I – Introduction

This chapter is designed to understand the nature of religious related crimes and identify
those types of religious abuses that may result in psychological trauma.

II – Pre Competency Checklist

True or False: 5 points

Answer the following statement:
1. Psychological abuse is refers to psychological manipulation and harm infected on a
person by using the teachings of their religion.
2. Physical abuse is the form of beatings, illegal confinement, and neglect, near drowning
or even murder in the belief that the child is possessed by evil spirits.
3. Sexual abuse – any act by deeds or words that shame or diminish the dignity of a person.
4. Cult – an organization brazed with spiritual or ethical belief.
5. Sect – groups which believe on unorthodox rituals crafted from established religious
ideology.

III – Learning Resources

UNIT 5: RELIGIOUS RELATED CRIMES

Religious violence is a term that covers phenomena here religion is either the subject or the object
of violent behavior. Religious violence is violence that is motivated by, or in reaction to, religious
precepts, texts, or doctrines of a target or attacker. It includes violence against religious institutions,
people, objects, or events. Religious violence does not refer exclusively to acts committed by
religious groups, but includes acts committed by secular groups against religious groups.

“Violence” is a very broad concept that is difficult to define since it is used on human and non –
human objects. Furthermore, the term can denote a wide variety of experiences such as blood
shedding, physical harm, forcing against personal freedom, passionate conduct or language, or
emotions such as fury and passion.

“Religion” is a complex and problematic modern western concept. It was not found anywhere before
the 1500s and there is no scholarly consensus over what a religion is. In general, religion is
conceived today as an abstraction which entails beliefs, doctrines, and sacred places. However, the
ancient cultures that wrote Holy Scriptures (e.g. Bible, Quran, etc) did not have such a concept in
their Holy Scriptures, language, or history. The link between religious belief and behavior is also
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problematic. Decades of anthropological, sociological, and psychological research has shown that
the assumption that behaviors follow directly from religious beliefs and values is false because
people’s religious ideas are fragmented, loosely connected, and context dependent just like in all
another domains of culture and life.

In general, religious, ethical systems, and societies rarely promote violence as end in itself since
violence is universally undesirable. At the same time, there is a universal tension between the
general desire to avoid violence and acceptance of justifiable uses of violence to prevent a “greater
evil” that permeates all cultures.

Religious violence, like all violence, is a cultural process that is context – dependent and very
complex. Over simplifications of “religion” and “violence” often lead to misguided understandings of
causes for why some people commit such acts of violence and why people most do commit such
acts in the first place. Violence is perpetrated for a wide variety of ideological reasons and religion
is generally only one of many contributing social and political factors and that can lead to unrest.
Studies of supposed cases of religious violence often conclude that violence is strongly driven by
ethnic animosities rather than by religious worldviews. Recently, scholars have questioned the very
concept of “religious violence” and the extent to which religious, political, economic, or ethnic aspects
of a conflict are even meaningful. Some observe that the very concept of “religion” is a modern
invention and not something that is historical or universal across cultures, which makes “religious
violence” a modern myth. Since all cases of violence include social, political, and economic
dimensions; and no way to isolate “religion’ from the rest of the more likely motivational dimensions,
it is incorrect to label any violent event as “religious”. Numerous cases of supposed acts of religious
violence such as the Thirty Years War, the French Wars of Religion, the Protestant – Catholic conflict
in Ireland, the Sri Lankan Civil War, 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, the Bosnian War, and the
Rwandan Civil War were all primarily motivated by social, political, and economic issues rather than
religion.

NATURE OF RELIGIOUS RELATED CRIMES

Both Islam and Christianity claim to be revealed religions, holding that their teachings are truths that
God himself has conveyed to us and wants everyone to accept. They were, from the start, missionary
religions. A religion charged with bringing God’s turn to the world faces the question of how to deal
with people who refuse the accept it. To what extent should it tolerate religious error? At certain
points in their histories, both Christianity and Islam have been intolerant of other religions, often of
each other, even to the point of violence.

This was not inevitable, but neither was it an accident. The potential for intolerance lies in the logic
of religions like Christianity and Islam that say their teaching derive from a divine revelation. For
them, the truth that God has revealed is the most important truth there is therefore, denying or
doubting this truth is extremely dangerous, both for nonbelievers, who may well be misled by the

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denials and doubts of nonbelievers. Given these assumptions, it’s easy to conclude that even
extreme steps are warranted to eliminate non-belief.

You may object that moral considerations should limit out opposition to non-belief. Don’t people have
a human right to follow their conscience and worship as they think they should? Here we reach a
crux for those who adhere to revealed religion. They can either accept ordinary human standards of
morality as a limit on how they interpret divine teachings, or they can insist on total fidelity to what
they see as God’s revelation, even when it contradicts ordinary human standards. Those who follow
the second view insist that divine truth utterly exceeds human understanding, which is in no position
to judge it. God reveals things to us precisely because they are truths we would never arrive at by
our natural lights. When the omniscient God has spoken, we can only obey.

For those holding this view, no secular considerations, not even appeals to conventional morality or
to practical common sense, can overturns a religious conviction that false beliefs are intolerable.
Christianity itself has a long story of such intolerance including persecutions of Jews, crusades
against Muslims and the Thirty Years’ War, in which religious and nationalist rivalries combined to
devastate Central Europe. This devastation initiated a move toward tolerance among nations that
came to see the folly of trying to impose their religions on foreigners. But intolerance of internal
dissidents Catholics, Jews, rival Protestant sects continued even into the 19th century. (It's worth
noting that in this period the Muslim Ottoman Empire was in many ways more tolerant than most
Christian countries.) But Christians eventually embraced tolerance through a long and complex
historical process.

Critiques of Christian revelation by Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau and Hume raised
serious questions that made non-Christian religions and eventually even rejections of religion-
intellectually respectable. Social and economic changes including capitalist economies,
technological innovations, and democratic political movements undermined the social structures that
had sustained traditional religion.

The eventual result was a widespread attitude of religious toleration in Europe and the United States.
This attitude represented ethical progress, but it implied that religious truth was not so important that
its denial was intolerable. Religious beliefs and practices came to be regarded as only expressions
of personal convictions, not to be endorsed or enforced by state authority. This in effect subordinated
the value of religious faith to the value of peace in a secular society. Today, almost all Christians are
reconciled to this revision, and many would even claim that it better reflects the true meaning of their
religion.

The same is not true of Muslims. A minority of Muslim nations have a high level of religious toleration;
for example Albania, Kosovo, Senegal and Sierra Leone. But majority –including Saudi Arabia, Iran,
Pakistan, Iraq and Malaysia- maintain strong restrictions on non – Muslim (and in some cases certain
“heretical” Muslim) beliefs and practices. Although many Muslims think God’s will requires tolerance
of false religious views, many do not.
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A Pew Research Center poll in 2013 found that in Iraq, Malaysia, Pakistan and other nations in which
Islam is officially favored, a large majority or Muslim’s think some form of Islamic law should be the
law or the and. The poll also found that 76 percent of such Muslims in South Asia and 56 percent in
the Middle East and North Africa favored executing Muslims who gave up their religion, and that in
10 Muslim counties at least 40 percent favored applying Islamic law to non-Muslims. This snows
that, for many Muslims, the revealed truths of Islam are not only a matter of personal conviction but
must also have a central place in the public sphere or a well-ordered society.

There is no central religious authority or overwhelming consensus that excludes such Muslims from
Islam. Intolerance need not lead to Violence against Nonbelievers; but, as we have seen, the logic
of revelation readily moves in that direction unless interpretations of sacred texts are subject to
nonreligious constraints. Islamic thinkers like lbn-Sina accepted such constraints, and during the
Middle Ages Muslims were often far more tolerant than Christians. But the path of modern tolerance
has proved more difficult for Islam than for Christianity, and many Muslims still do not accept the
ethical constraints that require religious tolerance, and a significant minority see violence against
unbelievers as a divinely ordained duty. We may find it hard to believe that religious beliefs could
motivate murders and insist that extreme violence is always due to mental instability or political
fanaticism. BUT The logic (and the history) of religions fells against this view.

Does this mean that Islam is evil? No, but it does mean that it has not yet tamed, to the extent that
Christianity has, the danger implicit in any religion that claims to be God' s own truth. To put it bluntly,
Islam as a whole has not made the concessions TO secular values that Christianity has. As
President Obama recently said, "Some currents Of Islam nave not gone through a reformation that
would help people adapt their religious doctrines to modernity." This adaptation will be long and
difficult and require many intellectual and socio-economic changes, some produced by outside
forces, others arising from the increasing power of Islamic teachings on tolerance and love. But until
such a transformation is achieved, it will be misleading to say that intolerance and violence are "a
pure betrayal" of Islam. (Gary Gutfing Aug. 1, 2016)

TYPES OF RELIGIOUS ABUSES

Religious abuse is abuse administered under the guise of religion, including harassment or
humiliation, which may result in psychological trauma. Religious abuse may also include misuse of
religion for selfish, secular, or ideological ends such as the abuse of a clerical position.

a. Psychological abuse - One specific meaning of the term religious abuse refers to
psychological manipulation and harm inflicted on a person by using the teachings of their
religion. This is perpetrated by members of the same or similar faith, and includes the use of
a position of authority within the religion. It is most often directed at children and emotionally
vulnerable adults, and motivations behind such abuse vary, but can be either well-intentioned
or malicious.

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 Even well-intentioned religious abuse can have long-term psychological consequences, such as
the victim developing phobias or long term depression. They may have a sense of shame that
persists even after they leave the religion. A person can also be manipulated into avoiding a
beneficial action (such as a medical treatment) or to engage in a harmful behavior.

In his book Religious Abuse, pastor Keith Wright describes an example of such abuse. When he
was a child, his Christian Scientist mother became very ill and eventually was convinced to seek
medical treatment at an inpatient facility. Members of her church went to the treatment center to
convince her to trust prayer rather than treatment, and to leave. She died shortly hereafter. While
the church members may not have had any malicious intent, their use of their religion's teachings to
manipulate Wright's mother ultimately resulted in her death.

A more recent study among 200 university students has shown that 12.5% of students reported
being victimized by at least one form of Religious/Ritual Abuse (RA). The study which was published
in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, showed that religious/ritual abuse may result in mental
health issues such as dissociative disorders.

b. Against children-Religiously-based psychological abuse of children can involve using

teachings too Subjugate children through fear, or indoctrinating the child in the beliefs of their
particular religion whilst suppressing other perspectives. Psychologist Jill Mytton describes
this as crushing the child's chance to form a personal morality and belief system; if makes
them utterly reliant on their religion and/or parents, and they never learn to reflect critically
on information they receive. Similarly, the use of fear and a judgmental environment (such
as the concept of Hell) to control the child can be traumatic.
c. Physical abuse- in a religious context often takes the form of beatings, illegal confinement,
and neglect, near drowning or even murder in the belief that the child is possessed by evil
spirits, practicing sorcery or witchcraft, or has committed some kind of sin that warrants
punishment. Such extreme cases are, though, rare.

In 2012, the United Kingdom's Department for Children, Schools and Families instituted new
action plan to investigate the issue of faith-based abuse after several high-profile murders, such as
that Kristy Bamu. Over a term of 10 years, Scotland Yard conducted 83 investigations into
allegations of abuse with faith-based elements and feared there were even more that were
unreported.

Religious violence- Religious violence and extremism (also called communal violence is a term
that covers all phenomena where religion is either the subject or object of violent behavior.

d. Human sacrifice- Child sacrifice and Child sacrifice in pre-Columbian cultures

Archaeology has uncovered physical evidence of child sacrifice at several locations. Some of
the best attested examples are the diverse rites which were part of the religious practices in
Mesoamerica and the Inca Empire. Psychologists Alice Miller and Robert Godwin, psych historian

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Lloyd deMaUse and other advocates of children's rights have written about pre-Columbian sacrifice
within the framework of child abuse.

Plutarch (c.46-120 AD) mentions the Carthaginian's ritual burning of small children, as do
Tertullian, Orosius, DiodoruS Siculus and Philo. Livy and Polybius do not. The Hebrew Bible also
mentions what appears to be child sacrifice practiced at a place called the Tophet (roasting place)
by the Canaanites, and by some Israelites. Children were thrown to the sharks in ancient Hawai.

e. Sacrificial victims were often infants. The slaughtering of newborn babies may be
considered a common event in many cultures including the Eskimo, the Polynesians, the
Ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, the Scandinavians, and various indigenous peoples of
Africa, the Americas and Australia.
f. Initiation rites - Artificial deformation of the skull Predates written history and dates back as
far as 45,000 BCE, as evidenced by two Neanderthal Skulls found in Shanidar Cave. It was
usually started just after birth and continued until the desired shape was achieved. It may
have played a key role in Egyptian and Mayan societies.

In China some boys were castrated, with both the penis and scrotum cut. Other ritual actions
have been described by anthropologists. Geza Roheim wrote about initiation rituals performed by
Australian natives in which adolescent initiates were forced to drink blood. Ritual rape or young
virgins have been part of shamanistic practices.

g. Modern practices - In some tribe’s rituals of Papua New Guinea, an elder "picks out a sharp
stick of cane and sticks it deep inside a boy's nostrils until he bleeds profusely into the stream
of a pool, an act greeted by loud Nar cries. After wards, when boys are initiated into puberty
and manhood, they are expected to perform fellatio on the elders. "Not all initiates will
participate in this ceremonial homosexual activity but, about five days later, several will have
To perform fellatio several times.
h. Witch-hunts - Witchcraft accusations against children in Africa. To this a day, witch hunts,
trials and accusations are still a real danger in some parts of the world. Trials result In
violence against men, women and children, including murder. In The Gambia, about 1,000
people accused of being witches were locked in government detention centers in March
2009, being beaten, forced to drink an unknown hallucinogenic potion, and confess to
witchcraft, according to Amnesty International. In Tanzania thousands of elderly Tanzanian
women have been strangled, knifed to death and burned alive over the last two decades
after being denounced as witches. Ritualistic abuse may also Involve children accused of,
and punished for, being purported witches in some Central African areas. A child may be
blamed for the illness of a relative, for example. Other examples include Ghana, where
witches were banished to refugee camps, and the beating and isolation of child witches in
Angola.

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 i. Psycho historical explanation – Psycho historical views on infanticide. A small number of
academics subscribe to the theory of psycho history and attribute the abusive rituals to the
psychopathological projection of the perpetrators, especially the parents.

This psycho historical model claims that practices of tribal societies sometimes included
incest and the sacrifice, mutilation, rape and torture of children, and that such activities were
culturally acceptable.

SPIRITUAL ABUSE INCLUDES:

a. Psychological abuse and emotional abuse - Physical abuse including physical injury (e.g.,
tatbir) and deprivation of sustenance.
b. Sexual abuse - Any act by deeds or words that shame or diminish the dignity of a person.
c. Intimidation and the requirement to submit to a spiritual authority without any right to dissent.
d. Unreasonable control of a person's basic right to exercise freewill in spiritual or natural
matters.
e. False accusations and repeated criticism by labeling a person as, for example, disobedient,
rebellious, lacking faith, demonized, apostate, an enemy of the church or of a deity.
f. Isolationism, separation, disenfranchisement or estrangement from family and friends
outside the group due to cult-religious or spiritual or indigenous beliefs.
g. Esotericism, hidden agendas and requirements revealed to members only as they
successfully advance through various stages of a faith.
h. Enforced practice of spiritualism, mysticism, or other ideologies peculiar to members of
that religion.
i. Financial exploitation or enslavement of adherents.

PERSPECTIVES OF RELIGIOUS RELATED CRIMES

1. Miyamoto Musashi - Aspire to be like Mt. Fuji, with such a broad and solid foundation that
the strongest earthquake cannot move you, and so tall that the greatest enterprises of
common men seem insignificant from your lofty perspective. With your mind as high as Mt
Fuji you can see all things clearly. And you can see all the forces that shape events; not just
the things happening near to you.
2. Macro social Evil: large-scale evil that overtakes whole societies’ and nations, and has done
so again and again since time immemorial.

When man contemplates history, as it is, he is forced to realize that he is in the iron grip of an
existence that seems to have no real care or concern for his pain and suffering. Over and over
again, the same sufferings tall upon mankind multiplied millions upon millions of times over
millennia. The totally or human suffering is a dreadful thing. The beast or arbitrary calamity has
always been with us. For as long as human hearts have pumped hot blood through their too-
fragile bodies and glowed with the inexpressible sweetness or life and yearning for all that is

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 good and right and loving, the sneering, stalking, drooling and Scheming beast of unconscious
evil has licked ifs lips in anticipation of ifs next feast of terror and suffering. Like;

3. Martha Stout, the Sociopath Next Door (2005)-Psychopaths, like anyone else, are born with
different basic likes and dislikes and desires, which is why some of them are doctors and
presidents and others are petty thieves or rapists.
4. William Krasner - Our society is fast becoming more materialistic, and success at any cost
is the credo of many businessmen. The typical psychopath thrives in this kind of environment
and is seen as a business "hero".

The truth, when twisted by good liars, can always make an innocent person look bad, especially
if the innocent person is honest and admits his mistakes. The psychopath is a predator. If we think
about the interactions of predators with their prey in the animal kingdom, we can come to some idea
of what is behind the "mask of sanity of the psychopath. Just as an animal predator will adopt all
kinds of stealthy functions in order to stalk their prey, cut them out of the herd, get close to them,
and reduce their resistance, so does the psychopath construct all kinds of elaborate camouflage
composed of words and appearances lies and manipulations in order fo "assimilate" their prey.

The psychopath enjoys making others suffer. Just as normal humans enjoy seeing other people
happy, or doing things that make other people smile, the psychopath enjoys the exact opposite

5. The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is now well known to have been a hoaxed attribution
to Jews. However, the contents of the Protocols are clearly not "hoaxed ideas" since a
reasonable assessment of the events in the United States over the past 50 years or so gives
ample evidence of their application in order to bring about the current Neoconservative
administration.

MEN BEHIND RELIGIOUS ABUSES: GLOBAL TERRORISM BY RELIGION

a. Pontious Pilate of Rome – during his reign, the citizens were bludgeoned to death, burned
at the stake or thrown into the lion's den it they vehemently refuse to accept the cross.

b. Stalin of Russia – thousands after thousands of skeletal remains were discovered in Russia
and its Satellite states, a grim reminder that anyone who was against the personality cult of
Stalin was doomed to death

c. Mao's Red Army of China – during its great purge, anything that looks churchy were
destroyed and vanished to extinction. Only those who pay homage and reverence to Mao's
thoughts find comfort and insurance of peace.

d. Adolf Hitler of Germany – subjugated and exterminated more than six million Jews into gas
chambers, this implies without an iota of doubt religious persecutions to satiate the Féuhrer's
mad-craze and genocidal dreams of building an "Arian race”.

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Cultism and Sectarianism

Cult – an organization brazed with spiritual or ethical belief.

