Is Religion a Barrier to Peace? Religious Influence on Violent Intrastate Conflict Termination

ABSTRACT

In recent years, a burgeoning literature has emerged on the relationship between religion and conflict. Contradictory theories address the dynamics and termination of religious violent conflicts. Some studies focus on the destructive role of religion, arguing that religious conflicts are longer, more violent, and intractable. Others argue that religion has an ambivalent role, both destructive and constructive, and recognize religion as a force for peacebuilding. This study focuses on the relationship between religion and conflict termination by examining termination outcomes, based on the length and the level of violence, as well as incidents of reoccurrence. The study quantitatively examines 118 domestic conflicts between 1990 and 2014, utilizing the Political Instability Task Force and Religion and State datasets. The findings suggest that religious conflicts are likely to last longer than non-religious ones. However, the study reveals that religion has no strong significant influence on conflict termination as well as on the reoccurrence of conflicts and the violence level.

KEYWORDS:

• Religion
• violent intrastate conflicts
• conflict termination
• conflict duration
• conflict reoccurrence

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jonathan Fox, Matthias Basedau, Isak Svensson, David T. Buckley, Indra de Soysa, Shlomo O. Goldman, as well as the two anonymous reviewers, for their insightful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Tanja Ellingsen, “Toward a Revival of Religion and Religious Clashes?” Terrorism and Political Violence 17, no. 3 (2005): 341; Jonathan Fox, Ethnoreligious Conflict in the Late Twentieth Century: A General Theory (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002), 149.

2. Gabriel Almond, Scott R. Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan, Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalism around the World (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Matthias Basedau, George Strüver, Johannes Vüllers, and Tim Wegenast, “Do Religious Factors Impact Armed Conflict? Empirical Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa,” Terrorism and Political Violence 23, no. 5 (2011): 752-79; Matthias Basedau, Birte Pfeiffer and Johannes Vüllers, “Bad Religion? Religion, Collective Action, and the Onset of Armed Conflict in Developing Countries,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 60, no. 2 (2016): 226-55; Michael C. Horowitz, “Long Time Going: Religion and the Duration of Crusading,” International Security 34, no. 2 (2009): 162-93; Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1993); David Little, “Religious Militancy,” in Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict, ed. Chester Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall (Washington, WA: USIP Press, 1996), 53-77; Ragnhild Nordås, “Beliefs and Bloodshed: Understanding Religion and Intrastate Conflict” (PhD dissertation, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2010); Monica D. Toft, “Getting Religion? The Puzzling Case of Islam and Civil War,” International Security 31 no. 4 (2007): 97-131; However, others claim that religion has a dual role, both destructive and constructive, see: Scott R. Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation, (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000); Jonathan Fox, An Introduction to Religion and Politics: Theory and Practice, (London, UK: Routledge, 2013), 135; Marc Gopin, “Religion, Violence and Conflict Resolution,” Peace and Change 22, no. 1 (1997): 1; Isak Svensson and Emily Harding, “How Holy Wars End: Exploring the Termination Patterns of Conflict With Religious Dimensions in Asia,” Terrorism and Political Violence 23, no. 2 (2011): 135.

3. On armed religious conflict termination, see: Svensson and Harding, “How Holy Wars End: Exploring the Termination Patterns of Conflict with Religious Dimensions in Asia”; Isak Svensson, “Fighting with Faith: Religion and Conflict Resolution in Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 51, no. 6 (2007): 930-49.

4. For a broader discussion, see: Fox, Ethnoreligious Conflict in the Late Twentieth Century; Fox, An Introduction to Religion and Politics; Jonathan Fox, Political Secularism, Religion, and the State: A Time Series Analysis of Worldwide Data (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Yves Lambert, “Religion in Modernity as a New Axial Age: Secularization or New Religious Forms?” Sociology of Religion 60, no. 3 (1999): 303-33; Rodney Stark, “Secularization, R.I.P,” Sociology of Religion 60, no. 3 (1999): 249-73; Kenneth D. Wald and Clyde Wilcox, “Getting Religion: Has Political Science Discovered the Faith Factor?” American Political Science Review 100, no. 4 (2006): 523-29.

5. On the comparison between secular and religious ideologies, see: Victor Asal and Karl Rethemeyer, “Dilettantes, Ideologues, and the Weak: Terrorists Who Don’t Kill,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 25 (2008): 244-63.

6. Fox, An Introduction to Religion and Politics, 19-22; Amongst the supporters of this theory, see Peter L. Berger, “A Bleak Outlook is Seen for Religion,” New York Times, February 25, 1968; Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West, (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2002).

