For hundreds of years religious differences have fueled violent confl ict, and our age is adding multiple chapters to this grim history. The Center conference “Toward an Understanding of Religion and International Confl ict,” held at the Pier House Resort in Key West, Florida, December 15-17, brought together journalists and scholars to examine religious developments, especially within Islam and Christianity, that are likely to aggravate political tensions in various parts of the world.

Gilles Kepel of the Institute for Political Studies (Paris), author of the highly acclaimed Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, outlined the historical and sociological progression of the Islamist movements, underscoring the dangers posed by the rise of “political Islam.” The pivotal decade of the 1970s saw three demographic groups connect and mobilize, he said. The fi rst was a large cohort of “young urban poor” who came of age in the 1970s and who had unprecedented access to education. They grew up literate and unrestrained by the colonialism to which their parents were accustomed. With literacy came power, a power that had previously resided solely with the clerics. The second group Kepel identifi ed was the “pious middle class,” who grew frustrated with the economic and political inequalities arising from markets controlled by tribal and familial connections. The third and fi nal component of the jihadist/Islamist confl agration was the intelligentsia. Such leaders as Sayyid Qutb and Sayyid Maududi crafted social philosophies that provided the fi rst two divergent groups with a shared, unifi ed, Islamic vision. Kepel predicted that the spasmodic terrorist activity the world has recently witnessed, which was epitomized by the September 11 attacks, will be the death knell of this perverse Islamist vision and lead to the breakdown of cohesion among these three groups.

Respondent Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker concurred with Kepel’s analysis, particularly with his observation that Arab and Muslim states make expedient use of the concept of jihad to redirect young males’ anger away from governmental failures. He expressed greater skepticism, however, about “whether or not it is true that we are experiencing the slow fl ame-out of an artifi cial, inorganic idea within the Muslim world.” There could be something inherent in Islam at large or within a smaller tributary that nurtures violence, Goldberg said. Given that Muslims put such weight on purity in their faith and practice, and that jihad (though touted of late as a spiritual struggle) is depicted in the Koran with violence, it is plausible to think that violent expressions of Islam are not necessarily perversions. Goldberg also noted the rise of virulent anti-Semitism in Muslim states and questioned whether this phenomenon is another politically expedient perversion of Islam or a theological inevitability.

Focusing on changes in the other principal global religion, Philip Jenkins of Pennsylvania State University, author of The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, warned that the spread of Christianity in Africa, Latin America, and Asia might well spark sectarian violence in those regions. Demographics are responsible for the rapid shift of the Christian world’s center of gravity from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere, where more charismatic, conservative forms of Christianity, such as Pentecostal Protestantism, are in ascendance. These groups now play a signifi cant role in the domestic politics of many Third World countries, he said, and, particularly in their quest for new converts, increase the potential for religious polarization and confrontation in areas of Africa and Asia that have large Muslim populations. “Very often, the most intense confl icts are happening in countries that are going to be the most populous in the new century,” Jenkins said, many of which have oil reserves as well. He named Nigeria, Congo, Indonesia, and the Philippines as examples of countries in which violence could have regional and global repercussions. In our “polyfaith world,” he added, friction between Christianity and Hinduism is a growing danger in India.

Respondent David Brooks of The Weekly Standard suggested that the incredible boom in Christianity, and especially the ecstatic mode of worship, attests to the end of an era of secularism. “Religions that tried to adapt to secularism and modernity are withering,” he noted, “while those that rejected the whole method are succeeding.” American elites, who are especially oblivious to this phenomenon, need to move past their “ever more obsolete” secular mode of public discourse. They must recognize and openly discuss both the “contradictions inherent in different faiths” and the equally problematic contradiction “between multicultural tolerance and the ideology of individual choice.” It is impossible, Brooks declared,
to cherish freedom of expression and, simultaneously, to “think that all cultures are wonderful.” In analyzing foreign affairs, moreover, our government must fi nd some new way of thinking about religious actors and religious confl icts that “takes intelligently into account,” not only economic power and material things, but also people’s genuine spiritual yearning and the fact that they have beliefs and act on those beliefs.

James Turner Johnson of Rutgers University compared just war theory in the West and Islamic jihad, both both jihad of which center on the justifi ed use of force by a public authority in a public enterprise. In tracing the evolution of just war theory, Johnson called it a moral and cultural rather than religious tradition that was meant to guide temporal leaders in temporal matters. Medieval thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas sought primarily to identify the elements necessary for a just war—sovereign authority, just cause, and right intention—and addressed only secondarily such considerations as proportionality, last resort, and reasonable hope of success. Johnson chided many modern interpreters, especially the American Catholic bishops, for reducing the whole just war idea to these subordinate categories and for falsely claiming that it includes a “presumption against war.”

Johnson then scrutinized the thoroughly religious concept of jihad in the sense of warfare, which was formulated by Muslim jurists in the eighth to tenth centuries. While these jurists focused on a rule-governed collective jihad authorized by a legitimate ruler, they also allowed for an emergency defensive jihad of individuals against direct attack. It is this latter form that has been so distorted over the last century, Johnson said. Originally conceived as an exceptional response to exceptional circumstances, it is now used to condone all sorts of Muslim violence against non-Muslim “aggressors.”

Responding to Turner’s remarks, Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair suggested that the just war tradition might be an “anachronism” in the era of “rapid response of the intercontinental ballistic missile.” The Cuban missile crisis, for instance, did not allow much time for debate. “Most commonly we fi nd ourselves arguing about whether to intervene in a confl ict that has already started” and where most of the justifi cations “are not available to us until afterwards,” as in the last Gulf War. The “nuclear dimension” also calls the theory into question, he said, because a strong case can be made that the use of such weapons would never be justifi ed. Hitchens nonetheless expressed approval of the “impressive discussion that American society has been having” about the Iraq situation, which has raised questions not only about just war but also about justice. Having learned some lessons from the Vietnam debacle, the government seems to be presenting its case openly and honestly, which is “one solid, new, important criterion for a just war in the information age.” There needs to be a “‘decent respect [for] the opinions of mankind,’” Hitchens said.

Center vice president Michael Cromartie moderated the wide-ranging discussions that followed the three formal presentations. The participants were Carl Cannon of the National Journal; Patricia Cohen, Edward Rothstein, and Peter Steinfels of the New York Times; E. J. Dionne, Ruth Marcus, and Carlyle Murphy of the Washington Post; Nina Easton of The Federal Paper; Jane R. Eisner of the Philadelphia Inquirer; Franklin Foer and John Judis of The New Republic; David Frum of National Review Online; John Fund of the Wall Street Journal; Barbara Bradley Hagerty of National Public Radio; Jody Hassett of ABC News; freelance writer Wendy Kaminer; Karen R. Long of the Cleveland Plain Dealer; Jane Mayer of The New Yorker; Jay Tolson of U.S. News & World Report; David Van Biema of Time; and Kenneth Woodward of Newsweek.