The document summarizes a debate around the relationship between religion and violence. It discusses perspectives from scholars like Karen Armstrong who argue that religion is not a primary cause of violence and that religiously inspired violence is often motivated more by political or personal factors. The document also discusses a model proposed by David Eller that identifies five dimensions - group integration, identity, institutions, interests, and ideology - that can predict a group's propensity for violence when satisfied. The author ultimately hypothesizes that while religion may not be a sole or primary cause of violence, the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are particularly capable of inspiring violence due to how well they satisfy Eller's five dimensions.

1. During a 2014 episode of Real Time with Bill Maher,
a brief “debate” broke out between neuroscientist
and popular religion critic Sam Harris and movie
actor Ben Affleck on the topic of Muslim violence.1
Harris pronounced Islam “the motherlode of bad
ideas,” and Affleck scorned his opponent’s attitude
as “gross” and “racist.” The Harris-Affleck affair ex-
posed a gaping intellectual void in the dialogue over
the relationship between religion and violence. Un-
fortunately, this debate has long been dominated by
extreme or undisciplined claims on each side. Some
suggest, for example, that all organized violence is
religiously inspired at some level, while others in-
sist that all religion is entirely benevolent when
practiced “correctly.” Neither of these positions is
defensible. There are many forms of violence—
from wars, inquisitions, and terrorism to honor
killing, suicide bombing, and genital mutilation—
each of which has a unique set of causes, only one
of which is religion.
Some social scientists have argued that reli-
gious belligerence ensues from simple prejudice,
defined as judgment in the absence of accurate in-
formation. Here, the customary prescription in-
cludes education and exposure to a broader
diversity of religious tradition. But as Rodney Stark,
co-director at Baylor University’s Institute for Stud-
ies of Religion, recently observed, “it is mostly true
beliefs about one another’s religion that separates
the major faiths.” Muslims deny Christ’s divinity, for
example, and Christians reject Muhammad’s claim
as successor to Moses and Jesus. As such, Stark rea-
sons, education is unnecessary and “increased con-
tact might well result in increased hostility.”2
As well, there are a number of perspectives
that both diminish and subordinate the role of reli-
gion in violent contexts to that of mere pretense or
veneer. These writers contend that religion is sel-
dom, if ever, the original or primary cause of aggres-
sion. Rather, they suggest, the sacred serves only as
an efficient means of either motivating or justifying
what should otherwise be recognized as purely sec-
ular violence. Such is the latest appraisal of Karen
Armstrong, ex-Catholic nun and prolific popular
historian of religion. In rapid response to Harris’s
televised vilification of Islam, Armstrong enlisted
the popular press. In an interview with Salon she
echoed Affleck’s hyperbole, equating Harris’s criti-
cism of Islam to Nazi anti-Semitism.3
Such compar-
isons are absurd, of course, because condemnation
of an idea is categorically different from denigration
of an entire population, or any member thereof.
But more to the point, Armstrong argued that
the very idea of “religious violence” is flawed for
two reasons. First, ancient religion was inseparable
from the state and, as such, no aspect of pre-mod-
ern life—including organized violence—could have
been divided from either the state or religion. Sec-
ond, she continued, “all our motivation is always
mixed.” Thus, says Armstrong, modern suicide
bombing and Muslim terrorism, for example, are
more personal and political than religious. In her
2014 book, Fields of Blood, Armstrong writes:
Until the modern period, religion permeated all as-
pects of life, including politics and warfare … be-
cause people wanted to endow everything with
significance. Every state ideology was religious …
[and thus every] successful empire has claimed that
it had a divine mission; that its enemies were evil….
And because these states and empires were all cre-
ated and maintained by force, religion has been
[wrongly] implicated in their violence.4
Armstrong goes on to argue that religion has
consistently stood against aggression. The Priestly
authors of the Hebrew Bible, she says, believed that
warriors were contaminated by violence, “even if
the campaign had been endorsed by God.” Similarly,
the medieval Peace and Truce of God graciously
“outlawed violence from Wednesday to Sunday.”
And in the past, Sunni Muslims were “loath to call
their coreligionists ‘apostates,’ because they believed
Religion, Violence,
and TerrorismAn Empirical Evolutionary Study
BY KENNETH KRAUSE
ARTICLE
48 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE volume 20 number 1 2015

2. that God alone knew…a person’s heart.”
So both ancient and modern forms of violence,
Armstrong contends, are not to be found in religion
per se, “but in the violence embedded in our human
nature and the nature of the state.” Thus, the “xeno-
phobic theology of the Deuteronomists developed
when the Kingdom of Judah faced political annihi-
lation,” and the Muslim practices of al-jihad al-as-
ghar and takfir (the process of declaring someone
an apostate or unbeliever) were resuscitated
“largely as a result of political tension arising from
Western imperialism (associated with Christianity)
and the Palestinian problem.”
Some of Armstrong’s claims are no doubt true,
but far less relevant than she imagines. For example,
that religion was conjoined with the state did not
render it ineffectual in terms of bellicosity—perhaps
quite the opposite, as we will see. In other cases, the
author’s claims are logically flawed. For instance, an
older version of a tradition is not more “authentic”
than its successors simply by virtue of its age. Also,
that violence results from manifold causes does not
diminish the accountability of any contributing in-
fluence, including religion.