7. Wald and Wilcox, “Getting Religion,” 523-29; Daniel Philpott, “The Challenge of September 11 to Secularism in International Relations,” World Politics 55, no.1 (2002): 69.

8. Fox, An Introduction to Religion and Politics; Daniel Philpott, “Has the Study of Global Politics Found Religion?” Annual Review of Political Science 12 (2009): 183-202; Phillip S. Gorski and Ates Altinordu, “After Secularization?” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (2008): 76-7.

9. Fox, Ethnoreligious Conflict in the Late Twentieth Century; Elizabeth S. Hurd, “The Political Authority of Secularism in International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations 10, no. 2 (2003): 235-62; Mark Juergensmeyer, “The New Religious State,” Comparative Politics 27, no. 4 (1995): 379-91; John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2009); Pippa Norris and Ronald Ingelhart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Timothy S. Shah and Monica D. Toft, “Why God Is Winning,” Foreign Policy 155 (2006): 38-43; Monica D. Toft, Daniel Philpott and Timothy S. Shah, God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics, (New York, NY: WW Norton, 2011).

10. Helen R. Ebaugh, “Return of the Sacred: Reintegration Religion in the Social Sciences,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41, no. 3 (2002): 388; Jeffry K. Hadden, “Toward Desacralizing Secularization Theory,” Social Forces 65, no. 3 (1987): 587-611; Stark, “Secularization, R.I.P.”

11. Fox, Ethnoreligious Conflict in the Late Twentieth Century, 38-9; However, some researchers claim that the term “Religious Resurgence” is wrong because religion has always been inseparable from politics, see: Ted R. Gurr, Peoples versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century (Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2000).

12. Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2003).

13. Nils-Christian Bormann, Lars E. Cederman, and Manuel Vogt, “Language, Religion, and Ethnic Civil War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 61, no. 4 (2017): 744-71; Timothy Wilson, Frontiers of Violence Conflict and Identity in Ulster and Upper Silesia 1918-1922 (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010).

14. For a broader discussion, see Fox, Ethnoreligious Conflict in the Late Twentieth Century, 14-21; Jonathan Fox, “The Effects of Religion on Domestic Conflicts,” Terrorism and Political Violence 10, no. 4 (1998): 43; Uzma Rehman, “Conflict Resolution and Peacemaking in Islam: Toward Reconciliation and Complementarity between Western and Muslim Approaches,” Islamic Studies 50, no. 1 (2011): 57; Nukhet A. Sandal and Jonathan Fox, Religion in International Relations Theory: Interactions and Possibilities, (London, UK: Routledge, 2013); Fox, Ethnoreligious Conflict in the Late Twentieth Century, 77.

15. Tanja Ellingsen, “Colorful Community or Ethnic Witches’ Brew? Multiethnicity and Domestic Conflict During and After the Cold War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 44, no. 2 (2000): 228-49; Jonathan Fox, “The Religious Wave: Religion and Domestic Conflict from 1960 to 2009,” Civil Wars 14, no. 2 (2012): 141-58; Ted R. Gurr, “Peoples against States: Ethnopolitical Conflict and the Changing World System,” International Studies Quarterly 38, no. 3 (1994): 347-77; Samuel P. Huntington, “Try Again: A Reply to Russett, Oneal and Cox,” Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 5 (2000): 609-10; Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War?; Mark Juergensmeyer, Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State, from Christian to Al Qaeda (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008); David C. Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism,” In Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy, ed. Audrey Cronin and James Ludes (Washington, WA: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 419-25; Marta Reynal-Querol, “Ethnicity, Political Systems, and Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 1 (2002): 29-54; Bruce M. Russett, John R. Oneal and Michaelene Cox, “Clash of Civilizations, or Realism and Liberalism Déjà vu? Some Evidence,” Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 5 (2000): 583-608; Toft et al., God’s Century.

16. Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, no.3 (1993): 22-49.

17. Ibid., 22-3.

18. Jonathan Fox, Religion, Civilization, and Civil War: 1945 through the New Millennium (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004).

19. Juergensmeyer, Global Rebellion; Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War?.

20. Fox, “The Religious Wave,” 144.

21. Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism.”

22. Ibid., 61.

23. Ellingsen, “Toward a Revival of Religion and Religious Clashes?” 341; Fox, “The Religious Wave,” 149.

24. Jonathan Fox and Shmuel Sandler, Bringing Religion into International Relations (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 36.

