Cosmic War
A big question arise when we heard about warfare in the name of religion. Is this true? Or simply used religion to justify the action of violence? On behalf of humanity, ideally all violences are not accepted, even from the poin of view of religious values itself. Religion supposed to give a way of goodness and gives men guidelines to which ways to be chosen in case of not knowing where to go.
Virtually all cultural traditions have contained martial metaphors. The ideas of salfation army in Christianity and a Dal Khalsa (“army of the faithful”) in Sikhsm, Muslim notion of Jihad, even in Buddhist legends great wars are to be found. In Sri lankan culture as recorded in the Pali chronicles, the Dipavamsa and the Mahavamsa, that relates the triumphs of battles waged by Buddhist King. In India, warfare has contributed to the grandeur of the great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which are tale of simingly unending conflict and military intrigue.
Religion has dealt with violance, therefore, not only because violence is unruly and has to be tamed, but because religion, as the ultimate statement of meaningfulness, must always assert the primacy of meaning in the face of chaos. For that reason, religion has been order restoring or life affirming eventhought it has justified the taking of life in particular instances.
Notions of cosmics war are intimately personal but can also be translated to the social plan. The Muslim concept of struggle-Jihad-has been employed for centuries in Islamic theories of both personal salvation and political redemption. The struggle againts all ideas, ideologies and political institutions that they regard as alien to Islam. But the concept of jihad is neither a cart blanche for violence nor extremely as a license to kill.
One of the reasons a state of war is preferable to peace is that it gives moral justification to act of violence. Michael Bray made an ethical distinction between what is legal in peaceful society and what is morally justified in a situation of warfare. Bray’s argument is similar to that of the assasin of Mohandas Gandhi, Nathuram Godse, who in his court trial eloquently justified what he called his moral thought illegal act of killing the Mahatma.
The confrontation is likely to be characterized as cosmic war, if :
1. the struggle is perceived as a defense of basic identity and dignity
The Irish confrontation, for instance, become spiritualized when Rev. Ian Paisley interprated it as an attact on Protestanism, and the palestenian struggle took on areligious aura after a significant number of Sheiks and Mullahs interpreted it as devense of Islam.
2. Losing the struggle would be unthinkable.
For instance, some Palestinian Muslims have refused to even consider the idea of a jewish state in what they regard as Arab territory. Similarly some radically Jews have regarded the Israeli government’s return of Biblical land to Arab as unthinkable.
3. The struggle is blocked and can not be won in real time or in real terms
If the struggle is seen as hopeless in human terms, it is likely that it maight be reconceived on a sacred plan, where the possibelities of victory are in God’s hand.
The presence of any of these three characteristics increases the likelihood that a real world struggle may be conceived in cosmic term as a sacred war. When a struggle become sacralized, incidents that might previously have bee considered minor skirmishes or slight differencess of understanding are elevated to monumental proportions. The use of violence becomes legitimized.
In conclusion the key to resolution is willingness to accept the notion that there are flaws on one’s own side as well as on the opponen’s side. This is the sensible stand if one’s goal is to get along with others and avoid violence.
