Term Paper on "Holy Wars and Crusades"

Term Paper 7 pages (1744 words) Sources: 5 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Holy Wars and Crusades

Although many people think the concept of holy wars and crusades are now nothing more than historical events, in fact holy wars and crusades are as much a part of modern history as they were of medieval history. Whether it be against Christians, Jews and Muslims, nor whether it be perpetrated by Christians, Jews or Muslims, Holy Wars and Crusades are occurring all over the world.

Three writers who explain the issue of holy wars and crusades are Karen Armstrong, Mark Juergensmeyer and Malise Ruthven. Although all three writers tackle the same issue, each approaches the problem from a different, unique point-of-view or approach. Thus, in order to understand the role that holy wars and crusades plays in our ongoing history, one must understand the theories of all of these authors.

Karen Armstrong, a former nun, is an author who specializes in writing about Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. Working now as a self-described "freelance monotheist," she is best known for her advancement of the theory that fundamentalist religion, of any kind, is essentially a response to and a product of modern culture.

Armstrong believes that holy wars and crusades have occurred at two points in history: during the fifteenth century and again in the late twentieth century. According to Armstrong's counter-intuitive theory of religious fundamentalism, the key to understanding modern day holy wars and crusades is to understand how they emerged in the late fifteenth and twentieth centuries.

In Holy War: Armstrong argues that it was the historic crusades against the Byzantine empire overrun by Muslim Turks by the Christian warriors summoned by Pope Urban II. During this period, the Christian fundamentalist took up the cross and the sword against the Turks with the sole purpose of recovering the holy city of Jerusalem from Islam. It is this initial battle that is still today raging, as the sides of Christians, Jews and Muslims continue to fight against the modern holder of the holy lands, whether the ownership be actual or theoretical.

Central to any reading of history is the notion that "premodern cultures possessed two complementary and indispensable ways of thinking, speaking and knowing: mythos and logos." Mythos, on the one hand, is concerned with meaning and "provided people with the context that made sense of their day-to-day lives." In other words, mythos is what attraction the human mind to such concepts as the eternal and the universal.

Logos, on the other hand, is what focuses the mind on practical matters. Logos, Armstrong argues, "is what causes humans to forge ahead by elaborating on old insights while mastering the environment and creating fresh and new things." According to Armstrong, it is Western Civilization's adoption of the logos as its foundation and subsequent loss of the mythos is the cause of the current world situation of holy wars.

In other words, the adoption of the logos has led to a slow disintegration of society's collective narratives and rituals and the meanings that were attached to them. Instead, authority as to deciding what is right, rational, pragmatic and scientific, but "which does not assuage human pain or sorrow" has been given to the logos. According to Armstrong, the problem with this is that this way of thinking is incapable of answering such questions as "what is the meaning of life."

According to the author, what the fundamentalist religions have been able to accomplish is taking their religions mythos, or myths and traditions, and making it their logos. When a fundamentalist group does this, unlike the rest of society, they loose the ability for rational thought and instead of seeing how their actions are irrational and against the mythos of their professed religion, instead view the logos as the meaning of their lives. Thus, according to Armstrong, "fundamentalism is a child of modernity and fundamentalist are fundamentally modern."

Armstrong suggest that, because fundamentalism is a response to modernity, that perhaps the key to solving the conflicts that have risen between the fundamentalist and the modernity that surrounds them is through compassion and a general effort of understanding on both sides.

Mark Juergensmeyer, in his book Terror in the Mind of God, takes the premise set by Armstrong one step further with the goal of specifically connecting religion and terrorism. The guiding question is to better understand how and why some people and the groups who support them are willing to commit acts of violence in the name of their god or gods and what they perceive to be the greater good. In other words, why do religious fundamentalist commit violent acts in the name of their god, taking the lives of innocent victims and terrorizing entire populations?

Whereas Armstrong argued that the answer to this was a combination of the logos taking the place of the mythos and because of the resulting modernity that has developed as a result of this theoretical shift. According to Juergensmeyer, the reason for this phenomena stems from what he calls, "the odd attraction of religion and violence." In reaching this general conclusion, he has identified certain "cultures of violence" within all religious communities, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism. It are these cultures of violence, and not the religion itself, that causes terrorism within fundamental believers.

According to Juergensmeyer, such religious communities will perceive themselves and their way of life as being under attack. This is essentially in agreement with Armstrong's argument that religious fundamentalism arises from a feeling that their way of life is being attacked by the way of the modern world.

To explain his point, Juergensmeyer uses the example of the Tokyo toxic sarin gas attack of 1995. This act of terrorism was committed by a member of a newly established "socially prophetic" Buddhist sect that believed in millenarian prophecies about the imminent end to the world. Although Buddhism, like all other religions, is fundamentally a nonviolent and peaceful system of beliefs, when members feel their way of life is being attacked, they will employ an all-out at no cost attack on the society that is perceived to be attacking them.

Essentially, Juergensmeyer argues that religious terrorism is a sociological phenomenon. Again, this is similar to the argument made by Armstrong, however it is less developed than that of Armstrong. Instead of delving into the theory of the phenomenon, like Armstrong does, Juergensmeyer instead focuses his research and writing on understanding the beliefs of the actual fundamentalist. To accomplish this, he conducts in depth interviews with some of the twentieth century's most notorious religious terrorist. What he concludes, unlike Armstrong, is that this social phenomena is not connected to the religious beliefs themselves but instead are a spin-off of classic group mentality. In other words, as these groups of fundamentalist gather against the alleged threat they end up developing a group ideology that can only be described as a new religion in and of itself, a religion that prescribes the use of violence, martyrology, satanization and "images of cosmic confrontation" in order to justify their violent actions.

The third writer, Dr. Malise Ruthven, is a historian on religion fundamentalism, especially as to Islamic affairs. In his book entitled Fundamentalism: The Search for Meaning, Ruthven starts at the end of the Cold War, using this as the point that fundamentalism emerged as the major threat to world peace and prosperity. From here, he poses the question that the other two others seem to have bypassed, that being, "what does fundamentalism really mean?"

According to Ruthven's study, since the coinage of the term in the 1920s by American Protestant evangelicals, the word has expanded its meaning to include any radical conservatives or ideological pursuits found in any sphere of society, not necessarily only religious. Further, Ruthven moves the focus of modern day fundamentalism and holy wars away from the common focus on Islamic radicals and also focuses on the fundamentalism found in other religions. For example, Ruthven focuses heavily on the militant Israeli settles who oppose Islamic, Sikh, Hindu and even Buddhist nationalists. Like the new-dominant Islamic fundamentalists, these Israeli fundamentalist also justify their political agendas through a reference to divine edicts and religious traditions which, as has been said by Armstrong, have been replaced by a false logos ideology of life.

However, in his book Islam: A Very Short Introduction, Ruthven focuses exclusively on the Islamic faith with the intent of promoting understanding of the religion that goes beyond the fundamentalist that have gone to define the faith. This concept is similar to Armstrong's argument for a solution to the modern day holy war: to solve the perceived threats of both sides through the promotion of understanding.

Unfortunately, Ruthven falls far short of providing his audience with the introduction promised. Instead of providing a basic understanding of the faith, Ruthven assumes that his audience has ample background information and thus focuses his narrative on abstruse intellectual and political issues that seem to do nothing more than bring the audience's attention back to the issue of religious fundamentalism within… READ MORE

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