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how did religion made

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Is Religion Man-Made? How Did Religion Start? The Evolution of Belief (2006)

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https://youtu.be/HMrfHk5Y7Iw

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How to have a conversation about RELIGION in English

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Issues about religion

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Pew Research Center - U.S. Politics & Policy

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Public Opinion on Religion, the Bible, Evolution and Social Issues

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There are deep divisions in the political typology over religious beliefs, views of the Bible and social issues such as homosexuality and abortion. And while the right and left differ over these issues, in many cases they also divide both parties’ coalitions.

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(Jariel)

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this video is a connection to the worldwide problem with religious conflict. this man in the video is a man talking about the religious conflict and how it affects people in other religions to feel offended and when they are being disrespected and create this chain reaction that causes the whole world have religious conflict. (this is an example of cause and effect)

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the cause and effect of religious conflict

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the cause and effect of religious conflict

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the cause and effect of religious conflict is people who cause these conflicts are people who are disrespecting other peoples religions. this has to do with many things including racism, equal rights, their race, and battle agents religions.

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Conflict Resolution: How to Settle Your Differences Fairly | BrainPOP

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the resolution to stop religious conflict

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the resolution to stop religious conflict.

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the resolution to stop religious conflict.

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this video gives you simlar details on how to stop religious conflict, and the resolution. In addition to this video, there are also communities and areas around the world who have people that respect their religion. this kindness can be shared throughout the the globe.

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Religious Violence, Causes and Solutions (Jariel Rosario)

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by Jayaram V

Question: Religions are supposed to promote peace and oppose violence. Then, why are they so destructive and cause so much harm and suffering to people?

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Teilhard de Chardin

You have to see from where that violence is coming. Is it coming from the scriptures, from the interpretation of the scriptures, or from the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of human beings? You may find that all the three are responsible for the religious violence, wars and bloodshed they often cause. It is also difficult to speak objectively about this subject, especially if you are a religious person and committed to a particular religion. If you are a secular person it is even more difficult.

Religious violence may be directed against people, religious institutions, cultural symbols, leaders of the faith or authority figures. It may be caused by overzealous individuals who are entirely motivated by their own psychological problems or collectively by groups of people as part of their social, cultural, national or communal expression and dominance. In a diverse society where people from different backgrounds practice multiple faiths, differences about social, economic and racial issues, which are inevitable may also lead to religious violence.

It is also true that violence is inherent to human nature, and human beings are easily swayed by emotions and irrational behavior. Many factors incite them into violent behavior, and religious attachment or loyalty happens to be one. Political and ideological differences may also lead to religious conflicts. Therefore, the problem of religious violence is a complex issue and should not be oversimplified with generalizations. In the following discussion, we focus upon religious violence, its causes and solutions.

The forms of religious violence

Religions caused a lot of bloodshed in the past. Many wars were fought for the sake of religions. The subject of religious violence is still a contentious issue, and religious wars are still fought in some parts of the world. For a long time, world religions have been stumbling blocks in the progress of our civilization. There are people, who fervently wish for the destruction of the world so that they can go to heaven and live there forever. In the context of religions, it is probably the most violent thought, which one can find in many religious scriptures with necessary justification.

It is sad but true that then and now religions have been the source of great violence and suffering to many people. It is not necessary that such violence should be caused by physical acts of aggression only. Religious violence can be expressed in various explicit and implicit ways to discriminate, demean, antagonize, minimize or harm particular groups or people. It is also true that religious violence is not always caused by religious groups only. Secular groups may also incite religious violence or aggravate religious passions to suit their political and ideological agendas. The following are a few known forms of religious violence.

1. Religious wars: Many wars were fought in the past either to spread particular religions or destroy rival faiths. Most notorious among them were the Roman conquests, Muslim invasions and Spanish invasions in Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America. Millions of people died in such wars, and entire nations were wiped out.

2. Religious persecution: Medieval India witnessed religious persecution on a massive scale by Muslim rulers. Their persecution took on many forms, including over taxation and reducing people to utter poverty. Millions of people died due to the cruelty, violence and ill treatment perpetrated by the Muslim rulers in the subcontinent. Religious persecutions were also practiced in Europe, Africa and Americas for a long time. Subtle forms of persecution still happen in some parts of the world.

3. Gender violence: Women and girl children have always been the victims of religious violence. In the past, women proved to be the biggest victims of religious wars. They were subject to rape, abduction, slavery, forceful marriages and killing as part of the political strategy of the aggressors to establish political dominance through religious wars and propagate their faith with impunity. In many Muslim majority countries, minority women are still exposed to threats and personal harm by religious fanatics and extremists.

4. Destruction of sacred places: One of the most notorious forms of religious violence is the destruction and desecration of religious places. In medieval India, Muslim rulers plundered and destroyed thousands of Hindu temples and built mosques in their place. They used sacred images from the destroyed temples as stepping stones in the construction of secular buildings. Destruction and desecration of religious places still happen in many countries to intimidate minority groups or incite religious violence.

5. Forced conversions: This is one of the major forms of religious violence. In the past, it was mainly used to propagate faith against the will of people and secure their loyalty. Whole nations were converted under the fear of punishment, death, discrimination, arbitrary taxation, fines or persecution. In some cases, monetary rewards, social or political privileges and other incentives were offered to the willing converts to set an example. Forced conversions still take place in some parts of the world where minorities are targeted for such conversions.

