I was listening to a rabbi speak recently and he asserted that the primary reason why religious conflict exists is not because of inherent differences in the doctrines of those religions, but rather a product of politicians using religion to obtain or hold onto power.
One broad yet clear example IMO is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Most people view this as a Jewish vs Muslim conflict, when really, religion just happens to be a primary characteristic by which the sides of the conflict can readily be differentiated from one another, and not actually the cause of the conflict. The real conflict is about politics and land use–those who think that the Israeli state is imperialism and those who think that it is a fair use of the land. (Oversimplification, obviously.)
Some other good examples are in medieval Spain over many centuries when Jews, Christians, and Muslims often lived side by side in relative peace, but it all deteriorated once Al-Andalus broke down into smaller kingdoms and the political leaders started leveraging the faiths against each other to conquer or defend land.
There are a lot of really broad obvious examples, but when trying to discuss this topic I’m at a loss to give specific examples to illustrate the point. The primary one I come up with is the Bush administration using post-9/11 anti-Muslim sentiment to rally support for his actions against Saddam Hussein and Iraq–a secular leader and a country which had no involvement in 9/11 but which was viewed by many American as just another Muslim country and therefore one of “them” and easy to vilify.
What are some other specific examples? And do you agree that politics, rather than the different beliefs of the religions, is the driving force behind the animosity and conflict between religions? Specifically Judeo/Christian vs Muslim relations? If politics were left out of it, would most people be content to live and let live? And do you think that it would ever be possible to remove politics from religion? I know that Islam especially has a sort of built-in political angle with Sharia law and so on…
Catholicism versus Protestantism could probably be discussed in terms of wanting to rid oneself of the influence of the Pope, but it’s probably the largest scale battle over truly doctrinal issues. There have probably been doctrinal battles on the individual level, but I’d agree that it’s hard for it to rise above the individual level unless there’s some sort of politics there.
Ultimately it’s all Us versus Them. That the boundaries sometimes fall on religious boundaries is fairly random.
For Christianity vs Islam, you could look at Nigeria, where the north is Islamic and the south Christian. Then there’s Indonesia where there are Muslim vs Christian fights - paging Siam Sam.
Both; neither. Sometimes it’s politics; sometimes it’s some belief or other ( “The Jews killed Christ” comes to mind ); and sometimes it’s not any specific beliefs, but the simple fact that the other religion has any beliefs that are different from the One True Way. And, quite often it’s mixed; the fact that America had political reasons for hostility for the Soviet Union doesn’t magically eliminate all the hatred that was due to it’s godlessness, or due to religious objections to it’s rejection of capitalism.
Really, the claim that religion is never the cause of conflict simply makes no sense, given all the calls for forced conversion, the killing of infidels, and the condemnation of this and that belief. It’s simply an example of the standard religious apologist bit where anything bad done in religion’s name is blamed on something else. Politics, money, human nature; anything but religion. Oddly enough, the same isn’t done when it comes to giving religion credit for good things; THEN religion is suddenly a major motivation for people’s behavior.
Which is like the Sunni-Shi’a conflict in Iraq: They’re not actually fighting over matters of doctrine. Rather, their religious identities have evolved into ethnic identities. An Irish Protestant who converts to Buddhism will remain an Irish Protestant in some sense until the day he dies.
Ok, but who made that claim? I certainly didn’t. My claim is that most doctrinal difference between religions would not have caused the large-scale conflicts that we see in the world throughout history, without the addition of politics. That is, I may disagree with your views, but I’m unlikely to form an army and go to war with everyone who agrees with you without someone leveraging our religious differences for political reasons. The small-scale conflicts are probably almost *all *over religious differences, and those would happen regardless, the same as people getting into conflicts over any beliefs. It’s the large-scale stuff that I’m talking about. I don’t think that most of that would happen without politics (and by “politics” I’m including things like invading to capture land, etc.)
That sounds like the standard “You can’t blame religion, the problem is that humans are Evil Scum” defense of religion.
I seriously doubt that; it seems unlikely that it’s a coincidence that nations dominated by religions that believe in spreading The Word by force end up fighting politically driven wars that just happen to end up with other nations converted by force.
I regard this line of argument as revisionist history more than anything. Conversion by the sword isn’t supposed to be openly admired anymore, so people living in countries that were converted that way pretend that it was just a coincidence that political leaders did what their religion demanded they do.
There’s also the fact that the more religion and politics become intertwined, the less meaningful any distinction between them is. If a medieval Pope has someone killed for defying him, it’s likely both religious and political. Not as two seperate motivations, but as one because the two are one.
It’s not a defense of religion any more than admitting that guns can kill people is an attack on gun ownership. Reality != defense/attack. There’s a reason it’s a standard.
Really? I don’t know about Iraq, but in Pakistan, where taliban and Wahabi inspired groups have targeted Shi’as it is definitely over matters of doctrine. They claim that the Shi’as are apostate, and that is why it is okay to kill them. In most cases, you cannot distinguish between Shi’a and Sunni in those areas by language or ethnic group. They may be tribal differences, but the Taliban and the Wahabis (Al-Quaeeda types) transcend the tribes.
