Jenkins,
two wrongs don't make one right. Islam is a male dominated social and nondemocratic political system masquerading as a religion.
It spread quickly because gave the men the authority to control the women. It gave an excuse to grap the land of the christians and the jews. It's written for ever in their book. Christians are human too, but with a more likely possibility for compassion because the Gospels don't teach violence. The problem is that the great majority of today christians are the"pick and choose" type; they (except the Amish and other Anabaptists) do not take the Sermon of The Mount literally. They should not be called christians. But please, do not stand up ever for Islam.

Primitive people can and do always find an excuse to vent their frustration by projecting it on something other than themselves. The 5th Century monks found their nemesis in the person of a patriarch. There is no text in the New Testament that incites for persecuting the other, let alone eliminating him.
Judaism at some point in its early history practiced a sort of apartheid because it felt threatened by the “unclean” people living around them.
Islam is something totally different. It inherited the tribalism of the desert Arabs who had founded it yet to a certain extent replaced the tribe with the Ummah, the Muslim community. Their scripture froze that primitive type of tribalism with all of its negatives in stone, for all time and place. Its ideology glorifies and venerates those who eliminate the “other”. The other being whoever’s worldview is different than the viewer. In this case the origin of intolerance is “secular” but the sustainer and the driving force of its extreme forms is a religion embraced by over a billion people.

leafgreen wrote:

"I would agree. At some point, Christianity (or most of it anyway) abandoned much of the Providential perspective (although it seems to be alive and flourishing in fundamentalist communities in America today..."

But even with its Providential perspective modern American fundamentalism is still pretty nonviolent. Why is it not violent?

Who would Jesus kill?

Why do they target the Church alone? What about other religions? A Muslim cleric can marry four wives. He can have sex with others too by the process of easy divorce sanctioned by Islam. Today's paper gives the news of a Yoga guru:
Swami Nityananda arrested in Himachal
•
Buzz Up
• Share
o Twitter
o Delicious
o Myspace
o Digg
o Stumble Upon
o Facebook

Wed, Apr 21 05:22 PM
Controversial self-styled godman Swami Nityananda, who was absconding for over a month in the wake of an alleged sex scandal, was arrested on Wednesday in Solan in Himachal Pradesh.
Nityananda and four of his associates were arrested from a house in Mamlig village under Akri police station area in Solan District in a joint operation by policemen from Bangalore and Himachal Pradesh, Deputy Commissioner, Solan, Amar Singh Rathore said.
He said Nityananda, who is believed to have been living in the Solan village for the last one month, and his associates have been taken to Arki police station.
Bangalore Criminal Investigation Department, probing cases filed against Nityananda, said it had recently seized some documents and articles during a raid on his ashram at Bidadi, about 35 km from here.
During the raid by a 15-member CID team, some documents pertaining to the ashram, computers and its hardware had been taken away by police, which had also questioned several ashramites, including Nityananda's brother Nityeshwara.
Police were on the look out for Nityananda who had allegedly indulged in sleazy activities and a purported video footage, aired by regional TV channels, had showed him in a compromising position with a Tamil actress.
Tamil Nadu police had registered cases against Nityananda for various offences under IPC including rape. The cases are under investigation by Karnataka police, to whom they were transferred to.
Nityananda had announced that he had quit as the head of his ashram in Karnataka and associated trusts to lead a life of 'spiritual seclusion'.

I agree with enemyofthestate. Humans, in spite of the self-granted cognomen "sapiens," are a variety of ape, which goes a long way toward explaining both violence and religion. In essence, the human ape is pounding his chest at uncaring nature, making up fantastic tales in an attempt to deny his utter insignificance and frequently explodes in a gorilla-like fury against deviations from the conventional "wisdom," such as it is.

Humans are significant only to each other, and when this particular species of ape goes extinct, like all the species that preceded us, not another organism on earth will notice, or care. If anything, the other animals will breathe in blessed relief to see this vicious predator disappear. Good riddance to bad rubbish in nature's big recycling bin.

The author's conclusion reads like a non sequitur. He identifies the religious motivation toward violence that dominates recent human history, but then, in one sentence, blames secularism, without the slightest argument to defend his accusation. The type of religious honor he speaks of could be considered similar to the dreadful type of honor we see espoused in street gangs (respect is demanded above all). But just like those street gangs, we see how utterly mindless a value that "honor" is when it leads one to violence and murder simply because they feel disrespected (often by mere words). So if this is the secular connection the author wishes to make, then he must accept the correlation of religions to street gangs.