6. False propaganda: This is a form of verbal violence, which includes spreading false and negative information about opposing religions, their leaders, scriptures, traditions, beliefs and deities to undermine their importance or influence. Its main purpose is to cast aspersions and create doubt and confusion among people about their faith so that they could be swayed to change their religion. False propaganda against rival religions still takes place with missionary zeal in many countries often with the blessings of the highest religious authorities and theocratic governments.

7. Discrimination: Religious discrimination has been a persistent and pressing problem in many parts of the world since ancient times. It is especially so in countries where one religion has a clear advantage over the others with the largest following. Religious discrimination is a subtle form of cultural, religious and even racial violence in which people are discriminated because of their religious beliefs, race or nationality and subjected to social and economic disabilities. It is a common practice in those religions which tend to discriminate between believers and nonbelievers and subject the latter to unfair, unequal and unjustified treatment.

8. Religious extremism: This is the most overt and extreme form of religious violence, which is used by overzealous individuals to establish dominance or express hostility and disapproval. Religious people, who are deeply committed to their religions with ambitious political aims often resort to it. They indulge in aggression and violent behavior as a counter measure to protect their own faith or oppose others. As part of their strategy, they advocate rigid adherence and loyalty to their traditional beliefs, scriptures, dogmas and doctrines to preserve their faith, while offering strong resistance to those which they perceive as a threat. Fanaticism, fundamentalism, terrorism, religious nationalism are its extreme forms.

The causes of religious violence

Religions are meant to promote peace and harmony. They are supposed to elevate human character and consciousness to the level of God and bring out the best of the humanity. Yet, many times they end up doing the opposite. Instead of alleviating the suffering of people and providing them with solace, they often cause violence and bloodshed.

Many religious wars were fought in the past. Even today, religions are major sources of disturbance and conflicts in various parts of the world. We have to then wonder why religions are so destructive and why they divide people, and cause them such harm. The following factors seem to be directly or indirectly responsible for religious violence.

1. Scriptures: Religious scriptures may incite violence or violent behavior if they seem to condone certain forms of aggression and behavior as virtuous or if they contain explicit or implicit information, which encourages such behavior with the promise of heavenly rewards or an eternal life. Because of them, some people may feel motivated to be part of God's war against evil.

2. Beliefs: Certain rational and irrational beliefs which are reinforced or justified by the scriptures, tradition or precedence, may strengthen or promote aggressive behavior. For example, the belief that a person who dies in the battlefield or for a religious cause goes straight to heaven encourages many to participate in religious wars or extreme forms of religious violence. Because of such beliefs some people feel encouraged to indulge in violence against nonbelievers, or those who lead unconventional lifestyles such as homosexuals.

3. Politics: In democratic societies and secular nations the politics of divide and rule often incite communal passions and lead to violent clashes. In theocracies religious violence is used by rulers to enforce obedience, loyalty and discipline. One of the worst examples was the partition of India in 1947 in which millions of people died both in India and Pakistan due to communal clashes. Certain political ideologies also tend to discriminate religious people for their beliefs and values and create resentment and hostility.

4. Economic interests: Wide disparities in incomes or standards of living among religious groups or the discriminatory policies of governments which seem to favor certain religious groups against others, may lead to violence and civil unrest. Religious propagation was the main driving force behind the colonial and imperial policies of the European nations until the Second World War. They openly encouraged discriminatory policies and religious propagation to subdue native populations.

5. Community interests: Religious violence may result if the interests of one community are threatened or undermined by another community, an inimical ideology or political leadership, especially when the community seem to be disproportionately enjoying higher status, power or privileges. When community interests are threatened, aggressive elements within in the community may rise in protest to protect them. In turn, it may create a counter reaction in other communities and provoke the extreme elements within them to register their feelings and concerns.

6. Exploitation: Religions and their emotional appeal have often been used by vested interests to exploit others by appealing to their sentiments and religiosity. For example, in almost every country weaker sections of society have been traditionally exploited by privileged classes in the name of religions, God, virtue, fate and service. When such exploitation becomes intolerable, people may rise in unison against the established authority to express their anger as it happened in France in the 18th Century or in the USSR in the 20th century.

7. Ideology: Secular ideologies, which seem to oppose or undermine religious groups or conventional beliefs, traditions and practices, may create deep divisions within society and lead to social and political or civil unrest. Ideological conflicts, coupled with propaganda and misinformation by secular institutions against conventional beliefs and practices, are a major source of conflict and unrest in many democratic and socialist countries.

From the above it is apparent that while religions are responsible for the violence they cause, the problem also partly rests with the people who practice them or oppose them as they misuse their religious affiliation or beliefs to indulge in violence or aggression. In many instances, such evil behavior is due to their ignorance or extreme loyalty and attachment. Instead of practising their religions to improve themselves or spread peace and happiness, they rally people against others and draw them into conflicts for domination and suppression. Ignoring the highest values, which are enshrined in their scriptures and selecting information or passages from the same scriptures to justify their evil actions, they violate the very principles which their religions seem to uphold.

