A World of Religion: an Analysis of
Religious Conflict and Origin
Part 1
Danny Putnam
Religious Conflict: Focus on Monotheism and the Middle East
Part 2
Chris Minaker
The History of the Christian Church in America
EDGE Fall 2003
December 5, 2003
Introduction
Deuteronomy 6:4 reads: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Religion has been a part of human culture since the appearance of homo-sapiens. Archeological evidence shows that religious practices initiated as early as art in the history of the human experience, and it has been a continual and vital characteristic of the human experience. Effectiveness rather than philosophical or historical demonstration has always been the hallmark of a successful religion. Today, the nature and practices of religions around the world vary significantly, and in many cases it is hard for people to come to agreement about what spiritual truths should be followed. Even in the same religion, there are divisions and new denominations that form out of doctrinal discrepancies. However, these discrepancies do not usually result in violent conflict.
History has witnessed events such as the Holy War and the Crusades. Even Adolph Hitler, claimed religious precedence in the “purification of the Jews”. In current times, the conflict in the Middle East is often blamed on religious tension. Both Israel and Palestine argue that the land belongs to them, so the question arises, “whose promised land is it?” Also, terrorist attacks committed by Arabs are quoted in the media to be done in the name of al-Lah. The atrocities of the crusades were done in the name of Yahweh. There is much conflict between three religions which all have something in common; they are monotheistic. Why do seemingly similar religions have bloody history? Another question must be asked for each of these instances, “Is something done in the name a religion a true representation of that religion?”
This paper looks to hypothesize the source and reasons behind religious conflict in the world. A historical perspective and history will be compared for each of the three Abraham religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I am going to put my own religious beliefs in the back seat, and in no means am I trying to prove one religion’s superiority over another. I am going to look at the fundamental differences in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I am going to look at the fundamental differences in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Then, as I hypothesize, it will be to see how religion has been used by political leaders for three purposes: economics gain, military advancement, and political power. Therefore, the fundamental differences in the theology or teachings in these religions are to blame for the violent religious conflict that has been seen throughout history.
Who is God?
Is there only one God, or are there many gods? This is the question that separates monotheistic and polytheistic religions. It is the same question which separated the ancient Hebrews from their neighbors, for the Hebrew nation of Israel was the only monotheistic religious followers in the area. Monotheism is the belief that there is only one God, Yahweh, and no others are to be worshiped of followed. Any other god is considered to be a false god, having no more significance or power than the piece of gold or wood that serves as a physical representation of that god. On the other hand, polytheism is the belief that there are many gods, and there is not any one god in particular that is to be worshiped over all the rest.
There are other categories of religions stemming from how one perceives the concept of God. According to Henotheism “God is One”, but that God is experienced subjectively by each individual. There is no objective God who can be defined by any one name. Whatever “One” somebody chooses to worship is his/her “favorite God”. The idea that all religions are the same, or that they all have something in common stems from this philosophy. This thinking as very much alive today, and it leads one into the belief of Universalism. In Universalism, the word God in Deuteronomy 6:4 does not mean the numerical one God. Instead, God can not be defined in the value of numerical deities. This idea is not defined as anything more that there is an existence of the concept of God. Therefore, God is not defined so Universalism is open to other religions. Another form of classification is called Monolatry. This philosophy says that only “One” God is worshiped, so all other gods are rejected and are never to be worshiped. However, this view does not reject the existence of other Gods, but others won’t be chosen.
The three religions I am studying are all monotheistic, and they all stem from the same root. Even so, each religion describes God in different ways. Judaism, as the oldest religion exalts Yahweh as the one true God. This is the God of Noah, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus of Nazareth was not the promised messiah, who is still to come. Christianity has the same beliefs in Yahweh as God, but the separation is founded on the belief of the identity of Jesus Christ. In Christianity, Jesus Christ is the prophesized messiah in whom salvation is found. Islam is the most recent of the Abraham religions, and it hold up al-Lah as the one and true God. Muhammad is the prophet who al-Lah came to in revelation
Judaism
Judaism is the oldest of the monotheistic religions. The Torah is the God inspired scripture, which includes history, laws, wisdom, and as Deuteronomy 6:4 shows descriptions of who Yahweh is. The Torah is the same as the Christian Old Testament. Yahweh is a transcendent being who intervenes in the lives of men and women. Starting with Abram, Judaism’s history is filled with moments where God given common people revelations and intervenes on “his people’s” behalf. Abram (who would later change his name to Abraham) was commanded by God:
“Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all the peoples on the earth will be blessed through you.” Genesis 12: 1-3
God made this covenant with Abraham, and in Judaism a covenant is the strongest promise that could be made. After Abraham obeyed and left his land of Ur God led him to the land of the Canaan, and the Lord told him that he would give the land to his offspring. This is just one example of God intervening and reaching out in a way where his followers would experience him in a real way.
