Summary
Religion is part of a categorization system that looks neutral to the secular liberal, presented in awareness as conforming to how the environment is, irrespective of the discursive structures that comprise our communal interpretative misgivings. According to critical religion, religion is a power category that interacts dialectically with other power categories. It has a unique purpose in that it provides the mythological underpinning of the community property of the world while making it appear natural and inevitable. The default attitude of liberal and conservative capitalism is the freedom to the unrestricted private accumulation of our shared organic patrimony, irrespective of the consequences for the rest.
Critical religion is a subversive practice that tries to deconstruct the linguistic falsehoods that convert a strange manner of owning the land into common sense normalcy. Critical religion attempts to do away with the phrase that gives religion its cohesiveness. On the other hand, a critical theory of theology sees the category of religion as a useful heuristic tool for comprehending the troublesome characteristics of that concept. Religion, like every other subject, does not have a fixed meaning. It is used to classify a wide range of ideas, behaviors, and organizations, allowing us to contrast one set with another. Lastly, it enables individuals to examine various sets of ideas, behaviors, and institutions that are generally not labeled religions and determine how closely they reflect more traditional knowledge and understanding of the class.
The term critical religion refers to the critical historical reconstruction of religious practice and associated concepts. Religion is part of a set of dominating notions that encompasses much of what people define as contemporary. It functions in binary antagonism to the secular in all of its manifestations. One of the most potent similar categories is politics, which, like religion, appears in popular and scientific discourse as both an uncontentious global and a single product of chronological onset.
People from different fields have attempted to provide academic definitions of religion, and many of them are conflicting. In the more extensive public discussion, religion is used to include such a diverse variety of acts that it loses any specific definition. Even socialist ideologies have been relegated to the realm of religion. Nation-states, self-regulating economies, and inherently possessive individuals are among the ideological fictions that have been most excepted from the religion categorization. In contrast to beliefs and spiritual traditions, these fictions are not inductions from direct observation but rather rhetorical tactics disguised as logic and common sense.
Religion is a sense of individual devotion and piety, largely divorced from the rigors of practical politics and the economy. Religion appears to be a decisive factor that has consistently stood in the way of secular liberal development. When faith deviates into government, it has a proclivity for violence and illogical savagery. As a result, spirituality has had to be tamed and disciplined in order to comply with the decorum of liberal norms. As the guardian in the house, religion does not question the right to unrestricted private collection, the exploitation of cheap labor, or the operation of commodities as the mediator of all human connections.
Just and Unjust Wars
The war conventions are a set of defined norms, practices, professional rules, legal principles, religious and philosophical concepts, and reciprocity agreements that influence military judgments and specify the obligations of combatant governments, leaders, and individual troops. Non-combatants, on the other hand, cannot be assaulted at any moment under war regulations. The notion of twofold impact is a mechanism for balancing the ban on harming soldiers and civilians with authorized military operations. The most extreme version of the sliding-scale approach holds that troops fighting in a fair war may do whatever is required to win the war, essentially nullifying the war treaty.
Current politicians and military may have abused the dignity of innocent civilians and broken war treaties in rare cases of great exigency. While arguments for a state of emergency based on a defeat that would almost certainly bring calamity to a political community are viable, arguments for a state of calamity based solely on the speed or extent of triumph are not. In terms of accountability for political leaders and citizens, the greater the potential for free action in the community realm, the greater the degree of guilt for heinous crimes committed on behalf of all who pose a minor threat (Renzo, 2019). Warriors are morally liable for crimes committed as a result of unconstitutional or immoral commitments.
Given the issues that have occurred following 9/11, just war theory has taken on new relevance. Whether terrorism is terrible is a topic that is frequently addressed incorrectly or insufficiently by those who describe terrorism as the random slaughter of innocent people with the intention of instilling widespread fear. Terrorism undermines the concept of innocence by treating civilians as justifiable targets. Terrorists’ long-term goal is the aggregate annihilation, elimination, or radical subjugation of people as a linked group. A conception of just peace is contained in the idea of just war, which means that non-combatant protection safeguards, not just particular non-combatants but also the community in which they participate.
Terrorism is a tactic selected from a large number of viable options. When terrorists choose violence, the question of how to combat them arises. People must demand from the start that the individual terrorists supposedly represent are not participating in terrorism. Just as terrorists centralize the guilt of the opposing side, claiming that every private individual is complicit in the government’s erroneous actions, anti-terrorists must expropriate in the opposite direction, demanding the overall purity of the population. Similarly, suppose terrorists reject the concept of ancillary or indirect harm in favor of inflicting as much direct harm as possible. In that case, anti-terrorists must differentiate themselves by emphasizing the concept of civilian casualties and committing as little of it as potential.
Once regimes learn to murder, they are prone to kill a lot and frequently, necessitating the imposition of legal and ethical boundaries. When the authorities are pursuing criminals in a peaceful zone, people understandably allow them no leeway for collateral harm. In the most basic sense, they must intend not to damage civilian populations if it complicates their mission and even if the offenders flee; this is the correct norm for anyone conducting targeted executions.
Reference
Renzo, M. (2019). Political authority and unjust wars. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 99(2), 336-357.