Religious violence and organized religions

Whatever may be the validity of religious discord you cannot overlook the divisive and destructive tendencies that are hidden in many religions. The problem is mostly with organized religions which wield considerable influence upon their followers. Religions are essentially human inventions. They draw their inspiration from divine revelations but mix up the revelatory knowledge with human values, myth and mythology to give the impression that they carry within themselves the authority of God to mold the lives of people, their choices, beliefs and behavior.

They also vest additional authority in specific groups and organizations, giving them the formal authority to represent them and their interests. Religions are thus a mixture of light and darkness. They are vulnerable to misuse and exploitation by vested groups. As the products of collective egos, which thrive upon group identity and institutional authority, they create in people conflicting feelings of being with them or against them.

The negative influence of religions upon human actions and human beings cannot be denied or ignored. History shows that organized religions which rely upon rigid dogma and proselytizing philosophies are prone to misuse, violence and discrimination, especially when political, social and economic factors are involved. In this regard, the following facts are worth mentioning.

Organized religions incite strong passions in weak minds, which can be easily exploited by vested interests.

They sow seeds of division and discard by imparting to their followers group identity and collective egos, which can lead to religious and communal stratification of society.

They encourage loyalty and submission to scriptural authority, which can be misused by traditional power groups to play with the emotions of their followers.

They justify the propagation of their faith, offering heavenly rewards to those who indulge in it. Some even justify violent methods against those who disagree or disobey. It brings them into direct conflict with each other and sets the stage for discord and unrest.

They encourage blind faith and suppress freedom of inquiry, which in turn may lead to superstition, irrational thinking and justification of practices that oppose with the values of humanity.

These problems are mostly due to the people who practice their religions, rather than the religions themselves. If people are ignorant, impure and evil-minded, they are going to misuse their faith for personal ends. While they may take pride in the superiority of their respective dharmas, they fail to exemplify the values which they are expected to uphold. It is as if having a religious identity or affiliation is more important than practising it or expressing it through one's behavior, personality and conduct.

The Solution to religious violence

If religions are causing strife and discard, or if they are being misused by vested groups, what can anyone do about it? How can people save themselves and others from the destructive tendencies that are inherent in their religions or from the evil machinations of those who want to exploit them? Religions are meant to elevate human consciousness and promote spiritual wellbeing. They are not meant to limit our choices, but to transcend our dependence upon them and our bondage to a limited and restricted life. To live in balance, express positive emotions, enjoy life, experience peace and happiness, they are why anyone should be religious or practice any religion.

You may use your religious identity to fight with others, incite passions, indulge in arguments, debates and discussions to denigrate rival faiths, show intolerance or persecute people. It may earn you the support and appreciation of a few like-minded people, but from the perspective of karma it will do you immense harm. People may misuse their religious identities and affiliations to capture political power, or use that power to oppress others. Spiritually, it degrades them and makes them vulnerable to spiritual downfall. It does not help anyone. It only spreads unhappiness, suffering, creates divisions and discard, and brings out the worst of human aggression. Therefore, there is no point in using any religion for harmful and destructive purposes. Its purpose should be to facilitate God's will upon earth. In this regard, the following points are worth remembering.

Your religion is as good as your knowledge, character and personality. Religions become evil in the hands of evil people.

The primary purpose of any religion is to see life from a wider perspective and understand its significance in the evolution and elevation of human consciousness.

Religion may have its source in God and his revelations, but its major corpus comes from human intellect and ego. Therefore, you need discerning intelligence (buddhi) to distinguish truth from falsehood and make right decisions.

In your spiritual progress, religious identity is a barrier rather than a facilitator. At some point you have to choose between your faith and God.

You cannot practice any faith without knowing the value of restraint, purity, balance, and moderation.

Your faith can pave the way for your spiritual destruction and downfall, if you use it to promote passions or incite violence.

As long as religions exist, because of their extremely divisive nature, religious violence is going to stay and be part of human expression. However, some forms of religious violence and their intensity may be curbed to some extent both at the individual and collective levels. For that, religious institutions must provide right knowledge to their adherents. Governments should pass strict laws and enforce them without discrimination to discourage those who resort to violence to settle their differences. People need to focus upon the positive aspects of their religions and cultivate tolerance. Most importantly, religious extremists, to whichever religions they may belong, must be isolated and dealt with severe punishments and deterrents.

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Religious Violence, Causes and Solutions

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by Jayaram V Question: Religions are supposed to promote peace and oppose violence. Then, why are they so destructive and cause so much harm and suffering to people? We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

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Cause and effect of the Ethno-religious conflict in Europe (Jariel Rosario)

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The fact people fight for their religion, it's wrong, people are supposed to not force others to join their religion. They join the Religion if they want to, but forcing other people to join the religion is wrong, people actually don't like the Religion, threatening/killing someone because of it someone because of it? I'd expect more from the Religion, you can explain what you support. But no, force people to join the Religion, for example, if you are a Christian and you force people to join that Religion, that's wrong because God / Jesus doesn't want you to join the Religion, he just wants you to believe in him.

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Today, there are more than 20 million Muslims in Europe. Most of them are second and third-generation immigrants. Muslims make up for nearly 6% of the continent's population. This is according to the pew research centre.

Germany alone is home to 4.76 million Muslims. France has 4.71 million Muslims and Britain has 2.96 million Muslims.

The immigration of Muslims has not been coupled with their integration to European society.Generations later, most of them still live in ghettos or what is called 'parallel communities'.

Most of them do not go to the same schools as other Europeans. They are politically and economically marginalized. The divide is real and it is deepening.

Extremism and Islamophobia are the two main reason behind this. There's no politically correct way to tell this story. Europe has seen a rise in Islamic terror between 2014 and 2016, there were several terror attacks inspired by the Islamic State.

From the Bastile day attack at Nice, France to the Berlin Christmas Market Attack, according to Europol, 62 people were killed in Jihadist attacks in 2017, in 2018, the number was 13 and last year, it was 10.

These incidents painted a negative image of Islam. Which quickly snowballed into hate. Muslims were rejected and vilified in Europe. Their religion was lampooned.

In 2018, Islamophobic incidents increased by 52% in France, in Austria, by 74%. These numbers translate into votes for the far-right.

European political parties are cashing in on this 'Us vs Them' divide. European far-right parties have been built around Islamophobia, and are deepening this divide.

From Phlams Belanj in Belgium to Sweden democrats parties are gaining electorally by spewing hate. Centre-right political leaders too - are not shy of attacking Muslim immigrants.

German chancellor Angela Merkel warned against 'Islamic terrorism'. France- under President- Emmanuel Macron has banned Muslim veils in public spaces. Face coverings have also been banned in parts of Denmark and Belgium. European leaders often highlight the difference in the cultural and social values between Muslims and Christians.

The memoir of former chancellor of West Germany - Helmut Schmidt - was published in 2004. He said he regretted allowing Muslim immigrants into Germany.

He wrote that 'Muslims and Christians cannot co-exist, except in despotic countries, like Singapore'.

44% of Germans see a 'fundamental contradiction between Islam and German culture and values'. In Finland, the number is 62%, in Italy, it becomes 53%.

Some estimates say Muslims will make up about 20% of the European population by 2050.

Contributing to the deepening divide is also the lack of proper integration policies.

In France, for example, everyone is expected to adopt the French secular culture, French values and the French language. It leaves no scope for pluralism, or for the Muslims to preserve their identity. In Germany, you have the so-called 'Kultur Muslims'.

A Muslim who has abandoned his or her identity in exchange for the European identity. Integration policies like these crush every scope of co-existence.

They highlight the religious differences and end up contributing to the deepening divide. As for the immigrants, they too need to abide by the law of the land they live in.

The law of Sharia cannot overshadow the sovereign laws. Co-existence is a two-way street.

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Cause and effect of the Ethno-religious conflict in Europe

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Today, there are more than 20 million Muslims in Europe. Most of them are second and third-generation immigrants. Muslims make up for nearly 6% of the continent's population. This is according to the pew research centre.

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This Is a Religious War (Published 2001) Jariel Rosario

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Perhaps the most admirable part of the response to the conflict that began on Sept. 11 has been a general reluctance to call it a religious war. Officials and commentators have rightly stressed that this is not a battle between the Muslim world and the West, that the murderers are not representative of Islam. President Bush went to the Islamic Center in Washington to reinforce the point. At prayer meetings across the United States and throughout the world, Muslim leaders have been included alongside Christians, Jews and Buddhists.

The only problem with this otherwise laudable effort is that it doesn't hold up under inspection. The religious dimension of this conflict is central to its meaning. The words of Osama bin Laden are saturated with religious argument and theological language. Whatever else the Taliban regime is in Afghanistan, it is fanatically religious. Although some Muslim leaders have criticized the terrorists, and even Saudi Arabia's rulers have distanced themselves from the militants, other Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere have not denounced these acts, have been conspicuously silent or have indeed celebrated them. The terrorists' strain of Islam is clearly not shared by most Muslims and is deeply unrepresentative of Islam's glorious, civilized and peaceful past. But it surely represents a part of Islam -- a radical, fundamentalist part -- that simply cannot be ignored or denied.

In that sense, this surely is a religious war -- but not of Islam versus Christianity and Judaism. Rather, it is a war of fundamentalism against faiths of all kinds that are at peace with freedom and modernity. This war even has far gentler echoes in America's own religious conflicts -- between newer, more virulent strands of Christian fundamentalism and mainstream Protestantism and Catholicism. These conflicts have ancient roots, but they seem to be gaining new force as modernity spreads and deepens. They are our new wars of religion -- and their victims are in all likelihood going to mount with each passing year.

Osama bin Laden himself couldn't be clearer about the religious underpinnings of his campaign of terror. In 1998, he told his followers, ''The call to wage war against America was made because America has spearheaded the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two holy mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and its politics and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control.'' Notice the use of the word ''crusade,'' an explicitly religious term, and one that simply ignores the fact that the last few major American interventions abroad -- in Kuwait, Somalia and the Balkans -- were all conducted in defense of Muslims.

