Fields of Blood

Title: Fields of Blood – Religion and the History of Violence
Author: Karen Armstrong
Publisher: The Bodley Head, 2014 (First)
ISBN: 9781847921871
Pages: 499

The attack on the World Trade Centre on Sep 11, 2001 was a watershed moment in the long history of religious violence. Even though not for the first time, the world sat up and took notice of why the worship of a god or deity demands violence from its adherents. With a start, the world noted that every religious text contained insinuations to violence. If the practitioners followed it verbatim, like a direct revelation from god, violence was bound to follow, whereas if your society is modern enough and above the level of savagery, individuals would assign only a 'symbolic value' to the teachings and quietly ignore the exhortations to kill. It is in this context that this book finds relevance before you read it. After going through it, there is confusion on why such an erudite scholar as the author condones religious violence and essentially points out human nature as the reason behind it. It claims that the 'myth of religious violence' was founded on the belief that the separation of church and state would liberate society from the inherent belligerence of religion, but every secularizing reform in Europe and other parts of the world would begin with an aggressive assault on religious institutions. The book provides a survey of the ancient civilizations of Sumer, India, China and Israel one by one in analysing the violent content in them. Karen Armstrong is one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs. She spent seven years as a Catholic nun in the 1960s and then returned to normal life. She has authored many books on religion.

Armstrong makes a review of social progress from the prehistoric times, but strangely does not consider why the religious spirit arose in men. Some of the rituals and myths devised by our prehistoric ancestors survived in the religious systems of later, literate cultures. In this way, animal sacrifice, the central rite of nearly every ancient culture, preserved prehistoric hunting ceremonies. Large scale violence originated with sustained farming. The large grain stores of Jericho became a magnet for hungry nomads and thick fortifications were made. Hence large scale violence was linked not with religion but with organized theft. This continued till agriculture ceased to be the economic basis of civilization. Exploitation of the peasants by the elite was an indelible feature of these societies. Civilization required a leisured class to cultivate it - which developed the arts and sciences that made progress possible. Pastoralists, who lived on the fringes of settled society, soon found that the easiest way to replace animals was to steal the cattle of nearby villages and rival tribes. Fighting thus became essential to the pastoralist economy. In agrarian societies, war was not just the sport of kings, but an economic and social necessity to conquer land and gain more peasants to tax. The author identifies a striking contrast between new and old societies. While modernity has institutionalized change, radical innovation was rare in pre-modern times because civilization seemed so fragile. Originality was not encouraged, but conformity was!

As part of its review of ancient civilizations and how they are infused with religious violence, this book begins with Sumer and scoops up India and China in quick succession. She categorically rules out the 'Aryan invasion theory' by stressing that 'there was no dramatic invasion'; they arrived in small groups, 'gradually infiltrating the region over a very long period' (p.41). Aryans established the kings of Kuru-Panchala by force and that 'events may well have conformed to what social historians call the conquest theory of state-establishment' (p.44). Armstrong argues that Ashoka's dilemma in not disbanding his army is the very dilemma of civilization itself. As society developed and weaponry became more deadly, the empire would become the most effective means of keeping the peace. People looked for an absolute imperial monarchy for a peaceful life. As in other states too, in ancient China, all violence in the form of sacrifice, warfare and hunting was the privilege and distinguishing characteristic of the nobility. The author claims that China proves that it is erroneous to believe that a given set of religious beliefs will lead inexorably to violence. Instead, we find people drawing on the same pool of mythology, contemplative disciplines and ideas but embarking on totally different courses of action. Armstrong's unfamiliarity with Indian sacred texts is palpable in the misguided directions she takes. Too literal interpretations of texts are considered without understanding the relevance these texts might or might not have had on the society. She happily reproduces quotes from Wendy Doniger and Romila Thapar, both of whom are notorious for their far-left ideology spilling onto their literary corpus. With such a literal acceptance that only Kshatriyas could rule in ancient India and Shudras were fit only to serve, she is helpless to explain why Shudras like Mahapadma Nanda and Chandragupta Maurya could usurp the Magadhan throne.

