ABSTRACT
Many of the violent religious organizations making news headlines in the present time are turning previous explanations for the causes of violence on their respective heads. Behavioral theories, which explained group violence in terms of a leader’s ability to sustain reduced levels of dissonance for organization members through strict hierarchal structure, are unable to explain the very disparate organizational structure that is seen in the majority of violent religious organizations today. In fact, the individuals in violent religious organizations are active members of their communities and are not constrained by traditional hierarchal structures at all. In the previous chapters, it was argued that these more-disparate structures have developed in response to the organization’s exclusion from the political process. The task presently at hand is to assimilate previous understandings of violence with present manifestations thereof. It will be argued in this chapter that religious organizations are unique because the presence of belief in the supernatural opens up a wide range of choices not accounted for in the study of secular movements. Further, the presence of religion ensures that even when a hierarchy is present, the leader is constantly constrained by how well the individual leads according to his or her followers’ perception of God. But where there is no hierarchy, God remains, and for this reason there is still a very strong force linking members to a particular cause. In fact, it will be demonstrated that when belief is framed so as to make violent action not only a right, but a responsibility, movement participants will endure severe resistance without turning from their cause. This argument is based on two simultaneous understandings. First, there are relevant differences between secular and religious social movements. Second, once the differences between secular and religious organizations are taken into account as important, it is possible to identify uniquely religious elements which serve parallel purposes as structural functions within secular social movements. It will be argued that the elements of structure that have traditionally been understood to increase propensities of violence (namely strong ties between members and their superiors, fostered by a hierarchal structure) are supplanted by members’ belief that God has demanded their action. Specifically, while violent organizations are forced by their exclusion from the political process to form cell-structured organizations rather than hierarchies, the same reduction of
dissonance is achieved as a result of a frame that characterizes violence as a sacred duty. The discussion will turn to the scholastic understanding of framing as a motivator for action and then contrasts the pluralistic frame of the Christian Coalition and al-Ikhwan al Muslimin with the rigid frames of the Army of God and al Jama’a al Islmiyya. Following this, it will be illustrated that the violent organizations have not only developed far more specific frames than their nonviolent counterparts, but how these frames shift the understanding of justification from the justification of violence to the justification of non-violence. In other words, the violent organizations argue that violence is not a right of its members, but a responsibility of all God-fearing individuals.
