1 00:00:00,360 --> 00:00:05,040 There's a widespread belief, amounting almost to a cultural assumption in many influential circles, 2 00:00:05,040 --> 00:00:08,960 that the songs to religion and religious difference an inherent tendency to violence, 3 00:00:10,080 --> 00:00:17,880 an extreme expression that encapsulates this and much else is Christopher Hitchens subtitle to the American publication of his book, God Is Not Great. 4 00:00:18,180 --> 00:00:21,210 The subtitle is How Religion Poisons Everything. 5 00:00:22,020 --> 00:00:26,280 And many more examples could be cited. They are indeed cyberbullying. 6 00:00:27,180 --> 00:00:31,740 Bill Kavanagh's book, The Myth of Religious Violence. So I'd like to read them. 7 00:00:32,400 --> 00:00:37,260 The assumption also carries with it the thought that religion is predominant or even unique in 8 00:00:37,260 --> 00:00:42,730 embodying the tendency to violence in the case of terrorism and certain forms of outright warfare. 9 00:00:42,820 --> 00:00:49,290 Included history of late 20th century and early 21st centuries and a great deal of terrorism that is widely and 10 00:00:49,290 --> 00:00:55,590 understandably viewed as principally religiously inspired and in fact principally inspired by one specific religion. 11 00:00:56,550 --> 00:00:58,890 So that the expressions Islamic terrorism, 12 00:00:58,890 --> 00:01:05,250 the militant Islamic terrorism and many other similar titles have become familiar coinage in the 21st century, 13 00:01:05,610 --> 00:01:10,170 especially in the discourse and public imagination of citizens in Western democracies. 14 00:01:10,710 --> 00:01:19,080 The attacks of September 11, 2001, plus the subsequent atrocities most recently the Sri Lankan tragedy have contributed to producing 15 00:01:19,080 --> 00:01:24,420 or popularising this picture of religious violence as particularly concentrated upon Muslim faith. 16 00:01:24,860 --> 00:01:31,350 This focus is already loaded with a specific version of the assumption about religion that I want to subject to critical examination. 17 00:01:32,130 --> 00:01:39,030 I'll begin, first of all, with the assumption that religion is somehow inherently and perhaps uniquely or distinctively prone to violence, 18 00:01:39,330 --> 00:01:42,840 and then examine the way this supposed tendency is linked to terrorist actions. 19 00:01:43,440 --> 00:01:49,260 Later, I will discuss the weaker thesis that, as a matter of fact, religion has on occasion been the cause of terrorism. 20 00:01:49,710 --> 00:01:53,820 Before moving on to the claim that even when religion is not a cause of terrorist acts, 21 00:01:54,180 --> 00:02:01,920 religious motivation is characteristically and uniquely responsible for some distinctive and unwelcome features of terrorist campaigns. 22 00:02:02,370 --> 00:02:08,309 This line of thesis is, in many respects, an echo of the comment long ago by that very eminent religious thinker, 23 00:02:08,310 --> 00:02:15,570 Blaise Pascal, who said Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. 24 00:02:16,110 --> 00:02:16,830 End of quote. 25 00:02:17,280 --> 00:02:25,410 Pascal's comments show clearly, but the thesis of some of the wider assumptions are not restricted to the non-religious or the anti-religious. 26 00:02:26,730 --> 00:02:32,790 Religion and violence. First of all, some words about Kavanaugh's critique the assumption that some sort of distinct, evil, 27 00:02:32,790 --> 00:02:37,169 intrinsic link between religion and violence and the implications thereof for 28 00:02:37,170 --> 00:02:40,979 such issues of terrorism have started to come under scrutiny in recent years, 29 00:02:40,980 --> 00:02:47,790 most radically in William Kavanaugh's writings, culminating in his important book, The Myth of Religious Violence. 30 00:02:48,540 --> 00:02:54,179 I really have to admit a long discussion of the difficulties of defining religion and the details 31 00:02:54,180 --> 00:02:58,890 of Bill Kavanaugh's response to these difficulties by rejecting the concept of religion. 32 00:02:59,400 --> 00:03:06,360 He sees that the concept of religion in his book as a sort of pseudo concept developed only after the Enlightenment, 33 00:03:06,360 --> 00:03:16,020 which characterises religion as a phenomenon separate from the rest of life, and I syllable as the often inherent cause of violence against this. 34 00:03:16,380 --> 00:03:18,990 I argue, though I won't repeat the arguments here, 35 00:03:19,290 --> 00:03:26,069 that his historical claim about the late emergence claims about the late emergence of the concept of false but abandoning the 36 00:03:26,070 --> 00:03:32,580 concept and hence showing the incoherence of the violence claims is unwarranted in spite of the real difficulties of definition. 37 00:03:33,300 --> 00:03:37,530 Yet even where the concept of religion of late addition to our vocabulary and even a 38 00:03:37,680 --> 00:03:43,139 construction used for various socio political purposes inimical to particular faces, 39 00:03:43,140 --> 00:03:49,770 Kavanaugh believes it wouldn't follow and fails to make out anything interesting and even valuable for contemporary discourse. 40 00:03:50,280 --> 00:03:55,080 I suppose the concept of virtual reality is unknown before the 20th century 41 00:03:55,380 --> 00:03:59,160 and may even have been coined with a dangerous bias against actual reality, 42 00:03:59,490 --> 00:04:08,219 which should give us pause. Even so, the concept marks a significant phenomenon in our real lives that can't be ignored and has obvious utility 43 00:04:08,220 --> 00:04:14,130 for analysing and discussing new technical and social developments and may even illuminate past realities. 44 00:04:14,160 --> 00:04:20,190 Indeed, I argue that it's possible to proceed with investigation of claims about religion's role in violence, 45 00:04:20,520 --> 00:04:25,380 using some paradigms and forms of what I call flexible social focal meaning. 46 00:04:25,920 --> 00:04:31,080 In that investigation, though, I won't develop what I mean by focal meaning. 47 00:04:31,710 --> 00:04:34,320 I shall take Kavanaugh's critique from. 48 00:04:34,320 --> 00:04:40,950 It could take the insight contextual from his conceptual pessimism that religion cannot in general be considered as a factor in life. 49 00:04:41,160 --> 00:04:45,360 Quite isolated from a range of other human commitments and identifications, 50 00:04:45,690 --> 00:04:50,820 such as those due to political, social, sexual, racial and biological outlooks. 51 00:04:51,540 --> 00:04:59,730 To take a terrorist to take the terrorist activities. Sorry section called how a focus on religious motivation obscures complex realities. 52 00:05:00,180 --> 00:05:06,070 To take the terrorist activities of contemporary Islamic fundamentalists are simply manifestations of religion, for instance, 53 00:05:06,490 --> 00:05:12,970 is to ignore the way that their religious commitments complement and intersect with political conflict and grievances. 54 00:05:13,270 --> 00:05:17,739 That would make perfect sense to non-religious people if only they took the trouble to examine 55 00:05:17,740 --> 00:05:22,150 them without the blinkered conviction that the cause of the violence is wholly religious. 56 00:05:22,870 --> 00:05:25,180 One has made such an examination as Robert Pipe, 57 00:05:25,570 --> 00:05:32,469 who has argued that close attention to the motives and backgrounds of suicide bombers from 1980 to 2003. 