Geography & History of a Holy City
Map of Jerusalem's Old City and the Creation of Illusory Scarcity
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Jerusalem is one of the most important cities in the world - not because it controls access to any vital minerals, oil, precious metals, or anything else of intrinsic value. Intead, it controls access to something that exists wholly in the minds of human beings and is sustained solely by the activity of religious organizations: access to holy sites and "holiness" itself. This is why Jerusalem is the central focus of so much religious violence - either as the location where the violence occurs, or the starting point from which violence is launched.
The geography, history, and demographics of Jerusalem are all vital to understanding the nature of religious violence both contemporary and historical. Critics of religion and religious thus need to be more familiar with Jerusalem itself in order for their critiques and analysis to be both more effective and more accurate. The Old City Jerusalem depicted here covers about 220 acres (one square kilometer). The walls were built during the reign of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566). Work began in 1537 and was completed in 1541.
People are more likely to fight, and to fight more brutally, when some scarce resource is at stake. Usually the resource is genuine (food, water, land), but sometimes it's not -- and this is where religion comes into play. Religions create scarce resources where no genuine scarcity exists, and this induces people to fight over them. A religion might preach peace, love, and harmony, but once it establishes a textual canon or sacred site which only some have privileged access to, it also establishes an illusory "scarcity" which eventually causes people to fight.
This may not be the intent of religious leaders, but it's an inevitable outgrowth of what they are doing - and one which they themselves probably aren't quite aware of. Insofar as scarcity is a genuine incitement to violence, then the creation of new scarcities - even if they are not real - will plausibly lead to violence at some point. Scarcity incites people to fight in order to gain access to and/or control over a resource for their own benefit. People who believe that some site, building, or city is "holy" will surely fight to gain or retain control over it and thus ensure their own religious purity, religious power, or personal holiness.
Usually, this involves restricting or denying access to outsiders - a frequent problem with the history of Jerusalem. The "holiness" of a site appears to be depleted when everyone always has completely equal and unfettered access. Restricting access thus makes a site more precious and thus more holy. Jews revolted against the Romans when they were denied religious use of their holy sites. Reports of harassment of pilgrims were a popular means for encouraging people to join the Crusades. At the Western Wall, male and female Jews are segregated so that the former aren't "polluted" by the latter. Also today, religious Jews and Muslims seek to deny access to Jerusalem to gays - especially gays who want to march on behalf of gay rights.
A prominent feature of Jerusalem's Old City is the fact that it is divided into four neighborhoods or "quarters" - Jewish Quarter, Muslim Quarter, Christian Quarter and the Armenian Quarter. The very geography of Jerusalem is thus one of religious apartheid - separation and estrangement of so-called "peaceful" religions is built into the very fabric and architecture of Jerusalem. The religious division of Jerusalem is created by the intersection of two main roads: the Via Dolorosa running west to east from the Jaffa Gate to St. Stephen's Gate and the Ha-Yehudim running south to north from the Damascus Gate to the Zion Gate.
The Via Dolorosa is famous in Christianity for being the road along which Jesus carried his cross; thus one of the central events in Christianity is inextricably linked to Jerusalem's religious apartheid. Jesus supposedly carried his cross and was crucified to pay for the sins of humanity, but among those sins would surely be the separation and division along religious lines - division which ultimately fuels the religious hatred and violence which plague the world today. Thus far, I haven't seen or heard any Christians object to this situation.
It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that if cities could be regarded as much less "holy" than they currently are, then the result would be much less religious violence overall. Obviously not all religious violence would end if Jersualem and other places came to be seen as just regular towns, but it would make a real difference. People would no longer feel any need to protect a "holy" territory that entailed denying equal access to treatment to those of the "wrong" religion, politics, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
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