 Usually, as Eric pointed out, I am a retired Navy chaplain and I would normally wander around and speak, but we're videotaping and for our leadership and so she's asked that we obviously stick close to the microphone so that the videotape will actually work. My goal this morning is to give us a historical background in terms of religion and security and obviously it's going to be a very broad brush because in 20 minutes I'm going to cover well over a thousand years and of course that's going to be quite a challenge. So it will be in fact a very broad brush as I approach that. First of all, just a number of points that I would like to make. Number one, that we are religious, that religion is with us, has been with us for all time and will continue to be so as all of us respond to that void within and fill it with a relationship with a God or with a power higher than ourselves. And we see that people of like mind and like spirit come together to worship that God universally across the human race. We also understand that man is by nature, as Eric Stoller pointed out, political. When we did this two years ago in Washington DC, I put this slide on the front and everybody laughed immediately. It was like this is a given everyone understands that we are in fact playful and that is an important part of what we do. That we are social, gregarious by nature and that we come together to govern our affairs through our political processes. Historically, people of good mind and positive outlook and best of intentions have brought together religion and politics for the purpose of bettering our social systems, our group life, our approach to living. And usually that has worked out very well, but many times it has not worked out well. And here at the War College, one of the theorists that we point out, now this is in the Mahon Room and the Mahon Reading Room, he is one of the naval theorists, but we also talked about the army theorist. Carl von Coswitz. And one of the dictums that we all learned is that war is a continuation of politics by other means. It's a very important aspect of what we do at the Navy War College. It's teaching what that means and how we actually apply that. Well the reality is when you bring religion into politics, one of the natural responses is in fact war. And here we see Victor Davis Hansen, his approach, and that as we mix the political with the religious, then unfortunately war can easily become the father of us all. And that's why we're here to talk about that intersection, if you will, of religion with politics and war. Now what I'm going to do this morning is I'll talk just briefly three historical illustrations. I will talk about how we try to solve some of those issues through the secularization process, if you will, and then the recognition that, hey, religion is still with us, it has always been there and it's a part of who we are and our whole paradigm and system. So the Crusades. Now we all understand about the Crusades. The Crusades are often referenced as Christianity and Islam into one that would wield the sword in such a way. Well two principles had to be established, I would say, that Jesus taught that their disciples either understood or misunderstood that and they argued, for instance, whether one would sit on his right or one would sit on his left. And of course the scriptures relate that there will be a future spiritual kingdom that descends upon the earth. That is, of course, fallen far in the future and is at the behest of God. In the 11th century, however with bishops and popes, it seemed like it was a perfect time to institute that heavenly realm upon the earth. And of course when Pope Urban II made that call, he met with, of course, most of Europe marched off to war. A second principle had to be established and that is how can you turn a peaceful religion into one again that wields the sword. And the point is, is that Jesus said, you know, if somebody strikes you, what are you to do? Turn the other cheek. Exactly, turn the other cheek. When Peter drew his sword, Jesus told him, put it away. So no, you don't need to be utilizing the sword in such a way. In the early church, if you were a military man who had gone off to war, you were not for six months before you could actually participate and you were excluded from the, from communion. However, you know, in fact, and governance in fact wields the power of violence if you will. That's part of what politics and governance does. And so we have actually the beginning with power going to the church, the Catholic church. You have what we call the just war tradition under Augustine. How do we come to that understanding? Reasoning, really. And of course, what happened is that Augustine and all those who followed were able to take what was called the central truth of Christianity, the law of love, of taking care of your neighbor and translate that into being responsible to return to the neighbor, one's property that had been taken away and violence in a way that we hope would be cauterized and amputated in. And so violence became the call of the day as all of Europe marched off to war. Of course, starting about 1555, the Treaty of Augsburg, Cuyus de Rageo and Cuyus de Villigio, please excuse my seventh grade Latin. This is the last time I took it. But the Treaty of Augsburg brought to an end the basis for the future wars in Europe in 30 years from 1618 to 48. In that, it was in governance as each prince was actually then in charge of the religion acts and provided the polarization and of course, which was very important, many martyrs went to their deaths during this time holding on to their faith, holding on to the belief system and refusing to give in to those who had been killed. And then of course, we have the English Civil War, 1640 to 58. And of course, the actors on the stage here were Puritans, Calvinists, he's actually saying, for the Irish failed to take any captains whatsoever and killed all men, women and children. And of course, the things that Cuomo instituted, instituted complete to freedom of religion for Puritans and for nobody else, and teaching and ethics throughout the realm. So as I say, obviously a very mixed result in terms of who he was. One of his officers was said to have said before he died that he'd been wounded in battle. He said, the only thing that I regret in execution are blinding people and Christians into these issues. And so we have