This research deals with the linkage between religion and terrorism and how terrorism as a phenomenon has evolved in the modern period, including an examination of the special case of the Irish Republican Army. Jonathan R. White (2003) argues that there is a certain logic in the connection that derives from the notion of faith and belief, which fosters fervent emotional conviction. Equally as important, however, in the logical nexus of religion and terrorism is the kind of religion that is involved. White describes Marvin Harris's view that religions are either killing or nonkilling, with the former looking to the deity for crisis intervention and comfort and the latter looking for an agency of transcendence of the vicissitudes of experience. But it is not that simple, for a nonkilling, transcendental religion can also become the agent of privileging certain groups, including a state.
The problem comes about because of the human tendency to reify belief by way of mythology and symbolism, such that the myth becomes real and the symbol is no longer metaphorical but becomes literalized. Thus the Promised Land that Hebrew scripture may have originally intended as a metaphor for communion with God mutated into a belief that a specific piece of land was meant for the Jews. Similarly, the medieval-and-after wars between and among Muslims, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox Catholics, especially as played out in the Balkans, fed and were fed by the interpenetration of religion and politics. Thus when one religious group gained political power, it oppressed the other religions, and "symbols of nonkilling religions were transformed into deadly elements of political expression" (p. 48). In other words, myth no longer helps explain religious communion with the divine but is "literalized," helping explain why God sanctions the social and political entitlements due the adherents of a particular religion. White cites Paul Tillich's valuable corrective ...