The Myth of Religious Violence _ Karen Armstrong _ World News _ the Guardian

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The myth of religious violence1286

The popular belief that religion is the cause of the world’s bloodiest conflicts is central to

our modern conviction that faith and politics should never mix. But the messy history of

their separation suggests it was never so simple

Karen Armstrong

Thursday 25 September 2014 06.00 BST

As we watch the fighters of the Islamic State (Isis) rampaging through the Middle

East, tearing apart the modern nation-states of Syria and Iraq created by

departing European colonialists, it may be difficult to believe we are living in the

21st century. The sight of throngs of terrified refugees and the savage and

indiscriminate violence is all too reminiscent of barbarian tribes sweeping away

the Roman empire, or the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan cutting a swath

through China, Anatolia, Russia and eastern Europe, devastating entire cities and

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massacring their inhabitants. Only the wearily familiar pictures of bombs falling

yet again on Middle Eastern cities and towns – this time dropped by the United

States and a few Arab allies – and the gloomy predictions that this may become

another Vietnam, remind us that this is indeed a very modern war.

The ferocious cruelty of these jihadist fighters, quoting the Qur’an as they behead

their hapless victims, raises another distinctly modern concern: the connection between religion and violence. The atrocities of Isis would seem to prove that

Sam Harris, one of the loudest voices of the “New Atheism”, was right to claim

that “most Muslims are utterly deranged by their religious faith”, and to conclude

that “religion itself produces a perverse solidarity that we must find some way to

undercut”. Many will agree with Richard Dawkins, who wrote in The God

Delusion that “only religious faith is a strong enough force to motivate such utter

madness in otherwise sane and decent people”. Even those who find these

statements too extreme may still believe, instinctively, that there is a violentessence inherent in religion, which inevitably radicalises any conflict – because

once combatants are convinced that God is on their side, compromise becomes

impossible and cruelty knows no bounds.

Despite the valiant attempts by Barack Obama and David Cameron to insist that

the lawless violence of Isis has nothing to do with Islam, many will disagree. They

may also feel exasperated. In the west, we learned from bitter experience that the

fanatical bigotry which religion seems always to unleash can only be contained by

the creation of a liberal state that separates politics and religion. Never again, we

believed, would these intolerant passions be allowed to intrude on political life.

But why, oh why, have Muslims found it impossible to arrive at this logical

solution to their current problems? Why do they cling with perverse obstinacy to

the obviously bad idea of theocracy? Why, in short, have they been unable to

enter the modern world? The answer must surely lie in their primitive and

atavistic religion.

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A Ukrainian soldier near the eastern Ukrainian town of Pervomaysk. Photograph: Photograph: Gleb

Garanich/Reuters

But perhaps we should ask, instead, how it came about that we in the west

developed our view of religion as a purely private pursuit, essentially separate

from all other human activities, and especially distinct from politics. After all,

warfare and violence have always been a feature of political life, and yet we alone

drew the conclusion that separating the church from the state was a prerequisite

for peace. Secularism has become so natural to us that we assume it emerged

organically, as a necessary condition of any society’s progress into modernity. Yet

it was in fact a distinct creation, which arose as a result of a peculiar

concatenation of historical circumstances; we may be mistaken to assume that it

would evolve in the same fashion in every culture in every part of the world.

We now take the secular state so much for granted that it is hard for us to

appreciate its novelty, since before the modern period, there were no “secular”institutions and no “secular” states in our sense of the word. Their creation

required the development of an entirely different understanding of religion, one

that was unique to the modern west. No other culture has had anything remotely

like it, and before the 18th century, it would have been incomprehensible even to

European Catholics. The words in other languages that we translate as “religion”

invariably refer to something vaguer, larger and more inclusive. The Arabic word

din signifies an entire way of life, and the Sanskrit dharma covers law, politics,


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and social institutions as well as piety. The Hebrew Bible has no abstract concept

of “religion”; and the Talmudic rabbis would have found it impossible to define

faith in a single word or formula, because the Talmud was expressly designed to

bring the whole of human life into the ambit of the sacred. The Oxford Classical

Dictionary firmly states: “No word in either Greek or Latin corresponds to the

English ‘religion’ or ‘religious’.” In fact, the only tradition that satisfies the

modern western criterion of religion as a purely private pursuit is Protestant

Christianity, which, like our western view of “religion”, was also a creation of the

early modern period.