58 00:05:32,470 --> 00:05:36,880 A total of 315 attacks, excluding those commissioned by states, 59 00:05:37,390 --> 00:05:43,180 strongly suggest that religion was seen at any rate, a seldom a significant factor in motivations. 60 00:05:43,990 --> 00:05:51,340 Pipe. Pipe was more recently upgraded this database and is now examined 2000 cases of suicide bombing with similar conclusions. 61 00:05:51,850 --> 00:05:55,330 He sums up his initial findings as follows The data. 62 00:05:55,810 --> 00:06:02,890 The data shows that there is little connection between suicide, terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism or any one of the world religions. 63 00:06:03,280 --> 00:06:10,329 Rather. But nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal to compel modern 64 00:06:10,330 --> 00:06:15,250 democracies to withdraw military forces from territories that the terrorists considered like their homeland. 65 00:06:15,730 --> 00:06:17,440 Religion is rarely the root cause, 66 00:06:17,680 --> 00:06:25,509 although it's often used as a tool by terrorist organisations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective, 67 00:06:25,510 --> 00:06:29,770 unquote. Inevitably, paperwork and methodology have come under criticism, 68 00:06:30,040 --> 00:06:36,340 especially his strong claims about the unique role of foreign intervention and occupation in provoking terrorist attacks. 69 00:06:36,880 --> 00:06:41,590 Nonetheless, these basic claims about the relatively slight or secondary nature of the religious 70 00:06:41,590 --> 00:06:46,840 motivation in most suicide bombings examine compared to perfectly earthly motivation, 71 00:06:47,230 --> 00:06:53,140 give serious thought to food for thought and any resort to religion as a leading cause of terrorist acts. 72 00:06:53,800 --> 00:06:59,020 Similarly, scepticism about prevailing views regarding the predominant role of religious faith in generating 73 00:06:59,290 --> 00:07:04,210 contemporary suicide bombing and terrorism has been expressed by the anthropologist Scott Atran, 74 00:07:04,840 --> 00:07:12,550 who says in his book Talking to the Enemy, that his extensive investigations, including many interviews with terrorists themselves, show that, quote, 75 00:07:12,850 --> 00:07:19,360 Islam and religious ideology per say are the principal causes of suicide bombing and terror in today's world. 76 00:07:19,360 --> 00:07:22,510 And quote, Atran, who is himself an avowed atheist, 77 00:07:23,080 --> 00:07:29,860 thinks that the more important factors are bound up with the sense of identification with a peer group who are who have developed 78 00:07:29,860 --> 00:07:36,430 strong feelings of outrage at what they see as examples of cultural and political domination over those with whom they identify. 79 00:07:36,940 --> 00:07:43,780 Atran and other investigators have often remarked on how superficial the understanding of any version of Islamic religion is, 80 00:07:43,780 --> 00:07:47,260 with most of the young men drawn to the violent struggle called jihad. 81 00:07:48,010 --> 00:07:52,479 This superficiality has been borne out in examinations of the views of many Western born 82 00:07:52,480 --> 00:07:58,030 recruits to icis in the terrorist activities of this appalling group in Syria and Iraq. 83 00:07:58,510 --> 00:08:05,200 A study of U.S. study of ISIS volunteers who returned to their original Western countries was carried out for 84 00:08:05,200 --> 00:08:11,110 the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism in 2017 and found that despite claiming to protect Muslims, 85 00:08:11,470 --> 00:08:17,230 most of the returned fighters were novices in their religion and some did not know even how to pray properly. 86 00:08:17,920 --> 00:08:18,250 Study. 87 00:08:18,280 --> 00:08:26,080 But Professor Hamad El-Sayed of Manchester Metropolitan University and terrorism expert Richard Barrett found that most of the would be jihadists. 88 00:08:26,320 --> 00:08:32,980 Quite like any basic understanding of the true meaning of jihad or even of the Islamic faith itself. 89 00:08:33,740 --> 00:08:42,240 In quote, these studies suggest at least four things that the focus on religion supposed special tendency toward violence tends to obscure. 90 00:08:42,730 --> 00:08:47,320 One, religions have played no significant part in many extreme outbreaks of violence, 91 00:08:47,770 --> 00:08:52,480 surely obvious that there have been many dreadful outbreaks of unjustified violence or terrorism. 92 00:08:52,900 --> 00:08:58,150 The causal motivational origins of which have nothing to do with religion Pol Pot, 93 00:08:58,150 --> 00:09:02,800 Mao, Hitler and Stalin in our own era were responsible for staggering massacres, 94 00:09:03,070 --> 00:09:10,330 most of them palpably terrorist, by my definition, but cannot be attributed to their authors religious inclinations or that of their followers. 95 00:09:11,080 --> 00:09:14,900 Other ideologies, including democratic ones, can play a significant role. 96 00:09:14,950 --> 00:09:21,010 Second point other ideologies, including credit ones, can play a significant role in promoting violence. 97 00:09:21,700 --> 00:09:26,800 Not only are there many outbreaks of political and other forms of violence that have little or nothing to do with religion. 98 00:09:27,220 --> 00:09:31,000 But some of the conflicts cited above show. Non-religious worldviews. 99 00:09:31,000 --> 00:09:36,580 Ideological outlooks. What roles calls comprehensive doctrines are sometimes themselves. 100 00:09:36,610 --> 00:09:41,980 Plausible candidates for playing an important role in causing or motivating widespread violence. 101 00:09:42,550 --> 00:09:47,770 They are often exempted from the odium put upon religious motivations in connection with violence and terrorism. 102 00:09:48,280 --> 00:09:56,530 Most recently, of course, the shocking slaughter of 50 people in two Muslim mosques in New Zealand by a right wing neo-Nazi nationalist Australian, 103 00:09:56,530 --> 00:10:03,140 of course, has tended to redress the balance. A balance that should have been already tilted away from religion. 104 00:10:03,530 --> 00:10:09,800 Apply such other massacres motivated by neo-Nazi ideology such as that of Anders Breivik in Norway. 105 00:10:10,620 --> 00:10:18,719 Even those who would make the bombings of German and Japanese cities culminating in the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were terrorist, 106 00:10:18,720 --> 00:10:23,460 as I would do not talk of democratic terrorism or democratic extremism, 107 00:10:23,940 --> 00:10:28,590 even though the defence of democracy and its values was an element in the motivation of the attacks. 108 00:10:29,280 --> 00:10:34,079 By contrast, at the height of the Northern Irish troubles, there was a tendency to ignore the economic, 109 00:10:34,080 --> 00:10:41,610 imperialist and nationalist aspects behind the conflict and speak exclusively of Catholic terrorism or Protestant terrorism. 110 00:10:42,120 --> 00:10:47,640 As for the contemporary relevance of certain forms of democratic ideology to extreme political violence, 111 00:10:47,940 --> 00:10:54,989 we could cite the neocon project of bringing democracy to the Middle East that played a part in the violent and I think, 112 00:10:54,990 --> 00:10:57,750 palpably unjustified invasion of Iraq. 113 00:10:58,380 --> 00:11:04,680 Nor should we ignore the Democratic rhetoric and rhetoric of defending our liberties that surrounds the war on terror and war that 114 00:11:04,680 --> 00:11:11,910 includes the resort to torture and drone attacks on Pakistan and Afghanistan and elsewhere which have killed so many innocent people. 115 00:11:12,210 --> 00:11:20,280 As to come close to what I have called neo terrorism and even on some occasions direct terrorism, free the focus on religion, 116 00:11:20,640 --> 00:11:26,280 constitutional mandate and specific causes of conflict, even where they are not specifically ideological. 117 00:11:26,820 --> 00:11:33,959 Quite apart from obscuring the role of non-religious outlooks in the outbreak of terrorism, the focus on religion as a major cause of wars, 118 00:11:33,960 --> 00:11:39,930 terrorism and other forms of political violence obscures many of the more mundane and specific causes 119 00:11:40,260 --> 00:11:45,660 of conflict that political leaders and many of the rest of us find inconvenient to acknowledge. 120 00:11:46,230 --> 00:11:49,260 Such grievances might be relatively independent of ideology. 121 00:11:49,650 --> 00:11:54,270 This is true even in those instances where there are issues of religion regularly invoked by 122 00:11:54,270 --> 00:11:59,010 the leaders of the campaigns of violence and used to some degree to motivate their followers. 123 00:11:59,520 --> 00:12:07,710 Osama bin Laden's various diatribes, referring to holy duties and caliphate, also contain numerous claims about straightforward political grievances, 124 00:12:08,130 --> 00:12:14,490 such as Israel's occupation of Palestinian land, Israeli military policing and political persecution. 125 00:12:14,490 --> 00:12:16,920 As he thought of Palestinian people, 126 00:12:17,340 --> 00:12:25,140 claims about past and present Western support for Middle Eastern dictatorships and Western exploitation of Middle Eastern assets such as oil. 127 00:12:25,590 --> 00:12:30,000 The United States historic deployment of troops throughout our lands and more recently, 128 00:12:30,270 --> 00:12:36,179 the US led invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan is a fascinating example of the way evocations of 129 00:12:36,180 --> 00:12:41,520 religious explanations can come to dominate and distort our understanding of violent outbreaks. 130 00:12:41,520 --> 00:12:51,450 And obscure and thereby obscure specific political motivation is to be found in Peter Wilson's recent huge book, A History of the 30 Years War. 131 00:12:52,020 --> 00:13:00,390 Wilson rejects that. Wilson argues that this war so often invoked as the are typical of religious war, 132 00:13:00,630 --> 00:13:08,040 the duration of which was caused by religious fanaticism was, quote, not primarily a religious war at all, unquote. 133 00:13:08,550 --> 00:13:12,870 There were, of course, religious elements which probably have been otherwise in 17th century Europe, 134 00:13:13,230 --> 00:13:18,420 where Christian faith was an aspect of life integrated to varying degrees with other central aspects. 135 00:13:18,900 --> 00:13:26,490 But most contemporary observers, quote, spoke of imperial Bavarian Swedish, although in truth not Catholic or Protestant. 136 00:13:27,060 --> 00:13:36,050 The war indeed began with a somewhat religious episode. The famous defenestration, but its real cause, with some ferocity and duration, were not due, 137 00:13:36,090 --> 00:13:41,910 argues Wilson, to religious fanaticism but dynastic ambition and political fissure. 138 00:13:44,900 --> 00:13:49,820 They don't know what the different installation of. Some do it. 139 00:13:49,840 --> 00:13:54,470 This is my amusing joke I was going to leave out. But I can't. I'm warning you, it's a joke. 140 00:13:54,520 --> 00:14:01,450 So you go to a different abstraction occurred in Prague in 1617, when three imperial officials, Catholics, 141 00:14:01,450 --> 00:14:11,080 all were flung out of a window 50 feet above the ground by a group of armed Protestants angry at the Catholic Hapsburg rule in the Holy Roman Empire. 142 00:14:11,620 --> 00:14:19,060 On one popular, though probably sadly apocryphal account, they fell calling on the Virgin Mary for help. 143 00:14:19,600 --> 00:14:27,820 Amazingly, they escaped death from this huge shot by falling in a dummy and survived to warn the emperor of his disquiet. 144 00:14:28,780 --> 00:14:34,600 I suspect this surprising event will fill many in the audience with amusement rather than the Dundee pub, 145 00:14:35,020 --> 00:14:40,960 rather than a respect for the efficacy of prayer. I will only remark that the two reactions are not incompatible. 146 00:14:41,560 --> 00:14:47,920 God may very well have something like a sense of humour and a robust, robust appreciation of the ridiculous. 147 00:14:48,330 --> 00:14:54,610 Indeed, I think he has, as one review of the book, summarised the argument about the causes of the length of the conflict. 148 00:14:55,000 --> 00:14:59,889 The Empire's hundreds of small territories were cash poor to fight so assumed 149 00:14:59,890 --> 00:15:04,840 impossible death debts adulterated their coinages and triggered a ruinous inflation. 150 00:15:05,110 --> 00:15:13,570 Unpaid armies could neither be for blood supply. Georgia's famine for excess remained in the field, nourished on plunder rather than religion. 151 00:15:14,690 --> 00:15:18,350 Religions are number for all. Religions are a very diverse phenomenon. 152 00:15:19,700 --> 00:15:27,380 Simple credos about a strong connection of religion with war and terrorism ignore too many distinctions between and within religions themselves. 153 00:15:27,920 --> 00:15:32,360 There are and have been all sorts of different religions with a great many different practices, 154 00:15:32,360 --> 00:15:35,660 ethical commitments and changes over the course of their histories. 155 00:15:36,020 --> 00:15:42,380 It may well be that some religions or some versions of the same religion are prone to spur their adherents towards violence, 156 00:15:42,770 --> 00:15:46,790 where other religions or other versions of the same religion have no such tendency. 157 00:15:47,270 --> 00:15:53,000 This is an issue that needs to be resolved by detailed, historical and sociological investigations. 158 00:15:53,600 --> 00:15:57,050 Loose talk about Islamic terrorism needs just such attention. 159 00:15:57,500 --> 00:16:04,430 But even if it could be shown that versions of Islam, such as Osama bin Laden's or even more plausibly that of the ISIS militants, 160 00:16:04,910 --> 00:16:08,720 had an inherent commitment to unjustified violence, including terrorism. 161 00:16:09,170 --> 00:16:14,000 This might have little or no relevance, for instance, just to the Sufi version of Islam. 162 00:16:14,480 --> 00:16:20,420 Nor do a great deal of mainstream Muslim believers, whether they profess Sunni or Shia or some other variant of the doctrine. 163 00:16:21,020 --> 00:16:25,250 This is obvious enough the casual observation of Muslim citizens in various parts of the world. 164 00:16:25,730 --> 00:16:31,730 But evidence of it is available in the search results of surveys, such as the findings of a 2011 Gallup poll. 165 00:16:32,330 --> 00:16:37,700 This poll investigated attitudes towards attacks upon non-combatants in various groups across the world. 166 00:16:38,180 --> 00:16:44,450 It avoided the word terrorism or terrorist because of definitional problems, but they followed attitudes to attacks upon civilians. 167 00:16:44,750 --> 00:16:52,520 So their findings are clearly relevant to terrorist acts as I define them, which you don't know about, but just take my word for it. 168 00:16:53,630 --> 00:17:01,780 They found in this poll that, quote, placing high importance on religion generally relates positively with rejecting violent religious intolerance. 