Ultimately, Armstrong misrepresents the issue
entirely by setting up her true intellectual adver-
saries as conveniently feeble straw men. “It is sim-
ply not true,” she asserts, “that ‘religion’ is always
aggressive.” Agreed, but no serious scholar has ever
made that accusation.
Nevertheless, Armstrong’s most recent com-
mentary reminds us that religion generally, and all
major religious traditions collectively, are a well-
mixed bag. Indeed, both Buddhism and Jainism were
at least founded on the principle of ahimsa, or non-
violence. And, yes, the sacred regularly intertwines
with politics and government, sometimes to a degree
rendering it indistinguishable from the state itself.
Finally, hostility in the name of religion, whether
perpetrated by a state, group, or individual, is fre-
quently motivated by a host of factors in addition to
faith. However, that religion is often employed as a
pretense or veneer to inspire people to violence only
tends to confirm its dangerous nature.
A More Methodical Approach
Cultural anthropologist David Eller proposes a
comprehensive model of violence consisting of five
contributing dimensions or conditions that, to-
gether, predict the source’s propensity to expand
both the scope and scale of hostility.5
These dimen-
sions include group integration, identity, institutions,
interests, and ideology. Eller applies his model to re-
ligion as follows: First, religion is clearly a group
venture featuring “exclusionary membership,” “col-
lective ideas,” and “the leadership principle, with
attendant expectations of conformity if not strict
obedience”—often to superhuman authorities de-
serving of special deference. Second, sacred tradi-
tions offer both personal and collective identities to
their adherents that stimulate moods, motivations,
and “most critically, actions.”
Next, most faiths provide institutions, perhaps
involving creeds, codes of conduct, rituals, and hi-
erarchical offices which at some point, according to
Eller, can render the religion indistinguishable
from government. Fourth, all religions aspire to ful-
fill certain interests. Most crucially, they seek to
preserve and perpetuate the group along with its
doctrines and behavioral norms. The attainment of
ultimate good or evil (heaven or hell, for example),
the discouragement or punishment of “dissent or
deviance,” proselytization and conversion, and op-
position to non-believers may be included as well.
Finally, “religion may be the ultimate ideology,”
the author avers, “since its framework is so totally
external (i.e., supernaturally ordained or given), its
rules and standards so obligatory, its bonds so un-
breakable, and its legitimation so absolute.” For
Eller, the “supernatural premise” is critical:
This provides the most effective possible legitimation
for what we are ordered or ordained to do: it makes
the group, its identity, its institutions, its interests,
and its particular ideology good and right … by defi-
nition. Therefore, if it is in the identity or the institu-
tions or the interests or the ideology of a religion to
be violent, that too is good and right, even righteous.
Thus, he concludes, “no other social force observed
in history can meet those conditions as well as reli-
gion.” And when a given tradition satisfies multiple
conditions, “violence becomes not only likely but
comparatively minor in the light of greater reli-
gious truths.”
Confronting the question at hand, then, and
with Armstrong’s historical observations and Eller’s
generalized model of violence in mind, I present
here a two-part hypothesis that describes potential
relationships between religion and aggression.
First, I do not contend that religion is ever the
sole, original, or even primary cause of bellicosity.
Such might be the case in any given instance, but for
the purpose of determining generally whether faith
plays a meaningful role in violence, we need only ask
whether the religion is the sine qua non (without
which not), or “cause-in-fact,” of the conflict. Second,
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3. although all religions can and often do stimulate a va-
riety of both positive and negative behaviors, clearly
not all faiths are identical in their inherent inclination
toward hostility. Indeed, there should be little ques-
tion that the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam have all satisfied each of Eller’s conditions with
exceptional profusion. Accordingly, I propose that the
Abrahamic monotheisms are either uniquely adapted
to the task or otherwise especially capable of inspiring vio-
lence from both their followers and non-followers.
Causation, Briefly
Determining whether a violent act would have oc-
curred absent religious belief can be difficult. Even
so, it is insufficient to simply note, as some critics of
religion often do, that the Bible prescribes death for a
variety of objectively mundane offenses, including
adultery (Leviticus 20:10) and taking the Lord’s name
in vain (Leviticus 24:16). And to merely remind us,
for example, that Deuteronomy 13:7-11 commands
the devoted to stone to death all who attempt to “di-
vert you from Yahweh your God,” or that Qur’an 9:73
instructs prophets of Islam to “make war” on unbe-
lievers, provides precious little evidence upon which
to base an indictment of religious conviction.
Sam Harris’s vague declaration, “As man be-
lieves, so will he act,” seems entirely plausible, of
course, but is also highly presumptive given the fact
that humans are known to frequently hold two or
more conflicting beliefs simultaneously.6
Nor can
we automatically assume that every suicide bomber
or terrorist has taken inspiration from holy author-
ity—even if he or she is a religious extremist.
On the other hand, there is substantial merit
in Harris’s criticism of those faithful who, regard-
less of the circumstances, “tend to argue that it is
not faith itself but man’s baser nature that inspires
such violence.” Again, there can be more than one
cause-in-fact for any outcome, especially in the psy-
chologically knotty context of human aggression.
