Violence-legitimizing verses in religious scriptures increase support for lethal violence

Authored by wzb.eu and submitted by mvea

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:

At the end of the survey, respondents were randomly assigned to a treatment or a control condition (for balance checks, see Figure S1 in the Online Appendix 1). The treatment condition provided a legitimation for the use of lethal violence in the name of religion, which was based on two isomorphic scriptural verses found in the Bible and Torah book Deuteronomy (verse 17: 2–5) and in the Quran Surah 5, Al Mai’dah (verse 33). In the treatment condition, respondents were primed with the following true statement:

According to the [Christian respondent: Bible Book Deuteronomy / Jewish respondent: Torah Book Deuteronomy / Muslim respondent: Quran, Surah 5, Al Ma’idah], those who cause mischief and do evil in the eyes of God should be killed.

In the control condition, individuals were not assigned any prime. Individuals in both the treatment and control conditions were then asked the following question: ‘What do you personally think? Should people who cause mischief and do evil in the eyes of God be killed?’ The answer options, scored on a 5-point Likert-scale, ranged from ‘completely disagree’ to ‘completely agree’. By comparing outcomes in treatment and control conditions, we test whether references to violence-legitimising scriptural sources increase target audience support for the use of violence against the null hypothesis that believers’ attitudes towards violence remain unaffected by such attempts to mobilise support for violence.

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:

2 If there is found among you, in one of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, and transgresses his covenant 3 by going to serve other gods and worshiping them—whether the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I have forbidden— 4 and if it is reported to you or you hear of it, and you make a thorough inquiry, and the charge is proved true that such an abhorrent thing has occurred in Israel, 5 then you shall bring out to your gates that man or that woman who has committed this crime and you shall stone the man or woman to death.

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:

Quran Surah 5, 33:

33 Those who wage war against God and His Messenger and strive to spread corruption in the land should be punished by death, crucifixion, the amputation of an alternate hand and foot, a or banishment from the land: a disgrace for them in this world, and then a terrible punishment in the Hereafter, (Haleem, M. A. S. Abdel, trans. The Qur’an. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.)

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.