ConfrontingGenocideDSRPBK.qxd 5/1/09 4:36 PM Page 1 Religion • Human Rights Jacobs “Religion has too often been a cause of genocide. The essays in this collection examine why, and then propose how religious texts and traditions could be reinterpreted so that religions can become forces against genocide.” Steven Leonard Jacobs —Gregory Stanton, president, The International Association of Genocide Scholars “My God! This book about what our Gods really instruct us—be it ‘Do Not Kill’ or ‘Yes, Kill in My Name’ (or alternately both, notwithstanding the contradiction)—deserves our deep thoughtfulness along with considerable appreciation to the editor for soundly addressing a largely neglected and censored topic. Steven Leonard Jacobs leads us CONFRONTING GENOCIDE to important encounters with ‘exclusivity, superiority, privileged access to God’; ‘cho- sen people-ness’ and ‘promised land-ness’; ‘nationalist-racist ideology undergirded by religious thought’; and how religion often ‘divides humanity into believers and infidels, into the saved and the damned.’ Highly recommended.” —Israel W. Charny, author of Fascism and Democracy in the Human Mind and editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Genocide “Confronting Genocide is an essential exploration of this complex dimension of the conceptual foundations of genocide. Steven Jacobs has done superb work in bringing together a broad and rich range of scholarly perspectives. A necessary contribution to genocide studies.” —Peter Balakian, author of The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response Confronting Genocide: Judaism, Christianity, Islam is the first collection of essays by recognized scholars primarily in the field of religious studies to address this timely topic. In addition to theoretical thinking about both religion and genocide and the relationship between the two, these authors look at the tragedies of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, Rwanda, Bosnia, and the Sudan from their own unique vantage point. In so doing, they supply a much-needed additional contribution to the ongoing conversations proffered by historians, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and legal scholars regarding prevention, intervention, and punishment. Contributors: Paul R. Bartrop, Donald J. Dietrich, Mohammad Omar Farooq, Zev Garber, Leonard B. Glick, Stephen R. Haynes, Steven Leonard Jacobs, Henry F. Knight, Leo Kuper, Paul Mojzes, James Frazer Moore, Chris Mato Nunpa, David Patterson, John T. Pawlikowski, Gary A. Phillips, Carol Rittner, John K. Roth, Richard L. Rubenstein CONFRONTING Steven Leonard Jacobs is associate professor of religious studies and holds the Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair of Judaic Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. GENOCIDE For orders and information please contact the publisher Lexington Books Judaism, Christianity, Islam A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 1-800-462-6420 www.lexingtonbooks.com Confronting Genocide Confronting Genocide Judaism, Christianity, Islam Edited by Steven Leonard Jacobs LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Confronting genocide : Judaism, Christianity, Islam / [edited by] Steven Leonard Jacobs. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-3588-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-3589-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-3590-7 (electronic) 1. Genocide—Religious aspects—History. 2. Rape—Religious aspects—History. I. Jacobs, Steven L., 1947– HV6322.7.C654 2009 201’.76—dc22 2009005541 Printed in the United States of America ϱ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992. Contents Introduction: Genocide in the Name of God: Thoughts on Religion and Genocide ix Steven Leonard Jacobs Part I: Textual Warrants for Genocide 1 Theological Warrants for Genocide: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity 3 Leo Kuper 2 The Last Uncomfortable Religious Question? Monotheistic Exclusivism and Textual Superiority in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as Sources of Hate and Genocide 35 Steven Leonard Jacobs 3 A Sweet-Smelling Sacrifice: Genocide, the Bible, and the Indigenous Peoples of the United States, Selected Examples Chris Mato Nunpa 47 4 The Accountability of Religion in Genocide 65 James Frazer Moore 5 More Than the Jews . His Blood Be Upon All the Children: Biblical Violence, Genocide, and Responsible Reading 77 Gary A. Phillips v vi Contents Part II: Religion and Mass Violence: Empirical Data and Case Studies 6 Religion and Genocide 95 Leonard B. Glick 7 Jihad and Genocide: The Case of the Armenians 119 Richard L. Rubenstein 8 Islam and Genocide: The Case of Bangladesh in 1971 139 Mohammad Omar Farooq 9 The Genocidal Twentieth Century in the Balkans 151 Paul Mojzes 10 “Death Was Everywhere, Even in Front of the Church”: Christian Faith and the Rwandan Genocide 183 Stephen R. Haynes Part III: Alternative Readings of Troubling Texts: Religion as a Force against Violence 11 Getting Rid of the G-d of Abraham: A Prerequisite for Genocide 197 David Patterson 12 The Ten Commandments, the Holocaust, and Reflections on Genocide 209 Paul R. Bartrop 13 Coming to Terms with Amalek: Testing the Limits of Hospitality 223 Henry F. Knight Part IV: Theologies and Practices of Reconciliation 14 Post-Shoah Restitution of a Different Kind 241 John K. Roth 15 The Holocaust, Genocide, and the Catholic Church 255 Donald J. Dietrich 16 Catholic Views on Holocaust and Genocide: A Critical Appraisal 267 John T. Pawlikowski 17 Terror Out of Zion: Making Sense of Scriptural Teaching 279 Zev Garber Contents vii 18 Rape, Religion, and Genocide: An Unholy Silence 291 Carol Rittner Appendix 1: Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 307 Appendix 2: Universal Declaration of Human Rights 313 Appendix 3: The United Nations Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity (1968) 321 Index 325 Contributors 345 Introduction: Genocide in the Name of God: Thoughts on Religion and Genocide In his academically autobiographical essay, Israel W. Charny, one of the true doyens of the field of genocide studies, related the following: A second section [of the 1994 work The Widening Circle of Genocide] was devoted to religion and genocide by Leonard Glick. There is quite a story to be told about how many years it took before we succeeded in getting this im- portant open treatment of the subject of religion as both setting the expressed moral direction of Thou Shalt Not Kill [sic], while in itself being responsible for so many genocidal killings over the centuries. Before Leonard Glick’s fine contribution, there had been several well-known scholars in the field of religion who had agreed to do the project and then dropped it at a very late stage, almost without explanation. To me, it seemed that what happened was that they were unable to tell the truth about the religious establishments with which they were variously connected. If truth be told, the reason for such difficulty is far more significant than that of personal “religious discomfort.” Those whose field is religious stud- ies come late to the study of genocide, and, thus, that which is commonly identified in the popular mind as “religion” is all too often overlooked as an important factor in contributing to either the implementation and per- petuation of genocide, or as a foundational underpinning and rationaliza- tion for such collective acts. To be sure, even where the evidence is incon- trovertible (e.g., the Armenian, Rwandan, Darfur [Sudanese] genocides), it is approached from the perspectives of historians, political scientists, sociologists, and the like, with no attempt to address the theological frame ix x Introduction: Genocide in the Name of God: Thoughts on Religion and Genocide out of which religions operate or their institutional structures—build- ings, liturgies, curricula, etc.—which proceed from those orientations. An example of this tendency is the otherwise excellent text edited by Bartov and Mack (2001), In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century, papers delivered at a 1997 conference held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. This volume focuses primarily on the Holocaust, the most documented of genocides, and less on Armenia, Rwanda, and Bosnia, through the five significant questions with which the editors were concerned. A focus on theology or institu- tions would have necessitated a very different set of papers in the main, with more work needing to be done, not only on Christian “preparations” for genocide, but with regard to both the Jewish and Islamic concepts of exclusivity