Armed Conflicts and Religious Factors: The Need for Synthesized Conceptual Frameworks and New Empirical Analyses – The Case of the MENA Region^*

Abstract

Before the 1990s, very little research had been done on the religious dimension in the dynamics of internal and international violent conflicts. Two factors may explain this: first, the lack of interest of a good part of international theory in peace research and conflict resolution in particular; and, second, the negative impact of the division between the major disciplines of social sciences and area studies. This article takes this insufficiency as its starting point and assumes that the factors of greatest value in explaining violent conflict are diverse (political, economic or social processes), and to speak of a single factor (religion) in isolation makes little sense if it is not contextualized within a metatheory. Thus, the article presents several elements that are derived from the theory of conflict resolution and area studies on the Middle East and North Africa region, and which should be taken into consideration when examining the extent to which religion contributes to violent conflicts and their evolution.

Notes

^1. For instance, Demmers highlights six theoretical approaches as possible causes of violent conflicts: (1) processes focused on group formation and group attachment; (2) processes focused on the role of identity group dynamics as an escalatory causation; (3) processes that emphasize the role of structures, material or social conditions that shape social relations; (4) processes oriented towards explaining the role of different forms and incentives for collective mobilization in favour of collective violent action, particularly in protracted social conflicts; (5) processes and interaction that emphasize, with models based in rational choice theories, motivations linked with greed, market or good/bad governance; and finally (6) discursive approaches that explain violent conflict and war as social phenomena with an important role for constructed discourses about the legitimacy of violence and the alienation of the ‘other’. And, in our opinion, there is, in specific cases, the possibility of mixed theories.

^2. The result is a dubious terminology to describe these new factors: internal conflicts, new wars, small wars, ethnic conflicts, civil war, conflict in post-colonial states or, in the language of United Nations agencies, complex political emergencies.

^3. Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Conflict, Global Burden of Armed Violence 2011, Geneva (2011), online at www.genevadeclaration.org/measurability/global-burden-of-armed-violence/global-burden-of-armed-violence-2011.html

^4. Lotta Themner and Peter Wallesnteen, ‘Armed Conflicts, 1946–2011’, Journal of Peace Research 49/4 (2012) pp.565–75. Also L. E. Cederman and K. S. Gleditsch (eds), Disaggregating Civil Wars (special issue), Journal of Conflict Resolution 53/4 (2009); I. Duyvestyn, ‘Contemporary War: Ethnic Conflict, Resource Conflict or Something Else?’ Civil Wars 3/1 (2000) pp.92–116; J. Dixon, ‘Emerging Consensus; Results from the Second Wave of Statistical Studies on Civil War Termination’, Civil Wars 11/2 (2009) pp.395–416.

^5. Jolle Demmers, Theories of Violent Conflict. An Introduction (New York: Routledge 2012).

^6. Ron E. Hassner, ‘“To Halve and to Hold”: Conflicts over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility’, Security Studies 12/4 (2003) pp.1–33.

^7. William Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence (Oxford: Oxford UP 2009) p.4.

^8. Chris R. Mitchell, The Structure of International Conflict (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1981) p.17.

^9. For example, the database that is best known and currently the most commonly used, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, defines armed conflict as ‘a contested incompatibility that concerns government or territory or both, where the use of force between the two parties results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in a year’. As soon as the armed conflict reaches 1,000 deaths, it is named or defined as ‘war’ (www.pcr.uu.se/research/UCDP/).

^10. In the famous phrase, ‘War is a mere continuation of policy by other means’.

^11. John A. Vasquez, The War Puzzle (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1993) pp.24–5.

^12. Nicholas Sambanis, ‘What is a Civil War? Conceptual and Empirical Complexities of an Operational Definition’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 487 (2004) pp.814–58.

^13. Jonathan Fox, ‘Religion as an Overlooked Element of International Relations’, International Studies Review 3 (2001) pp.53–73.

^14. Marc Gopin, ‘Religion, Violence and Conflict Resolution’, Peace and Change 2/1 (1997) pp. 1–31, p.1.

^15. These types of conflicts had certain traits: they were sometimes protracted and alternating phases of relative peace or major hostilities, without precise endings or beginnings and without time and space clear boundaries, with military parties regular and ‘irregular’, with external support from diasporas and identity groups, lobby forces or mercenaries.

