To what extent is religion a cause of conflict and violence?
Formative essay for first year's optional module Nine Ideas in International Security
Submitted at The University of Warwick on January 14, 2015
Words: 2589 Grade: 65
To S. Huntington in ‘Clash of Civilisations’, the main source of conflict in the world will be cultural, including religious beliefs, and civilizations will clash because of their differences in terms of history, language, culture, tradition and most importantly, religion.Thus, he emphasizes the conflictual aspect of religion. Originally, ‘religion’ comes from Latin and, according to Cicero, derived from regelere which means going through again. It also derives from religere, meaning « to bind fast ». Another origin of religion may also be religiens, which refers to the state of advocating, worshipping and the act of taking care. Officially, religion refers to ‘a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.’ It was predicted and fully agreed by thinkers such as Sigmund Freud or Emile Durkheim, since the beginning of the 19th century, that religion’s importance and influence would decrease in the context of the industrial revolutions. Religion has, however, certainly not been in decline but has become the forefront of international relations, especially after the events of 9/11. In fact, the 20th century has known spectacular religious tensions and violence, with the surge of fundamentalist movements, extremist ideologies, including extremist Islamic parties in the Middle East and terrorism, and the spread of ethno-religious conflicts affecting international relations.
Hence, it may be discussed to what extent is religion a cause of conflict and violence.
We will firstly deal with historical evidence of religion, and more specifically the monotheistic one, having been by definition, complex and confrontational across the centuries. Then, we shall focus on religion and its intimate link to politics, leading to conflict. Lastly, we will discuss the current context of religion with the rise of extremist ideologies, in particular in the Middle-East and failed states, and the serious questioning of religion in developed countries.
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Historically, religious conflicts were based on ideological divisions and on the non-recognition of differing faiths. Thus, religion, by advocating and claiming its own philosophy, tended to reject the existence of others. This is a more specific case for monotheistic religions, defined as a religion based in the existence of one god or in the oneness of God. To the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, it refers to ‘the belief in one personal and transcendent God’. Monotheistic religions include the main three Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, but also Caodaiism, Deism, Sikhism. Unlike polytheistic religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, believing in several gods, and thus accepting different visions, monotheistic ones base their convictions on the rejection of others, leading to conflicts, from simple tensions to serious religions wars. One obvious example is the Thirty Years’ war from 1618 to 1648, one of the most destructive and longest war in Europe, which ended with the Peace of Westphalia (1648), a series of peace treaties, establishing the basis of a national self-determination and separating the Church and the State. The war has both political and religious dimension, to the extent that the war opposed Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists. The treaties marked religiously, with the recognition and tolerance of three confessions, allowing the Princes to impose the religion they wished. Catholicism lost its prestige whereas Protestantism gained in influence. In A letter Concerning Toleration, John Lockes advocates acceptance of every religion, in order to build a more pluralistic and tolerant world.
The apprehension of religion passes by the understanding of its roots, that is to say its widespread ideology, its ‘code of conduct’ and finally, its printed foundation. Many authors and thinkers have criticized the ideology of religion, gapping in credibility. This is claimed by Christopher Hitchens in ‘God Is Not Great’, who questions the Abrahamic religions. In an interview from Truthdig in 2007 between Jon Wiener and Hitchens, he declares that he blames religion for world violence. To him, holy texts claim racist, slavery policies and advocate intolerance towards things such as homosexuality, abortion: contemporary universal issues. In ‘God Is Not Great’, Hitchens discredits the 10 Commandments, comparing them to dictatorship rules. The author takes religion responsible for conflicts and deeply blames holy texts of the Abrahamic religions. Another view is the one from the French General Georges Lavernhe, who considers that religion’s ideology is responsible for violence rather than religion itself. To his statement, religion, faith and ideology are to be distinguished. He discusses the confrontational impact of ideology when different and opposing ideological systems are confronted, for instance between Muslims and Jewish. To M.D.Toft in ‘Getting religion, the puzzling case of Islam and civil war’, monotheistic religions cause conflict because of the code of conduct it imposes. She argues that they importantly limit the conduct of believers as well as discounting their physical survival. Furthermore, they are being uncompromising and don’t adapt with time. The fact that those ‘code of conducts’ are dictated in sacred texts means that it is complex to empirically verify its validity, according to Juergensmeyer in ‘Terror in the Mind of God’.