Further, when an aggressor confesses religious in-
spiration, we should accept him at his word.
So when we are made aware, for example, that
one of Francisco Pizarro’s companions, whose fellow
soldiers brutalized the Peruvian town of Cajamarca in
1532, had written back to the Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V (a.k.a. King Charles I of Spain), recounting
that “for the glory of God…they have conquered and
brought to our holy Catholic Faith so vast a number
of heathens, aided by His holy guidance,” we should
concede the rather evident possibility that the
Spaniards slaughtered or forcibly converted these na-
tives at least in part because of their religion.7
Monotheism Conceptually
Eller denies that all religion is “inherently” violent.
Nonetheless, he recognizes monotheism’s tendency
toward a dualistic, good versus evil attitude that not
only “builds conflict into the very fabric of the cos-
mic system” by crafting two “irrevocably antagonis-
tic” domains “with the ever-present potential for
actual conflict and violence,” but also “breeds and
demands a fervor of belief that makes persecution
seem necessary and valuable.”
Stark agrees. Committed to a “doctrine of ex-
clusive religious truth,” he writes, particularistic
traditions “always contain the potential for danger-
ous conflicts because theological disagreements seem
inevitable.” Innovative heresy naturally arises from
the religious person’s desire to comprehend scrip-
ture thought to be inspired by the all-powerful and
“one true god.” As such, Stark finds, “the decisive
factor governing religious hatred and conflict is
whether, and to what degree, religious disagree-
ment—pluralism, if you will—is tolerated.”8
Indeed, many modern writers have distin-
guished monotheism as an exceptionally belligerent
force. Sigmund Freud, for example, argued in 1939
that “religious intolerance was inevitably born with
the belief in one God.”9
More recently, Jungian psy-
chologist, James Hillman, concurred: “Because a
monotheistic psychology must be dedicated to unity,
its psychopathology is intolerance of difference.”10
Even Karen Armstrong agreed when writing in her
late 50s that of the faiths of Abraham, “all three have
developed a pattern of holy war and violence that is
remarkably similar and which seems to surface from
some deep compulsion inherent in this tradition of
monotheism, the worship of only one God.”11
Author Jonathan Kirsch, however, addressed
the issue directly in 2004, comparing the relative
bellicosity of polytheistic and monotheistic tradi-
tions. Noting the early dominance of the former
over the latter, Kirsch described their most pro-
found dissimilarity:
[F]atefully, monotheism turned out to inspire a
ferocity and even a fanaticism that are mostly
absent from polytheism. At the heart of polythe-
ism is an open-minded and easygoing approach
to religious belief and practice, a willingness to
entertain the idea that there are many gods and
many ways to worship them. At the heart of
monotheism, by contrast, is the sure conviction
that only a single god exists, a tendency to re-
gard one’s own rituals and practices as the only
proper way to worship the one true god.12
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4. Former professor of religion, Edward Meltzer,
adds that for the monotheist, “all divine volition
must have one source, and this entails the attribu-
tion of violent and vengeful actions to one and the
same deity and makes them an indelible part of the
divine persona.” Meanwhile, polytheists “have the
flexibility of compartmentalizing the divine” and to
“place responsibility for…repugnant actions on
certain deities, and thus to marginalize them.”13
For Kirsch, the biblical tale of the golden calf re-
veals an exceptional belligerence in the faiths of
Abraham. After convincing a pitiless and indiscrimi-
nate Yahweh not to obliterate every Israelite for wor-
shiping the false idol, Moses nonetheless organizes a
“death squad” to murder the 3000 men and women
(to “slay brother, neighbor, and kin,” according to Ex-
odus 32:27) who actually betrayed their strangely
jealous god.
In the Pentateuch and elsewhere, Kirsch elabo-
rates, “the Bible can be read as a bitter song of de-
spair as sung by the disappointed prophets of
Yahweh who tried but failed to call their fellow Is-
raelites to worship of the True God.” “Fatefully,” the
author continues, the prophets—like their wrathful
deity—“are roused to a fierce, relentless and pun-
ishing anger toward any man or woman who they
find to be insufficiently faithful.”
This ultimate and non-negotiable “exclusivism”
of worship and belief, Kirsch concludes, comprises
the “core value of monotheism.” And “the most mili-
tant monotheists—Jews, Christians and Muslims
alike—embrace the belief that God demands the
blood of the nonbeliever” because the foulest of sins
is not lust, greed, rape, or even murder, but “rather
the offering of worship to gods and goddesses other
than the True God.”