25. Almond et al., Strong Religion; Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred; Basedau et al., “Do Religious Factors Impact Armed Conflict?”; Fox, An Introduction to Religion and Politics; Horrowitz, “Long Time Going”; Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War?; Little, “Religious Militancy”; Nordås, Beliefs and Bloodshed; Toft, “Getting Religion?”

26. Henne, “The Two Swords: Religion-State Connections and Interstate Disputes,” 38.

27. Monica D. Toft, “Religion, Civil War, and International Order” (BCSIA Discussion Paper, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2006), 17-8.

28. Alexander De Juan, “The Role of Intra-Religious Conflicts in Intrastate Wars,” Terrorism and Political Violence 27, no. 4 (2015): 763; Andreas Hasenclever and Volker Rittberger, “Does Religion Make a Difference? Theoretical Approaches to the Impact of Faith on Political Conflict,” Millennium 129, no. 3 (2000): 641-74; Peter S. Henne, “The Ancient Fire: Religion and Suicide Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence 24, no. 1 (2012): 38; Toft, “Religion, Civil War, and International Order,” 17-8; Joseba Zulaika, Basque Violence: Metaphor And Sacrament (Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1988), ch. 12.

29. Rashmi Singh, Hamas and Suicide Terrorism: Multi-causal and Multi-level Approaches (New York, NY: Routledge, 2011).

30. Russel J. Leng and Patrick M. Regan, “Social and Political Culture Effects on the Outcomes of Mediation in Militarized Interstate Dispute,” International Studies Quarterly 47, no. 3 (2003): 434.

31. Svensson, “Fighting with Faith,” 930; Svensson and Harding, “How Holy Wars End,” 135; Toft, “Getting Religion?” 116.

32. Ron E. Hassner, “To Halve and to Hold: Conflict Over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility,” Security Studies 12, no. 4 (2003): 1-33.

33. Ibid., 12.

34. Ibid., 13.

35. Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred; Fox, An Introduction to Religion and Politics, 135; Gopin, “Religion, Violence and Conflict Resolution,” 1; Svensson and Harding, “How Holy Wars End,” 135.

36. Daniel Philpott, “Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion,” American Political Science Review 3 (2007): 505-525; Toft et al., God’s Century.

37. Rehman, “Conflict Resolution and Peacemaking in Islam,” 56; Alston et al. suggest that militancy might change over time. See: Jon P. Alston, Charles W. Peek and C. Ray Wingrove, “Religiosity and Black Militancy: A Reappraisal,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 11, no. 3 (1972): 252-61.

38. Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred.

39. Fox, An Introduction to Religion and Politics, 122.

40. Marc Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religion, Violence, and Peacemaking (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000), 13; Isak Svensson, Ending Holy Wars: Religion and Conflict Resolution in Civil Wars (Brisbane, Australia: University of Queensland Press, 2012), 2; Toft et al., God’s Century.

41. Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred.

42. Almond et al., Strong Religion; Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred; Alexander De Juan, Jan H. Pierskalla and Johannes Vüllers, “The Pacifying Effects of Local Religious Institutions: An Analysis of Communal Violence in Indonesia,” Political Research Quarterly 62, no. 2 (2015): 211-24; Robert A. Dowd, “Religious Diversity and Religious Tolerance: Lessons from Nigeria,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 60, no. 4 (2016): 617-44; Gopin, “Religion, Violence and Conflict Resolution,” 9-11; Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon; Hasenclever and Rittberger, “Does Religion Make a Difference?”; Little, “Religious Militancy”; Micklethwait and Wooldridge, God Is Back; Mohammed Abu-Nimer, “Conflict Resolution, Culture, and Religion: Toward a Training Model of Interreligious Peacebuilding,” Journal of Peace Research 38, no. 6 (2001): 686; Philpott, “Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion”; Daniel Philpott, Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation, (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012); Luc Reychler, “Religion and Conflict,” The International Journal of Peace Studies 2, no. 1 (1997): 1-17.

43. David Little and Scott R. Appleby, “A Moment of Opportunity? The Promise of Religious Peacebuilding in an Era of Religious and Ethnic Conflict,” in Religion and Peacebuilding, ed. Harold Coward and Gordon S. Smith (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004), 2.

44. Gopin, “Religion, Violence and Conflict Resolution,” 9-10.

45. Rehman, “Conflict Resolution and Peacemaking in Islam,” 58-7.

46. De Juan et al., “The Pacifying Effects of Local Religious Institutions”; Fox, An Introduction to Religion and Politics, 135; Edward Luttwak, “The Missing Dimension,” in Religion: The Missing Dimension of Statecraft, ed. Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1994), 16.