Later on the book of Exodus discusses how Moses led the Hebrews out of the land of Egypt, across the Red Sea that was miraculously separated so the people could escape Pharos’ charging armies. Then the Hebrews wandered around in the desert for 40 years, and during this time God gave them laws and commandments to follow. Eventually Joshua and Caleb led the nation of Israel into the land of the Canaanites and had victorious battles, and then Israel experienced God’s promise to give them a land flowing with milk and honey. This established the nation of Israel as a fixture in the Middle East.
During Israel’s and Judaism’s history, Yahweh has been described with many different characteristics. The God of Abraham promised him many descendents and the father of a great nation. The God of Moses was described as a triamphalist.[1] I would argue that the God of Moses refers more directly to a rescuer, and the God of Joshua was a triamphalist. Then the God of Isaiah, the prophet, was described to be full of sorrow. Isaiah was a prophet who would speak to the nation of Israel on God’s behalf. He spoke out against the social injustice in the Israel’s culture. On the same note, King Amos was the 1st king who worked to promote social justice.
Yahweh was frequently involved in Israel’s history and made covenants with His people, there developed a large sense of pride in their identity. For, the God of the Universe chose them to be His people. After all, Yahweh promised to bless the whole earth through this people.
Christianity
In Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah, the Savior. He lived during a time where Israel was under the control of the Roman Empire. Jesus is God’s son born through the Virgin Mary by means of Immaculate Conception. It is argued that the reason the Jews did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah is because they believed the messiah was going to be the King of His kingdom on earth, and thus rescue them from the occupation of the Roman Empire. Christians believe he set up his Heavenly Kingdom through living a perfect life on earth and dying for the sins of the world, becoming the ultimate sacrifice for both Jews and for Gentiles. The apostle Paul writes in I Corinthians 15:3-6:
“For what you received I passed on to you as of first importance; that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time.”
There was a new covenant with Yahweh and the people of the world. All people, Jews and Gentiles, now have direct access to God. The gift of salvation is offered to all who would accept it. Christianity spread quickly through the whole Mediterranean region, and thousands of people put their faith in Jesus Christ. Churches began to surface and some of them are recorded in Paul’s letters to Ephesus, Philippi, Corinth, Rome, Thessalonica, and Colossi.
Islam
In the year 610 CE an Arab tribe by the name Quraysh became very wealthy due to success in trade. Muhammad ibn Abdallah, a member of this Meccan tribe feared that his tribe was making a new religion out of money. Money and capitalistic trade was putting focus on the individual not the community, so their culture was being threatened. People were beginning to abandon the traditional values of community for new values of individualism, self-sufficiency (istaqa), and competition. These new values were causing a division in the clans which threatened their very survival. Muhammad was convinced that if his tribe did not put some other transcendent value at the center of their culture, which would overcome the egotism and creed now prevalent in the tribe, the tribe would tear itself apart morally and politically in internecine strife.[2]
Life was a struggle in the rest of the Arab world and there developed deadly competition between tribes for survival. The struggle was making life exceedingly difficult, so they adopted a makeshift religion, which was more like as ideology, called muruwah. It helped people develop uniting value of community to ease the violent trends. The ideology included a pagan pantheon of deities, and these deities would be worship at their shrines by Arabs. This served to create a common culture which all the tribes could find agreement in. There was no notion of an afterlife, and there was no mythology behind the significance of the deities or holy sites. The muruwah ideology included virtues of chivalry in avenging any wrongs caused by other tribes, and is often translated in the West as “manliness”
The inter-tribe conflict was a problem throughout history. To ensure a tribe’s survival, they would share wealth and possessions while avenging the death of a single tribe member by killing members of the other tribe. This ideology resulted in a never ending circle of violence, struggle for survival, and revenge. This vendetta is also referred to a as blood-feud.
