An earlier treatment of this topic appeared in “Sacred Violence and Interreligious Conflict: The Background of a Tragedy,” Chicago Studies 41:1 (2002):8-25; © 2002 Civitas Dei Foundation. Material from that discussion is reprinted by permission.

In conflicts across the world today, religions often play an important role in motivating or justifying acts of violence. Religions are important factors in establishing personal and collective identity and in marking boundaries between differing communities. In many cases struggles over political, economic, and social issues are inextricably intertwined with questions of religious identity. Even where other factors may be predominant, religions can play a contributing role in inflaming animosity and in motivating and justifying violence. Sacred violence is as old as pre-history and continues to shape and challenge the world’s agenda today.[1] While the problem of religiously motivated violence runs through a wide range of religious traditions, the focus of this essay will be on the troubled history of relations among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The three traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, sometimes called “Children of Abraham,” intertwine in many ways.[2] The later traditions have important internal relations to the earlier ones, as Jewish figures appear in the Christian scriptures, and both Jewish and Christian figures appear in the Qur’an. These religions share many important beliefs and values, but members of each tradition have often vilified and abused those in the other religions.

The traditional moral principles of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam unite in proclaiming paths of peace and reconciliation and in condemning indiscriminate terrorist attacks on civilian populations. All three traditions agree in abhorring the deliberate murder of random persons; nonetheless, each of these religions has been understood in some situations to justify direct attacks on unarmed populations. Regarding wartime situations, Judaism, Christianity and Islam have set forth specific requirements for the declaration of war by responsible parties, and all have long forbidden the mass slaughter of civilians in warfare.

Even though the three traditions agree in principle in rejecting random violence against civilian populations, each of them also has a troubling history of violating this norm. Each at times has regarded violence as a sacred, divinely imposed obligation, a sacred war in which God will intervene decisively on the side of devout followers and lead them to triumph. Followers of each tradition have engaged in atrocities against others, believing that they were fighting on the side of right and justice. Each tradition has used another tradition as a scapegoat, the source of danger and terror, a threatening foe that must be controlled or eliminated.[3] Each tradition has demonized members of another tradition and claimed to represent the will of God in history. As René Girard has argued, one of the most frightening results of violence is that it renders us more alike.[4] As a group fights for its vision of what is right and just, it can easily begin to demonize the opposing group and soon it justifies any measures necessary to gain an advantage.

Judaism
The roots of sacred violence reach back to pre-historic times.[5] Ancient cosmologies, such as those of Greece and Babylon, often involve violence, suggesting violence was involved in the very formation of the world we inhabit; violence is in our blood, as it were.[6] Ancient peoples in the Near East often viewed war as having a sacred, heavenly dimension. While human armies were waging war on earth, the gods of the combatants were thought to be fighting in heaven, and a god’s power was demonstrated in the victories of the forces on earth. In Babylon, the gods were understood to pass judgment on opposing nations, and the proof was victory on the battlefield. Any victorious conqueror was seen as the representative of the god Enlil.[7] From primordial times, societies have shaped their own identity by opposing another group and invoking divine aid.

Ancient Israel shared that belief that God was a warrior directly involved in earthly battles.[8] Immediately after the deliverance of the Israelites at the Sea of Reeds in Exodus, the Song of the Sea proclaims: “The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name. Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he cast into the sea” (Ex 15:3). God’s violence strikes not only the slave-holding Egyptians but also other peoples encountered along the way and those already in the Promised Land. Christians do not read many of these passages about the holy war in the liturgy today, and Christian theologians have often ignored them, but they form an important backdrop for the history of sacred violence among the three traditions. God promises Moses and the people: “When my angel goes in front of you, and brings you to the Amorites, the Hitties, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods, or worship them, or follow their practices, but you shall utterly demolish them and break their pillars in pieces” (Ex 23:23-24). In Deuteronomy, Moses tells the people not to lose heart in fighting more powerful enemies because God is fighting with them (20:1-4).

According to the Hebrew Bible, at least some ancient Israelites believed that God demanded the complete or near complete extermination of the enemy tribe. This was sometimes justified because the other peoples worshipped alien gods with detestable practices and would teach the people of Israel to do likewise (Deut 20:15-18). In the Book of Numbers, God tells Moses: “Avenge the Israelites on the Midianites” (31:1), and so Moses orders the warriors “to execute the Lord’s vengeance on Midian” (31:3). After doing battle in accordance with God’s command, the Israelites are said to have killed every male (31:7). Moses, however, became angry with the officers because they allowed the women to live (31:15), and he demanded that the Israelites kill all the male children and all women who have had sexual relations with a man. Only female virgins were to be allowed to live (31:17-18). According to the biblical account, his orders were then carried out.

Later in the biblical narrative, when the Israelites reach Jericho, Joshua orders that the entire city be devoted to the Lord for destruction, except for Rahab the prostitute and those in her house. All other inhabitants are to be killed in the name of God: “Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep and donkeys” (Josh 6:21). During the early monarchy in Israel, Samuel prophesies to Saul: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have, do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey’” (1 Sam 15:2-3).