169 00:17:01,790 --> 00:17:08,810 A function of less, not more. Religion is generally associated with greater sympathy for attacks on civilians, unquote. 170 00:17:09,560 --> 00:17:17,570 A crucial point that underlies these four considerations is that a primary factor in many outbreaks of violence is attachment to identity and alarm, 171 00:17:17,570 --> 00:17:23,090 and perceived threats to religion certainly provides one focus for this attachment of Islam. 172 00:17:23,450 --> 00:17:30,560 But so to a great many other things, identity is closely related to power, self-respect and perceived cultural positioning, 173 00:17:30,920 --> 00:17:35,629 so that religion will also be appropriated to bolster or create culturally significant 174 00:17:35,630 --> 00:17:40,760 identities for those who have or want power or in need of group life support. 175 00:17:41,450 --> 00:17:49,700 The relationship between the sexes provides a case in point the fashioning of male identity with often dominant roles of female over against females. 176 00:17:50,030 --> 00:17:53,000 It has been a feature of history in which religion has certainly contributed, 177 00:17:53,480 --> 00:18:00,380 but it seems to be even more diverse and deeper sociological than any religious influence in some Islamic communities. 178 00:18:00,650 --> 00:18:04,550 And in the fanatically militant groups waging jihad against the modern world, for instance, 179 00:18:04,970 --> 00:18:11,420 the punitive obsession with hiding women from view within the home and in all covering clothing as well as denying them 180 00:18:12,020 --> 00:18:18,620 education and other cultural opportunities is arguably as much an exercise of male domination as a religious party. 181 00:18:18,830 --> 00:18:23,660 Whatever explicit appeals to interpretations of religious teaching or tradition might be made. 182 00:18:24,530 --> 00:18:29,570 It's worth noting that the major religions, in terms of numbers of adherents of many less popular religions, 183 00:18:29,900 --> 00:18:34,160 contain a great deal of teaching about the importance of values like peace and charity. 184 00:18:34,760 --> 00:18:39,860 Peace is a complex concept with many interpretations and conceptions built around it over the ages. 185 00:18:40,310 --> 00:18:42,410 Without being an expert on comparative religion. 186 00:18:43,210 --> 00:18:49,940 I would conjecture that there are very few religions that don't make the value of peace a significant part of their doctrine. 187 00:18:50,510 --> 00:18:54,860 Augustine, for instance, places at the heart of his Christo centric ethical system. 188 00:18:55,100 --> 00:19:02,990 Along with love. It's true that, as with many other Christians and non-Christians, he thought that compatible with the idea of a just war. 189 00:19:03,230 --> 00:19:07,850 In certain circumstances, though, other Christians have thought that it required pacifism. 190 00:19:08,330 --> 00:19:13,700 Certainly there's room for peacemakers and activists to build upon doctrines of peace within many religions. 191 00:19:13,700 --> 00:19:17,340 And they do. I come to an important objection. 192 00:19:17,370 --> 00:19:25,019 It may be urged against much of the above discussion, but whatever the success it has against the idea of the religious alliance is inherently, 193 00:19:25,020 --> 00:19:28,350 uniquely or even merely commonly prone to reduce violence. 194 00:19:28,710 --> 00:19:32,010 It does nothing to dispel the accusation that on occasion, 195 00:19:32,010 --> 00:19:40,020 religion might be the cause or the principal cause of particular outbreaks of religious of terrorist acts or other acts of unjustified violence. 196 00:19:40,500 --> 00:19:48,990 Nor does it damage the claim that some specific forms or interpretations of religion may be made them so as being directly prone to violence. 197 00:19:49,500 --> 00:19:51,780 I don't want to examine these propositions. 198 00:19:52,380 --> 00:20:01,350 On the first proposition, many will cite contemporary or near contemporary events frequently referred to, as we mentioned above, as Islamic terrorism. 199 00:20:02,040 --> 00:20:06,239 We've already seen scepticism about reason for scepticism about this appellation 200 00:20:06,240 --> 00:20:10,770 with regard to the causes of much terrorism that is frequently given that label. 201 00:20:10,800 --> 00:20:15,650 But although we can often find the leaders of groups such as Al Qaeda cite as reasons for their kind 202 00:20:15,660 --> 00:20:21,390 of faith alleged offences of a palpably political nature against groups or regions they identify with. 203 00:20:21,720 --> 00:20:22,620 It cannot be denied. 204 00:20:22,620 --> 00:20:29,730 They also employ strong religious rhetoric and appeals to religious interests in denouncing their enemies and exhorting their own followers. 205 00:20:30,090 --> 00:20:35,640 This much I've already conceded. The pressing question is whether such rhetoric, along with other considerations, 206 00:20:36,000 --> 00:20:41,400 means that in those circumstances, religion is the cause or primary cause of such terrorist acts. 207 00:20:42,150 --> 00:20:47,970 Obviously, a good deal turns on what we mean by cause, and much philosophical ink has been spilled on this topic. 208 00:20:48,480 --> 00:20:52,740 One final idea behind much of ordinary thought about cause is that one event 209 00:20:52,740 --> 00:20:55,740 would not have occurred without the occurrence of the other antecedent event. 210 00:20:56,100 --> 00:21:03,629 Whereas the 18th century philosopher David HUME would have objects rather than events where if the first object had not been the second, 211 00:21:03,630 --> 00:21:06,420 never had existed. This pregnant remark, 212 00:21:06,420 --> 00:21:13,710 though apparently in conflict with Hume's official regularity theory of causation spawned to for or against industry of counterfactual theories. 213 00:21:14,010 --> 00:21:21,750 Given momentum by David Lewis's analysis of counterfactual propositions in terms of possible worlds, clearly some idea along the line. 214 00:21:21,960 --> 00:21:26,610 If it wasn't for X, we wouldn't have had. Why is it work when people talk about X causing Y? 215 00:21:27,090 --> 00:21:30,600 But it's a very passionate in which to catch all that can be made by such remarks. 216 00:21:31,170 --> 00:21:37,049 Usually the action question covers much more than one factor. Or, to put it differently, if X is a single factor, 217 00:21:37,050 --> 00:21:42,240 then it will seldom travel trigger Y without being conjoin with several other factors or conditions. 218 00:21:42,600 --> 00:21:51,470 So the possibility exists. That aside from those many cases where religion plays no role at all in producing terrorist acts, 219 00:21:51,830 --> 00:21:55,819 the religious factor where significant remains nonetheless merely one element 220 00:21:55,820 --> 00:21:59,510 conjoined with several others and ignoring those others is fraught with risk, 221 00:21:59,780 --> 00:22:07,970 both intellectual and practical. Often the talk of what causes terrorist acts is concerned with silence without the speaker or the context finds. 222 00:22:08,000 --> 00:22:10,430 The most significant factor in bringing about the acts. 223 00:22:10,820 --> 00:22:16,460 But the significance is very interest and context dependent, which is not to deny it subjective status. 