It should be obvious that religion's main and primary usefulness is to create an "in" group, a tribal group, which has rules of behavior which protect somewhat its members; while allowing the "in" group to kill, torture, rape, pillage, and generally be inhuman towards all not in the "in" group! The rest of religion's nonsense is just window-dressing and a sop to the human conscience!

One thing to note here is that the author looked at what is now the Eastern Orthodox church. This is the church based out of Constantinople (now in Turkey). It is not the catholic church based out of Rome, which staged their own wars including the Spanish inquisition and battles throughout Germany against the "separatists" today the basis of most protestant churches. I agree with the authors point that forces outside religion drove these leaders. Many stories within the new and old testaments detail the human elements that drove the violence. The 'King' of Israel Herod issued an order that all 2 year old and younger boys were to be killed and they were to protect his power just to name one of many examples. I can't imagine any 'modern' society getting away with such a barbarous act.

These two observations about religious violence strike the casual observer as profound and spot-on. It explains Christian violence both in the far past and the not-so-distant past (northern Ireland). Ironically, it also explains Muslim violence by describing it as pre-modern (isn't that what the author is saying?)

I would agree. At some point, Christianity (or most of it anyway) abandoned much of the Providential perspective (although it seems to be alive and flourishing in fundamentalist communities in America today) and the notion of honor killings is simply beyond the comprehension of most of us. But both flourish in areas where Islam is practiced.

My hope is that Islam somehow gets through this awful stage where God is conflated and confused with notions of order, providence and honor, and evolves into something else. Until it does, we are all subject to random episodes of pointless and cruel violence.
_____________________________

On the issue of order, I have to disagree (the basic notion of religion SHOULD be order, at least in a sense of values allocation). Otherwise a good post.

These two observations about religious violence strike the casual observer as profound and spot-on. It explains Christian violence both in the far past and the not-so-distant past (northern Ireland). Ironically, it also explains Muslim violence by describing it as pre-modern (isn't that what the author is saying?)

I would agree. At some point, Christianity (or most of it anyway) abandoned much of the Providential perspective (although it seems to be alive and flourishing in fundamentalist communities in America today) and the notion of honor killings is simply beyond the comprehension of most of us. But both flourish in areas where Islam is practiced.

My hope is that Islam somehow gets through this awful stage where God is conflated and confused with notions of order, providence and honor, and evolves into something else. Until it does, we are all subject to random episodes of pointless and cruel violence.

Secular ideas may play a part in religious violence, but that doesn't excuse the part religion plays. Rules about family honor, etc are codified in religious teaching and elevated to the point of being beyond question. I'm perfectly comfortable stating that secular ideas that lead to violence are wrong. Once those ideas get wrapped up in religious teaching, however, people start writing articles trying to excuse them.

I also fail to see how early Christian violence excuses modern day Muslim violence.

Religion in some shape or form is a starting point for any endeavor: I do not speak here of "established" or "organized" religion, but rather a basic faith that there are underlying laws of basic conduct and decency which are applicable in any society (the most commonly phrased one is the premise that killing is usually wrong). Without basic assumptions such as this in a society, we're really no better than the apes we supposedly descended from.

Yes, the title secular "roots" of religious violence is totally misleading. What the author is really getting at, I think, are the secular "goals" of religious "extremism."

You strip away the pre-modern rhetoric of religious fanatics in every religion, and look at what they want to accomplish, and its 100% all about modern-day temporal power, and 0% about God. God's really just a talking point.

I don't see how labeling this "Providential theory" or "honor" as "secular" ideas is justified, relevant, or in any way excusing the violence that arises from these beliefs.

Muslims definitely are not secularists since Allah as per the dictates of the koran demands that male Muslims dominate not only females but also the world in general by any means possible.

Before you call it Jesus' Wars maybe you should check if Catholicism is Christianity at all.

The last nation to try truly secular leadership was the USSR. Didn't work out so well for them.

Religion is a foundation block of civilization. You can’t have a civilization without it. And religion’s primary function has always been to control the Human male propensity for violence. Unfortunately, from time to time in all societies there have been religious leaders who used this control for bad ends.

