The Justification of Religious Violence

Reviews / Votes

"How could anyone believe that they are justified inblowing up school busses or the World Trade Center? What role doesreligion play in their thinking? Steve Clarke illuminates thesecomplex and controversial issues with clarity and balance. Thisimportant book is highly recommended for all of us who wonder aboutthe relations between religion and violence." --Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Duke University "Avoiding big claims about religion causing violence,Steve Clarke argues that many religiously-based justifications forviolence, far from being wildly irrational, are formally similar tothose commonly offered as secular justifications. Clear, veryreadable, and thoroughly researched, the book makes a valuablecontribution to one strand in the current debate about religion andviolence." --C.A.J. Coady, University of Melbourne "The heated debates over the relation between religion andviolence that burst onto the world's political andintellectual scene after 9/11 have spewed much foam and fury, butlittle fact or reason. Now, Stephen Clarke offers a sober yethumanistic analysis of how people justify violent acts in the nameof religion, showing how historically and cross-culturallypervasive these justifications are. Mostly, secular and religiousargument in support of violence proceeds much the same. Thedifference arises from three classes of premises that stem fromreligious metaphysics, and that transcend - and so resistcontradiction by - empirical evidence and reason: appeal tocosmic war, the afterlife, sacred values, or some combination ofthese three. Religion thus outperforms the secular in armingviolence, with conceptual resources both wider in scope and moreresistant to challenge. Fortunately, Clarke also shows us how thesesame religious assets can be used to lessen violence and resolveeven the most intractable conflicts: for example, throughunderstanding and leveraging knowledge of sacred values, andlearning how to reframe them, rather than by futilely trying to getopposing sides to ignore, abandon or compromise them." --Scott Atran, Directeur de Recherche, Anthropologie, CNRS/ Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris