Fatal Addiction, War in The Name of God PDF

A Fatal Addiction

War in the Name of God

Thomas Block

Algora Publishing
New York
2012 by Algora Publishing.
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Sections 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act of 1976)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Block, Thomas.
A fatal addiction : war in the name of God / Thomas Block.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-87586-930-8 (soft cover: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-87586-931-5 (hard
cover: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-87586-932-2 (ebook) 1. ViolenceReligious aspects. 2.
WarReligious aspects. I. Title.
BL65.V55B57 2012
201.7273dc23
2012032048
Front cover: Mayan Classic Period Censer with Figure of Deity Holding Human Head
Located in the Museo Arqueologico-Sylvanus G. Morley, Tikal, Guatemala.
Credit: Macduff Everton/CORBIS

Printed in the United States

Religion in its broadest sense must be another term for that obscu-
rity that surrounds mans efforts to defend himself by curative or pre-
ventative means from his own violence.1
For my mother, Barbara Gilbert and my father, Victor Block
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION 1
Truth 1
America: A Case Study in the Difference between Truth
and Reality 2
One Truth 3
A Time-Honored Truth 4
A Religious People 5
Uncovered Truth 6
The Truth Shall Never Dissuade 7
America the Bellicose 7
CHAPTER ONE: WAR 9
Violence and Society 10
Violence and Spirituality 10
Violence and The Scapegoat 11
Violence of God 13
War and Religion 14
War and the State 15
A Parsimonious God 16
War and the Warrior 18
War is Beautiful 19
War is Sublime 21
War is Love 22
A Love of Killing 22
A Fatal Addiction: War in the Name of God
War as Mysticism 24
War is Holy 26
CHAPTER TWO: FROM THE BEGINNING OF HUMANITY 29
Original Human 29
Primitive Religion and the Birth of the Violent God 30
Sacrifice 31
Babylonian Religion: Creation from Destruction 32
The Greek and Roman Religions 34
Greek Gods and War 35
God and Sacrifice 36
Aristotle and Plato 37
Rome 38
Mars 39
CHAPTER THREE: JUDAISM 41
Jewish Scripture 42
An Atmosphere Pervaded with Violence 44
The Jewish God and His Battered Spouse 46
Sacrifice, Martyrdom and the Will of God 47
Israel: God, Land and the Other 49
Just War 50
Judaism Today More of the Same? 53
How the Jewish Bible Affects Christianity 54
Sacrifice 56
And Echoes in Islam 57
CHAPTER FOUR: CHRISTIANITY 59
Jesus a Message of Peace? 60
The Early Church Fathers 63
Martyrdom 65
The First Council of Nicaea and the Fall of Christianity 66
Just War 68
Error Has No Right 69
The Holy Roman Empire 70
Augustinian Influence on Later Christian Thinkers 71
The Principle of Double Effect 73
Protestant War 74
The Crusades 75
The Inquisition 77
Christianity Today 78
xii
Table of Contents
CHAPTER FIVE: ISLAM 81

Early Islam 82
Scriptures 83
Jihad 84
A Blood Covenant 86
Islam Today 87
A Just War 89
CHAPTER SIX: HINDUISM 91
Bhagavad Gita 92
Violent Imagery 95
Just war 97
Hindus Today 98
Sikhism 100
CHAPTER SEVEN: BUDDHISM 103
Violent Imagery 105
Buddhist Liturgy 106
More Violent Imagery 109
Buddhism and the State 110
Just War Theory 111
Japan 112
Exceptionalism 112
The Sword and the Lotus 113
Monks and War 114
Sugimoto 116
Zen, the State and a Just War 117
China 118
The Tao of Slaughter 119
Violent Imagery 121
Chinese Buddhism and the Korean War 122
India 123
Violence in Indian Buddhism 124
Ashoka 125
Reverberations: Violence in Indian Buddhism Today 126
Tibet 126
Born of Violence and Violent Still 128
Thailand 129
Buddhist Apocalypse 129
Military Monk 130
Sri Lanka 131
Mongolia 132
xiii
Et Tu, United States? 133

Final Thoughts 133
CHAPTER EIGHT: WAR AS LOVE 135
Abrahams Curse 135
Love, War and Sacrifice in the 21st Century 136
America: A Case Study in Sacred Violence 139
America: The New Israel 140
Sacrificing for God and Country 142
American History: Our Violence is Gods Will 143
George W. Bush, September 11, 2001, and Americas
21st-Century Crusade 148
Bushs Minions: Youre Either With Us or Against Us 151
God, War and the American Worldview 153
On the Fringe? 157
EPILOGUE 161
War as Mysticism: Redux 162
Religion and Violence: A Reconsideration 163
Sacrifice Revisited 164
Will, Violence and Gods Purpose 165
War, God and the Act of Creation 166
Le Plus a Change 168
War the Boundless 169
Without sacred violence, would society be possible? 170
A Conclusion 171
Violence and Chaos 172
ENDNOTES 175
BIBLIOGRAPHY 195
INDEX 205
xiv
Introduction
The failure of modern man to grasp the nature of religion has served to
perpetuate its effects . . . We persist in disregarding the power of violence
in human societies; that is why we are reluctant to admit that violence
and the sacred are the same thing.2
Truth
The 20th-century activist-prophet Mahatma Gandhi (d. 1948) stated
that God is Truth. They are the same thing.
At first glance, this looks like one of those throwaway lines about
Gods attributes, such as God is Great, God is Love or God is Omni-
present. Something that we hear often, yet rarely think too much about.
However, if we sit with the idea that God is Truth for a few minutes,
it quickly becomes unsettling. Truth and our conception of reality are of-
ten very much at odds. Truth is not found by sifting through polling data
or by agreeing with a generally accepted opinion. It has nothing to do
with objectivity which often simply splits the difference between op-
posing views or with history, or precedent, or even our deepest held
intuitions and beliefs.
Given the chasm that sometimes exists between perception and re-
ality, Truth can be very difficult to disentangle from desire, wish, hope,
political exigency and accepted objective reality. The Florentine political
philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli (d. 1527) realized this dynamic, stating:
The great majority of humans are satisfied with appearances, as though
1
they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem
rather than by those that are.3
The greatest spiritual thinkers have appreciated this difficulty. The
18 -century Jewish mystic Baal Shem Tov noted: What does it mean
th
when people say Truth goes over all the world? It means that Truth is
driven out of one place after another, and must wander on and on.4 And
Rabbi Pinhas of Koretz (d. 1791), a Hasidic master, said: For the sake of
Truth, I served 21 years. Seven years to find out what Truth is, seven to
drive out falsehood and seven to absorb Truth.5 Very few of us have the
energy and dedication to undertake this rabbis program of discovery!
America: A Case Study in the Difference between Truth

and Reality
The history of the United States offers fertile ground for considering
the difference between accepted fact and Truth. Contrary to the national
narrative, the United States of America is anything but a peace-loving
nation founded on the inalienable principles of human rights and justice
for all, which it gently exports around the world to other countries.
One Truth of the matter is that the United States was founded on
genocide (of the Native Americans), and stealing (of their land), and
then was turned into an empire on the backs of African slaves.
More recently, the history of the United States continues to veer from
its self-image as a nation of peace and gentle suasion: It has been the
single most bellicose international actor since World War II. In his book
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (1995),
William Blum outlines 55 different military actions in more than 50
countries, describing the role played by the United States in overthrow-
ing governments, perverting elections, assassinating leaders, suppressing
revolutions, manipulating trade unions and manufacturing news. The
United States is the only country that has ever utilized a nuclear bomb,
dropping two of them on Japan in 1945.
Yet the country has a very different self-image. According to Ameri-
cas most visible political leaders, the country is exceptional and good.
This example, one of many which will be explored throughout this book,
is from a speech by then Senator Barack Obama at the Democratic Na-
tional Convention in 2004. It represents the American zeitgeist:
We gather to affirm the greatness of our nation not because of the height
of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our econo-
my; our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declara-
tion made over 200 years ago: We hold these truths to be self-evident,
2
Introduction
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with
certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. That is the true genius of America.6
A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and the
Brookings Institution found that 58 percent of Americans agreed with
the statement: God has granted America a special role in human his-
tory.7 And this majority of countrypersons probably dont mean to com-
mit genocide, enslave humans and rain bombs down on countries as far
flung as Yemen, Somalia and Colombia.
This book is one attempt to dig through all of the myth and wish that
help shape Americas national as well as human narratives, to honestly
explore two central facets of human society: organized violence usu-
ally known as war and the yearning for the sacred, also known as
religion. Shorn of the usual political, emotional and social parameters
that can separate Truth and reality, this examination will not be bound
by accepted historical narratives. It explores in the clearest manner pos-
sible these central human institutions.
For if, as Gandhi maintained, God is Truth, then we owe it to our-
selves to do our best to take an honest look at our institutions, our mo-
tivations and our failings not as an exercise of self-flagellation but so
that we might begin to live up to the maxims and platitudes that are so
easily flung about in political and social forums.
One Truth
There are many painful truths that we might have a difficult time un-
derstanding and internalizing. This book is about one of them: our fatal
attraction to violence and war. And even more confusing, the manner in
which war and God are intertwined, in most religions and throughout all
human time, even into our own.
War represents the collision of our two most basic drives: the will to
live and a violent and self-destructive aspect of our nature. As the Ger-
man philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (d. 1900) explained, Exploitation
does not belong to a corrupt or imperfect and primitive society; it be-
longs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function. It is a con-
sequence of the will to power, which is, after all, the will to life.8
There is no greater manner of exploitation than to kill another hu-
man being or be part of a force or nation that does so. In so doing, the
will to live is taken to its logical conclusion, through denying life to an-
other. Little is so existentially satisfying, and nothing is so stubbornly at
3
the heart of human civilization, as this dynamic and the manner in which
it plays out through war.
It is a perverse universe indeed that would fuse these two primal in-
stincts in one being the will to live and the need to destroy but their
centrality to the human experience cannot be denied.
A Time-Honored Truth
There are few rituals more basic to all states and all civilizations
throughout human history than war. As the Chinese philosopher Sun
Tzu (c. 500 B.C.E.) said in The Art of War: Warfare is the greatest affair
of state, the basis of life and death, the Tao to survival or extinction.9
Despite its ubiquity, it is also the most inhuman of human institutions.
How can it still be so stubbornly central to society, even though our ar-
maments have grown to such grotesque efficiency that thousands and
even millions of people can be killed during the course of a few weeks?
Whats more, as our ability to commit mass slaughter grows through
technological advances, the percentage of non-combatants killed engorg-
es to alarming proportions: from 15% in World War I to 65% in World
War II, then 90% at the end of the 20th century in low-impact conflicts
in places such as the Sudan, East Timor and the Balkans10 and, most re-
cently, to an almost perfect 98% of those killed being innocent victims,
with the advent of pilotless drone attacks11 in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ye-
men, Somalia, the Palestinian Territories and other locales.
The stability of war as a central facet of society is undeniable. Today
is certainly no different than one thousand years after the birth of Jesus,
or a millennium before the birth of the Christian Messiah. For instance,
during my own lifetime, the United States of America has been inces-
santly at war. I was born into the Vietnam War in 1963 and now, as I
write this, my country is involved in various military engagements, in the
Middle East, Latin America, Africa and other regions.
Additionally, members of the United States armed forces are detailed
to 150 nations around the world, from Korea to Uganda to Germany to
Columbia, and all points in between. Over the past 50 years, the United
States military has been involved in bloody conflicts in Cambodia, Laos,
Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Lebanon, Honduras, Iran,
Panama, Grenada, Iraq (twice), Kuwait, Serbia, Colombia, Pakistan and
Somalia, just to name a few.12 This comprises an unbroken line of American
military engagements whose dead might count out the minutes that I
have lived in the course of nearly 50 years.
4
Introduction
Things are certainly not getting better. An article in the Washington

Post noted:
This is the American era of endless war . . . Today, radical religious ideolo-
gies, new technologies and cheap, powerful weapons have catapulted the
world into a period of persistent conflict, according to the Pentagons
last major assessment of global security. No one should harbor the illu-
sion that the developed world can win this conflict in the near future, the
document concluded. By this logic, Americas wars are unending and any
talk of peace is quixotic or nave.13
War cuts a bloody swath through all of human history with no
less insistence than it has throughout my lifetime. War correspondent
Christopher Hedges noted, in his gut-wrenching book What Every Per-
son Should Know about War, that over the past 3400 years of civilization
humans have been entirely at peace for only 268 of them.14 The Pulitzer
Prize winning historian Will Durant (d. 1981) calculated that there have
been only 29 years in all of human history during which there was not
a war underway somewhere in the world.15 George C. Kohn was even
more unforgiving, noting in his Dictionary of Wars that from roughly 2925
B.C.E. through today, an unbroken line of institutional violence can be
drawn. And psychologist James Hillman stated in A Terrible Love of War
that during the 5600 years of recorded history, 14,600 wars have been
fought, more than two wars for each year of human civilization.16
Of course, it must also be acknowledged that war has been almost as
intensively studied as it has been waged. From the first exploration of
this human ritual, in Herodotuss The Histories (d. 425 B.C.E.), through
the most recent reportage about the current war (whichever that might
be as you read this), countless investigators, historians, pundits, poets
and journalists have examined the causes of war in a myriad of ways. Yet
all of their conclusions have failed to explain, once and for all, the genesis
of this endemic human experience.17
This book is yet one more attempt.
A Religious People
The violent nature of our species is undeniable. As the 20th -century
prophet Thomas Merton (d. 1968) pointed out: Man is the only species
besides the rat that wantonly and cruelly turns on his own kind in un-
provoked and murderous hostility. Man is the only one who deliberately
seeks to destroy his own kind.18
At the same time, the vast majority of people and societies throughout
human time have considered themselves deeply religious. Even in our era,
5
the United States is said to be the most religious industrialized nation in

the world. A Washington Post article noted: 92 percent [of Americans]
believe in God or a universal spirit including one in five of those who
call themselves atheists.19
It was this pairing in contemporary America of war and religion, spir-
ituality and destruction, that inspired me to write this book. Shouldnt
the one (religion) mitigate the other (institutional violence)? Isnt peace
at the center of all religions? Yet the facts speak for themselves: a rela-
tionship between God and religion, not only in language but also in ac-
tion, cannot be denied.
To examine the pairing of war and religion throughout human history
is an academic study, but to look at it in terms of my country and my era
is deeply emotional. How could it be that my nation, one of the most reli-
gious countries in the world, is also one of the most violent? Do God and
war define the American spirit as much as apple pie and baseball? And
if they do, how can that be? From what I have understood of religion, it
leads to harmony internal spiritual tranquility, as well as social well
being between and among peoples.
The facts exhibit a different reality. With a country as religious and
war-like as the United States, something else must be taking place. So I
decided to delve not only into the history of war and religion, but also to
examine how the inseparable pairing of these two forces impact contem-
porary society.
Uncovered Truth
Most religions not only the bloody monotheistic ones with which
we in the West are more familiar (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), but
also many primitive religions,20 as well as Greek, Roman, Buddhist, Sikh
and Hindu creeds have, in addition to being sacred paths preaching
internal peace as well as brotherly love, less well known and blood-
thirsty histories. In many cases, as I explore below, these creeds demand
complete bodily commitment, sacrifice and murder to further the cause
of their god. As I delved deeper into the chronicles of these major faiths,
I found that few are religions of peace. And that if a religion does preach
peace in a meaningful manner, it is either swallowed up from the out-
side by a more warlike creed, or changed from the inside, as happened to
Christianity in the fourth century (see below).
The mantra (insert name of preferred religious path) is a religion of
peace is often simply not the case. Sometimes, it is little more than a
6
Introduction
manner of papering over the violent history of a particular faith. Or, at

the very least, it represents a selective view of the narrative of ones own
spiritual path. Additionally, this construction has been used to justify
violence against another, different religion that obviously isnt a religion
of peace, or they wouldnt be forcing us to undertake these bellicose
actions.
This dynamic is explored in detail below.
The Truth Shall Never Dissuade

Human beings often do not allow facts to come between them and
their deepest held beliefs. It is a dynamic that we see time and again, and
one that is hidden in plain view.
Ronald Lindsay, president of the Committee of Skeptical Inquiry, was
quoted in the Washington Post addressing the underlying motivation for
people choosing their inklings over truth. He was discussing a question
in American politics which will almost certainly be forgotten by the time
you read this: whether or not President Barack Obama was actually born
in the United States, otherwise known as the birther controversy. But
this dynamic holds true for any set of deeply held beliefs, and religious
beliefs are often the bedrock of a persons sense of self:
If you have a pre-commitment to your view, and that point of view is im-
portant for your identity if you are emotionally attached to it your
emotion is going to shape your reasoning process. Youll be presented
with facts, but youll find some way to minimize the significance of those
facts.21
And so it is with religion: people often believe that theirs is a religion
of peace, because they want to believe that they, and their god, are peace-
ful. Many devout people will blame anything but their own creed for the
history of blood and slaughter within their sacred path, violence often
committed in service to that religion.
America the Bellicose

In the study that follows, I review the violence of God tradition in six
of the largest religious paths practiced in our world, representing nearly
90% of the worlds faith community, as well as many bellicose precursor
religions in primitive societies, the ancient Near East, Greece and Rome.
The one thing that all of these religious paths share is a belief in sacred
violence and that violence and the sacred are at times so closely linked
as to be indistinguishable.
7
After this exploration, I turn my attention to American culture and

the manner in which the violence of God tradition influences its political
sphere how the United States, as a society, goes so easily to war as
one nation under God. In exploring the language of the media, politics,
religious speeches and popular culture over the decade or so since the
September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center attacks which are
themselves believed by some to be exemplary acts of religious ecstasy
I found that the tendency to fuse Gods will with institutionalized
slaughter affected many facets of Americas public discourse. Closer ex-
amination uncovered the fact that this conflation of violence and God
may be traced backward in the countrys history to the founding of the
United States and even earlier.
The question that arose for me throughout this work which I deal
with in the epilogue is which force is more powerful, and which serves
which? Do religion and God exist simply to channel our aggressive im-
pulses, with the fusion of violence and the sacred making civilization
itself possible by preventing humanity from dissolving into an orgy of in-
dividual, anarchic destructive behavior? Are our sub-and pre-conscious
aggressive impulses channeled through sacred violence into the institu-
tion of war, thereby protecting most of us while sacrificing the few, the
warriors?
Or does it go even further than that, with war being one true human
religion? With violence representing, for many, the ultimate expression,
as Nietzsche averred, of the human will to live. And in this case, are God
and Church sometimes subservient to our necessary, primal and geneti-
cally encoded violence?
I dont know.
But I felt that these questions must be explored and they had to
be considered honestly and openly, focusing on the facts at hand, outside
of the realm of wish and dream. Often, even in books that have exam-
ined the relationship between God and religion, I feel that conclusions
have been softened, holy warriors have been shunted from the center of
society (referred to as terrorists or miscreants) and the two energies
violence and the sacred have been teased apart, with a sigh of relief.
In those studies, the desire for a certain outcome often appeared to
influence the conclusion, clouding even the most penetrating studies of
violence and God. After all, a book must give the reader what he or she
wants, or it risks remaining an unpublished study, considered too de-
pressing or unmarketable to be put into print.
8
Chapter One: War
No one engaged in thought about history and politics can remain unaware
of the enormous role violence has always played in human affairs.22
War is violence.
Violence is endemic to the human condition.
Although philosopher Ren Girard noted in his seminal work Violence
and the Sacred, Neither primitive nor modern man has yet succeeded in
identifying the microbe responsible for the dread disease of violence,23 a
genetic basis for its expression must exist within the physical structure
of the human animal. Violence, the will to express oneself in an aggres-
sive and destructive manner, undoubtedly is tangled into our DNA like
the need to eat, sleep and breathe.
Despite the fact that it might distress and even disgust some of us,
the simple fact of our own violent nature must be accepted at the very
beginning of this study. Any squeamishness must be overcome so that
the spare facts can be appreciated and digested. No silver lining here: I
will not claim that most of us, at heart, are more like Gandhi than Geng-
his Khan.
Political theorist Hannah Arendt (d. 1975) proposed in On Violence
that humans violent urges are even more powerful than other innate
drives, such as nutritive and sexual instincts. She stated that nutritive
and sexual drives are activated by compelling bodily needs on one side
and by outside stimulants on the other, while violent impulses seem to
be independent of such provocation. This leads to instinct frustration,
to repressed aggressiveness, which according to psychologists causes
9
a damming up of energy, whose eventual explosion is all the more

dangerous.24
Violence and Society

More than just an individual need, violence represents a central as-
pect of communal intercourse. It often offers a vital cohesive bond be-
tween humans, one that makes society itself possible. As Ren Girard
noted: social coexistence would be impossible . . . if violence failed to be
transmitted into culture.25 This is an even more disturbing aspect of vio-
lence: not that it merely exists as a part of the human social experience,
but that it can seem to be necessary to it.
Expanding on the perceived inevitability of violence to human cul-
ture, Dr. Regina Schwartz argued in The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy
of Monotheism that violence originates in identity formation, in the pri-
mal need for individuals to separate themselves from each other and the
world around them. In the simple act of experiencing life as a unique
person, the seeds of violence are born.26 According to Schwartz, vio-
lence is central to personality, to existential meaning and to the funda-
mental experience of being. Violence represents the first step toward
consciousness.
How can this be? After all, not everyone behaves in a violent manner.
Schwartz explained:
Violence is not only what we do to the Other. It is prior to that. Violence is
the very construction of the Other . . . The outsider is believed to threaten
the boundaries that are drawn to exclude him, the boundaries that his
very existence maintains. Outside by definition but always threatening to
get in, the Other is poised in a delicate balance that is always off balance,
because fear and aggression continually weight the scales. Identity forged
against the Other inspires perpetual policing of its fragile borders.27
Violence and Spirituality

The definition of the self, created in opposition to the other, repre-
sents the antithesis of the spiritual understanding of being. It is vital to
highlight this difference because, as I will show, violence and religions
are deeply intertwined, while violence and the spiritual path are anti-
thetical to each other. This is a nuanced but central point, as the spiritual
paths at the center of all religions are very similar to each other.
At the core of most religions lies the belief that the surest way to spiri-
tual realization is to dissolve the sense of personal autonomy and indi-
10
Chapter One: War
vidual existence into the Divine ground of all being. Far from creating
the sense of self in opposition to the other, the mystical adept takes the
opposite course, appreciating the interconnectedness of all beings and
how the experience of selfhood grows out of ignorance.
As I work through this study, these diametrically opposed definitions
of being one, the more primal, based in separation through boundary
formation (leading to violence) and the other, more spiritually mature,
based on dissolving perceived differences between the self and other
will be a constant theme and one which helps explain how the deeply
religious can also be terribly violent.
Because sadly, religion and spirituality do not always go hand in hand.
Violence and The Scapegoat

If individual personality formation is forged in the furnace of violence,
as Regina Schwartz contends, then imagine how much more important it
must be for the even more fragile construction of a society. To bring hun-
dreds, thousands, even millions of souls together in an experience of us,
creating the basic bonds that make civilization possible, violence must
be collected and channeled. Without some institutional outlet for innate
human aggressiveness, the fabric of society would shred and the collec-
tion of human animals would disintegrate into the chaos of individuation,
as represented in an ongoing catastrophe of violent acts leading, in the
end, to the destruction of human civilization.
Ren Girard proposed in his beautiful study Violence and the Sacred
that the creation of the scapegoat some other upon which to vent all
of the aggressive tendencies collected in the human soul represented
the beginning of society. Those of us who have followed him in think-
ing about civilization and violence have often found much to inspire us
in Girards seminal work. Anglican priest Jeremy Young, writing in The
Violence of God and the War on Terror, noted:
Scapegoating is one of the quickest and most effective means of creating a
strong sense of group belonging: the differences and conflicts that may ex-
ist within a group can be ignored and projected onto another community
or onto its [own] deviant members.28
Society is built on the creation of an other upon whom to vent in-
nate murderous impulses. This is not hard to discern. We can see this
in the United States with the application of its death penalty, dispro-
portionately visited on African-American subjects, who since the time of
slavery have represented the other against which mainstream America
11
has often defined itself. Since the reinstitution of the death penalty in
1976, thirty-five percent of executed criminals have been Black,29 while
African-Americans make up only 12.6% of the total population.30 More
recently the scapegoat against whom many Americans define themselves
has shifted, with the attacks of 9/11/2001, to Arabs and Muslims.
This dynamic is replayed on the international stage as a manner of
knitting a collection of individuals into a society sharing a culture. It
could be argued that the United States, more than almost any other
country in the world, is desperately in need of enemies as its ethnic, cul-
tural and religious fabric is so diverse that it is almost impossible to find
shared markers except for a common enemy.
Americas national identity germinates in war. Its textbooks are filled
with stories of international engagements with heinous enemies. In
each case, students are taught about the courageous and freedom-loving
Americans stepping onto the international stage to safeguard God, coun-
try and the highest human ideals. Additionally, lest they come to believe
that these formative events, proof of their countrys goodness, are con-
fined to the past, the United States is collectively embroiled in a series of
contemporary actions with existential foes, whether terrorists, dictators,
oil-hording brigands or others.
The point of relevance in both the domestic and international acts of
violence is not whether an uncomfortable majority of executed citizens
have darker skin than is merited by their percentage of the population
(they do), or whether innocent people are put to death or not in our for-
eign interventions (they are). The real purpose of the death penalty in
America and its wars in far-off lands is to turn its citizens natural aggres-
sion outward onto a perceived other so that the countrypersons can
create a sense of belonging and be part of a functioning society.
Ultimately, this need for scapegoating comes to define a central as-
pect of any society: keeping peace through violence.
Violence, or the threat of violence, is fundamental to the creation of peace
of most communities. This is clear in the case of the armed forces, who
are trained in the use of violence to defend a country against both internal
and external threats, or the police. The courts, the judiciary and the prison
system are all systems of legal violence. The military and legal systems
underlie all of our communal interactions.31
And in every case, the people who become tangled up within the
states system of violence (either at home or abroad) not only offer a de-
fining boundary that helps individuals feel like part of the majority, but
12
Chapter One: War
those scapegoats also satisfy innate aggressive needs, freeing people to

live more or less peaceably within a society.
Violence of God
God can be a violent God.
Sometimes God must be, as God can demand so much violence from
His creations. God is understood in the Torah, Christian New Testa-
ment and the Quran to be powerful, because power is identified with
violence.32 Gods covenant with the faithful often includes the promise
to utterly destroy the enemy, as well as spread His word via violent acts
of aggression and retribution.
Whats more, God occasionally keeps His flock in line by visiting ter-
rible and violent episodes on those who stray. One point of undisputed
agreement is that Gods overwhelming character is that of a violent, pun-
ishing, pathological deity who uses unfathomable violence to both re-
ward and punish.33
God is imagined in many religions as sanctioning violence and often-
times as committing it Himself. And while I will give detailed and specif-
ic examples of pathologically violent language and action of God later in
this study, it is necessary now to fix in the mind of the reader that it is not
abnormal, and is sometimes even traditional, to place violence at the cen-
ter of religious experience. A passage from Mark Juergensmeyers (Direc-
tor of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University
of California, Santa Barbara) Terror in the Mind of God will suffice at this
point to verify the military sheen that can affect the spiritual quest, as
represented in many religions:
Virtually all cultural traditions have contained martial metaphors. The
ideas of the Salvation Army in Christianity and a Dal Khalsa (army of the
faithful) in Sikhism characterize disciplined religious organizations. Im-
ages of spiritual warfare are even more common. The Muslim notion of
jihad is the most notable example, but even in Buddhist legends great wars
are to be found . . . The legendary history recorded in the Pali Chronicles,
the Dipavamsa and the Mahavamsa relate the triumphs of battles waged
by Buddhist kings . . . The great Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Ma-
habharata are tales of seemingly unending conflict and military intrigue . .
. which defined subsequent Hindu culture. Whole books of the Hebrew
Bible are devoted to the military exploits of great kings, their contests
related in gory detail. Though the New Testament did not take up the
battle cry, the later history of the Church did, supplying Christianity with
a bloody record of crusades and religious wars . . . Protestant writer Ar-
thur Wallis explained that warfare is not a metaphor or figure of speech
13
but a literal fact. . . . Scholar Harriet Crabtree concurred, asserting that

the image of warfare is attractive because it situates the listener or reader
in the religious cosmos.34
War and Religion

War makes the world understandable, a black and white tableau of them
and us. It suspends thought, especially self-critical thought. All bow be-
fore the supreme effort. We are one. Most of us willingly accept war, as
long as we can fold it into a belief system that paints the ensuing suffering
as necessary for a higher good, for human beings seek not only happiness,
but also meaning. And tragically, war is sometimes the most powerful
way for human society to achieve meaning.35
Regardless of what one might wish to believe, war and religious ex-
perience are deeply and inextricably entangled. Any person who looks
you resolutely in the eye and states, My religion is a religion of peace,
almost certainly does not have a complete understanding of his or her
own religious path.
I have confronted religious leaders about the violence within their
own faiths. During one such meeting, at an interfaith conference at al-
Azhar University in Cairo, I asked a participant, a very well-respected
Catholic priest and scholar, about the Crusades, and he replied by roll-
ing his eyes and saying: Why do you always have to concentrate on the
bad stuff? As I am Jewish, a member of a recipient group of so much of
Catholicisms bad stuff, of course the answer should have been obvious,
but my Catholic priest friend was uninterested in exploring this aspect
of his faiths history, choosing to concentrate on the good stuff that he
and other Catholic leaders were undertaking.
No doubt, there is much good being done within faith traditions.
However, the unwillingness to acknowledge the difficult aspects of ones
own faith can be a blind spot that only leads to more bad stuff. Brian
Daizen Victoria captured this dynamic in his important work Zen at War:
Apologists for the faiths usually minimize the distress that can come with
religion or that religion can produce. They want religion to be nothing but
good news. You will not read about the destructive element in religions in
the advertisements for the church of your choice. Yet . . . one must note the
feature of religion that keeps it on the front page and in prime time it
kills.36
Most religious narratives are steeped in the imagery of combat, and
political and even religious leaders use religion to provide justification
for bellicose acts.
14
Chapter One: War
Violence and God, war and religion have been intertwined since the be-
ginning of human time. Religion, after all, is about reaching into the soul
to stir a consciousness beyond the limits of language and the mundane.
And images of death have always been at the heart of religions power to
do just this. God and war, love and death mix together into a toxic stew,
one that is accepted almost without thought by generation after genera-
tion of believers.37
The sacred consists of all those forces whose dominance over man
increases or seems to increase in proportion to mans effort to master
them. Tempests, forest fires, plagues, among other natural phenomena,
may be classified as sacred. Far outranking these stands human violence
violence seen as something exterior to man and therefore as part of all
the other outside forces that threaten mankind.38
Violence stipples the sacred texts of all religions. While many reli-
gious followers read these passages as metaphor for the personal, spiri-
tual struggle, those who seek to justify their violence as God-sanctioned
can easily find passages to support their position. And the problem is not
that the people are taking the passages out of context. They are simply
reading religious texts literally.
While gentler souls seek to defuse violence by asking followers of in-
dividual religious paths to look beneath the literal text for a second,
more spiritual meaning, the fact of the matter is that religious scriptures
offer some of the most perverse, violent, hateful imagery ever written
and often link this violence to the will of God.
War and the State

With the inclusion of the state in this human dynamic, mass mur-
der, religion and the myth of the nation as a paternal, God-like struc-
ture come together to create the unbreakable hold of war on society. As
psychologist Lawrence LeShan noted in Why We Love War: War seems
to be a natural way of behaving for governments . . . A constant, deeply
concealed pressure toward war may be exerted by the structure of our
governments, a structure designed partly for this purpose.39
War, religion and the state come together because the state is the
closest thing to a God that humanity can comprehend. In its paternalis-
tic relation to individual citizens, its massive size, its appearance of om-
niscience and ubiquity, the state represents a demigod whose purpose
can easily become enmeshed with conceptions of ultimate meaning. As
Carl Schmitt (d. 1985), a Catholic philosopher who became an important
ideologue for the Nazis, noted:
15
All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized
theological concepts not only because of their historical development
in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of state where-
by, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver
but also because of their systematic structure.40
In addition, war becomes a defining aspect of social belongingness
a shared act that binds the disparate individuals of a land together into
a society. In war, there is a unanimous participation in the rites of col-
lective murder, with the entire group acting in unison, either literally, as
warriors, or as accomplices, as members of the political elite, the press,
humanitarian volunteers and the general society. And the faceless form of
the enemy becomes the healing scapegoat upon whom to vent the popu-
lations innate aggressiveness, thereby unifying the citizens.
This explains the war fervor that grips a nation, accompanying a mili-
tary engagement. It could be seen recently in the United States just after
the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, when a Gallup poll concluded
that 79% of Americans considered the Iraq War was justified.
This mass psychosis is hardly something visible only in our current
age. Regina Schwartz provided a look at the Biblical underpinnings for
how war, religion and state are inseparable.
The Bibles preoccupation with collective identity was read through the
lens of nationalism Gods chosen people became the chosen nation . .
. In a disturbing inversion, nationalism was authorized by the once-holy
writ. A text that once posited collective identity as an act of God (I will
be your God if you will be my people) came to posit the collective iden-
tity as the fiat of the nation authorized by God (One nation under God).
Nationalism has held fast to this legitimization by transcendence. Nations
are the will of God.41
And if nations are the will of God, it goes without saying that so must
be their wars.
A Parsimonious God
Exacerbating the impetus for violence further, and providing the
perfect outlet for the discovery of a scapegoat and the warring needs of
nations and individuals, is Gods parsimonious nature. Succinctly put,
there is just not enough of God to go around. According to the Abraha-
mic tradition, God first gave His Covenant to Ishmael through Abraham
and Hagar (Genesis 16). He then withdrew It and gave it to Isaac via
Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 21). There was not enough God for both
Ishmael and Isaac, so a choice had to be made.
16
Chapter One: War
Some time later, Christianity claimed Gods promise (through Jesus)

and 600 years after that, Muhammad revealed that both Judaism and
Christianity had forfeited their right to the Covenant, and claimed the
mantle of God. The tendency to identify a particular people with the
chosen or elect of God is endemic in the monotheistic religions . . . The
combination of absolute truth with the self-identification of a group as
the chosen people . . . has enabled Jews, Christians and Muslims to com-
mit the most evil atrocities in the name of God with a clear conscience.42
Even many non-Abrahamic faiths believe that if their God is not be-
lieved by all, then at the very least all others are in error, while in the
worst (and often more normal) case, the non-believers must be eradi-
cated so as to prove that theirs is the one and true God. Wars by the
faithful of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and other creeds stories that
will be told in more detail bear this truth out.
We are forced to conclude that God is not only a jealous God, but mi-
serly, as well. Far from spreading the wealth, God is presented in most re-
ligions as a finite unit that must be claimed and then fought over. Mono-
theism is entangled with particularism, with the assertion that this God
and not any other gods must be worshipped, a particularism so virulent
that it reduces all other gods to idols and so violent that it reduces all
other worshippers to abominations.43
In each case, the previous owners of Gods grace are left devoid, or
at least with but one recourse to reclaim the Covenant of God: fight for
it and win. Only victory can prove that God is on ones side. And this
fight becomes an act of love love for the God that has been wrested
from their control and is now entombed in the clutches of a false religion.
Professor Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer (University of St. Thomas, Minnesota)
noted in Is Religion Killing Us:
Violence is at the heart of faith. Proclaiming God almighty and restrict-
ing God to One whose power, if understood as superior violence, means
that in monotheistic religion violence is God because violence saves God
in the sense of establishing and maintaining Gods credibility. The tragic
legacy of violent God and violent religion rooted in sacred text is that
religion, inevitably, if unconsciously, is reduced to violence.44
The simple existence of another religion becomes an existential
threat. The mere presence of other gods somehow represents a denial
of the truth of your god. Oftentimes, absolute faith isnt so absolute that
the existence of other religions doesnt place in doubt the foundations of
any particular creed, an admission that is usually lacking in the professed
17
certainty of religious leaders, missionaries and warriors from all cultures

and time periods.45
Fixing the power of the state in the Supreme Power (One nation un-
der God), and making the states God the only true God, helps create
the identity of a nation, raising it out of the world of culture and politics
and centering it in the realm of the divine. This ties in seamlessly with a
states need for war, as now soldiers are willing to sacrifice themselves
for the continual creation of the state, believing themselves to be doing
the will of the One True God. Almost without fail, political leaders will
highlight the relationship between their political goals and God by call-
ing on the omnipotence of the Divine, having Him confer credibility on
the temporal authority as well as the bellicose undertaking.46
With not enough God to go around; with an unbreakable, destruc-
tive passion within individuals; with God, state and religion wrapped
together for the simple purpose of survival, religion can become a party
to state-sponsored genocide.
War and the Warrior

War cannot be fought without individuals. Without warriors, the
catharsis provided to a society by institutional violence would be im-
possible, and the scapegoating necessary for the health of the collective
would dissolve into neighbor-on-neighbor aggression.
One of the great mysteries for many people who have never been to
war, nor considered going, is how individuals are compelled, seduced or
choose of their own volition to go into combat. One fascinating aspect of
war, one that can be difficult to fully appreciate due to its counter-intui-
tive conclusion, is that war counteracts the fear of death. Hannah Arendt
noted this oxymoronic aspect of war, which uncovers for the soldier the
fullness of life and power in the act of destruction:
As far as human experience is concerned, death indicates an extreme of
loneliness and impotence. But faced collectively and in action [in war],
death changes its countenance; now nothing seems more likely to inten-
sify our vitality than its closeness. It is as if life itself is actualized in the
practice of violence.47
Not only does sanctioned violence allow one the god-like exhilara-
tion of destroying,48 but it also makes very clear the distinction between
the living and the dead. As long as warriors stay on the correct side of
that frontier, they will feel alive as they never before have.
18
Chapter One: War
An account by a participant one of thousands that are written,

published, blogged, spoken at poetry slams and usually ignored, as the
truth is too painful gives a sense of just how profoundly war can posi-
tively attract an individual:
War may be the only way in which most men touch the mythic domains
of their soul. It is, for men, at some terrible level, the closest thing to what
childbirth is for women: the initiation into the power of life and death. It
is like lifting off the corner of the universe and looking at whats under-
neath. To see war is to see into the dark heart of things, that no-mans-
land between life and death, or even beyond.49
This is the most disturbing and confusing aspect of war:the manner
in which it entices. How it satisfies so much of what we, as humans, need.
In giving the moral justification to acts of violence,50 acts impossible to
undertake in the home society become commonplace. It is a freedom that
somehow both liberates and enslaves, and brings one closest to life as
death is all around.
War is Beautiful
Another of the great problems that remains hidden to the uninitiated,
is how very aesthetically alluring war is for many of its participants. In a
horrifying manner, it highlights the sensual beauty of the world, offering
in its violence, destruction, unimaginable sights and sounds, echoes of
what we have learned of God from the religious path.
War is beautiful.
This is the opinion of many who have gone into the war theater and
written about the experience. There is too much firsthand writing about
the aesthetic quality of war to deny it. In appreciating its seductive
splendor, we can begin to understand the more profound, spiritual as-
pects of war and why individuals have gone to and continue to go to
war since time immemorial.
Even non-combatant writers have waxed more poetic about war than
they ever have concerning flaxen-haired beauties. Helen of Troy, after all,
launched a thousand ships; she did not stem the tide of war. It was her
ability to create war that proved her beauty. The war itself represented
the climax of feelings that one has for the most beautiful woman in the
world, not something antithetical to this beauty. War as the ultimate act
of love.
This most grotesque of human activities has been written about with
the tenderness and wonder of a man remembering his first love. For in-
stance, when for the first time a nuclear blast incinerated a major world
19
city, disintegrating tens of thousands of human beings, there flashed in

the minds of observers images from Grunewalds resurrecting Christ and
holy script from the Bhagavad Gita.51
As psychologist James Hillman noted in A Terrible Love of War: In-
side the horror is a spectacular beauty, a beauty of another order. Inside
the utter chaos, there is a structure of meaning, of meaningfulness, not
to be found anywhere else.52 Of course, this horrifying truth will never
become part of the public narrative of war, because the beauty and mean-
ing it hides within it are beyond the acceptable boundaries of public dis-
course. We must retain the fiction that every war is absolutely necessary
to bring peace, and that each will be the last.
Time and time again, warriors and those who have been enticed by
Mars (the Roman god of War) have written shimmering odes to the of-
ficially inhuman institution. Ernie Pyle, an American journalist who died
in combat during World War II, gushed:
Stabbed with great fires, shaken by explosions, its dark regions along the
Thames sparkling with the pinpoints of white hot bombs, all of it roofed
over with a ceiling of pink that held bursting shells, balloons, flares and
the grind of vicious engines. And in yourself the excitement and anticipa-
tion and wonder in your soul that this could be happening at all. These
things all went together to make the most beautiful, most hateful single
scene I have known.53
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (d. 1944), an Italian poet and
founder of the Futurist movement, wrote in the Futurist Manifesto: War
is beautiful because it combines the gunfire, the cannonades, the pauses,
the scents and the stench of putrefaction into a symphony.54 Both Chris-
topher Hedges (War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning) and Glenn Gray (The
Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle) went even further, highlighting the
eroticism of war.55 James Hillman, writing in A Terrible Love of War, said
that war is spectacular . . . it becomes literature, movies and is imagined
even in its midst into poems, thoughts and tales.56
War uncovers a beauty that is sui generis: available only through par-
ticipation in war. It is the subconscious depths of the imagination come
to life, an impossible flaring into existence of our deepest and most hid-
den fears and conceptions, right in front of ones eyes. War offers all of
the fantastic sights and sounds of the most extreme carnival, parade, fes-
tival, party and orgy. There is nothing like it in the world and for some
who go to war, nothing can ever equal its aesthetic quality.
20
Chapter One: War
War is Sublime
In an exploration of wars allure, we must press on beyond the bound-
ary of beauty. While beauty is seductive, its power is not enough to
help fuse war and God, murder and the mystics quest. This happens
somewhere out beyond beauty, in the realm of the sublime. Beauty
alone is not sublime. Beauty fused with pain is sublime. And here is
exactly where war moves from the banal into the eternal, from the hor-
rific to the mystical.
The reason that war is sublime is not obscure. Beauty, being a repre-
sentation of the highest aspects of human experience, and pain (often
considered one of the most challenging), are often thought of as sepa-
rate, even opposing qualities. Fusing them in war expresses the totality
of experience, and can seem to offer the most potent possibility of human
perception. In many respects, war offers a profundity of being that noth-
ing else within the human realm can. Not even love.
Philosopher Edmund Burke (d. 1797) captured this sense of the
sublime:
Whatever is in any sort terrible . . . is a source of the sublime, that is, it is
productive of the strongest emotions which the mind is capable of feeling
. . . The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature is astonishment
. . . that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some
degree of horror . . . the mind is so entirely filled with its objects, that it
cannot entertain any other.57
James Hillman echoed this sentiment, applying it directly to war:
What is this euphonic simplification that war seems to offer? Is it because
human responsibility has been surpassed and we have entered the sub-
lime and are closer to the gods, and therefore beyond any considerations
of good and evil? No need to consider anything except action . . . forward
action justifies and purifies by forgetting.58
And American General George Patton (d. 1945) concurred, from first-
hand experience:
Despite the impossibility of physically detecting the soul, its existence is
proven by its tangible reflection in acts and thoughts. So with war, beyond
its physical aspect of armed hosts there hovers an impalpable something
that dominates the material to search for this something we should
seek it in a manner analogous to our search for the soul.59
To marry pain with the beautiful beauty which represents the
highest possibility of universal order, a point toward which all is di-
rected but where none can ever truly arrive brings the universal and
the particular together in the most meaningful manner. It is here in this
21
union that war most deeply affects the human character and mimics the
highest possibility of both humanity and the divine.
War is Love
To understand war means understanding the quality, the nature of love of
war, this love unlike any other and which veterans report they found only
in the midst of wars terror, a love that creates a potency of ones self that
is at the same time the sacrifice of ones self.60
More than just a sublime attraction, a beautiful addiction, war engag-
es the participant at the highest place of his character: selfless, unmiti-
gated love. War has now encompassed virtually all of the higher aspects
of the human character, although far from uplifting them, it has brought
them down into its basest experience: that of a murderer.
The power of love itself over the human mind should not be under-
estimated. Victor Frankl (d. 1997; the founder of logotherapy which is a
form of existential analysis), writing about his time spent in the There-
sienstadt Concentration Camp in World War II, said he grasped the
meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought
and belief have to impart: the salvation of man is through love and in love.
Unfortunately, an echo of this love can be found in the ultimate act of
destruction. Perhaps nothing reveals the universes perversity more than
this fact: in war, human love and human destruction are wrapped tightly
and irrevocably together. Nobel Prize winning author Rudyard Kipling
(d. 1936) noted that the love between war comrades could attain an in-
tensity that surpassed the love for women.61 War correspondent Chris-
topher Hedges discussed the fusion of love and war in War is a Force that
Gives Us Meaning:
Love, like death, radiates outward. It battles Thanatos at the very moment
of deaths sting. These two fundamental human impulses crack like break-
ers into each other. And however much beyond reason, there is always a
feeling that love is not powerless or impotent, as we had believed a few
seconds before. Love alone fuses happiness and meaning.62
A Love of Killing
Love in war is a terrifying experience, one that strips humanity bare
(instead of uplifting) and scrubs all action of morality, leaving only spare,
primal emotion. In war, any and every action can become emblematic of
love. Love can be found inside of war, a love of the most profound sort.
22
Chapter One: War
And also of the ugliest sort necrophilia, sadism, exuberant murder,

morbid prurience.63
Love, even, of the act of destruction flowers in the dark night of the
war theater. An article in the Daily Mail (U.K.) detailed the passionate
adoration of killing that developed in one American Iraq War veteran:
Killing becomes a drug, and it is really addictive, Charles Whittington [a
veteran of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan] wrote. I had a really hard time
with this problem when I returned to the United States, because turning
off this addiction was impossible . . . When I stick my blade through his
stomach or his ribs or slice his throat, its a feeling that I cannot explain,
but feels so good to me.64
Hardly confined to American society, another piece in the New Yorker
shared a firsthand account of the joys of being on the happy end of the
slaughter in Rwanda (1994). Girumuhatse , a Rwandese participant in
the slaughter, told his story to writer Philip Gourevitch:
I had always been told that Girumuhatse killed with a machete, but he
said that he had preferred to use a masu, a nail studded club. When I
killed, it was like communal work duty. Nothing seemed to have trou-
bled him when he went to work with his club, and I wondered whether
he had enjoyed it.
Yes. For me, it became a pleasure to kill. The first time, it was to please
the government. After that, it became a pleasure for me. I hunted and cut
with real enthusiasm. It was work, but work that I enjoyed . . . I was very
excited when I killed. I awoke every morning excited to go into the bush.
The genocide was like a festival . . . There were no limits anymore. It was
a festival. We celebrated.65
Horrible, revolting, inhumane and deeply and passionately
appealing.
This love extends even to the implements of destruction, those same
apparatus that many of us who do not understand, and look at with
horror.
The weapon is another Hephaistian instrument holding beauty and vio-
lence in a permanent embrace . . . You can hold the gods in your hand, carry
death in your purse . . . God is in the gun, and the passionate love for these
weapons may express less a love of violence than a mystical protection
against it.66
The weapon is a lovers red, red lips, or the alabaster turn of a youth-
ful bosom. It is the tangible proof that there is a God, and that one man
or woman can make a difference and achieve mystical meaning in a mun-
dane world.
23
No matter how much we talk about war, theorize, understand, quan-

tify, fight against, demand better, march in protest, write letters, gnash
our teeth and rend our garments, until we (humans) can honestly face
the pure joy of killing in war, we can never come to terms with the insti-
tution, let alone begin to cure the illness of state sponsored mass murder.
War as Mysticism
War is a mythical happening; those in the midst of it are removed to a
mystical state of being . . . the love of war tells of a love of the gods . . .
where else in the human experience, except in the throes of ardor that
strange coupling of love with war do we find ourselves transported to
a mythical condition and the gods most real?67
The fusion between war and the human yearning for immanence is
complete. War is mysticism. As Barbara Ehrenreich noted in Blood Rites:
Origins and History of the Passions of War, war occasions the highest and
finest passions humans can know: courage, altruism, and the mystical
sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves.68
War mimics the mystics path, while replacing the mystics goal of Di-
vine union with the basest of actions: institutionalized slaughter. Mys-
ticism, generally defined, is the personal search for a meaning beyond
the particular, an individual experience of the Divine oneness. Within
religious traditions, this search takes place in the quietude of meditation,
prayer and healing action. It is centered on reflection and self-awareness.
Mystics in all traditions are gentle, open-minded and deeply cognizant of
the bonds that tie all of Gods creation into a seamless whole.
Mystical experience is not a fantasy. Andrew Newberg (Director of
Research at the Myrna Brind Center for Integrative Medicine at Thomas
Jefferson University Hospital and Medical College) explored the neu-
rological effects of spiritual practice in his book How God Changes Your
Brain:
Using brain imaging studies of Franciscan nuns and Buddhist practitio-
ners, and Sikhs and Sufis along with everyday people new to medita-
tion Andrew Newberg asserts that traditional spiritual practices such
as prayer and breath control can alter the neural connections of the brain,
leading to long-lasting states of unity, peacefulness and love.69
Humans have what the Roman mystic Plotinus (d. 270) called an
amphibious nature, and we must integrate the desire for individuation
with the need to belong. Meditation and mysticism are examples of one
approach, but it is an arduous one. A second, easier way to assimilate
these needs is war. Or, as Leo Tolstoy described it in War and Peace: Ev-
24
Chapter One: War
ery general and every soldier was conscious of his own insignificance,
aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men, and yet at the same time
was conscious of his strength as a part of that enormous whole.70
Spiritual feeling, as it is attained in war, echoes the profundity of
experience found in mysticism, while offering an easy -to- achieve and
hollowed out version that stems from destruction, not the quietude of
understanding. As Helmuth von Moltke (d. 1891), chief of staff of the
Prussian Army for thirty years, noted: War fosters virtues of man: cour-
age, self-denial, obedience to duty and the spirit of sacrifice.
These virtues define almost exactly the mystics path every single
one of them is demanded for the individual devoting him or herself to
spiritual understanding and a complete devotion to God. Few Sufi mys-
tics or Christian ascetics would deny that each and every one of these is
central to his or her pathway to realization.
However, war is not mysticism. As war correspondent Christopher
Hedges noted, to achieve the institutional juggernaut of an army, the
most basic aspect of the mystical search must be overcome and it is in
this subtle omission of the mystics path that war turns warriors to the
ecstasy of destruction and away from the creative energy that represents
humanitys highest spiritual possibility. To achieve corporate action,
self awareness and especially self-criticism must be obliterated.71
War gives humans the illusion that they are fighting for a greater
power, with a mystical sense of belonging to something larger than
ourselves (Ehrenreich, above). Before this power, all bow and become
one.72 These exact words could easily be applied to the mystical path
toward divine realization, which leads an aspirant to an appreciation of
and respect for the God-nature hidden in everything, both living and in-
animate. However, the issue tips when we look at just how war accesses
this ultimate meaning it does so by bypassing the rational thought pro-
cess and accessing the animal aspects of the human psyche.
Where war bleeds irrevocably into the lower strata of human na-
ture is represented in the statement that war obliterates self awareness
and especially self-criticism (Christopher Hedges, above). Self-critical
thought is the only thing that truly separates us from animals with-
out it, we are little more than dexterous rats, killing machines with ever
more efficient tools of destruction.
Virtually all mystics from all major systems propose that the path
to God leads directly through the self. Confucius said: Attack the evil
that is within yourself; do not attack the evil that is within others.73 The
Prophet Muhammad stated that the first stage of worship is silence. The
25
Jewish Kabbalists believed that humans are literally the microcosm of