^16. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Knopf Doubleday 1979).

^17. Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson (eds), Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (New York: Oxford UP 1994); Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley: University of California Press 1994); David Little, ‘Belief, Ethnicity, and Nationalism’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 1/2 (1995) pp.284–301; R. Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2000); Andreas Hasenclever and Volker Rittberger, ‘Does Religion Make a Difference? Theoretical Approaches to the Impact of Faith on Political Conflict’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29/3 (2000) pp.641–74; Marc Gopin, Holy War, Holy Peace (Oxford: Oxford UP 2002); Jonathan Fox and Shmuel Sandler, Religion in World Conflict (London/New York: Routledge 2006); Ron E. Hassner, War on Sacred Grounds (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2009).

^18. Thomas F. Banchoff, Religious Pluralism, Globalization, and World Politics (Oxford: Oxford UP 2008); Richard A. Falk, Religion and Human Governance (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2001); Jeffrey Haynes, International Relations and Religion (Edinburgh: Pearson Education 2007); Eric O. Hanson, Religion and Politics in the International System Today (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2006); Douglas Johnston (ed.), Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik (New York: Oxford UP 2003); Fabio Petito and Pavlos Hatzopoulos, Religion in International Relations: The Return from Exile (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2003); Jack Snyder, Religion and International Relations Theory (New York: Columbia UP 2011); Scott Thomas, The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations: The Struggle for the Soul of the Twenty-First Century (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2005).

^19. Hasenclever and Rittberger (note 17).

^20. The authors contributing to this volume have proposed alternative classifications of the possible approaches on a similar basis to those proposed by Hasenclever and Rittberger. Isak Svensson characterizes the debate on causes between the two opposing positions. On one hand, what he calls the reductionist position, for which religious dimensions can always be reduced to social tensions based on diverging interests or social power structures; Isak Svensson, ‘Fighting with Faith: Religion and Conflict Resolution in Civil Wars’, Journal of Peace Research 51/6 (2008) pp.930–49. Therefore, they question the validity of the religious dimension of armed conflicts. On the other hand, there is the essentialist position for which the different aspects of religion are essential and a real part of the dynamic of armed conflicts underlying political or economic tensions. This author offers a third position which he calls conditionalist, according to which religious matters can play a role in the dynamic of conflicts under specific conditions.

^21. Samuel P. Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ Foreign Affairs 72/3 (1993) pp.22–50; Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster 1998). This author states that identity-based civilizations, wherein religion will occupy a central space, will form the basis of world politics and international conflict after the cold war. However, we do not coincide in classifying some of the authors mentioned in the respective approach (such as, for example, Gilles Kepel or Bassam Tibi as primordialists).

^22. Ted R. Gurr, ‘Peoples Against States: Ethnopolitical Conflict and the Changing World System’, International Studies Quarterly 38 (1994) pp.347–77.

^23. Hasenclever and Rittberger (note 17) pp.647–8; Alexander Wendt, Social Theory and International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1999).

^24. Jonathan Fox, Religion, Civilization, and Civil War: 1945 Through the Millennium (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books 2004).

^25. Monica Duffy Toft, ‘Issue Indivisibility and Time Horizons as Rationalist Explanations for War’, Security Studies 15/1 (2006) pp.34–69.

^26. Marta Reynal-Querol, ‘Ethnicity, Political Systems and Civil Wars’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 46/1 (2002) pp.29–54.

^27. James D Fearon and David D. Laitin, ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War’, American Journal of Political Science 97/1 (2003) pp.75–90.

^28. Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler and Måns Söderbom, ‘On the Duration of Civil War’, Journal of Peace Research 41/3 (2004) pp.253–73.

^29. The expression ‘conflict resolution’ is ambiguous in as far as it means different things to different authors. This has to do with the quadruple origin of the field (four traditions, to put it like that): studies coming from the area of business and organizational management and organizational development; international relations (with contributions from the dominant current but above all from heterodox though); the practice of certain peace movement and peace research groups; and, finally, contributions from what has come to be called ‘alternative dispute resolution’ in the field of business and labour conflicts.

