Politics and the Life Sciences http://journals.cambridge.org/PLS Additional services for Politics and the Life Sciences: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here Shaking the tyrant’s bloody robe Jordan Kiper and Richard Sosis Politics and the Life Sciences / Volume 35 / Issue 01 / March 2016, pp 27 - 47 DOI: 10.1017/pls.2016.7, Published online: 21 June 2016 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0730938416000071 How to cite this article: Jordan Kiper and Richard Sosis (2016). Shaking the tyrant’s bloody robe. Politics and the Life Sciences, 35, pp 27-47 doi:10.1017/pls.2016.7 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/PLS, IP address: 100.15.100.81 on 22 Jun 2016 Shaking the tyrant's bloody robe An evolutionary perspective on ethnoreligious violence Jordan Kiper, M.A.* and Richard Sosis, Ph.D.* *University of Connecticut ABSTRACT. Group violence, despite much study, remains enigmatic. Its forms are numerous, its proximate causes myriad, and the interrelation of its forms and proximate causes poorly understood. We review its evolution, including preadaptations and selected propensities, and its putative environmental and psychological triggers. We then reconsider one of its forms, ethnoreligious violence, in light of recent discoveries in the behavioral and brain sciences. We find ethnoreligious violence to be characterized by identity fusion and by manipulation of religious traditions, symbols, and systems. We conclude by examining the confluence of causes and characteristics before and during Yugoslavia's wars of disintegration. Key words: Collective violence, ethnic violence, identity fusion, intergroup conflict, religious system hen reproached for inspiring terror dur- to respond to the dynamic conditions of his times, to ing the French Revolution, Maximilien frame an emergent political struggle as a destined con- W de Robespierre reportedly responded that flict, and to justify violence morally. Religion is often speaking against justified violence and sympathizing used for these purposes. Through shared beliefs and with the enemy was equivalent to tyranny itself. ``The intense rituals, religion creates tight social bonds and enemy'' for Robespierre was a system that he, and apparent group homogeneity, which leaders or elites all good Jacobins, saw as inherently tyrannical and can manipulate alongside other behavioral propensi- responsible for historic injustices and with whose fallen ties both to induce and intensify intergroup conflict. figures the righteous and enlightened should not com- Moreover, leaders can exploit religion's ability to rouse individuals, and to unify people under a single banner miserate. Hence, to those who complained about terror through emotionally evocative and highly memorable by asserting the innocence of some of its victims, symbols and myths. Robespierre metaphorically replied, ``Stop shaking the Does this mean, then, as some suggest,3,4 that reli- tyrant's bloody robe in my face, or I will believe that 1 gion is prone to instigating violence? From our 21st cen- you wish to put Rome in chains.'' tury standpoint, where news of religious violence dom- Although they were made in the context of politi- inates headlines, we may be tempted to say that it does. cal revolution, Robespierre's remarks resemble the in- However, our judgment is likely biased in a number citing speeches of ethnoreligious leaders who, in the of ways by our secular environment. One such bias is context of social crises, use religious rhetoric to incite the myth of religious violence: the belief that religion is attacks on an entire group of people, combatants and the chief cause of the world's bloodshed.5 As Armstrong 2 non-combatants. Like other inflammatory speakers, observes, this myth is widely believed, but it is problem- Robespierre relied on widely accepted ideals and beliefs atic on several fronts. For one thing it is mistaken about the causes of conflict. From the French Revolution doi: 10.1017/pls.2016.7 to the catastrophic wars of the 20th century, many Correspondence: Jordan Kiper, M.A., Department of Anthropology, nation-states, secular communities, and sociopolitical University of Connecticut, 354 Mansfield Road, U-2176, Storrs, CT movements—even state-making movements6—did not 06269-2176. Email: [email protected] embrace religion but still brought about a great deal Richard Sosis, Ph.D., James Barnett Professor of Humanistic An- thropology and Director of the Evolution, Cognition, and Culture of bloodshed. Much of this violence, too, was imbued Program, Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, with historic animosities against an ``other'' that, under 354 Mansfield Road, U-2176, Storrs, CT 