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with equal alacrity by people on the left and on the right, by religious liberals as well asreligious conservatives.The threat of violence, it is believed, is alone able to deter aggressors. It secured usforty‐five years of a balance of terror. We learned to trust the Bomb to grant us peace 60 .As people of faith around the world grapple with the questions of violence, weneed to confess right at the start that religion has spurred on the blood‐letting. If we areever to renounce our violence and adopt the way of nonviolence, the religions of theworld need to repent of their complicity in war and injustice and reject every connection,approval and legitimation of violence.From the crusades of the Middle Ages to the invocations for protection by religiousleaders on all sides in every nation during the 1991 Gulf war, promoting violencehas been an integral part of religious life. We need to recognize our addiction to violence,and the heresy and blasphemy of such complicity, and make a complete aboutface. Such a conversion will cost not only millions in contributions and dramaticdeclines in attendance of religious services, but possibly even some lives.But it will be the beginning of an authenticity that we all long for deep down. Therecognition and rejection of our religious violence will, more than anything, bring allthe religions of the world back to new and greater life.8. Justification of violenceThe question to be answered here is: “Is there such a thing as ‘good violence’?”Gandhi once said ‘I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the goodis only temporary, the evil it does is permanent.’ However, there are many reasonspeople use to justify the application of violence. Some justifications for using violenceand possible alternatives or ways towards a solution are listed below:Self-defenceSelf defence means using violence in defence for survival in situations where there isdanger of harm to one’s own life. An alternative could be acquiring non‐violentmeans to defend oneself.Lack of controlLack of control describes someone lacking control over her/his action that mightharm another person. In other words, the aggressive behaviour of someone againstme is the reason for my violent re‐action. This explanation shows how the individual(me) rejects responsibility for their own violent action. A way out of this could184 V. V I O L E N C E