makes gender present in discourse. Acknowledging religion as an inherently gendered category in this way gives further insight into the discursive power and functioning of the religious label. With the example of the Westphalian production of the “myth of religious violence” and the employment of “religion” in colonial contexts, I demonstrate how a gender code upholds and enables the discursive power of religion. Religion is both gendered (as part of the Western public/private binary) and gendering (in colonial contexts vis-à-vis non-Christian, non-White religions). Acknowledging the multiple ways in which religion is gendered and gendering, then, has important bearings on the analysis of religion’s racializing function which is upheld and aided by the gender code through which religion is spoken.

Kingdom of Heaven: The One State Solution and Western Military Intervention in the Holy Land

In this article I argue that in Kingdom of Heaven Ridley Scott creates historical analogies between Saladin's taking of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade, on the one hand, and the Israeli-Palestinian question and American-led ‘War on Terror’, on the other hand. I maintain that Scott pictures the one-state solution in which both the Israelis and the Palestinians can coexist peacefully as a feasible settlement. By presenting the idea of a shared Jerusalem under the Crusaders' rule in the past, Scott wittingly promotes through a contrived historical analogy to contemporary Western interventionism in the Middle East. Crucially, Scott goes beyond Samuel Huntington's essentialist views of Muslims. He provides variable representations of Muslim characters, fluctuating between characters that are superstitious, on the one hand, and characters that are capable of rational thinking, on the other hand. Nevertheless, Scott seems to be highly convinced about the myth of religious violence, as suggested by William Cavanaugh. This myth suggests that secular violence is rational and useful whereas religious violence is irrational and dangerous. Moreover, Scott proves to be swayed by the idea of the ‘just war’ according to which the use of force can be legitimate. In Kingdom of Heaven, Scott pictures the ongoing ‘War on Terror’ as an incarnation of earlier centuries' European (colonial) ‘civilising missions’ towards the ‘less-civilised’ nations.

Humanising the Dehumanised: Emotion and Being in the Violence of the Islamic State (IS): An Alternative Perspective

This paper considers the effect of violence on the emotions of IS fighters and the resultant consequences of those emotions as a factor in their choice to use violence. By interrogating the human aspect of the fighters, I am focusing not on religion but on human agency as a factor in the violence. In this regard, this paper is about reorienting the question about the violence of IS not as “religious” violence but as a response to how these fighters perceive what is happening to them and their homeland. It is about politicising the political, about the violence of the state and its coalition of killing as opposed to a consistent effort to frame the violence into an explanation of “extremist religious ideology.” This shift in analysis is significant because of the increasing harm that is caused by the rise in Islamophobia where all Muslims are considered “radical” and are dehumanised. This is by no means a new project; rather it reflects the ongoing project of distortion of and animosity toward Islam, the suspension of ethics and the naturalisation of war. It is about an advocacy for war by hegemonic powers and (puppet regimes) states against racialised groups in the name of defending liberal values. Furthermore, the myth of religious violence has served to advance the goals of power which have been used in domestic and foreign policy to marginalise and dehumanise Muslims and to portray the violence of the secular state as a justified intervention in order to protect Western civilisation and the secular subject.

“Weak Thought” in the Face of Religious Violence

Modern comprehension of religion and violence, particularly modern attitudes toward religious violence, is the main topic of this paper. Mainstream secularization theory states that religion triggers conflict, tension, oppression, violence, and even war. As a continuation of this theory, the “myth of religious violence” assumes that religion is intrinsically connected with terror. These two narratives provide no sufficient proof for their claim about the irrelevance of religion; nonetheless, these narratives are expressions of the human agent’s struggle in his/her search for meaning. Referring to Gianni Vattimo’s idea of weak thought (pensiero debole), this writing proposes a narrative that treats religious and spiritual dimensions of human identity as essential for human life, as a source of remarkable consolation and hope in enduring the terror of violence, and as an opening to the new transcendental dimension of the ultimate meaning of human life.