Indeed, the historical plight of these faiths’ Holy
City seems to bear credible testimony to Kirsch’s ren-
dering. As Biblical archeologist Eric Cline observed a
decade ago, Jerusalem has suffered 118 separate con-
flicts in the past four millennia. It has been “com-
pletely destroyed twice, besieged twenty-three times,
attacked an additional fifty-two times, and captured
and recaptured forty-four times.” The city has endured
20 revolts and “at least five separate periods of violent
terrorist attacks during the past century.” Ironically,
the “Holy Sanctuary” has changed hands peacefully
only twice during the last four thousand years.14
For anthropologist Hector Avalos, Jerusalem
figures prominently in this discussion as a reli-
giously-defined “scarce resource.” Of course many
social scientists have attributed hostility to compe-
tition over limited resources. Avalos, however, ar-
gues that the Abrahamic faiths have created from
whole cloth four categories of scarce resource that
render them especially prone to the inducement of
recurrent and often shocking acts of violence.15
Sacred spaces and divinely inspired or other-
wise authoritative scriptures comprise the author’s
first and second categories. Such spaces and scrip-
tures are scarce because only certain people will ever
receive access to or be ordained with the power to
control or interpret them. Group privilege and salva-
tion constitute Avalos’ third and fourth categories,
neither of which will be conferred on a person, con-
sistent with religious tradition, except under extraor-
dinary circumstances. Obviously, all such resources
are related and, in many ways, interdependent.
To emphasize the point, Regina Schwartz, direc-
tor of the Chicago Institute for Religion, Ethics, and
Violence, cites the biblical story of Cain and Abel. In
the book of Genesis, the first brothers offer dissimilar
sacrifices to God, who favors Abel’s offering, but not
Cain’s. And so the gifting is transformed into a com-
petition for God’s blessing, apparently a commodity
in limited supply. Denied God’s approval—and now
God’s preference—Cain murders Abel in a jealous
rage. Here, Schwartz finds, “monotheism is depicted
as endorsing exclusion and intolerance,” and the
scarce resource of “divine favor” as “inspiring deadly
rivalries.”16
In the religious milieu, Avalos argues, scarcity is
markedly more tragic and immoral because the alleged
existence of these resources is ultimately unverifiable
and, according to empirical standards, not scarce at
all. Even so, for religionists the stakes are not only
real, but as high as one could possibly imagine. Con-
trol over such resources, after all, determines everlast-
ing bliss or torment for both one’s self and all others.
Indeed, assuming belief—at least in the context of
scarce resource theory—what’s not to kill or die for?
The Evolution of Monotheism
The God of Abraham was created not only in the
image of man, says professor of psychiatry Hector
Garcia, but far more revealingly in the images of
alpha-male humans and their non-human primate
forebears. It is no accident (and certainly no indica-
tion of credibility), Garcia continues, that the ma-
jority of all religionists worship a god who is
“fearsome and male,” who “demands reckoning”
and “rains fury upon His enemies and slaughters
the unfaithful,” and who is portrayed in the holy
texts as “policing the sex lives of His subordinates
and obsessing over sexual infidelity.”17
No more anaccident,that is,than the evolutionary
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5. process of natural selection and differential reproduc-
tion. Why would an eternal, non-material, and all-
powerful divinity like Yahweh, Allah, or Christ,
Garcia asks, preoccupy himself with “what are ulti-
mately very human, and very apelike” concerns? That
such a god would need to assert and maintain domi-
nance by threat or physical aggression or to use vio-
lence “to obtain evolutionary rewards such as food,
territory, and sex,” seems unfathomable.
Until, that is, one comes to recognize the Abra-
hamic gods as the highest-ranking alpha-male apes of
all time. In that light, these divinities “reflect the es-
sential concerns of our primate evolutionary past—
namely, securing and maintaining power, and using
that power to exercise control over material and re-
productive resources.” In other words, to help them
cope during a particularly brutal era, the male au-
thors of the Abrahamic texts fashioned a god “intu-
itive to their evolved psychology,” and, as history
demonstrates, “with devastating consequences.”
Rules of reciprocity govern the social lives of
non-human primates (which scientists routinely
study as approximations for the ancestors of hu-
mans). When fights break out among chimpanzees,
for instance, those who have previously received
help from the victim are much more likely than
others to answer his calls. And apes that are called
but fail to respond are far more likely to be ignored
or even attacked rather than helped if and when
they plead for assistance during future altercations.
Dominant males also rely on alliances to maintain
rank and will punish subordinates that so much as
groom or share food with their rivals. In fact, many
researchers calculate that the most common intra-
society cause of ape aggression is the perceived in-
fraction of social rules—many of which administer
reciprocity and maintain alliances.
Like their primate ancestors, men have long
sought alliances with their dominant alpha-gods.
Extreme examples abound in sacred texts. In Gene-
sis 22:1-19, Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac,
his own son, demonstrates his unflinching submis-
sion to God, who “reciprocates in decidedly evolu-
tionary terms,” according to Garcia, by offering
Abraham and his descendants the ultimate ally in
war. Similarly, In Judges 11:30-56, Jephthah sacri-
fices his daughter as a “burnt offering” to Yahweh
for help in battle against the Ammonites.
But gods have rivals too; and strangely—except
from an evolutionary perspective—so do omnipotent
gods. Created by dominant men, these divinities are
expressly jealous. And like their primate forebears,
they build and enforce alliances with their followers
against all divine rivals. As Exodus 22.20 warns, “He
who sacrifices to any god, except to the LORD only,
he shall be utterly destroyed.” But as an earthly ex-
tension of loyalty, God requires action as well. Mus-
lims, for example, are expected to “fight those of the
unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in
you hardness” (Sura 9:123).
Thus, monotheism not only establishes in- and
out-groups with evolutionary efficiency, it also inten-
sifies and legitimizes them. The founding texts are
capable of removing all compassion from the equa-
tion (“thine eye shall have no pity on them” [Deut.
