Holy Wars, Crusades, and Religious Fundamentalism Today

Introduction: Holy Wars in Modern History

Although many people think holy wars and crusades are now nothing more than historical events, they are in fact as much a part of modern history as they were of medieval history. Whether directed against Christians, Jews, or Muslims — or perpetrated by Christians, Jews, or Muslims — holy wars and crusades are occurring all over the world today.

Three writers who address the issue of holy wars and crusades are Karen Armstrong, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Malise Ruthven. Although all three tackle the same issue, each approaches it from a different and unique perspective. In order to understand the role that holy wars and crusades play in our ongoing history, one must therefore engage with the theories of all three authors.

Karen Armstrong: Mythos, Logos, and Fundamentalism

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 advancing 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 distinct points in history: during the fifteenth century, and again in the late twentieth century. According to her counter-intuitive theory of religious fundamentalism, the key to understanding modern holy wars and crusades is to understand how they emerged during those two periods.

In Holy War, Armstrong argues that the original crusades were launched against the Byzantine Empire — overrun by Muslim Turks — by Christian warriors summoned by Pope Urban II. During this period, Christian fundamentalists took up the cross and the sword against the Turks with the sole purpose of recovering the holy city of Jerusalem from Islamic rule. It is this initial conflict that continues to rage today, as Christians, Jews, and Muslims continue to fight over the modern holder of the holy lands, whether that ownership is actual or symbolic.

Central to Armstrong's reading of history is the notion that "premodern cultures possessed two complementary and indispensable ways of thinking, speaking and knowing: mythos and logos." Mythos 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 draws the human mind toward concepts such as the eternal and the universal.

Logos, on the other hand, 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, Western civilization's adoption of logos as its foundation — and the resulting loss of mythos — is the root cause of the current global situation of holy wars.

The adoption of logos has led to a slow disintegration of society's collective narratives and rituals along with the meanings attached to them. Instead, authority over what is right, rational, pragmatic, and scientific has been given to logos — a framework that "does not assuage human pain or sorrow" and is incapable of answering questions such as "what is the meaning of life?"

What fundamentalist religions have accomplished, according to Armstrong, is taking their religion's mythos — its myths and traditions — and transforming it into a logos. When a fundamentalist group does this, it loses the capacity for rational thought. Rather than recognizing how their actions contradict the actual mythos of their professed religion, they instead treat that distorted logos as the ultimate meaning of their lives. Thus, as Armstrong concludes, "fundamentalism is a child of modernity and fundamentalists are fundamentally modern."

Mark Juergensmeyer: Religion, Violence, and Terror

Armstrong suggests that, because fundamentalism is a response to modernity, the key to resolving these conflicts may lie in compassion and a genuine effort toward mutual understanding on both sides.

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

Whereas Armstrong argued that this stems from logos displacing mythos and the resulting modernity, Juergensmeyer locates the cause in what he calls "the odd attraction of religion and violence." In reaching this conclusion, he identifies certain "cultures of violence" within all religious communities, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. It is these cultures of violence — not the religion itself — that produce terrorism among fundamentalist believers.

According to Juergensmeyer, such religious communities perceive themselves and their way of life as being under attack — a view essentially consistent with Armstrong's argument that religious fundamentalism arises from a sense that one's way of life is threatened by the modern world. To illustrate this point, Juergensmeyer uses the example of the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attack. 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 of the world. Although Buddhism, like all major religions, is fundamentally nonviolent, when members feel their way of life is under attack, they may resort to an all-out assault on the society they perceive as the threat.

Juergensmeyer ultimately argues that religious terrorism is a sociological phenomenon. While this is broadly similar to Armstrong's argument, it is less theoretically developed. Rather than delving into the philosophical underpinnings of the phenomenon, Juergensmeyer focuses his research on understanding the beliefs of actual fundamentalists, conducting in-depth interviews with some of the twentieth century's most notorious religious terrorists. What he concludes — unlike Armstrong — is that this social phenomenon is not rooted in the religious beliefs themselves but is instead a spin-off of classic group mentality. As these groups of fundamentalists gather against a perceived threat, they develop a group ideology that functions as a new religion unto itself: one that prescribes violence, martyrology, the demonization of enemies, and "images of cosmic confrontation" to justify their actions.