06269-2176. certain conditions, was expressed in acts of widespread, Email: [email protected] indiscriminate violence. In this sense, collective violence Politics and the Life Sciences • Spring 2016 • vol. 35, no. 1 27 Kiper and Sosis of the worst kind (e.g., massacres, mass rape, ethnic Before doing so, we must first say a few words about cleansings, and genocide) have ensued in different ethnic identity. When discussing ethnic violence, it is cultural systems whenever conditions for social unrest not always clear how the identities of the ethnic per- persist and leaders, even so-called enlightened ones, sons involved are separable in terms of ``ethnicity'' and such as Robespierre, exploit human inclinations for ``religion.'' A people's ethnicity and religiosity (and way violence and justify hostilities according to socially of life for that matter) are often analogous. We will accepted ideals. therefore use the term ethnoreligious to describe com- Most importantly, the myth of religious violence dis- munities whose ethnicity and religion are important to torts religion itself by reducing it to a set of ideas that their identity and play a role in collective violence. To somehow brainwash would-be perpetrators. A more that end, we first deconstruct ethnic violence by show- substantial view is that religion increases the lethal- ing that it is a form of intergroup conflict, comprised ity of violence7 and decreases intragroup contestations of evolved behavioral propensities. Afterward, we show over war8,9 when combined with other conditions for that ethnic violence is not only a form of intergroup intergroup conflict and collective violence. This phe- conflict but also collective violence. We argue that what nomenon is particularly evident among certain ethnic distinguishes ethnoreligious violence from other cases of communities that center or ``fuse'' their personal and collective violence is the confluence of ethnicity, identity group identity.10 Religion is thus an effective proxi- fusion, and religion. We then shift our discussion to the mate mechanism for violence and is more accurately religious system's role in evoking violence by explain- described as a dynamically complex system that unites ing how the constituents of that system provide ethnic communities, strengthens ingroup cooperation, and of- groups with identity, coherence, and cooperation, and fers individuals life-affirming rituals.11 As such, religion render violence with moral justification and emotional can both inspire and sanctify conflicts, including acts significance. Finally, we examine how leaders exploit of collective violence, by rendering bloodshed a sacred both the behavioral propensities for intergroup conflict act or holy sacrifice. When this happens, the so-called and the religious system to incite ethnoreligious violence tyrant's bloody robe—to echo Robespierre's words—is in times of political crises, conflict, or war. shaken by religious leaders and perpetrators for all to see, although not in the contestation of violence but rather its social and moral approval. The evolution of intergroup conflict By way of example, it is unfortunately not very sur- Because ``ethnic violence'' spans different kinds of prising for ethnic tensions to erupt into instances of societies, hostilities, and cultural identities, it is notori- mob violence that celebrate the bloodshed of a devalued ously difficult to define.14 It can involve a nation-state outgroup. Apparently more shocking (perhaps because and militarized army or involve nonstate groups and it is so contrary to most religious doctrine) is the di- unconventional warfare.15 Capturing the breadth and rect orchestration of mob violence by religious leaders. complexities of ethnic violence, Brubaker and Laitin Even avowed religious pacifists have provoked such provide a critical definition that we shall presume: violence in several communities around the world, most notably Myanmar, where Burmese Buddhists have led Ethnic violence is violence perpetrated across eth- riots against Rohingya Muslims, an Indonesian ethnic nic lines, in which at least one party is not a state minority.12 (or a representative of a state), and in which the How do religions that inspire awe, joy, and love putative ethnic difference is coded—by perpetra- also inspire terror, fear, and animosity? We argue that tors, targets, influential third parties, or analysts— an evolutionary perspective on intergroup conflict and as having been integral rather than incidental to the religious system13 can shed light on this question the violence, that is, in which the violence is coded and help to explain how religion incites ethnoreligious as having been meaningfully oriented in some