God and that the surest way to learn about God is to learn about one-
self. As the 13th century Kabbalistic text Shaare Emunah stated: Blessed is
he or she who knows that within and above are synonymous.74
Bypassing the self-critical thought is the antithesis of mystical appre-
ciation, and the beginning of chaos.
War is Holy
If the god is nothing more nor less than the massive violence that was ex-
pelled by the original act of generative unanimity, then ritual sacrifice can
indeed be said to offer Him portions of His own substance.75
Virtually all wars were holy wars. And even today, many wars are pre-
sented as holy wars by political leaders. Young men and, more recently,
women volunteer to risk death or, even worse, a psycho-spiritual maim-
ing, as a way of proving their love of God. In war, they find some echo of
the universal force, an addictive power that reminds them of God, but is
not.
This is not to say that political and social issues arent at the forefront
of the stated reasons for a particular conflict. But if we peel away the lay-
ers of socio-political impetus be it boundary invasion, energy needs,
fighting against a dictatorship or whichever specific motives newspa-
pers and political leaders offer the underlying impulse for individual
warriors to join the cause is often religious and even spiritual. The social
catharsis provided by the scapegoat (the enemy) belies the deeper spiri-
tual release provided by the violence. Additionally, the language of war is
almost always couched in religious and spiritual terminology.
This veiled holy war aspect is based in the shared, quasi-mythical ex-
perience that war engenders in a society.
The way that people begin to perceive reality in the period typically pre-
ceding the outbreak of war is seductive . . . We cease to structure our
world in our customary way and turn to the ways of a fairy tale or myth . .
. During a mythic war, God, history and destiny are on ones side.76
Christopher Hedges stated: Lurking beneath the surface of every so-
ciety, including ours, is the passionate yearning for a nationalist cause
that exalts us, the kind that war alone is able to deliver.77
Holy war or most wars, as nations rarely undertake a war that
they dont consider holy becomes a metaphor for the struggle between
Gods will and the forces of resistance. It is more than a nationalistic call-
ing. It is a moral obligation to actively assist in establishing the rule of
26
Chapter One: War
God here on Earth.78 Both sides in the carnage act with God on their side.
All citizens fight to protect the greater good against the forces of evil
and chaos. This dynamic will be explicitly explored further along in this
book, as I examine the language of the leaders in the United States and
of its stated enemy, Osama bin Laden, both of whom used virtually the
same religious idiom to describe their fight against the other.
In the end, we are left with these words from Christopher Hedges,
stitching the last suture into place between war and the spirit:
Once we sign on for wars crusade, once we see ourselves on the side of
the angels, once we embrace a theological or ideological belief system that
defines itself as the embodiment of goodness and light, it is only a matter
of how we will carry out murder.79
The fusion between war and God is complete. They are not only in-
separable but interchangeable. For many people in human civilization,
war is God. A God demanding ever-more human sacrifice, blood which
knits the survivors together into a cohesive society, one nation under war.
27
Chapter Two: From the Beginning of Humanity
If war is a primordial component of being, then war fathers the very struc-
ture of existence and our thinking about it: our ideas of the universe, of
religion, of ethics . . . we think in war-like terms, feel ourselves at war
with ourselves and unknowingly believe predation, territorial defense,
conquest and the interminable battle of opposing forces are the ground
rules of existence.80
Our greatest fear as a species has always been of chaos. But chaos lies
within the human soul, not outside of it. Religion developed, at least in
a sociological sense, to deal with the ungovernable madness at the heart
of the human being.
Violence and religion grew into human experience together, two
aspects of the very same drive two manners of channeling the cha-
os at the center of our species. Perhaps they can be viewed as Yin and
Yang, the two necessary halves that make the whole, but they are inex-
tricably linked and were part of human society at the very beginning of
civilization.
Original Human
We can now appreciate the atmosphere of terror that accompanies the
primordial religious experience. When violent hysteria reaches a peak,
the monstrous double looms up everywhere at once. The decisive act of
violence is directed against this awesome vision of evil and at the same
time sponsored by it. The turmoil gives way to calm, hallucinations vanish
and the dtente that follows only heightened the mystery and hallucina-
29
tion of the whole process. In an instant, all extremes have met, all differ-
ences fused.81
It is vital to note that the monstrous double emerges from within
the human being, much in the same way that God and religion do. They
are created together in the human soul, perhaps even from the same im-
petus, but then separated when projected onto the world outside. This
is not to say that there isnt immanence, that there isnt a God. It simply
expresses the idea that the concept of God that we hold comes from the
darkest place within, and may or may not have something to do with the
ineffable power at the heart of all being.
In primal society, where the human being was only semi-conscious,
believing that even voices from within his or her own head might come
from without, everything was a potential danger including the impulses
and voices that arose from within. Julian Jaynes (d. 1997; an American
psychologist), posited in The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
the Bicameral Mind that ancient people were not conscious in the sense
that we are today. Unable to introspect, they experienced auditory hal-
lucinations, voices of gods as seen in ancient texts from the Iliad to the
Torah, which, coming from the brains right hemisphere, told a person
what to do in circumstances of novelty or stress.82
These original voices of God, experienced by the primal human as
originating from outside of him or herself, though with access to the in-
nermost sanctum of the individuals mind, became the basis for religion
and the fusion between humanitys own pathology and that of the
gods. The projection of humanitys psyche onto the immanence of being
can be explained simply by a consideration of the manner in which early
humans experienced reality and their need for an immanent structure to
underpin their strange and horrifying experience of semi-consciousness.
Primitive Religion and the Birth of the Violent God

In primitive societies the risk of unleashed violence is so great and the
curse so problematic that the emphasis naturally falls on prevention. The
preventative measures fall within the domain of religion, where they
can occasionally assume a violent character. Violence and the sacred are
inseparable.83
For humanity to change from a completely animal character to some
form of collective society, the innate violent tendencies at the heart of
his limbic system had to be dealt with in some manner. With a grow-
ing intelligence and ability to control the world around him, man had
30
an increasing ability to vent his personal violent impulses in ever more

extreme ways.
By ritualizing violence, by sequestering it within the religious im-
pulse, it could be controlled, pointed outward, prevented from complete-
ly destroying the nascent human civilization.
In assuming a mythico-ritual character, violence tends toward the exte-
rior, and this tendency in turn assumes certain sacrificial characteristics;
it conceals the site of the original violence, thereby shielding from this
violence . . . the elementary group whose very survival depends on the ab-
solute triumph of peace. Groups agree to never be completely at peace, so
that their members may find it easier to be at peace among themselves.84
Without systematizing violence, and giving it a sacred tint, human
civilization itself might not be possible. In this construction, war can be
considered the foundation for every painting ever painted, every opera
sung, every piece of theater acted. It is in war and, even more impor-
tantly, God-sanctioned and even God-initiated conflict that the seeds
of human civilization are sown.
The Stone Age (c. 3 million years ago to 500,000 years ago) ethos of
warfare and sacrifice has shaped human culture.85 Higher civilizations
have been grafted onto this initial impetus. The founding text of the
Abrahamic religions the Torah certainly has more in common with
the original, sacrificial and violent impulses of the earliest humans than
with any New Age dream of one world and one mind. We have built God,
religion and society onto an original sacred-violence foundation. We
have not evaded or superseded it. Even today, most of human society is
fated to follow the primordial impulse to offer up their young, just as
they are fated to accept the necessity of war.86
Sacrifice
As Bruce Chilton (Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard
College) noted in Abrahams Curse, before war, even, the violence of God
was satisfied through human sacrifice. Only later on, as civilizations
grew and urbanized, was the violence turned outward, and the healthi-
er option of war was founded. It should be noted, however, that human
sacrifice as a religious rite lasted within human society up until the dawn
of the Enlightenment, in the Americas, with the Aztec civilization in par-
ticular (c. 1516th centuries).
The end of the Stone Age saw the first urban communities and, in some
cases, the institutional killing of children . . . the urban temple, the founda-
tion of the whole city, had to be seen as holier and more powerful, more
31
attractive to gods, than any other altar. Human sacrifice emerged as the
price required to assure divine favor in building a city, the means of mak-
ing the urban temple the ultimate altar. Several ancient myths depict the
founder king of a city sacrificing his own child, by slaughtering him on the
foundation stone of the city in order to secure prosperity.87
This dynamic of sacrificing a human to God was still central to reli-
gion up until the very threshold of recorded history. The Neanderthals
(c. 110,000 to 35,000 years ago), who emerged from the long era of the
Stone Age, buried both animal and human skeletons near hearths that
played a religious function. Remains of young children have been found
near the Knossos Palace on Crete dating from 4000 years ago, their little
bones charred and nicked in the same manner that the ancient Minoans
prepared their sheep and goats for ritual slaughter.88
The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (c. 6030 B.C.E.) reported on
the ancient practice of human sacrifice in Carthage (c. 1000 B.C.E.; a
Phoenician center in what is today Tunisia), detailing one event in which
200 children were selected for sacrifice in a time of war and another 100
were volunteered by their parents for participation in the rite. Diodor-
us also situates human sacrificial rites within the Egyptian (c. 315030
B.C.E.), Celtic (c. 800100 B.C.E.) and Messenian Greek (c. 1300150
B.C.E.) cultures.89
Ritual slaughter of the most powerful member of a society was sys-
tematized in the Babylonian creation myth.
Babylonian Religion: Creation from Destruction

In the beginning, Apsu and Tiamat (the sweet and saltwater oceans) bear
Mammu (the mist). From them also issue the younger gods, whose frol-
icking makes so much noise that the older gods cannot sleep and so re-
solve to kill them.90
One of the first creation myths, the first stories attempting to un-
derstand the world and our place within it, comes from the Babylonians
(c. 2nd millennium B.C.E.). Inheriting many ideas from the even earlier
Sumerian civilization (c. 4th millennium B.C.E.), the Babylonian creation
myth was influential to the stories told in the Jewish Bible and thence to
the nearly three billion practitioners of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism,
Christianity and Islam) today.
The Babylonian creation myth placed horrific violence at the heart of
the human experience. Human beings are created from the blood of a
murdered God. They originate in violence and are all too prone to re-
32
sort to violence and so, have to be kept under control by the exercise of
violence.91
A synopsis of the Babylonian creation myth will help us appreciate
the intersection of violence and God, chaos and religion:
This plot of the elder gods [to kill the noisy children] is discovered, Ea
kills Apsu, and his wife Tiamat pledges revenge. Ea and the younger gods
in their terror turn for salvation to their youngest, Marduk. He exacts a
steep price; if he succeeds, he must be given chief and undisputed power
in the assembly of gods. Having extorted this promise, he catches Tiamat
in a net, drives an evil wind down her throat, shoots an arrow that bursts
her distended belly and pierces her head. He then splits her skull with
a club and scatters her blood in out-of-the-way places. He stretches her
corpse full length, and from it creates the cosmos.92
It does not suffice to simply inform the audience that Marduk was
successful in his task the slaughter of the older God (who happened
to be his mother) but the complete, violent recitation of the act is
detailed. It is also interesting to note that Marduk split her skull with a
club, which is the exact same action that our Rwandese murderer Giru-
muhatse employed, utilizing a masu, or nail-studded club, in his govern-
ment work.
The act of creation was violence itself. They myth of the gentle god
who created the universe out of love is simply wishful thinking, some-
thing stretched across the truth like a gauze so as to make it more pal-
atable to general society. Ren Girard extrapolated from the matricidal
beginnings of the universe, replete with billy clubs and split skulls: All
the signs seem to suggest that the gods, along with the community itself,
owe their origin to internal and unanimous violence and to a victim who
is a member of the community.93
Tiamat, not only a member of the community but the literal mother
of the community, played just this primal role.
In the Babylonian creation myth, we can see how violence and reli-
gion emerged together. Father Jeremy Young, in his book The Violence of
God and the War on Terror, explained how chaos, violence, humanity and
religion fused to form the basis of the human experience of God:
Because the cosmos is made from the body of Tiamat [a murdered God],
who represents chaos, in the world represented by the [Babylonian cre-
ation] myth, chaos is prior to order. This means that the potential for cha-
os has not actually been eliminated by the act of creation; instead, it has
been incorporated into the foundation of the created order and is always
threatening to break out again. Consequently, chaos needs to be repeat-
edly controlled by force and intimidation.94
33
Many scholars believe that the Jewish Bible was first codified and
written down during the Babylonian exile (597 B.C.E.515 B.C.E.), when
Jews lived under Babylonian rule and became acquainted with the Meso-
potamian gods and religion. As such, they set their God up against Mar-
duk, the powerful creator of the Mesopotamian universe, while still bor-
rowing some of the Mesopotamian ideas and iconography. A look at the
actual moment of creation in both myths shows possible influence of the
earlier, Babylonian, tale on the religion of Israel:
And God said: Let there be a vault in the midst of the waters, and let
it divide from water. And God made the vault and it divided the water
beneath the vault from the water above the vault, and so it was. (Genesis
1:5-7)
The Lord rested; he gazed at the huge body, pondering how to use it, what
to create from the dead carcass. He split it apart like a cockleshell; with
the upper half he constructed the arc of the sky, he pulled down the bar
and set a watch on the waters, so they should never escape. (Enuma Enish,
fourth tablet)95
Further comparison of the first chapters of Genesis with the fifth
chapter of the Babylonian creation story (where Marduk creates the uni-
verse out of the body of his mother) shows many similarities, not only in
imagery but also in specific language.
The fundamental dynamic of a violent God was set with the ancient
Mesopotamian creation myth, which then influenced the Jewish Bible
and, hence, nearly half of todays world population.
Although the official names given to the gods and dominant mythologies
have changed since Babylonian times, the myth of redemptive [and even
creative] violence has continued to exist and to exert its influence on sub-
sequent societies down to our day.96
The Greek and Roman Religions

The ancient Greeks linked war and love. Aphrodite, the goddess of love,
became the mistress of Ares, the god of war.97
Western civilization is founded on the philosophy, political struc-
ture, culture and, to a lesser extent, religious mythology of the Greek (c.
750150 B.C.E.) and then Roman (c. 400 B.C.E.400) societies. Many as-
pects of the Abrahamic faiths can be traced back into ancient Greece and
Rome.
In the Western tradition, an awareness of Greek religion was kept alive
in three ways: through its presence in ancient literature and in all litera-
34
ture formed on that model, through the polemics of the church fathers and
through its assimilation in symbolic guise to Neo-platonic philosophy.98
Here, as well, we find that the strong fusion of violence and the sa-
cred. War in ancient Greece was woven into the society at all levels. In
ancient Crete (c. 30001100 B.C.E.) and Lacedaemon (c. 1000100 B.C.E.;
also known as Sparta), the system of education and the greater part of
the laws were framed around the central unifying activity of war.
Greek Gods and War

For the Greeks, violence was entwined with divinity. As Ren Girard
(b. 1923; a French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social sci-
ence) noted, concerning the quality of kudos, a Greek term signifying the
ultimate power available to both humans and gods:
The epithet kudos signifies an attitude of triumphant majesty, a demeanor
characteristic of the gods. Man can enjoy this condition only fleetingly
and always at the expense of other men. To be a god is to possess kudos
forever, to remain forever a master, unchallenged and unchallengeable.99
It is interesting to note here that man could only enjoy kudos at the
expense of other men as if there were a finite amount of this god-like
power, which had to be fought over. This is in keeping with the idea of
the parsimonious God who will give His covenant to only one people
be they Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist or other while all
others are in error, outside of the protecting aura of the one true God.
Perhaps the idea of a god that must be gathered into the community at the
expense of other men began in this long-ago time, when the earliest Greeks
were warring over the gods kudos, and even then could only enjoy the
unchallengeable power fleetingly.
Zeus, the Greek father of gods and men, won his power in much the
same manner as did Marduk, the Mesopotamian god, who perhaps influ-
enced the Greek understanding of the deities.
Zeus had had to win his power through struggle and defend it against
revolt . . . once Zeus had come of age, he led the gods in war against the Ti-
tans: sky, earth, sea and underworld were all convulsed in battle, but Zeus
emerged victorious. He is seen by the Greeks in two images: as the boldly
striving warrior and as the figure enthroned with scepter in his hand.100
He was hardly the only war-like figure in the Greek pantheon. The
ideal of temporal, human war became attached to a specific god, Ares,
whose aggression was considered sacred. Whats more, violence in war
led to the altered states of the battlefield,101 a concept which still in-
35
forms the contemporary warriors mythical love of war. Ares was rep-
resented as a brazen warrior whose war chariot is harnessed by fear
and terror; he is overwhelming, insatiable in battle, destructive and
man-slaughtering.102
God and Sacrifice

Violence and the sacred went further than the gods in ancient Greece.
They were stitched together into the quilt of human society. Early in Gre-
cian civilization, dating back to Crete (c. 3000 B.C.E.), the blood-thirst
of the gods was satisfied by human sacrifice. As was noted, the Knossos
included a crypt with a deposit of childrens bones showing clear evi-
dence that they had been ritually killed.103 One sacred building dating to
about 1700 B.C.E. has been identified as a temple with the relics of hu-
man sacrifice.104
The poet Hipponax (sixth century B.C.E.) provided a first-person ac-
count of a human sacrificial ritual. He related that a man was chosen on
account of his ugliness and was fed figs and other delicacies. After this,
he was whipped with a fig branch on his membrum virile. He was then
burned and his ashes scattered in the sea. Other eyewitness accounts
portray the Pharmakos (scapegoat, or healing object) as being simply
driven out of the community after a period of humiliation and whipping.
Many such descriptions exist:
On dire occasions such as plague . . . a poor man was offered pure and cost-
ly food for a year, then, decked in boughs and sacred vestments, he was
led around the whole town amid curses and finally chased away. From
the cliffs of Leukas a condemned criminal was plunged into the sea every
year.105
Lest we grow too smug about what great strides we have made since
the time of ancient Greece, we must remember that in the 21st-century
United States, there is a similar ritual, called execution. In this sacrifi-
cial rite, a criminal, sometimes with darker skin than the majority in the
country, is chosen from a pool of prisoners and subjected to a gruesome
death after languishing for years and sometimes decades in a solitary
holding cell. It is a solemn occasion, presided over by a high priest and
signed off by the controlling civil authority a ritual that mimics almost
exactly the Pharmakos of ancient Greece.
Unlike Americans, however, the ancient Greeks did move beyond hu-
man sacrifice, ultimately settling on animals to provide the literal scape-
goat upon which the society could vent its destructive urges. Walter
36
Burkert described the manner in which the animal would play this vital
social role: The heart is torn still beating from the body before all else.
To taste the entrails immediately is the privilege and duty of the inner-
most circle of participants. The inedible remains are then consecrated.106
It is interesting to note how closely this tracks the manner in which
the Aztecs were sacrificing their human virgins to appease their gods, as
Hernn Corts and his band of conquistadores subjugated that ancient
civilization (c. 16th century). Hernn Corts related in his Letters:
They have a most horrid and abominable custom . . . and this is that, when-
ever they wish to ask something of the idols, in order that their plea may
find more acceptance, they take many girls and boys and even adults, and
in the presence of these idols they open their chests while they are still
alive and take out their hearts and entrails and burn them before the idols,
offering the smoke as sacrifice.107
Aristotle and Plato

No two ancient philosophers have had a deeper influence on Western
thought than the Greek thinkers Plato (d. 347 B.C.E.) and Aristotle (d.
322 B.C.E.). Among the many subjects they taught and wrote about was,
of course, war and the sacred. These Greek thinkers codified the link
between the two within a philosophical structure that was to influence
later theologians in all three Abrahamic faiths.
Plato, although he was certainly no believer in wholesale violence, lay
down the markers for what would become 20th-century fascist govern-
ments in Italy, Russia, the Middle East and elsewhere. Benito Mussolini
had a strong attachment to his works. And no wonder: in The Republic
(c. 380 B.C.E.), Plato advocated a system of elite minority rule by highly
educated, intellectual rulers called philosopher kings, who were allowed
to exercise total control over the politics and security of a society. Isnt
it likely that Mussolini, as well as Stalin, Hitler, Mubarak, Saddam Hus-
sein, Assad and others felt they were just such chosen leaders.
Another recurring point in Platos Dialogues was that war should not
be considered apart from justice. In this sense he is one of the originators
of the just war idea.108 He also said: The state control is religion . . .
belief in the gods is proclaimed as a duty to the state.109 This is an idea
that fits in today with the idea of the nation-state, and its massive social
and even spiritual presence.
Aristotle, twenty years Platos junior, further developed the concep-
tion of a just war, which influences religious and nationalist thinking
to this day. Here, the murders committed in certain types of war became
37
qualified as righteous. When the state itself was righteous (as, of course,
all states consider themselves to be), then the war itself was just.
War provided a natural form of acquisition for the state . . . It could legiti-
mately be deployed in self defense, to prevent the states enslavement, to
obtain an empire to benefit the inhabitants of the conquering state, or to
enslave non-Hellenes deserving of enslavement . . . In his Politics (VII: 14),
Aristotle insisted that War must be for the sake of peace.110
Since state control is religion (Plato) and when the state is righ-
teous, the war is just (Aristotle), we can see how war, religion and god
quickly came together nearly 2500 years ago to set the stage for a never-
ending series of bellicose campaigns in the name of God and the state,
which have helped to define human civilization to this day.
In Plato and Aristotles thinking, we see the foundation for ev-
ery Christian just war from the time of St. Augustine (d. 430) un-
til George W. Bushs campaign in Iraq. Is it simply coincidence that a
couple learned men in ancient Greece would characterize war thusly,
thereby affecting human history ever after? Or did Plato and Aristotle
simply state the obvious, setting the foundation stone for just war in
a species that cannot live without it?
Rome
Roman culture and society grew out of ancient Greece, an extension
of that empire which moved the pivot of Western civilization across the
Adriatic Sea. Following the markers laid down by earlier Greek thinkers,
Romans declared that a war could be just when it was carried out in
conformity with the proper set of religious laws . . . Deliberations about
war were expected to pass through a college of priests, who had spe-
cial responsibility for maintaining peaceful relations among Latins, who
would seek a judgment of the gods about the justice of the proposed
course of action.111
In addition to war, Ancient Rome, like the 21st-century United States,
found other ways of collective scapegoating to focus the human aggres-
sive urges, using these manners to bring the rest of society together. In
the United States, for instance, we have a whole menu of violent restor-
ative options including executions, the intensive torture of terrorists or
other enemies of the state (waterboarding, chaining internees to walls
and the floor, forcing them to sleep naked, etc.), solitary confinement for
those designated a risk to the state and other perverse methods of fo-
38
cusing our innate hostilities on some other, thereby making the one
nation under God possible.
Bruce Chilton described Roman antecedents to American social be-
havior in Abrahams Curse:
The seal of Romes power capital punishment for criminals of most
classes, especially slaves and non-citizens might include throwing vic-
tims to beasts, setting them on fire, forcing them to drink molten lead
that burned out their insides, crucifying or beating them to death, sewing
them into sacks with carnivores prior to drowning, hurling them from the
height of a cliff, or condemning them to become gladiators in the arena.
Rome coveted the display of pain, humiliation, and death as much as the
punishment of death itself.112
The only difference between the behavior in ancient Rome and that of
todays United States is that the Romans were open and gloating about
their cult of violence, while the citizens of the United States hide the
executions behind prison walls, claim to be horrified by the practice of
torture, and generally take a schizophrenic attitude toward the human
need for catharsis through institutionalized violence.
Mars
The Romans assimilated Ares into their pantheon and turned him
into their own God of war: Mars. In keeping with the history of linking
war and regeneration, Mars was also an agricultural guardian. He was
second in importance of the Roman gods to Jupiter (king of the gods and
the god of sky and thunder).
Mars represented military power as a way to secure peace and was
a father (pater) of the Roman people. In the mythic genealogy of Rome,
Mars was the father of Romulus and Remus, the founders of the city. His
love affair with Venus (the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility)
deeply fused the destructive power of war with the highest aspects of the
human character.
It is also important to note that the original impetus for war to
channel the innate aggressive and self-destructive tendencies of the indi-
vidual, so that the civilization could cohere and thrive was explicitly
stated vis--vis Mars:
The force [of Mars] had to be held from exploding into civil life . . . The
Romans felt Mars to be a collective danger and for their own security,
placed his cult outside the city walls in the field of Mars . . . The geo-
graphical placement of Mars outside the city walls in a field of his own
39
literalizes the psychic wall between the more human and inhuman areas
of our being.113
Of course, I disagree with that last statement. Throughout this book
I propose that war is as natural to human experience as other, more ac-
ceptable aspects of our character. The placement of Mars outside the city
walls simply represents the desire to separate ourselves from this central
facet of our own psyche. In a social sense, we do this by institutionalizing
this aspect of our being through war, and by choosing surrogate mur-
derers (warriors) to act out our own primal, destructive desires, thereby
freeing the rest of us to live in a civilized state.
This, to me, is the meaning of the exile of Mars.
40
Chapter Three: Judaism
The violence-of-God traditions that lie at the heart of the sacred texts of
Jews, Christians and Muslims are rooted in images of God featured cen-
trally in the Hebrew Bible . . . The Bible speaks of God as compassionate
and merciful, but it depicts Gods power . . . as violent, coercive, punishing,
threatening and deadly.114
Although Judaism is not the oldest major religion currently practiced
that designation is reserved for Hindus (c. 2000 B.C.E.) the Jewish
scriptures underpin religious practice in the West, and certainly in the
United States, where the Judeo-Christian heritage is touted by politi-
cians and most citizens alike as Americas spiritual foundation. And it is
in the Jewish Bible that we find the specific seeds of the pathologically
violent God that often rules in our era, as well as much of the impetus for
contemporary violence centered on the State of Israel.
This chapter, like the subsequent overviews of Christianity, Islam,
Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism, does not represent the definitive
study of violence within this religious path. Rather, it offers an overview,
examining the deep affiliation of violence and the sacred. A definitive
tome covering the violent strains in all of these religions would weigh in
at thousands of pages. The purpose of my book is not to exhaust the sub-
ject, but to introduce it into the public square and political conversation,
so that we might reconsider war, spirituality, religion and nationhood
and perhaps to begin the difficult task of untangling these human in-
stitutions from one another.
41
The Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) are centered

in the stories, prophets and monotheistic deity of the Torah (the Jewish
Bible). With its succession of violent stories, this book has helped spawn
the European millennia of wars, Islams dar al harb (world at war), the
Crusades, the Inquisition, World Wars I and II, the Holocaust, the cre-
ation and utilization of the nuclear bomb, jihad, the perfection of the sui-
cide bomber, pilotless bomb attacks by drone aircraft, terrorist plane
attacks, religiously-based oppression, biblically-infused murder and var-
ious other manners of destroying human souls in spiritually sanctioned
combat. Additionally, Judaism today continues its Biblical prescription
with religiously based oppression seen in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict,
as well as by providing a flashpoint for violence that affects the world
from Malaysia to New York City.
Israel, the religion and the nation, was founded in blood. The name
Israel itself means El does battle, and the Jewish God was the warrior
El, after whom the nation styled itself.115 Even given the muscular spiri-
tuality of the gods that came before in Mesopotamia, Greece and other
ancient locales, the God of Israel rivaled the worst that humanity has
ever endured in an irrational deity:
The invasion and conquest of Canaan [Book of Joshua] is a story of unpro-
voked aggression and genocide, both of which are attributed to the direct
command and intervention of God . . . If God were a human being, He
would be tried and found guilty of war crimes . . . The God of the invasion
of Canaan is the moral equivalent of any of the great perpetrators of geno-
cide in the 20th century, such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Saddam
Hussein. The story of the dispossession and genocide of the Canaanites
is central both to the Jewish and Christian religions and their respective
beliefs in the active intervention of God on behalf of His chosen or elect
people.116
Jewish Scripture
The Lord is a man of war; The Lord is His name . . . Thy right hand, O Lord,
glorious in power; Thy right hand, O Lord, dasheth in pieces the enemy.
(Exodus 15)117
While most Jews would assure you that God is merciful, loving, just
and fair, the truth, as represented in the Torah, resides far from this image.
The God of the Bible is a murderous, capricious, hateful, petulant, jealous
deity who gives and takes, supports or slaughters at His whimsical plea-
sure, often with no rhyme, reason or forethought whatsoever.
42
Story after story, passage after passage is rife with God-sanctioned

thievery, skullduggery, murder, incest, adultery and all other manner of
human ills, often rewarded, while the Ten Commandments loom over
all, arbitrarily applied at the whim of the Great Master. It is outside the
scope of this book to detail every instance of the pathology, narcissism
and capricious hatred of the Jewish Gods behavior, but an objective over-
view of a few of the stories, apart from the myth and belief that they have
spawned, will suffice to illustrate the unsound moral foundation upon
which the Abrahamic faiths are built. For further review, I point you to
any edition of the Torah, available in approximately 2400 languages.
In Deuteronomy (7:1-2), God instructs His People on how to enter
into a land promised them by the Creator:
When the Lord your God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest
to possess it, and shall cast out many nations before thee, the Hittite and
the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and
the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than thou,
and when the Lord thy God shall deliver them up before thee, and thou
shalt smite them; then thou shalt utterly destroy them; thou shall make no
covenant with them; nor show mercy unto them . . .118
A bit further along in the same Book of Deuteronomy, concerned that
compassion might enter into the hearts of His People and weaken their
resolve, God clarifies His wishes for His armies as they move into the
lands He has identified for them:
Howbeit of the cities of these peoples, that the Lord thy God giveth thee
for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth, but thou
shalt utterly destroy them.119
God waxes positively micromanager as He continues on to describe
exactly how Israel should wage war. He intones: Thou shalt not destroy
the trees thereof by wielding an ax against them; for thou mayest eat of
them . . . Only the trees that thou knowest are not trees for food, them
thou mayest destroy and cut down.120
From trees, the Lord their God moves on to outline which enemy
women might be taken as chattel (Deuteronomy 21:10):
When thou goest forth into battle against thine enemies, and the Lord thy
God delivereth them into thy hands, and thou carriest them away captive,
and seest among the captives a woman of goodly form, and thou hast a
desire unto her, and wouldst take her to thee to wife, then thou shalt bring
her home to your house, and thou shalt shave her head, and pare her nails;
and she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and she shall
remain in thy house, and bewail her father and her mother for a full month,
after that, thou mayest go in unto her, and be her husband . . .121
43
In the Book of Joshua, we read:

So Joshua smote all the land, the hill-country and the South, and the
Lowland, and the slopes, and all their kings; he left none remaining;
but he utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord, the God of Israel,
commanded.122
A bit further along in the same passage of Joshua (11:19-20), we find
another example of the Jewish Gods violent demands:
There was not a city that made peace with the Children of Israel, save
the Hivites the inhabitants of Gibeon; they took all in battle. For it was
the Lord to harden their hearts, to come against Israel in battle, that they
might be utterly destroyed, that they might have no favor, but that they
might be destroyed, as the Lord commanded Moses.123
Major prophets also get into the destructive spirit. In the Book of
Isaiah (c. 8th-6th centuries B.C.E.), the first 39 chapters prophesize doom
for a sinful Judah and for all the nations of the world that oppose God.
Within the text, we find many instances of violence, destruction and a
living hell-on-Earth, such as this one (Isaiah 13:9, 15-17):
Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel and full of wrath and fierce an-
ger; to make Earth a desolation . . . Every one that is found shall be thrust
through; and every one that is caught shall fall by the sword. Their ba-
bies also shall be dashed in pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be
spoiled, and their wives ravished.124
An Atmosphere Pervaded with Violence

These are but a spare few of the violent, hateful and triumphal pas-
sages that stain the Jewish Holy Book. Biblical scholar Raymond Schwa-
ger pointed out six hundred passages of explicit violence in the Hebrew
Bible, one thousand verses where Gods own violent punishments are
described, a hundred different passages where God explicitly commands
others to kill and a handful of stories in which God is represented as kill-
ing, or trying to kill, for no apparent reason.125
This collection of stories teaches a debased, twisted and capricious
version of morals. At times, though perhaps not violent, the tales and
their message fly in the face of the concept of morality itself, regardless
of what religion. For instance, in Genesis 21, we see the Lord exhorting
Abraham to take a concubine (Hagar) to bear a son, Ishmael (his wife
Sara was, at that time, barren) to continue the Abrahamic lineage. When
Ishmael was thirteen years old, God changed his mind, had the ancient
Sara (then 99 years old) bear a son (Isaac) and allowed Sara to throw
Hagar and Ishmael out of the house and into the wilds. Abraham, in the
44
attitude of every Jewish husband since, quietly acquiesced to his wifes

demands.
In Genesis 22, God, ever the erratic omniscient power, told Abraham
to sacrifice his and Saras son, Isaac, to the Lord, to prove his fealty. With
Ishmael long gone by this time, this would have ended the covenant ini-
tiated by God (Genesis 15), leaving Abraham with no one to carry on
his lineage. However, showing all the courage of a half-drowned worm,
Abraham lied to his son and took him up to Mount Moriah, fully intend-
ing to destroy his own progeny on the orders of the increasingly perverse
and unstable deity. In keeping with His fickle character, however, God
rescinded the demand at the last second.
In the story of Esau and Jacob (Genesis 25-27), twin brothers strug-
gled over Isaacs birthright. Though legally the Abrahamic covenant be-
longed to Esau, as he was the first born of the two, Rebekah, Isaacs wife,
ordered Jacob to fool the blind old man (Isaac) into giving him the birth-
right instead of Esau. Rebekah sent Jacob to his father dressed in Esaus
garments, laying goatskins on his arms and neck to simulate Esaus hairy
skin. Jacob lied first about how he had returned so quickly from the ap-
pointed hunt (Because the Lord your God arranged it for me). Then
when asked point-blank, Are you really my son Esau? Jacob responded
simply, I am. Isaac then blessed Jacob with the dew of the heavens, the
fatness of the earth and lordship over many nations as well as his own
brother. His punishment for breaking several of the Ten Commandments
was to successfully take over the Abrahamic covenant and be renamed
Israel by an angel.
The Jewish Scriptures are rife with examples of incest, to the point
that even sex between a father and his daughter was not explicitly for-
bidden. In Genesis 19, after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
(from which Lot was saved, as the single worthwhile man in the city),
Lot was tricked into getting drunk and then having sex with both of his
daughters to preserve the family line. Ironically, this story took place
shortly after they had fled from the cities that were destroyed by God for
their immorality.
In the next chapter, Abraham married his half sister, Sara (Genesis
20; which might explain the difficulties in conceiving, by the way), while
earlier we had learned that Abrahams brother Nachor married his niece,
Melcha (Genesis 11). In other passages, we read of a brother raping his
sister (II Kings 13); Mosess great aunt marrying her own nephew (Exo-
dus 6), and in Genesis 38, Judah, the fourth son of Jacob (he of the stolen
45
birthright), mistook his daughter-in-law Tamar for a prostitute while

she was veiled, and had sex with her.
The Jewish text is sprinkled with further examples of murder, infi-
delity, thievery and other immoral behavior, sometimes even on the part
of God Himself. What is most disturbing, however, is that there is no
clear moral reaction to these events. In some cases, actors are punished
for their immoral and illegal (against the Ten Commandments) behavior,
while in others they are rewarded.
The collection of stories leads to the conclusion that if one has Gods
approbation, one may do as he or she pleases and the surest way to
know that one has Gods approval is simply BY noting whether one can
get away with the action or not. To our day, this bizarre law of conse-
quence reigns, and individual and state actors often view their perverse
and murderous actions as just on the basis of whether they are power-
ful or lucky enough to pull it off without obvious social or geo-political
consequences.
The Jewish God and His Battered Spouse

Gods violence is relentless throughout the Jewish Bible. God orders Mo-
ses to kill disobedient children, adulterers, a man who lies with a male
as with a woman, and to stone to death those who gather sticks on the
Sabbath. God blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the
ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds in the
air in the genocidal Flood (Genesis 7:23) . . . God reduced a disobedi-
ent people to cannibalism (Lamentations 4:10). God sent two she-bears
to maul forty boys because they insulted a prophet (II Kings 2:23-24).126
Through this series of oppressive, aggressive and self-righteously vio-
lent stories, an image of the Jewish God emerges that is anything but
kind, loving and merciful. On the contrary, the Hebrew Bible depicts the
God of Israel as a narcissistic character who requires constant adoration
or He flies into a rage. He is violent above all other characteristics.127
Growing out of this was a perverse relationship between God and
his People (Israel), which can best be likened to the abusive relationship
between a battering husband and his spouse.
A number of prophets (Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel) employ the metaphor of
marriage to describe the covenant relationship. The use of this metaphor
attributes to God all of the rights belonging to a husband in a patriarchal
society . . . including the right to chastise and beat his wife when she has
been disobedient or unfaithful. These prophets present Israel as an un-
faithful wife who is both disobedient and sexually promiscuous . . . and
God as an aggrieved husband who in his anger and humiliation repeatedly
46
acts in controlling and abusive ways toward his wife, including extreme
physical violence . . . The violence in Gods relationship with Israel begins
with Israels unfaithfulness as a wife.128
Israel is always held responsible for the violence that God inflicts
upon her.
God is described as an abusive husband who batters his wife, strips her
naked and leaves her to be raped by her lovers, only to take her back in the
end, insisting that when all is said and done, Israel the wife shall forever
remain the wife of an abusing husband.129
Sacrifice, Martyrdom and the Will of God

As with the god of most early religions, the Jewish God thirsted for
blood, first of humans and later for animals. We see in Genesis 22, in the
story of Abrahams call to sacrifice his son Isaac, Gods desire:
What Abraham is called to do in Genesis 22 is, from a Biblical standpoint,
monstrous. He trudges up Moriah to prepare human flesh for Gods con-
sumption, although the law of ancient Judaism explicitly forbids treating
people as food, committing murder, approaching human blood or engag-
ing in infanticide . . . Sacrifice binds a community together, while offering
a person, making a child a sacrificial victim, threatens the communitys
existence. Yet healing and destruction seem to have become inextricably
entwined.130
God did rescind the demand once he became convinced that Abraham
was willing to carry it out. Regardless of the horrible psychological scars
this must have left on father and son, the perversity of the moment, the
utter torturous inhumanity, must never be overlooked or diminished. It
should also be noted that God did need blood in the end, and a sacrificial
ram appeared and was immediately destroyed.
Bruce Chilton, in The Curse of Abraham, noted how this central Abra-
hamic story has affected the three faiths that Abraham spawned:
Uniquely among the religions of the world, the three that center on Abra-
ham have made the willingness to offer the lives of children a central vir-
tue for the faithful. Child sacrifice is not merely a possibility; it is incorpo-
rated within the pattern of faith, not as a requirement of literal ritual, but
as an ethical virtue that every believer should be prepared to emulate.131
I can almost hear your pooh-poohing from here! After all, you say:
Im a believer in [insert Abrahamic faith here] and I certainly dont believe
in child sacrifice! How barbaric!
Would that these protestations had merit . . . but in interpretations
of this Abrahamic story, as well as the wars it has helped sanction, it has
47
spawned a cult of sacrifice for young warriors everywhere. The Abraha-

mic religions have persistently pushed their believers and, most impor-
tantly, their children to sacrifice themselves in the name of the Lord.132
The average age for an American soldier enlisting in the U.S. Army in
2008, for instance, was 21. The average age of a Muslim suicide bomber in
Israel in 2005 was the same.
This sacrifice both in the American army or as a Palestinian sui-
cide bomber often is presented as a form of martyrdom, a virtue
held in the highest regard in all Abrahamic faiths, though traced back
into the earliest Jewish narratives. Within Judaism, the blood covenant
(the Ten Commandments were described as dam habberit, the blood of
the covenant133) coupled with the story of Abraham on Mount Moriah,
fused together into a call to sacrifice oneself in the name of the Lord.
The imperative to become a martyr and join the armies of the suffering .
. . is an intrinsic dimension within the Abrahamic tradition that derives
from a specific, formative moment in the history of Judaism . . . The Mac-
cabees (c. 2nd century B.C.E.) motivated themselves and their children
in particular with the example of Abrahams offering of Isaac . . . and
constructed their ideal of martyrdom in direct response to the politics
of their period . . . According to the Maccabean theology, there was no
middle ground between true belief and the powers of this world; the
choice was not between remaining faithful and compromise, but between
martyrdom and collaboration with the enemies of Israel. This remorseless
standard applied specifically to children and woman as well as men
makes the willingness to die the litmus test of true faith.134
Whats more, these second century B.C.E. revolutionaries played a
central role in codifying Jewish practice for later believers. Their scribes
copied or wrote the last books of the Hebrew scripture, allowing them to
set into the Holy Writ the ideals of martyrdom and self-sacrifice. From
here on, self-sacrifice in the name of God became a standard virtue, and
within a spare few centuries, this ideal would become central to another
militant faith: Christianity.
To get a sense of how this belief still influences us to this day, an arti-
cle about an American warrior killed in Afghanistan echoes the exact ele-
ments proposed in the Maccabean narrative more than 2200 years ago:
Engaged in a frenzied firefight and outnumbered by the Taliban, Navy Lt.
Michael Murphy made a desperate decision as he and three fellow SEALs
fought for their lives on a rocky mountainside in Afghanistans Kunar
Province in 2005. In a last-ditch effort to save his team, Murphy pulled
out his satellite phone, walked into a clearing to get reception and called
for reinforcements as a fusillade of bullets ricocheted around him. One of
48
the bullets hit him, but he finished the call and even signed off, Thank
you. Then he continued the battle.
Navy Cmdr. Chad Muse, commanding officer of SEAL Delivery Team 1

in Hawaii, noted one of Murphys favorite books was Steven Pressfields
Gates of Fire, an account of outnumbered Spartans and their epic battle
against hundreds of thousands of invading Persians nearly 2,500 years
ago at the Battle of Thermopylae. Like the Spartans, who were ultimately
slaughtered, Murphy had a spirit that didnt give up. Its about sacrifice
and valor and heroism in battle, Muse said.135
Ultimately, the ideal of self-sacrifice became completely entangled
with the sacred virtues of worship and war, bringing them together ex-
plicitly in manners that have reverberated through the centuries down
to our era:
For ancient Israel, war is a continuous, highly expanded sacrifice. The cult
was not simply an important feature of warfare or a set of rituals attend-
ing it; rather, warfare was an important feature of the cult. Holy war was
one centrally important way in which Israel worshipped Yahweh.136
Israel: God, Land and the Other

The thing about war, sacrifice and the sacred is that an other is nec-
essary to complete the dynamic. The sacred love of God as evidenced in
the willingness to sacrifice oneself occasions the need for a strong and
present force to perform the ritual slaughter. This force is the enemy.
Identity is the basis of this separation between us and them, while the
scarcity of God completes the necessary formulation to bring God, war
and sacrifice together. I touched on Gods parsimonious nature earlier,
but the idea is worth revisiting, as it exists within each individual reli-
gion, and helps define the opposition as the sacrificial agent. The other
plays a sacred role, as they have assumed the mantle of the Divine Hand,
sacrificing His Own Child as part of the hallowed rite.
For Judaism, identity is originally forged from an idea of purity.
In the Hebrew Bible the foreigner is often seen as a source of potential
pollution, and the exclusion or annihilation of the foreigner is frequently
advocated by Biblical writers or commanded by God . . . This racism is
an unavoidable concomitant of covenant theology, and especially the idea
that the Children of Israel are the chosen people.137
The Jewish holy book is oft cited as the beginning of monotheism, and
the other two religions look approvingly on its creation of a unitary deity.
However, the flip side of this equation is that the Jewish scriptures also
inaugurated the conception of the miserly God, One who only has love
49
for a single people, with the rest operating outside of the orbit of His love
and protection.
No other holy scripture prior to the Jewish Bible identified a specific
ethnicity as the sole focus of Gods love and attention. With Judaism,
the idea of us and them was cemented in a particular way. The other,
now imagined as tribes and countries somehow standing between Jews
and their God, became enemies to vilify and destroy. This schema, laid
down in the ancient Holy Scriptures, came to affect the two subsequent
Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam, both of which claimed to
take over the covenant, and often turned their wrath on those who didnt
accept their claim to the original Abrahamic promise.
Society is encoded in the Bible as a principle of Oneness (one land, one
people, one nation) and in monotheistic thinking (one deity), it becomes
a demand of exclusive allegiance that threatens with the violence of
exclusion.138
This destructive dynamic has moved beyond the Abrahamic religious
sphere to help define secular ideas of state and nationhood.
Through the dissemination of the Bible in Western culture, its narratives
have become the foundation of a prevailing understanding of ethnic, reli-
gious and national identity as defined negatively, over and against others .
. . When this thinking is translated into secular formations about peoples,
one nation under God becomes less comforting than threatening.139
With the other in place, and with this force considered diametri-
cally opposed to not only the God of the one true religion, but also the
people who have received the covenant, a state of perpetual war is inau-
gurated. And going to war becomes the highest form of prayer sacrific-
ing oneself as a blood offering to God, in affirmation of His reality, as well
as the warriors love for Him.
Just War
The Book of Daniel insisted that God was waging a battle with the forces of
evil in heaven. This war was mirrored by and influenced earthly events.140
The Jewish God and his Biblical protgs had no need for a just war
theory, such as those developed by the later Abrahamic faiths. War was
waged at Gods command and whimsy, with little rhyme or reason and as
was shown time and again, need not fit into any controlling moral sche-
ma. Gods violence was inexplicable and ever-present, and the Israelites
needed little more provocation than an oblique sign or a simple desire to
launch into an all-out, genocidal military campaign.
50
However, for political and legal reasons, a just war theory was de-
veloped within Judaism in post-Biblical times, as the direct communica-
tion with God faded over the centuries and Israelites had to divine His
messages encoded in the Torah and through prophetic utterances. Rabbi
Dr. Asher Meir (a member of the Ethics Committee of the Prime Minister
of Israels office) explored contemporary Jewish just war theory in his
syndicated column The Jewish Ethicist:
Judaism is founded on a vision of brotherhood among all peoples. Yet in an
imperfect world, war is sometimes a necessary means to realize this vision.
When we are facing a ruthless enemy who will have no mercy on us, we
must do whatever is necessary to overcome them in order to bring about
an end to ruthlessness and cruelty. But to the extent that we face enemies
who dont play by the rules, we must remember the priests original admo-
nition: to keep in mind that we are fighting enemies, and not brothers, and
that these individuals will not display any mercy toward us. In this case
we may have to adjust our norms in order to overcome the forces of cruelty
and inhumanity. Yet even in this case, we have to keep in mind that the
conflict of war is only a means to bringing about a peaceful future world
where conflict is obsolete.141
Its important to acknowledge that in this case, the ruthless enemy
of whom the Rabbi speaks is the Palestinian people, and that this col-
umn is simply justification for the abhorrent treatment of this oppressed
people. He notes: we face enemies who dont play by the rules, but does
not acknowledge that the rules are set by the Israelis, often with Biblical
and religious justification (as this column surely means to be), and leave
absolutely no room for a fair or even fight. Sometimes it appears as if
Israeli justice is as arbitrary and violent as that of the God of the Jewish
Bible.
Rabbi Dr. Meir situates this Jewish just war theory within the Bibli-
cal past, stating: a realistic objective for a war conducted with humane
norms is the civil war between Judah (the southern kingdom) and Israel
(the northern kingdom) recounted in II Chronicles chapter 28. How-
ever, the subtext is contemporary geo-politics, and the justification for
Israels one-sided treatment of the people with whom they share the land.
Orthodox Rabbi Norman Solomon, in his Judaism and the Ethics of
War, not only situates Jewish just war theory in the scriptures, but
chooses one of the most vile passages, Deuteronomy 20, which intones
(among other things): Howbeit of the cities of these peoples, that the
Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save nothing alive
that breatheth, but thou shalt utterly destroy them.142 Rabbi Solomon,
basing his ideas on this and other passages in the Biblical chapter, notes
51
that Deuteronomy lays down several constraints and conditions for nor-
mal war:
The war is to be fought only by those who are courageous, possessing faith
in God . . . an offer of peace is to be made to any city that is besieged . . .
should the city refuse the offer of peace the males are put to the sword, the
females and small children taken captive and the city plundered.143
It is not difficult to envision how we get from these rules of engage-
ment to the Gaza War (2009), in which up to 1500 Palestinians were
killed (and 13 Israelis), most of whom were not specifically determined
to be combatants. According to Jewish just war theory, the incursion
could have been much worse, with a complete plundering of Gaza,
whose inhabitants were viewed as refusing an offer of peace. Undoubt-
edly, some religious Israelis (and members of the government) felt that
they let the Gazans off easy, while much of the rest of the world saw a
one-sided battle that veered into a slaughter of the innocents.
It should also be noted that Jewish law allows for a blanket indemni-
fication for the perpetrators under the guise of God issued instructions.
This is especially problematic in current day Israeli politics, as many
Settlers and others in the hyper-religious community most definitely
do believe that they have received instructions from God to undertake
everything from stone throwing (often by Settler children as young as
four years old) to Baruch Goldsteins opening fire on innocent civilians
at a mosque (1994; Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, killing 29 Muslims
at prayer and wounding another 125), spraying 111 bullets into the holy
space. Basing his actions on passages in the book of Esther, Goldstein
believed that by mowing down Arabs that he thought wanted to kill
Jews, [he] was reenacting part of the Purim story.144
Today, Goldsteins gravesite has become a pilgrimage site for Jew-
ish extremists. A plaque near the grave reads To the holy Baruch Gold-
stein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah and the nation of
Israel.145
To find justification for his acts, Goldstein could look to recent com-
mentators such as Tzvi Yehuda (d. 1982; a Rabbi and leader of religious
Zionism), who stated that the establishment of Jewish sovereignty over
Eretz [the land of] Israel is a commandment of the Torah.146 In 2010, Jew-
ish settlers were criticized because during celebrations of Purim they
sang songs praising Baruch Goldsteins massacre demonstratively in
front of their Arab neighbors. A phrase from the song read Dr. Goldstein,
there is none other like you in the world. Dr. Goldstein, we all love you . .
52
. he aimed at terrorists heads, squeezed the trigger hard, and shot bullets,
and shot, and shot.147
It is important to note and this applies to the Gaza incursion in
2009, as well as just wars in all other religious cultures that jus in
bello demands that non combatants be spared. Unfortunately, as Barbara
Ehrenreich noted in Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War,
in todays low-intensity wars, civilians constitute 90% of the dead148
making a true just war impossible.
Judaism Today More of the Same?