the Treaty Institute's interest of state, if you will. And this is actually in which now we remove confessional politics, the state, interest of state becomes the key focus. Now, I don't want to state that this is, it all happened at once. Obviously, there was an evolution that lasted for many years and with very different results, as we all know. Some of the states of Europe, you know, we have actual state churches. Others in the United States, we have complete separation of church and state and the secular on one side and then of course the religious on the other. We have John Locke who returned from Europe where he observed the movement that was taking place in terms of the secularization, if you will, or removal of confessional politics. And where, in fact, as a result of the Treaty of West Valley, where there was the recognition now of Lutherans and Calvinists and Catholics and all of them were supposed to, because of this treaty, to work together and if they have confessional differences, we're supposed to work out their differences in a peaceful way rather than resorting to the sort. Locke came back to England in 1689 with a re-establishment of Protestantism there and he wrote this book, very important book, called The Toleration, a letter on toleration, which is very important. And in the same way that his thinking, many of his principles, especially the pursuit that we have of life, liberty, and in his words property, he also communicated this, in his letter of toleration, this principle that the church, actually three principles. The first principle was the Navy chaplains. The realm of those, this is the point that he sought to establish through this letter that we should tolerate one another. And the church, of course, this principle that is then picked up later with the establishment of religion, corporate activity, the free exercise era. And Thomas Jefferson's principle, a fur wall divide. So we come to this element of the secularization thesis. Now, if you took international affairs and political science during the 1970s, as I did, this was part and parcel of our education at that time. And we were told that out from under what Peter Berger later would call the sacred canopy. And we're now, in fact, becoming secularized. And the point was that we were not dealing with religion in that context. That everything was secular, modern, and therefore had left the passions, if you will, of religion. And as we see here, Peter Berger in his book, The Sacred Canopy, which I read in Dan Cowden's courses back a few years ago, and I was working on my PC in that book. Thank you, Dan, for being here. Possibly that, in fact, there is a, you know, begun in the modern west, that has translated through the entire world and that religion today is not important. And of course that was communicated to our political realm, diplomats, because they were taught the same thing in the leading schools of our nation. And Madelineau, as she was dealing as former Secretary of State in the Carter administration, that they were completely surprised when a guy in a beard and long robes was able to, in 1979, to completely embarrass the United States in capturing the embassy in Iran and completely reversing U.S. efforts in that area. In her book, Mighty and the Almighty, she comments extensively on her experiences there and comments that, in fact, there is nothing of as more treacherous as far as the State Department and diplomats were concerned, that they were taught not to speak about religion and not to, you know, mix it with politics just like our parents taught us when we were young, that if you're in polite company, these are things that you do not bring up, religion and politics. Of course, that's what we're dealing with in these days here. And we will speak about both of them extensively. And so this was the realm, if you will, of the facts that ignored these issues and not only ignored them, but kept them as far away as possible. However, starting in the 1990s, we have a completely different understanding. As a result of, of course, our experience in Iran with the Ayatollah Khomeini and the dawning realization, if you will, of the part of our diplomats, that, in fact, religion was a key element in our world. So Samuel Huntington, 1993, in his Foreign Affairs article, the clash of religions with a question mark, as he put it, and his later book of the similar title, said that there is actually, in our world today, a clash of multiple civilizations, that the dividing line between those civilizations is culture and that religion is a primary, very few people actually agreed with Huntington at that time. As a matter of fact, he raised a great deal of disagreements and, of course, it wasn't necessarily the internet, that literature was inundated with responses to Huntington, and you did not find many that agreed with him. But the interesting thing was that he raised the issue and that the discussion then focused in that particular area. And of course, many disagreements, that was fine because it wasn't, in fact, the point that he was raising the issue. And then, of course, this whole issue of inter-civilizational clash of culture and religion. Berger, 1999, points out something else. He says, before I go to Berger again, he was the one that said in the earlier work, the sacred canopy, that the world was going secular. There's another book, 1994, by Doug Johnson and Samson, titled, Statecraft. A very important book, if you haven't read it, I suggest that you do. But in it, he pointed out that, in fact, religion, and that it had, in fact, damaged U.S. because we had failed to actually recognize it. And he made strong recommendations in the book about establishing within the State Department a cooperative professional who would understand religion, study religion. He actually suggested utilizing to educate folks within the State Department to be utilized as resources in the realm of religion. And then, of course, 1999, Peter Berger once again says, hey, we need to pay attention to it. It's the re-sexualization of the world war, the de-sexualization of the world. I would suggest it never run away. It was always there. And as we talk about the Cold War later, we understand that many of those passions were tamped down by geopolitical realities at the time and the strong powers that existed. And, of course, 9-11 came. We understood that it had been hijacked, if you