Media framing and the myth of religious violence: The othering of sikhs in The Times of India

ABSTRACTThis article employs theories of media framing to ‘the crisis in Punjab’ in 1983 and 1984. I argue that The Times of India frames Sikhs and the crisis in such a manner as to generate a stereotype of Sikhs as inherently violent, pre-modern and dangerous to the Indian state. Such a framing, I argue, mimics stereotypes of religion and violence critiqued by William Cavanaugh [2009. The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press.]. I employ Cavanaugh’s critical lens on the myth of religious violence to demonstrate that this framing of Sikhs is a tool of media and the state to justify illegitimate violence again Sikhs.

Aquinas and Hauerwas on the Religious and the Secular

Abstract This essay supports William Cavanaugh's thesis in The Myth of Religious Violence that the distinction between the “religious” and the “secular” is arbitrary. This essay also accepts the claim that this arbitrary distinction can be used to form unhelpful inversely-valued dichotomies for the sake of ideological or sectarian ends. However, the current essay seeks to show that this binary goes in the opposite direction as well. Sectarian outlooks of various kinds also postulate a strict and inversely valued dichotomy between the believing community and the world, where the former is the locus of truth and life and the latter, falsehood and death. Instead of this model of ethics, I commend an approach that upholds the prospect of concord between the believing community and the world, of the religious and the secular, even if these are somewhat inevitably arbitrary categories. In this approach, religious and civil loyalties are not pitted against each other, but rather exist on a continuum of provenance and perfection.

Were the Wars of Religion about Religion?

William Cavanaugh's The Myth of Religious Violence raises important questions about the role of religion in society. It challenges all-too-common misunderstandings about the relationship between religion and politics and, most valuably, warns against any assumption that religion is peculiarly prone to violence. This essay nevertheless takes issue with his attempt to disprove what he calls “the myth of religious violence” with evidence from the Wars of Religion in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Europe and his claim that “the story of these wars serves as a kind of creation myth for the modern state” (10). The essay emphasizes the importance of understanding the religious dimensions of early modern Europe's wars but also of recognizing that, in both historical and contemporary situations, religious motivations are best understood not as independent variables but rather as catalysts that could exacerbate-or relieve-tensions rooted in other sorts of divisions or quarrels.

William T. Cavanaugh and René Girard

This article examines the argument of William T. Cavanaugh’s The Myth of Religious Violence in the light of the mimetic theory of the French-American cultural theorist Rene Girard. Though the two projects are significantly different I argue for their mutual compatibility. Each author is “apologetic” for the Christian revelation, though the presence of theology in “The Myth .” is muted or implicit, as in Walter Benjamin’s parable of the puppet and the dwarf. I argue for four areas of specific convergence between Cavanaugh and Girard, arising from a shared Augustinian, “two Cities” suspicion of the state, and their resistance to the secularising marginalisation of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The notion of martyrdom as a “dramatic” performance is a further shared dimension. Finally, I argue that the apparent divergence of their approaches, between an anthropological thesis (Girard’s) and a historical one (Cavanaugh’s) is narrowed when we consider the later work of Girard and its examination of nineteenth century dynamics of escalation in warfare in his last book Battling to the End.

Introduction: The Inchoative Moment

Introduction: The Inchoative Moment

The Myth of Religious Violence. By William T. Cavanaugh

The Myth of Religious Violence. By William T. Cavanaugh

Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict – By William T. Cavanaugh

Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict – By William T. Cavanaugh

William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford and New York: OUP, 2009), pp. x + 285. $49.95.

William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford and New York: OUP, 2009), pp. x + 285. $49.95.

Symposium on William Cavanaugh's The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict

Symposium on William Cavanaugh's <i>The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict</i>

Violence: Religious, Theological, Ontological The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict by William T. Cavanaugh Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009

Violence may be productively understood as a secularized theological concept. Doing so challenges claims that secularism is necessary to prevent religious violence, and it also challenges claims for a Christian triumphalist alternative. William Cavanaugh’s embrace of such a triumphalism is called into question when his genealogical method is interrogated in light of the Foucaultian genealogical project.

The Myth of Religious Violence: An Interview with William Cavanaugh

The Myth of Religious Violence: An Interview with William Cavanaugh

Book Reviews: William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

Book Reviews: William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

The Myth of Religious Violence

The Myth of Religious Violence

The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict

The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict