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'Religious violence' is a term whose use is generally very imprecise. It is commonly encountered in the media and popular discourse to cover a large variety of phenomena. Theoretically we could stipulate that any intersection of religion and violence may be termed religious violence. In practice an approach of this sort is rarely taken.
Generally, religious violence covers all phenomena where religion, in any of its forms, is either the subject or object of individual or collective violent behaviour. Concretely, it covers both violence by religious actors (religiously motivated individuals or religious institutions) against objects of any kind, be they of the same religion or not (including secular targets). The other case is of violence by actors of any kind (religious or not, individual or collective) against objects that are explicitly religious (religious institutions, the persecution of people on the basis of their religion, religious buildings or sites).
Religious violence, like all violence, is an inherently cultural process whose meanings are context-dependent. It may be worth noting that religious violence often tends to place great emphasis on the symbolic aspect of the act. If we emphasise religious violence as primarily the domain of the violent actor then we may distinguish individual and collective forms of violence.

Contents

Ritual violence

Individual religious violence

Collective religious violence

Further reading

See also

Ritual violence

Ritual violence may be directed against victims (animal sacrifice, human sacrifice/ritual murder) or self-inflicted (religious self-flagellation, San Pedro Cutud Lenten Rites, Sun Dance)
Initiation rites may be violent, mock-violent, or merely symbolize violence or sacrifice (circumcision). The hunting hypothesis as forwarded e.g. by Walter Burkert in ''Homo Necans'' suggests that the anthropological phenomenon of religion itself grew out of rituals connected with hunting and the feelings of guilt associated with the violence involved.

Individual religious violence

Individual religious violence deals primarily with actions perpetrated by individuals acting on their own, often outside the context of wider society. Examples would include self-mutilatory behavior such as stigmata, whipping, flagellation, wearing thigh straps with nails and so forth. These kinds of acts may sometimes be characterised as deviant when they are radically different from prevailing social norms. When they are not radically different from prevailing norms, they are generally characterised not as religious violence but as a variety of ascetic religious practice.

Collective religious violence

Collective religious violence is what we more commonly picture when we think of religious violence. The term "collective" refers, in effect, to any violent activity that is perpetrated within the context of society, is legitimated by at least a subset of society or religion and always has a political dimension. Note that the term "collective" does not mean that a single individual cannot undertake collective religious violence - a single suicide bomber's attack is collective just as much as the mass suicide in Jonestown.
In most instances, serious religious violence is perpetrated by individuals belonging to social groups whose religious zeal and conviction exceed that of an average member of the wider society, although milder forms, such as verbal abuse or ostracism, can be habitually practiced by larger communities. The range of religious violence is varied, and in its more serious forms it often involves illegal means (although in some instances, the use of religious violence can be sanctioned and even undertaken by the government), such as physical abuse and vandalism, and in more extreme cases, torture or murder. Religious terrorism is one form of religious violence; the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center are thus an extreme example of religious violence. In 1986, science fiction author Tom Ligon wrote ("The Devil and the Deep Black Void") about a Muslim terrorist attempting to crash a spaceship into the earth. Human sacrifice and perhaps animal sacrifice are also forms of collective religious violence.
It's worth noting that even though in many instances religion is used to justify violent behavior, the immediate motivations of the individuals involved may not be religious as such and the overall goals of such behavior may be cultural, personal or even economical. An example of this is the organized violence directed against black people during the American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968) - the Ku Klux Klan made a strong point of being a Christian organization and often used this to justify its active stance against desegregation and racial integration.
Some contrast religious violence with sectarian violence, conflict between different sects of a single religion. However, the difference between a sect and an independent religion is usually not well defined.

Further reading

Terror in the Name of God by Jessica Stern
Holy War, Just War by Lloyd Steffen
Religious Fundamentalism and Political Extremism by Ami Pedahzur

See also

★ ''Violence and the Sacred''

★ ''Homo necans''

★ ''Mormonism and violence''