7:16]), thus leaving all manner of brutality permissi-
ble (“strike off their heads and strike off every finger-
tip of them” [Sura 8:12]). The First Crusade offers a
bloody case in point. Accounts of the Christian at-
tack on Jerusalem in 1099 document the slaughter of
nearly 70,000 Muslims. The faithful reportedly
burned the Jews, raped the women, and dashed their
babies’ wailing heads against posts. As a campaign
waged against a religiously-defined “other,” this as-
sault was considered unequivocally righteous.
As a second, more sexually-oriented, illustration
of the alpha-God parable, Garcia offers Catholic
Spain’s late 16th- and early 17th-century conquest of
the Pueblo Indians of today’s New Mexico. Here, the
incursion didn’t end with the violent acquisition of
territory. In striking resemblance to the behaviors of
dominant male non-human primates, Christian oc-
cupiers emasculated their native male rivals, clois-
tered their women, and appropriated their mating
opportunities. The Spaniards began by claiming the
natives’ territory in the name of Christ and God.
They destroyed their prisoners’ religious buildings
and icons and, as many dominance-seeking male an-
imals do, marked their newly pilfered grounds.
Catholic iconography was erected while the most
powerful medicine men were persecuted and killed.
Conquistador and governor of the New Mexico
province, Juan de Onate, neutralized all capable men
over the age of 25 by hacking away one of their feet.18
Meanwhile, the Franciscan friars were tasked
with their captives’ spiritual conquest. To install
themselves as earthly dominant males, the friars
undermined the existing male rank structure
through public humiliation. Native sons were
forced to watch helplessly as the Franciscans liter-
ally seized, twisted, and in some cases tore away
their fathers’ penises and testicles, rendering them
both socially submissive and sexually impotent.
“Indian men were to sexually acquiesce to Christ,
the dominant male archetype,” says Garcia, “and
the Franciscans exercised extreme brutality to ac-
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6. complish such subservience, to include attacking
genitalia in the style of male apes and monkeys.”
The friars hoarded the native women in clois-
ters, thus acquiring exclusive sexual access—which
was sometimes but not always voluntary. Inquisito-
rial court logs documented numerous incidences of
violence that were seldom if ever prosecuted. One
example involved Fray Nicolas Hidalgo of the Taos
Pueblo who fathered a native woman’s child after
strangling her husband and violating her. Another
friar, Luis Martinez, was accused of raping a native
girl, cutting her throat, and burying her body under
his cell. In these brutal but, to primatologists, eerily
familiar cases, Garcia writes, “we can easily spy
male evolutionary paradigms grinding their way
across the Conquista—the sexual domination of
men, the sexual acquisition of females, and differ-
ential reproduction among despotic men—all
strongly within a religious context.”
But the most unnerving evolutionary strategy
among male animals—especially apes and monkeys,
is infanticide. Typically only males attempt it, and
often after toppling other males from power. The re-
productive advantage is unmistakable. Killing another
male’s offspring eliminates the killer’s (and his male
progeny’s) future competition for females. In many
species, the practice also sends the offended mother
immediately into estrus, providing the killer with ad-
ditional reproductive access. Perhaps counterintu-
itively, the mothers also have much to gain by mating
with their infants’ slayers because infanticidal males
are genetically more likely to produce infanticidal,
and thus more evolutionarily fit offspring.
Unfortunately, this disturbing pattern is repli-
cated in modern humans. As Garcia notes, the num-
ber of child homicides committed by stepfathers and
boyfriends is substantially higher—in some in-
stances, up to 100 times higher—than those commit-
ted by biological fathers. And we know that genetics
are involved in this pattern because it occurs across
cultures and geographic regions.
Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point, the evolu-
tionary strategy of infanticide is also reflected in reli-
gion. In the Bible, for example, God orders his
followers to “kill every male among the little ones”
along with “every woman who has known man by
lying with him.” (Numbers 31:17-18) The virgins, of
course, are to be enslaved for sexual service. Also, in
his prophesy against Babylon, God declares that the
doomed city’s “infants will be dashed to pieces” as
their parents look on. (Isaiah 13-16) This time, the
hapless infants’ mothers will be “violated” as well.
It is no mere coincidence, Garcia argues, that
mostly men have claimed to know what God wants.
Dominant human males have inherited their most
basic desires from our primate ancestors. Interest-
ingly, their omnipotent and immortal God is fre-
quently portrayed as possessing identical earthly
cravings. He demands territory and access to
women, for example. And from an objective per-
spective, this God’s desires serve only to justify the
ambitions of the most powerful men.
As natural history would predict, human males
have relentlessly pursued—and continue to pur-
sue—the monopolization of territorial and sexual
resources through “fear, submission, and unques-
tioning obeisance.” The alpha-God expects and ac-
cepts no less. Most regrettably, however, “men have
claimed this dominant male god’s backing while
perpetrating unspeakable cruelties—including
rape, homicide, infanticide, and even genocide.”
Modern Islam
Sam Harris believes the West is at war with Islam.