224 00:22:17,570 --> 00:22:25,190 That said, there may seem to be clearly cases in which religion has played such a prominent part in bringing about significant episodes of terrorism, 225 00:22:25,460 --> 00:22:31,070 such as, for instance, the various Christian crusades waged against parts of the Muslim world in the Middle Ages. 226 00:22:31,580 --> 00:22:38,320 More recently, of course, the religious loaded denunciation of infidels that accompanied the ISIS massacres of 227 00:22:38,380 --> 00:22:42,800 enslavement of various groups regarded as hostile to the group's religious outlook, 228 00:22:42,800 --> 00:22:50,450 provide more evidence the ISIS terrorist attacks upon the Yazidi sect, for instance, seem a primary case for religiously cause terrorism. 229 00:22:51,500 --> 00:22:54,560 But even here, one must not ignore the secular aspects of the attacks, 230 00:22:54,830 --> 00:23:00,860 such as the quest for political domination of an area or the gaining of slaves, including sexual slaves. 231 00:23:02,910 --> 00:23:08,940 Religion and increased ferocity. Another important claim about religion in a good deal of academic literature. 232 00:23:11,250 --> 00:23:18,810 On terrorism, even if it's often too simplistic to claim a solid or critical role for some forms of religion in terrorist activity. 233 00:23:19,200 --> 00:23:21,060 The appeal to religion, when it does occur, 234 00:23:21,300 --> 00:23:28,920 serves to make for more sustained and vicious resort to terrorism than is the case with predominantly non-religious motivations. 235 00:23:30,210 --> 00:23:35,070 The idea is that religious doctrines appealing to the support of an omnipotent God and perhaps the rewards 236 00:23:35,070 --> 00:23:41,530 of an afterlife make an absolute commitment to unrestrained violence that is unique in religious outlooks. 237 00:23:41,940 --> 00:23:48,809 Mark Kirk and Spock Jurgens, both, for instance, who is commentator on terrorist matters, 238 00:23:48,810 --> 00:23:56,130 generally seeking a middle path between the view that religion does cause terrorism and the view that it does not. 239 00:23:56,610 --> 00:24:03,930 Argues that religion is at least a problematic factor in the mix of motivations because of the divine dimension it brings to the conflict. 240 00:24:04,620 --> 00:24:12,420 As he puts it, Mark on your hand. Religion brings more to the conflict than simply a repository of symbols, of an aura of divine support. 241 00:24:12,690 --> 00:24:17,610 It problematise the conflict through its abiding absolutism, its justification for violence, 242 00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:24,150 and its ultimate images of warfare that demonise opponents and cast the conflict in trans historical terms. 243 00:24:25,260 --> 00:24:30,060 There are three claims, at least about religion tied together, and Jurgens must comment sorry, 244 00:24:30,080 --> 00:24:36,690 the four claims about religion tied together and judges might comment on the distinct but relate the first concerns. 245 00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:41,460 Sorry. Three. The first concerns the role of absolutism. 246 00:24:41,760 --> 00:24:46,170 The second, the justification of violence. The third, the demonisation of opponents. 247 00:24:46,650 --> 00:24:52,470 I'll examine these in turn with an eye to the relations between them, because they're not totally unconnected. 248 00:24:53,190 --> 00:24:59,520 The idea of religions absolutism has a great vogue, but its widespread acceptance is inversely proportional to its clarity. 249 00:25:00,090 --> 00:25:01,980 What is often meant, though solemn explain, 250 00:25:02,250 --> 00:25:09,840 is something epistemological to the effect that the religious hold they believe with more certainty and conviction than the non-religious. 251 00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:13,229 And they wrong to do so depending on the belief in question. 252 00:25:13,230 --> 00:25:15,240 This is or ought to be plainly false. 253 00:25:15,720 --> 00:25:23,550 Many atheists and agnostics have just affirmed just as firm a conviction as any religious in their belief that right is a great wrong to the victims. 254 00:25:23,820 --> 00:25:27,300 But democracy is preferable to tyranny, that slavery is evil. 255 00:25:27,540 --> 00:25:33,870 But friendship is a great good and much else, including for some, that religion is dangerous and full of false beliefs. 256 00:25:34,470 --> 00:25:38,790 And as the philosopher Jean-Paul famously argued, there are a range of obvious truths. 257 00:25:39,030 --> 00:25:42,780 Evident is, he believed, common sense on which nearly everyone is adamant, 258 00:25:43,230 --> 00:25:47,820 such as the fact that all my audience here today have a head and only one head each. 259 00:25:48,330 --> 00:25:55,470 But none of us was born yesterday. But for burns, that logical reasoning is mostly better than guesswork and so on. 260 00:25:56,280 --> 00:25:58,229 These are many other convictions. 261 00:25:58,230 --> 00:26:06,570 Moral and otherwise are too commonplace to require much notice, but nonetheless the facts on which absolute conviction is necessary to ordinary life, 262 00:26:06,990 --> 00:26:10,110 and even more significantly, the very existence of reasonable doubt. 263 00:26:10,500 --> 00:26:15,570 Since without to be reasonable, it must have a firm foundation. Baseless doubt is just neurotic. 264 00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:23,580 Moreover, deep and firm, absolute moral convictions amongst some religious people constituted one central reason 265 00:26:23,580 --> 00:26:27,630 why the ghastly business of the slave trade in the West was eventually outlawed. 266 00:26:28,140 --> 00:26:32,280 The influence of crude versions of ethical and factual relativism upon popular culture, 267 00:26:32,730 --> 00:26:39,030 often fostered by some postmodernist simplicities filtering down from the Academy, can obscure these realities. 268 00:26:39,510 --> 00:26:45,780 What is really possible to extract from the sloppy allegations of absolutism is a genuine worry about fanaticism. 269 00:26:46,470 --> 00:26:52,140 Fanaticism as an intellectual and moral voice, though there is some complexity in assessing its nature, 270 00:26:52,650 --> 00:26:59,280 it can be a mere term of abuse, the application of which tends to be more in the eye of the beholder than anchored to clear criteria. 271 00:26:59,700 --> 00:27:03,390 And this is much like the application of stubborn whereby your belief, 272 00:27:03,690 --> 00:27:07,880 your behaviour evokes that adjective and my own identical actions are invoked instead. 273 00:27:07,890 --> 00:27:09,900 For me, the description resolute. 274 00:27:10,590 --> 00:27:17,070 Nonetheless, although we should be cautious in throwing the term around, there is a real phenomenon of fanaticism and a disturbing one. 275 00:27:17,670 --> 00:27:23,790 The Oxford Short a dictionary defines it in terms of an excessive secular enthusiasm, especially for an extreme cold. 276 00:27:24,180 --> 00:27:28,380 And it mentions religion and politics as areas where the term is commonly implied. 277 00:27:29,070 --> 00:27:35,580 The two main qualifiers here are excessive and extreme, and their application is clearly open to debateable judgement in context. 278 00:27:35,650 --> 00:27:41,460 This is someone who shows uncommon enthusiasm for abolishing the practice of enslaving women for prostitution. 279 00:27:41,670 --> 00:27:45,329 A fanatic both excessive and extreme expression. 