Religions' complex attitudes toward war

It sounds like a trick question: Are Al Qaeda and Hezbollah - groups that kill in the name of Islam - really Muslim?

To those who respond with a knee-jerk affirmative, Mark Allman of Merrimack College says not so fast. Consider that the Ku Klux Klan avows Christianity. How many Christians accept Klansmen as their brothers in Christ?

The point underscores the convoluted attitudes toward violence coursing through the histories of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Misunderstandings abound with regard to how the three view war, Allman said last week as he sought to clear the air in a talk at the North Andover campus, where he teaches religious and theological studies.

The subject is topical enough to draw 150 people on a frigid night. To keep the discussion from floating away on currents of airy academic theory, Allman opened by screening photos of war's victims, the most searing of which were gory pictures of children with bodies bloodied, mangled, and limbless - a needed reminder, he said, that "what we are here to discuss tonight is grotesque."

Displaying an on-screen theological tic-tac-toe grid, Allman delved into the three faiths' histories with three philosophies of war - pacifism, just war, and holy war. He offered a few surprises. For example, he said that some pacifists accept some violence; St. Augustine, who held that individuals couldn't morally use violence even in self-defense, invented just-war theory, believing that the state had a unique obligation to defend the weak.

Allman's central concern boiled down to the question of why these three religions, which all affirm a loving God and have done so much good, have histories of embracing war, be it the morally conditioned just war or the fanatical absolutism of "holy war, in which combatants claim the Almighty is on their side?

One connecting thread is power, Allman concluded: Religious believers historically tend to pacifism when they're defenseless against superior force. Once they attain brute strength, they're more likely to wield it. Such believers don't embrace pacifism solely because they can't beat anybody and shed it when they can, he insisted - they're on firm theological ground in their pacifism -but the "context of powerlessness" creates an environment in which pacifism seems more acceptable.

What about each faith's history and scriptures? The Book of Exodus is full of the Jewish people waging holy war, but such wars are rare elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, he said. Christians have invoked God's endorsement for violence from the Crusades to the removal of Native Americans from their lands. But those claims were "fundamentally unbiblical," Allman said. "Jesus has a good record on pacifism," from his blessing of peacemakers to his turning the other cheek and his commandment to love your enemies. That's why some early church fathers were pacifists.

When it comes to Muslims, "Islam is in trouble," he said, beset by a "serious problem -how to interpret the jihad tradition and who has authority to speak within [it]." Which brings us back to Al Qaeda and the question of who's a Muslim. Osama bin Laden issues religious edicts despite his lacking any theological, juridical role within Islam. "His authority is grounded in the fact" - Allman paused for effect - "he's rich."

But Islam has a vibrant alternative tradition of which its critics are ignorant, he continued. Mohammed used the word jihad to refer not to warfare but the individual's inner struggle to overcome sin. Those who quote the Koran's "sword passages" of violence overlook its "peace passages," which relentlessly stress God's mercy.

Other passages endorse violence in self-defense or command mercy and cessation of violence for enemies who sue for peace.

In short, Islam's turmoil hinges on whether jihad is interpreted literally or figuratively. To Allman, Islamic terrorists are "rogue elements that call themselves Muslim" but actually push a political and economic ideology that feeds off the poverty and alienation of poor Muslims.

When a questioner asked why moderate Muslim leaders hadn't condemned the extremists, Padraic O'Hare, director of the Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations, which sponsored the talk, said that a Google search would convince the questioner otherwise.

Allman is a Roman Catholic and advocate of rigorously conditioned just war. On that score, he might have alienated some like-minded allies with his asides during the talk, as when he criticized the "displaying of war banners - I mean American flags -in our houses of worship."

But the crowd rewarded his calls for understanding and ameliorating the causes of war with a standing ovation.

In these religiously conflicted times, O'Hare concluded, the center he leads is "an act of moral audaciousness and moral responsibility."

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