Notice also that as bin Laden understands it, the ''crusade'' America is alleged to be leading is not against Arabs but against the Islamic nation, which spans many ethnicities. This nation knows no nation-states as they actually exist in the region -- which is why this form of Islamic fundamentalism is also so worrying to the rulers of many Middle Eastern states. Notice also that bin Laden's beef is with American troops defiling the land of Saudi Arabia -- the land of the two holy mosques,'' in Mecca and Medina. In 1998, he also told followers that his terrorism was ''of the commendable kind, for it is directed at the tyrants and the aggressors and the enemies of Allah.'' He has a litany of grievances against Israel as well, but his concerns are not primarily territorial or procedural. ''Our religion is under attack,'' he said baldly. The attackers are Christians and Jews. When asked to sum up his message to the people of the West, bin Laden couldn't have been clearer: ''Our call is the call of Islam that was revealed to Muhammad. It is a call to all mankind. We have been entrusted with good cause to follow in the footsteps of the messenger and to communicate his message to all nations.''

This is a religious war against ''unbelief and unbelievers,'' in bin Laden's words. Are these cynical words designed merely to use Islam for nefarious ends? We cannot know the precise motives of bin Laden, but we can know that he would not use these words if he did not think they had salience among the people he wishes to inspire and provoke. This form of Islam is not restricted to bin Laden alone.

Its roots lie in an extreme and violent strain in Islam that emerged in the 18th century in opposition to what was seen by some Muslims as Ottoman decadence but has gained greater strength in the 20th. For the past two decades, this form of Islamic fundamentalism has racked the Middle East. It has targeted almost every regime in the region and, as it failed to make progress, has extended its hostility into the West. From the assassination of Anwar Sadat to the fatwa against Salman Rushdie to the decadelong campaign of bin Laden to the destruction of ancient Buddhist statues and the hideous persecution of women and homosexuals by the Taliban to the World Trade Center massacre, there is a single line. That line is a fundamentalist, religious one. And it is an Islamic one.

Most interpreters of the Koran find no arguments in it for the murder of innocents. But it would be naïve to ignore in Islam a deep thread of intolerance toward unbelievers, especially if those unbelievers are believed to be a threat to the Islamic world. There are many passages in the Koran urging mercy toward others, tolerance, respect for life and so on. But there are also passages as violent as this: ''And when the sacred months are passed, kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, besiege them, and lay wait for them with every kind of ambush.'' And this: ''Believers! Wage war against such of the infidels as are your neighbors, and let them find you rigorous.'' Bernard Lewis, the great scholar of Islam, writes of the dissonance within Islam: ''There is something in the religious culture of Islam which inspired, in even the humblest peasant or peddler, a dignity and a courtesy toward others never exceeded and rarely equaled in other civilizations. And yet, in moments of upheaval and disruption, when the deeper passions are stirred, this dignity and courtesy toward others can give way to an explosive mixture of rage and hatred which impels even the government of an ancient and civilized country -- even the spokesman of a great spiritual and ethical religion -- to espouse kidnapping and assassination, and try to find, in the life of their prophet, approval and indeed precedent for such actions.'' Since Muhammad was, unlike many other religious leaders, not simply a sage or a prophet but a ruler in his own right, this exploitation of his politics is not as great a stretch as some would argue.

This use of religion for extreme repression, and even terror, is not of course restricted to Islam. For most of its history, Christianity has had a worse record. From the Crusades to the Inquisition to the bloody religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, Europe saw far more blood spilled for religion's sake than the Muslim world did. And given how expressly nonviolent the teachings of the Gospels are, the perversion of Christianity in this respect was arguably greater than bin Laden's selective use of Islam. But it is there nonetheless. It seems almost as if there is something inherent in religious monotheism that lends itself to this kind of terrorist temptation. And our bland attempts to ignore this -- to speak of this violence as if it did not have religious roots -- is some kind of denial. We don't want to denigrate religion as such, and so we deny that religion is at the heart of this. But we would understand this conflict better, perhaps, if we first acknowledged that religion is responsible in some way, and then figured out how and why.

The first mistake is surely to condescend to fundamentalism. We may disagree with it, but it has attracted millions of adherents for centuries, and for a good reason. It elevates and comforts. It provides a sense of meaning and direction to those lost in a disorienting world. The blind recourse to texts embraced as literal truth, the injunction to follow the commandments of God before anything else, the subjugation of reason and judgment and even conscience to the dictates of dogma: these can be exhilarating and transformative. They have led human beings to perform extraordinary acts of both good and evil. And they have an internal logic to them. If you believe that there is an eternal afterlife and that endless indescribable torture awaits those who disobey God's law, then it requires no huge stretch of imagination to make sure that you not only conform to each diktat but that you also encourage and, if necessary, coerce others to do the same. The logic behind this is impeccable. Sin begets sin. The sin of others can corrupt you as well. The only solution is to construct a world in which such sin is outlawed and punished and constantly purged -- by force if necessary. It is not crazy to act this way if you believe these things strongly enough. In some ways, it's crazier to believe these things and not act this way.

In a world of absolute truth, in matters graver than life and death, there is no room for dissent and no room for theological doubt. Hence the reliance on literal interpretations of texts -- because interpretation can lead to error, and error can lead to damnation. Hence also the ancient Catholic insistence on absolute church authority. Without infallibility, there can be no guarantee of truth. Without such a guarantee, confusion can lead to hell.

Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor makes the case perhaps as well as anyone. In the story told by Ivan Karamazov in ''The Brothers Karamazov,'' Jesus returns to earth during the Spanish Inquisition. On a day when hundreds have been burned at the stake for heresy, Jesus performs miracles. Alarmed, the Inquisitor arrests Jesus and imprisons him with the intent of burning him at the stake as well. What follows is a conversation between the Inquisitor and Jesus. Except it isn't a conversation because Jesus says nothing. It is really a dialogue between two modes of religion, an exploration of the tension between the extraordinary, transcendent claims of religion and human beings' inability to live up to them, or even fully believe them.

According to the Inquisitor, Jesus' crime was revealing that salvation was possible but still allowing humans the freedom to refuse it. And this, to the Inquisitor, was a form of cruelty. When the truth involves the most important things imaginable -- the meaning of life, the fate of one's eternal soul, the difference between good and evil -- it is not enough to premise it on the capacity of human choice. That is too great a burden. Choice leads to unbelief or distraction or negligence or despair. What human beings really need is the certainty of truth, and they need to see it reflected in everything around them -- in the cultures in which they live, enveloping them in a seamless fabric of faith that helps them resist the terror of choice and the abyss of unbelief. This need is what the Inquisitor calls the ''fundamental secret of human nature.'' He explains: ''These pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find something that all would believe in and worship; what is essential is that all may be together in it. This craving for community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity since the beginning of time.''

This is the voice of fundamentalism. Faith cannot exist alone in a single person. Indeed, faith needs others for it to survive -- and the more complete the culture of faith, the wider it is, and the more total its infiltration of the world, the better. It is hard for us to wrap our minds around this today, but it is quite clear from the accounts of the Inquisition and, indeed, of the religious wars that continued to rage in Europe for nearly three centuries, that many of the fanatics who burned human beings at the stake were acting out of what they genuinely thought were the best interests of the victims. With the power of the state, they used fire, as opposed to simple execution, because it was thought to be spiritually cleansing. A few minutes of hideous torture on earth were deemed a small price to pay for helping such souls avoid eternal torture in the afterlife. Moreover, the example of such government-sponsored executions helped create a culture in which certain truths were reinforced and in which it was easier for more weak people to find faith. The burden of this duty to uphold the faith lay on the men required to torture, persecute and murder the unfaithful. And many of them believed, as no doubt some Islamic fundamentalists believe, that they were acting out of mercy and godliness.

This is the authentic voice of the Taliban. It also finds itself replicated in secular form. What, after all, were the totalitarian societies of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia if not an exact replica of this kind of fusion of politics and ultimate meaning? Under Lenin's and Stalin's rules, the imminence of salvation through revolutionary consciousness was in perpetual danger of being undermined by those too weak to have faith -- the bourgeois or the kulaks or the intellectuals. So they had to be liquidated or purged. Similarly, it is easy for us to dismiss the Nazis as evil, as they surely were. It is harder for us to understand that in some twisted fashion, they truly believed that they were creating a new dawn for humanity, a place where all the doubts that freedom brings could be dispelled in a rapture of racial purity and destiny. Hence the destruction of all dissidents and the Jews -- carried out by fire as the Inquisitors had before, an act of purification different merely in its scale, efficiency and Godlessness.

Perhaps the most important thing for us to realize today is that the defeat of each of these fundamentalisms required a long and arduous effort. The conflict with Islamic fundamentalism is likely to take as long. For unlike Europe's religious wars, which taught Christians the futility of fighting to the death over something beyond human understanding and so immune to any definitive resolution, there has been no such educative conflict in the Muslim world. Only Iran and Afghanistan have experienced the full horror of revolutionary fundamentalism, and only Iran has so far seen reason to moderate to some extent. From everything we see, the lessons Europe learned in its bloody history have yet to be absorbed within the Muslim world. There, as in 16th-century Europe, the promise of purity and salvation seems far more enticing than the mundane allure of mere peace. That means that we are not at the end of this conflict but in its very early stages.

America is not a neophyte in this struggle. the United States has seen several waves of religious fervor since its founding. But American evangelicalism has always kept its distance from governmental power. The Christian separation between what is God's and what is Caesar's -- drawn from the Gospels -- helped restrain the fundamentalist temptation. The last few decades have proved an exception, however. As modernity advanced, and the certitudes of fundamentalist faith seemed mocked by an increasingly liberal society, evangelicals mobilized and entered politics. Their faith sharpened, their zeal intensified, the temptation to fuse political and religious authority beckoned more insistently.

Mercifully, violence has not been a significant feature of this trend -- but it has not been absent. The murders of abortion providers show what such zeal can lead to. And indeed, if people truly believe that abortion is the same as mass murder, then you can see the awful logic of the terrorism it has spawned. This is the same logic as bin Laden's. If faith is that strong, and it dictates a choice between action or eternal damnation, then violence can easily be justified. In retrospect, we should be amazed not that violence has occurred -- but that it hasn't occurred more often.

The critical link between Western and Middle Eastern fundamentalism is surely the pace of social change. If you take your beliefs from books written more than a thousand years ago, and you believe in these texts literally, then the appearance of the modern world must truly terrify. If you believe that women should be consigned to polygamous, concealed servitude, then Manhattan must appear like Gomorrah. If you believe that homosexuality is a crime punishable by death, as both fundamentalist Islam and the Bible dictate, then a world of same-sex marriage is surely Sodom. It is not a big step to argue that such centers of evil should be destroyed or undermined, as bin Laden does, or to believe that their destruction is somehow a consequence of their sin, as Jerry Falwell argued. Look again at Falwell's now infamous words in the wake of Sept. 11: ''I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the A.C.L.U., People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'''

And why wouldn't he believe that? He has subsequently apologized for the insensitivity of the remark but not for its theological underpinning. He cannot repudiate the theology -- because it is the essence of what he believes in and must believe in for his faith to remain alive.

