ABSTRACT
It is a truism that all the world’s major religions aspire to peace. Nonviolence itself originates in far Eastern thought, particularly Taoism and Jainism, but has independent strands in the Jewish Talmud and the Christian gospels, and is found in Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. One of the few points of agreement among major religious traditions is this aspiration for peace. Nonetheless, all major religions are appropriated to the service of war. It is difficult – perhaps impossible – to find a significant military conflict anywhere in the world where religion plays no role. The obvious contemporary example is the ongoing ‘war on terror’, the US-dominated reaction to suicide-murder attacks on and after 11 September 2001, which pits the predominantly Christian West against what many refer to as elements of ‘radical Islam’ primarily in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also in secret cells allegedly scattered globally. Other examples include Islam and Judaism in the Arab/Israeli conflict, the break-up of Yugoslavia among Orthodox Christian Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosnians, the conflict between Buddhist Tibet and secular China, the struggle between Catholic and Protestant Christians in Northern Ireland and the longstanding conflict between Hindus and Muslims over India and Pakistan. Given the contradictions between religious aspirations and the behavior of followers of the various faith traditions, it would be foolish to imagine religion, as practiced, to be a panacea for the world’s conflicts. Nonetheless neglecting connections between religion and conflict would be foolish as well.