The book then turns its attention to West Asia. The Hebrew dilemma was that though Yahweh insisted that his people abandon the agrarian state, they had to return to it time and again because the land for herding which Yahweh had selected for them often failed to sustain them. Monotheism made Israel prone to violence because of the rabid intolerance not found in the generous pluralism of paganism. The author counters this by insisting that Israelites were not strictly monotheistic at this time. As noted earlier, the author was very particular to interpret Indian texts strictly in the literal sense, but for others she bends over backwards to read them in a favourable light. In the seventh century BCE, reformers brought a wholly new intransigence into the cult of Yahweh by incorporating exclusivity to his worship and advocating elimination of all infidels. King Josiah translated these lessons into acts of destruction and bloodshed. Jesus' attitude to violence is also examined. He forbade injury to others, but was verbally abusive. He fulminated against the rich, cruelly lambasted the scribes and Pharisees and called down god's vengeance on villagers who rejected his disciples. As Christianity took root in the Roman world, it set aside platitudes of peace and nonviolence. In the fourth century CE, zealot monks destroyed pagan temples in an act of violent orgy everywhere in the Christian world. They didn't spare synagogues either. Aurelius Augustine, bishop of Hippo, declared that violence was legitimate if it was inflicted with 'the enemy's welfare in mind'. In 528, Justinian gave all pagans three months to get baptized. In the next year, he closed the Academy in Athens that had been founded by Plato. The Dark Ages is believed to have begun with this incident.

What is embarrassingly shameful for the author is that she somewhat struggles to bail out Islamic scriptures in the ancient as well as its interpretations in modern times without even bothering to examine how their holy texts address the issue of violence for the religion's sake. She justifies the early Muslim violence. The Prophet's party in Medina had no independent source of income, so the 'obvious' alternative was plundering raids (p.164). Jews of Khaybar were slaughtered, but they deserved it because they aligned with the Prophet's enemies in Mecca! Umar's campaigns were driven 'entirely' by the precarious economy of Arabia (p.168). When she turns to the modern world, she finds that Muslim fundamentalism is more turned to physical aggression because 'Muslims had a much harsher introduction to modernity' (p.278). She then suggests that it began after World War I. She further makes an audacious comparison that the hard-line Muslim cleric Abul Ala Maududi was in agreement with Gandhi regarding the role of religion in politics (p.284). The most heartless one is that the Ottoman sultans deported and killed their Greek and Armenian [Christian] subjects 'in order to control the rising merchant class' (p.289). As is expected, the author is a vocal supporter of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and Khamenei in Iran! She accuses the former Persian ruler Shah of masterminding every assault on peaceful protests. Regarding the Iran hostage crisis in which 3000 religious students stormed the US embassy in Teheran and kept 52 diplomats hostage for 444 days, she blurts out that 'it is not clear whether Khomeini knew of their plan beforehand' (p.305). The Egyptian hard-line organisation Jamaat al-Islamiyyah segregated the sexes during lectures 'to protect women from harassment' (p.316). The radical students of the University of Minia in Egypt vandalised Christian churches 'in response to government oppression'. This disgraceful kowtowing in front of an intolerant and violent ideology decimates this book's worth as a piece of serious research.

A prominent manifestation of violence motivated by religion in the Middle Ages was the Crusades in which European Christians tried to liberate their holy places in Israel which were occupied by Muslims and who were threatening its very existence. When Roman power had collapsed in the west, the bishops had taken the place of Roman senatorial aristocracy. Pope Gregory VII wanted to free the Byzantines from Turkish aggression and to liberate Jerusalem. The author being biased to the Muslim view; she paints the crusades in a very bad light by claiming - among other things - that the crusades made anti-Semitic violence a chronic disease in Europe. Every time a crusade was summoned, Christians would first attack Jews at home. The crusaders knew nothing about local politics in the Near East and their understanding was derived from religious views and prejudices. The crusading army was a monastery on the march. Jews had been fully integrated in European society till the eleventh century. Their position grew worse with each crusade. In the end, Saladin put down the crusades through his conquest of Jerusalem.