The other critical aspect of this kind of faith is insecurity. American fundamentalists know they are losing the culture war. They are terrified of failure and of the Godless world they believe is about to engulf or crush them. They speak and think defensively. They talk about renewal, but in their private discourse they expect damnation for an America that has lost sight of the fundamentalist notion of God.

Similarly, Muslims know that the era of Islam's imperial triumph has long since gone. For many centuries, the civilization of Islam was the center of the world. It eclipsed Europe in the Dark Ages, fostered great learning and expanded territorially well into Europe and Asia. But it has all been downhill from there. From the collapse of the Ottoman Empire onward, it has been on the losing side of history. The response to this has been an intermittent flirtation with Westernization but far more emphatically a reaffirmation of the most irredentist and extreme forms of the culture under threat. Hence the odd phenomenon of Islamic extremism beginning in earnest only in the last 200 years.

With Islam, this has worse implications than for other cultures that have had rises and falls. For Islam's religious tolerance has always been premised on its own power. It was tolerant when it controlled the territory and called the shots. When it lost territory and saw itself eclipsed by the West in power and civilization, tolerance evaporated. To cite Lewis again on Islam: ''What is truly evil and unacceptable is the domination of infidels over true believers. For true believers to rule misbelievers is proper and natural, since this provides for the maintenance of the holy law and gives the misbelievers both the opportunity and the incentive to embrace the true faith. But for misbelievers to rule over true believers is blasphemous and unnatural, since it leads to the corruption of religion and morality in society and to the flouting or even the abrogation of God's law.''

Thus the horror at the establishment of the State of Israel, an infidel country in Muslim lands, a bitter reminder of the eclipse of Islam in the modern world. Thus also the revulsion at American bases in Saudi Arabia. While colonialism of different degrees is merely political oppression for some cultures, for Islam it was far worse. It was blasphemy that had to be avenged and countered.

I cannot help thinking of this defensiveness when I read stories of the suicide bombers sitting poolside in Florida or racking up a $48 vodka tab in an American restaurant. We tend to think that this assimilation into the West might bring Islamic fundamentalists around somewhat, temper their zeal. But in fact, the opposite is the case. The temptation of American and Western culture -- indeed, the very allure of such culture -- may well require a repression all the more brutal if it is to be overcome. The transmission of American culture into the heart of what bin Laden calls the Islamic nation requires only two responses -- capitulation to unbelief or a radical strike against it. There is little room in the fundamentalist psyche for a moderate accommodation. The very psychological dynamics that lead repressed homosexuals to be viciously homophobic or that entice sexually tempted preachers to inveigh against immorality are the very dynamics that lead vodka-drinking fundamentalists to steer planes into buildings. It is not designed to achieve anything, construct anything, argue anything. It is a violent acting out of internal conflict.

And America is the perfect arena for such acting out. For the question of religious fundamentalism was not only familiar to the founding fathers. In many ways, it was the central question that led to America's existence. The first American immigrants, after all, were refugees from the religious wars that engulfed England and that intensified under England's Taliban, Oliver Cromwell. One central influence on the founders' political thought was John Locke, the English liberal who wrote the now famous ''Letter on Toleration.'' In it, Locke argued that true salvation could not be a result of coercion, that faith had to be freely chosen to be genuine and that any other interpretation was counter to the Gospels. Following Locke, the founders established as a central element of the new American order a stark separation of church and state, ensuring that no single religion could use political means to enforce its own orthodoxies.

We cite this as a platitude today without absorbing or even realizing its radical nature in human history -- and the deep human predicament it was designed to solve. It was an attempt to answer the eternal human question of how to pursue the goal of religious salvation for ourselves and others and yet also maintain civil peace. What the founders and Locke were saying was that the ultimate claims of religion should simply not be allowed to interfere with political and religious freedom. They did this to preserve peace above all -- but also to preserve true religion itself.

The security against an American Taliban is therefore relatively simple: it's the Constitution. And the surprising consequence of this separation is not that it led to a collapse of religious faith in America -- as weak human beings found themselves unable to believe without social and political reinforcement -- but that it led to one of the most vibrantly religious civil societies on earth. No other country has achieved this. And it is this achievement that the Taliban and bin Laden have now decided to challenge. It is a living, tangible rebuke to everything they believe in.

That is why this coming conflict is indeed as momentous and as grave as the last major conflicts, against Nazism and Communism, and why it is not hyperbole to see it in these epic terms. What is at stake is yet another battle against a religion that is succumbing to the temptation Jesus refused in the desert -- to rule by force. The difference is that this conflict is against a more formidable enemy than Nazism or Communism. The secular totalitarianisms of the 20th century were, in President Bush's memorable words, ''discarded lies.'' They were fundamentalisms built on the very weak intellectual conceits of a master race and a Communist revolution.