will, a peaceful religion in order to justify attacks on the United States. And since then, of course, the classes like this that we are a part of today have been a part of our world. And we understand, in fact, religion is important. There's another individual who often speaks at our conferences. There's pretty much every current conflict around the world. It's a part of it. It's not everything. It's not nothing. But it's an important part in terms of what we understand. So, of course, there are laws in force. Religion is a part. And, of course, we'll have our slides, so we don't need to go into all of those, we'll spend days and weeks just talking about each of those issues within those areas. So we see that religion has both looking at history and our experience, religion certainly has stabilizing factors in our world today. Of course, people of black mind, all of our religions have a peace focus. As Christians, as Muslims, Buddhists, whatever religion they're a part of, there is, in fact, a peace focus and peace desire on the part of well-intentioned people. And, of course, around the world religious leaders serve as conduits of peace, of social well-being, and have a positive impact in their realm, in their environment. And, of course, we understand that it provides common ground for people of diverse cultural backgrounds. If two people of religious come together, we obviously immediately have something to talk about, which is good, and we can appreciate that. Even in Afghanistan and Iraq, as religious chaplains have been in those places, they have immediately had relationships with imams in the local area. Again, based on religion, not necessarily that they believe the same thing, that they had a common spiritual ground and hope for themselves and for their world. And, of course, it is also peace stabilizing. When war is imbued with religion, it's more violent, it takes longer, it's harder to resolve and complicates all issues relating to war. So, hopefully, my goal, my desire would be to separate religion from war, if that was possible. But it probably isn't because religion is a part of human nature, and, of course, war is a part of human nature as well. And I'm going to, I actually have some recommendations in my paper that I will share with you. I won't spend a lot of time on those right now. We'll be actually discussing those throughout the conference. I'm going to turn it over to Eric Anderson at this point, as he'll share with us. The talk is about how to think about, and whether you're a person of faith, or faith means very little to you, or you see faith as a problem. Let's put that aside. This is really kind of a social science talk. What this is really designed to do is to help analysts, to help people in uniform, to help academics, to discern what are the religious dynamics, I'll call them factors. What are the dynamics, factors, variables that are religious in any given conflict? Now, in a presentation next hour by Tim Deming, he's going to talk quite a bit about the return of religious factors since the Cold War. Let me just say very briefly what the survey data tells us surveys by, for instance, Gallup, by the Pew Forum, et cetera. By the way, what major capital city is this, that instead of having monuments to say Washington and Lincoln, on the equivalent of its national mall as the National Documentical Center and the National Mosque? This is an illusion. That's right. First, over the past 20 years, individual religiosity measured in a variety of ways. In other words, individuals seeing that faith is important to their life and that they want to practice it has arisen in many places around the globe. Not so much among the historic populations in western Europe and the United States and Japan, just about everywhere else. Perhaps more importantly for our conversation, though, the entry of religion into the public sphere, in other words, as a mobilizing factor, as the basis or part of collective groups and collective action of political parties has also been on the rise. Perhaps even more importantly, though, is in an era of globalization where we talk a lot about governments or states being perhaps weaker today or being a competition alongside many other organizations. There's a lot of other centers of power and influence, many of which are religious, that have a role to play. They have a role to play in places where the government is fractured or failed. Think about the role of someone like Grand Ayatollah Ali Sastani in the past decade in Iraq versus whatever efficacy that the government bagged at has. Think about places that have much weaker forms of government or the role of clerics. Think about how large the budget of an organization like World Vision is compared to the budget of a small place like the Central African Republic of Iraq. And those religious actors and ideas and identities are often transnational. And whether that's being a member of the global Roman Catholic Church and this unique tie over the past year that we've seen that many Catholics have felt to the New Pope or if it's money networks that are based along confessional lines that are supporting terrorism abroad somewhere, there's many, many ways that the notion of being a part of a UMA or a part of a citizenship that's faith-based transcends borders. It's a different notion of citizenship. And of course something that faith brings into the capitalist is something that Dane mentioned on a slide about peace and that is that religion can help individuals transcend what we might consider to be their natural self-interest. It's Mother Teresa washing lepers with her bare hands. It's also the motivation for a suicide bomber. I mean, for us in the West, a suicide bomber usually doesn't comport with our notion of material self-interestedness, which is often the basis for how we think about human relations. But certainly there are other factors in other cultures that can drive this. What I'd really like to leave you with in short is that it is a simple framework for thinking about is there really religion in this conflict and what is it? And the conceptual framework is quite simple. Our religious variables can directly or indirectly, usually indirectly impact or induce or exacerbate conflict. And it's worth asking yourself the question when you think about Northern Ireland or Lebanon or Sudan or Iraq or Israel in its environments. It's worth asking the question, so