Judaism today shows no evidence of changing from the primal dy-
namic of us versus them set down more than 5000 years ago in the earli-
est narratives from Genesis and the other four books of the Pentateuch
(five first books of the Jewish Bible). Even more damaging is the manner
in which Israel has become set up against many in the world as a flash-
point for religiously inspired war, both for and against the Jewish state.
Often, we find actions or reactions flowing from those who seek to
protect the ancient nation such as the United States and, to a lesser
extent, Europe and those that want to destroy it. Add the oppres-
sion that the Israeli state visits on citizen and non-citizen Palestinians,
its illegal possession of nuclear arms and its bedrock belief that Israel,
as a state, is sanctioned by the violent God of the Jewish Bible, and the
world is left with an ongoing religio-virulent infection that metastasizes
throughout the Middle East and, indeed, throughout the world. Too of-
ten, these political battles are couched as a war between the tripartite
division of God, with the monotheistic deity of Abraham having split in
three, and now often centered on the ancient land of Israel reborn
Abrahams progeny must fight to the death to see which people have the
true covenant, and which are the pretenders.
Israeli politics sometimes seems to emerge directly from the vicious
narrative of the Jewish Bible. Perpetrators of Jewish violence in our era
have often justified their deeds with pious language, using Jewish theol-
ogy, historical precedents and Biblical examples.149
A series of contemporary Israeli religious and military leaders situate
their actions within the Jewish religious tradition. Rabbi Meir Kahane
(d. 1990; an ordained Orthodox rabbi who later served as a member of
the Israeli Knesset) founded the militantly anti-Arab Kach party. The
partys platform called for the annexation of all conquered territories and
the forcible removal of all Palestinians. He helped develop what would
53
become a recurring theme in Israeli politics: that of the religious Zionist,

who fuses spirituality and violence in the name of the Chosen People.
In using violence against cosmic foes [represented in Kahanes thinking
by the Palestinians], Rabbi Kahane indicated that the lives of individuals
targeted for attack were not important . . . Any individual who was part
of a group deemed to be the enemy might justifiably become the object of
a violent assault. In a spiritual war there is no such thing as an innocent
bystander . . . The idea was that the Messiah will come in a great conflict
in which Jews triumph and praise God through their successes. This was
Kahanes understanding of the term Kiddush ha-Shem, the sanctification
of God.150
Although this conception of religion, violence and the other is prim-
itive, it continues to affect followers of Kahane. Baruch Goldstein, whose
atrocities were outlined earlier, has had a shrine erected to his heroism,
and is buried across from the Meir Kahane Memorial Park. Today, Jew-
ish tour guides explain the religious importance of Goldsteins act, as
well as underscoring how the Biblical land and sites on the West Bank
are sacred, and that Jews are under Gods requirement to occupy them.151
Yigdal Amir, the Bar Ilan University student who assassinated Yit-
zhak Rabin in 1995 (putting a bullet through the nascent peace process
as well), was quoted as saying that he had no regrets for his actions,
adding that he had acted alone and on orders from God. In his mind, the
slaughter was justified by a pursuers decree, which morally obligates a
Jew to halt someone who presents a mortal danger to Jews.152
Even as recently as the Gaza incursion (2009), the militarys Chief
Rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Rontzki, made this message crystal
clear: We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God
brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the non-
Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this Holy Land. Rabbi
Rontzki took a quotation from a classical Hebrew text and turned it
into a slogan: He who is merciful to the cruel will end up being cruel
to the merciful. The information was included in a booklet handed out
to the soldiers, containing a rabbinical edict against showing the enemy
mercy.153
How the Jewish Bible Affects Christianity

The account of Exodus can be considered the most important story in the
Bible . . . According to many liberation readings, God is a powerful, anti-
imperial Deity who takes sides with slaves, destroys superior armies and
delivers Gods chosen land . . . Gods violence and human violence done in
54
Gods name are the legitimate and preferred means to justice. Gods is a
liberating violence.154
The Jewish scriptures are foundational texts for both Christianity
and Islam. Far from superseding the ancient Israelite teachings, both re-
ligions simply built on top of them. They accepted the narratives, proph-
ets and teachings, and then added theirs on top, while insisting that they
had received Gods covenant which the earlier religion(s) forfeited.
As such, the idea of holy violence present within Jewish history was
accepted in its entirety by the other two Abrahamic creeds. One elegant
outcome of this has been that all three religions point their holy wars
at the other two, using the originally Jewish conception of holy war to
justify their destruction of those from the other two faiths. While I will
explore each Abrahamic cousin separately in the following two sections,
it is nonetheless instructive to briefly examine the manner in which re-
ligious thinkers in both Christianity and Islam accepted the violence of
God theories elaborated in the Jewish scripture.
Gratian (d. 383), a Roman Emperor who favored Christianity over
the traditional Roman religion, situated the novel conception of Chris-
tian warriors in the Hebraic past, using the example of Moses killing
the Egyptian as an example of courage at war.155 St. Augustine (d. 430)
crystallized the Christian Just War theory, presenting it in a form that
influences us to this day. He made it clear that the Old Testament idea
of war, commanded by God, was a continuing warrant for the use of
military force to punish wickedness.156 As Robert Holmes (author of On
War and Morality) outlined in A Time For War? Augustines Just War
Theory Continues to Guide the West:
Augustine insists that one can kill only under the authority of God, as
communicated by direct or implicit command from God, or by a legiti-
mate ruler who carries out Gods intent to restrain evil on earth. Augus-
tine further suggests that one who obeys such a command does not him-
self kill. He acts only as an instrument of the one who commands. Au-
gustine concludes, The commandment forbidding killing was not broken
by those who have waged wars on the authority of God, or those who have
imposed the death-penalty on criminals when representing the authority
of the state, the justest and most reasonable source of power . . . Thus
Augustine fashioned what is now called the just war theory, which
over the centuries has become a complex set of criteria to govern both the
recourse to war in the first place and the conduct of war once begun.157
A cottage industry of later Christian theologians emerged to interpret
Augustines concept of the Hebrew holy war precedent. Building on his
ideas, they religiously justified the Crusades, Inquisition, the 15th18th-
55
century genocide in the Americas, the religious wars in Europe through-

out the Middle Ages and modern era and even the massive World Wars
of the twentieth century.
For instance, both Heinrich Bullinger (d. 1575) and William Cardi-
nal Allen (d. 1590) held that religion permits the righteous to go to war
against adherents of other faiths, as religious difference itself was a suf-
ficient threat to the true religion, justifying bellicose reactions. Both
of these Christian thinkers based their judgments of the justice of holy
war on examples drawn from the Old Testament.158 Luis de Molina (d.
1600) used Deuteronomy 1:7 to justify the actions of warriors as Gods
executioners.159
Sacrifice
Christianity also appropriated ideas of sacrifice as worship, to inspire
young men to fight the states and religions battles. The new Abrahamic
creed situated the need for individuals to wage war in the necessity of
sacrifice and the blood covenant, originally sealed between Moses and
God with the Ten Commandments (see above).
During the second century C.E. both Judaism and Christianity argued ve-
hemently that God desired and accepted human sacrifice . . . Did Genesis
22 [Abrahams aborted sacrifice of Isaac] foreshadow Christs gruesome
death on the Cross, as Christian interpreters maintained, or did Abraham
really hack his son apart on Mount Moriah, as some Rabbis taught? Either
way, the Divine approval of human sacrifice remains, and many texts on
both sides of the Jewish-Christian divide call attention to that approval
rather than attempting to soften it in any way.160
Building on the Abrahamic story of the willingness of the father to
sacrifice his son, an entire literature of martyrdom grew up in Christian
history, glorifying those who gave or still give their lives as ritual
offerings to please God.161 Within this Judeo-Christian construction, we
speak of human death as sacrifice, as parties in armed conflict frequent-
ly do.162
To appreciate how war language explicitly borrows from this lexicon
of sacrifice and faith, we need only read the words of a man considered
by many to be an American hero, Senator John McCain (b. 1936; R-AZ).
Senator McCain eulogized a soldier fallen in Afghanistan:
He loved his country, and the values that make us exceptional among na-
tions, and good Love and honor oblige us. We are obliged to value our
blessings, and to pay our debts to those who sacrificed to secure them for
us. They are blood debts . . .The loss of every fallen soldier should hurt us
56
lest we ever forget the terrible costs of war, and the sublime love of those
who sacrifice everything on our behalf.163
And Echoes in Islam

The ideas of martyrdom, jihad (A religious war with those who are
unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad . . . enjoined especially for the
purpose of advancing Islam and repelling evil from Muslims164) and self-
sacrifice are central within Islam, as well. Even more so than in contem-
porary Judaism and Christianity, it seems that the Islamic religious value
of suicide in the name of God has reached a very high spiritual station.
Although the suicide attack dates back to the 17th century (the first
documented examples are by Dutch warriors in the Far East as well as
Europe165), the sacrificial act is currently associated with Muslims, and
deservedly so. Since the first Islamic suicide attack of our current era in
the early 1980s, suicide bombing has become the archetype of violence by
Muslim extremists.166
While there are no exact data on just how many Muslim suicide
attacks have taken place over the past 30 years, the Christian Science
Monitor documented 2200 such events over this period, most of which
occurred in the home countries of the attackers, often killing Muslims in
addition to their foreign targets.167 Suicide bombers are assured by some
of their religious leaders that their actions are religiously sanctioned, and
that they will be well-compensated for their acts of martyrdom, with
up to 72 virgins in a paradisical after-life. In fact, many, if not most, Is-
lamic scholars disagree suicide being illegal within traditional Islam
but there is enough religious precedent flowing through the Judeo-
Christian-Muslim heritage, and enough recent theological scholarship,
to assure Islamic suicide bombers that their actions are pure and moral.
57
Chapter Four: Christianity
The theological structure of Christian belief promotes the appalling record

of violence, persecution, hatred, intolerance, bigotry, abuse and hypocrisy
associated with the Christian churches over the past two millennia. This
is because it encourages believers to deny or repress their doubts, sins and
failures in order to be acceptable to God who, Christian doctrine declares,
will condemn those whom He finds unacceptable to eternal punishment.
Consequently, the faithful are liable to project the negative features of
their characters, beliefs and behavior onto scapegoats who are blamed for
them and excluded, persecuted or attacked in order to preserve the good
consciences of Christianity.168
Cut from the very flesh and blood of Judaism, founded by an apostate
Rabbi, Christianity was simply grafted onto the ancient Abrahamic faith,
accepting fully the earlier scriptures and then superseding them with Je-
suss message of love. Growing quickly from an oppressed collection of
deeply peaceful worshipers into a state religion that stretched from one
end of the globe to the other, Christianity claims more than a billion ad-
herents today. Additionally, it is the de facto state religion of what many
consider to be the contemporary worlds most dangerous superpower:
the United States.
Similar to Islam which separates the world into dar al-Islam (the
House of Islam) and dar al-harb (the House of War, i.e., all others) the
New Testament is dualistic, positing that humans have no choice but to
be ruled by God (the Christian God, that is) or by the forces of evil, those
that oppose their God.169 Like believers of all religions, Christians can
and do justify killing the other, as those who have not accepted Jesus
59
as their Lord and Savior are already dwelling in the realm of darkness,
and death (as was the case during the Inquisition) can save their souls. If
the individual is lost, at the very least these murders can help purify the
Earth.
Jesus a Message of Peace?

To negate violence in the New Testament, one must deliberately forget
Luke 22:36: whoever has no sword, let him sell his tunic and buy one.
They also purposely forget Matthew 10:34: I came not to bring peace, but
the sword. They pass over the fact that Matthew 23 is a page full of verbal
violence unique in all literature of all time. And most of all, they pass over
the fact that according to John 2:14-22, Matthew 21:12-13, Mark 11:15-17
and Luke 19:45-46, Jesus used physical violence to drive the traders from
the Temple.170
Perhaps one of the greatest religious myths that we have to contend

with is that the Christian Bible, known to its followers as the New Tes-
tament, is a peace document. How many times do we hear the exhorta-
tion to turn the other cheek, as if this were Christianitys only message
of how to deal with conflict? How many well-meaning Christian peace
workers, gathering over donuts and coffee in church basements, assure
each other that their path represents that set out by Jesus, and that mar-
tyrdom for Christians takes place in quiet suffering, hands at the side and
fully accepting of ones fate?
Alas.
Violence is inescapable in the New Testament. The most important
Christian image is the crucifixion, testament to the centrality of human
sacrifice to worship. Human blood is the ineradicable centerpiece of the
Christian message of redemption. Christianity was founded on an act of
extreme violence. The New Testament states frequently that Jesus was
sent to die, that his death was both intended and required by God.171
Uncovering violence within the Christian scriptures (leaving aside,
for now, the body of violence-justifying exegesis that has expanded the
ideal of Jesuss religion from the fourth century until today) is not diffi-
cult at all. I will not quote all of these passages they are far too numer-
ous I will simply give a representative sampling to show that Jesuss
exhortation to turn the other cheek is but one of a series of conflicting
messages emanating from the Christian Holy Writ. Violent imagery and
language abound in the New Testament:
Matthew
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And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee . . . And
if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is prof-
itable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy
whole body should be cast into hell. (5:29-30)
And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the
child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them
to be put to death. (10:21)
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I come not to send peace,
but a sword. (10:34)
Then Jesus began to denounce the towns in which most of his miracles
had been performed, because they did not repent . . . I tell you that it
will be more bearable for Sodom on the Day of Judgment than for you.
(11:20-24)
The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect
him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign
him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnash-
ing of teeth. (24:50-51)
Mark
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter
life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes
out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you
to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And
if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter
the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown
into hell, wherethe worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not
quenched. Everyone will be salted with fire. (9:43-49)
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not
shall be damned. (16:16)
Luke
But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body
has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear
him. (12:5)
The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect
him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign
him a place with the unbelievers. The servant who knows the masters
will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be
beaten with many blows. (12:46-47)
Those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over thembring
them here and kill them in front of me. (19:22-27)
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John
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. (3:36)
Those who do not believe in Jesus will be cast into a fire to be burned.
(15:6)
Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the
flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso
eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise
him up at the last day. (6:53-54)
Acts
And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that prophet
[Jesus], shall be destroyed from among the people. (3:23)
Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the
Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died. (12:23)
Romans
Without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection,

unmerciful: who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they that practice
such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent
with them that practice them. (1:31-32)
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man [Adam], and
death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all
sinned . . . (5:12)
1 Corinthians
If anyone destroys Gods temple, God will destroy that person; for Gods
temple is sacred, and you together are that temple. (3:17)
Nor let us act immorally, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand
fell in one day. Nor let us try the Lord, as some of them did, and were
destroyed by the serpents. Nor grumble, as some of them did, and were
destroyed by the destroyer. (10:8-10)
Ephesians
And walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for
us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (5:2)
The book of Matthew is particularly egregious and has given plenty
of ammunition to everyone from fourth -century Roman rulers to Pat
Robertson (b. 1930; a television evangelist and ex-Baptist minister who
politically aligns himself with the Christian Right) to justify Christian
violence:
62
The Gospel writer known as Matthew frequently places threatening and

hateful words on the lips of Jesus . . . Matthew cant seem to imagine peo-
ple doing the right thing without warnings of violent judgments hanging
over their heads, including threats of hell . . . Matthews Jesus consistently
uses heavily apocalyptic imagery when warning the people of imminent
judgment to come.172
There are many more instances of explicit violent language, threats
and behavior, culminating in the Book of Revelation, which details the
Armageddon and, far from the loving and redeeming religion that many
wish Christianity to be, represents the creed as one of destruction, mur-
der and holocaust.
It must also be noted that the Christian weekly liturgy offers a blood-
bath of imagery and language. The Christian Eucharist presumes the
punishing violence of God. The language body and blood of Christ
places the Lords Supper in a human sacrificial context. Christian rituals
and hymns are saturated in violent images of God, often masquerading as
themes of liberation or atonement.173
Lastly, lest you think that these scriptural passages are to be read as
metaphor, or with subtle nuance, here is a quote from a recent Papal en-
cyclical, Dominus Iesus, issued on August 6, 2000, in the name of Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger (b. 1927), who became Pope Benedict XVI on April 19,
2005:
For Holy Mother Church relying on the faith of the apostolic Testaments,
whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under
the inspiration of the Holy Spirit . . . they have God as their author, and
have been handed on as such to the Church Herself. [These books] firmly,
faithfully and without error, teach the truth which God, for the sake of
our salvation, wished to see confided in the Sacred Scriptures.174
The Early Church Fathers

The essence of virtue is not to be found in inflicting injury but in prevent-
ing it.175
Oddly enough, given the violent language and imagery embedded in
the Christian Holy Writ, plus the bloody history of the religion, Christi-
anity did begin as a genuinely peaceful religion. The early church fathers
argued that any participation in worldly affairs of statecraft, and specifi-
cally war, was unethical and contrary to the teachings of Christ.
Tertullian (d. 220; called the Father of Latin Christianity) had this to
say about participating in the wars of his era:
63
The question now is whether a member of the faithful can become a soldier
and whether a soldier can be admitted to the faith even if he is a member of
the rank and file [soldiery] . . . There can be no compatibility between an
oath made to God and one made to man, between the standard of Christ
and that of the devil. The soul cannot be beholden to two masters, God
and Caesar.176
The standard of separating the early Christian believer from every-
thing having to do with the civil authority was unwavering. Tertullian
stated: We either refuse offices in order to avoid falling into sin or we
must undergo martyrdom in order to be freed from obligations.177
Origen (d. 254; one of the most distinguished writers of the early
Church) addressed the carnage of the Jewish Bible, which underpins so
much of todays Christian fusion of temporal war and the spirit, relegat-
ing it to the realm of metaphor, assuring that physical conflict had no
place within the church:
Unless those carnal wars [of the Old Testament] were a symbol of spiri-
tual wars, I do not think that the Jewish historical books would ever have
been passed down to the apostles to be read by Christs followers . . . The
Apostle, being aware that physical wars are no longer to be waged by us
but that our struggles are to be only battles of the soul . . .178
Leader after leader from this era assured that there was no place in
war for a true Christian. Lactantius (d. 320) stated:
It is not right for those who are striving to stay on the path of virtue to
become associated with . . . wholesale slaughter. For when God forbids
killing, He is not only ordering us to avoid armed robbery, which is con-
trary to public law, but He is forbidding what men regard as ethical. Thus,
it is not right for a just man to serve in the army since justice itself is his
form of service.179
Lactantius belief that Christianity forbids what men regard as ethi-
cal, i.e., killing in war, would certainly strike a discordant note today.
There is little doubt that the majority of Christian followers in contem-
porary America draw a thick distinction between murder and killing.
I have had numerous devout Christians explain to me in quiet tones how
the Ten Commandments forbid murder, but not killing per se.
Ergo, the majority of American Christians today can strongly support
war, the death penalty, torture and other forms of violence, and even
consider them divinely ordained, provided that they do not consider
them murder. Even worse, a majority of Christians in America (more
than 60% in a recent Gallup poll) believe that killing of civilians in war is
sometimes justified!180
64
The early church fathers would strongly disagree with this concep-
tion: Thou shalt not kill unless you want to or need to or have been told to
or believe it is the right thing to do. But as we will see, the idea of divinely
ordained slaughter emerged into Christianity more than 1500 years ago,
and by now has a very solid collection of church thinkers and saintss
writings to back it up.
Martyrdom
Christianity has been a primary force in shaping our acceptance of abuse.
The central image of Christ on the Cross as the savior of the world com-
municates the message that suffering is redemptive . . . Those whose lives
have been shaped by the Christian tradition feel that self-sacrifice and
obedience are not only virtues but the definition of a faithful identity. The
promise of resurrection persuades us to endure pain, humiliation and vio-
lation of our sacred rights to self-determination, wholeness and freedom.
Our internalization of this theology traps us in an unbearable cycle of
abuse.181
The rejection of instigating violence by the early Christians in no way
freed the religion from violent imagery and actions it just pointed the
violence inward onto the believer, as a manner of echoing Christianitys
original creative act: that of God sacrificing His own Son. During this
early era, the soldier of Christ was an individual at war against the sin-
ful desires latent in his own urges and behavior.182 The enemy lay within.
These ideas built on beliefs from the parent Jewish religion and fused
with the story of Christ. Bruce Chilton noted in Abrahams Curse that
what Abraham and Isaac did on Mount Moriah was but a foreshadow-
ing of what Jesus revealed: Gods desire to destroy his own child in a
single, supreme, all-forgiving sacrifice.183 The New Testaments Book of
Hebrews (12:24) dates the thirst for sacred blood even earlier than the
story of Abraham and Isaac, stating that the true Christians dedication
for eternal sacrifice is one whose blood speaks better than Abels.184
The Book of Hebrews (c. 95) made the willingness of the believer to
become a martyr a religious duty, mimicking the sacrifice of Gods son
to Himself.185
Self-sacrifice and martyrdom became the highest form of worship for
these early Christians. By the second century, Christian teachers assured
that the ultimate act of faith was to give up ones life for the creed. Self-
denial, from austere asceticism to suicide for faith, was presented as the
surest way to attain union with Christ, dying with Him so as to be raised
65
to Him. Martyrdom was necessary to bring Jesuss Crucifixion alive to

new generations of believers.186
Ignatius of Antioch (d. 117; a student of John the Apostle) intoned:
Let fire and cross, struggles with beasts, dissections, slicings, rackings of
bones, cutting up of limbs, grinding of the whole body, cruel tortures of
the devil come upon me, only that I attain Jesus Christ.187
This impulse has had a profound effect on Christian nations over the
past two millennia. Countries with a deep history of Christianity have
displayed a capacity to mobilize their youth on a massive scale in times
of crisis, and put them in harms way. This self-sacrificing reflex feeds
easily into the European and American cultures of bloodshed,188 where
serving the nation as a warrior is conflated with serving Christ and God
in sacrifice. Ultimately, as Bruce Chilton (Bernard Iddings Bell Professor
of Religion at Bard College) noted:
In its detail, in its persistence, in its long-lasting effects for centuries af-
ter Roman persecution came to an end, and above all in its capacity to
be re-tooled in the service of nationalistic propaganda of martyrdom that
encourages sacrifice on behalf of country, the Christian veneration of mar-
tyrs has proven to be the single most influential incentive to self-sacrifice
among world religions over the centuries.189
The First Council of Nicaea and the Fall of Christianity

The wars of religion to which we are heir and are still fighting today began
in the battle of Milvian Bridge (313). There, Constantine, soon to be the
Roman Emperor, had his soldiers before battle inscribe on their shields
the Cross and the phrase: in this sign, you shall be victor.190
Christianity could not repress for too long through martyrdom the
violence seething within the human soul. By the fourth century, enough
people had converted to Christianity that the latent destructiveness
within humanity boiled to a point that it had to be pointed outward. Not
all new Christians believed that the only true path to Jesus lay in self-
mortification. More and more believed that the sword should be turned
on pagans and unbelievers, to prove Gods power and inflict His wrath in
the civil world of politics and war.
The Roman Emperor Constantine I (d. 337), who had learned of the
power of Christ at the Battle of Milvian Bridge prior to his ascension
to the throne, definitively fused Christianity and war. In 313 he issued
the Edict of Milan legalizing Christian worship. The emperor became
a great patron of the Church, and set a precedent for the position of the
Christian Emperor within the Church. In 325, at the Council of Nicaea,
66
Constantine avoided a church rupture over the nature of Christ, issuing

a decree that Jesus was both fully human and fully God. From that time
on, Christianity was the religion of the European emperor (called the
Holy Roman Emperor, a position that existed for nearly 1500 years, to
Napoleon in the 18th century).
Constantines conversion to Christianity and his actions at the Coun-
cil of Nicaea began a new chapter in the religion, providing religious jus-
tification for wars of state.
When the power of the empire became joined to the ideology of the
church, the empire was immediately recast and reenergized, and the
church became an entity so different from what had preceded it as to be
almost unrecognizable. Constantines conversion led to the militarization
of the Christian movement. No longer guided by the compassionate teach-
ings of Christ, but spearheaded by the emperors goals of conquest.191
Christs temporal power had a new meaning. One could be noble and
serve the spiritual realm through commanding attention and respect on
Earth. In fact, civil success in the world of violence proved Gods pow-
er, and His love of Jesus and Christianity. Prominent Christian leaders,
turning away from three centuries of self-mortification and a militant
passivity, embraced the model of a state-sanctioned religion. Far from
demanding removal from worldly affairs, the greatest Christian think-
ers now approved the use of violence, urging devout Christians on to at-
tack their competitors. The state power had been baptized as religious
power.192
Even the concept of the Christian martyr underwent a noxious
change another innovation that would infect Christian societies into
our era. The martyr was now not simply a passive victim, suffering pain
and violence in the name of Christ. After the Christianization of the Ro-
man Empire, the martyr became a soldier as well, a warrior-victim who
fought in the name of Christ. New hagiographies were written in which
the stories of these new murderer-martyrs were told alongside earlier
church fathers, who had died quietly under the persecutions of the previ-
ous centuries.193
As the Roman Empire became Christian, Christians introduced a fateful
shift in the identity of the martyr. Once the Roman Empire could call on
Christian soldiers for its defense, the benefit of martyrdom could accrue
even to those who risked their lives by engaging in violence on behalf
of their faith in Christ. Martyrs became executioners as well as victims,
while laying claim to the virtue of victimhood the whole time.194
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By the middle of the fourth century an institutional understanding

of how to apply restorative violence came into being. Bruce Chilton
explored how far the conception of religious violence went:
Later in the fourth century, in Callinicum on the Euphrates River, a local
Bishop had encouraged the plunder and arson of a synagogue by a mob
of unruly Christians . . . The Emperor Theodosius (d. 395) directed that
the Bishop rebuild the synagogue at his own expense. Bishop Ambrose in
Milan confronted Theodosius personally, arguing that the mob consisted
of overly enthusiastic but good-hearted people, childlike martyrs in their
immature but vigorous faith. Ambrose got his way. Mob violence had be-
come virtuous, on the argument that Christ was witnessed in these acts
as martyrs had once witnessed Christ. Having made his [successful] case
to Theodosius, Ambrose described himself as feeling as if he had entered
into paradise.195
And thus began one of the most pernicious periods of one religions
treatment toward the believers of another religion, as over the next 1600
years Christian Europe would subjugate its Jewish citizens to expul-
sions, pogroms, Crusades, Inquisitions, mass slaughters and, finally, the
Holocaust, the attempted destruction of every single follower of the Jew-
ish creedoften in the name of Jesus Christ.
A disgusting narrative, but not one you will often hear from followers
of the religion of the Lamb. As my priest friend said to me, Aw, man, why
do you always have to focus on the negative stuff? Theres so much good
in Christianity . . .
Just War
It is the iniquity on the part of the adversary that forces a just war upon
the wise man.196
There are few more powerful personalities in the history of God and
war than St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430). He spilled much ink, most of
which turned to blood, in defense of the idea that war could and did fit
within the structure of the Christian religion. While Constantine dis-
covered the power of the Cross at Milvian Bridge in 313, it was Augustine
who situated the idea of a just and righteous war within the Christian
tradition, a legacy that continues to influence the faith of Christ.
St. Augustine was convinced that war fulfilled the useful purpose of
reminding humans just how weak and dependent they actually are. In-
stitutional violence occurred in obedience to the will of God in order to
rebuke, humble or crush the pride of man.197 He used verbal gymnastics
to situate mass murder within the pantheon of Christian activities.
68
Waging war and extending the empire by subduing peoples is viewed as

happiness by the wicked, but as necessary by the good. But because it
would be worse if wrongdoers dominated those who are more just, it is
not inappropriate to call even this necessity happiness.
Augustine went so far as to outline the specifics of war strategy that
could be utilized in the name of God. Such things as ambushes are legiti-
mate for those who are engaged in a just war. In these matters, the only
thing a righteous man has to worry about is that the just war is waged
by someone who has the right to do so.198
For Augustine, war was undertaken as an extension of Christian
teachings. He advocated the use of the Roman military against Christian
heretics and schismatics.199 Implicit in this understanding of just war
was that each Christian victory on the battlefield proved the righteous-
ness of the campaign, as well as the power of God. This pathological con-
ception of just war metastasized over time to become manifest des-
tiny, with Christian Europeans believing that they had the God-given
right to take whatever they wanted and kill whomever they pleased, as
it was Gods will that they should rule the world. And their temporal
successes proved it!
Augustine continues to be the single most influential theologian
within Christianity for helping canon lawyers, theologians, politicians
and a vast array of modern Christian thinkers formulate their ideas on
war. Many modern thinkers reverentially refer to St. Augustine when
talking about war, and use his language and ideas.200
Error Has No Right

Augustine developed another insidious theory which, when coupled
with the divine right of the political leader to use war as a religious tool,
essentially made all Christian wars religious in nature. Called error has
no right, it situated the perceived enemies of Christianity in a judicial
no-mans land. The simple fact of their disagreement with Christians and
Christianity removed all of their legal rights, opening to them the neces-
sity of Christian judgment in the form of extirpative war:
The doctrine [of error has no right] was developed by St. Augustine to
justify the use of state coercion to suppress his heretical opponents. Be-
cause they are radically in error, they have no right to express or hold their
beliefs. Ever since, the doctrine has been put to similar use as the principle
behind every use of coercion, especially state coercion.201
Coupled with ideas of violence in the name of God, as well as the
infallibility of the Christian church, Augustines error has no right doc-
69
trine became an impetus for a millennium of religiously sanctioned wars,

slavery and other oppression in Europe, the Americas, Africa and the
Near and Far East.
The Holy Roman Empire

The best condition of the human race depends on a unity of wills. But this
cannot be unless there is one will dominating all the others and directing
them all to one goal . . . Nor can this will be one unless there be one ruler
over all, whose will can dominate and direct all others.202
Constantines desire to bring God and country, war and ultimate jus-
tice together had the effect of creating the European theocracy known as
the Holy Roman Empire, which existed for nearly 1000 years in Central
Europe. The first Holy Roman Emperor is generally considered to have
been Otto I, King of Germany, crowned in 962; while the final Holy Ro-
man Emperor was Francis II, who abdicated and dissolved the Empire in
1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. Others, however, date the founding
of the Holy Roman Empire to the year 800, when Pope Leo III crowned
Charlemagne emperor of Europe on Christmas Day.
Charlemagne brought the Christian holy war to a new, more violent
level.
Charlemagnes activities stand as the most brutal pages in Christian mis-
sionary efforts. For Charlemagne . . . the Resurrection Cross of Christ
symbolized the power that protected them in warfare and led them to vic-
tory. Priests traveled with the army and carried gold and jewel encrusted
crosses mounted on standards in procession through the troops.203
The new holy warrior ethos permeated all aspects of religious obser-
vance. The theologian Paschasius (d. 860) recast the daily Eucharist, in
which the body and blood of Christ are eaten in the form of wafer and
wine, not as a celebration of the resurrection but as a re-enactment of the
Crucifixion, the killing of the bleeding Christ. Communicants were to
stop considering the event as hopeful and life affirming. They were now
asked to focus on Jesuss suffering and dying. In political-military terms,
over time the death theme came to mean that killing in warfare was a
source of thanksgiving.204
From this time onward, all European wars were presented as holy
wars, even when fought against other Christians! In the case of inter-
necine battles, each side would simply brand the other as the mistaken
party (error has no right), and then do their best to prove their Godly
70
credentials through victory on the battlefield, showing that God loved

them more and that the adversary was in error.
This act of thanksgiving, undertaken through slaughtering those
in error, became fused with the idea of sacrifice, which also echoed the
Crucifixion and tightened the connection between a bloody death and
Christs dying for all of humanitys sins. Now, anyone going to war could
become a little Christ, taking on the sins of all humanity in their violent
act of thanksgiving.
Patristic theology insisted on the importance of the martyrs self-sacrifice,
including very young martyrs, to an extent unprecedented among the
major religions in antiquity. That happened because the [church] fathers
ratcheted up the ethical imperative found in Hebrews its demand that
believers pursue their devotion to Christ until blood (Hebrew 12:4), that
is, to the death.205
Augustinian Influence on Later Christian Thinkers

It is indeed better that men should be led to worship God by teaching,
than that they should be driven to it by fear of punishment or pain . . .
However, many have found advantage in being first compelled by fear or
pain, so that they might afterwards be influenced by teaching.206
The Augustinian infection burrowed deep into Christianitys soul,
turning a once-peaceful creed into one of the most bloodthirsty in the his-
tory of humankind. Throughout the Middle Ages, the greatest Christian
thinkers looked to Augustine to situate wars of passion, aggrandizement
and just plain slaughter within the Christian tradition. For instance, the
12th-century Bolognese monk Gratian (acclaimed as the Father of the Sci-
ence of Canon law) stated:
Do not think that none can please God while serving in arms . . . Therefore
keep this in mind first of all, when you prepare to fight, that your valor,
including your bodily courage, is a gift of God . . . be therefore peaceful
while you wage war.207
This 12th-century monk also assured that those who waged wars or-
dered by God never acted against the precept Thou shalt not kill, as a
soldier who kills a man in obedience to power under which he has been
legitimately constituted cannot be accused of homicide.208 To his credit,
however, Gratian did draw the line at priests bearing arms, averring:
priests may not take up arms themselves; but they are allowed to exhort
others to do so in order to defend the oppressed and to fight the enemies
of God.209
71
Within fifty years of Gratians pronouncement, the Pope himself

urged prelates into battle. Pope Innocent IV (d. 1254) assured:
Any prelate, if he has temporal jurisdiction, could legitimately take up
arms against disobedient subjects as long as he has the legal authority to
declare war. And even if he does not have the right to declare war, as long
as he has the jurisdiction he may take up arms, because in such cases, it is
not properly called war, but rather justice.210
With the churchs highest authority guaranteeing that even a man of
God could take up arms, and when he did so it was to administer justice
and not commit murder, the floodgates opened to validate all manner of
deleterious behavior. Remember: already in the fourth century a Chris-
tian mob had been exonerated of sin for marauding through a Jewish syn-
agogue and neighborhood, their only fault being an excess of faithful zeal.
So as the idea of sacred violence expanded and became settled within the
Church canon, it only stood to reason that it would encompass all actors
and virtually allviolent situations.
Hostiensis (d. 1271; one of the most important canonists of the thir-
teenth century) guaranteed: Whoever by a legitimate judicial authority
free of error attacks another, attacks justly, whereas the one attacked de-
fends himself unjustly. St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274; held in the Catholic
Church to be the model teacher for those studying for the priesthood)
quoted Augustine with these reassuring words:
Augustine says: Beware of thinking that none of those can please God
who handle warlike weapons . . . Now religious orders are established in
order that man may please God. Therefore nothing hinders the establish-
ing of a religious order for the purpose of soldiering.211
Far from being peripheral members of the Christian Church, these
voices were central to building the theological structure of the medieval
church, and are still studied by Catholic laypersons and priests alike.
Though many Christians will cringe at these ideas and assure that they
want to concentrate on the good stuff, many others will point to these
thinkers as they build a religious basis for state-sponsored violence. I
will explore this contemporary dynamic in depth in a later chapter, War
as Love, where I examine the religious language used in the justification
of American interventionism, and specifically since the 9/11/2001 assault,
an attack that was itself justified within the Islamic religious tradition.
From these 12th and 13th-century church elders, Renaissance Christian
thinkers those who gave justification to the genocide and wars of ag-
grandizement in the Americas took their spiritual sustenance. Chris-
tine de Pizan (d. 1431), a Venetian-born woman and a highly regarded
72
poet in her day, challenged the stereotype of the peace-loving female

with this comment: Wars undertaken for a just cause are permitted by
God. We have proof of this in several places in the Holy Writ.212
The Italian Cardinal Thomas Cajetan (d. 1534) went further, imput-
ing an almost God-like role of giver of justice to the ruler who waged a
just war:
He who has a just war is not a party, but becomes, by the very reason that
impelled him to make war, the judge of his enemies. For it is not a perfect
commonwealth if it lacks the ability to exercise vindictive justice, either
against internal or external disturbances.213 It is the enemys own fault if
he reduced himself to that state where foreigners can exercise vindictive
justice against him, for it was in his power to offer satisfaction earlier.214
The Principle of Double Effect

Like the Jewish scripture before, this Papal legate detailed how the
victorious religious warrior might consider all goods of the conquered
people as his own:
All of the losses resulting from a just war, not only for the soldiers, but
also for any member of the [vanquished] commonwealth against which
there is a just war are devoid of sin and entail no duty of restitution on
the part of those who inflicted the losses, even if by accident innocents
should be injured . . . strictly speaking, one justly receives [the booty],
even though another innocent person accidentally suffers unjustly, for
what happens by accident falls outside of the rules.215
This idea that those fighting just wars could injure the innocent
with impunity was called the principle of double effect. This is a set of
ethical criteria that Christians used for evaluating the permissibility of
acting when ones legitimate act would also cause an effect that would
normally be inadmissible.
Francisco de Vitoria (d. 1546; Catholic philosopher, theologian and
jurist considered as the father of international law), elaborated on just
how far the Christian warrior would be covered by this principle:
It is occasionally lawful to kill the innocent not by mistake, but with full
knowledge of what one is doing, if this is an accidental effect . . . This is
proven, since it would otherwise be impossible to wage war against the
guilty, thereby preventing the just side from fighting.216
Francisco Suarez (d. 1617; generally regarded to be among the greatest
scholastics after Thomas Aquinas) assured that if the end is permissible,
the means necessary are also permissible and hence it follows that in the
73
whole course, or duration, of the war hardly anything done against the
enemy involves injustice.217
These church fathers were building on earlier precedent, where St.
Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) had devised an ingenious theory that exon-
erated warriors from their responsibility in causing collateral damage,
and the killing of innocents. He developed this principle of double ef-
fect, assuring that Christian warriors were not responsible for foresee-
able, yet unintended side effects of their bellicose campaigns, in the same
way that the blood of Christ protected them from any guilt for harms
directly intended.
Later Christian thinkers, from Cajetan down to our era, have used
this idea to allow for causing collateral damage within the construct of
a religiously sanctioned just war,218 ultimately resulting in our contem-
porary statistics, where up to 90% of all damage done in todays low-
impact wars is collateral, with only 10% representing targeted enemy
warriors.
Protestant War
Martin Luther (d. 1546), who founded Protestantism when he broke
with the Catholic Church after posting his 95 Theses in Wittenberg
(1517), still found much to love about the Mother Churchs attitude to-
ward war. After all, now that he was right and the Catholic Church was
wrong, it would undoubtedly have to be punished, and what better way
than to be subjected to a Protestant war? What else is war but the pun-
ishment of wrong and evil? Luther intoned. Why does anyone go to war
except that he desires peace and obedience?219
Going even further in the direction of earlier Catholic war apologists,
he stated:
In a war of this sort it is both Christian and an act of love to kill the enemy
without hesitation, to plunder and burn and injure him by every method
of warfare until he is conquered . . . In such a case, let the proverb apply,
God helps the strongest.220
Leaving aside Jesuss statement that the meek shall inherit the earth,
Luthers proverb still lends itself to completely reductionist and terri-
fyingly dangerous reasoning. The only manner of proving who is stron-
gest is through warfare, the general society barely even noticing true
spirituality, which is based in humility. Additionally, this reasoning may
be applied retroactively to any bellicose campaign fought and won
which is the exact dynamic we have seen in Christian countries from the
74
time of Augustine right through the United States adventures in Europe,

the Far East and most recently the Middle East.
The Crusades
Jerusalem is the center of the earth . . . She seeks and desires to be freed,
and ceases not to implore your aid . . . Therefore, undertake this journey
for the remission of your sins, assured of the imperishable glory of the
Kingdom of Heaven.221
The Crusades represent the bloodiest period in the history of Euro-
pean Christianity, provided that one is willing to overlook the Inquisi-
tion (14781834), the genocide of the indigenous people of the Western
Hemisphere (14921890), the War of the Roses (14551485), World War
I (19141917), World War II (19391945) and the Holocaust (19381945).
Earlier justifications and even demands for war as an act of fealty to
God led to some ultimate and obvious conclusions. One of them was the
incredible carnage of the Crusades, a series of religiously inspired mili-
tary campaigns, waged by much of Roman Catholic Europe. The specific
crusades to restore Christian control of the Holy Land were fought be-
tween 1095 and 1291, while other campaigns in Spain and Eastern Europe
continued into the 15th century.
Anselm of Aosta (d. 1109), who became Archbishop of Canterbury
in 1093, crystallized the religious foundation for the Crusades with the
phrase: Peace by the Blood of the Cross. This became the rallying cry
for the warrior-penitents. Those who shared in partaking of the body of
Christ through the Eucharist incurred the obligation either to convert or
kill those who did not share in this ritual. According to the Archbishop,
killing and being killed imitated the gift of Christs death.222
The centuries-long campaign began in 1095, when Pope Urban II (d.
1099) called for Christians to retake the Holy Land from the infidel Mus-
lims. Urban offered a reward for the present as well as the future, absolv-
ing all participants of their sins, releasing them from the hardships of
religious observances such as fasting and mortifications and giving them
a license to kill, plunder, steal and indulge any other sensual appetites,
forgiven in advance for all sins committed in the name of Christ.223
Urban made the Crusade his lifes work, touring throughout France
during his final years to preach the holy battle, assuring that the blood-
shed would purify the faithful and be pleasing unto God.224 As he stirred
up Christians to liberate Jerusalem from the Saracens, their devout pas-
sion rose to such a fevered pitch that they could not possibly await ar-
75
rival in that far-off land before embarking on Gods work. They slashed
their way through the Jews of the Rhineland en route to their date with
destiny, stating: You are the children of those who killed our object of
veneration and He Himself said, There will yet come a day when my
children will come and avenge my blood. We are His children and it is
obligatory for us to avenge Him.225
Ultimately, this side work against the Jews far exceeded the carnage
of the Crusades themselves.
Campaigns against defenseless Jews punctuated the violent progress of
the Crusades, finally far exceeding the Crusades themselves in duration,
violence and body count. During the 12th century, the primordial logic of
the cherem [excommunication] and the vocation of self-sacrifice in imi-
tation of Christ fused to produce a genocidal campaign, consigning its
Jewish victims to hell on earth and to the devil in death. The plague of
sacrificial violence against Jews, perfected during the Crusades, contin-
ued in Europe until the 20th -century Holocaust and its future remains
uncertain.226
The Popes promises and exhortations worked their magic, and in
1099 the holy warriors did indeed retake the sacred city of Jerusalem
from the Muslims. Raymond of Aguilar gave a firsthand account of the
spiritual joy of the Christian conquerors:
In the temple our men were wading up to their ankles in enemy blood;
some 320 corpses were set ablaze as a burnt offering. The slaughter began
on Friday at the ninth hour, the same time that Jesus was crucified. The
Crusaders gathered for mass in the place of Jesus burial, while the blood
of their victims was still on them, so that the devotion was enhanced by
the blood that had been shed: their victims, their comrades, their own
and Christs.227
The Christian penitents slaughtered virtually all the Muslims and
Jews found in the Holy City, including women and children.228
The Crusades were the prototypical religious war. Warriors took
religious vows before departing for the campaign. New religious or-
ders of knights were founded for the purpose of fighting Christianitys
enemies.229 The Crusades developed a new conception of the warrior-
monk, pledged to lifelong chastity as well as to war. In this perverse new
creation, military monastic orders such as the Knights Templars and
Knights Hospitaliers developed the idea of the chaste and chivalrous
knight who was as holy as the cloistered monk.230
Professor James Turner Johnson, in The Holy War Idea, explained how
deeply affected were all Christian leaders by the new ethos:
76
After the proclamation of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II in 1095, re-
ligious and clergy of all levels spread the word throughout Christendom
and enlisted volunteers. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, a monk who went on to
found one of the strictest religious orders in the Western church, strongly
supported the founding of the military order of the Templars and was
a vigorous public advocate of the Second Crusade . . . Many clergy and
monks accompanied the armies of the Crusades . . . Individual monks or
priests sometimes bearing arms and sometimes not, took the lead at the
head of the armed forces and personally authorized them.231
More than a century after Urban II initiated the bloody pogrom,
Christian leaders were still situating the slaughter within the Lamb of
Gods works. Pope Innocent IV (d. 1254) reassured:
The Pope may declare war and grant indulgences to those who occupy the
Holy Land, which the infidels illegally possess. All this has a good cause,
for the Pope acts justly when he strives to recover the Holy Land which
is consecrated by the birth, life and death of Jesus Christ.232
While no one can say with accuracy how many were slaughtered (the
enemies) and sacrificed (Christians) throughout the two centuries of the
Crusades, estimates range from one to nine million souls. At the upper
estimate, this represents exactly 50% of the total population of Europe
at the time!
The Inquisition
The history of Christian extirpation is so rich that it offers far too
much material for a volume such as this one. As such, I will deal briefly
with but one of the gruesome religio-savage events of the past half-mil-
lennium. The various Inquisitions (12311860), instituted in Spain, Italy,
Portugal and other locales in Europe, were battles against heretics by
the church. Even before the official beginning in 1231, the righteous
work began in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture for the
persecution of heresy.
The Inquisition was focused on all manners of enemies of the church,
from Jewish and Muslim conversos (those who converted or pretended to
convert to Christianity under duress) to heretics within the religion. The
church fathers charged with protecting the faith invented every conceiv-
able device to inflict pain by slowly dismembering and dislocating the
body. Many of these devices were inscribed with the motto Glory be
only to God. Here is a list of just a few of the sacred contraptions that
were devised to help people understand how deep was Christs love for
77
them, and how profoundly Jesus helpers here on earth wanted them to
realize this:
Judas Cradle - The victim was seated on a triangular-shaped seat that was
inserted in his or her anus or vagina. He or she was slowly impaled.
Brazen Bull - When a victim was placed inside the brazen bull, he or she
was slowly burned to death. A complex system of tubes added an aes-
thetic quality by making the victims screams sound like an infuriated ox.
Rack Torture - The torturer turned the handle causing the ropes to pull the
victims arms. Eventually, the victims bones were dislocated with a loud
crack; some of the limbs were torn apart.
Exposure - The victim was buried up to his neck in the earth, allowing
animals, insects or other people to kill him slowly.
Chair of Torture - Spikes covered the back, armrests, seat, leg rests and
footrests. Two bars pushed the arms against armrests for the spikes to
penetrate the flesh even further.
Pear of Anguish - A pear-shaped instrument was inserted into one of the