^30. Rafael Grasa, La objetividad en las ciencias sociales: Peace research y relaciones internacionales (Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona 1990); Rafael Grasa, Cincuenta años de evolucióon de la investigación para la paz: Tendencias y propuestas para observar, investigar y actuar (Barcelona: ICIP 2010).

^31. Lewis Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict (Glencoe, IL: Free Press 1956).

^32. In terms of the influence deriving from their role in specific conflicts, it is enough to mention the South African case, to the Middle East, to Northern Ireland and, a little later, to examples in Africa and South East Asia.

^33. Grasa, Cincuenta años de evolucióon de la investigación para la paz (note 30).

^34. Svensson's article in this edition shows the virtues of the regional approach to analysing the religious dimension of the armed conflicts in the MENA region, using an approach close to conflict resolution tools, as it pays attention to the analysis of the agents and incompatibilities. We use the Svensson's typology, which proposes a useful distinction of conflicts based on Toft; see Svensson (note 20).

^35. Studies grant special importance to the level of polarization of these conflicts, that is, to the relative size of different religious groups involved: a conflict wherein there exists a high degree of factionalism is not the same as a dyadic conflict in which the two opponents have similar size and resources (high polarization). Distinctions must be made between conflicts like those in Lebanon, where there are different communities defined by religious affiliations involved, and those related to the repression/denial of rights of minorities and demands from these groups (consider the Alevi in Turkey, the Copts in Egypt, and so on).

^36. Johan Galtung, Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization (Oslo: International Peace Research Institute; London/Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage 1996).

^37. Ron E. Hassner (note 6); Isak Svensson (note 20).

^38. Lilach Gilady and Bruce M. Russet, ‘Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution’ in Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse and Beth A. Simmons (eds) Handbook of International Relations (London: Sage 2002) p.401.

^39. Jonathan Fox (note 24).

^40. Morten Valbjørn, ‘Culture Blind and Culture Blinded: Images of Middle Eastern Conflicts in International Relations’ in D. Jung (ed.) The Middle East and Palestine: Global Politics and Regional Conflicts (New York: Palgrave 2004) pp.39–78.

^41. Ibid.

^42. World Bank, Reducing Conflict Risk: Conflict, Fragility and Development in the Middle East and North Africa (Washington, DC: World Bank, December 2011); Håvard Hegre and Håvar Mokleiv Nygård, The Governance-Conflict Trap in the ESCWA Region (Oslo: PRIO 2011).

^43. L. Carl Brown, International Politics and the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris 1984).

^44. Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1987).

^45. Michael Barnett, ‘Institutions, Roles, and Disorder: The Case of the Arab States System’, International Studies Quarterly 37 (1993) pp.271–96.

^46. Paul Noble, ‘The Arab System: Pressures, Constraints, and Opportunities’ in B. Korany and A. Dessouki (eds) The Foreign Policies of Arab States (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1991).

^47. Marc Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres: The International Politics of Jordan's Identity (New York: Columbia UP 1999).

^48. Samir Makdisi and Richard Sadaka, ‘The Lebanese Civil War, 1975–1990’ in Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis (eds) Understanding Civil War: Evidence and Analysis (Washington, DC: World Bank 2005).

^49. On these issues see: Ali E. Hillal Dessouki and Bahgat Korany (eds), ‘A Literature Survey and a Framework for Analysis’ in The Foreign Policies of Arab States (Boulder, CO: Westview Press; El Cairo: The American University 1984) pp.5–18; Maurice Flory, Bahgat Korany, Robert Mantran, Michel Camau and Pierre Agate, Les régimes politiques arabes (Paris: PUF 1991); Michael N. Barnett, Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order (New York: Columbia UP 1998); Raymond Hinnebusch, ‘The Middle East Regional System’ in Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami (eds) The Foreign Policies of Middle East States (Boulder, CO: Linne Rienner 2002) pp.29–54.

^50. Giacomo Luciani (ed.), ‘The Rentier State in the Arab World’ in The Arab State (London: Routledge 1990) pp.85–98; Ferran Izquierdo, Political Regimes in the Arab World: Society and the Exercise of Power (London: Routledge 2012); Rolf Schwarz, ‘The Political Economy of State-Formation in the Arab Middle East: Rentier States, Economic Reform, and Democratization’, Review of International Political Economy 15/4 (2008) pp.599–621; Rolf Schwarz, ‘Does War Make States? Rentierism and the Formation of States in the Middle East’, European Political Science Review 3 (2011) pp.419–43.

