Politics of God or Politics of Man? The Role of Religion and Deprivation in Predicting Support for Political Violence in Israel
| Author | Ami Pedahzur,Daphna Canetti-Nisim,Eran Zaidise |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00673.x |
| Published date | 01 October 2007 |
| Date | 01 October 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Politics of God or Politics of Man? The Role
of Religion and Deprivation in Predicting
Support for Political Violence in Israel
Eran Zaidise Daphna Canetti-Nisim Ami Pedahzur
University of Haifa University of Haifa The University of Texas at Austin
This study examines the associations between religious affiliation and religiosity and support for political
violence through a nationwide sample of Israeli Jews and Muslims. Based on structural equation
modeling,the findings show that by and large Muslims are more supportive of political violence than Jews
and more religious persons are less supportive of political violence. Deprivation, however,was found to
mediate these relations, showing that the more deprived – whether Muslims or Jews, religious or
non-religious persons – are more supportive of political violence. The explanatory strength of religion
and deprivation combined in this manner was found to be stronger than any of these variables on their
own. The findings cast doubt on negative stereotypes both of Islam and of religiosity as promoting
political violence. They suggest that governments which want peace at home, in Israel as elsewhere,
would do well to ensure that ethnic and religious differencesare not translated into, and compounded by,
wide socio-economic gaps.
For many years scholars have been searching for explanations of political violence.
The abundant factors examined to date range from biological to psychological,
cultural, social and political issues.Favored explanations have varied in accordance
with both research findings and social and political trends. Still, the view that
religion leads to political violence resurfaced in the 1980s, and gained promi-
nence in the 1990s and early 2000s. This claim has been tendered with respect to
several different, though related and non-exclusive, forms of political violence:
localized violence driven by religious-based intolerance (Beatty and Walter,1984;
Hayes and McAllister, 2001; Hodson et al., 1994; Johansen, 1997; Karpov, 2002;
Nunn et al., 1978; Piereson et al., 1980; Stouffer, 1955) or religious institutions
(Fox, 1998); large scale ethno-nationalist violence within or between countries
(Huntington, 1993; 1996; Marty, 1997); and terrorism (Hoffman, 1995; 1998;
Juergensmeyer, 1993; 2001a; 2001b; Pape, 2003; Rapoport, 1984; Stern, 2003).
The view that religion is a major source of political violence is underpinned by
the many historical occasions on which political violence was explicitly carried
out in the name of religion or religious values, from the Muslim conquests and
Christian Crusades in the Middle Ages; the Spanish Inquisition and Europe’s
many religious wars from the Renaissance to the seventeenth century; to the
more recent sectarian conflicts in Ireland and the Indian sub-continent and
international terrorism explicitly car ried out in the name of Islam.
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00673.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2007 VOL 55, 499–521
© 2007The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Political StudiesAssociation
Included in the list are also smaller-scale acts of political violence such as the Sarin
gas attack in a crowded Japanese subway perpetrated by the obscure Aum
Shinrikyo cult, the attacks by Christian fundamentalists in the United States on
doctors and nurses involved in abortion work,and the regular stone throwing by
religious Jews at motorists in Israel on the Sabbath (Beit-Hallahmi, 2001). As
Mark Juergensmeyer (2001a) points out,violent interpretations have been the fate
of all religions.
Yet the claim that the violence in these or other instances was motivated solely
or even mainly by religion is still very much under debate. This article attempts
to explore the relationship empirically. More specifically, it tries to determine: (a)
whether support for political violence differs across religions (in this study only
Jews and Muslims are compared);(b) whether support for political violence varies
with the degree of religiosity; and (c) whether deprivation – objective and
subjective – mediates the relationship between religion and support for political
violence.
Political violence,in this study,is taken to mean the use (or threat) of force against
individuals and institutions representing the state and its bodies.Political violence
is thus an attempt to change a political situation by using violent means against
political actors – mainly office holders (Feierabend et al., 1972; 1973, p.393). The
dependent variable measured in this study is not actual participation in acts of
political violence, but rather the attitudinal support of such. Support for political
violence is therefore taken to mean a willingness to participate in actions of
political violence in predetermined circumstances. Although correlations
between attitudes and behaviors are often far from absolute,research in the social
sciences has come to rely on these specifically where the direct measurement of
behavior is difficult or impossible (Ajzen, 2001; 2005; Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980;
Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975; Wallace et al., 2005).In the study of political violence,
attitudinal measures have previously been employed with relative success
(Canache, 1996; Hayes and McAllister, 2001; Pedahzur et al., 2000).
Religion and Political Violence
For many decades now, social science has been aware of the existence of several
relationships between religion and political activity (Norris and Inglehart, 2004).
Kraig Beyerlein and Mark Chaves (2003) extensively review the literature deriv-
ing from empirical studies carried out in the United States, and present a
multitude of empirically based studies showing that religious organizations,
leaders and congregations encourage their members to participate in political
activity. Their findings suggest that the political activities of religious congrega-
tions also include protest, and that distinctive religious traditions support protest
in varying degrees (Beyerlein and Chaves, p. 237). Earlier studies support this
argument (McVeigh and Smith, 1999; Verba et al., 1995) and show that people
500 ERAN ZAIDISE, DAPHNA CANETTI-NISIM AND AMI PEDAHZUR
© 2007The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2007, 55(3)
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