victims orifices. The instrument consisted of four leaves that slowly sepa-
rated from each other as the torturer turned the screw at the top.
Head Crusher - With the chin placed over the bottom bar and the head un-
der the upper cap, the torturer slowly turned the screw pressing the bar
against the cap. This resulted in the head being slowly compressed. First
the teeth were shattered into the jaw; then the victim slowly died with
agonizing pain, but not before his eyes were squeezed from their sockets.
Please note that these are but a spare compendium of the rigors that
awaited the lost soul. Although according to Pulitzer Prize winner Will
Durant in The Reformation (The Story of Civilization VI), only 32,000 peo-
ple were actually murdered over the full course of the Inquisition, French
writer Victor Hugo (d. 1885) estimated that about five million people
were tortured throughout the Inquisitions history.
Christianity Today
Christians have used Christianity to justify slavery of Africans and the re-
moval to reservations or death of Native Americans. In the American Civil
War, the North acted with Gods terrible swift sword, and the Southern
cause came to be baptized in blood. Afterwards, Protestants in the Ku
Klux Klan employed chaplains, read Bibles and mounted crosses as they
set out against blacks, Catholics and Jews.233
The unbreakable link between God and war has hardly waned with
the secularization of Western society. The twentieth century saw no
78
easing of the Christian dynamic of sacrifice and slaughter. In fact, it was

by far the bloodiest hundred years in the history of our species, with 160
million people dying in wars, representing about half of the population
of the United States at the end of that bloody span.
As James Hillman pointed out in A Terrible Love of War, Western
Christianitys God comes to the fore when war is in the air.
In World War II, God was a co-pilot on bombing runs, as one book title
declared, and a popular song turned a chaplain into a helluva gunner.
In World War I, clergymen dressed Jesus in khaki and had Him firing
machine guns. The Bishop of London exhorted his fellow Christians to
kill the good as well as the bad . . . kill the young man as well as the old
. . . kill those who have shown kindness to our wounded as well as those
fiends.234
Douglas MacArthur, in his farewell address to the United States Con-
gress, said that it had been his sacred duty to carry to the land of our
vanquished foe the solace and hope and faith of Christian morals.235
And George Weigel, a Catholic theologian who is Distinguished Se-
nior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has argued that clas-
sic Christian doctrine did not treat war as a social and political anomaly
that had to be justified by theological thinking, but simply as a moral
category of its own, a neutral instrument of statecraft and international
affairs that could be used for good or ill.236
The intersection between Christianity, war and the United States
will be explored in more depth in the chapter War as Love.
79
Chapter Five: Islam
The problem of Islam and violence is not limited to incompatible texts but
is rooted in the overwhelming preponderance of passages in the Quran
that legitimize violence, warfare and intolerance. Violence in service to
Allah is both justified and mandated by Allah or Muhammad under the
sanction of divine threat.237
Islam, like most of the worlds religions, was founded on and then ex-
panded in blood. Echoing Mosess blood covenant sealed with God, the
Islamic pact brought divinity and violence together. The Prophet Mu-
hammad was himself a general and warrior, commanding forces in battle
on nearly forty separate occasions. After his death, the wars of Islamic
domination that he spawned killed hundreds of thousands over the next
several centuries, throughout Arabia, the Middle East, North Africa and
southern Europe. The Muslim military policy was to kill all those who
resisted Islamic domination.238
Islam has always represented a political as well as religious structure.
It offers government by immutable law, and provides the believer not
only with a revelation of Divine will, but also a highly detailed legal code
which regulates all aspects of human behavior.239 Given how deeply in-
tertwined violence and worship are within this final Abrahamic religion,
Islam is an extremely dangerous path. It fuses the violent and sacred im-
pulses within the human spirit, making them indistinguishable for some
Muslims.
81
Early Islam
Fighting is prescribed upon you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye
dislike a thing that is good for you . . . Allah knoweth and ye know not.240
With a warrior-prophet as its founder, a policy of aggressive terri-
torial advancement at the edge of the sword and a conception of holy
obligation (jihad) that many read, and continue to read, as an obligation
to commit murder in the name of God, Islam hardly lived up to its name.
The word Islam, after all, comes from the same root as Salaam, or
peace, and may be translated as achieving peace through submission
to Gods will.
Unfortunately, this submission has often involved slaughtering the
other in Gods name. Bruce Chilton noted:
The Muslim doctrine of the Four Swords emerged during the early
centuries of spectacular triumph. Allah gave the Prophet Muhammad
four swords: the first against the polytheists, which Muhammad himself
fought with; the second against apostates, which Caliph Abu Bakr fought
with; the third against the People of the Book [Jews and Christians],
which Caliph Umar fought with and the fourth against dissenters, which
Caliph Ali fought with. This teaching of Al-Shaybani (d. 804) helps ex-
plain what motivated the enormous success of Muslim raiders.241
Muhammad learned his lesson well from Jewish antecedents as rep-
resented in the Torah. It is vital to remember that Islam, like Christianity,
hardly turned its back on Abrahamic history: Muhammad accepted all
the Jewish prophets and stories of the Jewish Bible. However, he claimed
to supersede them, due to Jewish iniquity, and said that he was perfect-
ing the way of Abraham and Moses as the final prophet in the lineage
dating back to the Genesis narrative.
Although illiterate, Muhammad was obviously aware of the Jewish
prophets and their stories. And the Jewish wars of conquest in Deuter-
onomy were rehearsed in Muhammads own life. Joseph Montville (Dis-
tinguished Diplomat in Residence at American University), writing in
the volume The Crescent and the Couch, discussed Muhammads final and
definitive battle at Mecca, with the Jewish Qurayza clan:
Muhammad drew the line with the Qurayza . . . several hundred men were
executed, the women and children enslaved and the property divided
among the Muslims.242
This passage sounds as if it were taken almost verbatim from the Jew-
ish Bible! In Numbers 31, we read:
And they warred against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and they
slew every male . . . And the children of Israel took captive the women of
82
Chapter Five: Islam
Midian and their little ones, and they took for the spoil all their cattle and
all their flocks and all their goods.243
We are left with a Muslim Holy Book that, far from exhorting believ-
ers on to peaceful means of worship, sometimes seems to egg them on to
commit violence, or perhaps even suffer it, if they cannot live up to the
harsh demands of an unrelenting deity:
Spiritual violence is central to the Quran . . . It is embodied in Muham-
mad and Allahs unrelenting threats of hell and fire, used to condition hu-
man behavior . . . the tidy and simplistic view of life is based on Gods
absolute power and on rigid distinctions between good and evil, between
belief and disbelief. It can fuel conflict, encourage intolerance and justify
violence whenever historical reality doesnt conform to expectations that
flow from the theology and worldview of the Quran.244
Scriptures
Those who reject Our Signs, we shall soon cast into the fire; as often as
their skins are roasted through, we shall change them for fresh skins. That
they may taste penalty: for Allah is exalted in power and wise . . .245
Within the Quran, as within all of the other Holy Books that human-
kind has ever penned, one can find numerous passages either exhorting
followers on to sacred carnage, or glorifying successful battles, with vic-
tory provided by God. These passages are no less vile within the religion
literally named after peace than any other human creed. Jack Nelson-
Pallmeyer in his book Is Religion Killing Us? noted the pervasive violent
exhortations and imagery that infuse the Islamic text:
The Quran begins each Surah [chapter] with comforting words: In the
name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. It is surprising, therefore,
that the actual text of nearly every Surah uses images of a wrathful, pun-
ishing God to condition human behavior . . . Gods violence or threatened
violence often spills over into human violence done in service to Gods will.
In this respect, the Muslim God sounds similar, if not identical, to the
wrathful, petulant and violent God of the Hebrews. Far from recasting or
diminishing the violence inherent in Judaisms Holy Spirit, the Islamic
scriptures simply reinterpret it in a new language, sharing it with a novel
and much larger audience and unleashing anew the sacred hostility that
lies latent, and all-too-often blatant, within the human conception of
God and worship.
Although all religions base their theoretical idea of God and His re-
lationship with man on love, the truth of the matter is far different. All
three Abrahamic holy texts liberally utilize the fear of God as an impor-
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tant, if not the main motivator for following religious law, and worship-
ping the sacred presence. Islam is no different:
Almost every Surah in the Quran presents fear of Gods wrath as the foun-
dation for belief and action. Muhammad, like Matthew, seems unable to
imagine people behaving ethically or living out what he understands to
be Gods will without the threat of Gods sanction . . . Muhammads Allah
advocates specific actions and threatens people guilty of noncompliance
with an awful doom or grievous penalty.246
It is not difficult to find specific passages in the Quran that bear this
out. In Surah 9:5 (from the chapter Repentance), the Quran states:
And when the sacred months are passed, kill those who join other gods
with God. Wherever you shall find them; and seize them, besiege them
and lay wait for them with every kind of ambush.247
In the Cow Surah, we read these lines (2:191-193):
Kill them wherever you find them. Drive them out of the places from
which they drove you. Idolatry is worse than carnage. But do not fight
them within the precincts of the Holy Mosque, unless they attack you
there; if they attack you, put them to the sword. Thus shall the unbeliev-
ers be rewarded . . . Fight against them until idolatry is no more . . .248
Implicit in the message is that God is never wrong. Any evil that be-
falls unbelievers is due to their own iniquities. Leaving aside the psycho-
dynamic that it sets up for the faithful as no human beings can be
perfect to any institutional spiritual system, regardless of how hard they
believe or try the manner in which it shifts blame for the violence to
the victim is truly perverse. From the point of view of the religious prac-
titioner, it always justifies after the fact any ill that befalls a person.
How many towns have We destroyed? Our punishment took them on a
sudden by night or while they slept for their afternoon rest. When Our
punishment took them, no cry did they utter but this: Indeed we did
wrong.249
Jihad
The bi-partition of the crowd in Islam is unconditional. The faithful and
the unbelieving are fated to be separate forever and to fight each other.
The war of religion is a sacred duty and thus, though in a less comprehen-
sive form, the double crowd of the Last Judgment is prefigured in every
earthly battle.250
As painful as it is to acknowledge, jihad as holy war was wrapped
into Islamic observance from the beginning of the religion. Ann Lambton
(d. 2008; a leading British scholar on medieval and early Islamic political
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Chapter Five: Islam
theory) stated: The first duty of the Islamic world is to exalt the word of
God until it is supreme. Hence the only proper relationship to the non-
Islamic world is one of perpetual warfare . . . The duty of jihad is imposed
on the follower until the whole world is converted or submits to Islam.251
Muhammad, understood from the point of view of many devout Mus-
lims, was a prophet of fighting and war, advocating an expansion of tem-
poral power to represent the expansion of Allahs sphere of influence.252
Many commentators argue that the true meaning of jihad is the in-
ternal struggle for spiritual purification. Professor Abdulaziz Sachedina
(Frances Myers Ball Professor of Religious Studies at the University of
Virginia) stated that the concept of jihad as a war to increase the sphere
of Islam originated later than the Quran, with interpretation by the clas-
sical jurists. He was building on ideas from such Muslim historians as
Cheragh Ali (d. 1895) who, writing in A Critical Exposition of the Popu-
lar Jihad, noted: Jihad, as signifying the waging of war, is a post-Quranic
usage.
The effort to define the term continues. For instance, a hadith (say-
ing of the Prophet Muhammad) that is in circulation states: Upon his
return from battle Muhammad said: We have returned from the lesser
jihad [war] to the greater jihad [i.e., the struggle against the evil of ones
soul]. However, as even a cursory web-search will uncover, this hadith
does not stand up to the rigorous vetting that sayings of the Prophet
must withstand, and it is not considered as part of the accepted canon of
the Prophets utterances. In all probability, it was penned long after the
death of Muhammad to try to take the edge off of the Islamic prescrip-
tion to fight (literally) for the faith.
Regardless of how one might interpret jihad, many Muslims accept the
idea of an ongoing Holy War at the center of their religion. That not all
agree with the call to arms is irrelevant to the present discussion. Those
within Islam who choose to link violence and the sacred can point to
thirty-six different appearances of the word violence or one of its deriva-
tions in the Quran, in each case employed for the practice of warfare.253
Like the God of Israel, Allah is represented in the Quran as a holy
warrior.
The Quran presents Allah as an all-powerful holy warrior. David slew
Goliath by Allahs will (2:251). Those who fight on behalf of Allah de-
feat armies twice their number because Allah doth support with His aid
whom He pleaseth (3:14) . . . [and] There is no victory except from Allah
(3:126; 8:10).254
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Later commentators agreed, deepening the linkage between violence

and the sacred within the Islamic creed. The medieval Islamic jurist Ah-
mad ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328) articulated a definition of jihad that made it
the pinnacle of Islamic practice:
The head of the affair is Islam, the central pillar is the salat [prayer] and
the tip of the hump is the jihad . . . Now it is in jihad that one can live and
die in ultimate happiness, both in this world and in the hereafter.255
However, before we grow too breathless with the bellicosity of Islam,
especially in the current political climate of Islamophobia, it is important
to point out how this same language simply echoes that of the other two
Abrahamic faiths.
A violent quote by a Christian purist, basing his ideas on the Old Tes-
tament, exhibits how widespread jihad is within all of Abrahams spiritu-
al progeny. William Gouge (d. 1653; a Puritan clergyman) expressed his
belief in Gods approval of wars fought by the just against unbelievers:
The wars of Israel extraordinarily made by the express charge from God
are those with the best warrant there could be. Maintenance of Truth
and purity of Religion moved Israel to make war. Saints such as Abra-
ham and Joshua, some of the Judges and the best of the Kings are cited
as having waged war with Gods approval. Gouge notes that priests went
to war among the Israelites, that God is said to teach mens hands to
war and fingers to fight. Moreover, God himself fights in such wars: God
Himself is styled a man of war.256
A Blood Covenant
As has been variously noted, the original covenant between Moses
and God, signified by the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, was
called a Blood Covenant. The blood covenant, however, takes many
more forms than death. In all religions, various types of self-mortification
prove the deep faith of the supplicant. Islam is no different. And a gory
eyewitness account from the work of 20th-century essayist (and Nobel
Prize Laureate) Elias Canetti recounted one scene of Islamic self-flagella-
tion, the Day of Blood in Tehran:
500,000 people, seized with madness, cover their heads with ashes and
beat their foreheads on the ground. They want to give themselves up to
torture, to commit suicide in groups, or to mutilate themselves with a re-
fined cruelty . . . A great silence descends. Men in white shirts advance in
hundreds, their faces turned ecstatically to heaven. Of these men, several
will be dead by evening, and many more mutilated and disfigured; their
shirts, red with blood, will be their shrouds. They are beings who have
already ceased to belong to this world . . . With steps of automata they ad-
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Chapter Five: Islam
vance, retreat and move sideways in no apparent order. In time with each
step, they strike their heads with their jagged swords. Blood flows and
their shirts become scarlet. The sight of the blood brings the confusion in
the minds of these voluntary martyrs to a climax. Some of them collapse,
striking themselves haphazardly with their swords. In their frenzy they
have cut through veins and arteries, and they die where they fall . . . The
martyrs take off their shirts, which are now regarded as blessed, and give
them to those who carry them . . . No destiny is accounted more beautiful
than to die on the feast day of Ashura.257
Ironically, the holiday is based on Jewish lore. Ashura was an ancient
Judaic feast day of celebration and atonement. Moses fasted on this day
to demonstrate his gratitude to God for the deliverance of the Israelites
from Egypt. According to Sunni traditions, Muhammad fasted on this day
and encouraged others to fast. It is better known these days for mourning
the martyrdom of Hussain ibn Ali, the grandson of the Islamic prophet
Muhammad, who was killed at the Battle of Karbala (Iraq) in the 680 (61
AH). Mourners congregate for sorrowful, poetic lamentations performed
in memory of the martyrdom.
What better way to honor a fallen martyr than to become one yourself?
Islam Today
In light of the collective weight of violence-legitimizing passages in the
Quran, it seems something less than forthcoming to speak of Islam [to-
day] as being hijacked by extremists. Passages (from the Quran) could
reasonably be interpreted to justify or even require violence, terrorism and
war against enemies in service to Allah, or in pursuit of Islamic justice.258
Jihad is problematic today. Many mainstream Muslims want to dis-
tance themselves from Osama Bin Laden and mujahideen (strugglers or
people doing jihad; the word is from the same Arabic root as jihad) in
general, but the facts remain clear: for many in Islam, religious war and
violence against the other are spiritual duties. It is the obligation for all
Muslims to fight against disorder and strife caused by unbelief (i.e., lack
of acknowledgment that Muhammad is the final prophet, and Islam is
the only true religious path) in the world.259
The following statement by Osama bin Laden is the kind of thing that
is disavowed by mainstream Muslims as not representing the true reli-
gion, or the concept of jihad:
Our encouragement and call to Muslims to enter jihad against the Ameri-
can and Israeli occupiers are actions that we are engaging in as religious
obligations. Allah most high has commanded us in many verses of the
Quran to fight in His path and to urge the believers to do so. These are
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His words: Fight in the path of Allah, you are not charged with the re-
sponsibility except for yourself, and urge the believers, lest Allah restrain
the might of the rejecters, and Allah is stronger in might and stronger in
inflicting punishment.260
As much as Islamic practitioners who dont agree with this statement
might like to disavow it, as well as the tremendous destruction it has
wrought, it is hardly a peripheral interpretation of the Islamic path. Dr.
Abdul Aziz Rantisi (a founder of Hamas) expressed a similar apprecia-
tion for the holy spirit of justified violence against unbelievers, when
he used the word istishhadi instead of suicide bomber to describe the
young men and women littering Israel and other parts of the Middle East
with corpses (including their own). It means self-chosen martyrdom,
he averred, adding: All Muslims seek to be martyrs.261
During the IranIraq War (19801988), the Iranian government em-
ployed suicide bombers against heavily armed Iraqi army positions. The
volunteers were acting on their religious duty, to repel the advance of
the secular Iraqi army and protect the dar al-Islam (the Islamic nation).
Death was embraced as an outcome of participating in jihad, based on
the model of Saladins (d. 1193) warfare against the Christian Crusaders
in Jerusalem.262
Holy warriors can point to many contemporary scholars to back their
claims. Not only spurious Islamic leaders such as Osama bin Laden but
respected, mainstream leaders interpret the many bellicose passages
in the Quran, and their calls to holy war, in a literal manner. Egyptian
theorist and revolutionary Abd al-Salam Faraj (d. 1982) argued that the
Quran and the hadith were fundamentally about warfare. The concept
of jihad was meant to be taken literally, not allegorically. Faraj regarded
anyone who deviated from the moral and social requirements of Islamic
law to be targets for jihad.263
Sometimes the call for holy war is couched within the lexicon of non-
violence, confusing matters even more. According to Sheikh Omar Abdul
Rahman (b. 1938, a leader of Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya, a militant Islamist
movement in Egypt), a Muslim can never call for violence, only for love
and forgiveness. However, if we are aggressed against, if our land is
usurped, we must call for hitting the attacker and the aggressor to put
an end to the aggression.264
In The Neglected Duty: The Creed of Sadats Assassins and Islamic Resur-
gence in the Middle East, Professor Johannes Jansen explored the contem-
porary justifications for waging jihad, noting that each Muslim has not
only the individual duty to wage jihad against threats to Islam but also
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Chapter Five: Islam
the individual competence to choose which of many threats he or she is

to direct such jihad against.265
A Just War
At the heart of this Islamic just war theory are the rulings that pro-
vide the impetus and religious cover for the violent acts. A fatwa is a writ-
ten legal decree issued by an Islamic scholar with the breadth of knowl-
edge of sharia (Islamic religious law) to be considered a mufti (official
religious leader). Most of these opinions cite precedents from decisions
by earlier religious scholars, as well as from the body of hadith (sayings of
the Prophet Muhammad) and the Quran.266
The principles of Islamic just war, as represented in violent jihad,
are based on central Islamic legal judgments that echo a pre-Abraham-
ic conception of justice. Muamala bil-mithl (repayment in kind) echoes
Hammurabi in the first code of laws ever written (c. 1700 B.C.E.): an
eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth and a soul for a soul. This idea is ac-
cepted within Islamic jurisprudence, with the reservation that the value
of a Muslim life is greater than that of a non-believer, being worth up to
ten times more. In tabulating the Muslims around the world who have
been killed by Americans and their allies, some radical religious leaders
have utilized this logarithm to justify the killing of at least four million
Americans, up to half of them children.267
As Shmuel Bar related in Jihad Ideology in Light of Contemporary
Fatwas:
The rise of the modern Islamist jihad movement in the last two decades of
the 20th century has coincided with the rise of a growing body of fatwas
that declare jihad as a legal religious obligation and define clear guidelines
for the waging of jihad. These fatwas therefore provide moral and legal
sanction for acts of terrorism.268
It should once again be noted that these rulings are not coming only
from peripheral, extremist religious leaders. For instance, the Fatwa com-
mittee of al-Azhar University (founded in 972; the chief center of Sunni
Islamic learning in the world, representing 80% of Islamic practitioners)
has issued a wide range of rulings legitimizing suicide terrorism.269
Sheikh Ali Gomaa (b. 1952), the Grand Mufti in Egypt and one of
the most widely respected jurists in the Sunni Muslim world,270 issued a
ruling that runs contrary to his image as an important moderating force
in todays Islam, as well as an interfaith pioneer:
89
The civilian who occupies land in a state of war is a harbi (person from the
state of war). Everyone in Israel is ahl al-qital (warrior). It is permitted to
kill an Israeli traveling abroad because he is a harbi and a harbi spreads
corruption throughout the face of the earth.271
Sheikh Hammoud bin al-Uqlaa al-Shuaibi (one of the leading schol-
ars in the Arabian Peninsula), writing a spare six days after the attacks
on the World Trade Center in the United States, took the chance to ret-
roactively justify the action, as well as to call more Muslims to the jihad:
Democratic participation justifies killing civilians . . . due to the fact that
they bear responsibility for the decisions made by their elected leaders . . .
Similarly, the attacks of 9/11 were justified because every decision made
by the kafer (disbeliever) state, America, particularly those which relate
to war, is based on public opinion through referendum and/or voting in
the House of Representatives or Senate. Every American, having partici-
pated in this opinion poll and having voted regarding the war, is consid-
ered a combatant or at least a party to the war.272
Ultimately, as Shmuel Bar notes:
The role of the ulama [Islamic scholars] and their fatwas in legitimizing
terrorism is a pivotal element in the social and political legitimization of
terrorism and in the motivation of its supporters. The rulings analyzed
above are not merely political manifests aimed at motivating followers,
but serve as an important tool in the battle pitched between radical and
mainstream Muslims over the future of Islam.273
He continues on to note that legal counter-attacks are few and far
between from moderate scholars and mufti. This is due, Bar claims, to
the deference that mainstream ulama feel toward the radicals as quint-
essential believers. The problem is exacerbated by an unwillingness to
take any stances that might cause internal divisions within the Islamic
nation.274
Islamic violence and terrorist acts are situated within that creeds
Holy Writ and history. Violence as religious practice is normative Islam.
This is not to single out this religion in any particular way, for as we shall
see in the final section, it is sacred violence within Christianity today
which is as great a threat to world peace and the continuation of the
human species, as that found within Islam or any other of the sacrificial
cults that we call World Religions.
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Chapter Six: Hinduism
I am time grown old, creating world destruction set in motion to anni-

hilate the worlds; even without you, all these warriors arrayed in hostile
ranks will cease to exist. Therefore, arise and win glory! Conquer your
foes and fulfill your kingship! They are already slain by me. Be just my
instrument, the archer at my side.275
The violence of God tradition is certainly not sequestered within the
Abrahamic faiths, or the West. The Eastern creeds as well harbor a dark
secret. Religions considered steeped in interior and exterior peace such
as Hinduism, Sikhism and even Buddhism are awash in sacred blood
spilled in the name of God.
Hinduism is the predominant religious tradition of South Asia and
with nearly one billion adherents worldwide, is the third largest religion
in the world (after Christianity and Islam). It is formed of diverse tradi-
tions and has no single founder.
Unlike virtually all religions that postdated the ancient Indian creed,
Hinduism is not based on the teachings of a single inspired leader, but
on a collection of ancient and more recent texts. It has evolved over the
millennia based on these scriptures, through a back-and-forth conversa-
tion between diverse interpretations and practices. Even the name of the
faith, Hindu, is foreign to it. Muslim invaders first used the appellation
in the eighth century to refer to the customs and beliefs of these people276
that they considered infidels.
Among Hindu texts, the Vedas (the worlds oldest sacred texts) are
the foremost in authority, importance and antiquity. Other major scrip-
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tures include the Upanishads (of which more than 200 are known), the
Mahabharata (epic narrative of the Kurukshetra War, which took place
in the ancient past), the Ramayana and finally the Puranas (history of the
universe from creation to destruction). The Bhagavad Gita, a treatise from
the Mahabharata, is of special importance.
The Mahabharata itself is a massive work of special significance to
world spirituality. Weighing in at 1.8 million words larger than the
Iliad and Odyssey combined it has been has compared in importance to
the Bible, the writings of Shakespeare, the works of Homer, Greek drama,
and the Quran.277
This epic account is centered on war and glorifies armed conflict as
the highest spiritual activity:
The rituals of warrior life and the demands of sacred duty define the reli-
gious and moral meaning of heroism throughout the Mahabharata . . . The
distinctive martial religion of this epic emerges from a synthesis of values
derived from the ritual traditions of the Vedic sacrificial cult combined
with loyalty to a personal deity.278
The Hindu concept of religion is expressed by the Sanskrit term
dharma (sacred duty), which refers to the moral order that sustains the
universe. Within Hindu culture, it generally means religiously ordained
duty.279 However, given the foundational importance of the martial class
and war, it comes as no surprise that duty can often take a violent turn.
The Hindu religion gives high value to its warrior caste280 and it justifies
and requires warfare and violence, as can be seen in its sacred text, the
Bhagavad Gita.281
Bhagavad Gita
If you fail to wage this war of sacred duty, you will abandon your own
duty and fame only to gain evil. People will tell of your undying shame,
and for a man of honor, shame is worse than death . . . If you are killed, you
win heaven; if you triumph, you enjoy the earth; therefore, Arjuna, stand
and resolve to fight the battle.282
The Bhagavad Gita (Song of God) is the best known of the Hindu
scriptures, one that you will find the Hare Krishna (a Hindu religious
movement founded in New York City in 1966) giving away on street
corners, and which you will likely read if you take an Introduction to
World Religions course during your university years.
The narrative forms around counsel by Lord Krishna (who is consid-
ered to be a manifestation of God) to Prince Arjuna (Krishnas dear friend
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and brother-in-law) during the Kurukshetra War (dated as early as 6000

B.C.E.; a conflict between two groups of cousins of an Indo-Aryan tribe).
At times referred to as the manual for mankind, it has been highly
praised by not only prominent Indians such as Gandhi but also by Al-
dous Huxley, Albert Einstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Jung and
Hermann Hesse. Although the Bhagavad Gita clearly encourages war, and
a holy one, at that, Gandhi reinterpreted it to be a spiritual message re-
quiring human beings to struggle against the violence within in order to
nonviolently transform the world without.283
While Gandhis is certainly a noble sentiment, it is also another
example of how well intentioned religious followers deny the specific
meanings of their own faiths texts, not countering the violent narrative
but simply avoiding it. As we see time and again, this denial does little to
stem the gruesome tides of religiously sanctioned violence, only margin-
alizing these thinkers from the mainstream of their own religions.
In Gandhis case, his non-violent approach led a fellow Hindu to kill
him, shooting him three times at point-blank range. It was the Hindu
fanatic (who could not forgive Gandhi for his belief that Muslims had
equal value to Hindus and no-one was better than anybody else) who
perhaps had best heeded Krishnas counsel, and not the international
peacemaker.
The context of the Gita is a conversation between Lord Krishna and
the Pandava prince Arjuna taking place on the battlefield before the start
of the Kurukshetra War. Far from providing counsel of peace and forgive-
ness, this central Hindu scripture lays out explicitly the nexus between
obedience to God and the necessity of war. They are represented as the
same thing. And, coming from what many to believe to be the oldest re-
maining scriptural text still in use today, the Bhagavad Gita provides a
scrim through which to view all other religions, as they fuse violence,
the sacred and obedience to God into a unbreakable, deeply destructive
dynamic.
The premise of the Gita (as it is affectionately known) is that in re-
linquishing attachment to the fruits of action and giving oneself to God,
one attains true peace.
A man who relinquishes attachment and dedicates actions to the infinite
spirit is not stained by evil, like a lotus leaf unstained by water. Relin-
quishing attachment, men of discipline perform action with body, mind,
understanding and the senses for the purification of the self. Relinquish-
ing the fruit of action, the disciplined man attains perfect peace.284
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The explicit message of Krishnas counsel is that the highest form of

action is that of the warrior. The Bhagavad Gitas subtitle is: Krishnas
Counsel in a Time of War, and the premise is that Arjuna, reluctant to
engage in an armed conflict with his own kin, must be cajoled into un-
dertaking the battle. Lord Krishna assures: He incurs no guilt if he has
no hope, restrains his thought and himself, abandons possessions and
performs actions with his body only.285
The Gita also makes the same claim that some Buddhist warriors
would millennia later: that as the individual person truly has no person-
hood, killing is not possible, and the only aspect of the slaughter that
matters is the obedience to the religious precepts. The self embodied in
the body of every being is indestructible; you have no cause to grieve for
all of these creatures, Arjuna! Look to your own duty . . . nothing is better
for a warrior than a battle of sacred duty.286
In the end, Krishna is explicit about his demand that Arjuna fight his
kin advice that Gandhis assassin certainly could have had in mind
while pulling the trigger.
Our bodies are known to end, but the disembodied self is enduring, inde-
structible and immeasurable; therefore, Arjuna, fight the battle. He who
thinks this self a killer and thinks it killed, both fail to understand; it does
not kill nor is it killed.287
Krishna goes on to note that human beings cannot exist without ac-
tion that non-action is impossible, and therefore, circumstances de-
fine the actors possibilities, not the actor himself. No one exists for even
an instant without performing action; every being is forced to act by the
qualities of nature.288 Therefore, it is disciplined action that defines the
highest good action performed without attachment to the fruit of the
action, fueled by obedience.
Arjuna finally gives in completely to the wise counsel of Lord Krishna.
He comes to appreciate the inevitability of his own actions, realizing that
by performing his warrior duties with absolute devotion, he can unite
with Krishnas cosmic purpose and free himself from the crippling at-
tachments that bind mortals to eternal suffering.289 Krishna goes so far as
to insist that Arjunas objections to killing his relatives are based in the
same subjective, worldly desire that blinds his foes.290
If you hear echoes of a later religion, Buddhism, in aspects of this ex-
position concerning devotion, inevitability, attachment to desire and
self then your ear is finely tuned. The Buddha lived in what is now
the border area between India and Nepal, not far from the lands where
the Bhagavad Gita emerged. The Buddha was born into a Hindu family,
94
and his religious beliefs were an extension and recasting of the ancient
Indian religion.
The Gita is honest in one very important respect. By bringing violence
and the sacred together explicitly, humanitys violent tendencies can at
least be separated from the center of social interaction and channeled
into action against the other, those who exist outside of the social unit.
As translator Barbara Stoler Miller (Samuel R. Milbank Professor of
Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Barnard College) noted:
Though much of Krishnas teaching seems remote from the moral chaos
that Arjuna envisions will be a consequence of his killing his kinsman,
Krishnas doctrine of disciplined action is a way of bringing order to lifes
destructive aspect. When the puzzled Arjuna asks: Why do you urge me
to do this act of violence? Krishna . . . identifies the real enemy as desire,
due to attachment, an enemy that can only be overcome by arming oneself
with discipline and acting to transcend the narrow limits of individual
desire.291
Unfortunately, what we find in virtually all societies and time peri-
ods is that although individual warriors attempt to overcome their own
personal sense of self and desire and fuse into something greater (i.e., the
army), the leaders who command the armies never do. Religion becomes
a way for leaders reeking of desire and attachment to cause the spiritu-
ally desperate to perpetrate mass murder. Time and again this dynamic
plays itself out. And as we will see in the last section of this study, even
today in the United States, this exact same formulation set forth nearly
5,000 years ago in northern India remains as powerful and central to so-
ciety as it was then.
Violent Imagery
With a religious text based on a sacred war, much violent imagery
is utilized. Krishnas exposition of the relationship between death, sac-
rifice and devotion highlights the Hindu idea that one must heroically
confront death in order to transcend the limits of worldly existence.292 If
one is unfortunate enough to not be confronting death at that moment,
one must nonetheless imagine the horrors of the physical destruction
of the self to help him or her attain greater spiritual understanding and
detachment.
When Arjuna finally comes to understand that his participation in
this war and slaughter of his family members is a divine duty, he is able
to see Krishna in his entirety. What he discovers is hardly a comforting
sight:
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Seeing the fangs protruding from your mouths like the fires of time, I lose
my bearing and I find no refuge . . . Rushing through your fangs into grim
mouths, some [past warrior kings] are dangling from heads crushed be-
tween your teeth . . . As moths in the frenzy of destruction fly into a blaz-
ing flame, worlds in the frenzy of destruction enter your mouths. You lick
at the worlds around you, devouring them with flaming mouths; and your
terrible fires scorch the entire universe . . .293
It is also noted that Lord Krishnas true form was a multi-form, won-
drous vision, with countless mouths and eyes and celestial ornaments,
brandishing many divine weapons.
Further examples of violence are rife in other Hindu scriptures. As
Mark Juergensmeyer noted in Terror in the Mind of God:
The simple justification for fighting in battle killing or being killed in
sacred struggle runs deep in Indias religious traditions . . . In Indias an-
cient Vedic times, warriors called on gods to participate in their struggles
and to provide divine leverage for victory. The potency of the gods was
graphically depicted in mythic stories filled with violent encounters and
bloody acts of vengeance.294
It is not difficult to find the kind of specific text that would lead to
such a belief. The Rig Veda (c. 1500 B.C.E.) implores: May your weap-
ons be strong to drive away the attackers, may your arms be powerful
enough to check the foes, let your army be glorious. (1-39:2)
We also find Kali, the Hindu goddess of eternal energy, demanding a
violent fealty to the faith: Lay down your life, but first take a life . . . The
worship of the goddess will not be consummated if you sacrifice your
lives at the shrine of independence without shedding blood.295
Additionally, the myths show how all members of the society must
perform the violence for it to be ritualistically effectual, helping to ce-
ment the idea of gathering together to commit communal carnage in the
name of the sacred. Here are the early underpinnings of war: that sacred
violence must be attended by all members of the clan and visited upon
someone outside of the group, to be restorative.
Ren Girard noted one such event in the Yadjour-Veda (c. 1400 B.C.E.):
The Yadjour-Veda speaks of a sacrificial ceremony in which a god, Soma, is
to be put to death by the other gods. Mithra [the patron divinity of hon-
esty, friendship, etc.] at first refuses to join his divine companions in this
act, but he is finally persuaded to do so by the argument that the sacrifice
will be totally ineffectual if not performed by all . . . Unanimity is a formal
requirement of sacrifice; the abstention of a single participant renders the
sacrifice even worse than useless it makes it dangerous.296
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Girard continues, in Violence and the Sacred, to note that all religious
rituals spring from the surrogate victim.
It could hardly be otherwise, for the working of human thought, the pro-
cess of symbolization, is rooted in the surrogate victim . . . archetypal
myths tell how all mans religious, familial, economic and social institu-
tions grew out of the body of an original victim. The surrogate victim . . .
permits men to escape their own violence, removes them from violence,
and bestows on them all the institutions and beliefs that define their
humanity.297
We can situate this dynamic within the deepest past of the human
spiritual narrative, as evidenced in the early Hindu texts. The Shatapatha
Brahmana (c. 300 B.C.E., although it contains portions that are far older,
transmitted orally from unknown antiquity298) explains in explicit detail
how the original sacrifice of a man led to the fecundity of the Earth:
In the beginning, the Gods sacrificed a man; when he was killed, his ritu-
alistic virtues deserted him. They entered a horse; the gods sacrificed the
horse; when it was killed, its ritualistic virtues deserted it. They entered a
cow; the gods sacrificed the cow; when it was killed, its ritualistic virtues
deserted it. They entered a sheep; the gods sacrificed the sheep; when it
was killed, its ritualistic virtues deserted it. They entered a goat; the gods
sacrificed the goat. When it was killed, its ritualistic virtues deserted it
and entered the earth. The gods dug for them, and found them in the form
of rice and barley. And that is why today we still dig the earth to procure
rice and barley.299
Just War
All religions have developed some form of a just war theory, which
allows a given party to wage war while still retaining the fiction of being
a victim of some aggression, and therefore fighting only in self-defense. In
all cases, these theories evolve out of religious thinking and are theologi-
cally backed, usually by the scriptures or respected religious leaders in
the particular creed.
Hinduism is no different, and as the oldest continually practiced re-
ligion, perhaps it set the template that would be followed over the next
5,000 years from the shores of the China Sea to the Potomac River. Dr.
Surya Subedi (University of Leeds, England) outlined this Hindu ideal in
his article The Concept in Hinduism of just war:
Hinduism is based on a concept known as dharma. The essence of dharma
is the distinction between good, supporting the cosmic order, and evil,
which poses a threat to this order. Accordingly, the preservation of good
at the cost of a war was justified in ancient Vedic society . . . The concept
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of dharma in its original sense means the maintenance of peace and secu-
rity through the law and order within the larger cosmic order. Thus, the
concept of just war in Hinduism is against the evil characters of the day,
whether national or alien. It is based on right and wrong and on justice
and injustice in the everyday life of all mortals, whether Hindus or non
Hindus. Unlawful and unjust actions, e.g. the denial of the rights to which
one was entitled, gave rise to just wars.300
The point that Hinduism shares with all other just war theories is
that it must take place against the evil characters of the day, which can
be defined as those specifically in opposition to the geo-political desires
of the leadership of a tribe or nation. Recently we saw George W. Bush
justify his bellicose intentions in this exact same way, and while there
are dozens of specific quotes by Bush equating Americas enemies with
evil (and therefore justifying the war within his religious beliefs), one
such quote will suffice to stand for the dozens which are extant:
We are at the beginning of what I view as a very long struggle against evil.
Were not fighting a nation; were not fighting a religion; were fighting
evil. And we have no choice but to prevail. Were fighting people that hate
our values, they cant stand what America stands for. And they really dont
like the fact that we exist. And I want to assure you all that we will fight
this fight on every front. We will use every resource we have. And there
is no doubt in my time in my mind that in our time, we will prevail.
Theres no doubt.301
The reason I am weaving together the streams of sacred violence,
across all religions and all time periods, is to show how endemic this
connection is. It is a human problem one that haunts us, as the above
quote shows, to this day. Until we appreciate this fact, and react accord-
ingly, any attempts to root out the evil out there will be but another
primitive reaction of scapegoating and sacrifice to forge a sacred commu-
nity out of us through religious-based violence against them.
Hindus Today
Contemporary Hindu adventurism is not hard to uncover, staining
the Indian subcontinent red with righteously spilled blood. An article in
the Washington Post addressed one specific instance of Hindu violence, in
this case directed against Christians:
Babita Nayak was cooking lunch for her pregnant sister when a mob of
Hindu extremists wielding swords, hammers and long sticks rampaged
through their village chanting: India is for Hindus! Convert or leave! The
men ransacked dozens of huts, torched the village church, leaving behind
Bibles and torn down posters of Jesus.302
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Religious violence within all creeds is often focused on the members

of other religious paths, generally those closest at hand. It is not wanton
and anarchic violence; it is specifically directed at the others god, as if
the existence of another deity in their geographical space somehow calls
their own faith into question.
It is an expression of existential insecurity. As earlier noted, the god
of all religions is parsimonious. There is not enough god to go around, in
terms of sharing gods benevolence between creeds. Additionally, it is
as if the faith of even the most faithful is not quite strong enough. That
is to say, faith alone is not enough. Therefore, fealty to a particular god
must be proved in two manners: with victory in armed conflict, as well as
the eradication of competing faiths. God is great, true but God never
seems to be quite great enough, nor can He completely satiate the internal
spiritual deficits of His followers. His power must be proven through
victory in the basest of human experiences.
An article by journalist Nirmala Carvalho in Compass Direct outlined
further, and widespread instances of Hindu attacks on Christians:
By last June [2005] the number of violent attacks recorded by Christian
organizations had reached over 200. This number was expected to double
by years end. This year Hindu extremists have beaten our priests, as-
saulted our nuns, broken crosses and urinated on sacred vessels, said Dr.
John Dayal, president of the All India Catholic Union. These acts of des-
ecration show the true nature of the attackers. Attacks were reported
in Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and the states of
tribal central India.303
The only way I disagree with Dr. John Dayal is that the acts of dese-
cration actually show the true nature of humanity and not just the Hindu
attackers.
And lest we become too secure in the belief that the problems that
Hindus have is generally with Christians, they certainly have no love for
Muslims, either. An article in Time Magazine, HinduMuslim Violence
Imperils India explored the clash of these two major religions:
Ayodhya [Uttar Pradesh state] is at the epicenter of communal hostility
stoked by Hindu nationalists in defiance of modern Indias founding tradi-
tion of secular tolerance. In 1992, the city became the focus of the worst
communal violence since Indias partition 45 years earlier, when 2,000
people died in clashes after Hindu nationalists tore down the 16th-century
Babri mosque. Hindus claim the mosque had originally been built on the
site of a temple marking the birthplace of the Hindu deity Lord Rama.
Now that same strife threatens to topple the government of Prime Minis-
ter Atal Behari Vajpayee. Seventy people were killed in Gujarat province
99
on Thursday, as Hindu mobs attacked Muslims and torched a mosque and

other Islamic facilities.304
This is not to say that only the Hindus have resorted to violence in this
conflict as the article also noted: The violence came as retaliation for
Wednesdays firebombing by Muslims of a train carrying Hindu activists
returning from Ayodhya. Fifty-eight people, many of them women and
children, died in that attack. Neither side, though assuredly a religion
of peace in their own minds, is able to rise above the righteous orgy of
violence committed in the name of their god, even when women and chil-
dren are involved.
Not constrained to attacks against the Abrahamic faiths, there is a
violent history between Hindus and Buddhists dating back thousands
of years. An article by Dr. M. S. Jayaprakash, a noted history scholar and
social activist of Kerala, related in his article Hindu Violence against
Buddhism in India has no Parallel:
The Hindu ruler, Pushyamitra Sunga [d. 151 B.C.E.], demolished 84,000
Buddhist stupas that had been built by Ashoka the Great. It was followed
by the smashing of the Buddhist centres in Magadha. Thousands of Bud-
dhist monks were mercilessly killed.305
In our times, the civil war in Sri Lanka has taken place between the
majority Buddhist population (Sinhalese) and Hindus (Tamil). In fact, it
was the Tamil Hindus who popularized the use of the suicide bomber.
From July 1987, when the Tamil separatist movement (LTTE) carried
out its first suicide attack, through 2009, it conducted more than 170
suicide attacks, and the suicide attack became a trademark of the LTTE
and a characteristic of the civil war. As Lynn Neary reported on National
Public Radio, Sri Lankas [Hindu] Tamil Tiger rebels didnt invent the
suicide bomb, but they pioneered it as a tactic in war.306
Sikhism
It might seem unfair to include what is a very different religion
Sikhism as a subject covered under the larger umbrella of Hinduism.
But Guru Nanak (d. 1539), a Hindu born of the Khatri, a warrior tribe
from northern India, founded Sikhism. Additionally, the Guru shared
many common beliefs with Hinduism, such as karma, dharma, reincarna-
tion, and meditating on Gods name to break the cycle of birth. Found-
ed in the 15th century in Punjab, it is a monotheistic religion, and the
fifth-largest organized religion in the world, as well as one of the fastest
growing.
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Buddhism grew out of Hinduism as well, making the ancient Indian

creed similar to Judaism, in that it is progenitor of a trinity of central
world religions. Taken together, people of the Abrahamic and Hindu-
influenced creeds constitute nearly three quarters of the worlds popula-
tion. All of them have been steeped in the concept of sacral violence.
As with most religions, the initial introduction to Sikhism reveals
a beautiful, egalitarian path. Sikh teaching emphasizes the principle of
equality of all humans and rejects discrimination on the basis of caste,
creed or gender. As defined by the Sikh Missionary Society in the United
Kingdom:
Sikhism stands for human liberty, equality and fraternity. It believes in
universal brotherhood, universal peace and prosperity with commitment
for selfless service to the entire human race. The Sikh prayer all over the
world is not confined to a single community, a nation or a country. It is for
wellbeing of the entire human race. It is universal and all embracing. It is
not confined to a single caste, color, creed, country or a gender. It does not
know man-made barriers or cruel diversities.307
However, as is often the case, somewhere between stated beliefs and
action, things change. As Mark Juergensmeyer noted: The history of
Sikhism is one of violent encounters.308 The motivation for its institu-
tional, religiously based violence may be situated in Sikhisms most re-
spected leaders. For instance, the sixth Guru of the religion (Hargobind
Sahib, d. 1644) exhorted his followers to combine religion and worldly
engagement, including the sword to hit oppressors.309
The most frequently displayed symbol of Sikhism today is the double-
edged sword, adding violent iconography to the foundation of this faith.
It provides an image of the domestication of violence, and it is worn on
lockets, emblazoned on shops and garden gates and stands in front of
Sikh gurdwaras (Gateway to the Guru, or a place of worship for Sikhs),
where it is treated with the same reverence as Christians treat their own
emblem of destruction and triumph, the Cross.310
Like followers of all religious paths, the Sikhs wrath sometimes
knows no bounds. Sohar Singh (d. 1968), an Indian revolutionary, the
founding president of the Ghadar Party and a labor rights activist, spoke
eloquently about the role of love in Sikhism, though if others try to kill
you, you are warranted in trying to kill them. He claimed that the killings
undertaken by militants were always done with a higher purpose and
were not simply killing for killings sake.311
More recently, Jarnail Singh Khalsa Bhindranwale (d. 1984) was
inspired by the idea of miri-piri, the notion that spiritual and temporal
101
power are linked. This is a fairly common justification given by just war
theories in all religions, and one that inspires warriors to this day. Brute
force successfully applied proves the spiritual power through victory.
Bhindranwale, building on ideas of spiritual warfare, projected the
image of a great war between Good and Evil waged in the present day
a struggle for our faith, for the Sikh nation, for the oppressed. He
implored his young followers to rise up and marshal the forces for righ-
teousness.312 His life ended in a hail of gunfire in the Golden Temple in
Amritsar, which he had taken over and fortified with light machine-guns
and sophisticated self-loading rifles.
Today, the Sikhs highest authority, Akal Takht (the designated lead-
er of the Sikh nation), describes him as a great martyr of the Sikh com-
munity who made the supreme sacrifice for the sake of faith.
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Chapter Seven: Buddhism
The ideas and people encountered in the subterranean realm of Buddhism

