how many have Muslim inovlvement? This is not meant to be a GD question, although one might jump to (incorrect) conclusions about the motivations of the poster.
I had read about a year ago that the numbers were something like 23 out of 28. Just wondering if anyone has the facts.
Thanks.
You’ll get a differet number of “ongoing wars” from different source, but this one says there are currently 30. Of those, my simple research shows that 14 essentially involve one Muslim faction against a non-muslim faction. They are:
Afghanistan, Algeria, Chechnya, Indonesia (Aceh), Indonesia (Molucche-Sulawesi), Iraq, Israel - Palestine, Ivory Coast, Kashmir (India-Pakistan), Nigeria, Philippines, Senegal, Sudan, and Uganda
The other wars where neither of the principle parties are Muslim:
Burundi, Colombia, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea - Ethiopia, Ethiopia, Indonesia (Western Papua), Mexico (Chiapas), Northern Ireland (Great Britain), Peru, Rwanda, Salomon Islands, Somalia, Spain (The Basque country), Sri Lanka, Tibet (China)
Hmmm… Eritrea is majority Muslim and Ethiopia is about 50%. I’m not sure what’s going on in Western Papua, but Indonesia is majority Muslim as well. Somalia is nearly 100% Muslim.
I doubt you’ll be able to come up with a good definition or criteria for “war” that satisfies everyone, but I can’t imagine anyone classifying Northern Ireland as an “ongoing war.” Certainly fewer deaths in that “war” in the last few years than in the American war against fanatic militias and religious separatists (Waco, Oklahoma City, Ruby Ridge, etc.). Sendero Luminoso in Peru has been largely reduced to a nuisance as well. And now that the Madrid train attacks have been ruled to be Al Qaeda, not ETA, I’m having a hell of a time thinking of that as an ongoing war either.
The war between Eritrea and Ethiopa is between two predominantly Muslim countries, and my criteria was instances where Muslims and non-Muslims were in conflict. This is not an idealogical battle but a dispute over where the border between the two states should be.
Similarly, the conflicts in Western Papau and in Somalia are between a Muslim government and Muslim rebels.
Isn’t this exactly the situation in Algeria too, and also in Aceh? And if you are separating ideological conflict from border dispute or non-religiously motivated rebellion, then I don’t see why Kashmir should be counted in ‘Muslim’ wars. In Senegal and the much larger Uganda conflict, the war is specifically between christian fundamentalists and rather moderate muslim state. Ivory Coast civil war really doesn’t have any religious base as far as I know. And neither does Chechnyan war, which is essentially a fight for independence against Russian oppression. However now that Russians have destroyed most of the country the few rebels still left have started to get help from fundamentalist islamic organizations, which has led to some terrorist strikes and even further misery for Chechen populace so I guess it could now be counted as a muslim conflict. Also, apart from ones mentioned above there’s enough continuous violence in of Burma (Myanmar) to add it in the list of ongoing wars.
Actually many of the rebels in Irian Jaya are Christians/animists if my memory serves.
Also Afghanistan. If you are trying to seperate out conflicts based ideological vs. non-ideological a number of these cases are equivocal or mixed beyond those that Eurograff cites. In the Sudan the war against the mostly Christian and animist south is currently less active than the conflict with Darfur in the west, where the population is overwhelmingly Muslim ( the conflict essentially is ethnic and started when pastoral Arabs moving south due to drought disturbed the cropland of settled Fur and other peoples ). While the Abu Sayyaf group in the Phillipines are genuine Islamists, the larger and much older MILF traditionally aren’t, really - their dispute with the central government is really more just genuine regional separatism, based on their very late conquest by the Spanish and long history apartt from the rest of that island chain ( not to mention the Marxist NPA which of course have nothing to do with Islam ). In Nigeria religion often is a veneer over ethnic conflict.
Actually Uganda is majority Christian. There are two major insurgencies there ( and a couple of minor ones - fun place, Uganda ), one by the group you mentioned, the LRA, which is indeed a nutty brand of quasi-Christian - they seem to be truly batshit crazy. The other is by the ADF who claim to be fundamentalist Muslims struggling for Muslim rights ( however they seem to include an amalgam of several old insurgent groups from Rwanda and Uganda and ex-soldiers from the DRC - claims aside they seem to be as much a criminal enterprise as an ideological militia ).
But like Opus1 I have to question the status of some of these “wars”. Tibet for example hardly seems to qualify, whereas as Eurograff noted much more violent Burma wasn’t mentioned. Thailand has a Muslim insurgency in its south ( and non-Muslim insurgencies elsewhere ). India has always had troubles in tribal areas like Nagaland and Mizoram. The Chittagong rebellion seems to have ended in Bangladesh, but there are still Maoist rebels around. Ditto for Nepal. Yeah, I’m not crazy about that list. But then I guess you can nitpick anything if you try hard enough :).
A very large percentage of the world’s population is Muslim.
Actually, no.
20-ish percent of the world’s population in Muslim, and you say that is not a large percentage? It is not a majority, but it is closing in on a plurality.
Would it be a reasonable argument that poor or unstable countries/regions are more prone to conflict? And that muslims make up a larger proportion in many of these regions?
perhaps it could be said they have a lot less to lose with all out war, and everything to gain (in their minds). However a war with two large military based countries now days would result in huge civilian and military casualities, even if Nuclear weapons weren’t used. Even some of Arab nations realise how much there is to lose; thus leave Israel alone.
Poor countries also tend to have a weaker central government. This might entice Guerillas to have a go at claiming the power; while nobody would dream of it in any western country. Poorer countries once again have lower litreacy and less access to media, easier to keep them in the dark about whats going on.
As for hard statistics though, I have none, sorry 