280 00:27:45,330 --> 00:27:54,030 Negative evaluations, one on a disproportionate degree of enthusiasm or dedication, the other on the wrong is or dubious measure the call of a cause. 281 00:27:54,870 --> 00:28:02,280 Unusual acts of singular dedication may make many of us believe cosy and singular and regular lives feel uncomfortable, 282 00:28:02,610 --> 00:28:05,940 but they are not thereby fanatical. In this pejorative sense, 283 00:28:07,050 --> 00:28:13,320 Father Damien devotion is a selfless life of service to the leper colony on the island of Molokai was a dedicated commitment. 284 00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:17,340 That's not for everyone. It's not penned by fanatical British politicians. 285 00:28:17,340 --> 00:28:22,980 Thought Mahatma Gandhi, a fanatic for his campaign of non-violent resistance to imperial rule in India. 286 00:28:23,310 --> 00:28:27,180 But that expresses their bias rather than objective judgement of his cause and methods. 287 00:28:28,050 --> 00:28:32,220 This is not to deny that religion, like many other elements, has been involved in fanaticism, 288 00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:36,510 but fanaticism is a common risk of the implementation of belief systems generally, 289 00:28:36,810 --> 00:28:43,200 as is evident in the zealous prosecution of the record by many free market enthusiasts in the recent history of capitalism, 290 00:28:43,530 --> 00:28:52,170 not to mention the even more dangerous fanaticism sometimes involved in 19th century imperialism and 20th century totalitarianism. 291 00:28:53,320 --> 00:28:58,240 Some forms of fanaticism don't involve bad causes, but rather a distorted pursuit of good ones. 292 00:28:58,690 --> 00:29:04,030 And here they're connected in complex ways with the phenomenon of moralism that I've explored elsewhere. 293 00:29:04,330 --> 00:29:06,040 I'll talk a bit about that, but I'll leave it out. 294 00:29:07,030 --> 00:29:12,850 Avoiding fanaticism does not involve a total retreat from conviction, but holding the right convictions in the right way. 295 00:29:13,480 --> 00:29:17,410 The Australian painter Sheila Mullin seemed aware of this when she worried, quote, 296 00:29:17,710 --> 00:29:24,010 The difficulty is to avoid the perils of fanaticism as well as the paralysis that comes of seeing both sides at once. 297 00:29:24,700 --> 00:29:29,650 And G.K. Chesterton, who perhaps I'd rather too many convictions, would nonetheless write. 298 00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:37,120 About vacuous talk of an open mind when he visibly remarked, Merely having an open mind is nothing. 299 00:29:37,510 --> 00:29:42,250 The object of opening the mind as of opening the mouth. It's a shout to begin on something solid. 300 00:29:42,850 --> 00:29:46,450 Otherwise, it's more akin to a sewer, taking in all things equal. 301 00:29:47,480 --> 00:29:51,080 But surely it will be said fanaticism is a more likely feature of outlooks that claim 302 00:29:51,080 --> 00:29:55,760 the authority of God for their beliefs and practices than those without such recourse. 303 00:29:56,810 --> 00:30:00,230 Jurgens model relies on this proposition for his claim about absolutism, 304 00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:04,790 but also for his insistence that religion uniquely imposes an image of cosmic 305 00:30:04,790 --> 00:30:09,680 war between those fighting a spiritual battle against merely worldly opponents. 306 00:30:10,280 --> 00:30:18,319 Even Louise Richardson, vice chancellor of this university, who is one of the more nuanced commentators on terrorism and who argues that the 307 00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:22,430 picture of religion as the cause of terrorist acts is simplistic and mistaken. 308 00:30:22,970 --> 00:30:25,610 Even in the case of Islamic fundamentalism, 309 00:30:25,610 --> 00:30:32,150 terrorism also insists that the religious elements in some forms of terrorism produce certain distinctive features, 310 00:30:32,420 --> 00:30:40,280 such as reluctance to compromise or negotiate. Such terrorist groups, she says, exhibit a tendency to be more fanatical, 311 00:30:40,460 --> 00:30:46,070 more willing to inflict mass casualties and better able to enact unassailable commitment from their adherents. 312 00:30:46,670 --> 00:30:50,569 Again, this raises the question of the necessity of theism for religion. 313 00:30:50,570 --> 00:30:56,240 But believing that aside, it does seem plausible that people are confident in the almighty support would be spurred to 314 00:30:56,240 --> 00:31:01,550 perhaps excessive termination in their pursuit of objectives they regard as divinely endorsed. 315 00:31:02,330 --> 00:31:05,120 Certainly the non fanatical father, Damien, 316 00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:12,260 attributed his steadfast dedication to the welfare of the workers on the island of Molokai to his conviction that God had guided you to this role. 317 00:31:12,770 --> 00:31:19,080 So if people wrongly think that God wants them to pursue some evil path, they may do so with determined energy must. 318 00:31:19,100 --> 00:31:23,900 I think we readily agreed that the invocation of God's support has often been a spur fanaticism, 319 00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:27,410 but two considerations somewhat soften the force of this argument. 320 00:31:27,920 --> 00:31:35,809 The first is that the utilising God and unworthy cause is a form of blasphemy which should be condemned on religious grounds from within Christianity. 321 00:31:35,810 --> 00:31:36,830 To take one example. 322 00:31:37,130 --> 00:31:44,570 There's plenty of scope to caution against the invocation of God on behalf of an eternal pursuit of objectives that cause unjustified harm to others. 323 00:31:45,050 --> 00:31:52,760 And indeed, this is often enough happened in the history of Christianity, as with the Nazi denunciations by many courageous Spanish theologians of the 324 00:31:52,760 --> 00:31:57,020 conquistadors who pillaged in the newly discovered Americas of the 16th century, 325 00:31:57,590 --> 00:32:03,260 and of the theological reasons often used by those invaders and their political sponsors for the violent conquest. 326 00:32:04,220 --> 00:32:09,350 The invaders claim to write a violent conquest because the natives of Salt Lake sought to dispossession, 327 00:32:09,350 --> 00:32:15,740 plunder for paganism, and hence have no legitimate and no political legitimacy for their land and its treasures. 328 00:32:16,190 --> 00:32:23,720 Among the objectors to this were the Spanish Dominicans, Bishop Bartolomeo de la Costas and the Tomas theologian Antonio Montesinos. 329 00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:32,389 Montesinos denounced the genocidal activities of the Gold Coast Spanish colonists and publicly preached against what he called, 330 00:32:32,390 --> 00:32:36,590 quote, the cruelty and tyranny that you practice on. These innocent people told me. 331 00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:41,180 I want rival justice to you. Hold these Indians in such cruel and horrible slavery. 332 00:32:41,510 --> 00:32:47,630 I want write to your wife such detestable wars on these people who live mildly and peacefully on their own lands, 333 00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:53,180 where you consumed infinite numbers of them with unheard of murders and desolation, unquote. 