Karen Armstrong on Religion and the History of Violence

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2018

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Karen Armstrong has written over 16 books on faith and the major religions, studying what Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common, and how our faiths have shaped world history and drive current events. She came to the Intelligence Squared stage to talk about her forthcoming book 'Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence'. Journeying from prehistoric times to the present, she contrasted medieval crusaders and modern-day jihadists with the pacifism of the Buddha and Jesus’ vision of a just and peaceful society. And she demonstrated that the underlying reasons – social, economic, political – for war and violence in our history have often had very little to do with religion. Instead, Armstrong celebrates the religious ideas and movements that have opposed war and aggression and promoted peace and reconciliation. Armstrong was in discussion with journalist and broadcaster Tom Sutcliffe. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:50.0	Well, thank you for inviting me here.
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0:57.0	Well, where people have said to me, did you realize how aposite your book was going to be? And my reply was, well, there's
1:07.9	usually something. A little while ago it would have been Gaza that we would have been thinking about.
1:14.2	But as we look at ISIS, whatever they're calling themselves this week, we have, there's a certain sense
1:22.3	of exasperation in some quarters. Why an earth
1:26.7	can't the Muslims learn to separate religion and politics? This has become so that separation of these two things
1:36.8	is now so deeply entrenched in our secular consciousness that it's very difficult for us to understand that other cultures
1:47.0	don't have anything like our view of religion, our view of religion that sees it as a series of rituals and obligatory beliefs
	...

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