خلاصة:
In this paper, we examine the relationship between religion and violence. The idea is that religion, as a collection of texts, is single, but various kinds of actions have been taken under its name. The reason lies in the fact that religion, as a textual entity, is prone to various interpretations. Each of the interpretations indeed, in its turn, embodies a particular approach to the religion. It is in fact the approach and its resulting interpretation that lead to actions on the part of the believers. Some of the approaches to religion may amount to violence and they have indeed amounted to such a phenomenon. We will conclude that the spiritual approach, as compared with the jurisprudential and theological ones, is less likely to give rise to violence.
ملخص الجهاز:
On the other hand, actions taken by believers, under the name of the religion, derive from their particular understanding of the religious texts.
3 To explain, soon after the formation of a (faith-based) Muslim community in Medina, and in particular after the death of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), events unfolded in a direction that eventually a kind of legal ethics emerged among Muslims to be enforced all through their conquered territories.
2 We focus our attention on those approaches which have been “actually” taken to the religion of Islam by the faithful, as delving into “possible” approaches will make our discussion and analysis unnecessarily lengthy and, worse, speculative 3 On the origin and unfolding of the enterprise, see, for instance, Schacht, J.
The reason underlying the necessary outbreak of violence relates to the fact that the aforesaid approach gives rise to an interpretation of religion and courses of action thereupon that do not leave any options for the faithful to choose.
Although all over the sacred text (the Qur’an) it is “the faithful” who are addressed by the God9 and the concepts that express the pillars of religiosity are those of “faith in the God” and “faith in the hereafter”, all theological works have been discussing beliefs in God and the world to come.
The Spiritual Approximation Thus far, we have introduced and criticised two possible approaches to the religion (that is, the jurisprudential and theological ones) which – as shown above, when they are taken as the guide for religious practice – can lead, and indeed have actually lead to violence.