are the exact inverse of those on the surface. Down below, warfare and
killing are described as manifestations of Buddhist compassion . . . The
purpose of religion is to preserve the state and punish any country or per-
son who dared to interfere with its right of self-aggrandizement.313
Buddhism is not the oldest of religions, having been founded in the
5 century B.C.E. by the Buddha (d. 483 B.C.E.; born to the rulers of the
th
Shakya clan, hence his appellation Sakyamuni, which means sage of the
Shakya clan). But in terms of this study, it is the quintessential represen-
tation of religious hypocrisy.
Buddhism, more than any other religion, is considered to be a creed
founded on peace and nonviolence. As Dr. Mahinda Deegalle (professor
at the University of Bath in England; studied at the University of Chicago
and Harvard) noted in an article on violence and Buddhism:
Buddhist teachings maintain that under any circumstances, whether po-
litical, religious cultural or ethnic, violence cannot be accepted or advo-
cated in solving disputes between nations. All Buddhist traditions unani-
mously agree that war cannot be the solution to disputes and conflicts,
either. Even for achieving religious goals, violence cannot be justified. A
Buddhist cannot imagine a principle of a just war.314
Buddhism claims to eschew all violent behavior. The ultimate goal
of a person treading the path of Buddhism is the attainment of perpetual
inner peace. The Theravada Canonical scriptures contain absolutely no
instance in which violence is advocated as a means for achieving it.315
103
Additionally, there is no history or call to forced conversion in Bud-

dhism. Dr. Mahinda Deegalle noted:
There is not a single example of persecution or the shedding of a drop of
blood in converting people to Buddhism, or in its propagation during its
long history of 2,500 years. It spread peacefully over all the continent of
Asia.316
As a layperson, this was certainly my understanding of the Buddhist
path, prior to beginning research for this book. Under no circumstances,
I thought, could a practicing Buddhist justify even so much as killing a fly
let alone participating in a war. I still have seared into my memory the
description of a friend of mine, who later went on to become a Buddhist
nun and spend several years in a solitary meditation retreat, of her first
visit to Nepal. A college student at the time, she unthinkingly swatted at
a fly that was buzzing about her head and was met by the horrified gaze
of her host. To kill a living being!
But alas, the deeper I searched into Buddhist history, liturgy and poli-
tics, the more I discovered the exact same violent, war-like language and
behavior that is evident in all other religious paths on this earth. In fact,
despite Dr. Deegalles insistence that Buddhists have never in their long
history practiced forced conversion, Mark Juergensmeyer, in his Terror in
the Mind of God, shared a vision of Buddhism that aligns itself more with
jihadi Islam than the non-violent fantasies of quietists everywhere:
The great expansion of Buddhism in various parts of the world has been
credited in part to the support given it by victorious kings and military
forces who have claimed to be fighting only to defend the faith against
infidels and to establish a peaceful moral order.317
As Brian Daizen Victoria noted in Zen at War:
The original message [of Buddhism] was buried under a series of compro-
mises with oppressive political systems in India, China, Japan and else-
where. In all of these countries, Buddhism has been used as an instrument
of state policy for subduing rather than liberating the population.318
The Buddhist justification for violence against the other is rooted
in the underlying premise of the religions teachings: that the individual
human being has no true existence apart from the universal ground of all
being, and that this being is similar to, if not the same as, nothingness.
God is represented by a substantive existence so fine that we can neither
perceive nor understand it without completely eviscerating all traces of
our own selfhood.
The fifth-century Buddhist thinker Houei-Yan encapsulated the fluid
thinking that underpins Buddhist justifications for violence and war:
104
If we admit that the Other and I are identical, and that there is no op-
position between our two minds, then from the point of view of the tran-
scendent absolute, which is one, swords that crisscross are neutralized.
There is no conflict between weapons that bang together. Not only does
someone who injures another do no harm to the soul, but there is certainly
no living being that is killable. It is in this sense that, when Manjusri [a bo-
dhisattva, or spiritually enlightened being, associated with transcendent
wisdom] took up his sword, he was able to have the appearance of going
against Buddhist morality, but in reality, he was abiding by it.319
Violent Imagery
Much violent imagery within Buddhism stems from the Indian sub-
continent and even dates back to the time of the Buddha. For instance,
Stephen Jenkins (Professor of Religious Studies at Humboldt State Uni-
versity) noted in his article, Making Merit Through Warfare:
The Buddha is depicted as an attempted murder victim on multiple occa-
sions and even as the victim of a conspiracy to implicate him in a murder-
ous sex scandal (Jataka 285) . . . If legend and scripture are any indication,
the violence of the Indian Buddhists imagination, and probably the vio-
lence of their world, was extreme.320
This violence in and of itself is not troubling. After all, Buddhism
arose to counteract this aggressive expression. The Buddha was trying to
solve the problem of human violence, so it stands to reason that he must
have seen plenty of it in his time. Also, that someone tried to murder or
conspire against him in no way contradicts his message of nonviolence, it
only makes it more pressing.
However, the line between violence and non-violence was never com-
pletely drawn, not even by the Buddha. The oft-quoted story of Buddha
killing one person to save many (the story that came to underpin Bud-
dhist just war theory in virtually all Buddhist states) is told in Upay-
akausalya Sutra (c. 1st century B.C.E.; The Skill in Means). Brian Peter
Harvey (Co-founder of the U.K. Association for Buddhist Studies), ex-
plained the importance of this story in his Introduction to Buddhist Ethics:
Some texts justify killing a human being, on the grounds of compassion
in dire circumstances. A key text here is the Upayakausalya Sutra. This
says that taking a life is un-reprehensible if it develops from a virtuous
thought. A key passage in the text tells of Buddha in a past life as a bod-
hisattva sea captain named Great Compassion who was transporting 500
merchants. One night, deities inform him in a dream that one of the pas-
sengers is intent on killing the others and stealing all of their goods. He
realizes that the robber will suffer in hell for eons for such a deed, as the
105
merchants are all bodhisattvas . . . Accordingly, with great compassion and

skill in means, he kills the robber, who is reborn in heaven. A similar story
is found in the Maha-Upayakausalya Sutra, where the bodhisattva feels
compelled to kill the scout for 500 bandits, even though he is an old friend,
to save the lives of 500 merchants.321
The importance of these texts cannot be overstressed, as they became
the basis for violent Buddhism, an impetus that is present today in Sri
Lanka, Burma and even the United States (as we will see further along).
These texts were Mahayana scripture, and Mahayana Buddhism origi-
nated in India and is the larger of the two major traditions of Buddhism
existing today.
Buddhist Liturgy
The fundamental Tantric [scriptural] narrative is one of subjugation, a
forced conversion of the non-Buddhists or a taming of the infidels. Con-
versely . . . the Buddhist Sangha [community] looks sometimes like a be-
sieged citadel . . . Buddhists have constantly resorted to the demonization
of their rivals, Buddhist or non-Buddhist.322
We can find numerous examples of violence in Buddhist scripture
and canon. Even in the Dhammapada (Path of Righteousness), a text that
is ascribed to the Buddha, it is impossible to escape the use of sadistic
language to describe the path of this religion of peace.
Having slain mother and father and two Khattiya [a royal lineage at the
time of the Buddha] kings, having slain a kingdom together with the sub-
ordinate, without trembling the brahmana goes. Having slain mother and
father and two learned kings, having slain the tigers domain, a fifth, with-
out trembling the brahmana goes.323
This language is (theoretically) meant as a metaphor. In other ver-
sions of this text it is translated as Having slain mother craving, father
self-conceit, making explicit the symbol. Once violent imagery is in-
cluded in canonical texts, however, the movement from image to action
is swift. After all, it is easy to see in a specific, living enemy mother crav-
ing and father self-conceit, as the whole point of institutional violence
is that it allows us to project our own interior violent tendencies onto an
other a scapegoat and then destroy this part of ourselves through
violent acts. By placing this violence, even imagerically, within sacred
text, the leap to violent action becomes much easier.
Later Buddhist thinkers situated hostility in the realm of the bodhisat-
tva, or enlightened Buddhist practitioner. The bodhisattva renounces his
own eternal salvation in Nirvana, vowing to help save all human souls. In
106
order to accomplish this compassionate mission, however, Buddhist lit-

urgy sometimes taught that the bodhisattva might have to break accepted
Buddhist precepts, and humiliate, torture and even kill for the sake of the
lost persons salvation.324
The reasoning generally went that the bodhisattva was of such purity
as to render his or her motives unquestionable. Therefore, if the bodhisat-
tva chooses to kill, it must be for the purest of reasons, such as to save
someone from themselves, incurring the negative karma on their person
while releasing their victim to ultimate realization. A truly selfless act!
Some Madhyamaka thinkers (a school of Buddhism, c. 250) proposed
that bodhisattvas could undertake actions normally considered forbidden,
including killing, as long as they remained compassionate while doing so.
In the Sikasamuccaya (c. 8th century; a compendium of Buddhist doctrine),
Santideva says that the very things which send others to hell send a bod-
hisattva to the heavenly Brahmalokas (where refined souls exist in blissful
contemplation of Brahma).
This is hardly out of line with teachings about the Buddha himself.
The Mahaparinirvana Sutra (c. 200 or earlier, also known as the Nirvana
Sutra), a major Mahayana Sutra tells the story of the Buddha killing sev-
eral Brahmins in a previous life, and in so doing preventing them from
slandering the dharma (natural order of things). The Buddhas murders
are presented as growing out of his compassion, to save the evildoers
from the karmic consequences of their actions.325
The Nirvana Sutra continues on to exhort Buddhists to protect the
dharma at all costs, even if this means committing murder. This echoes
teachings in the Gandavyuha Sutra (c. 50 B.C.E.), which tells the story of
an Indian king who made killing into a divine service in order to reform
people through punishment.326
It is important to note that this idea of killing to save a soul (echoing
the thinking behind the Christian Inquisition), when coupled with the
concept that Buddhist states actually represent the institutionalization
of bodhisattva-hood on a grand scale, was used to justify whole popula-
tions engaging in compassionate killing in defense of the state and the
Buddhist values of compassion, peace and love.
The violence in the Buddhas text is hardly the only place where bel-
licose imagery may be found. Foundational text after foundational text
bears the imprint of hatred and slaughter. For instance, Asanga (d. 370),
considered a founder of the Yogacara school of Buddhism, argued in his
Bodhisattva-bhumi (Levels of Enlightenment) that compassionate vio-
lence offers merit for killing. For Asanga, compassionate killing was an
107
option not just for the realized bodhisattva, but also for the civil leader,
the king.327
Stephen Jenkins explained in his article, Merit through Warfare and
Torture:
The Arya-Satyakaparivarta (The Noble Teachings through Manifestations
on the Subject of Skillful Means in the Bodhisattvas Field of Activity) ar-
gues that compassionate torture that does not result in permanent physi-
cal damage may have a beneficial influence on the character of the victim
. . . the Sutra says that weapons cannot harm a warrior protected by good
karma. The unstated implications are that ones victims must be ripe for
their own destruction, and that losing suggests a moral failure on the part
of the loser.328
In the Saddharmasmrtyupasthana (c. 692; Sutra of Right Mindfulness)
the Lord Yama is depicted as ordering his servants to mutilate and hack
to pieces the body of a guilty party, who was destined for this type of kar-
mic retribution.329 The Jataka Sutra (c. 100 B.C.E.), concerning the previ-
ous lives of the Buddha, is full of stories of Buddhist warriors, often the
Buddha himself in a past life, and occasionally romanticizes their heroic
deaths in battle.330
The Jataka Sutra continues on to note that if a king kills with com-
passionate intentions, he may make great merit through warfare, so war-
fare becomes auspicious. The same argument was made earlier in relation
to torture, and the sutra proceeds to make commonsense analogies to
doctors and parents who compassionately inflict pain in order to disci-
pline and heal without intending harm.331
The Jen Wang Ching Sutra (c. 200; Benevolent Kings Sutra) represents
a conversation between Sakyamuni Buddha and Prasenajit, the king of
Kosala (India). In this book of counsel, allegedly from the mouth of the
Buddha himself, it is stated that one can escape the karmic consequences
arising from such acts as killing others by simply reciting this sutra. Go-
ing further, the sutra depicts the Buddha giving detailed instructions to
kings on how to best protect their lands from enemies, both internal and
external. The advice assures that soldiers involved in any slaughter may
be retroactively absolved of the karmic consequences of their acts.332
The Milinda Panha (c. 100; Questions of King Milinda), a highly au-
thoritative Theravadin text, argues that punitive violence should be un-
derstood as the fruition of the victims own karma. In such a case, the
state -sponsored violence was not only a reaction to a serious karmic defi-
cit in the other, but also restorative of the grand design, as well as per-
sonally healing to the targets of the states venom.
108
Of course, these examples (and many more) in no way represent the

only, or even main, teaching within Buddhism. There are far more pas-
sages that hew to the non-violent precepts which underlie the Buddhas
teachings. The point here, however, is to show how easy it is for those
who desire to find justifiable violence within Buddhism, to do so.
More Violent Imagery

Growing out of these scriptural passages was an explosion of violent
language attached to the supposedly serene Buddhist path. All religions
use the language of war to describe the spiritual path, but it is still sur-
prising to find it so well represented within Buddhism. And I want to
stress, again, the importance of this vocabulary of violence in preparing
religious followers for what becomes an easy slide from metaphorical vi-
olence to literal violence. The hostile language and imagery of spirituality
allows lay leaders to fuse the bellicosity of the state with religious and
spiritual meaning.
A visit to a Buddhist sanctuary in the Far East often shows the image
of Vaisravana, one of the four god-kings, who presides over the north.
This deity is represented as an armored warrior . . . for the Buddhists in
the north he became a veritable god of war.333
Violent portrayals also affected writing on the Buddhist spiritual
path. The 18th-century Zen monk Yamamoto Jocho, author of The Book of
Samurai, wrote:
Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day
when ones body and mind are at peace, one should meditate on being
ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by
surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by
lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thou-
sand foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku [ritual suicide] . . .
every day without fail, one should consider himself as dead.334
Bernard Faure (Kao Professor in Japanese Religion at Columbia Uni-
versity) noted in Buddhist Warfare how this kind of imagery might lead a
Buddhist to the practice of violence as spirituality:
Monastic discipline . . . can also be seen as a kind of muted violence against
oneself. To show their determination, Chinese monks would sometimes
mutilate themselves including cutting off or burning one or more of
their fingers. In extreme cases, self-denial could lead to self-immolation
by fire.
The image of the sword also plays an important role in Buddhist teach-
ing and meditation practice. The Chinese master Kuei-Shan Ling-yu (d.
109
853) referred to the interplay between action and silence as swordplay.

Lin-Chi (d. 866) also used imagery such as swords, sword blades and
the sword of wisdom.335 The Nirvana Sutra exhorts: Protect the true
dharma by grasping swords and other weapons.336
The master Yuan Wu ke Chin (d. 1135) assured that the sword which
kills people and the sword which gives life to people is an ancient cus-
tom.337 Zen master Huang Po (d. 850) expounded on the Sword of Bodhi
in his On the Transmission of Mind.338 And Takuan Soho (d. 1645), a major
figure in the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism, described Fudo Myo-o (The
commander of the Wisdom Kings) as follows:
Fudo Myo-o holds a sword in his right hand and a rope in his left. His lips
are rolled back revealing his teeth and his eyes are full of anger. He thrusts
violently at all evil demons who interfere with Buddha dharma, forcing
them to surrender.339
Buddhism and the State

The wars of the empire are sacred wars. They are holy wars. They are the
[Buddhist] practice [gyo] of great compassion. Therefore, the Imperial
military must consist of holy officers and holy soldiers.340
The leap from the violent language and the various justifications for
violence found in traditional Buddhist teachings to actual violence sanc-
tioned by a Buddhist state was a short one. And once Buddhism became
a state religion, Buddhist violence evolved into yet one more political
tool for subjugation and expansion.
Additionally, with Buddhism and temporal power wrapped together
(not unlike Catholicism and the various kingdoms in medieval Europe),
violence in service to the state could be presented as violence in defense
of the one true religion.
Zhao Puchu (d. 2000; president of the Buddhist Association of Chi-
na), stated in 1951, concerning Chinas entrance into the Korean War and
the necessity for Chinese Buddhists to support the war effort:
Buddhists are duty-bound to repay the kindness of the nation and people,
and always remind ourselves of this duty through reciting the scriptures
every day. Working for the benefit and happiness of people without con-
sidering even our lives is the vow of Buddhists.341
This dynamic is hardly confined to China, or, as we shall see further
along, to Japanese Zen, which historically allied itself with the cult of
the Samurai and played an integral role in the Japanese atrocities com-
mitted before and during World War II. As Dr. Michael Jerryson (whose
110
primary area of research is on the intersection of religion and violence)

noted: where Buddhism is part of the ideology of statecraft, there is a
pervasive tendency for Buddhists to sanction violence.342
The perversion of linking Buddhism with state-sponsored murder
has been taken to its absolute limits. Paul Demieville (d. 1979; considered
one of the pre-eminent Sinologists of the 20th century) related one ex-
ample of the fusion of Buddhism and state sponsored killing in Buddhism
and War:
Faqing [c. 515; Ho-pei, China] took the title of Great Vehicle, and de-
clared the arrival of the new Buddha . . . He had under his command
50,000 men. When a soldier killed a man, he earned the title of first-stage
bodhisattva. The more he killed, the more he went up the echelon toward
sainthood . . . Murder was a charitable act in the crusade against Mara (a
demonic, virtually all-powerful Lord of evil) . . . The recruits were con-
vinced that they were killing for a new Buddha.343
On one hand, it is tempting to dismiss this as an absurd cult of per-
sonality, having more in common with the messianic fervor inspired by
the likes of Shabbatai Zevi (d. 1676) or Jim Jones (d. 1978). However,
taken more soberly, is this very different from the slaughter outlined in
the Jewish Bible, the Christian Crusades, the jihadi terrorism of todays
Wahhabi Muslim sects and other religiously-inspired (or religiously-
justified) mass murders? By the sixth century, there was enough scrip-
tural and historical precedence within Buddhism to justify the absurd
claims of the Great Vehicle, and the dynamic would hardly wane. The
20th century saw examples of the same venomous Buddhist energy from
Japanese Zen practitioners, Sri Lankan Buddhists, Pol Pot in Cambodia
and others.
Just War Theory

Buddha Sakyamuni, during religious practice in a former life, participated
in a just war. Due to the merit he acquired as a result, he was able to ap-
pear in this world as a Buddha. Thus, it can be said that a just war is one
task of Buddhism.344
Out of the violent impulses coursing through the hidden heart of
Buddhism, a concept very similar to the just war theory of Christian-
ity emerged. Perhaps none was so explicit about this idea as the Fifth Da-
lai Lama (Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, d. 1682) of Tibetan Buddhism, who
began construction on the majestic Potala Palace. He linked war and the
state in a fashion similar to Abrahamic forms of religious justification. As
Dr. Derek Maher noted in Sacralized Warfare, the Dalai Lama developed
111
the just war theory to validate combat fought on his behalf by Gushri
Khan and Mongolian allies, 1635-42, for the unification of Tibet.
[The Dalai Lama] pays great attention to the types of concerns that are
encountered in standard just-war theory, elaborated by both Christians
and Muslims once they found a need to create governments. The Dalai
Lama expended considerable efforts to represent the battles as being re-
sponsible reactions to others improper actions.345
Here, we see a normal dynamic: for the purpose of the state, religion
and war must be brought in concord. The state is founded on war, this
is true, but it also cant be emphasized enough that religion is founded
on violence.
Japan
In the Zen sect of Japan, they interpreted the argument for taking anoth-
ers life as attempting to bring the others Buddha nature to life.346
This exploration now moves from general Buddhist bloodlust to the
specific cultures where it has operated. When I began this study, I as-
sumed that this violent dynamic was confined to one or two cultures
(say, Japan and China) and one or two time periods (perhaps the 20th
century).
I was wrong.
Although I will start with Japan, as the deep intertwining of Bud-
dhism with the violent Samurai (military nobility of pre-industrial Ja-
pan) culture is clear and was important as recently as World War II.
Buddhism, war and the state have been woven together in virtually all
cultures where Buddhism has flourished and even in some, like the Unit-
ed States, where Buddhism is peripheral to statecraft. Ultimately, in no
place where Buddhism has been institutionalized as either a state reli-
gion or even a religion within a state has it been able to retain its original
non-violent character.
Exceptionalism
Japan represents an especially egregious example of Buddhist justifi-
cations for slaughter, torture and restorative violence. Japanese attitudes
during the World War II era echo the contemporary American dynamic
in disturbing ways.
The idea of Japanese exceptionalism, as it intertwines with the state
religion of Buddhism, sounds very much like the American sense of the
state and Christianity. A quick comparison between Japanese Buddhist
112
justifications in the period leading up to World War II and a contempo-

rary political thinker will suffice to show how closely related are these
two cultures.
In 1934, Shimizu Ryuzan (d. 1943; president of Nichiren Zen sect-
affiliated Rissho University) explained:
The underlying principle of the spirit of Japan is the enlightenment of the
world with truth . . . we must lead all the nations of the world into righ-
teousness and establish heaven on earth, where brotherly love and world-
wide peace shall prevail and where all men shall be Buddhist saints. There
is the true ideal, the spirit of Japan.
This conception of state and religious exceptionalism is hardly se-
questered within the Japanese Buddhist spirit. Howard Zinn noted in his
article The Power and the Glory: Myths of American Exceptionalism:
The notion of American exceptionalism that the United States alone
has the right, whether by divine sanction or moral obligation, to bring
civilization, or democracy, or liberty to the rest of the world, by violence
if necessary is not new. It started as early as 1630 in the Massachu-
setts Bay Colony when Governor John Winthrop uttered the words that
centuries later would be quoted by Ronald Reagan. Winthrop called the
Massachusetts Bay Colony a city upon a hill. Reagan embellished a little,
calling it a shining city on a hill.347
Zinn goes on to state an obvious fact, yet one that somehow often
escapes the vision of God-fearing folks everywhere on their way to the
latest war of salvation and liberation:
Divine ordination is a very dangerous idea, especially when combined
with military power (the United States has 10,000 nuclear weapons, with
military bases in a hundred different countries and warships on every sea).
With Gods approval, you need no human standard of morality. Anyone
today who claims the support of God might be embarrassed to recall that
the Nazi storm troopers had inscribed on their belts Gott mit uns (God
is with us).348
The Sword and the Lotus

The sword is generally associated with killing, and most of us wonder
how it can come into connection with Zen, which is a school of Buddhism
teaching the gospel of love and mercy. The fact is that the art of swords-
manship distinguishes between the sword that kills and the sword that
gives life. The one that is used by a technician cannot go any further than
killing, for he never appeals to the sword unless he intends to kill. The
case is altogether different with the one who is compelled to lift the sword.
He had no desire to harm anybody, but the enemy appears and makes him-
113
self a victim. It is as though the sword performs automatically its function

of justice, which is the function of mercy.349
The relationship between Buddhism and the way of the Samurai is
not recent, beginning in the 13th century when the Hojo regents (c. 1203
1333) discovered that Buddhist vitality and rejection of life as an object of
special craving had much to offer the warrior.350 From this time on, war
and religious observance were separated in Japan by only the thinnest of
boundaries.
Later Japanese thinkers could point to an unbroken line of thinkers
from the 11th century through World War II, who brought Zen and vio-
lence together. The famous Rinzai Zen master Takuan (d. 1645) wrote,
echoing other Buddhist justifications for war:
The uplifted sword has no will of its own, it is all of emptiness. It is like
a flash of lightning. The man who is about to be struck down is also of
emptiness, and so is the one who wields the sword . . . As each of them is
of emptiness and has no mind, the striking man is not a man, the sword
in his hands is not a sword, and the I who is about to be struck down is
like the splitting of the spring breeze by a flash of lightning.351
Monks and War

Japanese Zen monks throughout the ages lauded the warriors path
as a central Zen Buddhist practice, at times even suggesting that there
was no better manner of achieving no-mind than the practice of dutiful
violence. The priest Tannen (d. 1680) related in his daily talks:
A monk cannot fulfill the Buddhist Way if he does not manifest compas-
sion without and persistently store up courage within. And if a warrior
does not manifest courage on the outside and hold compassion within his
heart to burst his chest, he cannot become a retainer. Therefore, the monk
pursues courage with the warrior as his model and the warrior pursues
the compassion of the monk.
Suzuki Shoshan (d. 1655), a Rinzai Zen priest of the same era, claimed
that the warrior must absolutely practice ZaZen amid war cries. What
better place to put meditation into action? He noted that however fond a
warrior might be of Buddhism, he should throw it out if it didnt work
amid war cries.352
Hakuin (d. 1768; one of Rinzai Zens greatest masters) went even fur-
ther, concluding that the warriors lifestyle was superior to that of the
monk for practicing Zen.353 Yamamoto Tsunetomo (d. 1719), a Buddhist
monk and Samurai warrior, noted a practice he undertook to center his
mind: Last year, I went to the Kase Execution Grounds to try my hand at
114
beheading, and I found it to be an extremely good feeling. To think that

it is unnerving is a symptom of cowardice.354 His assertion that it was
an extremely good feeling echoes the statements from some warriors of
our own era, who assure us that killing is good fun, and even addictive.
Sugawara Gido (d. 1978; Chief Abbot of Hokuku Zenjii Temple) not-
ed: There is no doubt that all those involved in the Greater East Asia
War had disregarded their self-centeredness and . . . attained the path of
Truth. If you believe that something is right, that is the path of Truth and
you should rush forward toward it.355
In writing of the Japanese incursion into China just before World
War II, scholar-priest Dr. Hitane Jazan (d. 1954) asserted:
Speaking from the point of view of the ideal outcome, this is a righteous
and moral war of self-sacrifice in which we will rescue China from the
dangers of Communist takeover and economic slavery . . . It would there-
fore, I dare say, not be unreasonable to call this a sacred war incorporating
the great practice of a bodhisattva.356
Scholar-priest Dr. Kurebayashi Kodo (d. 1988), writing of the same

incursion, assured that Japanese wars were just because of the influence
of the Buddhist spirit. He also soothed his readers with this thought:
Wherever the Imperial Military advances there is only charity and love.
They could never act in the barbarous and cruel manner in which the Chi-
nese soldiers act. This can truly be considered to be a great accomplish-
ment of the long period that Buddhism took in nurturing [the Japanese
Military]. Brutality itself no longer exists in the officers and men of the
Imperial Military . . .357
A beautiful sentiment, however one that is almost completely inde-

pendent of reality. As journalist Ralph Blumenthal noted in The New York
Times:
While Nazi scientists like Josef Mengele conducted hideous experiments
on concentration camp prisoners, their lesser-known Japanese counter-
parts, led by Gen. Shiro Ishii, were waging full-scale biological warfare
and subjecting human beings to ghastly experiments of their own and
on a far greater scale than the Germans. Ping Fan was a camp of plague-
bearing fleas, rat cages and warrens for human guinea pigs. Changchun,
150 miles south, was another huge installation for germ tests on plants,
animals and people. The Japanese record of atrocities what victims call
the Asian Holocaust is still producing revelations more than 50 years
after the end of World War II.358
115
Sugimoto
The reason that Zen is important for soldiers is that all Japanese, espe-
cially soldiers, must live in the spirit of sovereign and subjects, eliminating
their ego and getting rid of their self. It is exactly the awakening to the
nothingness of Zen that is the fundamental unity of sovereign and sub-
jects . . . In facilitating the accomplishment of this, Zen becomes, as it is,
the true spirit of the Imperial military.359
Although there were many Japanese Zen practitioners who were
Samurai, including the 17th-century Zen monk Yamamoto Tsumetomo
(d. 1719), who wrote The Book of Samurai about the fusion of Zen and
the warriors path, none was more explicit about the marriage of spirit
and war than Sugimoto Goro (d. 1937). He went so far as to propose that
the national structure of Japan and Buddhism are identical with each
other.360
He captured the full feeling of not only his age the years leading up
to World War II but also the manner in which Japanese warrior cul-
ture and Zen Buddhism were fused together in the popular mind. Quote
after quote of his exudes the spirit of both institutionalized murder and
the mystics path.
If you wish to penetrate the meaning of the Great Duty, the first thing
you should do is to embrace the teachings of Zen and discard self-attach-
ment. War is moral training for not only the individual but for the entire
world. It consists of the extinction of self-seeking and the destruction of
self-preservation.361
He also took great steps to knit Zen together with war and the state,
which helped lead to some of the most horrendous institutional atroci-
ties in recorded history. Sugimoto assured: Warriors who sacrifice
their lives for the emperor will not die. They will live forever. Truly, they
should be called gods and Buddhas for whom there is no life after death .
. . where there is absolute loyalty there is no life or death.362
Perhaps at this point the believer will want to disagree, assert that
these voices in no way represent the true path, they are but mistakes in
the Way and while they cannot be denied, nor should they be held out as
representing a central, or even major, aspect of the spiritual path.
However, in case after case, these very bloodthirsty cries are revered
at the time when it was most important: during their own contemporary era.
For instance, Sugimotos Zen Master, Yamazaki Ekiju (d. 1961) described
Sugimotos flowery death in battle:
A grenade fragment hit him in the left shoulder. He seemed to have fallen
down but then got up again . . . he was still standing, holding his sword in
116
one hand as a prop. Both legs were slightly bent, and he was facing in an
easterly direction [toward the Imperial Palace]. It appeared that he had
saluted, though his hand was now lowered to about the level of his mouth.
The blood flowing from his mouth covered his watch.363
As Brian Daizen Victoria notes in Zen at War: In Ekijus mind, at least,
it was his lay disciples finest moment, when he most clearly displayed
the power that was to be gained by those who practice Zen.364
Zen, the State and a Just War

By the 19th century, Japanese Buddhist military objectives were to kill
unbelievers and convert their state to Buddhism. As the Zen leaders and
lay people of Japan believed that people who were not enlightened (i.e.,
the enemy) would be reborn, there was, in their mind, no true destruc-
tion of life.365
This led to Buddhist support for specific military campaigns un-
dertaken by the Japanese government. During the SinoJapanese War
(189495), there was almost no peace movement among Buddhists, but
numerous Buddhists leaders justified the campaign. They based their
support on the contention that Japanese Buddhism was more advanced
than other strains in Asia. Mori Naoki expounded on this theme in 1894,
in an article entitled The relationship of Japanese Buddhists to the crisis
in China and Korea, in which he presented the battlefield as an arena for
the propagation of the faith holding high the banner of benevolence
and fidelity.366
By the end of the RussoJapanese war in September 1905, the foundation
had been laid for institutional Buddhisms basic attitudes toward Japans
military activities: 1) Japans wars are not only just but are, in fact, expres-
sions of Buddhist compassion; 2) fighting to the death in Japans wars is
an opportunity to repay the debt of gratitude owed to both the Buddha
and the emperor; 3) the Japanese army is composed of tens of thousands
of bodhisattvas.367
By the early 20th century, a Japanese-Buddhist just war theory had
been codified and was expounded by Soyen Shaku (d. 1919; the first Zen
Buddhist master to teach in the United States):
War is not necessarily horrible, provided that it is fought for a just and
honorable cause, that it is fought for the maintenance and realization of
noble ideals, that it is fought for the upholding of humanity and civiliza-
tion. Many material human bodies may be destroyed, many hearts broken,
but from a broader point of view these sacrifices are so many phoenixes
consumed in the sacred fire of spirituality . . . War is not a mere slaughter
117
of their fellow-beings, but they are combating evil, and at the same time
corporeal annihilation really means giving a rebirth of the soul.368
Zen leaders who supported Japanese militarism did so on the grounds
that Japanese aggression expressed the very essence of Buddha dharma
and even enlightenment itself.369 These religious figures went so far as
to claim that killing and bomb throwing were done independently of the
individual will, and therefore the individual had no choice or responsibil-
ity in the matter.370
This is an even more problematic line of reasoning than is found in the
Abrahamic religions, where at least the holy warrior is personally impli-
cated in his actions. In Buddhism, people are allowed to remain serene in
the knowledge that they were not present in the acts of violence. And
far from being viewed in a negative fashion, they are considered part of
the dispersion of the one true faith, as well as responsible for releasing
the victims for rebirth and future realization.
By World War II, Japanese Buddhist organizations were institution-
alizing religious war as the best spiritual practice, preparing the country
for its orgy of holy violence that began in China (1937) and would go
worldwide. An edict from the Association for the Practice of Imperial-
Way Buddhism in 1938 set out the specifics of this fusion of worship and
war:
Imperial-Way Buddhism utilizes the exquisite truth of the Lotus Sutra to
reveal the majestic essence of the national polity. Exalting the true spirit of
Mahayana Buddhism is a teaching that reverently supports the emperors
work. This is what the great founder of our sect, Saint Nichiren [d. 1282],
meant when he referred to the divine unity of sovereign and Buddha.371
China
It is a well-known fact that first of all commandments of the Buddhist
creed is Thou shall not kill, [but] Chinese books contain various passag-
es relating to Buddhist monks who freely indulged in carnage and butch-
ery and took an active part in military expeditions of every description,
thus leaving no room for doubt that warfare was an integral part of their
religious profession for centuries.372
Japan, until the end of World War II, was a warlike nation on par
with Germany, so the melding of Buddhism and the way of the Samurai
is not at all surprising. But while this might be so that Japan was par-
ticularly adept at fusing war and religion it was not unique, nor even
out of the ordinary for Buddhist countries. A quick trip throughout the
nations of Asia and the Indian subcontinent will uncover the violent his-
118
tory of Buddhism across the geographic as well as chronological history

of the supposed pacifist creed.
The Tao of Slaughter

Buddhism arrived in China in the first century, introduced by trad-
ers along the Silk Road. However, there was an ancient, indigenous and
peaceful religious practice that it merged with and at times replaced:
Taoism. Taoism may be traced to prehistoric folk religions in China,
which later coalesced into the Taoist tradition. Lao-Tzu (c. 6th century
B.C.E.) is traditionally regarded as the founder of Taoism and his book
The Way of Lao Tzu is revered as the bible of this belief system.
Taoism, like Buddhism, is a creed of acceptance and non-being. Briefly,
it may be defined as a way of noninterference with the course of natural
events that leads to harmony with the Tao, or universal essence. Echoing
the Buddhist abhorrence with worldly striving, Lao Tzu intoned: There
is no greater misfortune than being covetous.373
Like Buddhism, however, the Tao was twisted into an accessory to
murder, and helped lay the theological groundwork within China for the
manner in which Buddhism, after its adoption in the first centuries of
the Christian era, would come to underpin Chinese military campaigns
up to the Korean War (19501953). Early Chinese war theorists such as
Ssu-Ma (c. 4th century B.C.E.), Sun-Tzu (c. 6th century B.C.E.) and Huang
Shi-Kung (c. 3rd century B.C.E.) all brought militarism together with the
Tao to produce a specifically Chinese bellicosity, one which would affect
later Buddhist interpretations of religion and war.
A few quick quotes will suffice to show how the practice of Taoism
became united with statecraft. Ssu-Ma assured his readers:
As for the Tao of Warfare: After you have aroused [the peoples] chi [spirit]
. . . encompass them with a benign countenance and lead them with your
speeches. Upbraid them in accord with their fears; assign affairs in accord
with their desires.374
More specifically, Ssu-Ma defined the Tao thusly:
When the army does not listen to minor affairs, when in battle it does not
concern itself with small advantages; and when on the day of conflict it
successfully completes its plans in subtle fashion, it is termed the Tao.375
This appears to have more in common with the Florentine political
philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli (d. 1527) than the non-violent image of
Taoism. Ssu-Mas fusion of the Tao with war helped soften the earth of
119
Chinese spirituality for the later incursion of a just violence within Chi-
nese Buddhism.
Sun Tzu averred in his Art of War: one who excels at employing the
military cultivates the Tao.376 And in a passage that echoes the just war
theory in all religions, Huang Shih-Kung stated in his Three Strategies:
The sage king does not take any pleasure in using the army. He mobilizes
it to execute the violently perverse and punish the rebellious . . . weapons
are inauspicious implements and the Tao of Heaven abhors them. How-
ever, when their employment is unavoidable it accords with the Tao of
Heaven.377
From these Taoist justifications for institutionalized violence, it was
not difficult for the Sino-Buddhists to walk this same theological path.
Chinese Buddhism was interlaced with war almost from the outset. The
Jueguan Lun (c. 2nd century; Treatise on the Extinction of Contemplation)
states that if a murderous act is as perfectly spontaneous as an act of
nature, it entails no responsibility,378 a trope seen time and again in Bud-
dhist justifications for violence.
The Emperor Wendi, founder of the Sui Dynasty (d. 604), used anoth-
er well-known linguistic-spiritual gymnastic for justifying institutional
slaughter, as he explained the divine love behind his military campaigns:
With the armed might of a Cokravartin King, we spread the ideals of the
ultimately benevolent one with a hundred victories and a hundred battles;
we promote the practice of the ten Buddhist virtues. Therefore we regard
weapons of war as having become like incense and flowers (presented as
offerings to the Buddha).379
During the Tang Dynasty (618-907), there were tantric practices to
assure victory on the battlefield. Prayers were offered to the God Vais-
ravana (the chief of the Four Heavenly Kings and an important figure in
Buddhist mythology), who would then follow the armies (like a Homeric
God) to protect the true law.380
In the sixth century, Chinese Buddhists framed their fight against
non-Buddhists as between the Buddha and his nemesis Mara, the God
of desire and illusion. Chinese monks murdered their foes as part of
the larger cosmic battle against this internal enemy.381 This rationaliza-
tion hardly waned with time, as in the 15th and 16th centuries Buddhist
monks from the Dhyana Sect were famous for going to war to serve the
homeland.382
120
Violent Imagery
Chinese Buddhism utilized violent imagery and stories to expound
on the path. And like all religions, this use of brutal imagery and lan-
guage helped ease the acceptance of other, more literal interpretations of
the Buddha dharma, which led directly to Buddhist involvement in wars
and other sadistic practices. As David Gray noted in the Journal of Bud-
dhist Ethics, there is a significant body of tantric Buddhist literature that
evokes violent imagery or describes violent ritual practices.383
An early Buddhist scholar, Buddhajnana (c. 8th century), the founder
of an important school of tantric exegesis, composed two works on the
fierce deity Heruka. His Sriherukasadhana contains the following passage:
[Visualize] a vajra generated from [the seed-syllable] hrih, which blazes
like a destroying fire. From that the compassionate fierce one is born, the
great terrifier (mahabhairava) bearing a skull garland.384
Utilizing the reasoning similar to that of earlier Buddhists, Bud-
dhajnana advanced what would become a very popular interpretation
in tantric Buddhist circles. He claimed that Buddhist deities such as
Heruka appear in fierce forms, but their ferocity is not believed to be a
manifestation of mental afflictions such as anger. Rather, he claimed that
these deities ferocity is rooted in compassion.385
The Mahavairocana-abhisambodhi Tantra (c. 7th century; first true Bud-
dhist tantra) notes: When subduing hated foes, one should employ the
fierce fire.386 Bhavyakirti (c. tenth century) was an abbot of the Vikra-
masila monastery in Eastern India whose commentary on the Cakrasam-
vara Tantra (which describes a fierce homa rite for the purpose of subdu-
ing a rival kingdom) was as follows:
Then the destruction of all, arising from the vajra, is held [to be accom-
plished] with the great meat. It is the dreadful destroyer of all the cruel
ones. Should one thus perform without hesitation the rites of eating, fire
sacrifice (homa), and sacrificial offerings (bali) with the meats of dogs
and pigs, and also with [the meat of] those [chickens] that have copper
[colored] crests, everything without exception will be achieved, and all
kingdoms will be subdued.387
He follows this exposition with the usual rationalizing language
about how the ten non-virtuous actions are not necessarily downfalls
for [those who have realized] the reality of selflessness.388
One last story about a ninth-century Chinese monk Juzhi Yizhi illus-
trates further the fusion of blood and spirit. Juzhi is famous for the fol-
lowing story, which appears as a koan (a story, the meaning of which can-
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not be understood by rational thinking but may be accessible through

intuition) in various collections:
Gutei raised his finger whenever he was asked a question about Zen. A
boy attendant began to imitate him in this way. When anyone asked the
boy what his master had preached about, the boy would raise his finger.
Gutei heard about the boys mischief. He seized him and cut off his finger.
The boy cried and ran away. Gutei called and stopped him. When the boy
turned his head to Gutei, Gutei raised up his own finger. In that instant
the boy was enlightened.389
Chinese Buddhism and the Korean War

Zhao Puchu [d. 2000] reiterated the importance of a religious follower
loving his nation more than his religion. Loving ones nation is primary
while loving ones religion is secondary in that the existence of ones reli-
gion depends on the existence of ones nation.390
In the past century, as China grew from a backward, feudal society
into a world power, Buddhist thinkers and spiritual leaders had to keep
up or risk their marginalization within the society. And being able to
find much precedent within their religion for backing state-sponsored
military actions came in handy as they worked with 20th -century Com-
munist leaders to become the de-facto state religion in the officially
atheist nation.
The new Communist countrys first military campaign was the Ko-
rean War, which pitted the rising power against the United States, us-
ing Korea as the proxy. Religious leaders were strong proponents of the
conflict. The Venerable Xindao, addressing 187 monks and nuns, traced
his beliefs in restorative violence back to the Buddha himself. He spoke
to the Committee of Buddhist Circles in Nan Chang for Resisting America and
Assisting Korea on March 11, 1951:
The best thing is to be able to join the army directly and learn the spirit
in which Sakyamuni, as the embodiment of compassion and our guide to
Buddha dharma, killed robbers to save people and suffered hardship on be-
half of all living creatures. To wipe out the American imperialist demons
who are breaking world peace is, according to Buddhist doctrine, not only
blameless, but actually will give rise to merit as well.391
A bit later, in June of 1951, Buddhists in Jiuquan, in Guansu Province,
assured that Buddhists were family members of the Chinese nation. As
such, they should not hesitate to help in the war effort:
[We Buddhists] should dispel all misgivings in observing precepts that
we would perhaps violate the precept of non-killing if we donate the
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airplane or cannons [to the war effort], which are instruments of killing.
[We] dare to assure that one who practices the bodhisattvas path will
take up a knife and kill evil ones so that the good people may live in peace
and happiness . . . we are determined to eliminate all evil enemies through
killing for stopping killing.392
The Buddhist leader, Venerable Juzan (d. 1984), urged his fellow Bud-
dhists to work with the Communist leadership, arguing that compassion
and killing were not necessarily contradictory but dialectically comple-
mented each other. Juzan quoted an oft-used passage from the Yogacara
Bodhisattva precepts text to demonstrate that one may kill others if the
killing is for the sake of saving more lives.393 He used this basis to justify
Buddhist aid to the Chinese state in the Korean conflict:
We Buddhists uphold peace, yet America is the deadly enemy of peace.
Therefore, we must reject American imperialism in order to safeguard
peace . . . Now, the people of Korea have been severely tortured by impe-
rialist America; assisting Korea will safeguard not only the nation and the
world, but also Buddhism.394
A recent article in the Journal of Global Buddhism by Xue Yuof the
Chinese University of Hong Kong, explored the specific relationship
between this mid-20th century Chinese Buddhist leader and the Korean
War. In it he noted: I investigate how Juzan urged his fellow Buddhists
to work with the Communist leadership, and how he justified govern-
ment policies on Buddhism by reinterpreting Buddhist doctrines.395
Juzan was not reinterpreting Buddhist doctrines. In fact, Xue Yus
statement to this effect is another example of the great problem with
scholars undertaking research on their own faiths: they exhibit an un-
willingness to acknowledge the fusion of violence and the sacred that lies
at the heart of their own faith tradition.
While it is certainly true that the Buddha said: Thou shalt not kill, it
is just as true that in the lore of his own life (as well as past lives) stories
may be found of instances when the Buddha himself did kill, and justi-
fied it in a variety of ways. Additionally, the reinterpretation of Bud-
dhist practice, if we are really justified in calling it that, began almost as
soon as the Buddha was dead. Certainly, by the middle of the 20th century
there was a body of Buddhist just war theory that could be found in
original scripture, exegesis and other Chinese Buddhist texts.
India
India was the birthplace of Buddhism. About 2,500 years ago, Prince
Siddhartha Gautama (born in 566 B.C.E.) sat down under a pipal tree in
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Bodh Gaya (in the Bihar state in northeastern India) and received the en-
lightenment that would inspire one of the worlds great religions. Bodh
Gaya remains the most important Buddhist pilgrimage destination on
Earth.
As such, India has a special place in Buddhist history and lore, and it
is considered to offer one of the gentlest examples of the spiritual path.
Many scholars draw a distinction between the more bellicose Asian ver-
sion of Buddhism and its Indian manifestation. However, even here, in
the birthplace of the religion, we can find many examples of the more
muscular, state-oriented spirituality that is so clearly in evidence in Chi-
na and Japan.
Violence in Indian Buddhism

Buddhist scholar Stephen Jenkins described the world of the ancient
Indian ascetic as violent and dangerous:
Those who lost debates are often described as being swallowed up by the
earth, drowning in the Ganges or spitting up blood and dying. It was not
uncommon for the stakes to be death or conversion. The threat to split
someones head was typical of intellectual challenges and occurred often
. . . in early Buddhist literature. The fact that the threat was taken very
seriously is shown [in the Arya-Bodhisattva-gocara-upayavisaya-vikurvana-
nirdesa-sutra] by Satyavacas terror and the presence of Vajrapani, who
often works violence on the Buddhas behalf.396
Jenkins also noted that in another, earlier sutra, a non-believer made
the mistake of challenging the Buddha to a debate. When he hesitated
in answering a key question, Vajrapani threatened to split his head open
with a blazing vajra, a handheld weapon that later became the primary
symbol of the power of compassion.397
We find other examples of institutionalized violence in India. As Jen-
kins, again, noted:
The location of inscriptions (such as those in Nalanda, the great north
Indian monastic university, that glorifies the gore-smeared swords of
widow-making Buddhist kings) in a monastic university of vast interna-
tional prestige suggests that Buddhists, rather than being conflicted or
duplicitous, found it appropriate to publicly honor, and so validate mili-
tary violence.398
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy shared another story of a great
Indian Buddhist scholar who discovered within Buddhism the seeds of
not only contemplation, but also murder and destructive violence.
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An important passage discusses punishment in the Precious Garland (Rat-

navali), a letter to a king from the great Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna
[c. 200; a Brahmin from southern India who, in some Mahayana traditions,
is regarded as a second Buddha] . . . To maintain social order, punishment
is a regrettable necessity. But the king should not punish out of anger or
a desire for revenge. Instead, he should inflict punishment out of compas-
sion, especially compassion for the criminals themselves, whose destruc-
tive actions may have condemned them to many lifetimes of suffering.399
Not to make too much of a point of it, but the ongoing desire of Bud-
dhists to save the lost (designated criminals, miscreants and unbeliev-
ers) through corporeal punishment and even murder sounds not unlike
the loving ministrations applied by the Inquisition (14801834), which
applied various tortures to nonbelievers in the hopes of saving them from
eternal damnation (see above).
Ashoka
The most important temporal leader within Buddhism is King Asho-
ka, who represents the prototype of the spiritually realized civil leader.
He was an Indian emperor who ruled most of the Indian subcontinent
from 269-232 B.C.E. His empire included present-day Pakistan, Afghani-
stan, Bangladesh, parts of Iran and much of India. After a series of wars
of conquest, he embraced Buddhism. He dedicated himself to the propa-
gation of the religion across Asia, establishing monuments marking sev-
eral significant sites in the life of Gautama Buddha. According to legend,
Ashoka was a devotee of ahimsa (nonviolence), love, truth, tolerance and
vegetarianism.
For our purposes, however, Ashoka is a perfect example of the dis-
connect within Buddhism or, as Brian Daizen Victoria put it, the surface,
non-violent image of Buddhism and the subterranean, hidden darkness
within the path. As the original Indian Buddhist lay-leader, Ashoka set
the example of how to weave violence into the purportedly non-violent
creed.
Although revered as the most important Buddhist king, Ashoka
slaughtered 18,000 Jains (an Indian religion that prescribes pacifism and
a path of non-violence toward all living beings) after becoming dharma-
Ashoka. Brian Daizen Victoria painted the non-idealized picture of this
Buddhist leader:
Ashoka maintained an army and used force . . . Beyond that, one Buddhist
description of his life, the Sanskrit Ashokavandana [c. 2nd century], records
that he ordered eighteen thousand non-Buddhist adherents executed be-
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cause of a minor insult to Buddhism on the part of a single one. On another

occasion, he forced a Jain follower and his entire family into their house
before having it burnt to the ground. He also maintained the death penalty
for criminals, including his own wife, whom he executed.400
In one sense, it might appear easy to dismiss King Ashokas peculiari-
ties as simply an outlying example of Buddhism run amok. However, he is
revered to this day within Buddhist tradition. As the Venerable Shravasti
Dhammika (a distinguished lecturer and Buddhist monk from Australia)
recently wrote:
It is also very clear that Buddhism was the most influential force in Asho-
kas life and that he hoped his subjects likewise would adopt his religion.
It is also very clear that Ashoka saw the reforms he instituted as being a
part of his duties as a Buddhist. The contents of Ashokas edicts make it
clear that all the legends about his wise and humane rule are more than
justified and qualify him to be ranked as one of the greatest rulers . . . His
edicts were imbued with the Buddhist values of compassion, moderation,
tolerance and respect for all life.401
Reverberations: Violence in Indian Buddhism Today