what is religious in this conflict? And what's not? As Dane said, religion isn't everything, but it's not nothing. It's something. So first, religion can have a fact that can be a driving influence directly if someone says, well, God told me to do it. By the way, when you think about most conflicts today, they're very rare. Very few people are saying, I had a divine revelation. Now Joseph Coney, and you're right there, he actually says this. He says that the spirits load through me. That's his language. And that they tell me what to do. But it's pretty rare for people to say that scripture tells me today, or I heard a voice that tells me today to go out and perpetrate political violence. A second way that religion can directly influence violence is when religious actors, based on their authority in the pulpit, so to speak, use that authority to justify violence. And certainly that's one of the ways that religion was a part of the Bosnian wars, is if you have, say, for instance, a Serbian priest saying, because of my authority as a priest, I am telling you my parishioners that such and such is justified. So the power of the pulpit. A third way is when someone is what we might call a religious entrepreneur. And so they don't have the formal standing. Osama bin Laden didn't have a formal standing as a trained Ayatollah or as a trained Imam. And he didn't say, I heard the voice of God. What he said more or less was, as a private citizen, I see that my religion, religious establishment, the country I come from, Saudi Arabia, it is corrupted by Western influence in my group. But since I am calling for a reformation, we're going to tie back the historic Islam, we're going to promote jihad, we're going to push back the infidels, we're going to fight the near and mean authority. And so his legitimacy comes from being a member of the confessional community and his understanding of faith, not his position and not a direct revelation. Again, not all have come. The fourth one here, and I think of it in terms of the India context, is when religion sacredizes or makes sacred a place. And of course, there's only one place that's not negotiable or a thing, maybe a scripture, a copy of the Quran, for instance. And so there's a perceived obligation, I have to protect this or I have to avenge this. Certainly that is one of the motivations that Dain talked about a thousand years ago with Crusades, one of multiple motivations. In the context of India, what we've had happening in the past 20 years is often Hindu nationalists say, you know, that piece of terra firma, there's only one of it, and there used to be a Hindu temple there, we're going to burn down the mosque. That's a violation of our faith. We're going to burn down that mosque and we're going to reestablish a temple on that spot. And that's really a non-negotiable, because it's only one spot, it's only one place, and so often sacred spaces become a locus of conflict. People often will go outside of the church, this happened in the Kingdom, or four years ago in the presidential elections, it wasn't that they were attacking the church, it's that that's where they knew that people wanted to kill them, right? It becomes a focal point, but once you desecrate a house of worship, all of a sudden it raises to ante, specifically. Each of these are a means of saying, oh, is that thinking about such and such conflict that seems to be erupting in the country that I follow? Is religion playing this role? Now, religious factors can also take a less direct role. They can be kind of swallowed up into a larger collective or confessional narrative. Let me give you a couple of examples of this. The first one you see here is that religion is a part of differentiating socio-cultural groups. So think for a second, Northern Ireland, was any Catholic killing any Protestant over how many books are in the Bible? Or the role of the Pope? Or how to do theology? Of course the answer is no, right? It was not a religious war in any of those senses. But the way that the communities were structured, one of these historic differences was based on faith and community, even among people who don't go to church. By the way, if you're skeptical that I'm right on this one when it comes to Northern Ireland, because we've heard all through our life that it was Protestants versus Catholics, ask yourself this question. Is Shen Feng and the IRA Catholic? And what you'll find is this is a very critical by the Pope and the institutional Catholic church of the years. They were really a kind of traditional, secular, left-of-center type of nationalistic movement. And they don't get much credit for that. Think about Lebanon. Were people killing over religion during that terrible 20 years of civil war? Were marinates killing Sunnis over faith? No, it's not about politics. It was about access to hows, about economics. However, what is the breakdown of communities? The way that they, in a pluralistic society, how they competed in the past, they competed in part by violence, and they competed based on confessional communities. I would call that really indirect role for religion. You see here the NLF and the ILF in the Philippines. Now many of you know that in the 1950s the Moral National Liberation Front with its kind of call Ben Samora for an ethnic identity in an autonomous region in the Philippines. And you see there's symbols there in the upper left. This looks like the anti-colonial type of symbols that you saw during the Cold War. Look at the colors. Red is prominent. There's the machete. The text is in English. Hey Hassan, welcome. Welcome. The... And you have the small Islamic symbol there, but this was really, in a sense, this was not a religious movement in the 50s and 60s and 70s. By the late 70s, though as many of you know, that a splinter group that becomes quite powerful and was quite violent in the 1980s emerges called the Moral Islamic Liberation Front. And here's the shift, and you can just see it very simply in their new constituted graphic below. This is their symbol. Instead of the revolutionary red, the color of Islam, green. Instead of English text, the Arabic text. The prominence of right at the very center of the image of the Cross of the Star. And this was part of a larger appropriation of Islamic motifs and symbols and language and a call to unity that was based on faith, shared faith, fair Islamic identity instead of ethnic