RELIGION AND WAR

What Makes Religion Special as a Potential Cause of War?

What Makes Religion Special as a Potential Cause of War?

Introduction

Religion is a human activity system composed of beliefs and practices which are considered as divine, sacred, existential type, moral and spiritual. The term 'religion' is used to refer to specific forms of manifestation of the religious phenomenon, shared by different groups. There are religions that are organized into more or less rigid, while others have no formal structure and are embedded in cultural traditions and ethnic society in which they practice. The term refers to both personal beliefs and practices as collective rituals and teachings. However, people time to time use religion for their personal interests which cause violence in society. In this connection, this study is going to answer the question what makes religion special as a potential cause of war?

Discussion and Analysis

Even a cursory glance at the historical development of world views shows that the history of every religion is also a history of violence committed on the name of religion. All the more amazing is that despite this historical fact of the academic study of religion, over the question of causality, religious convictions for violence had been quite abstemious. Only after the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the social sciences, an intensified confrontation has been witnessed with the question of meaning religiously legitimized violence (Peasre, 2007). The question was of importance even for criminologists. Historically, once war is declared, American churches have rallied to the battle flag. Such was the case during the Civil War when denominations (some of which had already split North and South over slavery) supported their respective sections with patriotic fervor. While northern churches were nearly unified in their support of the Union, all of them did not advocate freeing the slaves at the beginning of the conflict (Tanner, 2007).

The most intense can be the connection between religion and violence observed when about wars or assassinations are declared to be sacred. This kind of religious charge of the use of force became surprisingly secular conditions under a golden age. In the two Gulf wars, during the 1980s and early 1990s saw the term "holy war" a boom. While Islamic parties, the word "jihad" used on the west is using the term "holy war" played, described the preacher Billy Graham, a spiritual adviser to President Bush, the war for the expulsion of Iraqi troops from Kuwait as a divinely ordained battle between good and evil. Even President Saddam Hussein used the semantics of the eternal Manichean opposition between light and darkness, and declared the war as a jihad. And more recently to see Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda fighters in a "holy war" against the "godless" West, while President Bush pretends Junior, by divine order, the "God's own country 'in the fight against the Axis of Evil to perform (Juergensmeyer, 2003).

The use of religion in the wars

Whether it can be argued that all wars took place for variety of reasons, mainly ...