Sect – groups which believe on unorthodox rituals crafted from established religious Ideology.

CULT, as it is suggestive of being the first stage of development into religion. It start from the
recruitment process facilitated through the technique of psychological coercion, and when the flocks
were enthralled under the magic spell of interpersonal influences of the charismatic leader, they
were financially, physically exploited and or sexually abused.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM CLAUSE OF THE PHILIPPINE CONSTITUTION AND OTHER LAWS; an

Instrument by Cults to hide their licit Activities

a. Art. 93, New Civil Code - No public official shall attempt to inquire into the truth of any religious
doctrine before issuance of authorization to solemnize marriage.

b. Art. 123, RPC, It is a criminal offense for any public officer or employee to disturb or prevent
religious ceremonies.

c. Art. 133, RPC, it is a felonious act for any person to perform an act notoriously offensive to
the feelings of the faithful in a place devoted for religious ceremony.

d. Art. 32, New Civil Code, Any public official or private individual, who obstruct, impede or
violates the right to religious freedom is liable for damages.

e. Art. 26, New Civil Code, any person who shall vex or humiliate another on account of his
religious belief, though does not constitute a criminal offense is liable for damages. These
provisions hinder any one or any public officer to inquire or verify authenticity of any group
fending to be a religion of their activities. Hence, if a cult presents itself as a religion, the state
is gagged to prosecute these illicit groups.

Global Event of Cultism

a. 1978, more than 900 hundred members of Jim's Jones Temple in Jonestown, Guyana drink
poison to death as part of their spiritual rituals and belief of mortality after death.

b. 1993, David Koresh. Self-styled Messiah of the Davidan's Branch gained the international
center stage when almost one hundred of their followers choose to die than to surrender to
US Government Agents in an armed confrontation at Waco, Texas.

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 c. Sun Myung Moon of Korea, known as "Moonies" a self-described religious order at Syanon
which gained world-wide adherents presently being looked-upon by the worlds political
leadership with alacrity and scorn as subterfuge of white - slavery and exploitation.

d. March 28, 1997, 39 victims were videotaped as part of the elaborate suicide rituals of the
"Heaven’s Gate Cult", it sends shockwaves to all capitals of the world. Marshall Applewhite,
the charismatic leader who died with the group, declared that their death is anchored on a
greater plan to join with space aliens, purportedly following the comet Hole-Bopp to earth.
They believe in death and resurrection as a condition precedent to joining the so- called
superior space beings.

e. Other religious groups sprouting in the guise of faith; like the; El Shaddai, Soldier of Christ,
Jesus is Lord, Rizalistas, Opus Dei, lglesia ni Cristo and so many others who are hiding in
the mantle of religious freedom. These hungry worlds of spiritual mooring and wealth,
notwithstanding the colossal blunders, these prophets of doom, self-styled apostles of biblical
apocalypse and televangelist with skyrocketing popularity are made the instruments of
politicians especially during elections. They are the main arm to win in both local and national
elections. (source: https://repository.uwc.ac.za/handle/10566/2939)

IV – Explore

This part contains the specific instructions on what are you going to do with the learning
resources.
Possible topics/questions:
1. What are the religious related crimes?
2. What is the nature of religious related crimes?
3. What are the types of religious abuse?

V – Discussion on Board

Accomplish the things embedded on this part because this will serve as your
recitation/participation.

For the online learners: Check our Facebook messenger group chat and wait for
the meeting code and password of our Google meeting. Also, in our Google meeting,
the topic will be discussed briefly to enlighten your queries and questions.

For the offline learners. You may share your thoughts in a form of a short paragraph
VI – Post Competency
on our chat group on Facebook messenger.
Checklist

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Essay: 25 points

Define the following question:

PERSPECTIVE OF RELIGIOUS RELATED CRIMES
1. Miyambo Musashi
2. Macro social Evil
3. Martha Stout
4. William Krasner
5. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

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