Historical and archeological evidence strongly indicates that such massacres never actually took place; nonetheless, they remained for later generations as powerful examples of divine aid in battle and of a divine demand for widespread slaughter of an enemy.[9] Some biblical passages view the destruction of the enemy as a sacrifice to God (Deut 2:34-35; 3:6-7; Josh 6:17-21; 8:2, 24-28; 10:28-40); others view it as just retribution for the enemy’s crimes (Deut 13:12-18; 20:10-18).

During the conflict against the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the second century BCE, apocalyptic writers drew upon the ancient mythological images of the sacred war to portray their earthly enemies in symbolic form as fearsome beasts emerging from the sea and challenging the heavenly powers (Dan 7:2-27).[10] In the time of Jesus, the Dead Sea Scrolls continued this tradition.[11] The War Scroll describes an eschatological battle in which the Sons of Light, the members of the Essene community, finally triumph over their enemies, the Sons of Darkness, called the Kittim, who represent the Romans but more generally represent “the archetypal bad guys.”[12] There are detailed descriptions of the battle trumpets and banners, and special prayers are prescribed. After great suffering, the Sons of Light persevere to final victory over the evil empire. Mythic images and language interpret the specific situation of a particular community in terms of an age-old battle between good and evil; these images remain available to interpret ever-changing later situations.[13]

There were various Jewish revolts against pagan rulers, notably the Maccabees against the Seleucids, recounted in the Books of Maccabees, and the revolts against Rome from 66-70 C.E. and 132-135 C.E. The latter rebellion against the Roman Empire was led by Simon bar-Kokhba (“Son of the Star”), who was hailed by the leading rabbi of the day, R. Akiba ben Joseph, as the Messiah.[14] Religious beliefs and images played a major role in motivating and justifying the violence of these efforts against foreign, idolatrous rulers. When Mattathias slew the king’s commissioner and a would-be Jewish idolater, he was described as following the example of Phinehas in the Book of Numbers (25:6-15): “In his zeal for the Law he acted as Phinehas had against Zimri son of Salu. Then Mattathias went through the town, shouting at the top of his voice, ‘Let everyone who has any zeal for the Law and takes his stand on the covenant come out and follow me’” (1 Macc 2:26-27).

Regarding the divine commands to kill entire tribes in the Hebrew Bible, the later rabbinic tradition viewed the wars of conquest of Canaan as a unique situation that offered no precedent for later wars.[15] Some later Jewish commentators would interpret the struggle against the Amalekites as a symbolic metaphor for fighting genocidal evil.

For centuries, from the first century B.C.E. to the twentieth century C.E., most Jews lived in pagan- or Christian- or Muslim-ruled territories and had little effective political or military power. This situation changed dramatically with the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948, and the ancient question of the rights of the inhabitants of the land reemerged in a new form. Modern official Israeli policy prohibits mass slaughter of Palestinians. Nonetheless, the massacre of unarmed Palestinians by Zionist forces at Deir Yassin and other villages in 1948 was a major factor in the foundation of modern Israel. In the fighting prior to the official establishment of the state of Israel, a band of Jewish fighters captured the village of Deir Yassin on the outskirts of Jerusalem on April 9, 1948. After the Arab fighters had withdrawn, only women, children, and unarmed older men remained. The Jewish fighters from the Irgun paramilitary group lined up the remaining Arabs, variously numbered from over 100 to 500, and shot them dead; the most commonly used figure for those murdered is 254.[16] Jews from a nearby village came and tried to stop the slaughter in vain. A young Jewish officer protested in vain. The terror continued, as Arab survivors were loaded onto freight trucks and paraded around parts of Jerusalem in a type of victory march. Afterward, they were executed.[17] Similar massacres took place at a number of villages, such as Ad Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Safsaf, Majd al Kurum and others.

Word spread quickly of the massacres, and about 300,000 Palestinians fled their homes in the following weeks. Altogether, about 750,000 fled in terror. Jewish settlers moved into many Arab homes and began using the furniture and eating from the abandoned dishes and utensils. Menachem Begin, the leader of the Irgun paramilitary group, who would later become Prime Minister of Israel, sent a congratulatory note to the soldiers who had done the massacre at Deir Yassin: “Accept congratulations on this splendid act of conquest. Tell the soldiers you have made history in Israel.”[18] In his memoirs, Menachim Begin later wrote that the legend of Deir Yassin was as good as half a dozen battalions.

Martin Buber, the most influential Jewish thinker at mid-century, fiercely condemned the attack. Buber wrote repeatedly to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion about the massacre, but Ben-Gurion did not reply. According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, Ben-Gurion was at that very time explicitly sanctioning the expulsions of Arabs from Palestine.[19] Israel would proclaim the right of return for Jews throughout the entire world, but for the Palestinian Arabs who fled their homes under the threat of mass murder, there would be no right of return, even though many of them retained the title deeds to land and the keys to their homes. They and their children and grandchildren populate the refugee camps that continue to be part of the problem in the Middle East today. Meanwhile, Jewish immigrants to Palestine moved into the areas abandoned and used everything in them, houses, lands, shops, furniture, all manner of utensils

The massacre at Deir Yassin would be rarely mentioned by later Israelis and is little known to many Americans, but to Palestinians and Arabs, it is a powerful marker of the violence at the foundation of the modern state of Israel. To the minds of many Arabs and Muslims, the memory of Deir Yassin marked Israeli Jews as mass murderers who used terror and the fear of terror to drive Palestinians from their homes. Palestinians repeatedly asked for some acknowledgment of the massacre at Deir Yassin and other places.[20]