334 00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:59,569 Secondly, some of the spoilers with non-religious ideologies have had as much fanatical drive as 335 00:32:59,570 --> 00:33:04,130 any religious enthusiast when it comes to spectacular resorts to violent persecution. 336 00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:10,040 As the history of the 20th century illustrates abundantly stollen melting pot, Pol Pot, 337 00:33:10,040 --> 00:33:15,110 as already noted, did well enough in the fanaticism stage without resort to divine assistance. 338 00:33:15,620 --> 00:33:18,470 And when it comes to opposition to negotiation compromise, 339 00:33:18,770 --> 00:33:25,250 the allied powers in World War Two was adamantly opposed to negotiation and compromise to end the war with the Axis powers. 340 00:33:25,580 --> 00:33:32,480 As any religiously inspired group, they ruthlessly pursued unconditional surrender and were happy to destroy by terror bombings, 341 00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:40,430 as Churchill himself called it, vast swathes of civilian occupied cities in Germany and Japan in defence of liberal democracy. 342 00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:46,520 Nor were the leaders of many followers of Nazi Germany and Japan lacking in fanatical pursuit of their war aims. 343 00:33:46,790 --> 00:33:54,170 Even when virtually certain defeat was looming and their commitment to vicious tactics was as great as any sanctioned, violent religious zeal. 344 00:33:54,830 --> 00:33:59,629 It seems that support for whatever it is that you regard as the highest value or sanction for your history, 345 00:33:59,630 --> 00:34:03,560 ethnicity, science, the proletariat, the nation, democratic liberty, 346 00:34:03,560 --> 00:34:09,560 the race or manifest destiny will do to drive unrelentingly some fanatical enterprise, 347 00:34:09,800 --> 00:34:14,900 especially when it coheres with the usual HUMINT, human instincts for power, glory and riches. 348 00:34:15,710 --> 00:34:20,270 Jurgens Meier emphasises the way that religious commitments can instil apparently 349 00:34:20,270 --> 00:34:24,050 unrealistic expectations for victory and commitment to endless struggle. 350 00:34:24,620 --> 00:34:29,810 He cites a conversation he had with Abdul Aziz Rantisi, the late leader of the political wing of Hamas, 351 00:34:30,140 --> 00:34:36,350 in which Rantisi replied to his insistence that Palestinian military efforts could never defy defeat the military might of 352 00:34:36,350 --> 00:34:43,970 Israel by saying that Palestine had previously been occupied for 200 years and his comrades could now endure at least as long. 353 00:34:44,510 --> 00:34:48,440 Jurgens attributes to this this conviction to confidence in God's support. 354 00:34:48,740 --> 00:34:54,649 But he doesn't quote Rantisi. Invoking God and confidence in the power to prevail in the long term can come from 355 00:34:54,650 --> 00:34:59,390 many sources and has sustained secular revolutionary movements of all sorts, 356 00:34:59,750 --> 00:35:02,870 notably in the 20th century, those inspired by Marxism. 357 00:35:03,320 --> 00:35:10,070 In fact, much of the argument about the spatial motivational power of religion displays a common contemporary mindset amongst intellectuals, 358 00:35:10,430 --> 00:35:15,200 then finds idealism and confidence about the future difficult to sustain or even comprehend. 359 00:35:16,730 --> 00:35:21,800 But this might be a symptom of cultural malaise rather than a form of maturity. 360 00:35:22,460 --> 00:35:27,620 In any case, there have been many non-religious people who've remained firm in their ethical commitments and endeavours, 361 00:35:27,860 --> 00:35:29,960 even where the odds against success were high. 362 00:35:30,380 --> 00:35:36,890 No doubt some of the British citizen citizens and their leaders who persisted resolutely against overwhelming odds in the military 363 00:35:37,100 --> 00:35:43,460 and political struggle against the Nazi war machine in the early years of World War Two were sustained by religious motives. 364 00:35:43,820 --> 00:35:47,780 But many others drew upon secular sources of hope and conviction. 365 00:35:49,130 --> 00:35:54,050 Jenkins model also urges a close connection between religious outlooks and the demonisation of the enemy. 366 00:35:54,410 --> 00:35:57,230 But once more, World War One had plenty of that on both sides. 367 00:35:57,470 --> 00:36:01,760 Without a strong religious element, both Germans and Britons would predominantly Christian. 368 00:36:02,150 --> 00:36:07,400 And what differences of religious doctrine would evolve played no part in the causes of prosecution of the war. 369 00:36:08,090 --> 00:36:12,950 Nonetheless, vilification of the harm persisted in British propaganda in a way parallel with 370 00:36:12,950 --> 00:36:17,630 that by which ISIS more recently vilified and demonised the enemy infidel. 371 00:36:18,290 --> 00:36:22,250 Another claim by Jurgens, more echoed by others in the terrorist literature, 372 00:36:22,760 --> 00:36:30,170 is that religious convictions also lead to the endorsement of more extreme and immoral, violent measures than would otherwise be the case. 373 00:36:30,830 --> 00:36:35,870 Religious warriors have certainly behaved in morally atrocious ways, as in the medieval crusades, 374 00:36:36,140 --> 00:36:41,070 where gross violations of widely accepted norms against atrocity were common as well. 375 00:36:41,090 --> 00:36:49,010 In 1099, Western Catholic Crusaders massacred Muslims and Jews, not sparing the elderly, the women or the sick. 376 00:36:49,580 --> 00:36:52,190 But again, as we earlier saw in the discussion of absolutism, 377 00:36:52,520 --> 00:36:58,610 the existence of a moral ferocity in violent conflict is not the sole province of those with religious commitments. 378 00:36:59,060 --> 00:37:05,750 As Dermot McCulloch commented in the course of discussing and denouncing the violent horrors committed by religious people. 379 00:37:06,140 --> 00:37:12,710 It's true, he said. But those who who've rejected traditional forms of religion, including Hitler and Stalin, the perpetrators, 380 00:37:12,860 --> 00:37:17,690 perpetrated the atrocities as heinous as those committed in the name of God or gods, unquote. 381 00:37:18,380 --> 00:37:24,110 A more recent example is the way in which the moral prohibition on deep repugnance against torture was so readily 382 00:37:24,110 --> 00:37:30,740 abandoned by the Western military and security practitioners with the support of many secular liberal intellectuals. 383 00:37:31,190 --> 00:37:33,350 The War on Terror provided the context for this, 384 00:37:33,650 --> 00:37:38,930 and in many places the result of hitherto unthinkable practices gained widespread popular endorsement. 385 00:37:39,290 --> 00:37:47,330 No hint of religious motivation here, but plenty of democratic and self-protective ferocity in the name of civic duty and national emergency. 386 00:37:49,530 --> 00:37:55,110 I got. Three more pages and pages. 387 00:37:56,790 --> 00:38:07,860 Maybe it's for. We've dealt with Jurgen Klopp, his first and third players and since they overtook over last summer, so is my treatment of them. 388 00:38:08,220 --> 00:38:15,630 His second claim is rather different and needs some unpacking. So in one control my response with Echo's responses to the first and third claim. 