Silberman4

536 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION AND APPLIED AREAS

legitimare guide for civil government, or that the lega) codę, being divinely ordained, is invio!ab!e on the pain of punishment). In addition, religious teachings may explicit!y or implicitly rolerate or even encourage prejudice against certain targets such as gay men and lesbians, Jews, or women (Altmeyer & Hunsberger, Chapter 21, this volume; see Hunsberger & Jackson, 2005 for a review).

Art interesting example for a religious value that might facilirate violence would be “selflessness.” This value means nullification in front of God and a focus on religious goals and objectives rather than on the self (Silberman, 2004). Under certain circum-stances it can guide people to sacrifice other needs and even their lives in religious wars or in acts of homicide (suicide) bombings. Under other circumstances it can facilitate selfless acts of love and compassion. The same can be said about the value of “self-sacrifice.”

Second, religion, because of its power to morally justify any goai or action through the process of sanctification, can provide an excellent source for the Iegitimization of the most violent acts within both individual and coliective meaning systems (Fox, 1999). It can provide a particularly strong basis for processes of morał disengagement, such as morał justification, euphemisric labeling, and dehumanization. According to Bandura (2004), individuals adopt morał standards that serve as guides for positive conduct and as deterrents for negative conduct. When individuals wish to engage in behaviors that are seemingly inconsistent with their morał standards without experiencing a sense of self-condemnation, rhey endorse psychological mechanisms that disengage morał self-sanctions from the unethical behavior.

The morał disengagement process of morał justification involves the cognitive redefi-nition of a destructive conduct as servicing socially worthy or mora! purposes, and, accordingly, as personally and socially acceptable (Bandura, 2004). One example of reli-gious-based morał justification would be the attacks of the Al-Qaeda organization across the worłd, which have been described by Al-Qaeda members and supporters as part of a holy war, and as consistent with the teaching of spiritua! leaders such as the Propher Mu-hammad and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, and as sanctified by ulema, or Muslim clergy (Bergen, 2002; Silberman, 2003a). This idea is expressed in the following description of the self-perception of religious terrorists: “They know they are right, nor just politicałły but morally. Tbey believe God is on their side” (Stern, 2003, p. 282).

Another way in which religious violence is presented as morally justified is by de-scribing it as a response to pressing emergency situations (Appleby, 2000; Selengut, 2003; Stern, 2003). Whether these conditions involve difficult political or economic situations, a sense of rbreat to religious freedom, or chreat from systems that promęte values seen as danger to the religious system (e.g., pornography or sale of alcohol), they make it easier to define violence as morally legirimate. In the words of Appleby (2000, p. 88), “Funda-tnentalists believe themselves to be !iving in unusual extraordinary times of crisis, danger, or apocalyptic doomr the advent of tlie Messiah, the Second Corning of Christ, or the return of the Hidden Imam; and so on.” The urgency of this special time requires true be-lievers to make exceptions, to modify or ignore the generał rules of the tradition (e.g., its adherence to peace), and to subordinate all other laws to the requirements of survival.

Beyond that, as imptied above, religion can be very successful in the morał disengagement process of euphemisric labeling, which can be seen as based on the psychological idea that people behave much morę cruelly when aggressive actions are given a sani-tized label than when they are called aggression (Diener, Dineen, Endersen, Beaman, 8c Fraser, 1975). Religious violence and killing are often redefined through rheological rein-terpretation as holy wars, as sacred events, or as being fought for God and his honor.

These battles are not viewed within the religious meaning systems of those who parrici-pate in them as violence. On the contrary, they are viewed as religious battles for justice aimed at making a morę peaceful and just world. The battles are perceived as jnstified means to educate those who are living in sin, to bring truth and redemption, and to in-spire truth and faith for which even the fallen enemies will eventcally be graceful (Selengut, 2003, p. 20).

Finally, there are numerous historical and contemporary examples where basie be-liefs that cornpose the religious meaning systems of individuals encourage the process of dehumanization, which is defined as the stripping of individuals from their human qunli-tics by redefining them as subhuman or even as satanic or evi! (Bandura, 2004; Deutsch, 2000; Montville, 2001; Struch &c Schwartz, 1989). £xamples include the dehumanization of the Jews in both Christian (CarroIl^OOl) and Muslim (Bodansky, 2000) anti-Semitism, and Muslim extremists’ portrayals of "Western nations as the “enemies of God” and of the United. States and Israel as the “great Satan” and the “smali Satan,” respec-tively (Lewis, 2003). Additional examp!es include Christian white supremacists’ view of Jews and nonwhites as “the literał children of the Satan” (Hoffman, 1993), and the dehumanization of Muslims by the Christian Crusaders (Bandura, 2004).

The third process through which religion can facilitate violence is deseeration. Any objeer, belief, goal, or action that is perceived as sacred can be deseerated by being lost, destroyed, or violated. Since a perception of deseeration has uniąue adverse effects, such as intense negative affect (e.g., feeling distressed, nervous, scared, and upset; Pargament et a!., 2005), it may facilitate intensive political or violent activism againsr those who are believed to have caused the deseeration. For example, the Middle East conflict seems to be fueled to a certain extent by a sense of deseeration of both Jewish and Muslim holy sites. A sense of deseeration of Saudi Arabia (which is rhe Muslim Holy Land par cxcel-lence), especially of its two holy sites, Mecca and Medina, by a U.S. military presence has been mentioned as one of the main sources of bin Laden’s anger roward the United States (Lewis, 2003).

Fourth, religion can facilitate violent activism by offering seemingly simple and pow-erful myths or stories thar summanze very complicated situations in a cognitively man-ageable way within individual or col!ective systems of meaning. “Such myths are critical means of organizing the world and making sense of one’s history, one’s origins, and evcn one’s futurę” (Gopin, 2002, p. 7). Unfortunately, such myths often emphasize the “other-ness” of the nonreligious or of those who hołd different religious views in a derogating way. “The facile invocation of religious symbols and stories can exacerbate ethnic ten-sions and foster a social cliinate conducive to riots, inob violence, or the random beatings and killings known as hate crimes” (Appleby, 2000, p. 119).

A famous example of a powerful myth is the biblical story of the Abrahamie family—a myth that is part of the lives of hundreds of millions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The myth discusses the competition and rivalry between the rwo sons of Abraham— Isaac, who is described as the key to the jewish lineage, and Ishmaei, the key to the Arab Islamie lineage-—and berween their mothers. The sons compete over who i$ idolarrous and who is authentic, and they also compete for the love of their father. “In this metaphor of Abrahamie family, identities are established . . . old wounds are expressed .. . ancient competitions and conflicts are given a quality of cosmic significance” (Gopin, 2002, p. 7).

Another famous myth is the portrayal of Jews and Judaism in early Christian writ-ings. The Jews are portrayed there as the kiłlers of Jesus, and the disagreements between Jews and Christians are described dramatically as a cosmic struggie between evil and