Religion and violence

Violence in the name of religion or belief is not a feature exclusive to a specific religion. For the history of religions shows us that followers of many religions have also justified the acts of violence that they have perpetrated against others as being motivated by religion or as representing their completion of a mission of divine origin. Jews, Christians and Muslims, for example, have used either specific passages from their scriptures, which, they claim, demanded of them that they treat those with different beliefs violently if necessary, or sometimes random interpretations of those texts, to justify their actions. And where such texts, or an interpretation of them, did not provide just cause for acts of violence, they were justified as having allegedly been assignments from a heavenly or divine source.

In other cases, followers of one and the same religion have fought against each other because one group has claimed that the other did not interpret or practise their religion in the manner intended. Consequently, masses of people have been subjected to violence in the name of religion. At the same time, however, each of the three religions and their respective scriptures claim to contain peaceful elements, maintaining that a true Jew, Christian or Muslim is a peaceful person and one capable of communication, for his religion teaches him how to treat his fellow man and to respect and accept him for what he is. If, on the one hand, we are to believe that this assertion is true, how, then, on the other, are violence or dialogue to be justified in many societies today?

This theme is the subject of a treatise based on texts prepared by Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, a contemporary politician and legal expert from Sudan, and the Rum Orthodox bishop and legal expert, Georges Khodr from Lebanon

Project operator: Proto-Exarchos Alexius Chehadeh, M.A.
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