The role of religion in conflict and peace-making

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to describe the role of religion in society both in terms of cohesion, where it can provide a spiritual and moral ‘glue’ for a particular society and in terms of its ‘prophetic’ aspect, where it can challenge the state or society and the direction it, or some elements in it, may be taking. It will then consider how religion can go wrong and fuel conflict between ethnic groups within nations or between nations. Examples will be given from the Middle Ages, early modern Europe and contemporary nationalisms in Asia and Europe. Religion can also, the article argues, be a powerful force for making and maintaining peace between groups and nations. This can arise directly from religious conviction or it can be the result of patient dialogue between representatives of religious traditions about how each tradition encourages, or even requires, them to work for peace whether locally, nationally or internationally. Particular attention will be given to the ‘Abrahamic’ faiths because of their global reach and because they are a factor in conflict, as well as in peace-making, in so many parts of the world. There will also be discussion of the accountability of religious traditions in the context of inter-religious dialogue, in the media and in the public square, regarding their role in promoting fundamental freedoms, good stewardship of the natural world, bringing conflict to an end and promoting peace and collaboration among diverse ethnic, religious and socio-economic groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Religion
• peace-making
• social cohesion
• values
• prophetic roles
• interfaith dialogue

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See my Conviction and Conflict: Islam, Christianity and World Order, London, Continuum Press, 2006, pp 17f.

2. Bryan Wilson, Religion in Sociological Perspective, Oxford, OUP, 1982, pp 32ff.

3. Wilson, ibid, p. v, Akbar Ahmed, Islam under Siege, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003, pp74ff. See also his Ibn Khaldun’s Understanding of Civilisation, Middle East Journal 56, 1, Winter, 2002, Pp 1ff.

4. Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun’s Understanding of Civilisation, p 77.

5. Peter Berger, A Rumour of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural, Baltimore, Penguin, 1969. His later book, The Heretical Imperative, Collins, London, 1980, explores the applicability of an inductive approach to assessing religious experience.

6. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, London, Duckworth, 2^nd edn, 1985, pp4f, 263.

7. Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, New York, Harper, 1960, Pp 6, 131, 170ff. See also Michael Nazir-Ali, Thinking and Acting Morally, Crucible, October-December, 2002, Pp 207ff.

8. Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, London, Routledge, 2001, Pp 2–3.

9. Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, Philadelphia, PA, Fortress Press, 1978.

10. On this early period see Martin Lings, Muhammad: his life based on the earliest sources, Cambridge, Islamic Texts Society, 1991

11. Michael Nazir-Ali, Freedom in the Face of Resurgent Islam in Faith, Freedom and the Future, London, Wilberforce Publications, 2016, pp173ff.

12. See further W. Owen Cole and Piara Singh Sambhi, The Sikhs: Their Religious Views and Practices, Brighton, Sussex, Academic Press, 1995.

13. Elizabeth Harris, What Buddhists Believe, Oxford, Oneworld, 1998, Pp 99ff.

14. Owen Chadwick, The Reformation, London, Penguin,1990, Pp 318ff, 444ff.

15. See further Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Vol 1, London, Penguin, 1991.

16. See Conviction and Conflict, op cit, pp 80f.

17. Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, London, Al-Saqi Books, 1984.

18. For details of these conflicts see Keith Taylor, The Early Kingdoms; Kenneth Hall, The Economic History of South East Asia; and JG Caspari and IW Mabbett, Religion and Popular Beliefs of South East Asia Before c. 1500 in The Cambridge History of South East Asia, Vol 1, Cambridge, CUP, 1994, Pp157ff.

19. See John Richards, The Mughal Empire, The New Cambridge History of India, 1.5, Cambridge, CUP, 1995, Pp 171ff.

20. Kenneth Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India, in the New Cambridge History of India, Cambridge, CUP, 1997, pp218ff and VS Naipaul, India: A Million Mutinies Now, London, Heinemann, 1990.

21. For an account of the conflict see Laura Silber and Allan Little, The Death of Yugoslavia, London, Penguin/BBC, 1995.

22. James Billington, Russia: In Search of Itself, Washington, D.C., Woodrow Wilson Center, 2004, Pp145ff.

23. Reinhold Niebuhr in Children of Light and Children of Darkness, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1944, Pxxxii.

24. Conviction and Conflict, op cit, pp 41f.