A recent article concerning a Buddhist rampage explores how the ac-
ceptable, though often unacknowledged, violence implicit in the Bud-
dhist path can allow its practitioners license to react to events with wild
and violent abandon:
A Buddhist monk was found dead in mysterious circumstances here Sun-
day, and in the aftermath of violence by his followers the police have filed
a case of murder against a builder and some office-bearers of a Buddhist
organization.
When news spread in the afternoon that the monk, Buddhabhanti Badant
Sanghraj Thairo, had committed suicide by hanging himself in his tene-
ment at Deonar in northeast Mumbai, Buddhists in the neighborhood
took to the streets. Suspecting foul play, they threw stones at vehicles and
buildings in the vicinity and torched at least three vehicles. Even as po-
lice reinforcements were rushed to control the violence, the angry crowds
continued to swell.402
Tibet
From India, we move north to Tibet. Certainly, in recent times, no
country better represents the oppression that Buddhists can suffer under
the yoke of an unjust and irreligious government (in this case, Commu-
nist China). Additionally, in the person of Tenzin Gyatso (b. 1935), His
126
Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism has come to represent
the potential fusion of non-violence with contemporary geo-politics, as
the spiritual leader has unwaveringly preached a patient and non-mili-
tary reaction to the conflict with his Chinese oppressors.
Alas.
If only this current Dalai Lama was representative of Tibetan Bud-
dhist history. The truth, however, like so much of hidden Buddhism, is
far more contradictory. Looking into the Tibetan annals, we find that the
country was formed out of violence, and that the power of the Fifth Da-
lai Lama (Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso, d. 1682) was consolidated through
violence and war.
It is stated clearly on the official website of the Tibetan government
in exile that the Fifth Dalai Lama founded the Ganden Phodrang Govern-
ment of Tibet in 1642, the first strong, central government in that coun-
trys history. What is not noted, however, is the manner in which this
came to be. The Fifth Dalai Lama was installed as civil leader of Tibet
through warfare.
The war of ascension took place at the instigation of Sonam Rapten,
the Regent to the Fifth Dalai Lama. In the winter of 1640, Gushri Khan,
the Mongol king, defeated all the Dalai Lamas enemies. The Fifth Dalai
Lama was then seated on the throne of the deposed king.
After taking the throne, the Dalai Lama spent the rest of his life re-
writing history to fit the war of conquest in with the non-violent phi-
losophy of Buddhism. Immediately after the end of the war, he rushed his
Song of the Queen of Spring (The History of Tibet by the fifth Dalai Lama,
completed in 1643, celebrating the Dalai Lamas coming to power in 1642;
he represented this event as a new spring in the history of the country)
into print with a journalistic timeliness to influence the way people
perceived the conquest.403 He suggested in this work:
Highly advanced Buddhist yogins may be able to undertake acts of violence
that serve salutary ends without themselves experiencing afflictive emo-
tions. Under certain circumstances, cases of murder, suicide, self-sacrifice,
warfare and other types of violence may be regarded as legitimate within
Buddhist discourse, so long as they are carried out by people capable of
undertaking them without generating harmful mental attitudes.404
Derek Maher noted how the religious leader framed the military cam-
paign in Sacralized Warfare: The Fifth Dalai Lama and the Discourse of
Religious Violence:
The [Fifth] Dalai Lama not only embeds Gushri Khans military exploits
within a Buddhist narrative, but he intends to evoke an identity between
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Buddha and the Khan . . . Additionally, the Khan is depicted as a dharmaja,

or a religious king, a class of sovereign that is regarded as particularly just
and righteous because they dedicate their rule to promoting the interests
of Buddhism.405
Of course, it isnt so easy to scrub the blood from the hands of a mur-
derer, even when the criminal is on your side. Even more so, because the
Fifth Dalai Lama was utilizing Buddhist imagery and narratives to justify
a victory in what was essentially a sectarian battle between two compet-
ing Buddhist sects.406
But to the victor go the spoils, and there is no greater booty than
control of the historical narrative of an event. Despite the fact that the
losers in the war viewed the Gushri Khans conquests and the political
ascendancy of the Dalai Lama as permeated with sectarian agendas, the
Dalai Lama was able to reconfigure the entire symbolic universe of the
new Tibet, placing the institution of the Dalai Lama at its core,407 where
it remains to this day.
Born of Violence and Violent Still

Any Buddhist will tell you that the rules of karma would demand that
once actors undertake a violent act, they are certain to have this repaid
sometime in the future. And so, a devout Buddhist might well view the
violence in Tibet in 1959 as simply the karmic recompense for past sins.
However, Tibetan Buddhists learned a different lesson from the
founding of their country and its justification by the Fifth Dalai Lama
in his Song of the Queen of Spring. They learned how to validate their own
violence when fighting for what they believed in, and wanted.
This can be seen in the recent history of the country. When Tibetan
monks originally rebelled against the Chinese Communist occupation in
1959, they used the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, (c. 150; considered by English-
translator Kosho Yamamoto to be one of the three great masterpieces
of Mahayana Buddhism) as scriptural evidence to authorize their armed
resistance.408
Mikel Dunham examined the bellicose role of Tibetan Buddhist
monks in his recent book, Buddhas Warriors: The Story of the CIA-Backed
Tibetan Freedom Fighters, the Chinese Communist Invasion, and the Ultimate
Fall of Tibet. In it, he recounted how the non-violent Buddhist monks
of Eastern Tibet rose as warriors and defenders of the Buddhist faith.
Whole monasteries in Kham armed themselves, claiming the mantle of
128
monk-warrior, and waged war against the Chinese occupiers. As Dun-

ham noted of the Khampa:
Buddhism provided the Khampa with a moral code and a sense of one-
ness with all things Tibetan. The Khampa code of conduct while killing an
enemy was the same as when picking flowers for the Buddhas altar: pro-
ceed with unquestioning devotion, prostrate to the lamas, but stand up
for your rights. Whole monasteries armed themselves and went to war.409
Thailand
Buddhism reached Thailand as early as the 2nd century B.C.E., though
the form currently practiced in that country (Theravada Buddhism) ar-
rived in the sixth century. It was made the state religion with the estab-
lishment of the Thai kingdom of Sukhothai (the forerunner to the Thai
state) in the thirteenth century. Today, nearly 95% of Thai are Theravada
Buddhists.
Like other Buddhist countries, Thailand has not remained untouched
by Buddhisms violent hand. Thailand has developed a tradition that
mimics the Tibetan Khampa the warlike Buddhist warriors of rugged
Eastern Tibet in their own ideal of the military monk.
Buddhist Apocalypse
In the countrys past we find a series of military activities relating to
the millennial accounts, a belief in a messianic return of a figure called
Maitreya, a bodhisattva who is to appear on Earth as a successor of the
historic Buddha. Most Buddhists accept the legend of Maitreya as a state-
ment about an event that will take place when dharma (teachings of the
Buddha) will have been forgotten on Earth.
However, like many messianic believers, Thai Buddhists concluded
that contemporary woes could lead to the return of Maitreya and the
coming of ultimate bliss. This return would take place after a period of
apocalyptic bloodletting that could be likened, in Christian terminology,
to the stories of Armageddon from the Book of Revelation, the last book
of the New Testament. Between 1699 and 1959, in eight revolts against
Siamese and Thai governments, Buddhist revolutionaries held to a belief
that the imminent catastrophes of those conflicts would to be followed
by material and spiritual bliss.410
129
Military Monk
Buddhist just war theory can be followed through Thai history. In
the 1970s, Phra Kittiwuttho (b. 1936; propagated an interpretation of
Buddhism that justified centralized authoritarian rule and the use of
force to eradicate political threats to the establishment411) sanctioned op-
posing Thai communists on two concepts: 1) the antagonist to the state
is a manifestation of mara, an embodiment of moral depravity and 2) kill-
ing such a manifestation is not the same as killing a human being.412
These streams of thought led to an extreme interpretation of Bud-
dhism, an outlier even in terms of a world where Buddhism and violence
have often been intertwined. As in Tibet, Thai Buddhism created the
military monk, Buddhist practitioners who are fully ordained monks,
while simultaneously serving as armed soldiers. These monks embody
the fusion of the militant nation-state and Thai Buddhist principles.413
It is interesting to note how very similar dynamics from different
religions mimic each other. Thai Buddhisms warrior-monk echoes a
similar spiritual movement of the Christian faith. Barbara Ehrenreich de-
scribed such a caste in medieval Europe, a precursor of Thai Buddhisms
military monk:
It was the Crusades [10951291] that led to the emergence of a new kind of
warrior, the warrior-monk, pledged to lifelong chastity as well as to war . . .
The way of the knight at least that of the chaste and chivalrous knight
became every bit as holy as that of the cloistered monk.414
Michael Jerryson observed in Militarizing Buddhism: Violence in South-
ern Thailand, that the warrior-monk ideal has evolved within contem-
porary Thai Buddhism:
Since 2002, Buddhist spaces have become militarized by the very exis-
tence of military personnel working and living in them . . . military per-
sonnel residing at it usually raise the outer walls and stretch barbed wire
around the entrance and perimeter. They also convert Buddhist pavilions
into barracks, transform sleeping quarters into bunkers and create look-
out posts near the entrances.415
This is not to say that all military men living within todays south-
ern Thai monasteries are monks, nor that all monks are soldiers, but the
nexus between the two is seamless, and there are many that wear both
mantles.
130
Sri Lanka
Historically, the great military conquests of the Sinhalese Kingdoms
in Sri Lanka (during medieval times) were conducted in the name of the
Buddhist tradition and often with the blessings of Buddhist monks.416
These religious efforts at temporal victory have not lessened, as contem-
porary Sri Lanka offers another well-documented case study of religious-
ly sanctioned armed conflict in Buddhism. Recently, a civil war caused
the death of hundreds of thousands of countrypersons, with the conflict
often framed in sacred terms.
The Sri Lankan people were embroiled in a civil war from 1983 to
2009, a battle that included terrorism, political and economic oppression
and open war between Sinhalese Buddhists and Tamil Hindus.
Members of the Buddhist political party JVP were alleged to have blurred
the lines between sacred duty and murder; they traced their justifications
back to the Sinhalese mytho-historical chronicle called the Mahavamsa. In
this work, the Buddhist king Duthagammani wages a sacred war against
foreign invaders led by the Tamil king Ejara in the second century B.C.E.
In the contemporary Buddhist view, killing the Tamil heathens did not
constitute murder because Tamil warriors were neither meritorious nor,
more importantly, Buddhist.417
History never dies. The Mahavamsa chronicle still rankles in Sri Lanka.
An article in the Sri Lanka Guardian by a Tamil writer laid the blame for
the violent turn to Sri Lankan Buddhism at the feet of this ancient text:
According to Buddhism, a person ordained as a Bikkhu [monk] should
practice Ahimsa (non-violence), Karuna (compassion), Metta (affection),
and Maithriya (loving-kindness) toward fellow humans, (irrespective of
race or religion), not only by words but also in his thoughts and action.
Unfortunately in Sri Lanka, due to the influence of the Mahavamsa, a Bud-
dhist Bikkhu is at liberty to engage in racist politics and promote Sinhala-
Buddhist chauvinism and hatred, as we see today.418
Buddhist religious ceremonies have been co-opted by the military,
echoing a similar synthesis in Japan, Tibet, Thailand and other countries.
Daniel Kent noted in Onward Buddhist Soldiers: Preaching to the Sri Lankan
Army, concerning Buddhist religious ceremonies:
[These] have been commissioned by the army to correspond with a large-
scale military operation that was about to begin in the north of the island.
The commander of every army base in the country had been ordered to
commission sermons during the week leading up to the operation. This
entire ceremony had been sponsored by the army in an attempt to bless its
soldiers, protect them and grant them success in battle.419
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Mongolia
As was already noted, Mongolian Buddhists played a central role in
the founding of Tibet, through prosecuting a war against a Buddhist clan
that was a rival to the Fifth Dalai Lama. Gushri Khan, a leader of the
Khoshut Khanate in Mongolia, defeated the Dalai Lamas enemies (1639
1642), displacing the rival dominant school of the Karmapas (one of the
four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism). After this military victory, the
Fifth Dalai Lama was seated on the throne of the deposed king. He hon-
ored Gushri Khan with the title of King of Tibet.
Gushri Khan was himself basing his military behavior on the earlier
thought of Mongolian Buddhist leaders. As Vesna Wallace noted in Le-
galized Violence: Punitive Measures of Buddhist Khans in Mongolia:
Khutukhtu Setsen Khung Taijis (d. 1586; the ruler of the Ordos Mongols)
. . . conveyed the message that at times it is necessary for a Buddhist ruler
to sanction acts of violence for the sake of establishing the dharma and for
securing inner stability of the state. As attested in the codes of law insti-
tuted by later Mongolian rulers, this message echoed for a long time in the
minds of Buddhist legislators and the penal systems they established . . .
the Mongol rulers severely punished those who disobeyed their religious
and secular ordinances.420
Violence permeated the Mongolian state until the government grew
less Buddhist, not more. From the middle of the 17th century until the first
half of the 20th century, Mongolian Buddhist nobles and monks engaged
in violence on behalf of their faith numerous times, and in many varia-
tions.421 Brutal punishments were meted out for the commitment of both
civil and religious crime until 1921, when the Mongolian Revolutionary
Government (an outgrowth of Soviet secular Communism) was formed.
It should be noted that during this long period of state-sponsored
corporeal justice, the penalties were applied after opening eulogies to
legislators who were recognized as high incarnate lamas and living Bud-
dhas, praised for their virtue, wisdom and unbiased compassion.422
A passage taken from Mongolias White History of the Tenfold Virtuous
Dharma (c. 16th century) exhibits the viciousness that could take place
not only under the aegis of Buddhist practice, but which might be visited
upon the Buddhist monks themselves:
If a monk breaks his precepts, disrobe him. Tie his hands tightly and paint
his face with ink. Place a black flag on his head. Put a robe around him and
beat him with a golden stick on his buttocks . . . Afterwards, banish him to
a faraway place. If one steals, blind his eyes. If one tells a lie, cut his tongue.
If one injures the state, take his life.
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Et Tu, United States?

According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life,423 Buddhism
is the third largest religion in America (behind Christianity and Juda-
ism), with as many as 10 million adherents. However, far from offering
a peaceful palliative to what is the most militarized nation currently on
Earth, American Buddhists embrace the contemporary American ethos
and, as so many Buddhists who came before them did, use their religion
to serve the state.
Buddhist practitioner Barbara OBrien noted in War and Buddhism:
Buddhist Teachings on War:
Today there are more than 3000 Buddhists serving in the United States
armed forces, including some Buddhist chaplains . . . During World War
II, approximately half of the troops in Japanese-American units such as
the 100th Battalion and the 442nd Infantry were Buddhists.
In the Spring 2008 issue of Tricycle, Travis Duncan wrote of the Vast Ref-
uge Dharma Hall Chapel at the U.S. Air Force Academy. At the dedica-
tion of the chapel, the Reverend Dai En Wiley Burch of the Hollow Bones
Rinzai Zen school said, Without compassion, war is a criminal activity.
Sometimes it is necessary to take life, but we never take life for granted.424
Final Thoughts
The Florentine political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli (d. 1527)
said: The great majority of humans are satisfied with appearances, as
though they were realities, and are often more influenced by things that
seem than by those that are.425
This has not changed to our era. An article by journalist Chris Mooney,
We Cant Handle the Truth, explored how we order reality by what we
feel, or what we already believe, independent of the facts, in this case,
discussing belief versus scientific actualities:
Its not just that people twist or selectively read scientific evidence to
support their preexisting views. According to research by Yale University
professor Dan Kahan and his colleagues, peoples deep seated views about
morality, and about the way that society should be ordered, strongly
predict whom they consider to be a scientific expert in the first place
people reject the validation of a scientific source because its conclusion
contradicts their deeply held views.426
This clinging to ones views can be seen in the context of this study.
For instance, one very important source for this chapter was Buddhist
Warfare, by Michael Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer (Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2010). Even before it was released, however, Buddhist follow-
133
ers were upset with the message not that they necessarily disagreed
with it on any factual grounds, just that they didnt want to believe it.
Michael Jerryson wrote an article in Religion Dispatches about the book
prior to its release, describing how Buddhists shape reality, as well as
how people would rather believe in propaganda than the harsh truth:
I realized that I was a consumer of a very successful form of propaganda.
Since the early 1900s, Buddhist monastic intellectuals such as Walpola
Rahula, D. T. Suzuki, and Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama,
have labored to raise Western awareness of their cultures and traditions
. . . presenting specific aspects of their Buddhist traditions while leaving
out others. In an effort to combat this view and to humanize Buddhists,
Mark Juergensmeyer and I put together [Buddhist Warfare]. It apparently
touched some nerves in the academic community before its release. Some
have objected to the cover [a Buddhist monk holding a gun], which they
feel is not an appropriate subject for Buddhism.427
We run into this intransigence in the face of Truth time after time.
Many faithful are unwilling to accept the violent-sacred observance in
their own spiritual path. This version of their creed, often more honest
than the image of a religion based in and leading to peace, comes into
conflict with the propaganda surrounding their creed.
I will state here, once again and clearly: all religions are paths of vi-
olence. And, whats more, all religions justify their violence within the
context of what they hold most sacred.
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Chapter Eight: War as Love
Thus far, this study has been concerned with the historical fusion be-
tween God and war, violence and the sacred in all religious paths. If this
book ended here, it would be but one more academic investigation, an-
other uncomfortable truth that we could consign to the past and ignore.
But the union of violence and the sacred continues unabated into our
own time and culture. By looking more closely at this dynamic as it plays
itself out in our contemporary social and political worlds, we can better
understand it.
In this section, I will briefly outline how contemporary conflicts are
often couched in the religious and spiritual terms that I have been exam-
ining. And then, in a longer section, I will examine the American experi-
ence since the attacks of September 11, 2001 and how the countrys
reaction to these events and subsequent wars are simply more of the
same: violence in the name of the sacred. And given how members of all
religious paths are steeped in the language, imagery and history of war as
religion, we can begin to appreciate why politicians and political leaders
utilize the language of the sacred to sell war and, even more disturbing,
why it successfully resonates within the general society.
Abrahams Curse
In 2008, Bruce Chilton wrote a book entitled Abrahams Curse, in
which he traced much of the sacrificial violence in the Abrahamic faiths
back to the event on Mount Moriah (Genesis 22) when God demanded
that Abraham sacrifice his son, Isaac and Abraham concurred. Here,
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the idea of Gods violent rapacity and abject human fealty to this sacral
bloodlust was written into the spiritual DNA of Judaism, Christianity
and Islam.
While it is vital to situate the contemporary war as love dynamic on
its historical foundation, it is just as important to see how this ethos is
central to todays conflicts around the world. I touched briefly on this in
the previous sections, but now will take a more in depth look at the here
and now.
In most bellicose situations, the state (or rebel leaders, in the case
of non-state actors) sets itself up as an ultimate truth, one whose geo-
political goals are almost always tied to the will of God:
The moral certitude of the state in wartime is a kind of fundamentalism.
And this dangerous, messianic brand of religion, one where self-doubt is
minimal, has come increasingly to color the modern world of Christianity,
Judaism and Islam . . . there is a danger of a growing fusion between those
in the state who wage war and those who believe they understand and can
act as agents for God.428
Coupled with this is the insidious manner in which the idea of hu-
man sacrifice, as an ultimate manner of worship (as first laid out in the
Abrahamic story from Genesis), has become intertwined with not only
religious worship, but also fealty to the state.
The rhetoric of sacrifice has been passed on from its religious sources to
the lexicon of politically inspired violence . . . Since the end of the 19th cen-
tury, powerful movements of fundamentalist interpretation Christian,
Jewish and Muslim have arisen that demand literal sacrifice from their
adherents . . . we live in an age of sacrifice.429
Sacrificial violence, both suffered by believers and inflicted by them
on others, has woven itself deeply into the pattern of Western history.
This impulse led to more child sacrifice in the 20th century than in any
previous era. In recent times, adolescents and pre-adolescents have
joined up with the Lords Resistance Army in Uganda, the Shining Path
in Peru, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Aryan Nation in the
United States, national fronts throughout Europe and Australia, Maoist
guerillas in Asia430 and even, counting eighteen and nineteen year olds as
adolescents, in the United States army, where they are sent to the ulti-
mate sacrifice in the name of God and country.
Love, War and Sacrifice in the 21st Century

Virtually all war language, whether describing religious wars or secu-
lar conflicts, is laced with religious imagery. One could argue that there is
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no such thing as a secular war, except along the very edges of statecraft,
where companies such as Dyncorp, or persons such as Muammar Gad-
hafi (Libya), or petty princes in Africa and the Middle East collect bands
of mercenaries to fight wars. Other than these few and small examples,
the vast majority of state -sponsored violence can still be collected under
the umbrella of sacred violence, bringing war and God together as the
ultimate form of worship.
For instance, Jewish thinking on war and the State of Israel is often
deeply affected by the specter of sacral violence. Pulitzer Prize nomi-
nated Professor Regina Schwartz noted in The Curse of Cain: The Violent
Legacy of Monotheism, the linkage between contemporary Israel and the
ancient, Biblical precursor:
The founders and leaders of modern Israel have not thought about their
new nation without invoking the ancient one. Their rhetoric is heavily
laced with biblical citations. In his opening remarks in the Middle East
peace talks in Madrid in 1991, Yitzhak Shamir intoned the psalmists If I
forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning and the Hag-
gadahs Next year in Jerusalem, and he began with an assertion of the
complete continuity between the biblical and the present one. The an-
cient homeland blurs into the national agenda.431
The specifics of how this formulation infuses Israeli thinking are not
difficult to discern. War correspondent Christopher Hedges noted that
he had heard settlers on the West Bank argue that Palestinian towns,
which had been Muslim since the 7th century, belong to them because
it says so in the Bible.432 Jewish citizens in traditional movements
throughout Israel have cited the Torah to define the political boundaries
of todays nation, and the Founders of the state utilized Biblical stories
from the Books of Deuteronomy, Joshua and Judges to underpin their
arguments for the divinely sanctioned war to birth Israel.433
Islam, as we all know, has certainly produced no more peaceful con-
temporary events than the stories of the Torah have. As we have already
seen, the Islamic conception of war for religion is based in a deeply root-
ed understanding of the integration of politics and faith. The juristic
ideal of the unitary dar al-Islam (house of Islam) with leadership at once
religious and political has impressed itself deeply on historical Muslim
polities.434
Finding echoes of this in Islamic political activities today fusing
violence and religious obligation is not difficult. The Muslims who
flew the airplanes into the World Trade Centers did so in the service of
Allah, as have hundreds of other suicide bombers over the past 30 years.
137
In keeping with the idea of child sacrifice, the age of these religious war-
riors grows younger and younger the Afghan government places the
figure of trained child suicide terrorists at 5,000.435 This represents but
one of the countries affected with this disease.
From Osama bin Laden, who said Peace be upon our Prophet, Mu-
hammad ibn Abdallah, who said, I have been sent with the sword be-
tween my hands to ensure that no one but God is worshipped,436 to the
Shia scholar Murtaza Mutahhari (d. 1979): The shahid [warrior in the
name of God] can be compared to a candle whose job is to burn out and
get extinguished in order to shed light for the benefit of others, Islamic
religious leaders have issued calls for sacrifice and murder in the name
of God, always based on their reading of their violent religious scripture.
At Mutahharis funeral, the Ayatollah Khomeini praised the scholar, as-
serting: Islam grows through sacrifice and martyrdom of its cherished
ones.437
The perversity in this realm knows few bounds. Christopher Hedges
related a story of a Palestinian father who egged his own children on to
become martyrs in the name of God, and the Palestinian cause:
Rayyan gave two of his sons ages fifteen and sixteen money to join
the youths who throw rocks at Israeli checkpoints. His youngest, Mo-
hammad, was crippled by an Israeli bullet. All three, according to their
father, strive to be one thing: martyrs for Palestine. I only pray that God
will choose them, he said.438
While it is certainly de rigueur these days in the United States to high-
light this dynamic within Islam, to the point that the major American
news commentator Bill OReilly could say, Muslims killed us on 911439
on national television and suffer no professional repercussions, the fact
remains that Christianity, and specifically American Christianity, is no
less prone to sacred violence than Muslims or Jews. And the United
States has at its disposal armaments so frightening that it could unilater-
ally choose to initiate the Apocalypse, as envisioned in its Bible.
In the book Is Religion Killing Us?, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer noted,
Most Christians, including those in the United States, have rejected Je-
suss nonviolent power and a nonviolent God while adopting superior
violence as Lord and Savior.440
I will treat the subject of Americas sacred violence in the next sec-
tion. It should be noted, however, that I am not singling out America or
Christianity as in any way special in this war as love dynamic. However,
as the United States is currently the largest military actor in the world,
it is therefore de facto the most dangerous violent force today. It would
138
behoove us to take a more jaundiced look at this countrys motivations

and behavior, instead of allowing Americans to continue blithely on a
destructive path while believing things such as this:
Most [U.S.] citizens eagerly embraced the explanations of leaders who
said we were attacked because of our basic goodness and the base evil of
our attackers. We, therefore, can rightfully hate them, hunt them down
and kill them in a permanent war against terrorism. God, of course, is on
our side.441
America: A Case Study in Sacred Violence

Hypocrisy in America is not a sin, but a necessity and a way of life. It makes
possible armories of mass destruction side by side with the proliferation
of churches, cults and charities. Hypocrisy holds the nation together so
that it can preach, and practice what is does not preach.442
There is no country that so worships the fresh, the new and the future,
as does the United States. This country has always represented a teleo-
logical arrow pointing excitedly to the next invention, the latest tech-
nological gadget and the most recent cultural or social creation. Since
the first locomotive rumbled west in the middle of the 19th century, the
United States has believed that salvation was just around the corner, and
if not in the form of the Apocalypse, than perhaps it would come through
its ingenious innovations.
The cult of modernity in the United States, however, has in no way
altered the God is war dynamic. As Friedrich Nietzsche (d. 1900) stated
at the beginning of our frantic age of progress, calamity lies concealed in
the absurd guilelessness and blind confidence of modern ideas.443 Tech-
nology, God and war sometimes fuse together in the United State into a
calamitous modern social stew.
One thing progress has done is to advance our means of destruc-
tion, to quicken the pace of sacrifice, to invent new and more horrifying
manners of proving our love for God with the destruction of the other,
as well as developing gleaming new methods of keeping our sacrificial
victims barely alive, short of limbs and eyes and pieces of skull, living
testaments to how very deeply we are committed to our God and His
blood-lust.
Nietzsche said that anyone who fathoms the calamity concealed be-
neath our faith in progress and Christian-European morality suffers
from an anxiety that is past all comparison.444 I concur, as I am up nights
tossing and turning, trying to figure out what, if anything, I can do to
139
help stem the orgy of self-destruction that, I fear, bears down upon us
from the near future.
So I have written this book, a fittingly impotent act by a man operat-
ing outside of the political and cultural mainstream. With this work, I
fancy myself joining ranks with a long line of prophets from the Biblical
Isaiah to Bill McKibben (b. 1960), who lives in Vermont and bitterly de-
scribes the environmental disaster that he warns is about to sweep away
several thousand years of human civilization and its progress.
As in all cultures, violence and religion are at the heart of the Amer-
ican psyche. In keeping with the universal idea of sacral violence, the
more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support
the torture of suspected terrorists. In recent polls, people unaffiliated
with any religious organization were least likely to approve it.445 Hav-
ing removed themselves from the bondage of religious thinking, so-called
secular citizens were able to judge actions by their own merits, outside
of the grim history of religions sacred brutality.
The belief that violence is often religiously sanctioned and the fact,
as we saw in the first section of this book, that it can feel spiritually ca-
thartic in the short term for most members of a society has led the
United States to become the single greatest exporter of carnage in to-
days world.
America: The New Israel

Contrary to the American myth and the illusion of American sinless-
ness, the United States is a country founded on some of the worst crimes
against humanity genocide of Native Americans and enslavement of
Africans . . .446
Underpinning the sacred violence is the belief that the United States
has replaced Israel as Gods chosen people. As absurd as this might sound,
it is no joke and the sense of exceptionalism that it engenders is both
frightening and dangerous.
Nineteenth-century author Herman Melville captured the particular
American spirit:
We Americans are the peculiar chosen people the Israel of our time; we
bear the ark of the liberties of the world. God has predestined, mankind
expects, great things from our race . . . the rest of the nations must soon be
in our rear. We are the pioneers of the world, the advance guard, sent on
through the wilderness of untried things to break the path into the New
World that is ours.447
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As Melvilles quote illustrates, America promotes itself as a religious

or mythic entity. In a perverse conflation of nation and God seen in
almost all empires before us, whether it was ancient Rome, 16th-century
Spain or Nazi Germany large numbers of Americans adopt religious
attitudes toward their country, overlaying the sacred violence of the
Abrahamic tradition on top of the nation-state. The country functions
as a type of religion itself, the object of devotion and sacrifice that is nor-
mally reserved for God.448
A recent survey by the Brookings Institution (one of the oldest and
most prominent research organizations in Washington D.C. track-
ing public policy and views) found that 58% of Americans agreed with
the statement: God has granted America a special place in human his-
tory.449 The country is often portrayed in language reminiscent of Jesus
Christ, with political leaders going so far as to identify the nation with
Christ. The churchs teachings of the risen Son of God have been trans-
ferred wholesale to the United States. The nation is treated with a rever-
ence that amounts to worship.450
Professor Robert H. Nelson (School of Public Policy at the University
of Maryland), writing for the PBS website, said:
In his State of the Union address [January 25, 2011], President Obama of-
fered the latest updating of the American national faith. We are a nation
uniquely created, he said, on common hopes and a common creed. This
mission is what sets us apart as a nation. We . . . must be not just a place
on a map, but the light to the world. John Winthrop [d. 1649; Puritan
leader and founding father of Massachusetts] could not have said it better
. . . We are hearing again the basic story of America: We have sinned, we
will be called to account, we must reform our ways, but God will bless us
if we now heed his commands. We are the chosen people.451
The Fourth of July becomes a religious holiday for Americans. On In-
dependence Day 2006, President George W. Bush offered this homage to
American exceptionalism:
We offer our gratitude to all the American patriots, past and present, who
have sought to advance freedom and lay the foundations of peace. Because
of their sacrifice, this country remains a beacon of hope for all who dream
of liberty and a shining example to the world of what a free people can
achieve. May God continue to bless the United States of America.452
All of this talk about Americas light and its shining beacon ac-
tually has an ominous subtext to it. For the American messiah does
not come to inaugurate the Kingdom of God on peaceful clouds of glory.
Rather, he comes as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Book
of Revelation), using the force of his military, political and economic
141
dominance to subdue the rest of the globe. As Anglican priest Jeremy

Young noted in The Violence of God and the War on Terror: This is where
the myth of redemptive violence, the idea that evil can only be overcome
by force, is particularly influential upon the myth of America . . . the myth
of redemptive violence is the real religion of America.453
And since America considers itself the standard bearer of truth, and
follows closely Augustinian ideas concerning just war and his con-
ception of the notion that error has no right, those who disagree with
America are obviously in error. Because they are wrong and are resisting
the onward march of Truth, they have no right to hold onto their beliefs
nor to hold America to account for its actions nor to oppose Americas
God-given right to impose its own convictions upon them.454
Sacrificing for God and Country

The myth of religious America in which the country has been cho-
sen by God to perfect the world in its image is endemic in its culture.
Many young men and, more recently women, yearn to sacrifice them-
selves as Christ to the god of nation. After all, to fight a never-ending se-
ries of wars in Gods name, warriors are needed and plenty of them.
By bringing the sacred, the state and war together, the necessary pool of
willing soldiers can be assured.
The theology of Christs eternal sacrifice remains, as well as the incentive
for martyrs to emulate his ennobling death. Perhaps even more powerfully,
[we] capture the rhetoric of Hebrews in a secular form, offering young sol-
diers the immortality of national remembrance in exchange for their will-
ingness to shed the human blood that alone makes sacrifice effective.455
There are thousands of citations one could find to situate this idea
within Americas mainstream culture, but I will share just one pub-
lished in a small-town newspaper in Greensburg, Indiana, reporting on a
Memorial Day observance in 2008:
Memorial Day often brings tears of sadness with swellings of pride to
those who have had family members make the ultimate sacrifice in the
line of duty. Nowhere was that made more evident than at the annual Me-
morial Day event at South Park Cemetery. Honoring fallen soldiers, all the
way from the Revolutionary War to the current conflict in Iraq, was cause
enough for quite a crowd to gather to remember those who had paid with
their lives to keep the freedom Americans know alive . . . Sacrifices [are]
meaningless without remembrance . . . Pastor Keith Dover (Mt. Moriah
Baptist Church, Greensburg, IN) led the group in prayer: Let us fix our
eyes on Jesus, who gives all men, women and children the opportunity to
be free, he said.The ceremonys guest speaker, Rev. Jim Splitt (co-Pastor,
142
First Presbyterian Church of Adrian, MI), then addressed the crowd . .

. But never forget those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Our calling is
to honor the sacrifices of our country . . . The American Legion Ladies
Auxiliary 129 were then asked to place wreaths on crosses representing
every war in Americas long history. With the memorial wreaths hung
and blowing gently in the breeze, the Tree City Harmonizers graced the
crowd with their rendition of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Pastor Do-
ver then offered his benediction: We ask for blessings over our freedom,
nation, families and soldiers.456
For the record, the first stanza of the Battle Hymn of the Republic
goes thusly:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
American History: Our Violence is Gods Will

In America, God and war have a particular kinship: evoking God in the
midst of mass killing is inspirational . . . Divine sanction has been used
to give meaning to the Constitutions promise of equality, as well as to
license genocide . . . This impulse to blend God and war owes much to
the American temperament: Americans have always feared one (today,
nine out of ten call themselves believers) and loved the other (the United
States has fought in dozens of armed conflicts in the nations two-and-a-
third centuries). Not a few old warriors have admitted to thrilling to the
words of Onward Christian Soldiers.457
The fusion of God, nation and institutional slaughter goes back to the
very beginnings of the nation.
From the very first days of the American colonies, the settlers belief that
they were a chosen people was accompanied by an Old Testament belief
that God was a God of Warre. The image of the ancient Israelites and
their battles with their neighbors was used to justify wars against the
latter-day Amalekites, whether Indian or French, and God was held to
fight for America in those wars.458
From these beginnings, a nearly unbroken line of sacral violence may
be drawn down to our current era. In 1640, one New England assembly
passed a series of resolutions which included the following: 1) The Earth
is the Lords and the Fullness thereof; 2) The Lord may give the Earth or
any part of it to his Chosen People; and 3) We are the chosen people.459
This certainly gave the proper religious context for the slaughter that was
to take place over the next two centuries, as the European settlers con-
143
sidered the Native Americans to be Canaanites, their land equivalent

to Canaan and themselves the new Israelites. Robert Allen Warrior (b.
1963), an Osage Indian and professor at the University of Illinois, noted:
Many Puritan preachers were fond of referring to Native Americans as
Amalekites and Canaanites people who, if they would not be converted,
were worthy of annihilation. By examining such instances in theological
and political writings, in sermons and elsewhere, we can understand how
Americans self-image as a chosen people has produced rhetoric to jus-
tify domination.460
By the time of the Founding Fathers (c. 1770s), most of whom were
slave owners themselves, an almost never-ending series of military victo-
ries and territorial expansion against the Native Americans, French and
then the British had proven Gods providence and beneficence. To com-
plete the image of America as the new Israel, Benjamin Franklin wanted
the Great Seal of the United States to depict Moses, rod lifted, with the
Egyptian Army (British Redcoats) drowning in the Red Sea (Atlantic
Ocean).461
It is hard to deny that the Founding Fathers exhibited a very different
subtext to the beginnings of the country than the secular underpinnings
that are believed to be enshrined in the Constitution. John Quincy Ad-
ams (d. 1848; sixth president of the United States) said at a Fourth of July
speech in 1837, at Newburyport, Massachusetts:
Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is in-
dissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading
event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Decla-
ration of Independence first organized the social compact on the founda-
tion of the Redeemers mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of
human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?462
Timothy Dwight (d. 1817), President of Yale University, spoke of the
Revolution ushering in an America that would become the principle
seat of that new, that peculiar kingdom which shall be given to the saints
most high. Just prior to the Revolution, the American preacher Ebenezer
Baldwin insisted that the calamities of war would only help bring about
Gods plan for the New World,463 an apocalyptic strain in the American
zeitgeist that continues to this day.
This manner of thinking did not die with the Founding Fathers and
their contemporaries. During the Civil War (18611865), both sides
claimed the mantle of God, and God Himself was kept busy destroying
His enemies on both sides of the Mason Dixon Line.
144
The leaders of the Confederacy had no qualms about claiming that God
had uniquely raised the South up to do His work in the world. Christi-
anity held an exalted and powerful place in Confederate culture. [At the
same time] Civil War northern clergy believed that their cause was or-
dained by God. Part of their mission in this conflict was to punish the
South for seceding from the United States, a political community that was
indivisible because it was created by God. But as Northern propagandists
extolled the Christian virtues of their national Union and the spiritual
superiority of their society over a sinful South in need of Gods repentance,
the religious and political leaders of the Confederacy were building what
they perceived to be their own Christian civilization. Indeed, the Chris-
tian nation theme was even more prominent in the South than it was in
the North. They viewed the Confederacy as a refuge for the godly amid the
infidelity of the Union to which they once belonged.464
Even the wars most violent slaughter, Shermans slow motion, geno-
cidal march to the sea through Georgia in 1864, took on a sacred patina.
On this scorched earth campaign, echoing Old Testament dictums to
completely destroy the enemy, General William Sherman was heartened
to hear many of his 60,000 soldiers break into the Doxology in unison,
singing Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Flush with the Spirit
himself, Sherman intoned: Noble fellows! God will take care of them.465
Americans certainly didnt learn to disentangle God and war from
the most destructive war on domestic soil in the countrys history. At
the start of the SpanishAmerican War in 1898, U.S. Senator Albert Bev-
eridge (d. 1927; R-IN) took to the floor of the United States Capitol and
assured:
God has made us master organizers of the world to establish a system
where chaos reigns. He has given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm
the forces of reaction through the earth . . . Were it not for such a force as
this, the world would lapse into barbarism and night. And of all our race,
he has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in
the regeneration of the world.466
Among other things, this quote evinces how very little progress we
have made as a species in terms of spiritual issues in the past 5000 years.
This formulation of America the Good fighting against the forces of cha-
os and dissolution echoes the Babylonian creation myth, where Tiamat
represented the enemy, the chaos which threatens to destroy the or-
der of the world and Marduk is played by America, the god who will
give security to other nations provided that they accept its leadership
unquestioningly.467
William McKinley (d. 1901; 25th president of the United States), pres-
ident at the time of this particular war, found his solace for the slaughter
145
in God: I walked the floor of the White House night after night until
midnight. I went down on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for
light and guidance. His specific concern was over whether to annex the
Philippines. And the Almighty God answered his prayers: There was
nothing left to do but to take them all and to educate the Filipinos and
uplift and civilize and Christianize them. Three years later, half a mil-
lion Filipinos were dead.468
In 1906, the battle still raged in the Philippines between the liberat-
ing American force and the stubborn native population. America, cho-
sen by God to bring light to this world of chaos, could not be stopped,
however, and General Leonard Wood (d. 1927) sent the following cable
to President Theodore Roosevelt breathlessly recounting his victory over
the Filipino Muslims:
The enemy numbered six hundred including woman and children
we abolished them utterly, leaving not even a baby alive to cry for its dead
mother. This is incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved
by the Christian soldiers of the United States.469
The Presidents reply extolled the generals brilliant feat of arms and
the excellent manner in which he had uplifted the honor of the Ameri-
can flag.470
America barely had time to catch its breath from this Far-Eastern ad-
venture when God picked up the phone again: the storm clouds of World
War I formed. The clergy joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill, assuring
that God is on our side it is His will that the Germans be killed. Of
course, in Germany at the same time, their good pastors called upon their
young men to kill the godless allies, to please the very same Christian
God.471
After World War I, American theologians felt a need to better ground
the impetus for war on a solid Christian foundation. After all, the War
to end all Wars hadnt actually done so ergo the act of war itself must
be re-centered in the spirit life of the nation, so the next war might do
what the last was unable. Reinhold Niebuhr (d. 1971; the most influen-
tial religious leader of the 1940s and 1950s in American public affairs)
built his case for war on Augustines concept of original sin, arguing that
sometimes-righteous force is necessary to extirpate injustice and sub-
due evil in a sinful world.472 Not quite as gleeful as past commentators,
Niebuhr was considered the pre-eminent sober theologian of his era, and
therefore his words carried great weight.
That God smiled upon the American forces was sometimes borne out
by the facts on the ground. In addition to piling up military victories
146
through World War II, specific Acts of God sometimes aided the mili-
tary on its march to triumph.
As General George Pattons columns rolled into Belgium in December
1944, rain and snow slowed the advance, and gave the enemy cover. Pat-
ton ordered his chaplain to write a prayer for good weather. The skies
cleared for eight straight days; American air power decimated the Nazis.
Patton gave his chaplain a bronze star.473
Although the Korean War (19501953) and then Vietnam War (1961
1975) showed a decided lack of focus on Gods part, America regained its
spiritual balance with a series of incursions in which He had little choice
but to side with His chosen people. Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), a
quick bomb strike on Libya (1986) helped rebuild the relationship be-
tween the Almighty and the country, leading up to the First Gulf War
(19901991). Finally having mastered the medium of television, the war
played out more like a mini-series or video game than a real-life slaughter,
and made it clear that America, once again, was the force against which
chaos would collide in its never-ending attempt to undo all of the good
that America was wreaking throughout the world.
This self-righteous and God-sanctioned violence has been devastat-
ing in the world. Spending ten times more money on the military than on
health care between 1940 and 1996,474 the United States has sallied forth
on a destructive course from the Far East through the Middle East, into
Africa, Central and South America, leaving very few geographic regions
untouched by its bellicose interventions.
Despite constant protestations to be doing Gods work and bring-
ing order where once there reigned godless chaos, the fact remains that
Americans and their allies typically cause ten to twenty times more com-
bat casualties than American forces suffer.475 Even more disturbing, these
enemy military deaths represent a miniscule fraction of the total slaugh-
ter, as in recent wars, civilian deaths have accounted for up to 90% of all
fatalities.476
Additionally, the American military-industrial complex, engorged
with nearly half of the government budget, seeks out other manners
of exporting this form of love. The United States is the worlds largest
supplier of arms, manufacturing almost half of the weaponry sold on
the world market.477 For terrorists and warriors around the world, the
United States is the great gun bazaar and it is not at all unusual for
Americans involved in interventions abroad to be killed with American-
made weapons.
147
Lastly, it should be noted what broad support these policies have,

from the massive military budget to the history of incursions: between
60% and 85% of the American public support a military action after
it begins. For instance, in March 1966, 59% of Americans agreed with
American involvement in the Vietnam War.478 On the eve of the Iraq
War (2003), the incursion was supported by 62% of respondents, while
the First Persian Gulf War (1991) saw a 79% approval rate in its early
stages.479
George W. Bush, September 11, 2001, and Americas 21st-

Century Crusade
The troubling pattern of grievance followed by violent response justified
in relation to faith, God or sacred text is evident in the U.S. response to
the terrorist attacks: U.S. leaders peppered their pronouncements of re-
taliation . . . with references to God. The rhetoric of President Bush and
his advisors is eerily similar to that of Osama bin Laden and his supporters . . .
Each side poses the conflict as a struggle between good and evil . . . each
side justifies the deaths of civilians . . . each believes the grave depravity
can only be countered with lethal violence. Each invokes Gods name to
ground the righteousness of their cause.480
During the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, I and many
people around me were astounded by the religious and even spiritual
framing that George W. Bush used in describing the American pain and
response to the event. Even more so, we were amazed by how it reso-
nated with the American public and how the media kept parroting the
absurd framing of light and dark, good and evil, God and Satan. How
could people accept and even thrive on such a theistic approach to inter-
national politics?
In this final section, I will explore the specific language of God and
violence that was used in the decade or so following the heinous incident.
What should by now be clear something that I did not, at the time,
understand was why this faith-based lexicon resonated so deeply and
successfully within American culture: because virtually all American cit-
izens, from whatever religious background, grew up in traditions where
violence and the sacred were profoundly intertwined. True, the language
used in America in the 21st century is primarily that of Christianity, but
for Buddhists, Jews, Hindus and even Muslim-American patriots, there
is a personal religious history of fusing God and war, which made the
language of political leaders acceptable and even successful in framing
the institutional violence that the terrorist attacks unleashed.
148
Earlier ideas of America as the Chosen People influenced contempo-

rary political discourse well before the attacks, leading to a seamless at-
tribution of Gods will to the military response after the fact. If we
have to use force, Madeleine Albright (U.S. Secretary of State, 1997
2001) asserted, concerning Americas bombing raids in Serbia (1999), it
is because we are America! We are the indispensable nation!
George W. Bush echoed this language, insisting as he prepared the
country for its mission against the Taliban in Afghanistan: Our nation is
chosen by God and commissioned by history to be a model for the world.
Using the laws of deductive reasoning, U.S. violence was proposed to be
an instrument of Gods will.481
It is also important to note Bushs own fundamentalist views of Re-
demption coming only through Apocalypse,482 and how deeply even this
message resonates with many Christians, due to their conflation of vio-
lence and the return of the Messiah, as foretold in the Book of Revelation.
Anglican minister Jeremy Young noted in The Violence of God and the War
on Terror:
George W. Bush holds a very conservative, even fundamentalist form of
Christian belief that anticipates cosmic catastrophe as part of the divine
plan for the redemption of the world, a belief shared by many Americans.
From the apocalyptic perspective, the prospect of major world conflict is
to be welcomed because it is a sign of the end and a preparation for the
second coming of Christ.483
When combined with the belief that American violence is sanctioned
by God, due to the United States status as the heritors of the original
covenant between God and the Jewish people, a dynamic emerges where
many Americans believe that their violence is not only ordained but also
necessary to fulfill Gods grand plan.
Political leaders hardly had to lead the public to a conception of sa-
cred violence, as it is so endemic in American culture that the immediate
reaction was religious.
In the weeks after the September [11, 2001] attacks, communities gathered
for vigils and worship services. The enterprise of the state became imbued
with a religious aura . . . The state, and the institutions of state, became for
many, the center of worship.484
On the first anniversary of the attacks, seven months before the 2003
incursion into Iraq, President Bush said: Our cause is even larger than
our country. Ours is the course of human dignity, freedom guided by
conscience grounded by peace. This ideal of America is the hope of all
mankind.485
149
The British newspaper The Guardian reported on how deeply held

was the Presidents concept of sacred violence:
George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched
the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Nabil Shaath, Palestinian foreign
minister said: President Bush said to all of us: I am driven with a mission
from God. God would tell me, George, go and fight these terrorists in
Afghanistan. And I did. And then God would tell me, George, go and end
the tyranny in Iraq. And I did.486
Bushs belief was always framed for the public in a religious manner,
which resonated with the understanding of his intended audience: the
vast majority of Americans, who are Christian and who grew up in this
same tradition of blood sacrifice, American exceptionalism and sacred
violence. The President said in his State of the Union Address (January
28, 2003):
There is a power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism
and faith of the American people. This is a reference to a hymn which
proclaims: the wonder working power of the blood of the Lamb who
was slain in other words, Christ . . . President Bush is suggesting that
America is Christ and that its role is to save the world.487
Around this same time, Washington Post Columnist Courtland Mil-
loy noted this particular strain of American sacred justice in the Presi-
dents worldview, as well as the general culture:
Its been apparent for some time that President Bush sees the world in
terms of either/or: good or evil, and this simplicity obviously resonates
with many Americans. As one reader [of this column] wrote: If 3000 or
3 million people, young or old, die to save the lives of Americans, then so
be it. In choosing a world of progress, a lot of Americans apparently
believe that war is the way to get there. And a student from the Idaho
campus of Brigham Young University-Idaho wrote: As you can imagine,
this campus is strongly pro-war and backs up Bush all the way. Take it
from me, fanatic Middle Easterners arent the only ones who believe in the
oxymoron holy war. According to opinion polls, those who subscribe to
Bushs view of the world are clearly in the majority.488
This points out an important aspect of Bushs religious framing of the
war not that George W. Bush was leading a charge, but that he was
simply galvanizing a war-as-love dynamic that lies festering beneath the
surface of political society. He didnt need to take responsibility for fus-
ing God, War and American purpose. He was simply giving voice to a
central facet lying latent in the American psyche, as it does in the com-
munal lives of all people.
150
In the end, Bush doesnt have to say hes ordained by God . . . it goes with-
out saying. To me, I just believe God controls everything, and God uses
the president to keep evil down, to see the darkness and protect this na-
tion, Hardy Billington told me, voicing an idea shared by millions of Bush
supporters. Other people will not protect us. God gives people choices
to make. God gave us this president to be the man to protect the nation
at this time.489
Finally, a virtually unknown incident with then French President
Jacques Chirac shows how pervasive was Bushs belief that he was fight-
ing a holy war and that he represented the forces of good and light
against the dark forces as represented by Islam:
In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Will-
ing, President Bush spoke to Frances President Jacques Chirac. Bush
wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at
work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated. In Genesis and
Ezekiel, Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied
to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of
Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy: And when the thou-
sand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go
out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog
and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from
God out of heaven, and devoured them.
Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac: This
confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase His
peoples enemies before a New Age begins.490
Bushs Minions: Youre Either With Us or Against Us

