In each of these cases, with Columbine, with Todd Beamer, and also with the so-called martyrs of 9/11 and some of the Palestinian suicide bombers, religion is the root cause. Is martyrdom culture unique to those with extreme religious beliefs? Is it what unifies militant Islam with militant Christianity?

I'm hesitant to use those kinds of labels because at the very heart of all religions is the kind of assertion that life is not just about what we see before our eyes. There is something of higher or ultimate value. Martyrdom is a potential in all religions or in any community that asks individuals to sacrifice their lives for the community, for others. So I'm suspicious of the tendency to say something about certain kinds of religions, to in a sense call them extremists and say that's why martyrdom appeals to them.

But this kind of martyr worship isn't found as intensely in secular culture, say among atheists, right?

Well, you can look at atheistic systems that exalted those who laid down their lives for that community or cause. One thinks of Stalinist Russia with its heroes, or American patriots who have regretted that they only had one life to give to the cause. So I don't think by getting rid of religion you get rid of extremism. In fact, if you get rid of religion, you get rid of an important resource for questioning all forms of extremism -- a resource that helps society put in a larger, wider perspective.

Another example is the Buddhist monks who immolated themselves to protest in Vietnam in the early 1960s. Buddhism is not a religion you would associate with that. But given the political context that religious communities find themselves in, they may find it necessary to use political violence, self-directed or directed at others.

Do you think that religions need to reform their ideas of martyrdom, whether that means adhering to facts rather than legend, or simply ceasing to encourage and pay for the kind of martyrdom sought by Palestinian suicide bombers? To many of us, the idea of martyrdom seems to have gotten out of control.

Certainly, it's a very volatile thing that can get out of control. But many religions will reform that by turning toward a kind of martyrdom in inner life: asceticism or sainthood. But religions can't reform themselves in isolation. Religions will turn to either using political violence or using victims of violence as symbols when violence is part of the political reality, when they have no other outlet for changing the world. Then, the resort to sacred power to break through boundaries is the result.

That sounds like a justification for encouraging the practice of martyrdom. Aren't you assuming that religions and religious leaders always exhaust previous resources before resorting to either martyrdom or martyr exploitation?

It could be used as a justification for that, but if you really look at how religiously based violence plays out over time, it's clear that you end up with madness. You end up destroying what you're trying to preserve. With some wisdom, [religious figures] tend to see that they have to pull back from that. Figures like Gandhi, in his struggles against Britain, and even the use of nonviolent protest in the civil rights movement in the U.S., show an understanding that the result of violence would be madness -- and a situation far worse than one could imagine.

And you're confident that those who ultimately judge which tactic is best -- in most cases, religious leaders and/or political leaders -- will make the right decision?

If one is willing to base a new, just society on a pile of bodies, then I suppose you can make that judgment and use violence. Communities and individual political actors have to make that kind of choice, but there's always some reflection that the means you choose will affect the ends. If you're going to use political terror to create a society, an element of terror remains in the society that you're going to create.

Our ability to hear what's going on inside these religious communities is very limited. The communities we hear from are the ones who make a noise. They seem to be the ones we focus on. But go to any number of churches in America and ask them, does Jerry Falwell speak for Christianity? and they will give you a resounding no. But he has been a popular figure for years, so the media returns to him. There are very complex processes going on inside these religions. They're in dialogue with their political and cultural realities. So I'm a pessimistic optimist. In the short term, meaning my lifetime, my future children's lifetime, I'm fairly sure that human history as we've experienced it -- with all its tragedy and bloodletting -- will be pretty much the order of the day. But there's an intuition I have, some people might call it faith, that that's not all there is to our future existence. In an ultimate sense, I have a hunch I should be optimistic.

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