One may question to what degree these actions related to the biblical commands. Most leaders of the original Zionist movement were, like Theodor Herzl, secular Jews for whom Zionism was a way of affirming Jewish identity and nationhood after the collapse of faith in a transcendent God. Nonetheless, David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the State of Israel, claimed that the Bible was the Jews’ sacrosanct title-deed to Palestine, with a genealogy of 3,500 years.[21] In 1963, an Israeli socio-psychologist, Georges R. Tamarin, investigated the impact of biblical passages on contemporary attitudes in Israel.[22] He showed school children in Israel aged 8½ to 14 passages from the Book of Joshua about the conquest of the Promised Land and the destruction of its inhabitants, and he asked if they approved. Sixty-six percent, a sizeable majority, approved totally and an additional 8% approved partially. When asked if the Israeli army should follow the commands in the Book of Joshua, 30% agreed totally and 8% partially. Other children were given the same story, but the proper names were changed so that it told of a Chinese war god named Lin who ordered his followers to destroy an enemy tribe. The children overwhelmingly rejected this image of a god and the idea that it should be imitated. When asked the same questions, only 7% approved of the genocide totally and 18% partially, leaving 75% opposed. In the controversy that followed publication of the results, Tamarin lost his professorship at Tel Aviv University.

Some Jewish leaders have interpreted the modern state of Israel in divine terms: Z.Y. Kook commented, “Zionism is a Divine matter.” “The State of Israel is a Divine entity.”[23] Some rabbis in Israel, as at the extremist settlement of Gush Emunim have sanctioned vigilante violence against Arabs, leading, according to the 1982 Karp report, to “killing, wounding, physical assaults, property damage, and the use of armed and unarmed threats.”[24] After the Israeli victory in the 1967 war, Israel, in violation of international law, expropriated large amounts of Palestinian land in the Occupied Territories for military use or for Jewish settlements. Some Israelis spoke of Eretz Israel (“Land of Israel”), referring to an expanded nation with biblically authorized borders and insisted on called the Occupied Territories by their biblical names, Judea and Samaria, claiming biblical right to lands confiscated from Palestinians. Conquest of the occupied territories was justified as a fulfillment of the will of God expressed in the Bible. Since according to the Bible God had given the land to Israel, Jews had the ultimate right to it.

One of the most notorious attacks on unarmed Arab civilians in the name of Judaism was that of Baruch Goldstein, a member of the militant Kach party. On February 25, 1994, the feast of Purim, which celebrates the victory of Jews over their enemies in the Persian Empire and their slaughter of thousands of their foes (Esther 9:6-16), Goldstein went to the Mosque in Hebron that is sacred to the memory of the Patriarchs As Muslims bowed in prayer during their holy month of Ramada, Goldstein shouted, “This is Purim,” and fired an automatic rifle into the assembly, killing twenty-nine and injuring many others before he was eventually overwhelmed and killed. While most Jewish leaders condemned the attack, other Jews revered him as a martyr and came to his grave each year on the feast of Purim to commemorate his action.[25]

Christianity
Christianity was born in a world filled with violence, and violent apocalyptic imagery shapes much of the New Testament. Even though Jesus himself proclaimed a path of peace and nonviolent resistance to evil,[26] the Book of Revelation renews in Christian form the vision of a holy war fought by God and the angels against the forces of evil in the world.[27] At the climax of the battle, the leaders of the evil armies are thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur (Rev 19:20). “All the rest were killed by the sword of the rider on the horse, the sword that came from his mouth, and all the birds were gorged with their flesh” (Rev 19:21). Like earlier apocalyptic writings, the Book of Revelation promises that a mighty empire will be destroyed and justice will at last be established, with Christians exulting triumphantly in heaven. This vision would influence some Christians down to the present in their vision of a holy war against the forces of evil in this world.[28]

Conflicts at the beginning of Christianity would bear bitter fruit in later centuries.[29] Some Jews were involved in seeking the death of Jesus, and some Jews persecuted early followers of Jesus, who were themselves also Jews.[30] According to the Acts of the Apostles, Stephen was stoned to death by a Jewish mob; the young Saul approved this deed, arrested followers of Jesus in Jerusalem and sought out other followers of Jesus in Damascus with murderous intent (7:55-8:3; 9:1-2). The New Testament authors tragically prepared the way for centuries of anti-Jewish attitudes and practices by presenting John the Baptist’s and Jesus’ fierce criticisms of Jewish leaders (e.g., Mt 23:1-39). These criticisms in their original context continue the tradition of self-criticism of the Hebrew prophets, which is one of the great contributions to the world’s religious history. However, later Christians who were not Jewish would later interpret the harsh language of John the Baptist and Jesus as indicting all Jews at every time and place. The gospel writers also place special responsibility on the Jewish leaders who are said to have pressured a reluctant Pontius Pilate to have Jesus crucified. Indeed, the Gospel of Matthew presents the crowd in Jerusalem as crying out: “His blood be on us and on our children” (Mt 27:25).[31]

