In Fields of Blood, Karen Armstrong defends religion against those who would blame it for wars, persecution, and the like. The crux of Armstrong’s argument, according to David Nirenberg, is that religion is only religion when it endorses behavior of which she approves. All cases of violence in the name of religion are thus really about power, oppression, and inequality. Nirenberg writes:

Perhaps we should not judge religions by the company they keep. Still, even (or especially) if we share Armstrong’s sympathies—that is, her view that religion is generally innocent as charged—we should want to ask why religion so often finds itself in arms with the wicked. . . . Divorcing religion from power might ease one’s conscience about faith traditions, but it won’t help us understand why those traditions have so often sought dowries from dominion, which seems to me precisely what we most want and need to know. . . .

Armstrong’s yearning to think of religion as separate from power is unsatisfying and unpersuasive, but it is also an exceedingly common position among Westerners today. Perhaps we should think of this tendency as the secularized form of a religious idea—namely, a particular self-understanding of Christianity as a persecuted and nonpolitical religion of love. This possibility points to another conviction common to Fields of Blood and much other writing on the topic of religion and violence: that it is easy to distinguish between religious and secular ideas, between religious and nonreligious motives for violence. . . .

It is not religion, but powerlessness and oppression, the argument goes, that motivate religious violence. This argument depends on a misplaced confidence in a moralizing distinction central to discussions of post-colonialism: the distinction between power and powerlessness. This is often conjoined with the conviction that the violence of the powerless is ethical or moral, that of the powerful unethical or immoral—and that a line can easily be drawn between the two. Once that line is drawn, it is but a short step to saying that the victims of violence by the powerless are morally more culpable than the perpetrators, because they are beneficiaries of oppression.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.