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Chapter Seven - The Problem of Violent Scriptures – A Higher Hermenuetic

from PART FOUR - TOWARDS A SOLUTION

Clinton Bennett
Affiliation:
SUNY at New Paltz
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Summary

While the three case studies suggested that religion was not a major factor in causing those conflicts, they did show how religion was used to fuel animosity. In each situation, religion was also involved as a marker of identity. Thus, even if religion was not used to justify violence, what outsiders see is religious people acting violently. If religious traditions are so unambiguously committed to peace and reconciliation, why do religious people find it so easy to fight each other? My survey of the conflicts suggested that religious texts were not widely cited to motivate or encourage violence. Qur'anic texts were cited in Bosnia and Palestine to justify self-defense, while biblical texts played a part in the Northern Irish and Israeli contexts. The Ulster Scots and Israeli Jews found justification for their policies vis-a-vis the ‘Other’ in the biblical narrative of conquering and purifying a promised land. Settlements in the West Bank were inspired by the conviction that Jews must re-occupy the whole of their promised land, although it is difficult to identify specific verses that support this view. Fundamentalist Christians think that an escalation of conflict in the Middle East fulfils biblical predictions and so express no interest in peace-making in that region. Some Muslims who aided the Bosnian and Palestinian causes, who may also have fought in Afghanistan and Chechnya, see these conflicts as part of a wider jihad against the whole non-Muslim world. This will be explored below.

Type
Chapter
Information
In Search of Solutions
The Problem of Religion and Conflict
, pp. 192 - 216
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2009

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