Traditional spirituality did not urge people to retreat from political activity. The

prophets of Israel had harsh words for those who assiduously observed the

temple rituals but neglected the plight of the poor and oppressed. Jesus’s famous

maxim to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” was not a plea for the

separation of religion and politics. Nearly all the uprisings against Rome in first-century Palestine were inspired by the conviction that the Land of Israel and its

produce belonged to God, so that there was, therefore, precious little to “give

back” to Caesar. When Jesus overturned the money-changers’ tables in the

temple, he was not demanding a more spiritualised religion. For 500 years, the

temple had been an instrument of imperial control and the tribute for Rome was

stored there. Hence for Jesus it was a “den of thieves”. The bedrock message of

the Qur’an is that it is wrong to build a private fortune but good to share your

wealth in order to create a just, egalitarian and decent society. Gandhi wouldhave agreed that these were matters of sacred import: “Those who say that

religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.”

The myth of religious violence

Before the modern period, religion was not a separate activity, hermetically

sealed off from all others; rather, it permeated all human undertakings, including

economics, state-building, politics and warfare. Before 1700, it would have been

impossible for people to say where, for example, “politics” ended and “religion” began. The Crusades were certainly inspired by religious passion but they were

also deeply political: Pope Urban II let the knights of Christendom loose on the

Muslim world to extend the power of the church eastwards and create a papal

monarchy that would control Christian Europe. The Spanish inquisition was a

deeply flawed attempt to secure the internal order of Spain after a divisive civil

war, at a time when the nation feared an imminent attack by the Ottoman empire.

Similarly, the European wars of religion and the thirty years war were certainly


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exacerbated by the sectarian quarrels of Protestants and Catholics, but their

violence reflected the birth pangs of the modern nation-state.

Before the modern period, religion was not a separateactivity, it permeated all human undertakings

It was these European wars, in the 16th and 17th centuries, that helped create

what has been called “the myth of religious violence”. It was said that Protestants

and Catholics were so inflamed by the theological passions of the Reformation

that they butchered one another in senseless battles that killed 35% of the

population of central Europe. Yet while there is no doubt that the participants

certainly experienced these wars as a life-and-death religious struggle, this was

also a conflict between two sets of state-builders: the princes of Germany and theother kings of Europe were battling against the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V,

and his ambition to establish a trans-European hegemony modelled after the

Ottoman empire.

If the wars of religion had been solely motivated by sectarian bigotry, we should

not expect to have found Protestants and Catholics fighting on the same side, yet

in fact they often did so. Thus Catholic France repeatedly fought the Catholic

Habsburgs, who were regularly supported by some of the Protestant princes. Inthe French wars of religion (1562–98) and the thirty years war, combatants

crossed confessional lines so often that it was impossible to talk about solidly

“Catholic” or “Protestant” populations. These wars were neither “all about

religion” nor “all about politics”. Nor was it a question of the state simply “using”

religion for political ends. There was as yet no coherent way to divide religious

causes from social causes. People were fighting for different visions of society,

but they would not, and could not, have distinguished between religious and

temporal factors in these conflicts. Until the 18th century, dissociating the twowould have been like trying to take the gin out of a cocktail.

By the end of the thirty years war, Europeans had fought off the danger of

imperial rule. Henceforth Europe would be divided into smaller states, each

claiming sovereign power in its own territory, each supported by a professional

army and governed by a prince who aspired to absolute rule – a recipe, perhaps,

for chronic interstate warfare. New configurations of political power were

beginning to force the church into a subordinate role, a process that involved a


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fundamental reallocation of authority and resources from the ecclesiastical

establishment to the monarch. When the new word “secularisation” was coined

in the late 16th century, it originally referred to “the transfer of goods from the

possession of the church into that of the world”. This was a wholly new

experiment. It was not a question of the west discovering a natural law; rather,

secularisation was a contingent development. It took root in Europe in large part

because it mirrored the new structures of power that were pushing the churches

out of government.

A US army soldier shoots at Taliban fighters on the outskirts of Jellawar in the Arghandab Valley, Afghanistan.

Photograph: Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images

These developments required a new understanding of religion. It was provided

by Martin Luther, who was the first European to propose the separation of church

and state. Medieval Catholicism had been an essentially communal faith; most

people experienced the sacred by living in community. But for Luther, theChristian stood alone before his God, relying only upon his Bible. Luther’s acute

sense of human sinfulness led him, in the early 16th century, to advocate the

absolute states that would not become a political reality for another hundred

years. For Luther, the state’s prime duty was to restrain its wicked subjects by

force, “in the same way as a savage wild beast is bound with chains and ropes”.