As Christianity began to spread throughout northern Africa and the Middle East, Arabs saw that both Christianity and Judaism was a superior religion to their pagan pantheon, for God had never given the Arab people a revelation or special intervention. They felt left out because they had received no special knowledge from God. This created a sense of spiritual inferiority in the Quraysh tribe, so they longed for a revelation that would give them a legitimate religion. Then after a long wait and “calling out to God” they received a revelation. Muhammad believed that al-Lah, the High God of the Arabian pantheon simply meant “the God”, but he didn’t believe that he would be the eagerly awaited prophet.
The Quaraysh help the holy sight of Kabah in the highest regard, for it was the most holy site in all Arabia. Each year all Arabians would travel to Mecca as a pilgrimage to perform rituals, and all violence was forbidden in the sanctuary. This sanctuary was vital to the mercantile success of the Quaraysh, and it was also a source of status among all the tribes of Arabia. Still there was no scripture in their own language and there was no messenger such as Abraham, Moses, or Jesus.[3] According to the Palestinian Christian historian Sozomenus, Arabs in Syria has rediscovered the true religion of Abraham (hanifiyyah). [4]
The Recitation
The longing for divine revelation was fulfilled on Mount Hira in 610 on the seventeenth day of Ramadan, in what is known as the Recitation. Muhammad was ripped from sleep and overcome with a “devastating divine presence.” The angel appeared and commanded him to iqra! (recite!). He was embraces three times and released until he finally began to recite the first words of the scripture. This Arabic scripture would ultimately be called the qur’an. The angel identified himself as Gabriel, and told Muhammad that he was an apostle of God. The Koran was revealed to him bit-by-bit, over a twenty-three year period. He then preached what he was given by revelation, and people who heard it memorized it. Eventually, people who were literate wrote it down. 20 years after his death, the 1st compliation of the revelation was made. He did not see himself as a founder of a new religion but as bringing the old religion of the One God to the Quraysh. Islam meant that Muslims had a duty to create a just, equitable society where poor and vulnerable were treated decently.
“Muhammad never asked Jews or Christians to convert to his religion of al-Lah unless they particularly wished to do so, because they had received authentic revelations of their own. The Koran did not see revelation as canceling out the messages and insights of previous prophets but instead it stressed the continuity of the religious experience of mankind. It is important to stress this point because tolerance in not a virtue that many Western people today would feel inclined to attribute to Islam. The intolerance that many people condemn is Islam today does not always spring from a rival vision of God but from quite another source: Muslims are intolerant of injustice, whether it is committed by rulers of their own-like Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran- or by the powerful Western countries.” (Armstrong 177)
The Roman Empire and the Crusades
The crusades were one of the greatest movements in history. Greatest is not defined by human progress of some desirable value but in terms of geography and men who participated. The crusades dominated social thought from 1095 to 1400. This is a controversial time period for there was a mixture of violence, wars, and religion. This mixture caused people to argue for the reasons for the wars and its justification. The Christian church is reluctant to link itself with the violence of the crusades, so for years there has been an idea that the wars were fought with just cause. However, there is evidence that the actual teachings of Christianity were not responsible for the years of violence, but the name of Christendom and the Taking of the Cross was ideology that were used to rationalize and drive a political and economic drive for power.
“Even today it is hard to be indifferent to their history; they were launched in support of a cause which can be portrayed with equal force as the most noble and the most ignoble, and over the centuries men have turned to them for inspiration or as an object lesson in human corruptibility” (Riley-Smith 11). So what is it? Were the acts of war committed by the crusaders acts of brave, faithful, chivalrous deeds, or were they acts of treachery as evidence for greed and intolerance? I am not going to answer this question, for it is not necessary to answer crusaders motivations. However, it is crucial to examine the motivations of the leaders of the Roman Empire, and later the Holy Roman Empire.
There were three basic facts in how the crusades were structured. First, participants were called to “take the Cross” and to take a vow to join a military expedition with a specific aim, which was originally aimed at protecting the Holy Land. Second, the pope was the ultimate authority in the military’s actions. Therefore, it must be taken into the account for the pope’s motivations and pressures, as a religious as well as political leader. Thirdly, through the crusaders’ fulfilling their vows and performing in battle, participants were given certain well-known privileges. These privileges included guaranteed protection of their property during their absence and monetary compensation. They were also lured into participation by spiritual enticements. They were promised Indulgences for their commitment, and so the institutionalized church was using the promise of salvation as a motivational tool, or bribe, to build military support for the crusades.