It is well known that there are conflicts between different religions, even conflicts between different denominations of the same religion. And it is well known that such conflicts may escalate and lead to violence, even to war. There are examples in the past, for instance violent conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, and there are examples in our time, for instance violent conflicts between Buddhists and Muslims, or between Sunnites and Shiites.

The German poet Heinrich Heine has written a lengthy poem on the disputation between a Christian monk and a rabbi, transforming real theological discussions of the time into a satire. The heated dispute between the monk and the rabbi builds up to insulting language and barely avoids fighting. Now, why is it that sometimes religious conflicts do not remain within the limits of discussion, even stormy dispute, but lead to violence, even excessive violence in the name of religion?

The German Egyptologist Jan Assmann has concluded that the decisive source of violence, enacted in the name of religion, is its polarizing force, i. e. the tendency to divide mankind into Christians and heathens, Muslims and infidels (kafir), orthodox believers and heretics. But whence, Assmann asks, does this polarizing source come from?

Assmann reverts to Carl Schmitt’s theory of the Political, and I’ll follow his argument because I find it convincing. In 1932 Carl Schmitt concluded that the decisive political distinction is the distinction between friend and enemy. Normally, Schmitt suggests, this antagonism is not obvious, gains a polarizing momentum, even a totalizing effect, in the case of an emergency; and the utmost case of emergency (der Ernstfall) would be war.

At this point, the Political claims totality over all other domains of society--and establishes a total state. This theory was influenced, obviously, by Schmitt’s experience of the First World War, when in Germany the Supreme Army Command under Ludendorff and Hindenburg gradually changed into something like a political and economic dictatorship. 

Assmann sees an analogy between the monotheistic religions and the Political, as defined by Schmitt. In his books Moses the Egyptian, Exodusand The Mosaic Distinctionhe described the exodus of the people of Israel from Egypt as an exodus from polytheism into the covenant with the one and only God Jahwe, who has revealed himself to Moses in the thornbush on Mount Horeb.

Assmann called this event the “Mosaic distinction,” and he considers this distinction between polytheism and monotheism as a revolutionary event of world historical importance. In polytheistic societies, several gods could exist next to each other. The gods could even be translated between different societies, for instance the Egyptian Thot into the Greek Hermes and Hermes into the Roman Mercurius. 

The criterion now, after the revelation of the transcendent god--to distinguish monotheism from polytheism—is not so much the distinction between one and many gods, but between the true god and the false gods. This means that the pertinent religions are not reconcilable. The monotheistic religion draws a sharp line between the own religion, the ‘true’ religion, and other religions.

In his recent book Exodus, Assmann shifts the accent of the Mosaic distinction from the antagonism between true and false to the contrast of faithfulness to betrayal, although he still considers the former to be a decisive category that originated with Monotheism. In any case, there is a polarizing force inherent in the revelatory monotheistic religions. But when and on which conditions does this force erupt into violence?

Assmann makes it clear that in his opinion the revelation of the one and only transcendent god was a progress in spirituality and that the ethical consequences of this revelation are basically humane and morally sane. Nonetheless, there have been outbursts of violence. I agree with Assmann’s considerations, but would sharpen the point with the following interpretation.

Violence may happen as a consequence of a case of emergency (Ernstfall) in the Schmittian sense. This case of emergency is not the original revelation of the transcendent god, but an apocalyptic revelation. The term ‘apocalyptic revelation’ is a tautology—because the Greek term apokalypsis means ‘revelation.’ By using the tautology, I simply want to point out the special character of this revelation as a case of emergency.|

The Revelation of John in the New Testament serves as a telling example. This text originated towards the end of the first century in the context of the persecutions of Christians in the Roman Empire under Nero and Domitian. The connection between social, cultural and religious oppression and its apocalyptic interpretation made up a case of emergency. 

The gist of the Revelation is the prophesy that after many plagues that will befall mankind, God will pass judgment; he will destroy the devil and his followers and will rescue the true believers who will enter into the heavenly New Jerusalem. The prophesy expresses extreme urgency, it reveals “things which must shortly take place” (Rev. 1,1 and 22,6).

Thus we do have a characteristic case of emergency here, that, in analogy to Schmitt’s understanding of the Political, turns the polarizing force of ‘the Religious’ into a totalizing force that submits all aspects of human life to the distinction of true and false and of faithfulness and betrayal as well. People have to decide either to be faithful and be saved or to be “cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, etc.” (Rev. 21,8) and perish.

The Revelation of John is charged with images of excessive violence, but the violent deeds of destruction are committed by God himself, by Christ and by the army of angels, not by men. In historical reality, there was no factual violence in consequence of the Revelation. If there was any, then rather the endurance of violence by Christians who refused to worship other gods, especially the divinized Roman emperor.

But the matter does not rest there. If we may stay for the moment with the consequences of the Christian apocalyptic revelation, there have been also interpretations of this text which urge the faithful that they should assist God and fulfill his intentions by taking up the sword.

From the eleventh to the sixteenth century, there had been new cases of emergency that led to apocalyptic outbursts and now also to violence. Political and social grievances, but also crying abuses by the official church added up, together with the revival of the Revelation, to cases of emergency.  

The Revelation’s prophesy of a Millennium, a paradise on earth under the rule of Christ and the Saints played an important role in numerous religious as well as social movements. Some of them took up arms against the official church and the ruling powers. Most famous were the Anabaptists in the city of Münster who established a terrorist religious system between 1534 and 1535.

In Islam we can observe a similar radicalization of the polarizing force, inherent also in the Muslim religion, to a totalization of the religion and, if there is an apocalyptic case of emergency, to violence. The apocalyptic worldview implies that the faithful believers, the representatives of the true religion, are oppressed and persecuted. If this view is corroborated by events in historical reality, we may have a case of emergency that warrants violence.

The first war against the Iraq in 1991 and the intervention of the United States in Somalia triggered the apocalyptic justification of the Djihad against the USA and the West in general, pronounced by al-Qaeda. The second war against Iraq in 2003 and the ensuing civil-war-like turmoil led to the rise of an even more radical apocalyptic force, the so-called ‘Islamic State’ that made an incontrovertible distinction between true believers and all other people; and this rigid distinction even justified violence against Muslims like Shiites and Sufi. 

I mentioned before that the apocalyptic worldview of the early Christians did not lead to violent acts against other religions, but rather implied the readiness to endureviolence as the price for remaining faithful and thus earning a place in heaven. The figure of the Christian martyr is conspicuous. In Islam martyrs are known, too. The ‘Islamic State’, however, developed a new, extreme understanding of the role of the religious martyr, namely as a person who kills infidels and, at the same time, sacrifices himself. The suicide-bomber combines the two sides of religious violence, he is the identification of perpetrator and victim who really leads religious violence to the extreme.