In the first century, the bitter struggle over whether Jesus was Messiah was still an inner-Jewish debate, since most followers of Jesus in the first generation were Jews.[32] In later centuries, when most Christians were not Jewish, the New Testament’s criticisms were often taken as a wholesale condemnation of all Jews at all times. For centuries Christians blamed each successive generation of Jews for the death of Jesus, and interpreted the voice of the crowd in the Gospel of Matthew as inviting retribution in each generation.[33] Thus Christian Good Friday celebrations often led to attacks on Jewish communities.[34] St. Augustine influenced later church policy in Europe, declaring that the Jews should be allowed to live, but kept in a state of misery because of their crime of killing Jesus.[35]

For centuries, Christian self-understanding was shaped by using the Jews as scapegoats. A friend of mine, a rabbi in Chicago, was born in Germany in 1916 and grew up in Munich playing with Christian boys. One day when he was seven years old, all his Christian playmates jumped on him and began beating him up. They had always had the usual childhood struggles, but nothing like this had ever happened before. When they had finished, he dusted himself off and asked them why they had done that. They told him they had just come from catechism class and had learned that he had killed Christ. He did not remember doing any such thing and went home to his father, who tried to explain the situation to him. Far worse atrocities happened over and over again in the history of Jewish-Christian relations.

In Christian history the idea of a holy war and of a right to conquer and colonize other peoples would have a long and horrifying history. In the early third century the great theologian Origen interpreted the conquest narratives in the Hebrew Bible as commanding an allegorical struggle against sin in one’s own soul and thought it would be horrendous to take them literally. Origen commented on the preparations to take Jericho: “The battle which you must wage is within yourself.”[36] He expressed his view of the holy wars of extermination: “Unless those carnal wars were a symbol of spiritual wars, I do not think that the Jewish historical books would ever have been passed down by the Apostles to be read by Christ’s followers in their churches.”[37] Not all later Christians agreed. In 1095 at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II called Christian Europe to arms against the Muslims who held the holy places in Jerusalem. The pope, boldly invoking the language of holy war and the image of the ancient foes of Israel who were to be exterminated, excoriated the Muslims as “more execrable than the Jebusites.”[38] As the armies formed wearing the sign of the cross, some Crusaders stuck first at defenseless Jews, especially those living in France and the Rhineland.[39] One reportedly exclaimed: “All this the Crucified has done for us, so that we might avenge his blood on the Jews.”[40] According to some estimates, 10,000 Jews were killed. Some thought that Jewish sufferings bore witness to the redemption of Christians. Even though church leaders protested against it, violence against Jews was a recurrent feature of the Crusades.

The sack of Jerusalem by Christian Crusaders that began on July 15, 1099 was merciless and bloodthirsty. The Crusaders fighting in the name of Christ and wearing his cross as their emblem breached the walls of Jerusalem about 3:00 p.m., the very hour when Christ had died. After routing the Muslim defenders, they engaged in a general massacre of the Muslim and Jewish populations and confiscation of their property. According to Crusader historians, 70,000 people were slaughtered in one part of Jerusalem, and 10,000 in another.[41] The survivors were put to work hauling away the bodies. When the Crusaders had finished their bloody business, they washed themselves off and sang hymns of praise and thanksgiving to a merciful God. One eyewitness commented: “So let it suffice to say this much at least, that in the Temple and porch of Solomon men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of unbelievers, since it had suffered so long from their blasphemies. The city was filled with corpses and blood.”[42] People reported that they could still smell the stench of the dead six months later at Christmas. This event is still remembered in the Muslim world as a horrendous atrocity, and is very much in the minds of militant Muslim extremists. Crusaders who died in battle were promised a plenary indulgence and died in the hope of immediate entrance into heaven.

The memory of the Crusades is often more vivid in the minds of Muslims than of Christians,[43] and some Muslims see the Crusades as continuing today in a different form. Muhammad al-Ghazali (1917-96), a prominent Egyptian commentator on the Qur’an, remarked: “This [the peaceful conversion of Christians to Islam] was brought to a halt by the vicious and relentless Crusades waged against the Muslims. They started over one thousand years ago, and do not seem to have come to an end yet.”[44] This image remains vividly imprinted on the minds of many Muslim as the great symbol of Christian mass murder.

The traditional anti-Judaism of Christians poisoned the atmosphere in Europe centuries before the rise of Adolph Hitler. While Christians had never called for the complete destruction of Jews, centuries of name-calling and pogroms and discrimination had rendered the Jews an easy candidate for a new and more vicious form of scapegoating. Christians also traditionally demonized Muhammad, depicting him in the vilest fashion as licentious and ambitious, an inventor of pseudo-revelations to support his own lusts, and a pork-eater who broke the rules of Islam in his own conduct.[45] For over a millennium, Muslims threatened Christian Europe, and often stalked the Christian imagination. Europe tended to repress the memory of how much the early Middle Ages had learned from a superior Muslim intellectual culture and viewed Islam as the constant enemy. The heritage of Christian abuse of both Jews and Muslims continues to shape the situation around the world down to the present day.

Islam
The rise of Islam in the seventh century C.E. changed the course of world history, posing new challenges for Jews and Christians alike. The Arabs before the rise of Islam observed a code of vengeance against members of other tribes. If a member of one tribe was injured, someone of the other tribe of equal prestige would have to be injured in return. Vendettas were a regular and incessant part of Arab life. The Qur’an forbade vengeance to humans, reserving it to God alone.