The author then turns her attention to the advent of modernity and the gradual disintegration of the hold of religion first on state power and then in secular society. For the first time, it had to recede from most of the niches it had occupied in driving or controlling every need of the society and was relegated only to the sacred sphere. By 1492, papal power had plummeted and balance of power passed to the kings. The book notes that Renaissance humanists like Thomas More supported the violent subjugation of natives in the New World, believing them to be savages. What the author hints at is that secularism is also not free from violence inherent in its ideals. With the development of tools of capitalism such as joint stock companies, the church had no control over them. Successful merchants, artisans and manufacturers became powerful enough to influence politics. Luther portrayed religion as a discrete activity, separate from the world as a whole, which it had previously permeated. Where pre-modern faith had emphasized the sacredness of community, for Luther, religion was a wholly personal and private matter. The word 'secularization' originally meant the transfer of goods from the possession of the church into that of the world in the sense that legislative and judicial powers that had been in the church's remit were gradually transferred to the new sovereign state. The Thirty Years' War (1618-48) is known to be the most influential occurrence that ushered in secularism in Europe, but the author claims that the War was not in fact between the Protestants and Catholics. People of both faiths were arrayed in both the factions that fought against each other. This may be factually correct, but we can only conclude that Armstrong is missing the wood for the trees. In America, religion still exerted its pernicious effect on the white settlers. The native Americans were suppressed by ruthless colonists, justifying their violence on the bellicosity of Hebrew scriptures.

The basic cause of writing this book is the author's desire to proclaim that violence in human societies is not caused by religion alone, but is a deeper malice of human nature. With this in mind, she examines modern societies and concludes that secular societies are not less violent. The French Revolution brought in a secular republic backed by systemic violence. After a few fits and starts, it eventually held on as a model for the world. The combination of industrial technology and empire was creating a global form of systemic violence, driven not by religion but by the wholly secular values of the market. The American civil war was a conflict charged with religious conviction, both sides believing that God was on their side and that they knew exactly what he was doing. When lost, the Southerners saw their defeat as divine retribution. The book wishes to reiterate that nationalism is the new faith of the secular age. The author handles the issue of Islamic terrorism in a style soothing to its perpetrators by beginning with LTTE and claiming that they were Hindu Tamils. This book tries to lessen the fearful effect of terrorism by arguing that it is not very extraordinary and that 'some of the largest-scale acts of terrorist violence have been carried out by states rather than independent groups or individuals' (p.313). She further points out that 'terrorism is fundamentally and inherently political, even when other motives are involved' (p.313). This means Armstrong believes that the 9/11 attackers were freedom fighters, which is exactly the same as jihadi propaganda. Armstrong lists out some elements that lead to structural violence and terrorism as too rapid urbanisation, inequitable social system and physical and social dislocation. However, these are present in all states, but why does only a few go into terrorism? She terms the 1983 Hezbollah suicide attack on an American base in Beirut as a 'martyrdom operation' (p.320). People who enrolled in al-Qaeda did so to 'assuage the suffering of fellow Muslims and not to fight the US'.

The author's undisguised partisanship to Islam is nauseatingly evident in the clever omissions and commissions. It provides a graphic description of violence inflicted by the crusaders on the captured Muslims, but not vice versa. She commends the Muslim side because 'their wars had always been conducted within mutually agreed limits' (p.195). Then again, 'Muslims were always ready to learn from other cultures' (p.200). Caliph al-Hakim's destruction of the Church of Resurrection in Jerusalem is not listed as a cause of the crusades, but instead, she declares that he was insane! She exhibits a bit of haughtiness and colonial pride in her wishful thinking on Indian society and practically concludes that the Hindu religion did not exist before the British began to categorize a group of people as such. Her assertion that in the Mughal empire, the administration rarely had a 'religious colouration' (p.261) must have come about only because of her ignorance. Regarding the freedom struggle, her claim that 'Hindus campaigned for an India free of both the British and Islam' (p.263) is outrageous because of its naked falsehood.

This totally biased work is a waste of time for most readers and hence not recommended.

Rating: 1 Star