Strikingly the process of Scriptural interpretation is very similar across violent religious groups. For example, throughout the Left Behind series so popular among American apocalyptic Christians, the protagonists continually justify their actions by reference to individual Bible verses, or sometimes even just bits of verses or phrases. Almost always these textual bits are cited without any reference to their context. The assumption here appears to be that the Bible is a repository of concepts and images that are independent and autonomous and can be taken out of their larger textual or narrative context and treated as isolated slogans or bits of wisdom. The same thing happens with other religiously motivated terrorist movements. For example, many commentators have pointed out that when jihadists quote the Koran to justify terrorist actions and the killing of civilians (things most Muslim scholars agree are against Koranic principles), they almost always take passages out of context, ignoring either the texts’ immediate context or the larger message of the Koran taken as a whole. There is one kind of jihadi video that consists of single, violence-oriented Koranic phrases chanted to music or repeated over and over by an iconic figure like Bin Laden or Zarquawi or a would-be martyr sometimes with scenes of battle playing in the background. Often these texts are re-grouped around themes like the obligation of jihad or the lure of paradise. Likewise the Army of God website is covered with Biblical verses with no context such as “cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood (Jeremiah 48: 10), or “surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God” (Psalm 139: 19), and “The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance done: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked” (Psalm 58: 10). This site also contains a statement by Eric Rudolph who was responsible for several women’s health clinic bombings, the bombing of a gay club, and the bomb that exploded at the Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park. His statement is captioned “Psalm 144: 1: Blessed be the LORD my strength which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight”.

 

Likewise with the violent Israeli settler movement in the occupied territories of Palestine. After the 6-day war when Israel continued to occupy the west bank, justification for that occupation had to be found. No United Nations mandate gave them title to that land. Such occupations are illegal in International Law, the “might makes right” philosophy has been discredited for generations. The only justifications for the occupation could found by taking references to ancient Israel in the book of Exodus and applying them to the modern secular state. These deconxtextualized fragments from the Torah are now the basis for occupation, oppression, and warfare.

 

Scholars have said the same thing about Asahara’s (the founder of Aum Shinrikyo which released sarin gas in the Tokyo subways) use of texts from the Tibetan Tantras: that in order to justify his violent and apocalyptic teachings Asahara either took texts out of context or interpreted passages literally that were meant to be interpreted symbolically. The same is true of the way the authors of the Left Behind series treat the New Testament. In none of these cases are these scriptural texts or fragments discussed in terms of their historical or linguistic context or their place in traditional commentaries. Rather they are simply flung at the reader or viewer. Such a style of interpretation and the concomitant assumption that a sacred text can be treated as simply a collection of independent textual fragments to be combined and recombined in any way that suits the ideology of the speaker seems to characterize the use of sacred texts on the part of violence prone religionists.

 

This is part of a larger point: while violent religious groups always claim to represent the most traditional and conservative viewpoint; their understanding of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc is always a very narrow and limited representation of the greater traditions. What the historian Martin Marty calls in a telling phrase the “selective retrieval of tradition.” For example, this narrow and literalistic understanding of sacred texts is hardly traditional. Literalistic approaches to scripture are a distinctly modern, post-enlightenment phenomenon. Ironically these groups that are often portrayed as anti-modern (which is true only in a very limited sense if at all) represent a very modern understanding of how language functions and knowledge is constructed. And, of course, the contents they derive from scripture, as well as their processes of interpretation, almost always represent modern concerns that were unknown to the texts’ original authors and commentators. It is only because the global society, and especially North America and Europe, has secularized so rapidly (and also because of these groups sophisticated manipulation and control of the mass media) that these groups can get away with claiming to represent the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Hinduism, etc when clearly don’t. Wrapping themselves in a very gauzy mantle of “traditionalism” or “conservatism” should not obscure their “selective retrieval.”  

 

Besides texts and stories that describe and sanctify violence which all these groups reiterate over and over, another of the most striking things about this material is that the same issues are common to the writings of religious terrorists across many different religious traditions. Their societies are seen as ruled by anti-religious leaders who may claim to be Jewish, Christian, or Muslim but really are not. The scriptural texts that are focused on are primarily the legal texts of their sacred scriptures. Religion is defined in primarily legal terms, as a divine law, the capitalized “Moral Law” in Paul Hill’s (the murderer of a physician and guard at a woman’s health center) writings – the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament, the Koran, even the Buddhist Sutras are understood as books of rules, laws. A divine mission to impose this law on the whole society and replace secular or hypocritical leaders with devout leaders is proclaimed. As I've noted before, this is why religious terrorists reject the separation of church, synagogue, mosque or ashram and the state. Their religion requires of them that all aspects of life — from laws governing capital crimes to women’s clothing and children’s discipline — be subject to religious control. And the prominent issues in this divine mandate are also similar across traditions:  the “proper” roles of men and women, the regulation of sex, ending abortion and homosexuality. Texts that discuss or can be made to discuss such issues are lifted out and made prominent.

 

The important point is that these very same issues  – an abhorrence of the materialism and individualism of the west, its lack of spirituality, its sexualized culture, its blurring of traditional gender roles and the emasculation of its men, and its tolerance for homosexuality – are found in the writings of religiously motivated terrorists whether they are living in settlements in the occupied territories on the West Bank, in the Taliban camps in Afghanistan, or in the Christian enclaves in rural America.

           

            This brief discussion of the role of scripture reveals one very, very important point about contemporary religiously motivated terrorism—that religiously motivated terrorists groups share many, many common features regardless of the traditions they come from. In addition: religious terrorists emphasize shame and humiliation, dichotomizes the world into warring camps of the all-good against the totally evil, demonize those with whom they disagree and foment crusades against them, advocate violence and blood sacrifice as the primary means of purification, seek to placate or be unified with a punitive and humiliating  idealized divine figure or institution, offer theological justifications for violent acts, and promote prejudice and authoritarian behavior. Sacred texts are then twisted and reconfigured to fit within and support such a theology.