“It is not merely that we are at war with an other-
wise peaceful religion that has been ‘hijacked’ by
extremists,” he argues. “We are at war with pre-
cisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Mus-
lims in the Koran, and further elaborated in the
literature of the hadith.” “A future in which Islam
and the West do not stand on the brink of mutual
annihilation,” Harris portends, “is a future in which
most Muslims have learned to ignore most of their
canon, just as most Christians have learned to do.”19
Incendiary rhetoric aside, is Harris naïve to
emphasize Islamic violence as his critics claim?
After all, Western history is saturated with exclu-
sively Christian bloodshed. Pope Innocent III’s
13th-century crusade against the French Cathars,
for example, may have ended a million lives. The
French Religious Wars of the 16th-century between
Catholics and Protestant Huguenots left around
three million slain, and the 17th-century Thirty
Years War waged by French and Spanish Catholics
against Protestant Germans and Scandinavians an-
nihilated perhaps 7.5 million.
Islamic scholar and apostate, Ibn Warraq, doesn’t
think so. Westerners tend to mistakenly differentiate
between Islam and “Islamic fundamentalism,” he ex-
plains. The two are actually one in the same, he
says, because Islamic cultures continue to receive
the Qur’an and the hadith literally. Such societies
will remain hostile to democratic ideals, Warraq ad-
vises, until they permit a “rigorous self-criticism
that eschews comforting delusions of a…Golden Age
of total Muslim victory in all spheres; the separation
TERRORISM
volume 20 number 1 2015 WWW.SKEPTIC.COM 53

7. of religion and state; and secularism.”20
Likely entailed in this hypothetical transfor-
mation would be a religious schism the magni-
tude of which would resemble the Christian
Reformation in its tendency to wrest scriptural
control and interpretation from the clutch of re-
ligious and political elites and into the hands of
commoners. Only then can a meaningful en-
lightenment toward secularism follow. And as
author Lee Harris has opined, “with the advent
of universal secular education, undertaken by
the state, the goal was to create whole popula-
tions that refrained from solving their conflicts
through an appeal to violence.”21
In the contemporary West, Rodney Stark
concurs, “religious wars seldom involve blood-
shed, being primarily conducted in the courts
and legislative bodies.”22
In the United States,
for example, anti-abortion terrorism might be
the only exception. But such is clearly not the
case in many Muslim nations, where religious
battles continue and are now “mainly fought by
civilian volunteers.” In fact, data recently col-
lected by Stark appear to support Sam Harris’
critique rather robustly.
Consulting a variety of worldwide sources,
Stark assembled a list of all religious atrocities
that occurred during 2012.23
In order to qualify,
each attack had to be religiously motivated and
result in at least one fatality. Attacks committed
by government forces were excluded. In the
process, Stark’s team “became deeply concerned
that nearly all of the cases we were finding in-
volved Muslim attackers, and the rest were Bud-
dhists.” In the end, they discovered only three
Christian assaults—all “reprisals for Muslim at-
tacks on Christians.” A total of 808 religiously
motivated homicides were recorded, resulting in
5,026 persons killed—3,774 Muslims, 1,045
Christians, 110 Buddhists, 23 Jews, 21 Hindus,
and 53 seculars. Most were killed with explosives
or firearms but, disturbingly, 24 percent died
from beatings or torture perpetrated not by de-
ranged individuals, but rather by “organized
groups.” In fact, Stark details, many reports “tell
of gouged out eyes, of tongues torn out and testi-
cles crushed, of rapes and beatings, all done prior
to victims being burned to death, stoned, or
slowly cut to pieces.”
As Table 1 shows, present-day religious ter-
rorism almost always occurs within Islam: 70
percent of the atrocities took place in Muslim
countries, and 75 percent of the victims were
Muslims slaughtered by other Muslims, often
the result of majority Sunni killing Shi’a (the ma-
jority only in Iran and Iraq). Pakistan (80 per-
cent Sunni) ranked first in 2012, likely due to its
chronically weak central government and the
contributions of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Christians accounted for 20 percent (159)
of all documented victims; 11 percent of those
(17) were killed in Pakistan, but nearly half (79)
were slain in Nigeria, often by Muslim members
of Boko Haram. Formally known as the Congre-
gation and People of Tradition for Proselytism
and Jihad, Boko Haram was founded in 2002 to
impose Muslim rule on 170 million Nigerians,
nearly half of which are Christian. Some esti-
mate that Boko Haram jihadists—funded in part
by Saudi Arabia—have murdered more than
10,000 people in the last decade.
Such attacks are indisputably perpetrated
by few among many Muslims. But whether the
Muslim world condemns religious extremism,
even religious violence, is another question. Ac-
cording to Stark, “It is incorrect to claim that
the support of religious terrorism in the Islamic
world is only among small, unrepresentative
cells of extremists.” In fact, recent polling data
tends to demonstrate “more widespread public
support than many have believed.”
Shari’a, the religious law and moral code of
Islam, is considered infallible because it derives
from the Qur’an, tracks the examples of Muham-
mad, and is thought to have been given by Allah.
It controls everything from politics and econom-
ics to prayer, sex, hygiene, and diet. The ex-
pressed goal of all militant Muslim groups, Stark
argues, is to establish Shari’a everywhere in the
world.
