RELIGION AND WAR

Does Religion Cause War?

Does Religion Cause War?

Explanatory Synthesis

We live in a world which you cannot imagine without religion. Every people know that religion belief is in the human nature from beginning to end. A human being is born with religion requirement. So this makes religion so important thing for people lifes. Well, is religion so important as much as it can cause warfare? Shortly, does religion cause war? History can give the best answer to this question. There was lots of warfare which happened because of religion in history. Very well known ones of them are crusades and jehads and also we can mention about suicide bombings as well. While the proponents of this argue that religion causes wars the opponents claim that this is simply untrue.

First of all, let us deal with the popular thought that 'most wars are caused by religion'. In my humble opinion, this is not so true thought. According to an academic research, in the last 3500 years, there was no effect of religion for 60% of them. Only 40% were viewed as truly religious wars. We can say a lot of other cause for warfare as well as racism, economic causes, national interests and national ego. As an example for racism causes, Jews in Germany during the 1930s achieved via a massive propaganda campaign following the seizing of power by the Nazi party. This was a necessary precursor to the subsequent attempt to eradicate the population in the 'final solution'. The purpose of the campaign was to get people to view the Jews, not as human beings, but as vermin. For the economic causes, the example can be given from Napoleon Bonapart. When Napoleon defeated Spain in warfare, King of Spain says Napoleon, “You just come and fight to get money, spoil, gold and land but we fight just for our honor and purity.” and Napoleon answers “Yeah that is right. Everyone fights for what they need.”

Analytic Synthesis

Wars occur when power fields of various parties conflict with each other. Most of time, getting land or giving land is symbolic. In the past, we have seen thousands of people died because of the rocky, arid, the small pieces of land which does not provide any benefit to anyone. That means, in the background, there were greater purposes and greater interests. We cannot ignore the effect of the struggle for power. Who knows how many times the father fought with his son or siblings fought with each other just for being king. The most innocent emotions were forgotten and ambition showed itself. Those ambitions, passions and desires were not because of religion. These were just because of those greater purposes and greater interests.

If we want to look at the history for seeing what were causes of important wars, we can understand the difference better;

Religious: The Crusades and The Jihads

Non-religious: The American Revolution, The French Revolution, The US Civil War, World War I and World War II

Secondly, to deal with other view which is ...