A survey experiment among Christians, Muslims and Jews in seven countries shows the mobilizing potential of religious scripture
Extremist perpetrators of violence often quote verses from their religion's holy scriptures that authorize, or even prescribe, attacks on enemies of the faith. Abdullah H., the Syrian now on trial who stabbed a homosexual couple with a knife and killed a man in Dresden in October 2020, also testified that he had been inspired to commit the crime by a Quranic sura. However, whether the religious motivation that extremist perpetrators of violence emphasize is causally related to their actions is often doubted. Now, WZB researchers Ruud Koopmans and Eylem Kanol can prove for the first time that verses in religious scriptures that legitimize violence can increase support for killing enemies of the faith.
Together with Dietlind Stolle, a German-Canadian political scientist, they designed an experimental study in which they asked 8,000 Christians, Muslims, and Jews in seven countries (Germany, the United States, Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Kenya) whether or not they thought lethal violence against enemies of the faith was justified. Half of the respondents were asked the question without any introduction, while the other half were first presented with a quote from the Bible, Koran, or Torah that endorsed violence against alleged enemies of the faith.
The results show that reference to scriptural passages legitimizing violence significantly increased support for lethal violence in all three religions and in all seven countries (see graph). However, this effect was weaker among Jews and Christians than among Muslims. Across all seven countries, 9 percent of Christian believers supported violence without receiving a scriptural quote beforehand, against 12 percent among those who were given such a quote. Among Jewish believers, the figures were 3 and 7 percent, respectively. Among Muslims, 29 percent supported violence against enemies of the faith without and 47 percent with prior reference to a Quranic quote. In Germany, however, these figures were considerably lower: among German Christians, support for violence was 2 without and 3 percent with a biblical quotation; among German Muslims, 5 without and 16 percent with a Koran quotation (seeh graph).
The most important reason for the differences between the three religions, the researchers show, is the larger proportion of Muslim believers who adhere to a fundamentalist interpretation of their faith. Fundamentalist believers are characterized by the fact that they take the holy scriptures of their religion literally and consider them to be unambiguously valid in the present. Therefore, they are comparatively more susceptible to attempts to legitimize violence by referring to religious scriptural sources.
The findings have significance for countering religious extremism. "Religious causes and motivations must be taken seriously. Violence should not be reduced to socio-economic and psychological causes alone," says Ruud Koopmans, director at the WZB. The task of religious leaders and associations, he says, must be to actively counter fundamentalist interpretations of faith and to promote interpretations that take the historical and social context into consideration.
MagiKKell on April 24th, 2021 at 06:02 UTC »
Ok, that study design though. It was basically "Here is a verse from your scripture? Do you agree with it?" And unsurprisingly more people agreed with it when they were reminded that it was in the Bible/Qur’an/Torah.
Here is what they did:
So it wasn't that they tested for some independent endorsement of violence. They just asked "Do you agree with what that verse/Surah says?" Without getting into any questions of what exactly that means, or killed when, and by whom, or how.
except, they didn't even quote real scripture. According to the study this is Deut 17:2-5. Let's see what the most "Academic" translation, the NRSV, has on those verses:
This is a verse on covenant transgression by religious in-group members. That is, you couldn't possibly use these verses to justify any of the "religious holy war" or whatever people are on about in the comments are talking about. So this whole study just completely blew the study design and what observant people understand by that verse. In fact, I think this is scientific malpractice because they lied to religious people about the content of their sacred texts. That's not cool.
edit: Since then I've dug up what the Quran actually says at that point:
At the least the paraphrase "mischief" for "wage war against God and His Messanger and strive to spread corruption in the land" is a bit off. Also, this gives some options besides killing as punishment. The statement in the study made it sound like all who do evil mischief must die, and that's not what this says, either.
Seriously, who signed off on that study design, and what blind bats let this go through peer-review.
svenbillybobbob on April 24th, 2021 at 05:27 UTC »
who would've thought that having God tell you to kill people makes you more likely to kill people
chronistus on April 24th, 2021 at 05:07 UTC »
Please read before commenting....please.