Gallup World Polls from 2007 and 2008
show that nearly all Muslims in Muslim
countries want Shari’a to play some role in
government.24
As Table 2 illustrates, the de-
gree of desired implementation varies from
nation to nation. Strikingly, however, a clear
majority in 10 Muslim countries—and a two-
thirds supermajority in five—want Shari’a to
be the exclusive source of legislation.
In 2013, an Egyptian criminal court sen-
tenced Nadia Mohamed Ali and her seven chil-
dren to 15 years imprisonment for apostasy. One
could argue, however, that Nadia got off easy be-
cause in Egypt the decision to leave Islam is pun-
ishable by death. In fact, death is the mandatory
sentence for apostasy in both Afghanistan and
54 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE volume 20 number 1 2015
Table 1:
Incidents of
Religious
Atrocities
by Nation
(2012)
Pakistan .....267
Iraq ............109
Nigeria........106
Thailand........52
Syria.............44
Afghanistan...27
Yemen ..........22
India.............20
Lebanon .......20
Egypt ............15
Somalia ........14
Myanmar.......11
Kenya .............9
Russia............7
Sudan.............7
Iran ................6
Israel..............6
Mali................6
Indonesia........5
Philippines ......5
China..............4
France ............4
Libya ..............4
Palestinian......4
Algeria ............2
Bangladesh.....2
Belgium ..........2
Germany .........2
Jordan ............2
Macedonia ......2
Saudi Arabia....2
Bahrain...........1
Bulgaria ......... 1
Kosovo ...........1
South Africa ....1
Sri Lanka ........1
Sweden ..........1
Tajikistan ........1
Tanzania .........1
Turkey.............1
Uganda...........1
TOTAL.........808

8. Saudi Arabia. But do such laws garner support from
Muslims in general? To find out, the Pew Forum on
Religion and Public Life asked citizens in 12 Islamic
nations whether they supported the death penalty for
apostasy.25
Their responses are reflected in Table 3. In
Egypt, 88 percent of Nadia’s fellow residents would
have approved of her and her children’s executions, as
would a majority of Jordanians, Afghans, Pakistanis,
Palestinians, Dijboutians, and Malaysians.
However, from a Western perspective, so-called
“honor” killing ranks among the most incomprehen-
sible of Muslim customs. Stark details four truly
mindboggling cases: In one, a young lady was stran-
gled by her own family for the “offense” of being
raped by her cousins. In the other three, girls who
eloped, acquired a cell phone, or merely wore slacks
that day were hung or beaten to death. In 2012
alone, Stark identified 78 reported honor killings, 45
of which were committed in Pakistan.
Many protest that simple domestic violence is
often misclassified as honor killing. But, again, Pew
survey data seem to suggest otherwise.25
Table 4
shows the percentage of Muslims in 11 countries
who believe it is often or sometimes justified to kill
a woman for adultery or premarital sex in order to
protect her family’s honor. Thankfully, only in Pak-
istan and Iraq do a majority (60 percent) agree. But
in all other Muslim nations polled, a substantial mi-
nority—including 41 percent in Jordan, Lebanon,
and Pakistan—appear to approve of these horrific
murders as well as their governments’ documented
reluctance to prosecute them.
According to a report from the Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan, in 2012 alone 913 Pak-
istani females were honor killed—604 following
TERRORISM
volume 20 number 1 2015 WWW.SKEPTIC.COM 55
Table 2: Percent of Muslims
Who Think Shari’a should be…
…the ONLY …a
source of source of
legislation legislation Total
Saudi Arabia 72% 27% 99%
Qatar 70% 29% 99%
Yemen 67% 31% 98%
Egypt 67% 31% 98%
Afghanistan 67% 28% 95%
Pakistan 65% 28% 93%
Jordan 64% 35% 99%
Bangladesh 61% 33% 94%
United Arab
Emirates 57% 40% 97%
Palestinian
Territories 52% 44% 96%
Iraq 49% 45% 94%
Libya 49% 44% 93%
Kuwait 46% 52% 98%
Morocco 41% 55% 96%
Algeria 37% 52% 89%
Syria 29% 57% 86%
Tunisia 24% 67% 91%
Iran 14% 70% 84%
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
BANGLADESH
LEBANON
TURKEY
TUNISIA
MALAYSIA
PAKISTAN
DJIBOUTI
AFGHANISTAN
IRAQ
EGYPT
JORDAN
PALESTINIAN
TERRITORIES
PALESTINIAN
TERRITORIES
Table 3: Percent of Muslims who Favor the
Death Penalty for People Who Leave Islam
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
BANGLADESH
LEBANON
TURKEY
TUNISIA
PAKISTAN
MOROCCO
PALESTINIAN
TERRITORIES
AFGHANISTAN
IRAQ
EGYPT
JORDAN
Table 4: Percent of Muslims
who responded that it is sometimes/often justified for
family members to end a woman’s life who engages in pre-
marital sex or adultery in order to protect the family’s honor
* In Afghanistan and Iraq, the question was modified to:“Some people
think that if a woman brings dishonor to her family it is justified for
family members to end her life in order to protect the family’s honor…”

9. accusations of illicit sexual affairs, and 191 after marriages
unapproved by their families. Six Christian and seven Hindu
women were included.26
Monotheism Tamed?