The sovereign, independent state reflected this vision of the independent and

sovereign individual. Luther’s view of religion, as an essentially subjective and


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private quest over which the state had no jurisdiction, would be the foundation of

the modern secular ideal.

But Luther’s response to the peasants’ war in Germany in 1525, during the early

stages of the wars of religion, suggested that a secularised political theory would

not necessarily be a force for peace or democracy. The peasants, who were

resisting the centralising policies of the German princes – which deprived them of their traditional rights – were mercilessly slaughtered by the state. Luther

believed that they had committed the cardinal sin of mixing religion and politics:

suffering was their lot, and they should have turned the other cheek, and

accepted the loss of their lives and property. “A worldly kingdom,” he insisted,

“cannot exist without an inequality of persons, some being free, some

imprisoned, some lords, some subjects.” So, Luther commanded the princes, “Let

everyone who can, smite, slay and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that

nothing can be more poisoned, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel.”

Dawn of the liberal state

By the late 17th century, philosophers had devised a more urbane version of the

secular ideal. For John Locke it had become self-evident that “the church itself is

a thing absolutely separate and distinct from the commonwealth. The boundaries

on both sides are fixed and immovable.” The separation of religion and politics –

“perfectly and infinitely different from each other” – was, for Locke, written into

the very nature of things. But the liberal state was a radical innovation, just asrevolutionary as the market economy that was developing in the west and would

shortly transform the world. Because of the violent passions it aroused, Locke

insisted that the segregation of “religion” from government was “above all things

necessary” for the creation of a peaceful society.

Hence Locke was adamant that the liberal state could tolerate neither Catholics

nor Muslims, condemning their confusion of politics and religion as dangerously

perverse. Locke was a major advocate of the theory of natural human rights,

originally pioneered by the Renaissance humanists and given definition in the

first draft of the American Declaration of Independence as life, liberty and

property. But secularisation emerged at a time when Europe was beginning to

colonise the New World, and it would come to exert considerable influence on the

way the west viewed those it had colonised – much as in our own time, the

prevailing secular ideology perceives Muslim societies that seem incapable of

separating faith from politics to be irredeemably flawed.

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The reign of terror plunged France into an irrational bloodbath, in which 17,000 men, women and children wereexecuted

This introduced an inconsistency, since for the Renaissance humanists there

could be no question of extending these natural rights to the indigenous

inhabitants of the New World. Indeed, these peoples could justly be penalised for

failing to conform to European norms. In the 16th century, Alberico Gentili, a

professor of civil law at Oxford, argued that land that had not been exploited

agriculturally, as it was in Europe, was “empty” and that “the seizure of [such]

vacant places” should be “regarded as law of nature”. Locke agreed that the

native peoples had no right to life, liberty or property. The “kings” of America, he

decreed, had no legal right of ownership to their territory. He also endorsed a

master’s “Absolute, arbitrary, despotical power” over a slave, which included

“the power to kill him at any time”. The pioneers of secularism seemed to be

falling into the same old habits as their religious predecessors. Secularism was

designed to create a peaceful world order, but the church was so intricately

involved in the economic, political and cultural structures of society that the

secular order could only be established with a measure of violence. In North

America, where there was no entrenched aristocratic government, the

disestablishment of the various churches could be accomplished with relative

ease. But in France, the church could be dismantled only by an outright assault;

far from being experienced as a natural and essentially normative arrangement,

the separation of religion and politics could be experienced as traumatic and

terrifying.

During the French revolution, one of the first acts of the new national assembly

on November 2, 1789, was to confiscate all church property to pay off the

national debt: secularisation involved dispossession, humiliation andmarginalisation. This segued into outright violence during the September

massacres of 1792, when the mob fell upon the jails of Paris and slaughtered

between two and three thousand prisoners, many of them priests. Early in 1794,

four revolutionary armies were dispatched from Paris to quell an uprising in the

Vendée against the anti-Catholic policies of the regime. Their instructions were to

spare no one. At the end of the campaign, General François-Joseph Westermann

reportedly wrote to his superiors: “The Vendée no longer exists. I have crushed

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children beneath the hooves of our horses, and massacred the women … The

roads are littered with corpses.”

Ironically, no sooner had the revolutionaries rid themselves of one religion, than

they invented another. Their new gods were liberty, nature and the French

nation, which they worshipped in elaborate festivals choreographed by the artist

Jacques Louis David. The same year that the goddess of reason was enthroned onthe high altar of Notre Dame cathedral, the reign of terror plunged the new nation

into an irrational bloodbath, in which some 17,000 men, women and children

were executed by the state.