Now on a tangent, this violence-controlling role also accounts for why the backbone of Christian churches has always been the support of the women in the community.

Posted by: ZZim
========================
Can't have a civilization without religion? Disagree on this point, though I agree with the rest.

I can envision a society based on reason and humanity, with no need of supernatural beings or mystical beliefs. Does such a utopia exist? Not yet, but that doesn't preclude the possibility.

we all should spread non dualism as the universal dogma...devoid of any named god or messenger prophet this unity in cosmic diversity takes all humanity to divinity without any man made barriers..even atheists must live in harmony accepting this line of philosophy

@yeal9: Don't forget the 12 million Gypsies, Jew, Slavs, gays, and others killed in the oh-so-christian Nazi Holocaust. Or the totally-christian pogroms against Jews. Or the calls for genocide of gentiles in the Old Testament.

Personally, I think we need to put the Monophysite Liberation Front on the terrorist watch list.

I think violence is in the human DNA.

Posted by: EnemyOfTheState
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Of course it is.

Religion is a foundation block of civilization. You can’t have a civilization without it. And religion’s primary function has always been to control the Human male propensity for violence. Unfortunately, from time to time in all societies there have been religious leaders who used this control for bad ends.

Now on a tangent, this violence-controlling role also accounts for why the backbone of Christian churches has always been the support of the women in the community.

In both cases, the problem is not the religion itself, but the secular ideas that become attached to it.
Horse hockey, the problem is religion.

I think violence is in the human DNA. When you consider that we share about 95-percent of our genetic code with chimpanzees, one of the most aggressive and, at times, gratuitously violent primates on the planet, it begins to make sense.

Given that lineage, the only thing left for the uniquely self-aware cousin of the chimp is to dress up the violent impulses with religion to make it more palatable.

Anyone expressing an absolute certainty regarding an untestable "truth" is far more likely to go to extremes than is a skeptic who questions certitude itself.

If I were going to wage war, I'd want an entire army of true believers who were absolutely certain that they were going to live forever in heaven, even (or especially) if they were killed in battle.

Moral relativists make lousy warriors.

Religion and religious beliefs are part of what constitute human societies. Religion often unifies those societies from within and is used as the basis for social violence against those outside a society.

In the book "The Stillborn God", Mark Lilla proposes that the people in many societies orient themselves to their world through their relationship to god. To cite secular roots seems to miss the point.

Philip Jenkins

You wrote, "When we look at Christian violence in bygone years, or Muslim extremism today, we should look less at the scriptures of the particular faith, and more at the society in which believers live."

Maybe we need look no farther than human nature.

With "human nature" being what it is, it seems as if the only way to "eradicate" violence would be to have the most repressive police state even beyond imagining, even then it would only be contained.

Most, if not all, human societies came into being thru violence, most by inflicting it and some by weathering it.

If it were not for the "violence" of the USA and it's allies during WWII, the world would probably be a much different place than it is now, if it even still existed, is this not a "fact"?

The world is a mess and if anyone thinks "violence" is the only thing not quite right is rather short-sighted.

See you all in the Kingdom.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

'Secular roots of religious violence' is a highly misleading introductory lead. It seems more accurate to portray the problem as the inherent violence imbedded in human nature and human society.

Trying to grapple with the insoluable conundrum below was probably enough to give anyone a splitting headache - arguably the most fundamentally illogical proposal in all of human history.

'By modern standards, the issues at stake in the 5th century seem bafflingly technical. All participants agreed that Christ was both fully God and fully Man, and all that remained was to find a formula that did not undermine either side of the equation. But between 430 and 630, a series of Jesus Wars tore the Christian world asunder, in an era of coups and rebellions, urban riots and pogroms, beheadings and burnings.'

In any event, the Jesus Wars apparently failed to result in any kind of consensus, much less the universal adoption of a peace-loving Jesus as the central religious role model - and Christianity went on to slaughter millions that disagreed with this core nuevo-theistic JesusGod point of view - heretics, apostates and assorted non-believers of every kind fell to the sword, the axe, the stake, and various creative mechanisms of torture.

'Secular' is what happens when humans decide to try and keep religion at arms length for a change. In other words, a human effort that is based on folks finally becoming wise to their own flawed and easily deluded nature.

Humans will remain violent with or without religion, until they manage to either evolve beyond it or die trying.