identity alone. And so it's often when religious symbols are manipulated or used by elites, that's often how religion becomes part of an already existing period of tension. Well, the same dynamics are true when it comes to peace. Religious factors, religious actors can be a driving force, can be a part of efforts towards peace both directly and indirectly. One is when someone has a sense of a divine sense of their scripture, or they've heard the voice of God to tell them directly, I'm calling on you to be a peacemaker. Now, we don't have a lot of people who seem to say, well, I heard the voice of God telling me to do that, but we do have quite a few people who say my understanding of our spiritual tradition in a related form is when an individual or a group has a sense of calling or vocation or my understanding of my role within our religious community, my vocation or work called to serve as peacemakers. We've seen this in the Mennonites over the past 40 years. We see this among some Quakers. Certainly the kind of driving force in South Africa on the Desmond Tutu side of the aisle was an understanding of his faith and of Christianity as an opportunity to engage on behalf of peace. Now, South Africa was not a war. What you'll find is lots and lots of the peace and reconciliation literature that pretends to be about war talks about South Africa and the TRC. There was no war, but it's worth asking the counterfactual why is that the one country among its neighbors that didn't follow the Civil War? And certainly among all of the factors the role of Christian communities in particular in working towards reconciliation is a part of the story. Now, something that religion brings that very little other ideologies or partisan movements can bring is this notion of redefining the conflict from us versus them to, you know, we're all children of God. Religion can reframe those types of relationships and we've seen those things happen in places like Rwanda. And religion has something that very few other things can offer and that is that people of faith believe and I believe that in some instances faith can help transcend the situation. It can transcend it through acts of service. It can transcend it through acts of reconciliation. It can transcend it through acts of forgiveness. Usually at the individual level but in some rare cases at the political level. Let me mention one great story. By the way, if you don't mind me saying I love religious peacemakers, there isn't a ton of evidence that they've really stopped a lot of wars but there is a powerful case and that is this Civil War most of the week. It must have been known that when Portugal pulled out in the early 70s that essentially all of its former colonies were on the Civil War. So East Timor was annexed by Indonesia, Mozambique and Gola at the center that kind of descended into the Civil War. And in the Mozambique case that war lasts for more than 15 years. How did they get to the peacetalks? I mean the story is quite interesting that a Catholic lay organization based around is the one who wrote the peacetalks. And how did they do so? Well, through their charitable work that they developed relationships with both sides and that they were seen as a trusted agent for communicates between Fulham and Renado. They then brought the parties to meet in Rome the men of the soccer game. The soccer game was the venue for pulling aside privately off the radar and overtime community Sena Gidio and these parties brought in the Italian government the United States, the United Nations to help bolster the process. But this is a case where it was clearly religious peacemakers that made the critical, the unequivocal difference in whether or not there was going to be a peace at that time based on the conditions on the ground. That's a very, very powerful case. By the way, in the Philippines case that we looked at just a little bit earlier it was just within the past year that it looks like finally an autonomous region and an agreement has been reached. That's another case where religious actors have played a role where the Philippine government including by bringing in Catholic peacemakers to train its military about how to do peacemaking and reconciliation initiatives at the village level that's been one of the vectors there as well. I can tell you other stories but I think we'll move on to that Q&A in just a moment. I would say this when a conflict starts in many parts of the developing world I bet you would find that there are religious groups already there meeting the needs of the most vulnerable and Catholic Marshall tomorrow will talk about this. And when whatever the flavor of the month fad of intervention is, it goes away. Whether it's oh remember sedan or if it's hey let's put some extra money here or there. When the government agencies start to go away it'll be religious actors running the orphanages still providing food to the poor the top seven hospitals in Africa every year they're all run by faith-based organizations that's a part of this larger when we talk about the cycle of conflict from the pre-stage through a war to the post-conflict phase it is often faith-based groups that are providing need trying to build long-term relationships between communities and things. That's an important role. It may not stop the bombing it may not stop the bullets but it may hit some of those longer factors between communities on the ground. Well, with that I'm going to stop talking and invite Dane to come up and we'll take some Q&A at this time. What we're going to do is our intent is to go until 10 with a Q&A conversation here and then we'll break for 20 minutes 10 to 10 to 20 and we'll be a little bit ahead of schedule so that the next panel judges three speakers can get that extra 10 minutes. So what I'd ask is we're going to sit right here because if you would raise your hand we'll call one of you and Dane's going to moderate this and then identify yourself like I asked earlier tell us who you are and where you're from and I would ask that you keep it to a brief comment or question so we can have more people participate rather than a lengthy bottle up. Fair enough. And I think we'll start with Chip Haas and we'll turn it over to Dane. Hi, I'm Chip Haas from the Alliance for Peace Building and this is a self-interested question we'll have to write a chapter on identity conflict and peace building. You both in different