To die for one’s country

When Napoleon’s armies invaded Prussia in 1807, the philosopher Johann

Gottlieb Fichte similarly urged his countrymen to lay down their lives for the

Fatherland – a manifestation of the divine and the repository of the spiritualessence of the Volk. If we define the sacred as that for which we are prepared to

die, what Benedict Anderson called the “imagined community” of the nation had

come to replace God. It is now considered admirable to die for your country, but

not for your religion.

As the nation-state came into its own in the 19th century along with the

industrial revolution, its citizens had to be bound tightly together and mobilised

for industry. Modern communications enabled governments to create and

propagate a national ethos, and allowed states to intrude into the lives of their

citizens more than had ever been possible. Even if they spoke a different language

from their rulers, subjects now belonged to the “nation,” whether they liked it or

not. John Stuart Mill regarded this forcible integration as progress; it was surely

better for a Breton, “the half-savage remnant of past times”, to become a French

citizen than “sulk on his own rocks”. But in the late 19th century, the British

historian Lord Acton feared that the adulation of the national spirit that laid such

emphasis on ethnicity, culture and language, would penalise those who did not

fit the national norm: “According, therefore, to the degree of humanity and

civilisation in that dominant body which claims all the rights of the community,

the inferior races are exterminated or reduced to servitude, or put in a condition

of dependence.”

The Enlightenment philosophers had tried to counter the intolerance and bigotry

that they associated with “religion” by promoting the equality of all human

beings, together with democracy, human rights, and intellectual and political


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liberty, modern secular versions of ideals which had been promoted in a religious

idiom in the past. The structural injustice of the agrarian state, however, had

made it impossible to implement these ideals fully. The nation-state made these

noble aspirations practical necessities. More and more people had to be drawn

into the productive process and needed at least a modicum of education.

Eventually they would demand the right to participate in the decisions of

government. It was found by trial and error that those nations that democratised

forged ahead economically, while those that confined the benefits of modernity

to an elite fell behind. Innovation was essential to progress, so people had to be

allowed to think freely, unconstrained by the constraints of their class, guild or

church. Governments needed to exploit all their human resources, so outsiders,

such as Jews in Europe and Catholics in England and America, were brought into

the mainstream.

A candlelight vigil in 2007 at the Arlington West Memorial in Santa Barbara, California, to honour American

soldiers killed in the Iraq war. Photograph: Sipa Press/REX

Yet this toleration was only skin-deep, and as Lord Acton had predicted, an

intolerance of ethnic and cultural minorities would become the achilles heel of

the nation-state. Indeed, the ethnic minority would replace the heretic (who had

usually been protesting against the social order) as the object of resentment in the

new nation-state. Thomas Jefferson, one of the leading proponents of the

Enlightenment in the United States, instructed his secretary of war in 1807 that


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Native Americans were “backward peoples” who must either be “exterminated”

or driven “beyond our reach” to the other side of the Mississippi “with the beasts

of the forest”. The following year, Napoleon issued the “infamous decrees”,

ordering the Jews of France to take French names, privatise their faith, and

ensure that at least one in three marriages per family was with a gentile.

Increasingly, as national feeling became a supreme value, Jews would come to be

seen as rootless and cosmopolitan. In the late 19th century, there was an

explosion of antisemitism in Europe, which undoubtedly drew upon centuries of

Christian prejudice, but gave it a scientific rationale, claiming that Jews did not fit

the biological and genetic profile of the Volk, and should be eliminated from the

body politic as modern medicine cut out a cancer.

When secularisation was implemented in the developing world, it was

experienced as a profound disruption – just as it had originally been in Europe.

Because it usually came with colonial rule, it was seen as a foreign import andrejected as profoundly unnatural. In almost every region of the world where

secular governments have been established with a goal of separating religion and

politics, a counter-cultural movement has developed in response, determined to

bring religion back into public life. What we call “fundamentalism” has always

existed in a symbiotic relationship with a secularisation that is experienced as

cruel, violent and invasive. All too often an aggressive secularism has pushed

religion into a violent riposte. Every fundamentalist movement that I have

studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is rooted in a profound fear of annihilation, convinced that the liberal or secular establishment is determined to

destroy their way of life. This has been tragically apparent in the Middle East.