According to the Muslim tradition, Muhammad received the divine command to fight against his enemies in Medina at time when he and his followers were weak and threatened by powerful opponents.[46] After the hijra (migration) to Medina in 622, Muhammad ordered raids against caravans from Mecca, with varying degrees of success; but when things looked particularly bleak, he won the decisive battle at Badr in 624. A few years later, Muhammad was able to return to Medina peacefully and purify the sacred area of idols. His early victories were viewed as direct interventions by God. He reigned in peace at the end of his life over much of the Arabian Peninsula.

Muslims understand the Qur’an to come directly from God and to demand total obedience from all humans.[47] Islamic law, Shariah, is based on the Qur’an, together with the reports (hadith) of the teachings and decisions of the prophet Muhammad (the Sunnah, the well-trodden path), and, in cases not covered directly by the above, on analogies (qiyas) to explicit teachings. For Sunni Muslims, the fourth source of Shariah is the consensus (ijma) of the community of scholars of law.[48] There were traditionally four schools of law in Sunni Islam. Some contemporary revivalist Muslims accept only the Qur’an and the hadith as sources of Shariah (e.g., Shukri Mustafa of the Egyptian Jama’at al-Muslima). Traditionally, it was the responsibility of the government to enforce Shariah as the expression of the revealed will of God, as interpreted by various schools of law.[49]

The Islamic tradition set strict conditions for legitimate warfare.[50] According to some passages in the Qur’an and the early Islamic tradition, wars must be defensive and must be waged only against combatants. The Qur’an orders: “Fight for the sake of Allah those that fight against you, but do not attack them first” (2:190). Jihad in Arabic means “striving” or “struggle” or “effort.” The greater jihad is the internal struggle to do God’s will and overcome sin within one’s own heart and to build a just Islamic society through peaceful means. Jihad often includes the struggle for social and economic justice, as well as general cultural activities. Muhammad al-Ghazali commented on the significance for the present time: “Jihad in our times encompasses a whole range of activities including inventiveness, development, and construction on land, in the sea, and in outer space. It implies research in all fields to gain wider and deeper understanding of the world around us and all the phenomena associated with it.”[51] One side of the Muslim tradition understood the lesser jihad to involve defensive wars but not offensive military operations: on this understanding, if non-believers attack Muslims, the Qur’an demands that Muslims defend themselves with arms.[52] The Muslim teaching that only defensive wars can be justified is similar to the teaching of the Catholic Church on a just war. The Qur’an also condemns suicide and threatens it with eternal punishment; the person will be condemned to repeat the suicidal act over and over again without ceasing.[53]

There are, however, other passages in the Qur’an and the early Islamic tradition that value the ideal of a single Islamic state extending throughout the world and that call for attacks on non-believers. Rudolph Peters notes, “Classical Muslim Koran interpretation . . . regarded the Sword Verses, with the unconditional command to fight the unbelievers, as having abrogated all previous verses concerning the intercourse with non-Muslims.”[54] In principle, early Muslims believed the Islamic state was supposed to extend to the entire world so that the will of God would be acknowledged everywhere. Any non-Islamic form of rule was an affront to God’s sovereignty. Islam understood itself to be at war with idolatry, which constituted blasphemy. Thus early Islam divided the world into two regions, distinguishing the Dar al-Islam, the realm of Islam, from the Dar al-Harb, the realm of war.[55] The latter included all states and communities outside the Muslim world. Muhammad understood himself to have a divine mandate to fight against polytheism (shirk). Since the divine mandate was to spread Islam throughout the entire world, the Dar al-Islam was, at least in theory for early Muslims, always at war with the Dar al-Harb; and this struggle was one meaning of the word jihad. Sometimes this involved large-scale military operations, like the invasions of the Byzantine and Sassanian Empires, North Africa, Spain, France, and India.

After the death of Muhammad, Abu Bakr, the first caliph, established the principles for war in an early speech. He prohibited mutilation and looting and forbade the killing of women, children, and old men; and he ordered that all booty of war be given to the general community.[56] In the decades after the death of Muhammad in 632, Muslim armies raced through lands held by the Sassanian Empire and the Byzantine Empire, sweeping through Palestine and North Africa and entering Spain in the early seventh century and reaching into France in the early eighth century. As we have seen, from one perspective, all Muslim wars were supposed to be defensive. Muhammad al-Ghazali explains: “Wars are said to be conducted for God’s cause when they are fought to uphold God’s supremacy and drive out godless powers.”[57] To explain the Muslims’ victorious sweep through Persian and Christian empires, al-Ghazali claims that the Byzantine had attacked first in 629 and 630.[58] Muslim armies, he maintains, sought to liberate the peoples from the oppressive rule of Byzantine and Sassanian overlords and then teach them about Islam (1:160) to offer them the freedom to choose the true way to worship God, which was not permitted by the Byzantine and Sassanian Empires. In this context jihad is presented as a war for religious freedom for Islam against the obstacles to God’s will.

Like the biblical authors of the narratives of the conquest of Canaan and like medieval Christians, early Muslims understood their rapid victories as a palpable sign of God’s favor. The power of God was manifest on the battlefield. Jihad in the military sense did not always mean large-scale conflicts. Sometimes jihad consisted of small-scale plundering raids that brought no permanent results. Often, there was peace on the borders of the Muslim world.

