Religion — impetus for war and conflict

Religion — impetus for war and conflict Featured

Lito Monico C. Lorenzana
LML Polettiques
22 November 2023
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THE fourth part of my series on the Palestinian-Israel conflict ("Toward a tragic prognosis," The Manila Times, Nov. 8, 2023) ended up with a statement: "The two-state solution was a formula for disaster for the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Ishmael. Which brings us to the culprit of this wicked problem. Religion." This elicited several comments, two of which were thought-provoking and central to this article by readers. From Sultan Ali Mindalano of Mindanao: "The Culprit is the vested and twisted interpretation of extremists to the words of Allah/Yahweh/God." And from Ley Leyretana Sr. of Baltimore, USA, who looked at the column from a different angle, "...careful [of] its sensitivity ... don't be like Rushdie ... although it's about time someone writes about religion..."

Leyretana was cautioning me about Salman Rushdie, an Indian-British novelist who authored the controversial book "Satanic Verses" (Viking Penguin, 1988, UK), a thematically complex novel, purely fictitious, that the Muslim world considered to be blasphemous, earning for it a fatwa from Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, calling for the assassination of the author and his publishers.

We depart from the current Hamas-Israel madness, which is now on its seventh week of blood, gore and tears, and attempt to expand our hypothesis on the role of religion in geopolitical dynamics.

For purposes of discussion, three major global religions are selected as their communities constitute more than 60 percent of the world's believers. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, founded in that order, are the three Abrahamic religions that historically trace their doctrine on monotheism from their common prophet Abraham: Judaism and Christianity through his son Isaac, and Islam through his son Ishmael.

Abrahamic religions and violence

Perhaps havoc and violence were the underpinnings of Judaism. This was palpable when Yahweh, the God of Abraham, who, to test the faith of a mere mortal, required the slaughter and sacrifice of a child, Isaac. Offhand, this suggests a selfish, bloodthirsty God with a streak of cruelty. Or, perchance, this is an allegory to the coming of the chosen one farther down the line.

From the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Torah), when Yahweh, the God of Moses, called forth his people out of slavery in Egypt and back to the lands promised to Abraham's seeds, he directed them to kill all the Canaanite clans who were living in the land. The book of Joshua recounts the killing of every man, woman and child. This was not only a God perceived to be cruel but one who transgresses his own moral dictates. This episode of divine genocide has become a template for the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Israel in the current Palestinian problem.

Judaism was marked with religious wars, aggressions and deprivations upon the express direction of Yahweh, from their enslavement in Egypt for 400 years to the exodus and wandering in the desert for 40 years (circa the 13th century BCE) to their subsequent Babylonian exile; the Roman-Jewish wars in the 1st and 2nd centuries; and eventually to the Jewish Diaspora, the dispersion of the Jews outside of their homeland. Throughout history, Jews faced antisemitism and pogroms, violence, forced conversions, and expulsions owing to their religious beliefs. But the greatest of these was the Holocaust and the "final solution," the elimination of millions of Jews in Nazi Germany, which prompted the creation of Israel.

Christianity

Christianity traces its beginning in Judea from the Nazarene Jesus' time as a Judaic sect. Christians believe in Jesus as the Son of God, whose coming as the Messiah was foretold in the Hebrew Bible, thus establishing the nexus of the two religions. But the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath, whereas the God of the New Testament is a God of love. And He sent his only son to die on the cross and redeem mankind from its sins. His resurrection was the solid foundation of Christianity. Yet in the name of Yahweh, God and Allah — and the religions that emanated from them — their adherents over the millennia have been in a permanent state of belligerence.

The first major Christian-Muslim conflicts came with the Crusades, which lasted from the 11th to the 13th centuries. These were the Middle Ages military campaigns launched by Christian kingdoms with the blessing of the powerful central structure of Christianity, the papacy, with the purpose of wresting control of the Holy Land from Islam, focusing on Jerusalem, claimed by the three Abrahamic religions.

And on the Fourth Crusade, in April of 1204, the papacy allowed the sacking of Constantinople and the massacre of the Byzantine Christians, which led to the permanent alienation of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches.

Islam

This third of the Abrahamic religion was founded in Mecca in the 7th century by Muhammad, an illiterate businessman, the last and final prophet, when he started receiving revelations from Allah through the Angel Gabriel for 23 years. It may be noted that in the Quran, the books considered to be part of the revelations by Allah, mentioned the Torah (Tawrat), the Psalms of David (Zabur), and the Gospel (Injil) and, more importantly, referred to the two main characters of these revealed books, Moses and Jesus (Isa), as prophets. Islam spread primarily through military conquests by Muhammad the warlord and the appeal of the religion's message of monotheism, social justice and equality for all believers through the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe, including Spain.

Among Muslims, Allah is depicted as merciful and compassionate, but there are verses in the Quran that describe him in another light. In chapter 5, verse 95, the Quran describes the laws on the Pilgrimage to Mecca and that every devout Muslim must undertake at least once in one's life. But Allah brooks no transgressions as "Allah will take vengeance on him, Allah is all-mighty, vengeful."

In Surah- Ma'idah (5:38): "And the thief, male or female, cut off his or her hand as a penalty for what they have earned, as an exemplary punishment from Allah. And Allah is Exalted in Might and Wise."

And in Surah Al-Anfal (8:12): "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip."

And the internecine upheavals within Islam itself are no less serious and deadly. Of note is the Sunni-Shia sectarian enmity precipitated by questions of succession harking back centuries as to where the rightful leadership mantle of the Muslim Caliphate falls after the death of Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE. Sunnis believed that leadership should be based on consensus, while Shias believed that it should be passed on down through the family lineage of Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law.

But the more worrisome development is the rise of extremist Islamic groups — Hamas, Hezbollah, IS, etc. —that have captured the universal interpretation of Islam, threatening radical preponderance, making them palatable to their advocates. Suicide bombing, for one, is a totally faith-based act for the furtherance of political and religious aims.

All these are antecedents to Judaism, Christianity, and Islamic intolerance and antagonisms over the millennia, reinforcing the thesis that these are the impetus for more violence and wars.000
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