Very often modernising rulers have embodied secularism at its very worst and

have made it unpalatable to their subjects. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded

the secular republic of Turkey in 1918, is often admired in the west as an

enlightened Muslim leader, but for many in the Middle East he epitomised the

cruelty of secular nationalism. He hated Islam, describing it as a “putrefied

corpse”, and suppressed it in Turkey by outlawing the Sufi orders and seizing

their properties, closing down the madrasas and appropriating their income. He

also abolished the beloved institution of the caliphate, which had long been a

dead-letter politically but which symbolised a link with the Prophet. For groups

such as al-Qaida and Isis, reversing this decision has become a paramount goal.

Ataturk also continued the policy of ethnic cleansing that had been initiated by

the last Ottoman sultans; in an attempt to control the rising commercial classes,


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they systematically deported the Armenian and Greek-speaking Christians, who

comprised 90% of the bourgeoisie. The Young Turks, who seized power in 1909,

espoused the antireligious positivism associated with August Comte and were

also determined to create a purely Turkic state. During the first world war,

approximately one million Armenians were slaughtered in the first genocide of

the 20th century: men and youths were killed where they stood, while women,

children and the elderly were driven into the desert where they were raped, shot,

starved, poisoned, suffocated or burned to death. Clearly inspired by the new

scientific racism, Mehmet Resid, known as the “execution governor”, regarded

the Armenians as “dangerous microbes” in “the bosom of the Fatherland”.

Ataturk completed this racial purge. For centuries Muslims and Christians had

lived together on both sides of the Aegean; Ataturk partitioned the region,

deporting Greek Christians living in what is now Turkey to Greece, while Turkish-

speaking Muslims in Greece were sent the other way.

The fundamentalist reaction

Secularising rulers such as Ataturk often wanted their countries to look modern,

that is, European. In Iran in 1928, Reza Shah Pahlavi issued the laws of

uniformity of dress: his soldiers tore off women’s veils with bayonets and ripped

them to pieces in the street. In 1935, the police were ordered to open fire on a

crowd who had staged a peaceful demonstration against the dress laws in one of

the holiest shrines of Iran, killing hundreds of unarmed civilians. Policies like this

made veiling, which has no Qur’anic endorsement, an emblem of Islamic

authenticity in many parts of the Muslim world.

Following the example of the French, Egyptian rulers secularised by

disempowering and impoverishing the clergy. Modernisation had begun in the

Ottoman period under the governor Muhammad Ali, who starved the Islamic

clergy financially, taking away their tax-exempt status, confiscating the

religiously endowed properties that were their principal source of income, and

systematically robbing them of any shred of power. When the reforming armyofficer Jamal Abdul Nasser came to power in 1952, he changed tack and turned

the clergy into state officials. For centuries, they had acted as a protective

bulwark between the people and the systemic violence of the state. Now

Egyptians came to despise them as government lackeys. This policy would

ultimately backfire, because it deprived the general population of learned

guidance that was aware of the complexity of the Islamic tradition. Self-

appointed freelancers, whose knowledge of Islam was limited, would step into


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the breach, often to disastrous effect.

Many regard the west’s devotion to the separation of religionand politics as incompatible with democracy and freedom

If some Muslims today fight shy of secularism, it is not because they have been

brainwashed by their faith but because they have often experienced efforts at

secularisation in a particularly virulent form. Many regard the west’s devotion to

the separation of religion and politics as incompatible with admired western

ideals such as democracy and freedom. In 1992, a military coup in Algeria ousted

a president who had promised democratic reforms, and imprisoned the leaders of

the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which seemed certain to gain a majority in the

forthcoming elections. Had the democratic process been thwarted in such anunconstitutional manner in Iran or Pakistan, there would have been worldwide

outrage. But because an Islamic government had been blocked by the coup, there

was jubilation in some quarters of the western press – as if this undemocratic

action had instead made Algeria safe for democracy. In rather the same way,

there was an almost audible sigh of relief in the west when the Muslim

Brotherhood was ousted from power in Egypt last year. But there has been less

attention to the violence of the secular military dictatorship that has replaced it,

which has exceeded the abuses of the Mubarak regime.

