Religious violence

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Religious violence covers phenomena in which religion is either the subject or the object of violent behavior.^[1] All the religions of the world contain narratives, symbols, and metaphors of violence and war.^[2] Religious violence is violence that is motivated by, or in reaction to, religious precepts, texts, or the doctrines of a target or an attacker. It includes violence against religious institutions, people, objects, or events. Religious violence includes both acts which are committed by religious groups and acts which are committed against religious groups.

The term has proven difficult to define, however. Violence is a very broad concept, because it is used against both human and non-human entities.^[3] Furthermore, violence can have a wide variety of expressions, from blood shedding and physical harm to violation of personal freedoms, passionate conduct or language, or emotional outbursts like fury or passion.^[4][5] Adding to the difficulty, religion is a complex and modern Western concept,^[6][7] one whose definition still has no scholarly consensus.^[8][6][7][5] In general, however, religion is considered an abstraction which entails beliefs, doctrines, and sacred places.

Religious violence, like all forms of violence, is a cultural process which is context-dependent and highly complex.^[9] Thus, oversimplifications of religion and violence often lead to misguided understandings of the causes for acts of violence, as well as oversight of their rarity.^[9] Violence is perpetrated for a wide variety of ideological reasons, and religion is generally only one of many contributing social and political factors that may foment it. For example, studies of supposed cases of religious violence often conclude that the violence was driven more by ethnic animosities than by religious worldviews.^[10] Due to the complex nature of religion, violence, and the relationship between them, it is often difficult to discern whether religion is a significant cause of violence.^[5]

Indeed, the link between religious belief and behavior has proven difficult to define. Decades of anthropological, sociological, and psychological research have all concluded that behaviors do not directly follow from religious beliefs and values because people's religious ideas tend to be fragmented, loosely connected, and context-dependent, just like other domains of culture and life.^[11]

Religions, ethical systems, and societies rarely promote violence as an end in of itself.^[3] At the same time, there is often tension between a desire to avoid violence and the acceptance of justifiable uses of violence to prevent a perceived greater evil that permeates a culture.^[3]