The relationship between religion and violence has received new attention in the last couple of decades, particularly as the. demise of the bipolar world has led to debate about whether the resurgence in nationalisms are necessarily associated with religious divisions (Huntington; Rashid). At the same time, postcolonial writers such as Edward Said and .Richard King have been reassessing the relationships between the west and the "east," as constructed by Europeans and Americans. Such reassessments naturally precipitate the question of how the sacred texts of various religions view violence and its justification.