After a bumpy beginning, secularism has undoubtedly been valuable to the west,

but we would be wrong to regard it as a universal law. It emerged as a particular

and unique feature of the historical process in Europe; it was an evolutionary

adaptation to a very specific set of circumstances. In a different environment,

modernity may well take other forms. Many secular thinkers now regard

“religion” as inherently belligerent and intolerant, and an irrational, backward

and violent “other” to the peaceable and humane liberal state – an attitude withan unfortunate echo of the colonialist view of indigenous peoples as hopelessly

“primitive”, mired in their benighted religious beliefs. There are consequences to

our failure to understand that our secularism, and its understanding of the role of

religion, is exceptional. When secularisation has been applied by force, it has

provoked a fundamentalist reaction – and history shows that fundamentalist

movements which come under attack invariably grow even more extreme. The

fruits of this error are on display across the Middle East: when we look with


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Religion Philosophy

horror upon the travesty of Isis, we would be wise to acknowledge that its

barbaric violence may be, at least in part, the offspring of policies guided by our

disdain.

Karen Armstrong’s Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence is

published today by Bodley Head. She will be appearing on 11 October at the London

Lit Weekend at Kings Place

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Embracing the religious marketplace

146

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2 Oct 2014

30 Sep 2014 23 Sep 2014

The battle for the soul of British milk

Wales: can the slumbering dragon awake? It’s silly to be frightened of being dead

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/sep/23/-sp-diana-athill-its-silly-frightened-being-deadhttp://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/30/wales-can-slumbering-dragon-awakehttp://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/02/-sp-battle-soul-british-milk


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MikeDrew2101

25 Sep 2014 06:18

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Karen Armstrong ignores the fact that religion is based on misunderstanding (to use the mildest

term I can think of). Morality cannot be based on a wrong understanding of human nature.

Seculism may not have been perfect but it able to progress. Living on the basis of religion cannot

progress unless it is towards the the one true religion- and as far as I can tell from a limited reading

of Karen Armstrong's work she doe not believe there is a one true religion.

This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may

also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.

The issue here is the political interference by religion. While personal religion can be about

about love and peace, their political versions are generally not. Islam and State needs to be

separate; just as any religious church and state.

While the idea of uniting religion with state needs thwarting, it is a journey that the citizens of middle eastern countries need to undergo and evolve. We can't instil that with bombs.

It is always about personal power.

ISIS brainwashes thousands of Muslims around the world to come and fight and die so that a

certain few individuals can become leaders of absolute power in a new "Islamic state".

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Mike Lawn

25 Sep 2014 06:56

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The corporate class of America brainwashes over a hundred million right-wing evangelical

American morons to continue voting for pro-corporate, pro-war politicians who do everything

for the pursuit of corporate profit and greed in endless wars under the guise of "doing the

Lord's good work". Ruling (rightwing) politicians in Canada and Australia invoke "god" at

every opportunity to whip the sheep among the population up into a fervor.

Religion is simply a tool for insidious ends. And the earlier religion is banished from politics (it

should be forbidden for any politician to invoke his "god" in public) the better. Pity that in this

century there are still people who are willing to believe in fanciful tales in order to justify

voting for "religious" politicians who then use the political mandate to commit war crimes.

It is simple. Religion is just another form of human tribalism. Knuckle dragging football supporters

is another one. Fundamentally we like forming into groups and fighting one another. Such is

humanity

Fundamentally we like forming into groups and fighting one another

Absolutely. In New Scientist (22nd September 2012), there was an article about the basis of

conflict. It explained that religions are a source of conflict because they define groups and

generate sacred values. This enhances conflict because members of the group see outsiders as

a threat. Furthermore, brain scans have shown that people process these sacred values as

absolute and moral binding commitments, which limits the chance of reconciliation.

It explained that religions are a source of conflict because they define groups and generate

sacred values.-------------------------------------------------A sources is just that - a (1)source. Religion is not the singular source of conflict though, never was and never will be.

Monotheistic religion most certainly has been and is a source of conflict. When you have a

belief that says "this is the only correct belief", invest that belief with that faulty belief it is

the source of morality, and mix it with authority over people's lives it's going to be bad. At

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World news The Guardian

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3Ebola isn’t the big one. So what is? And are we ready for it?4Ebola: answering the 10 basic questions you were afraid to ask5

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least ancient religions were about actions, not belief in creed.

Ancient Roman religion was based in ritual, but morality was the realm of philosophy. Some

early Christians went to their deaths rather then sprinkle incense at the feet of an emperor's

statue. Nothing more, and it was foolish. They believed they had the only correct way and

were inflexible. Look at the trouble Northern Ireland suffered. The issues go beyond just

religion, but make no mistake that the view "my fairy tale demands x, so I must do y" is a

source of conflict.

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Documents

The Myth of Religious Violence _ Karen Armstrong _ World News _ the Guardian