Whenever you see people using religion to justify violence, they are also typically using some alleged injustice to justify their violence. This is how those committing violent acts are most easily able to tell themselves that they are doing good -- and indeed, even in secular contexts we are more willing to accept the use of violence in order to stop or to rectify some great injustice.
The problem is, though, that the alleged injustices that people are using religious violence to stop are too often no injustice at all.
Ricky:
There are plenty of cases of religious violence where the perceived injustice isn't really an injustice. Examples include honor killings and violence against gays, abortion providers, those who draw pictures of Muhammad, those who criticize Islam, and (as P. Smith pointed out) those who believe differently.
With violence against abortion providers, the task is showing perpetrators that their definition of personhood is a religious opinion, not a scientific fact (as I once believed). With the other cases, the perpetrators must be shown that if there are no victims, then there is no injustice, notwithstanding any condemnations from their god.
However, with the sensitivity of men over what they perceive as their honor, talk about devaluation of heterosexual marriage, and fears that their god will punish everyone for the actions of a few, the hard part may be convincing these people that they have not, in fact, been victimized.
[original post]
In many Christian churches, and probably most conservative evangelical churches, people are taught that they should expect to be persecuted for their beliefs. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as believers see "persecution" at every possible slight and even at every failure of others to be respectful or deferential.
Thus many Christians in America do see themselves as perpetual victims, even though white Christians hold most of the power -- political, social, cultural, and economic -- in America. It's an amazing example of how ideology can trump facts, of how obvious, verifiable facts in the real world can be completely dismissed or ignored in order to preserve some comforting ideology.
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