Jews and Christians constituted a special case as People of the Book. When they lived in the Dar al-Islam, they and their religious observances were protected by the Qur’an itself, but they were to live in a subordinate status and pay a poll tax (the jizya). As a matter of principle, Muslims did not force Jews or Christians to convert through violent means. This protection was also extended to Zoroastrians and sometimes to Hindus in India. There were often peaceful relations among Jews, Muslims, and Christians.[59] Scholars of all three traditions studied and learned together at the court of Alfonso X, “El Sabio” (1221-84), who was renowned for his learning and wisdom. In Baghdad, in or around 781, the Caliph Mahdi debated theology with the Christian patriarch Timothy of the Church of the East (traditionally but inaccurately labeled “Nestorian”).[60] Each partner maintained his own beliefs, but the Christian patriarch generously praised Muhammad for his teachings. Even though the debate was held in Muslim territory, there was no clear winner.

From the seventh century until the seventeenth century, Muslim armies repeatedly threatened to conquer Europe.[61] At the same time that Spanish armies were driving the Moors out of Spain, Muslim armies succeeded in sacking Constantinople in 1453 and pursued a centuries-long struggle for the control of the Balkans. In 1527 and again in 1683 Muslim armies besieged and nearly captured Vienna. The Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 ended large-scale hostilities for about a century. In 1798 Napoleon landed with an army in Egypt and defeated the Ottoman army near the pyramids. The tide of military technology had turned decisively in Europe’s favor during the eighteenth century; and from 1800 on, the Muslim world would be increasingly inferior in technology and military prowess to the European powers.[62] This change in the balance of political, military, and economic power posed a major challenge to all forms of Islam and is one major factor in the growth of militant Muslim movements.[63] For revivalist Muslims, the reason for the decline is the weakening of religious faith and practice, and the cure is a strict enforcement of Shariah.

In the late eighteenth century, three strands began to appear in the Islamic world, cutting across the traditional divisions between Sunni and Shiite.[64] There is tremendous variety in each of these strands of Islam, reflecting the tremendous diversity in the Muslim world. Customary or traditional Islam continues to practice the received Islamic traditions to the degree that this is possible within a changed world. Customary Islam includes the wide variety of forms in which Islam has been traditionally practiced across a huge area from Morocco to Indonesia. Islam was very flexible when it came into to new cultures, and there are a wide array of customary practices that have long been accepted but that can appear to conflict with strict Muslim Shari’ah. In Morocco the tombs of saints are venerated. In Indonesia, Muslims tell the stories of Hindu gods from the great Indian epic, the Ramayana. In Southeast Asia Muslims venerate sacred stones. All these practices conflict with traditional Muslim teachings on worshipping God alone.

One new movement in the late eighteenth century is what would later come to be called liberal or modernist Islam.[65] This movement stressed the importance of ijtihad, or creative interpretation, against the rule of taqlid, the repetition of traditional teachings. Representatives of liberal Islam are often critical of traditional Islam and have sought to reshape the tradition. They have been in dialogue with modern European thought and have argued for democracy and human rights and the equality of women on Muslim grounds. They use a variety of interpretative strategies to harmonize their teachings with the Qur’an, ranging from the claim that the Qur’an directly supported the liberals’ positions to arguments that the silence of the Qur’an on many issues for allows for creative innovation and experiment, to hermeneutical strategies of interpretation. Some liberals argue that some Qur’anic teachings were intended for the context of seventh-century Arabia, but they are not timeless principles for all cultures and centuries. Modernist Muslims tend to believe in social evolution, and favor the transformation of Islamic practice by critically accepting certain ideas from the West and rejecting practices such as polygamy and male domination of women.

A third strand of Islam began in the eighteenth century as well, which fiercely criticizes traditional or customary Islam for deviations from pure practice and belief and seeks to purify Muslim societies of later corruptions. This movement is variously called Islamism, fundamentalist Islam, Revivalist Islam, or Restorationist Islam. No term is perfectly adequate. Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (1703-92), in eighteenth-century Arabia, is one of the most important leaders, and one branch of revivalist Islam is called Wahhabism by outsiders.[66] Followers of this movement reject this name and prefer to call themselves “the asserters of the divine unity” (al-Muwahhidun or Ahl al-Tauhid). This is the form of Islam that is officially practiced in Saudi Arabia today.

Revivalist Muslims generally reject the ideas of social evolution and modernist interpretations of Islam. They generally see the Christian West as a corrupt, decadent society driven by greed and power, exploitative and predatory. The United States often, though not always, appears as the heir of the British and the French and the medieval Crusaders. For revivalist Muslims, perhaps the greatest threat from the West today is popular culture, which undermines traditional Islamic values in a swirl of capitalism and moral relativism. Revivalist Muslims demand the strict enforcement of Shari’ah, the traditional code of Islamic law.