ways alluded to the fact that faith can be a bridge building and Eric you've said that there weren't many examples you could turn to other than the said GDO in the Philippines I guess the question I have and I hope it structures what we do the next couple of days is how do people of faith get to that point? You know, what's the transformation if it doesn't come Eric or revelation from your data? How do people make that decision to say I'm going to work for the good of the whole rather than even the good of my community? Well, I would say this you know, the subtext of my talk is that much of what goes on in the issues of more peace is religious. And so religious people have the power of prayer, the power of giving the power of their own involvement in these things that being said there's that part of what I'm trying to say is we can be smart about identifying the religious elements and let's not pretend that all that other stuff is caused by Islam or caused by Christianity and so I think that that's an important part to answering your question in other words, religion isn't everything in these conflicts and I don't think there's a single way to say that we're going to get every religious person out there to necessarily work in the trenches for peace and that's because they may see this conflict in quite different ways than we do. Think about the conflict that's gone on in Central Asia and Afghanistan and its environment. You know, people of the same general religion can see the things that have gone on in Afghanistan in a variety of different ways and one is to say well this is a historic Arab Islam that's been invaded by people from the west and so we have a duty to at least liberate our country because of who we are and that a person could live in that code of Islam and want peace and give charity to build an orphanage and these kinds of things that we think of as peacemaking and yet feel like their national defense calls on them to push the western invaders out. So what I'm suggesting is that it's nuanced in any of these contexts. What I would say though is that what would help according to Scott Appley in his book The End of the Wants and the Sacred I think he's right is that it would be nice if religious leaders in their communities took a stronger stand on the front end of conflict but I don't necessarily mean as some sort of pacifist saying all comfort is bad but saying what can we as citizens in our country do to try to decrease the kinds of things that lead to war how can we be agents of peace and I was going to agree exactly with what Eric said my thoughts went to such people as Gandhi or Tutu and people take a risk and they have to actually go against the grain I think religion obviously very passionate at times especially when we were dealing with international struggle for it's very easily easy to fall into the narrative if you will that you know these people are evil this religion is evil whatever and as Christians or people of religion speaking from my own context as a Christian in the western world we have to resist that narrative and resist that tendency if you will and go against the grain sometimes it takes a risk to actually speak up and I think it also takes some education too many of our folks don't have an educated understanding of what's going on in the western world one of our roles here at the Navy Warfog is in fact to educate our officers about different religions and what their perspective is on war and peace and I see 30 or 35 military students every quarter and many of them come to the table with very very extreme misconceptions about the different religions of the world to actually correct those and I think that's true in our culture as well that there is a great lack of understanding of what people believe and so there needs to be an effort on the part of religious leaders not to fall into the political narrative and the passion narratives and actually take a stand and oppose the extreme taken on forest environments and to suggest peace building into the book it takes a risk in the long run our next question Connor Thank you very much for rendering this for me for countries my name is Manuel Sontal I go to the University of San Diego for master's degree in industrial studies and in our school there is a course taught by Professor William Tenney a religion in the western dimension of peace I truly understand the problems within our life and I mean there has been under this matter in the policy world so my question is when you mention that in a lot of conflicts in the world religion has been politicized the leaders tell that it's truly a religious war but by that I mean that the conflict is not really purely religious subjects it might be political, economic, social and cultural but of course coming from Pakistan this thing came to my mind how do you separate the Taliban conflict I mean and also the al-Qaida the conception of Islamic and Thai some people say that it might be powerful but when I see those poor people polyps they really fight for religion it seems to me that they don't fight for power political power they think that it's their purpose in life to fight for the law to fight for Islam to fight for all these things how do you separate? because that thing shows that religion is inherently bad because it is religion or is it a matter of like is Islam different from us or I mean how do you deal with this situation because the kind of Islam that we believe in is not the one that is propagated by the polyps thank you very much I think that you've asked that difficult question and often I ask an audience do you know how Mullah Omar who was on my first slide how did it start and usually none of those and it's an interesting story to think about the leader of a little group of Talib students in Kandahar in person with no influence it's ticked off by the corruption in his own country all these checkpoints in Afghanistan thanks all these checkpoints in Afghanistan and corruption in that early nineteen days and so he takes a few of his students and they go down the street to the local checkpoint and they say we've had enough of this and they hang that guy from the turret of an old tank hey that worked but they just proceeded down the road and one of the religious symbols that he used for legitimacy and this is a guy who never claimed to be a leader right in those early years was the club of Muhammad that resides