There is empirical historical evidence that monotheistic religions tend not to tolerate others and generate tensions, leading to religions wars. I will now focus on three examples, showing different religious conflicts in three different regions: Europe, Asia and Africa. The first religious event I picked is the Yugoslavian War, which occurred at the end of the nineties. The United States intervened by the means of the NATO with air strikes after Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbian forces uproot the population and embarked on a plan of an ethnic cleansing of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian population. Indeed, the conflict takes a religious dimension to the extent that the war was declared because of religious divisions: orthodox Serbs, Catholics Croats and Muslims Bosnians. A.J. Rubin said in ‘Religious Identity at the Heart of the Balkan War’ in the LA Times that ‘...religious identity has been present constantly in the antagonisms that have fragmented the Balkans for centuries - setting neighbor against neighbor…’. The Yugoslavian conflict was fueled by religious (and ethnic) differences. After the US intervention, war was ended. Another example of religious war is the Sri Lankan civil war from 1989 to 2009, led by the Hindu Tamil minority and the Buddhist Sinhalese majority. Another example could be the Rwandan genocide in 1994 occurring between Hutus and Tutsi which was based on ethno-religious cleavages and almost killed 800.000 people. These conflicts were declared because of religious divisions and of the non-recognition of each religion’s authority, leading to very destructive conflicts. Therefore, religion’s aim goal is to give philosophical answers to the existence of life, and so generates goodness in the world.
Thus, there is historical evidence that religion, particularly monotheistic one, causes conflict and violence to the extent that, by definition, it claims and spreads its proper ideology and philosophy, and thus is being intolerant towards others, leading to massive and destructive conflicts, deeply affecting international affairs.
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The way politics and religion are linked is undeniable, in so far as religion takes part in the identical pursuit of every human being and when religious conflicts occur, the whole state is affected, so are politics. Moreover, it is not innocuous if Politics, Religion and Society now constitute an academic discipline and a degree programme in many universities. Nowadays, in liberal democracies, Rawls argued in 1971 that the state should tolerate all religions and not impose only one, as the state is supposed to represent all of the people composing its demos, separating Church and State. When states don’t recognize all religions, political and religious conflicts can occur. Church and State and Religion and Politics have to be distinguished. Church, as for all religious organizations, and state, are separated, with the guarantee of the free exercise of any religion. In that sense, the state is secular. Nevertheless, conflicts can occur between authority and activity because Church and State are in principle separated, but in practice, they tend to overlap. According to K.Cauthen in ‘Church and State, Politics and Religion’ tensions arise in two contexts : when there is an attempt of steering between not establishing a religion and allowing its free exercise. One particular tension is the one concerning prayers in US public schools, in so far such a policy imposes a religion, overlapping Church and State. The other context refers to when ‘religious belief and practice conflict with secular law’. Cauthen uses the example of the Mormon custom of advocating polygamy, which was forbidden by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1878. In such contexts, and when religious beliefs/practice overlap state policies, tensions and conflicts arise. Thus, religious organizations representing religion can cause conflict and violence.
The relationship between religion and politics is another issue, as religion politically impacts citizens, to the extent that religion has moral and social implications, affecting society. Furthermore, religion deals with political issues such as homosexuality, abortion, banished by Christian religion. Again, the idea of non-tolerance towards those political issues, which are accepted and totally open in most developed countries, can lead to conflicts.
Moreover, the link between religion and politics can be seen differently: some political conflicts tend to justify interventions or wars in the name of religion. Religion is used to justified political conflicts. There is empirical evidence of such a fact. Therefore, I am focusing on two main political conflicts that can be considered as religiously-used conflicts. The first one, and still occurring, is the India-Pakistani or Kashmir conflict, opposing Hindus against Pakistanis. Kashmir, since the independence of India in 1947, belongs to India but, as a strategic position, it represents an interest for both countries. Above religious divisions, the conflict is political and strategically territorial. Another conflict was the Iraqi-Iranian war that occurred from the eighties to 1988, ended by United Nations’ naval intervention in the Gulf. Reasons of the war remain politically and religiously linked: whether the war is based on a regional rivalry between Iraqi and Iranian leaders who tried to establish their own primacy on the region, or on religious divisions between the Sunni Iraqi and the Shia Iranian. The first assumption is claimed by S.Hunter in ‘Sunni-Shia tensions are more about Politics, Power and Privilege and Theology’ who considers that the differences between Sunni and Shia are not huge, and are nowadays based on political differences and no longer theological ones. Their religious division is mainly due to economic, political and social cleavages. In an article from L’Express, P.Razoux answers why there are so many conflicts in the Middle-East. To him, the Iranian Islamist revolution of 1979 has shifted religious influence and established wars based on politics. Above religious and ideological: they are political. Religion there takes an instrumental dimension. Three contemporary conflicts justify this thesis according to him: religious conflict between Orthodox Israelis and Hamas’ Palestinian in the Israeli-Palestinian war, Iraqi-Iranian confrontation between the Sunni and the Shia peoples, and the current Djihad of the ISIS which justifies its conflict on a holy war (the Caliphate against Christian and Shia peoples). Nevertheless, religion is, originally, a promotion of peace and tolerance.
Hence, religion can cause conflict and violence to the extent that there is an intimate relationship between politics and religion, and religion tends to be used to justify some political conflicts.