389 00:38:16,050 --> 00:38:22,410 The second claim is that religion is particularly problematic with respect to terrorism because of its justification of violence. 390 00:38:22,620 --> 00:38:25,409 But this raises difficulty of interpretation, 391 00:38:25,410 --> 00:38:32,340 since in the first place there's widespread acceptance beyond religious circles that violence can be justified in certain circumstances. 392 00:38:32,760 --> 00:38:38,310 Hence, the idea that religions have often justification for violence shows in itself nothing distinctive about religion. 393 00:38:38,670 --> 00:38:42,360 Indeed, only complete pacifists reject global justification for violence. 394 00:38:43,170 --> 00:38:44,520 On another interpretation, 395 00:38:44,520 --> 00:38:51,960 it may be that Jurgens means that religions offer unsatisfactory justifications for political violence like terrorism or war. 396 00:38:52,530 --> 00:38:58,800 The restriction to political violence is plausible because terrorism, for instance, is the topic of this discussion. 397 00:38:59,310 --> 00:39:04,980 But some religions, for instance, the Quakers offers of no justification for any forms of political violence. 398 00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:10,740 Others offer justification for some forms of political violence in some circumstances, but not in others. 399 00:39:11,130 --> 00:39:15,570 The question is whether the justifications they offer in some circumstances are 400 00:39:15,750 --> 00:39:19,170 fragile and in some circumstances are morally and intellectually respectable, 401 00:39:19,500 --> 00:39:24,420 and also whether they distinctive or similar to the respectable justifications offered by the non-religious. 402 00:39:25,020 --> 00:39:32,010 These are questions that can't be answered by some comprehensive reference to religion as such must be treated on a case by case basis. 403 00:39:32,460 --> 00:39:39,000 In Christianity, for instance, some of the early Christians were pacifists and then unjust war doctrine was developed and later influenced with common 404 00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:46,140 justification comes with secular Western thinkers and some Eastern thinkers and the fashioning of international law. 405 00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:52,800 There are two important features to note about the complex tradition of the Gulf War in the West. 406 00:39:52,830 --> 00:39:56,700 The first is that always placed restrictions on the right to go to war and that these 407 00:39:56,700 --> 00:40:01,130 restrictions became more stringent over the course of the development of that doctrine. 408 00:40:01,140 --> 00:40:02,670 And the second is the tradition. 409 00:40:02,910 --> 00:40:10,110 Although heroes within Christianity always relied upon appeal to common reasoning for its later manifestations, what was called natural law. 410 00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:14,250 That tradition was certainly at times polluted by the concept of holy war. 411 00:40:14,700 --> 00:40:18,870 But later, medieval theorists gradually removed religious war from the scope of just war. 412 00:40:19,140 --> 00:40:26,190 And with it, the idea that the pursuit of supernatural ends sanctioned the use of otherwise immoral means, such as the slaughtering of children. 413 00:40:26,910 --> 00:40:30,720 In modern times, many Christians have been adamant about the stringent restrictions. 414 00:40:31,260 --> 00:40:38,579 So, for instance, religious people within allied countries were amongst the few who criticised the devastating tactics of their own leadership in 415 00:40:38,580 --> 00:40:44,700 the airing of bombing campaigns aimed at the slaughter of civilians and wholesale destruction of German and Japanese cities. 416 00:40:45,180 --> 00:40:49,380 The Anglican Bishop of Chichester drew George Pell, not George Pell. 417 00:40:49,470 --> 00:40:55,440 George Pell repeatedly condemned the bombing in speeches in the House of Lords and elsewhere during the war. 418 00:40:55,710 --> 00:41:02,700 And the American Jesuit priest, John C Ford, in 1944 wrote an article in Stern Condemnation of the practice. 419 00:41:03,300 --> 00:41:08,460 Fuller's article marked an influential moment in the later development of aspects of the Catholic peace movement, 420 00:41:08,730 --> 00:41:10,800 especially with regard to nuclear deterrence. 421 00:41:11,580 --> 00:41:16,830 It's not been my intention to downplay the evil involved in the use of religion to support a terrorist act, 422 00:41:17,250 --> 00:41:20,130 nor excuse in any way those avowedly religious people. 423 00:41:20,460 --> 00:41:25,350 They've been moved too often by the understanding of faith to condone or perpetrate terrorist acts. 424 00:41:25,920 --> 00:41:32,280 I've been concerned, rather, to highlight confusions and misleading implications of common talk about religious war and terrorism, 425 00:41:32,580 --> 00:41:39,840 particularly the ways in which non-religious aspects and factors involved in the causation and motivation of terrorist acts can be. 426 00:41:42,260 --> 00:41:48,350 Obscured by the concentration upon religious affiliation and rhetoric surrounding some terrorist perpetrators. 427 00:41:48,740 --> 00:41:54,350 This tendency is reinforced when the perpetrators are foreign and can be cast as foreign to the home culture. 428 00:41:54,800 --> 00:42:00,950 The idea that religion or some particular religion is inherently prone to violence can also impede understanding 429 00:42:00,950 --> 00:42:05,720 of the cautionary attitudes to violence or outright rejection of it within the religion in question. 430 00:42:06,380 --> 00:42:13,700 Even when religions countenance justified violence as as we we've seen, they usually put restrictions on the justifications we can apply. 431 00:42:14,420 --> 00:42:19,639 Those cautionary attitudes where they exist can be thought of them deployed against the use of religion for terrorist 432 00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:25,910 purposes by other religious people or by non-religious governments have increasingly acknowledged this option, 433 00:42:26,270 --> 00:42:29,419 but have often been reluctant to commit serious resources. 434 00:42:29,420 --> 00:42:34,249 I'm thinking of Western governments to commit serious resources to foster the deployment and 435 00:42:34,250 --> 00:42:38,090 in some cases have made their acknowledgement of the efforts seem heavily condescending, 436 00:42:38,810 --> 00:42:41,690 possibly the most condescending and potentially counterproductive. 437 00:42:41,690 --> 00:42:50,540 Such effort was that of Australia's former prime minister, Tony Abbott, in a national security address on February 23rd, 2015. 438 00:42:51,020 --> 00:42:57,469 Abbott first accused Australian Muslim leaders of not speaking out enough against terrorism and then added, 439 00:42:57,470 --> 00:43:02,030 quote, I've often heard Western leaders describe Islam a religion of peace. 440 00:43:02,330 --> 00:43:08,780 I wish more Muslim leaders would say that more often and mean it unquote entirely gratuitous. 441 00:43:08,780 --> 00:43:13,580 I mean, it was not only offensive and unsupported by any evidence of insincerity, 442 00:43:15,410 --> 00:43:23,719 but was given to the provision of evidence about it could only impede efforts at sympathetic engagement with the 443 00:43:23,720 --> 00:43:31,160 Muslim community to help combat all inclinations of terrorist activity existed in a section of that community. 444 00:43:31,430 --> 00:43:31,820 Thank you.