there at the local mosque in Kandahar and it's been kept for centuries again not a part of briefings that the U.S. military got when they got things like that but a very powerful, powerful symbol of righteousness and legitimacy there and so I hesitate to say when that camera is rolling that I have any sympathy for Mullah Omar but I think that when we evaluate the kinds of things that drive people to make these first steps that is interesting to know about the context and so what you just mentioned about the sincerity of some of these groups I agree if we simply say this is the way U.S. foreign policy has gone oh no it's really not about religion if we can just talk about their material interests we can negotiate something I mean that's not the way this works it isn't only land or money these larger questions at hand and so to have peace in a context like this there's only two ways one is you just absolutely have to crush it or the second is that there has to be a way to bring into the conversation all of these value questions that are so difficult and over the past since the beginning so-called of these peace jurgers and things in 2011 I've been very skeptical about war because neither of those have really been a part of it it's all been power sharing and things like that it hasn't dealt with the values questions and the Taliban hasn't felt like they were pushing against the wall and had a need to deal with this so I would say there's these two things unless they feel real pressure that they have to negotiate then the conversation has to include their real concerns that concerns are influenced by religion and I would just comment I've had the opportunity to speak with political scientists in our culture the professor in the next office over from mine is working on his PhD right now he's working on al-Qaeda in Iraq and there is a tendency on the part of political scientists and social scientists to ignore what you raised and that is that in fact people do have religious beliefs and that they are truly and sincerely in doing the things that they're doing they tend to see it more as a cynical approach that these religious leaders Mullah Omar or whomever are doing this only for their own political purposes and are manipulating the rank and file in order to accomplish their ends and I made the comment to to this gentleman what happens if that gentleman is a true believer that he is actually fighting this war because of his beliefs and that is why he's doing the things that he's doing and he doesn't have political scientists doesn't have the real ability to take that into account that's the realm of the religious of chaplains and moms and so on and so I think that in terms of our analysis we have to understand I appreciated Eric's article that he had always read in that context looking at it from the three levels of analysis let me just say one of the ways that the US has handled this in the first 150 years of our history starting in the 1620s we struggled with this and the transition was from church and state to religion and politics and so for the past 200 years religion has definitely been a part of our society and politics but it has not been a formal part of our government apparatus because you asked specifically about this issue why don't we throw a ball over to Hassan Abbas as a Pakistan watcher do you have a different answer to this question do you want to disagree with Tim and I what are some of your thoughts I intend to agree to this there's no doubt for example just to give a brief example of federally administered tribulations we know that it is a Pashtun as well as it is the tribalism which is at play as well but if we look at some of the discourse of the tribals in Wazir Islam the Pakistani Taliban Tariqa Taliban Pakistan some of the leaders have never been to some of the major seminaries in the area but the secondary leadership the ordinary people who are there most certainly have been influenced by their view of religion whether I would call it a distorted version of Islam that's another issue but for those who are having others a distorted different stream of religious view is most certainly having an impact so I tend to agree with this larger point that you are making that at one stage we have to deal with this in terms of religious language, terminology a religion to religion issue and that will also become very relevant when it comes to de-radicalization can you talk to a militant who is so inspired by his version or his extremist view to a secular angle I don't think so it will have to have a religion component in that discourse and I also did a development project talking about training and narratives and vocalization of religion and other culture I just have an interesting point to share I actually attended DOS in the IA training in Washington DC before going to Afghanistan and we had half the trainings and other specialized trainings and I live and work in the community and one that the local community in Afghanistan and I don't actually or the country but was actually according to the community the fact is that there was many many races and the young girls were coming to a different community and when a blind girl who was 13 came to know Omar and then they started raising problems in the community the person that you hired was in the government it was about the rape and the cruelty in Omar and that is what I do behind it because of that duty to protect like you mentioned before and the largest militia and the largest religious kind of art and that is because they already protect their own religion from Omar but it's just interesting to me the narratives we see versus the narratives of the kind of art and what that means is and who is for and whether it's protected or for interruption thank you I bet when you tell that story people are very surprised that Ta'al was protecting rape girls yes but that is what the local people think I know it's magic Ashi I'm a sociologist I do psychology also in Boston just a couple of points is that the more I study about psychology and psychology and religion I wonder about the connection between trauma and religion because if you look at the beginnings of open-store religions that happen to certain people like the Israelis in Asia even the Jesus with the crossing the story the Muslims in the beginning of Islam and so I wonder about how trauma contributes to the formation of religion and how