Is There a Theological Response to Terrorism?

[Gauracandra]

Here is an article about the role of religion in response to terrorism. One thing that I've seen lately in the analysis of this situation though, is the idea that poverty in third world countries is what drives the terrorism. I think this is way off. For instance, we aren't seeing poor Haitian's dive bombing into the World Trade Centers. It is strictly around one religion in particular that we see such a concerted terrorist mentality. Be that as it may I thought you might find the following article interesting.

 

Gauracandra

 

Is There a Theological Response to Terrorism?

 

by Ted Parks

Religion News Service

 

"Blessed are the peacemakers," Jesus said. And, "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also."

 

"We want to tear those pages out on days like this," admitted Christian ethicist Shaun Casey after the terrorist attacks last week on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "But, ultimately ... in the grand scheme of things, we've got to ask, what are the things that make for peace?"

 

While Christianity along with other world faiths brings the voice of tradition to bear on questions of war and violence, some experts wonder if answers forged by religious thinkers over the centuries still speak clearly in the chaotic context of international terrorism.

 

"How do you think about responding to violence when it is terrorist violence?" asked Jonathan Wilson, who teaches religious studies at Westmont College near Santa Barbara, Calif. Wilson and others point to two classical approaches to war in the Christian faith: pacifism and the "just war" tradition.

 

Pacifism rejects all violence. Just war theory concedes warfare can be necessary, and lays out principles for nations to evaluate their motives for fighting and the ways they conduct combat. The theory begins with the question, "Is it ever right to take up arms against other human beings?" said Casey, a professor at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. While pacifists would answer an unequivocal "no," just war thinkers give in to war if the motives for it are proper.

 

Looking at the criteria as first outlined in the 4th century by Christian theologian St. Augustine, Casey said one just cause is defense of an innocent party. Another is to punish evildoers. The just war tradition offered additional standards to decide the

legitimacy of a conflict. War must be a last resort, the final measure after every other option failed. Furthermore, a party should go to war only if it has a reasonable chance for success. And leaders must think through the lasting consequences of opting for war.

"We capture these terrorists, but the Middle East goes up in flames and World War III starts," Casey suggested as a current application of the principle. "You have to weigh the good you hope to produce, versus the evil you may produce in the process."

 

The just war approach not only asks questions about reasons and potential results, but seeks to contain war's fury. "Discrimination" and "proportionality" are key concepts here, Casey explained. The first principle demands that noncombatants not be targets in the conflict. The second insists that warring parties use only the force necessary to win their objectives, not wipe the enemy off the map.

 

Casey acknowledged that 21st century terrorism strains the historic concepts of the just war. "The changing nature of warfare puts pressure on the ethic," he said. For example, modern terrorism makes enemies hard to pin down. "The just war ethic puts very high demands on the military response," Casey said. With the enemy camp no longer "a discreet piece of real estate," he said, the new context "raises the temptation to strike back at larger entities."

 

While the just war ethic sought to purify motives and limit destruction, another strain in the Christian tradition questioned whether a faith grounded in love had room for any kind of bloody reprisal. J. Denny Weaver, professor of religion at Ohio's Bluffton College, argues that Christian faith does not legitimize an in-kind response to aggression. "Nonviolence ... still holds" as a valid Christian response, Weaver insisted.

 

Bluffton is affiliated with the Mennonite Church USA. Mennonites, Brethren and Quakers comprise what scholars have called the "historic peace churches" because of the groups' pacifist stance. For Weaver, the question is whether believers allow the enemy to set the tone for their own actions. "Do I base my response on how bad the deed is?" he asked. "The fact that this is a very heinous deed doesn't change how I should respond as a Christian."

 

Drawing on the Christian nonviolent tradition, Weaver questioned if the frantic urge many feel to "do something" could only mean striking back the same way we were hit. "Think about the fact that the people who did this terrible deed also believe that violence works," he said. "You've got both sides saying that."

 

Acknowledging that the world longs for justice, Weaver distinguished two ways to understand the concept. "Retributive justice," the standard of American jurisprudence, "means inflict pain, suffering, violence, that's equivalent to the deed done," Weaver said. But that approach has problems, he said. For one thing, the victims who suffered in the first place benefit little from the violent confrontation of the misdeed. Retribution doesn't restore. "Restorative justice," on the other hand, would focus not on punishing the perpetrator but bringing back some of the good snatched away by the original evil. "You can't put back murder," Weaver said. "No amount of punishment is going to restore anything." Leaders "need to start ... a process that lessens violence," he said.

 

David Cortright, president of the Fourth Freedom Forum, a private foundation promoting international peace, believes principles from both just war theory and pacifism apply even in today's murky conflict. He underscored the just war concept of "discrimination" that would call military planners to think twice before targeting civilians to get at terrorists. And Cortright looked to pacifism as a warning against the black hole of violence. Pacifism reminds us of "the spiral of violence, the notion that violence begets violence."