Islam is not universally violent, of course. The same polls, for
example, show that few if any British and German Muslims
and only five percent of French Muslims agree that honor
killing is morally acceptable. But the data from Islamic nations
tend first, to support the proposition that Abrahamic monothe-
ism is uniquely adapted to inspire violence, and second, to
demonstrate that the belief in one god continues to fulfill this
exceptionally vicious legacy. It is no accident, for example, that
nearly all Muslims in these countries are particularists (see
Table 5), believing that “Islam is the one true faith leading to
eternal life.”27
On the other hand, Westerners ought not to conclude
from these polls that the perils of monotheism are confined to
the geographic regions surrounding North Africa and the Mid-
dle East. Even in the distant U. S., for example, children con-
tinue to die needlessly because their Christian parents reject
science-based medicine in favor of “prayer healing.” Enduring
tragedies of this ilk would seem unimaginable in the absence of
religious devotion to an allegedly all-powerful, ultra-dominant
god.
56 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE volume 20 number 1 2015
1. Real Time with Bill Maher. 2014. Ben
Affleck, Sam Harris and Bill Maher De-
bate Radical Islam (HBO). 2014. http:
//bit.ly/1t2nxBC (posted October 6).
2. Stark, R. and K. Corcoran. 2014. Reli-
gious Hostility: A Global Assessment
of Hatred and Terror. Waco, TX: ISR
Books.
3. Schulson, M. 2014. Karen Armstrong
on Sam Harris and Bill Maher. http://
bit.ly/1zfj8d0 (posted November 23,
2014).
4. Armstrong, Karen. 2014. Fields of
Blood: Religion and the History of Vio-
lence. NY: Knopf.
5. Eller, Jack David. 2010. Cruel Creeds,
Virtuous Violence: Religious Violence
across Culture and History. NY:
Prometheus.
6. Harris, S. 2005. The End of Faith: Re-
ligion, Terror, and the Future of Rea-
son. NY: W.W. Norton.
7. Diamond, J. 1997. Guns, Germs, and
Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.
NY: W.W. Norton.
8. Stark, R., and K. Corcoran. 2014. Re-
ligious Hostility.
9. Freud, S. 1967. Moses and Monothe-
ism. NY: Vintage.
10. Hillman, J. 2005. A Terrible Love of
War. NY: Penguin.
11. Armstrong, Karen. 2001. Holy War:
The Crusades and Their Impact on
Today’s World. NY: Anchor Books.
12. Kirsch, J. 2004. God Against the
Gods: The History of the War Between
Monotheism and Polytheism. NY:
Viking Compass.
13. Meltzer, E. 2004. “Violence, Preju-
dice, and Religion: A Reflection on the
Ancient Near East,” in The Destructive
Power of Religion: Violence in Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam (Volume 2: Reli-
gion, Psychology, and Violence), ed. J.
Harold Ellens. Westport, CT: Praeger.
14. Cline, E.H. 2004. Jerusalem Be-
sieged: From Ancient Canaan to Mod-
ern Israel. U. of Mich. Press 2004.
15. Avalos, H. 2005. Fighting Words: The
Origins of Religious Violence.
Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
16. Schwartz, R. 2006. “Holy Terror,” in
The Just War and Jihad: Violence in
Judaism, Christianity, & Islam, ed. R.J.
Hoffman. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
17. Garcia, H. 2015. Alpha God: The Psy-
chology of Religious Violence and Op-
pression. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
18. Guitierrez, R. 1991. When Jesus
Came the Corn Mothers Went Away:
Marriage, Sexuality and Power in Mex-
ico, 1500-1846. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
19. Harris, S. The End of Faith.
20. Warraq, Ibn. 2003. Why I Am Not a
Muslim. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
21. Harris, L. 2007. The Suicide of Rea-
son: Radical Islam’s Threat to the
West. NY: Basic Books.
22. Stark, R., and K. Corcoran. 2014. Re-
ligious Hostility.
23. Stark’s sources included thereligionof-
peace.com, the Political Instability Task
Force Worldwide Atrocities Data Set, Tel
Aviv University’s annual report on world-
wide anti-Semitic incidents, the U.S.
Commission on International Religious
Freedom’s annual report for 2013, and
the U.S. State Department’s Interna-
tional Freedom Report, 2013.
24. The Gallup World Poll studies have
surveyed at least one thousand adults
in each of 160 countries (having
about 97 percent of the world’s popu-
lation) every year since 2005.
25. The World’s Muslims: Religion, Poli-
tics and Society. 2013. http://pewrsr
.ch/19aHxGF (posted April 30, 2013)
and http://pewrsr.ch/1zg1Yxh
26. State of Human Rights in Pakistan in
2012. Islamabad, Pakistan, May 4,
2013.
27. Pew Forum on Religion and Public
Life, The World’s Muslims: Religion
Politics and Society. (Washington, DC,
2013).
REFERENCES
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
BANGLADESH
LEBANON
TURKEY
TUNISIA
MALAYSIA
UNITED
STATES
MOROCCO
PALESTINIAN
TERRITORIES
INDONESIA
IRAQ
EGYPT
JORDAN
Table 5: Particularism Among Muslims
Percent of Muslims Who Agree that “Islam is the
one true faith leading to eternal life in heaven.”