There are many varieties of revivalist Islam, but for the purposes of this essay on religiously motivated violence, I will focus mainly on the more militant factions.[67] For many, their struggle is not defined solely by the state of Israel or the United States but involves the broader goal of establishing a worldwide Islamic caliphate, beginning with Muslim nations. Revivalist Muslims often see Islam in a defensive posture against an international conspiracy to destroy them, led by the United States and represented on traditionally Muslim soil by Israel. They see the proper answer to the present crisis as a return to strict practice of Islam. Revivalist Muslims are confident in the finality of Islam and in its ultimate victory through the power of God.[68]

Their view of the world is shaped by a particular reading of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history. In the nineteenth century Western powers encroached more and more on Islamic countries with a mission civiliatrice, which looked down on other cultures as inferior to Europe.[69] In the wake of World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk proclaimed a secular republic in Turkey, dissolving the caliphate.[70] Meanwhile, Great Britain and France moved into areas formerly part of the Ottoman Empire.[71] To many Muslims, these developments seemed like the return of the Crusaders, and there were violent protests and strikes. Some believed that there was a vast Western conspiracy against Islam. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the end of the caliphate was the first stage. The foundation of the modern state of Israel was the second. The repeal of Shariah by Ataturk in Turkey and by Reza Shah in Iran furthered the process of undermining Islam. Both rulers ordered their people to wear Western dress and abolished the women’s veils. In response, militant Muslim clerics began calling for a jihad against the corrupt and satanic West, the heir to the massacring Crusaders and the supporter of the murderous Israeli fighters.

One of the most influential of the militant Muslim leaders was Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem. Born into a leading Palestinian family in about 1895, he studied law at the prestigious al-Azhar Islamic University in Cairo. After serving in the Ottoman army until 1917, he returned to Jerusalem, where he organized demonstrations against Zionism. The British high commissioner sponsored him for the post of Grand Mufti in 1922, which he received. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Haj Amin sent him a congratulatory cable, and endorsed the boycott of Jewish goods in Germany. Hitler sought revenge against Britain and France, the very same powers that had carved up regions of the Ottoman Empire. Many Arab Muslims sided with Hitler against the Jews, the French, and the British; many Muslims rejoiced in the fall of France in 1940. When Hitler’s Reich collapsed, some Muslims believed he had gone into hiding and would one day return. The rumor even circulated that Hitler had converted to Islam after meeting Haj Amin al-Husseini.

A number of the revivalist Muslims turned to violence. One of Haj Amin al-Husseini’s assistants, Sheikh Ezzedin Qassam, established an armed group, the Black Hand, which attacked both Jews and British in the 1930s. He was killed in 1935 and became the greatest hero for militant Palestinian Islamists. The military wing of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, is inspired by him and is named after one of his portraits, “The Qur’an and the Rifle.”[72]

After World War II, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, led a campaign of terror against the secular government of Egypt for being “anti-Islamic.” Their activities became a model for other Muslim militants. They sought to mobilize the population against the government. They bombed cinemas, set hotels on fire, attacked unveiled women, and raided homes. Pro-Western officials in government were murdered. Young militants from all over the Muslim world came to learn from al-Banna. He was gunned down on the street in Cairo on February 12, 1949, and his movement was severely restricted for a time, but his example lived on as a model for others.

Militant fundamentalist Muslims have sometimes cooperated with secular nationalists in Muslim countries, but the alliance tends not to last long. In principle, most revivalist Muslims do not recognize the legitimacy of the modern nation-state. For many (e.g., Muhammad Rashid Rida from Tripoli), the goal is the restoration of the caliphate and the eventual expansion of the caliphate to universal, world-wide status. They believe that a strict practice of Islam is the answer to all the problems confronting contemporary Muslim societies. They are often a danger to governments in Muslim areas. The Armed Islamic Group fought viciously against the Algerian government, often murdering villagers, as well as the French Trappist monks of Tibhirine.[73] Various militant Islamic groups operate in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Central Asian Republics, Egypt, and Lebanon. Muslim women who did not wear a veil have had acid thrown in their faces from Tunisia to Iran.

One of the most influential twentieth-century revivalist Muslims, Sayyid Qutb (1906-66) from Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, charged that all Muslim countries in the mid-twentieth century were in a state of jahiliyya, ignorance and infidelity, like the pre-Islamic era, because they do not implement God’s program for society.[74] He proposed a vision of social justice and equality based on Islamic sources, and he called for the overthrow of all existing governments in Muslim countries because they were not faithful to Islam. He came to the United States in 1948 to study its educational system, and he was horrified at the laxity of morals at that time, at the separation of church and state, the equality of women, the freedom of expression, the criticism of religion, and the indulgence in worldly pleasures. He excoriated the West for being depraved and dissolute. He called permissiveness “that animal freedom” and termed women’s liberation “that slave market.”[75] Qutb demonized the United States as the Great Satan, predicting that just as Roman decadence brought down the Roman Empire, so American decadence would have the same effect.

Qutb insisted that Islam respects religious freedom and does not seek to impose Islam by force. It does, however, seek freedom to preach Islam and promote it actively throughout the world. If anyone resists the preaching and spread of Islam, then it is necessary for Muslims to fight until the person either professes loyalty and submission or is killed.[76] Islam “annihilates all those political and material powers that stand between the people and Islam, which make one people bow before another and prevent them from the servitude of Allah.”[77] Qutb rejected the interpretation of jihad as only defensive warfare because Islam must fight to destroy all the Satanic forces in the world. “It either completely dynamites the reigning political systems or, subjugating them, forces them into submission to acceptance of Jizyah [the poll tax].”[78] According to Qutb, “The reasons for jihad . . . are these: To establish the Sovereignty and Authority of God on earth, to establish the true system revealed by God for addressing the human life; to exterminate all the Satanic forces and their ways of life., to abolish the lordship of man over other human beings. Since all men are creatures of One God only, no other slave has the right or authority to make them his servants or make arbitrary laws for them. These reasons and factors are enough to declare Jihad.”[79] According to Qutb, Islam is under obligation to continue this struggle and cannot accept any cease-fire.[80] Qutb’s later writings were influenced by Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi from Pakistan, who argued that all human society today is composed to infidels and therefore it is obligatory for Muslims to do battle with it and forcibly take power.[81] Qutb declared the Egyptian government illegitimate and called for its overthrow; Egypt’s ruler Nasser threw him in prison in 1965, where he was tortured and eventually hanged in 1966. He is still widely honored as a martyr, and is a decisive influence on Hamas and others.

