Here is my discussion questions and answers for Sep 17th Peace & Conflict Resolution class. Some of you may feel interesting to read.
1) Why does religion accept the existence of violence or even seem to support violence?
According to the facts from the past decade, religious terrorism is growing with a unbelievably high speed. It can almost be considered as a kind of power regarding the size of it. To be regarded as a power is the major purpose of the organizers of the religious terrorism. Some terrorist leaders do not consider their activities as terrorism but militant (Juergensmeyer, 9). This can explain their willingness to have equal power as main world militants. Usually, a religion’s action is decided by elites and leaders. If these people want to gain power through violence, terrorism will be practiced right after.
2) Why is a divine mandate for destruction accepted with such certainty by some believers (Juergensmeyer, 7)?
In the answer of the first question, I mentioned that the decision makers are always elites and leaders who have large influence on mass. The influence will be even larger if the mass is under structural violence for a long time. The structural violence can be economics pressure, religion dignity and so on. Thus violence becomes the efficient way of them to gather global awareness. To some extent, they consider terrorism as a holy revolution which is justified.
3) How do religions make the justification of violence easy?
According to Eller, there are three ways which can give the right to violence. First, which I think is the most important is that putting the violence under the name of God. If so, everything that is considered as wrong before can be accepted easily without guilty. Or will be committed with proud. Do not follow the order will be seen as against God. For example, “A Muslim is one who attains peace by submitting to the will of God (Eller, 164; Allah). Second, categorizing “us” and “they”. People can easily accept anything does not connect with themselves and commit violence on others who are categorized as alien. Usually, the “us” are the believers of the same religion and “they” are nonbelievers or believers of the other opposite religion. Third, building up violence accepted conditions which put the spiritual force as good force against the evil one.
4) Religious violence in Middle East is most well known nowadays, westerners are always feeling hard to understand the thoughts of suicide bombers. What part in their religion supports their action?
Some part of their religion leads them to think their self-sacrifice is holy. The self-sacrifice of God in the person of Jesus is the best example many people imitate. The sacrifice is a way to protect the community from violence. It prove the believer not just evince a cause but prove the cause(Eller, 173) To die for their life’s belief.