George W. Bush hardly operated in a vacuum. He surrounded himself
with many American Christians who held his same beliefs, and who were
willing to use the full power of their offices and oratorical capabilities to
make this point. An article in the The Guardian newspaper exhibited the
infection that grew around George W. Bush:
One of the top planners of the US war in Iraq gave President George Bush
secret intelligence briefs headlined with biblical quotations . . . In the
days surrounding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, US Defense secretary
Donald Rumsfeld prepared top secret briefing papers for the president
adorned with triumphant images of US military personnel and adoring
Iraqis, along with the quotes. The cover of one intelligence briefing shows
US soldiers kneeling in prayer, headlined with a selection from the book
of Isaiah: Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Here I am Lord,
send me! One shows an image of Saddam speaking into a television cam-
151
era and quotes 1 Peter 2:15: It is Gods will that by doing good you should
silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.491
The main speechwriter throughout Bushs first term in office, Michael
Gerson (who went on to become a columnist for the Washington Post)
was:
an evangelical Episcopalian who said he is reading a biography of the
Apostle Paul for escape, [who] shared Bushs willingness to talk pub-
licly about the centrality of the Christian faith to his life. The result was
a president whose public words were laced with Biblical undertones . . .
We have tried to employ religious language in a way that unites people,
[Gerson] said. Martin Luther King Jr. did it all the time during the Civil
Rights movement. He was in this tradition, going all the way back to Old
Testament prophets, that says God is active in history and, eventually, on
the side of justice.492
Fluid moral thinking contaminated virtually all followers of this pres-
ident, as they attempted to wrap God, Jesus and the military together
into a 21st -century Crusade. The following notice seeped out in the
alternative press:
A major defense contractor for the military and Homeland Security
claimed that the United States is morally obliged to maintain a perma-
nent presence in Iraq for the sake of God. If we stay and rebuild Iraq, we
will demonstrate to the world that we remain the best force for good in
the world, Charles Patricoff, Sr., Contract Manager for Ball Aerospace &
Technologies Corp, said. More importantly, we as Christians can better
influence that region for the Kingdom of God.493
In another instance, Lt. General William Boykin spoke before an
American Christian group, attacking Muslims as idolaters and forces
of Satan. He also said that when he found himself in a battle against a
Muslim warlord in Somalia, he knew he would vanquish his enemy be-
cause, Well you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his. I
knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.494
Lieutenant General William Boykin was hardly a peripheral figure,
having been a veteran of the elite Delta Force and Deputy Undersecre-
tary of Defense for Intelligence. He was also quoted as saying: We in
the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have been raised
for such a time as this, and assured that George W. Bushs presidency
was ordained by God.495 This American Crusader had spearheaded the
unsuccessful hunt for high-profile targets such as Osama Bin Laden and
Mullah Omar.
From the Presidents inner circle, the ripples of holy politics expand-
ed outward. Bush had numerous religious advisors, such as Reverend Pat
152
Robertson, Reverend Franklin Graham and others who helped situate

the Presidents actions within his deep Christian faith, as well as the
apocalyptic struggle between Good and Evil.
The Reverend Franklin Graham, Reverend Billy Grahams son and suc-
cessor, has repeatedly called Islam an evil religion. Christian Coalition
founder Pat Robertson described Muhammad as an absolute wild-eyed
fanatic . . . a robber and a brigand . . . a killer. The Rev. Jerry Vines, for-
mer president of the Southern Baptist Convention, called Muhammad a
demon-possessed pedophile.496
God, War and the American Worldview

This fusion of God and war in the language and beliefs of Americas
leaders did not fall on deaf ears. In an article entitled Praise the Lord
and George W. Bush, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer noted how deep re-
ligious faith coincided with support for Americas war:
A recent Gallup poll shows that church-going Americans are more likely
to support war against Saddam Hussein than are Americans as awhole.
According to Gallup, Americans who attend church at least once a week
support war to depose the Iraqi dictator by an almost 2-to-1 margin.
Americans who never attend church or say religion is not important to
them are more evenly divided about the possibility ofwar . . . Why are
religious Americans more prone to support war with Iraq while the more
secular are less supportive? Traditional religious people understand that
the world is fallen and sinful. War, therefore, is lamentable but sometimes
unavoidable if evil is to be resisted.497
Even at the level of popular culture and entertainment, we neednt
dig too deeply to see the way in which these myths are perpetrated and
disseminated. An article about the college football coach (and one-time
professional National Football League coach) Jerry Glanville began with
this lead:
Jerry Glanville can pinpoint the instant his life changed forever. In March
2004, on a morale-building trip to Iraq and Kuwait set up by the NFL, he
was standing in the last latrine along the Highway of Death when a sen-
tence scribbled on the wall hit him right between the eyes: Id rather live
a day with the lions than a thousand years with the lambs, the American
Soldier. I thought, Wow, youve got to coach these kids, says Glanville.
They dont question the mission, just, Lets get it done.498
Here, we see echoes of St. Augustine, who averred that a just man, if
he should happen to serve as a soldier under a human king who is sac-
rilegious, could rightly wage war at the kings command, [for following
orders] is not contrary to the sure precepts of God.499 One neednt tweak
153
St. Augustines teachings too much to see how sports, religion, unques-
tioning fealty to secular goals and war are all wrapped together and pre-
sented as heroic in this article that ran in self-appointed Nations News-
paper, USA Today.
The public is asked using arguments based in images that it knows
from its religious past to disregard that which makes people most
human (their self-critical thought), and either give in to the powerful
though spurious spiritual catharsis politicians and war offer which
often is represented as doing Gods will or become (supposedly) sepa-
rated from their own higher spirit, as well as the nations community.
For those that waver, the dead soldier is held out as incontrovertible
proof of the necessity and worth of the war. After all, how could one
force the soldier to have died in vain, by questioning the worth of his
action? The war becomes worthwhile because someone has died under-
taking it, a reversal of the normal assignation of worth which defines an
actions merit before the risk is actually taken. In a horrifying example of
the sunk costs theory, the more people who die for a cause, however
mistaken, the more valuable the action, no matter what the true human
or economic price really is.
Through the sacrifice of human souls for political ends, the sublime
nature of war becomes enmeshed with a true God-experience. The very
real horrors of war are euphemistically referred to in the language of mys-
ticism: sublime love, obligation, good causes, moral purpose, save
the innocent, peace and sacrifice. The fog of war begins in the lan-
guage of the powerful, and then overtakes the thought processes of the
general population.
This is when the American Christ is honored, the warrior-supplicant
who sheds his sacrificial blood for the good of all. Senator John McCain
(R-AZ) has been a particularly pernicious purveyor of the war as love
construction. Writing as the Republican nominee for president in the
nationally syndicated Parade Magazine (the most widely read magazine
in America with a circulation of 32.2 million) on July 1, 2008, he stated:
It is the sacrifices of so many Americans, at home and abroad, in times of
peace and times of war, that give meaning to all of us. We are blessed to be
Americans, and blessed that so many of us have so often believed in a cause
far greater than self-interest, far greater than ourselves.500
Memorial Day is a particularly fertile time to cement the bond be-
tween nation, God and self sacrifice in war. In that same year (2008),
the Washington Post ran an editorial entitled: In the Profanity of War,
a Commitment to Sacred Duty, which included the following passage:
154
As Lincoln soon came to understand all too well, some of the most basic
questions in this high-minded civic religion of lofty ideals and mutual re-
spect and cooperation could, in the end, be settled only by blood. And at
Gettysburg, that truth was incorporated into the faith, as Lincoln spoke
on farmland that had become a vast cemetery: ground consecrated and
hallowed these were the words he used by the brave men, living
and dead, who struggled here and from whose sacrifice all must hence-
forth strive to bring about a new birth of freedom . . . in the more ideal-
istic renderings of the American civic faith before and since, this has been
the stated purpose, no matter how imperfectly pursued.501
As I write this, with America now embroiled in several military ac-
tions in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America as well as various
police and peacekeeping actions (Bosnia/Serbia; North Korea/South
Korea; Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Israel/Palestine and, according to a re-
cent Department of Defense report, 140 more nations around the globe),
the prayers of Americans grow ever more fervent. As Randy Sly (a Viet-
nam War veteran and Doctor of Divinity) wrote on Memorial Day 2011,
in Memorial Day: Chaplains A Reminder that We Are One Nation
Under God:
There are 1.4 million Christians in the military; wherever they are sta-
tioned, the chaplain is there. These chaplains can be found bringing Jesus
Christ to their people in desert tents, on the aft deck of a guided missile
cruiser, underwater on a submarine, and in post chapels . . . This Memorial
Day, let us pause and remember our Chaplains. Lets give thanks for the
sacrifice in serving their country as they serve the Lord. Let us especially
remember those who laid down their lives for their friends.502
It is important to note and this is a dynamic that I think prevents
American societys full appreciation for how deeply intertwined are war
and the sacred that secular people are unable to comprehend how
prevalent is the connection between war and God, the American flag and
the Cross.
This issue was addressed by Mark Tooey in his 2003 article Praise
the Lord and George Bush, which offered a very coherent analysis of
why many mainstream people in this society are unable to understand
the sacred aspect of war, and how deeply ingrained it is for a majority of
Americans:
This news [that a majority of religious Americans support the war in Iraq]
has failed to capture the attention of most media, liberal and conservative.
They continue to chant the mantra that the United States religious com-
munity, excepting the religious right, is nearly united against thewar . . .
Why are religious Americans more prone to support war with Iraq while
the more secular are less supportive? Secular people, who are less influ-
155
enced by biblical notions of human sin, are often more idealistic and uto-
pian. In their view, war can be avoided through greater human efforts at
good will and humanitarianoutreach. Why the divide between the Unit-
ed States religious people [who supported the war 2 to 1] and many of
their [religious] leaders [who often did not support the war]? That ques-
tion is more complicated. But for many church leaders, especially among
the mainline Protestants, the 60s era of anti-war protests was their defin-
ing social justice moment. Many of them, and probably more than a few
Catholic bishops as well, continue to view the world through the prism
of Vietnam rather than 2,000 years of Christian history. Their pro-war
lay people may not recall church history. But they might understand the
world and its fallen nature a littlebetter.503
Not only the disconnect between mainstream religious leaders
who are sometimes against war and their minions who are over-
whelmingly for it should be noted, but the deep resonance of religious
faith in American culture must also be appreciated. A recent Gallup poll
noted that 92% of Americans believe in God or a universal spirit. Even
more telling, 63% of Americans consider their holy book the word of
God,504 cementing the violence of God tradition with nearly two-thirds
of American citizens.
In an op-ed in the Washington Post, one soldier explained his coming
to terms with the vital importance of human sacrifice to the nation:
I came to my decision [to join the army] because my parents along with
other role models such as my Boy Scout leader instilled in me the concept
of public service of becoming part of something greater than myself. As
a result, I have had the honor to work with incredibly dedicated young
men and women from all walks of life who are considered blue collar can-
non fodder in many elite circles . . . Lets all say a prayer of thanks for those
who serve our country.505
There are a few important issues raised in this short passage. First, the
disconnect noted by the author between those who are instilled [with]
the concept of public service, even to the point of sacrificing their lives
for this something greater, and the sneering elite. As we saw above,
the elite, though they sometimes are represented as a majority in the
mainstream media, are a decided minority in American life.
Another important facet to note is the manner in which these Ameri-
can patriotic values are instilled into the countrys youth, via role mod-
els such as [the] Boy Scout leader. This osmotic manner in which a per-
son is infused with values that, in fact, turn him or her into cannon fod-
der is perhaps the most confounding aspect of all. The fusion of sacrifice,
war and love is so endemic in American culture and all cultures, if the
156
truth be told that it is inculcated in the youth in an almost uncon-

scious manner.
Lastly is the sense that by joining the army, one can become part of
something greater than the self a yearning that does mimic the spiri-
tual path and the ultimate purpose of religion. However, as has been not-
ed, the two paths that of the warrior and that of the mystic diverge
when one (the warrior) is asked to be completely un-self critical and
the other (the mystic) devotes his life to getting to know him or herself
almost entirely through self-reflection. As the Hasidic Rabbi Gershon
Chanoch Henich of Radzin (d. 1900) said: Blessed is he who knows that
within and above are synonymous. Or, in the words of the Naqshabandi
Sufis: He who knows himself, knows his Lord.
On the Fringe?
Christian Identity activists want to merge religion and state in a new
society governed by religious law. They share an apocalyptic view of his-
tory and . . . believe that their virulent, militant efforts could threaten the
government-imposed evil system and awaken the spirit of the freedom-
loving masses.506
Christian American terrorism has recent roots, in the battles against
abortion providers, the federal government, the United Nations, world-
wide Jewry, Blacks, Muslims and other groups that so-called fringe ele-
ments consider forces of darkness. However, these homegrown terrorists
are hardly out of the mainstream; they simply represent an extension of
the norm, the logical conclusion of a lifetime spent in a country where
God, justice and American exceptionalism have been propagated every-
where from Boy Scout meetings to Memorial Day and Fourth of July pa-
rades. The murders perpetrated by these American holy warriors are of-
ten undertaken as skirmishes in the grand confrontation between forces
of evil and forces of good,507 echoing the language and motivation of a
leader no less important than President George W. Bush.
That Christian American terrorism is a recent phenomenon has to do
with a slow-motion backlash to the supposed libertinism of the 1960s
and 1970s, times when African -Americans were shedding their status as
a permanent underclass, ideas of free love were rampant and marijuana
was widely used, all of which gave homegrown religious warriors their
initial impetus. Add the landmark Roe v. Wade (1973) Supreme Court de-
cision legalizing abortion into the mix and it became clear to those dedi-
157
cated to God, country and divine justice that the forces of darkness were
winning in America.
Dominion Theology [is] the position that Christianity must reassert the
dominion of God over all things, including secular politics and society.
This point of view articulated by such right-wing Protestant spokes-
persons as Reverend Jerry Falwell (d. 2007) and Pat Robertson (b. 1930)
led to a burst of social and political activism in the Christian Right in
the 1980s and 1990s.508
Of course, activism for the holy warrior often takes the form of vi-
olence. Reverend Mike Bray (a former midshipman at the U.S. Naval
Academy, and author of the book A Time to Kill) comes out of this Ameri-
can Christian worldview, schooled as he was in the Naval Academy, and
then drew spiritual and activist sustenance from American leaders such
as Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Although he is cur-
rently designated a terrorist by the National Memorial Institute for the
Prevention of Terrorism, his views are not as far outside the mainstream
as we might like to believe.
Mike Brays justification of violence against abortion clinics is . . . the con-
sequence of a grand religious vision. His position is part of a great Crusade
conducted by a Christian subculture in America that considers itself at
war with the larger society. Armed with theological explanations, this
subculture sees itself justified in its violent responses to agents of a sa-
tanic force.509
Before dismissing Bray as a fringe actor, it is vital to remember how
closely this dovetails with mainstream American thought on religiously
sanctioned violence. Recall that a majority of Americans approve of tor-
ture and the more religious the respondents, the higher their approval
rating.
The fusion of God, state and violence as proposed by an endless se-
ries of patriotic observances, as suggested by George W. Bush and many
other presidents, and as subscribed to by a majority of Americans, leads
easily to the positions of right wing Christian movements, which simply
represent one conclusion of this social and religious dynamic. And often
right wing preachers, like their mainstream counterparts, situate the vio-
lence within the Bible:
The world as envisioned by followers of both Christian Identity and Re-
constructionism is a world at war. Identity preachers cite the Biblical ac-
counts of Michael the Archangel destroying the offspring of evil to point
to a hidden albeit cosmic war between the forces of darkness and the
forces of light . . . the struggle is a secret war between colossal evil forces .
. . and a small band of the enlightened few. 510
158
The scriptural justifications for hostility are explicit. The Reverend

Paul Hill who, at the urging of Reverend Mike Bray, murdered an abor-
tion doctor in 1994, had this to say about the act: My eyes were opened
to the enormous impact of such an event, adding that the effect would
be incalculable. He opened his Bible and found sustenance in Psalms 91:
You will not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by
day. In Hills religion-soaked thought process, he interpreted this as an
affirmation that his act was Biblically approved.511
The fluidity between so-called mainstream political and religious
leaders, such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and the thinking of
more extreme actors cannot be stressed enough. The difference between
the two is a matter of degree not philosophy. Even so-called progres-
sive pundits, such as Washington Post columnist (and Atlantic Monthly
editor-at-large) Michael Kelly wrote after the attacks on September 11,
2001: American pacifists are on the side of the future mass murderers
of Americans. They are objectively pro-terrorist . . . That is the pacifists
position, and it is evil.512 Overcome by the fervor of the times, he echoed
the with us or against us language of the American theocracy.
Lastly, ex-Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin, who was the Republican
nominee for Vice President in 2008, told ministry students at her former
church that the United States sent troops to fight in Iraq on a task that
is from God. Thats what we have to make sure we are praying for: that
there is a plan and that plan is Gods plan.513
There is almost no difference between the language of Michael Kelly,
Sarah Palin and George W. Bush and those deemed fringe members of
society, such as Mike Bray and Paul Hill. And where Bray and Hill mur-
der one at a time, mainstream leaders slaughter tens of thousands in the
expression of their cosmic war.
159
Epilogue
Violence is the dominant religion in the world today. Walter Wink [Pro-
fessor Emeritus of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary,
New York] says violence is the ethos of our times and the spirituality
of the modern world. [It is] accorded the status of a religion, demanding
from its devotees an absolute obedience to death. Violence is the real re-
ligion of America.514
This book was written to explore this question: how religion and
violence are intertwined, and why these forces resonate so powerfully
together in both the human spirit and contemporary American soci-
ety. When I began this work, I did not know what, if any, conclusions
I would reach. And now, after examining the deep connection between
violence and the sacred, in all religious paths and at all times in human
history, I have grown sadly convinced that violence, as much as quiet
spiritual reflection, gives an ultimate meaning to human existence. They
both touch us in the same deep place: at the intersection between being
and nothingness, where the original question forms: who am I and why
am I here?
Both religion and violence address this issue and, given the deep, ani-
malistic urges that lurk just outside of human consciousness, oftentimes
violence answers these questions more immediately and satisfactorily
than a non-violent sacred path.
161
War as Mysticism: Redux

The eyes of soldiers who carry on the orgy of death are crazed. They speak
only in guttural shouts. They are high on the power to destroy. They are,
for a moment, gods swatting down powerless human beings like flies.515
I believe that there is no single greater fear latent and unacknowl-
edged within the human soul than the fear of non-existence. For most
of us, the dread is an ever-present specter, something just out of reach
of our interior monologue that haunts our nights and, as we grow older,
overtakes our days, as well.
This primal dread is dealt with in religion through promises of eter-
nal life. Some are able to find solace there. Others simply grow more and
more terrified as they age, finally (and thankfully) slipping into insen-
tience before passing away in complete bodily exhaustion. As the Nobel
Prize-winning essayist Elias Canetti assured: The threat of death hangs
over all men, and however disguised it may be . . . it affects them all the
time. He also noted how this dread morphs so easily into the will to
destroy: It creates in them the need to deflect death onto others. A mur-
der shared with many others, which is not only safe and permitted, but
indeed recommended, is irresistible to the great majority of men.516
Hugo Grotius (d. 1645, a Dutch jurist who helped lay the foundations
for international law) concurred with Canetti, stating that the end and
aim of war is the preservation of life and limb . . . war is in perfect accord
with the first principles in nature.517
It is here, in the original existential question, that the innate attrac-
tion to war and violence sinks its roots. War mimics mystical attainment
in many aspects and mystical attainment is perhaps the surest meth-
od of at least convincing ourselves that we have attained some form of
permanence, whether this is the case or not. As James Hillman stated in
A Terrible Love of War: War belongs to our souls as an archetypal truth
of the cosmos . . . a love that no other love has been able to overcome.518
As I noted earlier in this study, war does offer much of the same spiri-
tual experience as the deepest mystical realization. Although war and
mystical attainment diverge at the demand for self-awareness war
asks the participant to quell this need, while spirituality requires the
mendicant to lose himself in himself, in contemplation of the self war
provides a poor-mans mysticism, a way of accessing some of the high-
est aspects of the human soul with none of the self-reflection or human
loneliness of the mystical path.
162
Epilogue
War is simply a seduction too great for many people to turn away
from, especially when the conception of sacred violence is so successfully
rehearsed in all religious traditions. As war correspondent Christopher
Hedges noted: In the beginning, war looks and feels like love.519
Coupled with the mystical echoes in war is the manner in which it
mimics religious observances, tying this human catastrophe even more
closely to the search for God:
Ceremonies of military service, the coercion by and obedience to a su-
preme command, the confrontation with death in battle as a last rite on
earth, wars promise of transcendence and its sacrificial love, the test of
all human virtues and the presence of all human evils, the slaughter of
blood victims, impersonally, collectively in the name of a higher cause
and blessed by ministers all drive home the conclusion that war is
religion.520
Religion and Violence: A Reconsideration

Violence will come to an end only after it has had the last word and that
word has been accepted as divine. The meaning of this word must remain
hidden, the mechanism of unanimity remain concealed. Religion protects
man as long as its ultimate foundations are not revealed.521
Given the timeless intertwining of the mystics path and war imagery,
the easy manner in which humans turn to bellicosity, and the long his-
tory of equating spiritual heroism and the field of battle, we must ques-
tion whether war is, in fact, natural to the human condition. After all,
this dynamic appears across all time periods and in virtually all religious
institutions. It appears to be endemic to the human condition, perhaps
even necessary to it.
This is not surprising when we consider the ideas undergirding re-
ligion. God is parsimonious, and can only have one chosen people at
a time. Human violence is instituted to prove who is Gods beloved
spiritual victory and temporal conquest are viewed as the same.
In addition to this jealous and miserly God, the creation of a social
and religious group (us) must be created through the designation of an
other that is assuredly different from and perhaps even destructive to
our own group. This is the enemy, who undoubtedly want to steal Gods
covenant (as did Isaac with Ishmael in Genesis 16:21 and Jacob with Esau,
Genesis 25:33). Gods blessing and the comfort of belonging to a group
are sealed in the blood sacrifice of both the child-warriors and the other:
It is certainly astonishing that all human activities, and even the course
of nature itself, are subordinated to the metamorphosis of violence taking
163
place at the heart of the community . . . The benefits attributed to genera-

tive violence extend beyond mankind to nature itself. The act of collective
murder is seen as the source of all abundance; the principle of procreation
is attributed to it . . . everything beneficial and nutritive is said to take root
in the body of the primordial victim.522
We have not come very far at all from the earliest creation myth in
Babylonia, in which the universe was created from the murdered body
of Tiamat, the mother goddess who had birthed the murderer Marduk.
Sacrifice Revisited
In his seminal work Violence and the Sacred, Ren Girard proposed
that the origin of symbolic thought, and therefore the beginnings of con-
sciousness itself, could be situated in the act of sacrifice. Collective mur-
der, he proposed, provides the conditions favorable to human thinking.
In sacrifice, and only through this act, can the innate human aggres-
sion be channeled and tamed, allowing civilization to thrive around it.
Instead of a pulsing human heart or an imagined god, violence itself lies at
the center of human experience an almost uncontrollable aggression
that must be visited upon an other, or else it will turn on itself, render-
ing society itself impossible.
Polarized by sacrificial killing, violence is appeased. It subsides. We might
say that it is expelled from the community and becomes part of the divine
substance . . . Just as the human body is a machine for transforming food
into flesh and blood, generative unanimity is a process for changing bad
violence into stability and fecundity.523
The dynamic of death leading to life, of the intertwining of genera-
tive violence, human society and the sacred is as old as the earliest hu-
man religious narratives. According to the Mesopotamian creation myth,
the universe was created out of a slaughtered mother. In the Abrahamic
faiths, sacrifice is part of a cultural constitution, signed in blood, which
influences religion, culture and politics into our own era. Christianity is
founded on the literal sacrifice of a human. In Islam, an ongoing battle
is waged between believers and infidels. War, civilization and God find
their ground in death and sacrifice.
Most conflicts are ignited with martyrs, whether real or created. The
death of an innocent, one who is perceived as emblematic of the nation
or the group under attack, becomes the rallying point for war. These dead
become the standard-bearers of the cause and all causes feed off a steady
supply of corpses.524
164
Epilogue
The public is asked using an argument based on images that they

know from their religious past to disregard that which makes them
most human (self-critical thought). They must either give in to the pow-
erful, and spurious spiritual catharsis offered by war which is repre-
sented as doing Gods will or risk separation from the community.
We are left with only one question: is war truly necessary to the
human condition? Are those who find war abhorrent little more than
delicate and hopeless dreamers, beating their impotent fists into their
breasts while the massive machinery of god and war grinds on through
the millennia? Can anything be done to stem the red tide of death spout-
ing from ever-more horrifying war machines?
Will, Violence and Gods Purpose

Suppose, finally, we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as
the development and ramification of one basic form of will namely, the
will to power; suppose that all organic functions could be traced back to
this will to power and one could also find in it the solution of the problem
of procreation and nourishment . . .525
The human soul is filled with unexcavated urges, unnamed frustra-
tions, a vague yearning for something gone that can never be recaptured.
From the Genesis narrative on, the entire human condition is portrayed
as one of exile from a mythical paradise, or true home. To be in exile, as is
our experience of living, is to be deprived of ones chosen place.526
The great medieval Sufi Jallaludin Rumi (d. 1273) captured the long-
ing and desire of this state of exile in this couplet: I once had a thousand
desires, but in my one desire to know You all else melted away. But as
we have already variously seen, only a rare individual can practice mysti-
cism of the contemplative sort that leads the yearning and desire at the
center of human experience to a life of self-examination, and perhaps
even attainment of God consciousness. The vast majority of us, experi-
encing the same vague sense of desire for You, or a return to the mythi-
cal paradise, are left with only the pulsing, thrusting desire at the heart
of the will to live.
The Greek philosopher Plato explored this idea as well, one that has
little changed in the past few thousand years of human time:
The body fills with loves and desires and fears and all sorts of fancies and
a great deal of nonsense, with the result that we literally never get the op-
portunity to think at all about anything. War and revolutions and battles
are due simply to and solely to the body and its desires.527
165
The desire at the heart of being, which is necessary from an evolution-

ary point of view, provides us with the will to live (without this will,
the physical universe would simply evaporate). Friedrich Nietzsche said:
Life is simply the will to power,528 and this will to power, I contend, is
actually Gods will for being, as channeled through His creation.
War, God and the Act of Creation

The original act of nature was not one of love, as some within the reli-
gious community contend. Nor, as so many religions assure, is God mer-
ciful, kind and generous. The original act of creation that of a unitary
power, alone, unconscious and unreachable was one of desperation.
It was an act of withdrawal and removal for the sake of self-knowledge.
However, the only way that God could create a universe was to create
something outside of Himself, which is logically incomprehensible, as
God is omnipresent and eternal.
The act of creation initiated the separation, the sense of yearning that
we experience as the desire to return to paradise. However, this sense
of yearning that we feel is not each of ours individually, but that of God,
unitary and alone, still shut off from His own creation by the unbridge-
able gap of time, space and dimensionality. For in creating the physical
universe, in forming physicality, God fashioned an other, something
that exists outside of His eternal, omnipresent being. And the yearning
and desire that we feel is simply that of God, desperately and hopelessly
in search of Himself.
Thus, the indescribable and profound sense of longing and will at the
heart of being. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (d. 1860)
developed a philosophy expressing this idea, stating: [T]he inner being
of unconscious nature is a constant striving without end and without
rest. Willing and striving is being, which may be compared with an un-
quenchable thirst. The basis of all willing is need, deficiency and thus
pain.529
He went further, explaining the difference that I have been examin-
ing, that which separates sacred violence, which captivates the majority
of our species, from that interior contemplative monologue that abhors
violence, and searches for meaning in reflection, self-awareness and the
mystics path:
We may call the complete self-effacement and denial of will, the true ab-
sence of will . . . the absolute good, and regard it as the only radical cure of
the disease of which all other means are only palliatives and anodynes.530-
166
Epilogue
The greatest anodyne for the disease of will is war, the opposite of
complete self-effacement and denial of will, that which only a select few
can attain. Perhaps this, as the mystics assure, is the meaning of life, to
move Gods own will beyond desperation and need, to a place of accep-
tance, denial of self, an absence of striving.
Only a rare few can make this spiritual leap. Whats more, because
they have effaced themselves of ego and striving, they have no apprecia-
ble effect on the rest of society, though they might well be incontrovert-
ible to the ultimate experience of God, and the meaning of creation.
Will, for the rest of us, expresses itself through desire. And desire
and its basest antidote, temporal power, are most clearly experienced
through violence. Through the domination of the other, we can be more
certain of our own being. Violence comes to underpin existential mean-
ing for many people. We, the spiritually immature, experience violence
as an expression of primal need and the will that rises up from within.
The expression of this will through political power, individual vio-
lence or the mass murder of war, however, cannot satiate. It only exac-
erbates the wound. And so aggression and violence must be expelled in
ever-greater explosions, each of which can do nothing to satisfy the will
for return that lies at the heart of being, and which we misconstrue, in
our spiritual ignorance, as a will to power.
Desire is attracted to violence triumphant and strives desperately to in-
carnate this irresistible force. Desire clings to violence and stalks it like a
shadow because violence is the signifier of the cherished being, the signi-
fier of divinity.531
Violence becomes the basis for our sense of being. That is to say, driv-
en by an unquenchable thirst that of Gods desire for self-knowledge,
as channeled through His creation we are left to satisfy this need in
the clearest manner possible: by the expression of power through vio-
lence. Gods act of creation was based in desperation a desperate
yearning for self-awareness and understanding and all of us channel
this desperation. However, only the most spiritually advanced among us
can answer the call through contemplation and self-effacement. The rest,
the vast majority, channel our sacred impulses into violence, where they
can be viscerally satisfied in a momentary way.
It is the best that most of us can achieve, and it alone allows us to limp
along with the semblance of a civilization, instead of dissolving into an
anarchic hell, worse than anything most of us can imagine.
167
Le Plus a Change
The idea of a maturing human species is fallacious: it does not exist.
There are no more or less truly realized human souls now in Scho-
penhauers construction than there were 500 or 5000 years ago. Carl
von Clausewitz (d. 1831; a Prussian general and military theorist), who
wrote one of the most important books ever on institutional conflict, On
War, noted: [T]he tendency to destroy which lies at the bottom of the
conception of war is in no way changed or modified through the process
of civilization.532
It could well be argued that modernization and advancement have
only made our situation more dire, as we have invented ever-more suc-
cessful instruments of destruction, which in no way add to our spiritual
maturity. The final act of humankind might well be to invent an arma-
ment that is no longer dependent on human control, but is simply the
will to destroy come to life in a discrete package, without any of the at-
tendant emotions, moral concerns or religious channels to sway its pas-
sion to obliterate.
A recent article in the Washington Post pointed to the very real pos-
sibility of this outcome for our technological progress:
[Drones], piloted by people far from the battlefield, represent an ap-
proaching technological tipping point that may well deliver a genuine
revolution in military affairs, leading future decision makers to resort to
war as a policy option far sooner than previously.533
Even this horrifying advance, however, is surrealistically placed with-
in the just war theory, situating the drones within the moral universe
of the good warrior:
The laws of war call on commanders on both sides of the fight to limit loss
of life and that use of unmanned aircraft prevents the potential loss of
aircrew lives and is thus in itself morally justified.534
The absurdity and hypocrisy of this statement is frightening, and that
the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Walter Pincus would allow it to
appear without an opposing view in his article points to how very deep
runs our collective illness. Drone attacks kill far more civilians than en-
emy combatants. David Kilcullen (a counterinsurgency adviser to Gen.
David Petraeus from 2006 to 2008) and Andrew Exum (a fellow at the
Center for a New American Security, and an Army officer in Iraq and Af-
ghanistan from 2002 to 2004) wrote in the New York Times concerning
the kill rates of drones:
168
Epilogue
Press reports suggest that over the last three years [20062009] drone
strikes have killed about 14 terrorist leaders. But, according to Pakistani
sources, they have also killed some 700 civilians. This is 50 civilians for
every militant killed, a hit rate of 2 percent hardly precision.535
While recent asymmetrical wars have increased the civilian death toll
to up to 90% of the war dead, the drone attacks take this grisly statis-
tic even higher to 98% of all those slaughtered being innocent civil-
ians! And as if this isnt bad enough, we are informed in Pincuss article:
drones are becoming increasingly automated. With minor advances, a
drone could soon be able to fire a weapon based solely on its own sensors,
or shared information, without recourse to higher, human authority.536
Leaving aside the argument over whether human authority is higher
than that of the unmanned, autonomous killing machine, the fact re-
mains that we are fast approaching a time when slaughter of civilians is
war, and even worse, considered morally justified, as it protects against
the potential loss of aircrew lives. The final warrior deaths will have been
removed from war, with only the sacrificial other remaining, the sur-
rogate victim, the Pharmakos, as it was known to the Greeks. In this case,
however, a single representative victim will hardly suffice, and whole
populations will be at risk of ritual destruction.
War the Boundless

Nobel Prize-winner Konrad Lorenz (d. 1989) contends that there is an
aggressive instinct embedded in the phylogenetic structure of all species.
If humans and the lower animals had not developed mechanisms that in-
hibit fighting methods like status systems, the love bond and ritualiza-
tion their very survival would come into question.537
War represents the unbounded will to live, channeled into violence
lying within the human soul, with limits. By directing violence into war,
we protect ourselves from ourselves. There are rules that operate on the
field of battle, and it is only these seemingly arbitrary yet very real bound-
aries that protect us from our interior chaos and violence. The imposition
of both external law (Geneva Convention, rules of war, civil morals, etc.)
and the internal constraints provided by wars connection to God, reli-
gion and the spirit might be the thin line that prevents our civilization
from dissolving in a self-destructive orgy.
Religion protects man from his own violence by taking it out of his hands,
transforming it into a transcendent and ever-present danger to be kept in
check by the appropriate rites appropriately observed.538
169
Given the make-up of our species, the emotional substructure of a

unified society cannot be found in love, or even a shared culture, religion
or history. Violent unanimity represents the foundation stone of human
society. It is violence that allows our species to come together to create
families, towns, cities and vast nations. And the sense of community that
underpins these human social constructions stems not from a positive
identification with the group, but a negative identification against an
other an other that must be created and then destroyed.
The emotional foundation of a unified society derives from the collective
destruction of a sacrificial victim, a scapegoat or enemy upon whom all
together turn on and eliminate. Thereby, the inherent conflicts within a
community that can lead to internal violence become exteriorized and rit-
ualized into an enemy. Once an enemy has been found or invented, named
and excoriated . . . patriotism and the preemptive strikes of preventative
war become opportune consequences.539
Without sacred violence, would society be possible?

Medea, like Ajax, reminds us of a fundamental truth about violence: if left
unappeased, violence will accumulate until it overflows its confines and
floods the surrounding area. The role of sacrifice is to stem this rising tide
of indiscriminate violence and redirect it into proper channels. Sacrifice
serves to protect the entire community from its own violence; it prompts
the entire community to choose victims outside of itself.540
Without war, civilization itself would be impossible.
Without fusing the violence within the human spirit with the sacred,
the primal aggression that lies at the center of our being would become
unmoored, narcissistic, tearing apart the delicate fabric of our social ex-
istence and plunging us into an animalistic hell. Worse than animals, re-
ally, as man is the only species besides the rat that will turn on its own
in unprovoked and unbounded rage. And given our engorged neo-cortex,
the possibilities of our violence are far wider than many of us can imagine.
The story of human violence unbridled is as old as the first human
children, Cain and Abel. This story also represents the beginning of war,
of finding a scapegoat for an unquenchable, interior rage that cannot be
suppressed. Here, situated at the very beginning of the human narrative
in arguably the most important Holy Book in todays world, we find the
beginnings of redemptive violence and the mechanism of the surrogate
victim.
The dynamic of necessary, restorative aggression is encoded in our
very language. Sacrifice and sacred come from the same Latin root sa-
170
Epilogue
cra: sacred rites. In Greek, the Pharmakos, a human scapegoat (a slave, a

cripple or a criminal) who was chosen and expelled from the community
at times of disaster, when purification was needed, signifies at once poi-
son and remedy.541
The Pharmakos lives on today in the form of every enemy or surrogate
victim upon which each nation vents its cathartic violent needs.
The social activity of organized conflict is a primal form of human activity.
Warfare organizes people into a we and a they, and it organizes social
history into a storyline of persecution, conflict and hope of liberation, re-
demption and conquest. The enduring and seemingly ubiquitous images
of cosmic war from ancient times to the present continue to give the rites
of sacrifice their meaning.542
James Hillman, in A Terrible Love of War, captured the inescapable
centrality of war to civilization:
War defends civilization, not because war is claimed to be a just war, or
justified war. The just cause lies not in the end overcoming evil, repel-
ling barbarians, protecting the innocent but the way the entry into war
and the conduct of war maintain the steadfast virtues.543
War gives us to ourselves in so many ways channeling aggression;
creating an inhumane world within which to find our humanity; bringing
an us together around the hatred of a shared enemy, or surrogate victim;
offering a counterpoint against which the rest of civilization can assure:
we are not that. As Rumi said, we know things by their opposite, so war
gives us a background against which our civilization can stand out.
A Conclusion
We are left with the uncomfortable conclusion that the Pharmakos,
the true sacrificial victim who is expelled from the community in an orgy
of violence so that the rest of civilization can survive, is the child-warrior
that we send into battle, generation after generation, century after cen-
tury. For this is the blood upon which civilization is founded our chil-
dren and their children meeting on a hallowed ground to consecrate God
and humanity at the same time, to provide the rest of us the purification
necessary to continue on, to vent the aggressive destruction that wells
up within each of us until bursting with the need for release.
Without the warrior, it might be that civilization itself would be-
come impossible. Humanity would devolve into small groups of warring
tribes, venting their blind violence on those closest at hand endlessly, un-
til all manner of creative civilization became untenable and the human
animal was condemned to a culture-less existence of kill or be killed.
171
Decade after decade we make the decision that Abraham was saved
from: to have our children slaughtered to appease God, so that we may
live in peace. And if they have the audacity to return from battle alive, or
in various pieces, they often are treated as outcasts. Today, one in four
homeless people is a veteran, though veterans make up only 11% of the
general population. In all of 2006, the National Alliance to End Home-
lessness estimated that 495,400 veterans were homeless at some point
during the year.544
They have served their sacred purpose, to provide the purifying need
of sacrifice, and their return is an embarrassment, as well as a challenge.
Their existence in our midst reminds us of our own internal aggression,
something that we had subconsciously foisted off onto them. The sacri-
fice of our young is a lesser violence, and their return a challenge to our
own sense of goodness and restraint.
Violence and Chaos

We are back where we began: to the earliest creation myths, where
chaos could only be subdued through violence and murder. The primal
chaos, that which represents the unthinkable God before conception, a
God driven to the desperate act of creation, always lurks.
I was walking through Washington National Airport when I was
arrested by an advertisement, a massive billboard affixed to the wall at
the entrance to the airport from the Metro system. Lockheed Martin, the
munitions maker, had plastered a huge image of the latest fighter plane
on the wall, with text beneath it that read: Lockheed Martin: Annihilat-
ing Chaos. I stood and stared for quite awhile as the streams of people
moved past, secure in their belief that they lived in the most advanced
age known to humanity, as I myself looked into our deepest, darkest
fears, laid bare on an advertising placard.
There are only two manners of annihilating chaos: religion and vio-
lence. And they come together not only in practice, but also in the deep-
est recesses of the human soul. As Mark Juergensmeyer noted, Religion,
as the ultimate statement of meaningfulness, must always assert the pri-
macy of meaning in the face of chaos.545
When I began this study, I had thought that by the end of it I might
be able to offer an answer, some hope, perhaps a way out of war and de-
struction and wanton death. After all, it is the dream of all peace-loving
people that war is somehow an aberration, and that harmony will some-
day reign on earth. But what I have found about war is that it is far more
172
Epilogue
pernicious, and far more necessary to humanitys wellbeing, than I ever

could have imagined. In the midst of writing this study, I even joked with
a friend that perhaps the teleological purpose of humanity was to invent
self-replicating, non-thinking destructive implements as we have al-
most achieved and then die of our own stupidity, brought down by
environmental disasters, greed and just plain lack of vision.
I was only half joking, as this outcome might well be in the process
of coming true.
The Upanishads, one of the oldest religious teachings known to hu-
mankind, propose a time before the universe that looked like this:
There was not then what is nor what is not. There was no sky, and no
heaven beyond the sky. What power was there? Where? Who was that
power? Was there an abyss of fathomless waters? There was neither death
nor immortality, then . . .546
For some reason, this time before time appeared first to God, and
then to humankind, as chaos.
There is something so terrifying about nothingness that God Itself
felt compelled to escape it through creation. This represents the despera-
tion at the heart of being; this is the chaos that must continually be de-
stroyed, yet is indestructible.
War and religion both attempt to paper over this abyss, a place so
horrifying that God Himself was afraid.
173
Endnotes
1 Girard, Ren. Violence and the Sacred (Patrick Gregory, translator). (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), p. 23.
2 Ibid., p. 262.
3 Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Discourses (Luigi Ricci, translator). (New York: The
Modern Library, 1950), p. 182.
4 Buber, Martin. Tales of the Hasidim (New York: Schocken Books, 1991), p. 71.
5 Ibid. pp. 131-132.
6 Quoted in Tumulty, Karen. Conservatives New Focus: America, the
Exceptional. Washington Post (November 29, 2010), p. A1, 12.
7 Ibid.
8 Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil (Walter Kauffman, translator).
(New York: Vintage Books, 1966), p. 203.
9 Sun-Tzu. The Art of War (Ralph D. Sawyer, Translator). The Seven Military
Classics of Ancient China. (New York: Basic Books, 2007), p. 157.
10 Ehrenreich, Barbara. Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997), p. 227.
11 Kilcullen, David and Exum, Andrew McDonald. Death From Above, Outrage
Down Below. New York Times (May 17, 2009), p. WK13.
12 Grossman, Zoltan. "From Wounded Knee to Libya: A Century of U.S.
Military Interventions." www. academic.evergreen.edu.
13 Jaffe, Greg. On a War Footing, Set in Concrete. Washington Post (September
5, 2011), p. A1.
14 Hedges, Christopher. What Every Person Should Know About War.(New York:
Free Press, 2003), p. 1.
15 Hedges, Christopher. War is a Force that Gives us Meaning (New York: Public
Affairs, 2002), p. 10.
16 Hillman, James. A Terrible Love of War (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), p.
17.
175
17 LeShan, Lawrence. Why We Love WarAnd What We Can Do To Prevent

It Anyway. Utne (January-February 2003), p. 53.
18 Merton, Thomas. On Peace (New York: McCall Publishing Company, 1971),
pp. 196-197.
19 Salmon, Jacqueline L. Most Americans Believe in a Higher Power.
Washington Post (June 24, 2008), p. A2.
20 Primitive religion is a name given to the religious beliefs and practices of
those traditional, often isolated, preliterate cultures which have not devel-
oped urban and technologically sophisticated forms of society.
21 Quoted in Achenbach, Joel. Certificate Unlikely to Appease Birthers.
Washington Post (April 28, 2011), p. A6.
22 Arendt, Hannah. On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc.,
1970), p. 8.
23 Girard, Ren. Violence and the Sacred, p. 33.
24 Arendt, Hannah. On Violence, p. 61.
26 Schwartz, Regina M. The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 5.
27 Ibid. p. 5.
28 Young, Jeremy. The Violence of God & the War on Terror (New York: Church
Publishing Inc., 2008), p. 50.
29 www.deathpenaltyinfo.org.
30 www.quickfacts.census.gov.
31 Young, Jeremy. The Violence of God & the War on Terror, p. 53.
32 Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jack. Is Religion Killing Us? (New York: Continuum
Publisher, 2004), p. 39.
33 Ibid. p. 39.
34 Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 2003), pp. 160-161.
35 Hedges, Christopher. War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, p. 10.
36 Victoria, Brian Daizen. Zen at War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, Inc., 2006), p. vi.
37 Some language and ideas in the paragraph taken from Juergensmeyer, Mark.
Terror in the Mind of God, pp. 6-7.
It Anyway, p. 56.
40 Quoted in Schwartz, Regina M. The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of
Monotheism, p. 6.
41 Ibid. pp. 10-11.
42 Young, Jeremy. The Violence of God and the War on Terror, p. 170.
43 Schwartz, Regina M. The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism, p. 33.
44 Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jack. Is Religion Killing Us? p. 136.
45 Some language and ideas in the paragraph taken from Hillman, James. A
Terrible Love of War, p. 183.
176
Endnotes
46 Information in this paragraph from Schwartz, Regina M. The Curse of Cain:

The Violent Legacy of Monotheism, p. 12.
47 Arendt, Hannah. On Violence, p. 68.
49 Broyles Jr., William. Why Men Love War. Esquire Magazine (November
1984), p. 62.
50 Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God, p. 157.
51 Hillman, James. A Terrible Love of War, p. 115.
52 Ibid. pp. 119-120.
53 Quoted in ibid. p. 115.
55 Ibid. p. 143.
56 Ibid. pp. 116, 117.
58 Ibid. p. 141.
60 Ibid. p. 158
61 Ibid. p. 147.
64 Bazley, Lewis. Iraq War Veteran Barred from University After Writing
Essay About how Addictive Killing Was. Daily Mail [U.K.] Mail Online
(November 25, 2010), www.dailymail.co.uk.
65 Gourevitch, Philip. The Life After: Fifteen Years After the Genocide in
Rwanda, the Reconciliation Defies Expectations. New Yorker (no. 85, vol. 12,
May 4, 2009), pp. 40-41.
67 Ibid. p. 9.
68 Ehrenreich, Barbara. Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War, p.
238.
69 Gerson, Michael. A Searcher with Faith in Mind. Washington Post (April
15, 2009), p. A19.
70 Information in this paragraph and Tolstoy quote from LeShan, Lawrence.
Why We Love WarAnd What We Can Do To Prevent It Anyway, p. 54.
72 Ibid. p. 10.
73 Confucius. The Analects (Arthur Waley, translator). (New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 1992), p. 169.
74 Patterson, David. Greatest Jewish Stories (New York: Jonathan David
Publishers, 2001), p. 230.
It Anyway, p. 55.
78 Johnson, James Turner. The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions
(University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1997), p. 131.
177