 

Other religious traditions share Christianity's call to carefully ponder war and its potential for destruction. Muhammad Al-Hanooti, a leading Islamic scholar who lives in Virginia, said that Islam could justify war under circumstances of oppression. "You have the right to defend your life, your property ... especially your territory." But, he added, "we don't fight against anybody because of his faith or because of anything racial, ethnical, tribal."

 

Al-Hanooti said that Islamic tradition teaches parties preparing a violent confrontation to warn their enemy before attacking. "The root meaning of Islam is peace," stressed Salam Al-Marayati, director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, an American Muslim advocacy group. "The whole purpose of the religion is to establish justice on earth, so that we are in harmony with God's creation. Islam has no room for terrorism."

 

Similarly, Judaism enshrines principles intended to humanize war and reduce its destructive consequences. "There is a thrust in the tradition that you go to war in defense of yourself and in defense of other people," said Rabbi Steven B. Jacobs, spiritual leader of the Kol Tikvah Reform congregation in Woodland Hills, Calif. "You have to contain your anger," Jacobs said, adding that the goal of exercising power is "to be able to turn your enemy into a friend."

 

Fourth Freedom's Cortright echoed the importance of thinking not only about retaliation, but redemption. Justice, he said, means not only "bringing those responsible to trial," but "trying to find means of economic and social equality" for needy people. With the millions spent on defense and intelligence-gathering, which still failed to thwart last week's attack, Cortright wondered about other ways for the country to use its enormous resources. "If we had spent those kinds of moneys in ... helping the poor of the world, perhaps we'd create a better image of ourselves and begin to address the ... economic desperation that motivates people to these extreme acts."

[Guest guest]

poverty in third world countries is what drives the terrorism

 

BULLSHIT!

 

Demons drive terrorism.

 

America has given billions of dollars in food/medical/practical aid to Afghanistan in the last twenty years. And this is how they pay us back? By harboring Osama?

 

It is all over. We will bomb them with ghee and grain.

 

Taliban is not Afghanistan. Taliban is history.

[JRdd]

Very impressive article. Out of all who were quoted in it, I most appreciated the one who spoke of there being valid tenets in both the just war take and the pacifist viewpoint.

 

As transcendentalists, or aspirant transcendentalists, our decisions seems to boil down, as always, to the question of whether our activities are on the level of karma-kanda or not. I mean, Krsna told Arjuna to perform his duty. And we have learned, as devotees, more than most, that there really really is more to things than meets the eye. What may appear to be outrageous to some may be perfectly acceptable on a higher strata. Just like, it is said that Srila Bhaktisiddhanta made the comment that he would go so far as to feed meat to people if he thought it would bring them to Krsna; from this we understand his intention was to point out the highest purpose in life. I have always so much appreciated Srila Prabhupada's tteaching us to do the needful, and to be practical, and to make adjustments according to time and circumstance. Nothing is set in stone. If it was, we would automatically know exactly what to do. But there is more to it than that, and that more-ness is yoga, connecting with the divine, gaining that ear for Supersoul, coupled with any specific instructions we may be so fortunate to receive from the guru. It everything was black and white it would be a whole different kettle of fish, and that is our main challenge in this world: coming to that state of knowing what to do. In the meantime, we do our best, and surrender the results to Krsna. What we do know is that one has the right to defend against aggressors, as is stated in the Bhagavad-gita and other places. I have been thinking of the aptness of having the dialogue between Krsna and Arjuna take place on the battlefield, for this certainly challenges the idea that nonviolence is always the msot appropriate action. This was immediately acceptable to me as a new devotee learning about transcendence and devotion to God, even with my background of Be-ins and protest marching. I realise this thread addresses a unique situation: terrorism, but I think what I have said applies regardless.

 

This is why I can neither condemn those who go to fight these people, nor can I condemn those who adhere to the principles of pacifism, which also speak very strongly to me.

 

I'm going to return with a quote from Srila Prabhupada on terrorism. It may not be specific to the question of this thread, but since we see so very few quotes on terrorism--this quote will speak of the mentality of terrorism--I hope you don't mind if I slip this little quote in anyway.

 

Jayaradhe

 

[JRdd]

Here is the quote:

 

Morning Walk - May 28, 1974, Rome

 

Yogesvara: One problem that seems to be occurring more and more frequently is the appearance of terrorists, that is to say, men who are motivated for some political, mostly political reasons.