^51. As shown in Edward E. Azar, Paul Jureidini and Ronald McLaurin, ‘Protracted Social Conflict: Theory and Practice in the Middle East’, Journal of Palestine Studies 8/1 (Autumn 1978) pp.41–60. See Dan Smith, The State of the Middle East: An Atlas of Conflict Resolution (Berkeley: University of California Press 2006).

^52. On the complex relationships between the discipline of International Relations and Area Studies (the ‘Area Studies Controversy’), see Andrea Teti, ‘Bridging the Gap: IR, Middle East Studies and the Disciplinary Politics of the Area Studies Controversy’, European Journal of International Relations 13/1 (2007) pp.117–45.

^53. Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (eds), Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press 1990).

^54. Maxime Rodinson, ‘Le monde musulman et la politique: le fond du problème’ in Maxime Rodinson (ed.), L'Islam: politique et croyance (Paris: Fayard 1993) pp.107–13; Nazih N. Ayubi, Over-Stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (London, NY: I.B. Tauris 1996); Bassam Tibi, The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press 1998).

^55. In the case of Israel, religion played a key role in the historical process that led to the establishment of this State in 1948, but where secularism was a very important part of a larger attempt to create a new identity.

^56. First liberalism, then socialism; failure of national construction experiments based on the growth paradigm; the decline of the left-wing nationalist discourse; and weariness with the corruption associated with the elites who have captured national resources.

^57. Charles Seymour Liebmann and Eliezer Don Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel: Traditional Judaism and Political Culture in the Jewish State (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press 1983).

^58. Ralph E. Crow, ‘Religious Sectarianism in the Lebanese Political System’, The Journal of Politics 24/3 (August 1962) pp.489–520.

^59. In the case of Islamic Sharia, this was unprecedented in the history of Islam, through the application of the codes of family statutes.

^60. Defined mainly through speech and symbolic acts in very different ways.

^61. Alev Cinar, Srirupa Roy and Maha Yahya, Visualizing Secularism and Religion: Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, India (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan 2012).

^62. James Piscatori, Islam in a World of Nation-States (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1986); Adeed Dawisha, Islam in Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1983); Bernard Lewis, The Middle East and the West (Bloomington: Indiana UP 1965); Bernard Lewis, ‘Politics and War’ in J. Schacht and C. E. Bosworth (eds) The Legacy of Islam (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1974); M. Khadduri, ‘The Islamic Theory of International Relations and Its Contemporary Relevance’ in J. Proctor (ed.) Islam and International Relations (London: Pall Mall Press 1965) pp.24–39. On Gush Emunim, see Gideon Aran, ‘From Religious Zionism to Zionist Religion: The Roots of Gush Emunim’, Studies in Contemporary Jewry 2 (1986) pp.116–43; Lily Weissbrod, ‘Gush Emunim Ideology: From Religious Doctrine to Political Action’, Middle Eastern Studies 18 (1982) pp.265–75. On Lebanon, see Ghassan Hage, ‘Religious Fundamentalism as a Political Strategy: The Evolution of the Lebanese Forces’ Religious Discourse During the Lebanese Civil War', Critique of Anthropology 12 (March 1992) pp.27–45; Marwan George Rowayheb, ‘Political Change and the Outbreak of Civil War: The Case of Lebanon’, Civil Wars 13/4 (2011) pp.414–36.

^63. See the work of Oliver Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (London: I.B. Tauris 1994); Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trial of Political Islam (London: I.B. Tauris 2002); Ferran Izquierdo, ‘Islam político en el siglo XXI’, Afers Internacionals 93–94 (2011) pp.11–32.

^64. As we have already stated, they can contribute little to explaining current processes.

^65. Rodinson (note 54).

^66. Including its exacerbating or moderating role on individual or group behaviour at escalation and de-escalation phases and in post-war stabilization; that is, what is usually known as peacebuilding?

^67. Grasa, Cincuenta años de evolucióon de la investigación para la paz (note 30).

^68. Anatol Rapoport, The Origins of Violence: Approaches to the Study of Conflict (New Brunswick: Transaction Books 1995).