After the Israeli victory in the 1967 war, militant Islam spread more rapidly and there developed more and more an inner war within Islam itself between Modernist and Revivalist Muslims. Revivalist Muslims blamed the Arab defeat on lack of fidelity to Shari’ah and became more hostile to Islamic Modernists. Since the 1970s, there has been growing conflict between the revivalist and modernist movements in Islam. The Islamic revolution in Iran led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 added momentum to the revivalist drive to establish Islamic governments.

The struggle of militant Muslims is not only against the United States or Israel. There is a long list of Liberal Muslim intellectuals who have been assassinated: Mahmoud Mohammed Taha (Sudan, ca. 1910-1985), Subhi al-Sali (Lebanon, d. 1986), Farag Fuda (Egypt, 1945-1992), Maulvi Farook (India, 1945-1990), Qazi Nissa Ahmed (India, 1948-1994), Mohammad Sa’id (Algeria, ca. 1947-1995), Abderrazak Redjam (Algeria, ca. 1957-1995), and there are many others threatened or attacked or forced out of positions. One Egyptian Muslim scholar was declared no longer a Muslim, and his wife was forcibly ordered to divorce him because she could not be married to a non-Muslim.

The struggle of the Palestinians against Israel is one important part of contemporary jihad. Israelis are understood to have attacked Muslims and stolen their land. Thus the Qur’an demand for jihad in the sense of a militant armed struggle applies in the strict sense of the word. Militant Muslims often call the Jews “unbelievers” (kafirun), and view them as liars and murderous enemies of God. Following traditional Islamic teachings, these Muslims hold that the Jews received the revelation from God through Moses, but they turned away from it and falsified it. When prophets came who displeased them, the Jews of biblical times killed them; and, according to the Qur’an, Jews tried unsuccessfully to kill Jesus. Muhammad came with the final revelation, but Jews and Christians were envious and opposed him and his message. In the early Islamic tradition, Jews are portrayed as having tried to assassinate Muhammad by throwing a rock from the top of a house at him.[82] Militant Muslims often take up themes of modern European anti-Semitism, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery from Czarist Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, as evidence of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy to dominate Islam and the entire world.[83] Militant Muslims understand Judaism as a religion that “stipulates racism and hostility towards others in its books and incites to wrongly take away Palestine under the slogan of the Holy Land.”[84]

Palestinian militants justify terrorist attacks against Israel and other Western targets as defensive responses to Israeli aggression. Sheikh Yessin insisted that the Palestinian jihad was comparable to the Jewish violent resistance to the British Mandate force.[85] The long list of terrorist attacks is well known. Militants see themselves as fighting in the tradition of the defenders against the Crusaders and the Tartars. By fighting in the path of God, they believe they will eventually triumph against all odds.

To militant Muslims, the stationing of American troops on Saudi Arabia during and after the Gulf War of 1990-91 was considered an insult and a desecration of holy land. The first Gulf War itself was often seen as an attack by American imperialists upon the Islamic community (ummah) to further its own interests. UN approval was cynically regarded because resolutions against Iraq were enforced with overwhelming military might, while resolutions against Israel’s seizure of territory have never been enforced at all. It is from this context that Osama bin-Laden and the Al-Qaeda network have emerged.

Steps Forward
In this time of so much distrust and hostility, we need to do what is necessary to stop the direct threat of terrorism from whatever source directed at whatever target. We also need to reach out to responsible religious leaders of all traditions to shape a community of religions that can stand together against atrocities. There have already been beginnings in this direction, such as the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.[86] In 1986 Pope John Paul II invited religious leaders from all the world’s traditions to come to Assisi and pray for world peace. As he entered the gathering, he spoke of the need for Christians to remember past crimes towards members of other traditions and to ask God’s forgiveness and seek understanding and reconciliation.[87] No such gathering had ever taken place on this scale before in the history of the world.

It is significant that the pope did not invite the world’s religious leaders to Rome but to Assisi, the town of St. Francis, who is a figure who reaches out across religious boundaries and touches the hearts of many from a wide variety of traditions. In particular, Francis has a special significance for Muslim-Christian relations. At a time when Christian Crusaders and Muslim warriors were fiercely battling each other, Francis sought the path of dialogue, and journeyed to Egypt to meet with the sultan and explain the message of peace of Jesus to him.[88] The sultan welcomed him and listened to Francis with respect. While the sultan did not convert to Christianity, he appreciated the courage of Francis and sent him home with honors. In a world troubled by violence, the example of Francis, together with the peaceful encounters of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, stands as an example of a way forward.