Prabhupada: Yes the whole basic principle I have already explained. Because they are animals, so sometimes ferocious animal. That's all. Animal, there are different types of animals. Tigers and lions, they are ferocious animal. But you live in the animal society. So animal society, some, another animal comes as very ferocious, that is not very astonishing. After all, you are living in animal society. So you become human being, ideal. This is the only solution. We have already declared, this is animal society. If some ferocious animal comes out, so where is the astonishment? After all, it is animal society. Either a tiger comes or elephant comes, they are all animals. That's

all. But you don't become animal. Counteract. That is required. Then after...

A human being is called rational animal. If you come to the rationality, that is required. If you remain also another animal, another type of animal, that will not help you. You have to become actually human being. But "durlabham manusam janma tad apy adhruvam arthadam". You have to... These people they have no aim of life. What is the aim of human..., they do not know. So their animal propensities are being adjusted this way, that way, this way, that way.

 

 

[Janus]

Adsit Anglis Santus Georgius!

The Acharyas, Guru and Shastra all agree that there should be kings, and that these kings should be Divinly appointed. Kings, by the fact that they are kings accept that they are Divinly appointed, or they care not for Divine appointment because they do not believe it, that there is any Devine to appoint them, or any spiritual authority, or any spirit at all.

Rational deliberation had convinced us that the metaphyics of the Classicists; of Homer, Plato and Aristotle were empty of works, just plentiful in words.

Our vision and view of reality does not suffer from the delusionment that those who expound that they are the representives of Deity have any longer any purpose, no longer in any use to us, and that they indeed, as exhibited by the Fascist face of Islam, as displayed in the likeness of Bin Laden and so many other zealots produced by the fanaticism of ideological zealotry, pose now a threat to all that we have lived for and all that we envision that will in our future be.

Because we are still families it is sometimes difficult to not desire that there would be a God, but reason placed such a being as little more than a cosmic watch maker several hundreds of years ago at the exact same moment that they dismissed Him.

That there should be kings is never in question by those who are already acting in the manner of kings. That they should be Divinely appointed is a consideration that they cannot allow themselves on account of their knowledge.

Unless we have divinely appointed kings howerver we shall still have kings. The difference will be in how they see things, and how they see things now is that all human life is just a matter of little tiny molecules just moving in motion.

There is no God in this Civilization. Hmmmm? And we are incapable, as yet, of producing Him. But those who say that there is a God and that they are his representives fit to rule over us, who say to their followings that they are all destined for heaven or paradise still exert by this tactic that was once so useful to us undue influence, even several hundreds of years following the time that their usefullness was at an end.

It is difficult to counter this without divine appointment from the psychological perspective, that we admit. Obviously though they do not allow themselves just to fade out into obscurity and from thence to dust but seek to overturn the natural order that we are progressing. They have always been uinheaththy as exhibted by their tendencies to castrate and flagellate themselves to remove the burden of their recognition that that is, in fact as much of their natures as their diseased model would avail them of.

A religion without a Goddess is halfway to atheism. There is not however a feminine perspective in even our appraisal of the world. There is only mathmatics.

 

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[Janus]

That people should accept government of kings has been rejected by pirates and other babarians, but not by all of them. Thus it is no surprise that the chief architect of the Machine Age Sir Francis Bacon, was knighted, even after his quarrel with Queen Elizabeth.

Knighthood instills in one a strong desire to champion the rights of the Lady of Soverenity, so even so an internal dissonance is created, productive of disharmony.

There are two conflicting versions of reality that we each imbibe in our conditioning, the cut throat capatalism of Adam Smiths economic theory and the values that have come down to us through both the teachings of Christianity and those other elements of our heritages that were transmitted from the Western cultus though estranged from an actual tradition.

It is no wonder that so many of us tend then to suffer some mental upset or calamity. It is hard to accept that life for us has a definite beginning and a definite and final end. Thus religion has been allowed to continue to practice it's fraud under the cloak of our auspices, as a personal liberty even though it was rejected long ago by us a a basis for social centricity.

This leaves sanity for only those who in awareness are capable of reason and who can soberly progress themselves in accordance with "reality".

Such discipline is beyond the scope of those who suffer in their awareness of what in their lives is lacking, even when they are offered a high standard of economic enjoyment and the material benifits that are alien to most of the whole earths human population to whom even a little rat meat along with their rice is viewed as a luxury.

Existential pressure makes such luxuries as this writing here on a board in cyber space beyond the reach of most everyone, and only those who exhibit the primier values of the Machine Age, speed, accuracy, etc., and very few of them can be maintained at the standard of life that permits them even the slightest delusion of autonomy. Those familiar with the second laws of thermodynamics will understand the economic theory advanced from an understanding of it's implications. The Sri Isopanisad does not advance that one can over colonize, nor over exploit a closed system. The Right Management of the earth and of the Earths resources and the future of human kind make certain sacrifices necessary.