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Peter L. Burger quoted ‘The world today, with some exceptions...is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever.’ Indeed, religiosity is rising in a context of endless conflicts and violence and of a worldwide economic crisis especially in failed states. The religious participation is persisting more strongly in those states, as have observed Inglehart and Norris in ‘Sacred and Secular: religion and politics worldwide’. To them, religiosity is related to economic, social and political factors. R.Woodlock quoted ‘religion has been a major feature in some historical conflicts and the most recent wave of modern terrorism. Religion has taken on extra significance today because globalization is challenging and changing everything.’ In failed states, with poor economy, authoritarian regimes and limited freedom, citizens pursuit their identity and religiosity is extremely high, accompanied with extremist ideologies such as the ones of Al Qaeda or Al Aqmi. These can lead to conflict and violence.
Nevertheless, Western countries such as the EU are facing a decline in religious participation. This is empirically discussed in a table extracted from The Mannheim Eurobarometer Trend File which represents religious participation in the EU from 1970 to 1999. The most obvious example is France, where the rate of religious participation went from 23% in 1970 to 5% in 1999. This is related to the secularization thesis, referring to the belief that as societies progress, particularly through modernization, religion loses its authority in all aspects of social life and governance. In the West, new faiths have emerged, such as sectary ones (Mormons, Jehovah’s witness, Scientology Church in the US), and the rise of nationalism and patriotism since the end of WW2 have deeply marginalized religiosity.
The events of 9/11 have particularly spread extremist and fundamentalist doctrines. While terrorism means perpetrating violent acts intended to create terror in a political/religious/ideological goal, fundamentalism is defined, to Marsden’s definition, as the demand for a strict adherence to certain theological doctrines. Religious extremism refers to an ideology which is extreme compared to common moral standards, for instance in Islamic political and religious movements. These extremist movements, claiming Islamic law, constitute international terrorism according to S.Berstein and P.Milza in ‘History of the 20th century’. To them, Islamic terrorism is feed with leader’s ideological radicalism and their hate for the West. They aim at imposing Islamic extremist law, such as the Sharia law for Muslim women. Islam awakening, as they quote, is mainly due to ancestral traditional legacy which are in opposition with modernity and Western ideological and cultural constructions. This form of terrorism threatens society as it leads to violent conflicts and inspires islamic fanatics, who encourage youth to sacrifice themselves to God. A relevant example to that could be the events that occurred on January 7, 2015 in France, when three terrorists attacked Charlie Hebdo’s office, a French satirist newspaper, and killed 12 of them, because of sarcastic Prophet’s Muhammad cartoons they made. The event took a political dimension, as it was seen as an attack of freedom of press/expression. What happened perfectly fits in the idea of a rising extremist ideology, threatening peace and establishing political disorder, leading to destructive violence and conflicts
Thus, in a context of current economic, social and political crisis in the West, questioning ofits efficiency from failed states is established, leading to emerging extremist movements affecting religion’s primary goal and thus generating conflict and violence.
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Religion is a cause of conflict and violence to the extent that, historically, monotheistic religions, by refuting others’ existence, generate tensions leading to conflicts. Moreover, the way religion affects politics on the international scale is undeniable and religion is being ‘instrumentalized’ to justify political conflicts. To V.Hugueux, religious movements often intervene in the name of a God they constantly betray. Furthermore, our current context is being shifted by the powerful emergence of extremist ideologies, leading to numerous conflicts and tensions. Religion is nowadays drifting form its primal goal: teaching morality and advocating a way of apprehending the world surrounding us. The surge of atheist assumptions, disbelieving in a God, is a concrete example of that phenomenon.
Nevertheless, religion remains a huge source of identical understanding and its impact on people is undeniable, showing its incredible worldwide importance and influence.
References
Berstein S., and Milza, P., (2010), “Ideological crisis and new religiosities“ in ‘History of the 20th century’, 379-384.
Cauthen K., (1997), ’Church and State, Politics and Religion’.
Hitchens, C., (2007), ‘God Is Not Great: how religion poisons everything’, Twelve Books, London.
Hunter, S., ‘Sunni-Shia tensions are more about Politics, Power and Privilege and Theology’
Huntington, S. (1993), ‘Clash of Civilisations’, Foreign Affairs, 72: 22-49.
Inglehart and Norris (2004), ‘Sacred and Secular: religion and politics worldwide’, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Juergensmeyer, M., (2003), “Terror in the Mind of God: the global rise of religious violence”.
Locke, J. (1689),’A letter Concerning Toleration’,
Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
Rubin, A.J., (1999) ‘Religious Identity at the Heart of the Balkan War’ in the Los Angeles Times.
Toft, M.D., (2007), ’Getting religion, the puzzling case of Islam and civil war’ from Journal Article, International Security, 31(4): 97-131.
Wiener, J., Hitchens, C., (2007), “Christopher Hitchens: Religion Poisions Everything”, interview in Truthdig.
Woodlock, R., (2013), ’Doesn’t religion cause most of the conflict in the world?’ The Guardian