this trauma plays down the road on the long term because if you want to establish peace we have to heal trauma and many of these are forgotten trauma but they are existing in these communities that was said you mentioned used by the lab when he was siding what he was doing trauma and history so the connection between trauma and are these terrorist or whatever groups or jihadi or so many groups and various religions are they trying to heal some kind of trauma by unhealthy ways by engaging in these activities to restore some kind of national self esteem or respect or whatever it is that they are trying to do maybe they are doing the wrong things but also maybe they are trying to establish some kind of healing process we know in psychiatry that people who are traumatized they tend to repeat the trauma they traumatize a lot of people and they think this is healing they are trying to trauma to someone else so I'm wondering about that and also about the connection between religions and revolutions because in some way I think that all religions are basically revolution political revolution if we look at how Moses helped the Israelis revolt against the power structure of Egypt how Prophet Muhammad helped the Muslims revolt against Arabia Jesus helped the powers to revolt against the Roman Empire and whatever structure so I'm kind of thinking like are we really missing something here by looking only at the whole religion of politics but also maybe religion is popular I was speaking with Clarence the other day he made the comment that he teaches history and that too many people forget history and are not aware of it and that we are doomed to repeat our histories as a result of that in many of these novels that we've talked about people are very aware of history and relives the histories in terms of responding to whatever happened a thousand years ago or 600 years ago or 500 years ago and holding on to that historical piece as a piece of their book in terms of actually dealing with if their motive is healing of the trauma it seems like it's usually revenge and to continually inflict that kind of approach I'm not a psychiatrist but in the military and as chaplains we've often had to deal with the direct results of trauma in war and of course repeating the violence is not a way as we all understand of healing trauma although maybe we're doomed to that if we don't pay attention to it Eric do you have any comment? I have much to say about the trauma point that might be a question in that conversation I spoke around this afternoon by Catherine Marshall who's done a lot of work on how religious communities respond to trauma I will say that certainly there are faith groups who emphasize traumatic moments in their history and certainly in many of the practices that happened in Iraq and Iran Shia practices such as Karbala, these marches and self-legislation of things are re-enacting in a sense a trauma narrative that is a part of their narrative although I'm skeptical that we can use that as a lens for all faiths now when it comes to revolution certainly in the case of the Iranian Revolution in 1979 it became a format not only for Shia but for Sunnis as well in the greater Middle East thinking about what the Sun team calls religionized politics and a format for trying to take over the state so there is a model for that most so-called revolutions aren't truly revolutionary from a political science standpoint in other words not trying to burn down the old regime and create a new one in its place that's what the French Revolution did that's what the Russian Revolution did that Chinese Revolution through the Cultural Revolution did and the Iranian Revolution certainly is that type of revolution but most insurgencies most rebels, etc I mean honestly whether the religious are not their thugs okay one last question before we take it right the first thing I thought was a theory back up here Kenya most of the consultants here are in Newport as I'm listening to this a couple of things across my mind when is the sort of when it inserts a new language in a discussion like we need more language one phrase that came to mind is going back to my graduate school days it's a really long time ago eros and patatas I mean a lot of what we're talking about is the war between love and death and you know it doesn't feel like this is a theme that's repeated through the conversation looking for ways of healing or being inclusive versus looking at war for ways of keeping something intact, something valued intact by killing somebody the other thing that occurs to me is that in a sense what we're talking about is not so much religion it's cosmology you have a story of the world the universe and then a counter story somebody is saying when a revolutionary religion appears the story of the world we've been listening to is wrong we have to change the story and we have to keep changing until the new story takes hold and sometimes that involves a lot of joy because everybody else is blinding to the old story and the only way to change them is by imposing this narrative on them I don't know if that's helpful but it just makes things more complicated but religion doesn't quite describe what's going on here it's more like it's a paradigm shift going on how you think the universe operates and you have to establish not just a new way of understanding the reality and because it's a desperate enterprise it feels like only force will get you your only violence that's correct I've got a question there's a hand over there I'll ask one more if you might comment on what you both talked about is impacted by what is described as a post-wrestling period could you be a slight more specific just we're dealing with these issues now where there's not a state there's a transnational organization like Al-Qaeda or something so how do we address some of these things when there is no state non-state actors and so on I actually think that's the topic of the next panel because the next panel is really about how to think about religious affairs at a strategic level particularly from the seat of U.S. national security decision making so if you don't mind I think I'd actually pass it off to I think Tim Newby is going to answer that one very quickly okay we're going to take a break now and we're going to break until 10.20 and so we have refreshments available for you and take this opportunity to again continue the conversation