We enjoy rights and priveledges now and think that we are entitilted to them because we share the assumption that history is progressive, and that where we are now represents evolution. The extremists of these ideologies that confront us are particulary austere, they are not of the masses and the masses are not of them by choice. They function however within an economic environment that makes their tenure of short duration. There are howerver a lot of them and thus their eradication may take considerable effort and time and their will be casualties.

It took two million years for the earth to gain it's first billion human inhabitants, only thirty years more to double again. What's a million peoples lives matter, I mean between "friends"?

What technology has acquired for us cannot be sustained in the mannor that we have it now, not for all of us, not for any of us for we are only molecules in motion with no truely autonomous motive force beyond our symptoms of life, beyond our hope and our hunger. We too are accounted to be machines, bits and pieces, meant for production and consumtion in the service of the Machine Age world view. This is Kali yuga and this is Kali yuga. Understanding it, and then being able to discount it's materialistic world view is half of that which it takes to sit the acharya's chair in the West.

Who of you, who of your sons or your daughters will manifest the other half and return to our nobility or to their sons and their daughters Divine appointment?

Hiranyakasipu thinks that you'd better and best leave him and his children alone, and here Hiranyakasipu doesn't even believe in the demigods let alone in God and so your threat to him, in his perception is only that you (not you) are able to still exert influence because he simply has not yet considered it of paramount importance to destroy all religion upon a global scale, past it's usefulness to him. That it is an option that he has considered is exhibeted just in experimental incidents such as in Tibets and in the Soviet Union where hundreds of thousands of priests and nuns were raped and slaughtered. Joe Stalin and Mao Tse Tung were children of our same world view.

Regarding the autonomous individuals, those types of critters that dispite our acceptance of Vaisnava philosophy we still imagine ourselves to be in our unenlightened consciousness of only our material identities; Joseph Stalin said it best, that the death of an individual was a tragedy while that the deaths of millions was a statistic. That he accepted this as true was demonstrated by that he was very sympathetic to the persons in the movies that he watched who were undergoing tragedies and hardships while all at the same time he was executing millions. Technology has given "us" the power to rule the world and discrimination has given us the understanding of how the world must be ruled, and for whom.

"Whom" does not include either me or you for we are not individuals only parts of a statistic, just restless molecules.

Moooooooooo.

 

PS. In answer to your question as to whether there is any theological response to terrorism it is this, that there is no explanation given by any theologists that can counter the conditions that create an atmoshphere in which terrorists can freely function and attack us. There is a response, but its basis is derivative from our Machine World View.

The conception of human rights that we accept as God given and inalienable has been a luxury that in the very near future will be adjusted by our realizations as many civil liberties are willingly sacrificed for security, and sacrificed permanantly. Those who make such sacrifices will afterwards come under the realization that they have neither, their "just deserts" in the opinion of Benjamin Franklin, or perhps he was just precognitive just internally to dissonant to believe that his talents were somewhat oracular, and to horrified to consider full well it's implications, or to jaded by the Parisian night life.

 

 

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[karthik_v]

Originally posted by rand0M aXiS:

[bAmerica has given billions of dollars in food/medical/practical aid to Afghanistan in the last twenty years.

Is that why Afghanistan is among the richest nations in the world? Is that why it has sprawling mansions, meadows, hospitals and universities? The USA pumped money into the hands of the very same Taliban and Osama and Pakistani dictators to fight the USSR. The money wasn't given to the people of Afghanistan.

 

The US often propped up or supported dictatorship regimes in many 3rd world nations to further its interests.

 

And this whole thing called "AID" is humbug. The US, USSR and NATO nations made billions by trading arms and fighter planes to those countries that can't afford to feed their population. And a fragment of that revenue went back as aid. A case in point is that of Ethiopia/Eritrea in 1987 when they were battling for homeland. USA and USSR sold weapons to them and took away 80% of their GDP. The artistes then formed a consortium called USA for Africa (United Support Artistes) and raised 4 million USD in aid. The media raved about this aid, but hardly anyone spoke of the billions taken away from those poor folks through arms sale.

 

So, what is the definition of aid? The only way we can have lasting peace is when we remove inequalities in this world. That can happen only when we ultimately transcend the artificial barriers of nationality. For that to happen in the long-term, the first steps should be to put an embargo on arms trade. The second step should be to ban the secret banking industry in Switzerland...for that is the conduit for every dictator, arms dealer and mafia. Then we don't need any "AID", you see.

 

 

[paul108]

My wife recently read a book about an indigenous culture that was annihilated a few decades ago by the U.S. (Our official history claims it was a civil war, but the book says it was a massacre.) Apparently the big threat to the U.S. was their economic rule that whoever would become the wealthiest in the community would give their wealth away to the other members. Then the next in line would do the same. The result was that everyone was about equal in terms of their economic status, and no one was attached to their posessions. It seemed like they were quite happy until we killed them all.

 

Bill Gates could give about $10 to every person on earth.

 

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