82 Jaynes, Julian. The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral
Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976).
84 Ibid. p. 249.
85 Chilton, Bruce. Abrahams Curse. (New York: Doubleday, 2008), p. 34.
86 Ibid. p. 34.
87 Ibid. pp. 24-25.
88 Ibid. p. 17.
89 Ibid. pp. 39-40.
90 Young, Jeremy. The Violence of God and the War on Terror, pp. 52-53.
91 Ibid. p. 62.
92 Ibid. pp. 52-53.
95 Sandars, N. K. (translator). Poems of Heaven and Hell from Ancient Mesopotamia.
(London: Penguin Books, 1971), p. 92.
98 Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion (John Raffan, Translator). (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 1.
100 Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion, p. 127.
103 Ibid. p. 37.
104 Ibid. p. 31.
105 Information in the preceding paragraph and quote from ibid. pp. 82-83.
106 Ibid. p. 57.
107 Corts, Hernn. Cartas de relacin [originally 1523]. (Mxico: Editorial
Porra, 2005), p.26.
108 Reichberg, Gregory M.; Syse, Henrik and Begby, Endre. The Ethics of War
(Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), p. 19.
110 Tyerman, Christopher. Gods War: A New History of the Crusades (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 32.
111 Reichberg, Gregory M.; Syse, Henrik; Begby, Endre. The Ethics of War, p. 47.
112 Chilton, Bruce. Abrahams Curse, p. 131.
113 Hillman, James. A Terrible Love of War, pp. 88, 89.
115 Julius Wellhausen in von Rad, Gerhard. Holy War in Ancient Israel (Marva
J. Dawn, translator). (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1991), p. 3.
116 Young, Jeremy. The Violence of God & the War on Terror, pp. 40-41.
178
Endnotes
117 The Holy Scriptures: According to the Masoretic Text. (Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society, 1948), p. 82 (Exodus 15).
118 Ibid. pp. 221-222.
119 Ibid. p. 237.
120 Ibid. p. 238.
121 Ibid. p. 238.
122 Ibid. p. 274.
123 Ibid. p. 275.
124 Ibid. pp. 493-494.
127 Young, Jeremy. The Violence of God & the War on Terror, pp. 29, 34.
128 Ibid. p. 18.
129 Ibid. p. 19.
131 Ibid. p. 44.
132 Ibid. p. 18.
133 Schwartz, Regina M. The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism, p.
24.
135 Sharp, David. Navy SEAL Honored with Warship Bearing his Name.
Associated Press (May 5, 2011).
136 von Rad, Gerhard, Holy War in Ancient Israel, p. 5.
138 Schwartz, Regina M. The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism, p. xi.
139 Ibid. pp. x, xi.
141 Meir, Rabbi Dr. Asher. Not Alls Fair in War, Part II: Guidelines for
Conducting a "just war". Jewish World Review (Feb. 15, 2006):,www.jewish-
worldreview.com.
142 The Holy Scriptures: According to the Masoretic Text, p. 237.
143 Solomon, Rabbi Norman. Judaism and the Ethics of War. International
Review of the Red Cross (Volume 87, Number 858, June 2005), p. 296.
144 Lustick, Ian. For The Land and The Lord (New York: Council on Foreign
Relations Press, 1994), p. x. According to the Book of Esther, the Jews are
saved by the king who reverses Hamans evil decree and declares instead that
Jews may do unto their enemies what their enemies had intended to do unto
them: to stand up for themselves, to destroy, to slay, and to annihilate any
armed force of any people or province that might assault them, with their
little ones and women. (Esther 8:11)
145 BBC News. Graveside party celebrates Hebron massacre. (March 21,
2000), www.BBCnews.com.
146 Quoted in Solomon, Rabbi Norman. Judaism and the Ethics of War, p.
306.
147 Medzini, Ronan. Sheikh Jarrah Jews Praise Baruch Goldstein on Purim,
YNet News (April 3, 2010), www.ynetnews.com.
179
148 Ehrenreich, Barbara. Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War,
p. 227.
149 Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God, pp. 45-46.
150 Ibid. pp. 58, 55.
151 Ibid. p. 53.
152 Ibid. pp. 48, 49.
153 Information and quote in this paragraph from Bronner, Ethan. A Religious
War in Israels Army. New York Times (March 22, 2009):, p. WK1.
154 Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jack. Is Religion Killing Us? pp. 42-43.
155 Reichberg, Gregory M.; Syse, Henrik and Begby, Endre. The Ethics of War,
p. 115.
156 Johnson, James Turner. The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions,
p. 56.
157 Holmes, Robert. A Time For War? Augustines "Just War" Theory
Continues to Guide the West. Christianity Today (September 2001), www.
christianitytoday.com.
pp. 57, 58.
p. 335.
161 Ibid. p. 9.
162 Ibid. p. 6.
163 McCain, John. Eulogy for Pat Tillman. Fox News: Raw Data (May 3, 2004),
www.foxnews.com.
164 Morgan, Diane. Essential Islam: A Comprehensive Guide to Belief and Practice
(Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2010), p.87.
165 In the late 17th century, injured Dutch soldiers fighting for control of Taiwan
in 1661 would use gunpowder to blow up both themselves and their oppo-
nents rather than be taken prisoner. [Yu Yonghe. Small Sea Travel Diaries
(Macabe Keliher, translator). (Thailand: SMC Publishing Inc., 2004), p. 196.]
166 Feldman, Noah. Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age. New York
Times (October 29, 2006), Magazine.
167 Pape, Robert. What Really Drives Suicide Terrorists? Christian Science
Monitor (December 9, 2010), www.csmonitor.com.
169 Ibid. p. 88.
170 Jose Miranda quoted in Young, Jeremy. The Violence of God & the War on
Terror, p. 109.
171 Ibid. p. 5.
173 Ibid. pp. 62, 98.
174 Quoted in ibid. p. 95. For the full text of the encyclical see: Dominus Iesus:
On The Unicity And Salvific UniversalityOf Jesus Christ And The Church,
www.vatican.va.
180
Endnotes
175 St. Ambrose (d. 397) quoted in Reichberg, Gregory M.; Syse, Henrik and
Begby, Endre. The Ethics of War, p. 60.
180 Wilkins, Brett. Gallup Poll: 30% of U.S. Christians Approve of Killing
Civilians; Muslims and Atheists Most Likely to Reject Violence. The Moral
Low Ground (August 3, 2011), www.morallowground.com. The Gallup sur-
vey of 2,482 Americans found that 78% of Muslims believe that violence re-
sulting in the death of civilians is never justified. Some 56% of atheists, 39%
of Catholics and 38% of Protestants agreed.
181 Young, Jeremy. The Violence of God & the War on Terror, pp. 112-113.
p. 40.
184 Ibid. p. 81.
185 Ibid. pp. 81, 80.
186 Ibid. p. 98.
188 Ibid. p. 99.
189 Ibid. p. 103.
191 Austin, Greg, Todd Kranock and Thom Oommen. God and War: An Audit
and an Exploration (Bradford, England: University of Bradford, Department
of Peace Studies, 2003), p. 21.
193 Ibid. p. 130.
194 Ibid. p. 133.
195 Ibid. pp. 134-135.
196 St. Augustine quoted in Reichberg, Gregory M.; Syse, Henrik and Begby,
Endre. The Ethics of War, p. 72.
197 Nelson, Keith L. and Olin Jr., Spencer C. Why War? Ideology, Theory and
History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1980),
p. 18.
198 St. Augustine quoted in Reichberg, Gregory M.; Syse, Henrik and Begby,
199 Johnson, James Turner. The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic
Traditions, p. 79.
p. 70.
201 Joseph Liechty quoted in Young, Jeremy. The Violence of God & the War on
Terror, p. 125.
202 Dante Alighieri quoted in Reichberg, Gregory M.; Syse, Henrik and Begby,
181
203 Parker, Beth Ann and Brock, Rita Nakashima. Saving Paradise: How
Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire (Boston:
Beacon Press, 2008), p. 227.
204 Montville, Joseph. Multiple Religious Belonging: Compassion, Life and
Death. (Cambridge, MA: Boston Theological Institute keynote address,
February 27, 2009), p. 5.
p. 88.
207 Ibid. p. 111.
208 Quoted in ibid. pp. 117-118.
213 Quoted in ibid, pp. 247-248.
214 Quoted in ibid. p. 238
215 Quoted in ibid. pp. 248-249.
217 Ibid. p. 362.
218 Ibid. p. 189.
219 Reichberg, Gregory M.; Syse, Henrik and Begby, Endre. The Ethics oIf War,
p. 265.
220 Ibid. p. 268.
221 Pope Urban II quoted in ibid. p. 102.
222 Parker, Beth Ann and Brock, Rita Nakashima. Saving Paradise: How
Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire, p. 270.
224 Ibid. pp. 173-174.
225 Montville, Joseph. Jewish-Muslim Relations: Middle East. The Crescent
and the Couch: Cross-Currents Between Islam and Psychoanalysis (Salman Akhtar,
editor). (Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson, 2005), p. 227.
227 Ibid. p. 178. Also this passage from a participant in the First Crusade:
Exulting with joy we reached the city of Jerusalem on Tuesday, June 6 [1099]
and besieged it in a wonderful manner . . . Day and night we vigorously at-
tacked the city on all sides, but before we made our assault the bishops and
priests persuaded all by their preaching and exhortation that a procession
should be made around Jerusalem to Gods honor, faithfully accompanied by
prayers, fasting and alms . . . One of our knights, Letholdus by name, climbed
onto the wall of the city. When he reached the top, all the defenders of the
city quickly fled along the walls and throughout the city. Our men followed
and pursued them, killing and hacking, as far as the Temple of Solomon, and
there was such a slaughter that our men were up to their ankles in the en-
emys blood. Quoted in ibid. pp. 102-103.
182
Endnotes
228 Austin, Greg; Kranock, Todd and Oommen, Thom. God and War: An Audit
and an Exploration, pp. 23-24.
p. 39.
230 Ehrenreich, Barbara. Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War, p.
171.
pp. 81-82.
p. 153.
233 Marty, Martin E. Is Religion the Problem? Tikkun Magazine (March/April
2002, Volume 17, Number 2), p. 19.
235 Ibid. p. 185.
236 Steinfels, Peter. A Catholic Debate Mounts on the Meaning of "just war".
New York Times (April 14, 2007), Beliefs.
and an Exploration, p. 21.
239 Bar, Shmuel. Jihad Ideology in Light of Contemporary Fatwas. Research
Monographs on the Muslim World (Washington DC: Hudson Institute, 2006),
p. 1.
240 Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jack. Is Religion Killing Us? pp. 84-85.
241 Chilton, Bruce. Abrahams Curse, pp. 183-184.
242 Montville, Joseph. Jewish-Muslim Relations: Middle East, p. 224.
243 The Holy Scriptures: According to the Masoretic Text, pp. 202-203.
244 Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jack. Is Religion Killing Us? pp. 76, 77.
245 Surah 4:56-57 quoted in ibid. p. 81.
246 Ibid. p. 75.
248 The Koran (N. J. Dawood, translator). (New York and Middlesex, England:
Penguin Books, 1981), p. 352.
249 Surah 7:5 quoted in Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jack. Is Religion Killing Us? p. 81.
250 Canetti, Elias. Crowds and Power (Carol Stewart, translator). (New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984), p. 142.
251 Quoted in Johnson, James Turner. The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic
Traditions, p. 65.
252 Islamist Ignaz Goldhizer (d. 1921) in Canetti, Elias. Crowds and Power, pp.
142-143.
pp. 60-61.
255 Chilton, Bruce. Abrahams Curse, pp. 185-186.
p. 58.
257 Quoted in Canetti, Elias. Crowds and Power, p. 155.
183

p. 19.
261 Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God, pp. 73, 74.
p. 163.
264 Ibid. p. 80.
p. 164.
266 Bar, Shmuel. Jihad Ideology in Light of Contemporary Fatwas, p. 2.
267 Information in this paragraph from ibid. pp. 12-13.
268 Ibid. p. 1.
269 Ibid. p. 4.
270 Tolson, Jay. Finding the Voices of Moderate Islam. US News: Faith Matters
(April 2, 2008), www.usnews.com.
271 Bar, Shmuel. Jihad Ideology in Light of Contemporary Fatwas, p. 11.
273 Ibid. p. 15.
274 Ibid. p. 15.
275 Bhagavad Gita. (Barbara Stoler Miller, translator). (New York: Bantam
Books, 1986), p. 11.
276 bid. p. 2.
277 W. J. Johnson in The Sauptikaparvan of the Mahabharata (W. J. Johnson,
translator and editor). (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
278 Bhagavad Gita. p. 3.
279 Ibid. p. 2.
281 Ibid. p. 139.
282 Bhagavad Gita, p. 34.
284 Bhagavad Gita, p. 58.
285 Ibid. p. 52.
286 Ibid. pp. 33-34.
287 Ibid. pp. 31-32.
288 Ibid. p. 41.
289 Ibid. pp. 11-12.
290 Ibid. p. 8.
291 Ibid. pp. 12-13.
292 Ibid. p. 1.
293 Ibid. pp. 102-103.
295 Quoted in Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jack. Is Religion Killing Us? p. 18.
297 Ibid. p. 306.
184
Endnotes
298 There are references throughout to a primal mother-Earth worship, un-

named snake deities and human sacrifice. There are also recitations of key
Vedic-era myths.
299 Quoted in Girard, Ren. Violence and the Sacred, p. 306.
300 Subedi, Surya P. The Concept in Hinduism of "just war". Journal of Conflict
and Security Law (2003, Volume 8, Number 2), abstract.
301 Bush, George W. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George
W. Bush, 2001, Book 2, July 1 to December 31, 2001. (Washington D.C.: National
Archives and Records Administration, Office of the Federal Register, 2003),
p. 1308.
302 Wax, Emily. Christians Face Hindus Wrath. Washington Post (September
15, 2008), p. A16.
303 Carvalho, Nirmala. A Year of Violence Against Indias Catholics. Compass
Direct (December 19, 2005), www.truthandgrace.com.
304 Karon, Tony. Hindu-Muslim Violence Imperils India. Time Magazine
(February 28, 2002), www.time.com.
305 Jayaprakash, Dr. M. S. Hindu Violence Against Buddhism in India has no
Parallel. Cricket Voice (May 11, 2007), www.cricketvoice.com.
306 Neary, Lynn. Tamil Tigers: Suicide Bombing Innovators. National Public
Radio (May 21, 2009), www.npr.org.
307 www.gurmat.info.
and an Exploration, p. 12.
310 Information and quote from Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God,
p. 163.
311 Ibid. p. 100.
312 Ibid. p. 100.
313 Victoria, Brian Daizen. Zen at War, p. XIV.
314 Deegalle, Mahinda. Is Violence Justified in Theravada Buddhism? The
Ecumenical Review (Vol. 55, April 2003), p. 5.
315 Premasiri, P. D. The Place for a Righteous War in Buddhism. Journal of
Buddhist Ethics (Volume 10, 2003), p. 154.
316 Deegalle, Mahinda. Is Violence Justified in Theravada Buddhism? p. 5.
318 Victoria, Brian Daizen. Zen at War, p. 233.
319 Quoted in Demieville, Paul. Buddhism and War. (Jerryson, Michael K. &
Juergensmeyer, Mark, editors). Buddhist Warfare (Oxford, England: Oxford
University Press, 2010), p. 43.
320 Jenkins, Stephen. Making Merit through Warfare According to the Arya-
Bodhisattva-gocara-upayavisaya-vikurvana-nirdesa-sutra. (Jerryson, Michael
K. & Mark Juergensmeyer, editors). Buddhist Warfare (Oxford, England:
Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 63.
321 Harvey, Brian Peter. An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values and
Issues (Cambridge England: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 135-136.
185
322 Faure, Bernard. Afterthoughts. (Jerryson, Michael K. & Mark

Juergensmeyer, editors). Buddhist Warfare (Oxford, England: Oxford
University Press, 2010), p. 222.
323 Carter, John Ross and Palihawadana, Mahinda (translators). The
Dhammapada (New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1992), p. 62 (verses
294-295).
325 Information taken from Victoria, Brian Daizen. Zen at War, p. 226.
326 Ibid. pp. 226-227.
Bodhisattva-gocara-upayavisaya-vikurvana-nirdesa-sutra, p. 70.
328 Ibid. p. 65.
329 Wallace, Vesna. Legalized Violence: Punitive Measures of Buddhist
Khans in Mongolia. (Jerryson, Michael K. & Mark Juergensmeyer, editors).
Buddhist Warfare (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 97.
331 Ibid. p. 68.
333 Demieville, Paul. Buddhism and War, p. 38.
334 Tsumetomo, Yamamoto. Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai (William Scott
Wilson, translator). (Tokyo, New York, London: Kodansha International,
1979), p. 164.
336 Quoted in Victoria, Brian Daizen. A Buddhological critique of Soldier-Zen
in Wartime Japan. (Jerryson, Michael K. & Mark Juergensmeyer, editors).
338 Huang Po. On the Transmission of Mind (John Blofeld, Translator). (New
York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1958), pp. 114-116.
340 Sugimoto quoted in Victoria, Brian Daizen. A Buddhological critique of
Soldier-Zen in Wartime Japan, p. 108.
341 Xue Yu. Buddhists in China during the Korean War (1951-1953). (Jerryson,
Michael K. & Mark Juergensmeyer, editors). Buddhist Warfare (Oxford,
England: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 144.
342 Jerryson, Michael K. Introduction. (Jerryson, Michael K. & Juergensmeyer,
Mark, editors). Buddhist Warfare (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press,
2010), p. 9.
345 Maher, Derek. F. Sacralized Warfare: The Fifth Dalai Lama and the Discourse
of Religious Violence. (Jerryson, Michael K. & Mark Juergensmeyer, editors).
186
Endnotes
347 Zinn, Howard. The Power and the Glory: Myths of American
Exceptionalism. Boston Review (Summer 2005), www.bostonreview.net.
348 Ibid.
349 D. T. Suzuki quoted in Victoria, Brian Daizen. Zen at War, p. 110.
350 Tsumetomo, Yamamoto. Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, p. 13.
353 Ibid. p. 220.
354 Tsumetomo, Yamamoto, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, p. 103.
358 Blumenthal, Ralph. The World: Revisiting World War II Atrocities;
Comparing the Unspeakable to the Unthinkable. New York Times (March 7,
1999), p. 4, Week in Review section.
362 Ibid. p. 121.
364 Ibid. p. 125.
365 Jerryson, Michael K. Introduction, Buddhist Warfare, p. 9.
366 Information in this paragraph and quote from Victoria, Brian Daizen. Zen
at War, p. 20.
367 Ibid. p. 30.
368 Ibid. pp. 28, 26.
369 Ibid. pp. X-XI.
370 Ibid. p. 36.
371 Ibid. p. 84.
372 J. J. M. deGroot quoted in Jerryson, Michael. Introduction, Buddhist
Warfare, p. 3.
373 Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching (D. C. Lau, translator). (Middlesex, England: Penguin
Books, 1983), p. 107.
374 Ssu-Ma. The Methods of the Ssu-Ma (Ralph D. Sawyer, Translator). The Seven
Military Classics of Ancient China (New York: Basic Books, 2007), p. 136.
375 Ibid. p. 137.
376 Sun-Tzu. The Art of War , p. 164.
377 uang Shih-Kung. The Three Strategies (Ralph D. Sawyer, Translator). The
Seven Military Classics of Ancient China (New York: Basic Books, 2007), p. 288.
378 Faure, Bernard. Afterthoughts, Buddhist Warfare, p. 213.
379 Quoted in Victoria, Brian Daizen. Zen at War, p. 201.
380 Demieville, Paul. Buddhism and War, pp. 38-39.
382 Demieville, Paul. Buddhism and War, pp. 31-32.
187
383 Gray, David B. Compassionate Violence? On the Ethical Implications of

Tantric Buddhist Ritual. Journal of Buddhist Ethics (Volume 14, 2007), p. 244.
385 Ibid. p. 246.
386 Ibid. p. 252.
387 Ibid. p. 252.
388 Ibid. pp. 252-253.
389 Mumon. The Gateless Gate: A Collection of Zen Koans(1228).(Nyogen Senzaki
and Paul Reps, translators of the 1934 edition; in the public domain), #3.
390 Xue Yu. Buddhists in China during the Korean War (1951-1953), p. 144.
391 Ibid. p. 145.
392 Ibid. p. 146.
393 Ibid. p. 142.
394 Ibid. p. 139.
395 Xue Yu. Buddhist Contribution to the Socialist Transformation of
Buddhism in China: Activities of Ven. Juzan during 19491953. Journal of
Global Buddhism (Volume 10, 2009), p. 217.
397 Ibid. p. 61.
398 Ibid. p. 70.
399 Goodman, Charles. Ethics in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism. (Edward
N. Zalta, editor). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition),
www.plato.stanford.edu.
400 Victoria, Brian Daizen. Zen at War, pp. 197-198.
401 Dhammika. Venerable Shravasti. The Edicts of King Ashoka.(Kandy, Sri
Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1993), pp. 5, 6.
402 IANS. Mumbai Buddhist monks death sparks violence. IBNLive, (January
8, 2008).
403 Maher, Derek. F. Sacralized Warfare: The Fifth Dalai Lama and the
Discourse of Religious Violence, p. 84.
404 Ibid. p. 85.
405 Ibid. p. 83.
406 Ibid. p. 83.
407 Ibid. p. 84. Monasteries were seized and converted, land estates were reas-
signed to support dGe lugs [the Dalai Lamas sect] institutions, the Karmapa
was driven into exile.
409 Dunham, Mikel. Buddhas Warriors: The Story of the CIA-Backed Tibetan
Freedom Fighters, the Chinese Communist Invasion, and the Ultimate Fall of Tibet
(New York: J. P. Tarcher, 2004), Introduction.
410 Jerryson, Michael K. Introduction, Buddhist Warfare., p. 8.
411 Biographical material from Jackson, Peter A. Buddhism, Legitimation, and
Conflict: The Political
Functions of Urban Thai Buddhism (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asia Studies,
1990), p. 148.
188
Endnotes
412 Jerryson, Michael K. Militarizing Buddhism: Violence in Southern

Thailand. (Jerryson, Michael K. & Mark Juergensmeyer, editors). Buddhist
Warfare (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 189.
413 Ibid. pp. 182, 204.
414 Ehrenreich, Barbara. Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War,
p. 171.
415 Jerryson, Michael K. Militarizing Buddhism: Violence in Southern
Thailand, p. 198.
418 Devananda, J.L. The Sinhala (Mahavamsa) Buddhism Revisited. Sri Lanka
Guardian (December 26, 2009), www.srilankaguardian.org.
419 Kent, Daniel W. Onward Buddhist Soldiers: Preaching to the Sri Lankan
Army. (Jerryson, Michael K. & Mark Juergensmeyer, editors). Buddhist
Warfare (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 172-173.
420 Wallace, Vesna. Legalized Violence: Punitive Measures of Buddhist Khans
in Mongolia, p. 95.
421 Ibid. p. 91.
422 Ibid. p. 95.
423 The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. U.S.Religious Landscape Survey
Religious Affiliation: Diverse and Dynamic (Washington DC: Pew Forum Web
Publishing and Communications, February 2008).
424 OBrien, Barbara. War and Buddhism: Buddhist Teachings on War.
Buddhism. ww.buddhism.about.com.
425 Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Discourses, p. 182.
426 Mooney, Chris. We Cant Handle the Truth: The Science of Why People
dont Believe Science. Mother Jones (Volume 36, No. 3, May + June 2011), p.
43.
427 Jerryson, Michael. K. Monks With Guns: Discovering Buddhist Violence.
Religion Dispatches Magazine (January 12, 2010):,www.religiondispatches.org.
430 Ibid. pp. 11, 19.
122.
432 Hedges, Christopher. War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, pp. 26-27.
p 140.
435 Crimi, Frank. Jihads Child Suicide Bombers. Front Page Magazine (May, 11,
2011), www.frontpagemag.com.
437 Two quotes from Chilton, Bruce. Abrahams Curse, p. 190.
439 ORelly, Bill. The View. ABC Television (October 14, 2010).
189
441 Ibid. p. 114.

443 Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil (Walter Kauffman, translator).
(New York: Vintage Books, 1966), p. 118.
444 Ibid. p. 118.
445 CNN. Survey: Support for terror suspect torture differs among the faith-
ful. CNN (April 30, 2009), www.articles.cnn.com.
448 Information and some wording in this paragraph from ibid. p. 128.
449 Tumulty, Karen. Conservatives New Focus: America, the Exceptional, p. A1.
451 Nelson, Robert H. Sin, Sacrifice, and the State of the Union. PBS Religion
and Ethics Newsweekly (January 26, 2011), www.pbs.org. John Winthrops
(15881649) sermon A Model of Christian Charity, evidently written on board
the ship Arbella in 1630, cast the Puritans as the New Israel, the people so
manifestly destined to be a light unto the nations that the claim needed no
proof: We shall find that the God of Israel is among us . . . when He shall
make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, the
Lord make it like that of New England. For we must consider that we shall
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462 John Adams quoted in Baldwin, Chuck. The Birh of Christ and the Birth
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463 Quote and information in this paragraph from Young, Jeremy. The Violence
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469 Quoted in Victoria, Brian Daizen. Zen at War, p. xii.
470 Ibid. p. xii.
471 Butler, Brigadier General Smedley D. War is a Racket (Los Angeles: Feral
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474 Hedges, Christopher. What Every Person Should Know About War, p. 4.
475 Ibid. p. 4.
476 Ibid. p. 7.
477 Ibid. p. 6.
478 Lunch, William L., Sperlich, Peter W. American Public Opinion and the
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479 Benedetto, Richard. Poll: Most back war, but want U.N. support. USA
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481 Ibid. p. 112.
486 MacAskill, Ewen. George Bush: God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq.'"
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488 Milloy, Courtland. Why No Outrage Over How We Treat Our Own
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489 Suskind, Ron. Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush.
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490 Hamilton, Clive. Biblical Prophesy and the Iraq War: Bush, God, Iraq and
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491 Nasaw, Daniel. Iraq War Briefings Headlined with Biblical Quotes, Reports
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493 Thomas, Adam. Defense contractor openly using God to sell war in Iraq.
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494 Welch, Michael. Scapegoats of September 11th: Hate Crimes & State Crimes in
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495 Information and quotes in this paragraph from Goldenberg, Suzanne. US
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496 Cooperman, Alan. Christian Leaders Remarks Against Islam Spark
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497 Tooley, Mark. Praise the Lord and George W. Bush. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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498Steeg, Jill Lieber. Glanville still shakes things up. USA Today (August 30,
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501 Editors. In the Profanity of War, a Commitment to Sacred Duty. Washington
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502 Sly, Randy. Memorial Day: Chaplains A Reminder that We Are One
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503 Tooley, Mark. Praise the Lord and George W. Bush.
504 Salmon, Jacqueline L. Most Americans Believe in Higher Power, Poll Finds.
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505 Green, Matt. Choosing to Serve Their Country. Washington Post (November
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506 Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God, pp. 32-33.
507 Ibid. p. 20.
508 Ibid. p. 27.
509 Ibid. p. 36.
510 Ibid. pp. 35-36.
511 Ibid. p. 23.
512 Quoted in Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jack. Is Religion Killing Us? pp. 113-114.
513 Terkel, Andrea. Palin: Iraq is a Task from God. Think Progress (September
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515 Hedges, Christopher. War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, pp. 171-172.
516 Canetti, Elias. Crowds and Power, p. 49.
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520 Hillman, James. A Terrible Love of War, pp. 178-179.
522 Ibid. p. 94.
523 Ibid. pp. 265-266.
525 Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil, p. 48.
526 Schwartz, Regina M. The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism, p. 50.
527 Quoted in Hillman, James. A Terrible Love of War, p. 23.
528 Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil, p. 203.
529 Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Idea, Volume I (Cambridge,
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530 Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation, Volume 1
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533 Pincus, Walter. Debates Underway on Combat Drones. Washington Post
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534 Ibid.
535 ilcullen, David and Exum, Andrew McDonald. Death From Above, Outrage
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536 Pincus, Walter. Debates Underway on Combat Drones, p. A2.
537 Nelson, Keith L. and Olin Jr., Spencer C. Why War? Ideology, Theory and
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539 Hillman, James. A Terrible Love of War, pp. 24-25.
540 Girard, Ren. Violence and the Sacred, pp. 10, 8.
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546 The Upanishads (Juan Mascaro, editor and translator). (New York and
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Wu-Tzu. The Wu-Tzu (Ralph D. Sawyer, Translator). The Seven Military Clas-
sics of Ancient China. New York: Basic Books (2007): 206-224.
Xue Yu. Buddhist Contribution to the Socialist Transformation of Bud-
dhism in China: Activities of Ven. Juzan during 19491953. Journal of
Global Buddhism (Volume 10, 2009): 217-253.
Buddhists in China during the Korean War (1951-1953). Buddhist
Warfare (Jerryson, Michael K. & Juergensmeyer, Mark, editors). Oxford,
Young, Jeremy. The Violence of God & the War on Terror. New York: Church
Publishing Inc., 2008.
Yu Yonghe. Small Sea Travel Diaries (Macabe Keliher, translator). Thailand:
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Sacred Books:
Bhagavad Gita. (Barbara Stoler Miller, translator). New York: Bantam Books,
1986.
Dhammapada (John Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana, translators).
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Holy Scriptures: According to the Masoretic Text. Philadelphia: Jewish Publica-
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Koran (N. J. Dawood, translator). New York and Middlesex, England: Pen-
guin Books, 1981.
The Upanishads (Juan Mascaro, editor and translator). New York and Mid-
dlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1984.
Online Sources:
About.Com: www.about.com
Atheist Nation: www.atheistnation.net
BBC News: www.news.bbc.co.uk
Boston Review: www.bostonreview.net
Catholic Online: www.catholic.org
Christianity Today: www.christianitytoday.com
Christian Science Monitor: www.csmonitor.com
CNN: www.cnn.com
Counterpunch: www.counterpunch.org
Cricket Voice: www.cricketvoice.com
Editorial Digest: www.editorialdigest.com
Encyclopedia Mythica: www.pantheon.org
Fox News: www.foxnews.com
Front Page Magazine: www.frontpagemag.com
Greensburg Daily News: www.greensburgdailynews.com
Guardian Newspaper: www.guardian.co.uk
IBNLive: www.ibnlive.in.com
Jewish World Review: www.jewishworldreview.com
Moral Low Ground: www.morallowground.com
National Public Radio: www.npr.org
New York Times: www.nytimes.com
Parade Magazine: www.parade.com
Patheos: www.patheos.com
PBS: www.pbs.org
Pew Forum: www.pewforum.org
Religion Dispatches: www.religiondispatches.org
203
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: www.seattlepi.com

Sikh Missionary Society: www.gurmat.info
Socialist Action: www.socialistaction.org
Source Watch: www.sourcewatch.org
Sri Lanka Guardian: www.srilankaguardian.org
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: www.plato.stanford.edu
Think Progress: www.thinkprogress.org
Time Magazine: www.time.com
Truth and Grace: www.truthandgrace.com
USA Today: www.usatoday.com
US News: www.usnews.com
Vatican: www.vatican.va
Washington Post: www.washingtonpost.com
204
Index
A Archbishop of Canterbury, 75
Ares, 34-36, 39
Aristotle, 37-38
Abel, 65, 170
Arjuna, 92-95
Abraham, 16, 31, 39, 44-45, 47-48, 53, 56,
Army, U.S., 13, 25, 48, 64, 70, 88, 95, 117,
65, 82, 86, 135, 172, 178-183, 189-190
119-120, 122, 131, 136, 144, 152, 156-157,
Abrahamic, 16, 31-32, 34, 37, 42-45, 47-
189
48, 50, 55-56, 59, 81-83, 86, 91, 100-101,
Asanga, 107
111, 118, 135-136, 141, 164
Ashoka, 100, 125-126, 188
Abu Bakr, 82
Asia, 91, 104, 115, 117-118, 125, 188
Adams, John Quincy, 144
Augustine, St., 38, 55, 68-69, 71-72, 74-75,
Afghanistan, 4, 23, 48, 56, 125, 136, 149-
146, 153-154, 180-181
150, 168
Aztecs, 37
Aguilar, Raymond of, 76
ahimsa, 125, 131
B
Ajax, 170
al-Azhar University, 14, 89
Albright, Madeleine, 149 Babylon/Babylonians, 32-34, 145, 164
Ali, Hussain ibn, 87 Bhagavad Gita, 20, 92-94, 184
Ali Gomaa, Sheikh, 89 Bangladesh, 125
Allah, 81-85, 87-88, 137 Battle Hymn of the Republic, 143
al-Qaeda, 136 Belgium, 147
altar, 32, 129 Bernard, St., of Clairvaux, 77
Amalekites, 143-144 Beveridge, Albert, 145
Ambrose, St. , 68, 181 Bhindranwale, Jarnail, 101
America (see also United States), 2-8, bin Laden, Osama, 27, 87-88, 138, 148, 152
11-12, 41, 64, 90, 98, 122-123, 133, 138- Bodh Gaya, 123-124
150, 153-155, 158, 161, 175, 190 bodhisattva, 105-108, 111, 115, 123, 129
Amir, Yigdal, 54 Books of the Bible
angel, 45, 62 Acts, 8, 11-14, 19, 21, 46-47, 52, 55, 57,
Aphrodite, 34 62, 68, 77, 89-90, 96, 99, 106, 108,
118, 127, 132, 147
Apocalypse, 129, 138-139, 141, 149, 151
Daniel, 50, 131, 189, 191
Apsu, 32-33
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 72-74
205
Gospels of chosen people, 16-17, 42, 49, 54, 140-141,

John, 56, 60-62, 66, 99, 113, 141, 143-145, 147, 149, 163
144, 154, 178, 180, 186, 190, 192 Civil War, 51, 78, 100, 131, 144-145, 169
Luke, 60-61 Committee of Skeptical Inquiry, 7
Mark, 13, 60-61, 96, 101, 104, 133- Communism, 132
134, 155, 172, 176-177, 180, 184- Confederacy, 145, 190
186, 189, 191-193 Confucius, 25, 177
Matthew, 60, 62-63, 84 Constantine, 66-68, 70
Hebrews, 65, 71, 83, 142 Constitution (United States), 143-144, 164
Isaiah, 44, 140, 151 Corts, Hernn, 37, 178
Joshua, 42-44, 86, 137 Council of Nicaea, 66-67
Judges, 86, 137 Crete, 32, 35-36
Numbers, 82, 141 Crusades, 13-14, 42, 55, 68, 75-77, 111, 130,
Revelation, 63, 81, 129, 141, 149, 151
178
Romans, 38-39, 62
Chronicles, 6, 13, 51
Corinthians, 62
D
Deuteronomy, 43, 51-52, 56, 82, 137
Ephesians, 62 Dalai Lama, 111-112, 126-128, 132, 134, 186,
Esau, 45, 163 188
Exodus, 42, 45, 54, 179 dar al-Harb, 59
Genesis, 5, 16, 34, 44-47, 53, 56, 82, dar al-Islam, 59, 88, 137
135-136, 151, 163, 165 death penalty, 11-12, 64, 126
Psalms, 159 Declaration of Independence, 144
Boykin, William, 152 de Pizan, Christine, 72
Boy Scouts, 156-157 de Vitoria, Francisco, 73
brahmana, 97, 106 Dhammapada, 106, 186
Brookings Institution, 3, 141 dharma, 92, 97-98, 100, 107, 110, 118, 121-
Buddha, 94, 103, 105-112, 117-118, 120-125, 122, 129, 132-133
127-129, 188 Dhyana Sect, 120
Buddhajnana, 121 double effect, 73-74
Burma, 106 drone (pilotless aircraft), 4, 42, 168-169
Bush, George W., 38, 98, 141, 148-153, Dwight, Timothy, 144
157-159, 185, 190-192 Dyncorp, 137
C E
Cain, 10, 137, 170, 176-177, 179, 189-190, 192 Egypt, 87-89
Cajetan, Thomas, 73 Einstein, Albert, 93
Canaan/Canaanites, 42-43, 143-144 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 93
Canetti, Elias, 86, 162, 183, 192 erotic/eroticism, 20
caste, 101, 130 error has no right, 69-70, 142
Celtic, 32 exceptionalism, 112-113, 140-141, 150, 157,
chaos, 11, 20, 26-27, 29, 33, 95, 145-147, 187
169, 172-173 Eucharist, 63, 70, 75
Charlemagne, 70 Europe, 53, 56, 68, 70, 75-77, 81, 110, 130,
child/children, 19, 31-33, 36, 44, 46-49, 136
52, 61, 65, 68, 76, 82, 89, 100, 136, 138, evil, 17, 21, 25, 27, 29, 33, 50, 55, 57, 59,
142, 146, 163, 170-172, 189 74, 83-85, 92-93, 97-98, 102, 110-111, 118,
China, 97, 104, 110-112, 115, 117-119, 122,
124, 126, 175, 186-188
206
Index
123, 139, 142, 146, 148, 150-151, 153, 157- Hill, Paul, 159
159, 171, 175, 179, 190, 192 Hitler, Adolf, 37, 42
Hojo Regents, 114
F Holocaust, 42, 63, 68, 75-76, 115
Holy Roman Empire, 70
Falwell, Jerry, 158-159 Homer, 92
Fatwa, 89 Hospitaliers, Knights, 76
Founding Fathers (Americas), 144 Hostiensis, 72
Fourth of July, 141, 144, 157 Houei-Yan, 104
France, 75, 151 Huang Po, 110, 186
Franciscans, 24 Huang Shi-Kung, 119
Franklin, Benjamin, 144
Futurist Movement, 20 I
G ibn Taymiyyah, Ahmad, 86

Ignatius of Antioch, 66
Gallup Poll, 16, 64, 153, 156, 181 Iliad, 30, 92
Gandhi, Mahatma, 1, 3, 9, 93-94 incest, 43, 45
Gaza, 52-54 India, 94-96, 98-100, 104, 106, 108, 121,
Genghis Khan, 9 123-126, 185
Geneva Convention, 169 Inquisition, 42, 55, 60, 75, 77-78, 107, 125
genocide (see also mass murder), 2-3, Iraq War, 16, 23, 88, 148, 151, 153, 155, 177,
18, 23, 42, 55-56, 72, 75, 140, 143, 177 191
Gerson, Michael, 152, 177 Iran, 4, 88, 125
Goliath, 85 IranIraq War, 88
Goldstein, Baruch, 52, 54, 179 Isaac, 16, 44-45, 47-48, 56, 65, 135, 163
Gomorrah, 45 Ishmael, 16, 44-45, 163
Goro, Sugimoto, 116 Israel, 34, 41-49, 51-53, 82, 85-86, 88, 90,
Graham, Franklin, 153 137, 140, 144, 151, 155, 178-180, 190
Gratian, 55, 71-72 Italy, 37, 77
Greece, 7, 34-36, 38, 42
Grenada, 4, 147 J
Grotius, Hugo, 162
Gulf War, 147-148 Jacob, 45, 163
Guru Nanak, 100 Jain, 126
Gushri Khan, 112, 127-128, 132 Japan, 2, 104, 112-114, 116-118, 124, 131,
186-187
H Jataka Sutra, 108
Jerusalem, 75-76, 88, 137, 182
hadith, 85, 88-89 Jesus, 4, 17, 59-63, 65-68, 70, 74, 76-79,
Hagar, 16, 44 98, 138, 141-142, 152, 155, 180
Haggadah, 137 jihad, 13, 42, 57, 82, 84-90, 183-184, 189
Hamas, 88 Jones, Jim, 111
Hare Krishna, 92 Judah, 44-45, 51
Helen of Troy, 19 Julius Caesar, 64
heretics, 69, 77 Jung, Carl, 93
Herodotus, 5 Jupiter, 39
Heruka, 121 just war, 19, 25, 37-38, 50-53, 55, 68-69,
Hesse, Hermann, 93 73-74, 89, 97-98, 102-103, 105, 111-112,
207
115, 117, 120, 123, 129-130, 142, 168, 171, Mars, 20, 39-40
179-180, 183, 185 martyr/martyrdom, 47-48, 56-57, 60, 64-
Juzhi Yizhi, 121 68, 71, 87-88, 102, 138, 142, 164
mass murder (see also genocide), 15,
K 24, 68, 95, 167
McCain, John, 56, 154, 180, 192
Kabbalah/Kabbalists, 25-26 McKibben, Bill, 140
Kahane, Meir, 53-54 McKinley, William, 145
Kali, 96 Medea, 170
Karma, 100, 107-108, 128 Melville, Herman, 140
Karmapas, 132 Memorial Day, 142, 154-155, 157, 192
Khampa, 129 Mengele, Josef, 115
Khomeini, Ayatollah, 138 Merton, Thomas, 5, 176
King Jr., Martin Luther, 152 Mesopotamia, 42, 178
Knesset, 53 messiah/messianism, 4, 54, 111, 129, 136,
Knossos, 32, 36 141, 149
Korean War, 110, 119, 122-123, 147, 186, Middle East, 4, 37, 53, 75, 81, 88, 137, 147,
188 151, 155, 182-183
Krishna, 92-96 Milvian Bridge, 66, 68
Ku Klux Klan, 78 miri-piri, 101
Kudos, 35 Mithra, 96
Kuwait, 4, 153 Mongolia, 131-132, 186, 189
monk, 71, 76-77, 109, 114, 116, 121, 126, 129-
L 132, 134, 188
Moriah, 45, 47-48, 56, 65, 135, 142
Moses, 44-46, 55-56, 81-82, 86-87, 144
Lactantius, 64
mufti, 89-90
lama, 111-112, 126-128, 132, 134, 186, 188
Muhammad, 17, 25, 57, 81-85, 87, 89, 138,
Lao Tzu, 119, 187
153
Libya, 137, 147, 175
Mumbai, 126, 188
limbic system, 30
Mumon, 188
Lockheed Martin, 172
mystic/mystical, 2, 11, 21, 23-26, 116, 154,
Lorenz, Konrad, 169
157, 162-163, 165-167
Lot, 45, 150
Lotus Sutra, 118
N
Luther, Martin, 74, 152
M Native Americans, 2, 78, 140, 143-144

Nazi, 113, 115, 141
Neanderthals, 32
MacArthur, Douglas, 79
Nepal, 94, 104
Maccabees, 48
New Age, 31, 151, 180
Machiavelli, Niccolo, 1, 119, 133, 175, 189
Niebuhr, Reinhold, 146
Mahabharata, 13, 92, 184
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 3, 8, 139, 166, 175,
Mahayana, 106-107, 118, 125, 128
190, 192
Maitreya, 129
Nirvana, 106-107, 110
Mammu, 32
North Africa, 81
Manjusri, 105
nuclear bomb/weapon, 2, 19, 42, 53, 113,
Mao Tsedung, 42, 136
180
Mara, 111, 120, 130
nuns, 104
Marduk, 33-35, 145, 164
208
Index
O Rumi, Jallaludin, 165

Rumsfeld, Donald, 151
Russia, 37
OReilly, Bill, 138
RussoJapanese War, 117
Obama, Barack, 2, 7, 141
Rwanda, 23, 177
Odyssey, 92
Old Testament, 55-56, 64, 86, 143, 145,
S
151-152
Onward Christian Soldiers, 143
Origen, 64 sacrifice, 6, 18, 22, 25-27, 31-32, 36-37,
45, 47-49, 56-57, 60, 62, 65-66, 71, 78-
P 79, 95-98, 102, 116, 121, 135-136, 138-139,
141-143, 150, 154-156, 163-164, 170-172,
185, 190
Pakistan, 4, 125, 136, 155
Saddam Hussein, 37, 42, 153
Palestinians, 52-54
Sahib, Hargobind, 101
Palin, Sarah, 159
Saladin, 88
Panama, 4, 147
Samurai, 109-110, 112, 114, 116, 118, 186-187
parsimonious God, 16, 35, 49, 163
sangha, 106
Patton, George, 21, 147
Sanskrit, 92, 125
Paul, 111, 152, 159, 185-188
Sarah, 16, 159
Pharmakos, 36, 169, 171, 193
Satan, 148, 151-152
Philippines, 146
scapegoat, 11-12, 16, 26, 36, 106, 170-171
Pinhas of Koretz, 2
Schmitt, Carl, 15
Plato, 37-38, 165, 188
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 166, 192
Plotinus, 24
September 11, 2001, 135, 148-149, 159
Pol Pot, 42, 111
Serbia, 4, 149, 155
Pope, 63, 70, 72, 75-77, 182
sex, 45-46, 105
Portugal, 77
Shabbatai Zevi, 111
Potala Palace, 111
Shakespeare, 92
primal/primitive, 3-4, 6-11, 22, 30, 33, 40,
Shamir, Yitzhak, 137
53-54, 98, 162, 167, 170-172, 176, 185
sharia, 89
Purim, 52, 179
Sherman, General William Tecumseh,
Q 145
Singh, Sohar, 101
SinoJapanese War, 117
Quran, 13, 83-85, 87-89, 92 skill in means, 105-106
slave/slavery, 2, 11, 39, 54, 70, 78, 115, 144,
R 171
Sodom, 45, 61
Rabin, Yitzhak, 54 Soma, 96
Ramayana, 13, 92 Somalia, 3-4, 152, 155
Rantisi, Abdul Aziz, 88 Song of the Queen of Spring, 127-128
Reagan, Ronald, 113, 158 Spain, 75, 77, 141
Renaissance, 72 SpanishAmerican War, 145
Revolutionary War, 142 Sparta, 35
Rinzai Zen, 110, 114, 133 Sri Lanka, 100, 106, 131, 188-189
Robertson, Pat, 62, 152-153, 158-159 Ssu-Ma, 119, 187
Rome, 7, 34, 38-39, 141 Stalin, Josef, 37, 42
Romulus and Remus, 39 State of the Union address, 141, 150
Roosevelt, Theodore, 146 Stone Age, 31-32
209
stupas, 100 122, 133, 136, 138-141, 143-149, 152, 155-

sublime, 21-22, 57, 154 156, 158-159, 175, 181, 185, 189
Sufi, 25, 165 Upanishads, 91-92, 173, 193
Sui Dynasty, 120
suicide bomber, 42, 48, 88, 100 V
Sumeria, 32
Sun Tzu, 4, 120 Vaisravana, 109, 120
Sunni, 87, 89 Vajra, 121, 124
Supreme Court, 157 Vajrapani, 124
sword, 44, 52, 60-61, 66, 78, 82, 84, 101, Veda/Vedic, 92, 96-97
105, 109-110, 113-114, 116, 138, 143 von Clausewitz, Carl, 168, 193
Venus, 39
T Vietnam war, 4, 147-148, 155, 191
Takuan, 110, 114 W

Tang Dynasty, 120
Tantric, 106, 120-121, 188 Wahhabis, 111
Tao/Taosim, 4, 119-120, 187 Wallis, Arthur, 13
Templar, Knights, 76 warrior, 18, 35-36, 42, 48, 50, 66, 70, 73,
Ten Commandments, 43, 45-46, 48, 56, 81, 85, 90, 92, 94, 96, 100, 108-109, 114,
64, 86 116, 118, 130, 138, 144, 157-158, 168-169,
terrorism, 87, 89-90, 111, 131, 139, 157-158 171
Tertullian, 63-64 West Bank, 54, 137
Thailand, 129-131, 180, 189 Winthrop, John, 113, 141, 190
Thanatos, 22 Wood, Leonard, 146
Theodosius, 68 World Trade Center, 8, 90
Theravada, 103, 129, 185 World War I, 4, 75, 79, 146
Tiamat, 32-33, 145, 164 World War II, 2, 4, 20, 22, 75, 79, 110, 112-
Tibet, 112, 126-132, 188 116, 118, 133, 146-147, 187
Titans, 35
Tolstoy, Leo, 24 Y
Torah, 13, 30-31, 42-43, 51-52, 82, 137
torture, 38-39, 64, 77-78, 86, 107-108, 112,
Yama, 108
140, 158, 190
Yemen, 3-4, 155
Tsumetomo, Yamamoto, 116, 186-187
Yogacara, 107, 123
U Z
Umar, 82
Zen, 14, 104, 109-118, 122, 133, 176, 185-
United States (see also America), 2, 4,
188, 191
6-8, 11-12, 16, 23, 27, 36, 38-39, 41, 48,
Zeus, 35
53, 59, 75, 79, 90, 95, 106, 112-113, 117,
Zionists, 54
210

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A Fatal Addiction

War in the Name of God

No portion of this book (beyond what is permitted by

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Printed in the United States

CHAPTER FIVE: ISLAM 81

Et Tu, United States? 133

America: A Case Study in the Difference between Truth

Things are certainly not getting better. An article in the Washington

the United States is said to be the most religious industrialized nation in

manner of papering over the violent history of a particular faith. Or, at

The Truth Shall Never Dissuade

America the Bellicose

After this exploration, I turn my attention to American culture and

a damming up of energy, whose eventual explosion is all the more

Violence and Society

Violence and Spirituality

Violence and The Scapegoat

those scapegoats also satisfy innate aggressive needs, freeing people to

but a literal fact. . . . Scholar Harriet Crabtree concurred, asserting that

War and Religion

War and the State

Some time later, Christianity claimed Gods promise (through Jesus)

certainty of religious leaders, missionaries and warriors from all cultures

War and the Warrior

An account by a participant one of thousands that are written,

city, disintegrating tens of thousands of human beings, there flashed in

And also of the ugliest sort necrophilia, sadism, exuberant murder,

No matter how much we talk about war, theorize, understand, quan-

Jewish Kabbalists believed that humans are literally the microcosm of

Primitive Religion and the Birth of the Violent God

an increasing ability to vent his personal violent impulses in ever more

Babylonian Religion: Creation from Destruction

The Greek and Roman Religions

Greek Gods and War

God and Sacrifice

Aristotle and Plato

The Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) are centered

Story after story, passage after passage is rife with God-sanctioned

In the Book of Joshua, we read:

An Atmosphere Pervaded with Violence

attitude of every Jewish husband since, quietly acquiesced to his wifes

birthright), mistook his daughter-in-law Tamar for a prostitute while

The Jewish God and His Battered Spouse

Sacrifice, Martyrdom and the Will of God

spawned a cult of sacrifice for young warriors everywhere. The Abraha-

Navy Cmdr. Chad Muse, commanding officer of SEAL Delivery Team 1

Israel: God, Land and the Other

Judaism Today More of the Same?

become a recurring theme in Israeli politics: that of the religious Zionist,

How the Jewish Bible Affects Christianity

century genocide in the Americas, the religious wars in Europe through-

And Echoes in Islam

The theological structure of Christian belief promotes the appalling record

Jesus a Message of Peace?

Perhaps one of the greatest religious myths that we have to contend

Without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection,

The Gospel writer known as Matthew frequently places threatening and

The Early Church Fathers