But Islamic fundamentalism is based on a glorious civilization and a great faith. It can harness and co-opt and corrupt true and good believers if it has a propitious and toxic enough environment. It has a more powerful logic than either Stalin's or Hitler's Godless ideology, and it can serve as a focal point for all the other societies in the world, whose resentment of Western success and civilization comes more easily than the arduous task of accommodation to modernity. We have to somehow defeat this without defeating or even opposing a great religion that is nonetheless extremely inexperienced in the toleration of other ascendant and more powerful faiths. It is hard to underestimate the extreme delicacy and difficulty of this task.

In this sense, the symbol of this conflict should not be Old Glory, however stirring it is. What is really at issue here is the simple but immensely difficult principle of the separation of politics and religion. We are fighting not for our country as such or for our flag. We are fighting for the universal principles of our Constitution -- and the possibility of free religious faith it guarantees. We are fighting for religion against one of the deepest strains in religion there is. And not only our lives but our souls are at stake.

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This Is a Religious War (Published 2001)

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Andrew Sullivan article says individual faith and pluralism were targets of Sept 11 terrorist attacks, since the Osama bin Laden's of the world, like leaders of Inquisition and other before and after them, demand that all embrace absolute faith; says whatever else Taliban regime is in Afghanistan, it is fanatically religious; says this religious war is not between Islam versus Christianity or Judaism, but rather between Islamic fundamentalism and faiths of all kinds that are at peace with freedom and modernity; photos (L)

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Study Asks If War Makes A Person More ... Or Less ... Religious (Maylin Sanchez)

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What's the link between war and religion? Does living through the traumas of conflict make people more religious - or turn them against religion?

Those age-old questions are probed in two studies.

"War Increases Religiosity" appears in Nature: Human Behavior. A team led by Joseph Henrich, chairman of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology of Harvard University, analyzed interview responses from 1,709 individuals in 71 villages in three countries that had suffered prolonged, brutal internal conflicts that did not revolve around religious or ethnic differences: Sierra Leone's civil war, 1991-2002; the Lord's Resistance Army insurgency in Uganda, 1986-2006; and Tajikistan's civil war and continuing political violence.

The data showed that people who had been more intensely affected by the violence of war were more likely to join or participate in religious groups and practice religious rituals. The data, collected in 2010 and 2011, came from previously published work by other researchers.

The more profound the impact of war on an individual - such as the death, injury or abduction of a household member - the greater the likelihood grew of that person turning to religion. By contrast, those who had been less affected by the impact of war were also less likely to join a a religious group. The statistical breakdown showed that for those in Sierra Leone, greater exposure to war made it 12% more likely individuals would turn to religion; 14% more for those in Uganda; and 41% more for Tajikstan.

Even as years passed, Henrich's latest study found that religious practice continued to play a significant role in the lives of many of those surveyed. "These effects on religiosity persist even 5, 8 and 13 years post-conflict," according to the study. The effects held true whether those surveyed were Muslim or Christian.

So what does that mean in terms of day-to-day behavior? In Henrich's previous work, he had found that religion led people to be more "prosocial" - that is, more supportive, cooperative and generous - but in a particular way. "When people hear the word cooperation, they interpret that positively," he said. But his study showed a "more narrow" type of cooperation that only included people in one's own group or village while excluding outsiders. As Henrich put it, "When I'm hit by a shock, what should I do? Who should I turn to? The groups you're already in become tighter, and you're less interested in reaching out to those who are not" in your in-group.

The positive side is that such cooperation could lead to nation building. But the danger, Henrich says, is that these ingredients can alternatively lead to what he calls a "negative feedback loop." In that scenario, these already tightly knit religious groups could, in the event of an attack or if they fear one is imminent, band together to fight off other groups and defend their own religious beliefs.

And that's the mixed message from the study's findings. Even though the groups studied by Henrich and his colleagues had not initially experienced a war with a religious element baked in, they could have a religious awakening in the aftermath that could foster "parochial cooperation" - but could also "catalyze ongoing cycles of violent conflict."

Henrich echoes the conclusions of an earlier research study, published in 2016, by psychology professors Hongfei Du of Guangzhou University and Peilian Chi of the University of Macau. They also found that the greater exposure to war, the more likely people are to become more religious, belong to religious groups and participate in religious rituals. That was their takeaway after analyzing responses from 82,772 individuals in 57 countries contained in the 2010 World Values Survey.

In a post-war environment, religion can serve as a psychological buffer against worry about future conflicts, they write - and can also help people achieve a strong sense of belonging to a group.

And yet, Du wrote in his email to NPR, some research has shown that a different factor could tip the cycle toward peacemaking instead: whether the religious leaders hold and emphasize compassionate values rather than promote violent solutions to conflicts. It's an idea that was crystallized in a quote from Gandhi: "The need of the moment is not one religion, but mutual respect and tolerance of the devotees of the different religions."

Diane Cole writes for many publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Jewish Week, and is book columnist for The Psychotherapy Networker. She is the author of the memoir After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges. Her website is dianejcole.com.

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Study Asks If War Makes A Person More ... Or Less ... Religious

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What's the link between war and religion? Does living through the traumas of conflict make people more religious - or turn them against religion? Those age-old questions are probed in two studies. "War Increases Religiosity" appears in Nature: Human Behavior.