Some sects within Sunni Islam definitely believe that Shi’as are not “true” Muslims for doctrinal reasons. They regard the various Imams of Shi’a sects as pretenders to prophethood, and therefore in violation of one of the basic tenets of Islam - the finality of the prophethood of Mohammed.
shrug all I can say is that I guess you didn’t understand my point. Your summary of my point being that “religion is never the cause of conflict” leads me to believe you don’t have much interest in actually understanding my point, but rather that you have your own agenda you want to argue about and you’re likely to intentionally misunderstand anything I say so that you can argue your side against a straw man. (I could be wrong, surely, but that’s how it comes across.)
The idea of me “defending” religion is hilarious, though. I can’t think of anyone who hates religion more than me. I think religion is inherently evil. I just think that most people wouldn’t fight violently over it if politicians/governments didn’t manipulate it for their agendas.
True. And also, religious leaders can manipulate things for political reasons. I know that my mom’s church tries to influence its congregation on voting, for example. She got kicked out of the choir back in the '80s for wearing a button on her jacket that supported a Democratic candidate.
This is where you get into very very murky water. I am by no means a religious scholar. But all of the reading I have done and all of the discussions I have had are that the major religions all recognise each other. Those that don’t specifically recognise (I am thinking budhism here) don’t give two hoots about other religions.
I know that some Islamic writings recognise Chirstians as “people of the book”, in essence “cousins in religion”.
This being the case, those (whether from within or without the religion) exhort “conversion by the sword” are either delusional or using it as a cover for a naked power grab. It is a simple marketing ploy (the same way Schlub used Weapons of Mass Destruction as a marketing ploy)
The nature of the question assumes that there actually is a difference between religious and political authority. That’s been true in Christian civilization. It hasn’t always been true elsewhere. In Islamic civilization, for most of its history, there was no such divide. At the time when Muslims were conquering Arabia, attacking Persia, attacking the Byzantine Empire, and conquering North Africa and Central Asia there was no secular authority to speak of, so the question is moot with regard to that part of history.
In Christian Europe there are certainly examples that would support the hypothesis. Anyone who’s studied the history of the Middle Ages knows of the many attempts by the kings of Germany and France to control the papacy and the bishops. However, the wars started by those kings aren’t what some people associate with religious violence. The things that are called religious violence, such as witch hunts and anti-semitic riots, typically occurred whenever the power of the Church was weakest. For example, after the plague swept Europe in 1349-52, the Church lost most of its ability to exert authority, and the result was a mass outbreak of violence. The same was repeated with each ensuing outbreak of plague. In fact, the Church authorities usually did as much as possible to contain the spread of violence. For example, during anti-semitic riots, Jews were frequently sheltered in churches.
In Iraq, where Shi’a Islam started, Shi’ites are in the majority. The Ottoman Empire was officially Sunni and favored Sunnis for official positions; they became the social elite and remained so after independence (Hussein was Sunni) until the U.S. invasion. In, fact, I remember reading around the time of the first post-invasion elections, most Iraqi Sunnis actually thought all along that they were the numerical majority in the country, and were astonished to learn that they weren’t. So, I think the situation has more in common with Ireland than Pakistan – more an ethnocultural conflict and a class conflict than a doctrinal conflict.
The question boils down to; are those politicans true believers? We can look at them specifically, but in general, if religious differences are enough to convince the masses, surely even if the politicians themselves are faking it then that’s enough to show that there are such differences? I mean, if President Liar goes out and convinces 100 people that so-and-so are evil because of their religion, believing not a word of it himself and simply trying to stay in power, then we can’t use him to show there are significant religious difference - but surely we can use those 100 people, who apparently are quite convinced?
I really think you’re going too far by assigning such a period of violence to the Church losing the ability to exert authority. It’s not like there weren’t other widespread changes at the time - say, for instance, a huge amount of people dying from plague.
And during anti-semitic riots, Jews were attacked for their religious leanings by those who believed otherwise. That doesn’t support the hypothesis at all - it stands rather firmly against it, Church authorities not being the only Christians at the time.
Cairo Carol could probably tell you more about Indonesia than I could. But in Thailand, we have Muslim versus Buddhist. Our deep South has been undergoing a Muslim insurrection for several years now, with 3000+ killed to date. That area, which is Muslim-majority, speaks the Maly dialect of Yawi and borders the Muslim country of Malaysia, has always been treated as third class by the Bangkok-based government.
Uprisings seem to occur once a generation, but in recent times they were usually communist in nature. I still recall some of the communist strife of the 1980s. Still, anything against the Buddhists must be good is the way of thought among many down there, so the communist movement seemed to include a lot of Muslims. Today, it’s definitely religious in nature, and Jemaah Islamiya, the local arm of al Qaeda, is involved. You could argue it’s political to a certain extent, but the religious element has never been this strong.