The myth of religious violence is the pervasive secularist idea that there is something called “religion,” endemic to all human cultures and eras, that has a tendency to promote violence because it is essentially prone to absolutism, divisiveness, and irrationality. Religion must therefore be separated from “secular” phenomena like politics for the sake of peace. This book argues that the myth of religious violence is a piece of Western folklore that underwrites Western violence. The book shows that religion is not a universal and transhistorical phenomenon. Religious-secular and religion-poli ... More

The myth of religious violence is the pervasive secularist idea that there is something called “religion,” endemic to all human cultures and eras, that has a tendency to promote violence because it is essentially prone to absolutism, divisiveness, and irrationality. Religion must therefore be separated from “secular” phenomena like politics for the sake of peace. This book argues that the myth of religious violence is a piece of Western folklore that underwrites Western violence. The book shows that religion is not a universal and transhistorical phenomenon. Religious-secular and religion-politics distinctions are modern Western inventions. The book shows that what counts as religious or secular in any context corresponds to how power is arranged. The myth of religious violence helps to construct a religious Other, prone to fanaticism, to contrast with the rational, peace-making, secular subject. In domestic politics, the myth underwrites the triumph of the state over the church in the early modern period and the nation-state’s subsequent monopoly on its citizens’ willingness to sacrifice and kill. In foreign policy, the myth of religious violence reinforces the superiority of Western social orders to nonsecular—especially Muslim—social orders. Their violence is seen as fanatical; our violence is seen as rational and peace making. In academic, government, and journalistic sources, the book shows how the myth of religious violence is used to justify U.S. diplomatic and military actions, including the Iraq War. Peace depends on recognition that so-called secular ideologies and institutions can be just as prone to absolutism, divisiveness, and irrationality.