47. Abu-Nimer, “Conflict Resolution, Culture, and Religion.”

48. Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson, Religion: The Missing Dimension of Statecraft (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1994).

49. Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon; Marc Gopin, Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012).

50. Philpott, Just and Unjust Peace.

51. Ellingsen, “Toward a Revival of Religion and Religious Clashes?”; Svensson, “Fighting with Faith,” 930-47; Andrejv Tusicinsy, “Civilizational Conflicts: More Frequent, Longer, and Bloodier?” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 4 (2004): 485-98.

52. Svensson, “Fighting with Faith.”

53. Nils Petter Gleditsch, Peter Wallensteen, Mikael Eriksson, Margareta Sollenberg and Håvard Strand, “Armed Conflict 1946-2001: A New Dataset,” Uppsala Conflict Data Program [dataset], http://www.prio.org/Data/Armed-Conflict/UCDP-PRIO (accessed January 1, 2017).

54. Svensson, “Fighting with Faith,” 941.

55. Jacob Bercovitch and Karl DeRouen, “Managing Ethnic Civil Wars: Assessing the Determinants of Successful Mediation,” Civil Wars 7, no. 1 (2005): 108.

56. Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, and Mans Soderbom, “On the Duration of Civil War,” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004): 253-73; Tusicinsy, “Civilizational Conflicts?”

57. Barbara F. Walter, “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement,” International Organization 51, no. 3 (1997): 356.

58. Nil S. Satana, Molly Inman, and Johanna K. Birnir, “Religion, Government Coalitions, and Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence 25, no. 1 (2013): 29-52; Victor Asal, Marcus Schulzke and Amy Pate, “Why Do Some Organizations Kill While Others Do Not: An Examination of Middle Eastern Organizations,” Foreign Policy Analysis 13, no. 4 (2016): 811–31; Peter S. Henne, “The Two Swords: Religion-State Connections and Interstate Disputes,” Journal of Peace Research 49, no. 6 (2012): 765; David Muchlinski, “Grievances and Opportunities: Religious Violence across Political Regimes,” Politics and Religion 7, no. 4 (2014): 684-705.

59. Svensson, “Fighting with Faith,” 937; Patrick M. Regan, Civil Wars and Foreign Powers: Outside Intervention in Intrastate Conflict (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002); Barbara Walter, Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Patrick M. Regan and Aysegul Aydin, “Diplomacy and Other Forms of Intervention in Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 5 (2006): 736-56; Karl R. DeRouen and David Sobek, “The Dynamics of Civil War Duration and Outcome,” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004): 303-20.

60. Basedau et al., “Bad Religion?”; Ellingsen, “Colorful Community or Ethnic Witches’ Brew,” 229; Henderson and Singer, “Civil War in the Post-Colonial World, 1946-92,” Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 3 (2000): 284.

61. Fox, “The Religious Wave,” 149.

62. Monica D. Toft, Securing the Peace: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 5.

63. Monty G. Marshall, Ted Robert Gurr, and Barbara Harff, “State Failure Problem Set: Internal Wars and Failures of Governance, 1955-2013,” PITF [dataset], http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html (accessed January 1, 2017).

64. Jonathan Fox, “Religion and State,” RAS [dataset], http://www.thearda.com/ras (accessed January 1, 2017).

65. Jack A. Goldstone, Robert H. Bates, David L. Epstein, Ted Robert Gurr, Michael B. Lustik, Monty G. Marshall, Jay Ulfelder, and Mark Woodward, “A Global Model for Forecasting Political Instability,” American Journal of Political Science 54, no. 1 (2010): 190-208.

66. Fox, “The Religious Wave.”

67. Ibid., 142-43.

68. Svensson. “Fighting with Faith,” 936.

69. Fox, “The Religious Wave.”

70. Toft, “Getting Religion?” 97; Isak Svensson and Desirée Nilsson, “Disputes over the Divine: Introducing the Religion and Armed Conflict (RELAC) Data, 1975-2015,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 62, no. 5 (2018): 1127-48.

71. On the influence of conflict duration on termination outcomes, see Joakim Kreutz, “How and When Armed Conflict End: Introducing the UCDP Conflict Termination Dataset,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 2 (2010): 246.

72. For broader discussion on conflict reoccurrence, see Karl R. DeRouen and Jacob Bercovitch, “Enduring Internal Rivalries: A New Framework for the Study of Civil War,” Journal of Peace Research 45, no. 1 (2008): 54.

73. On the influence of intensity level on conflict termination, see: Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, “International Peacebuilding: A Theoretical and Quantitative Analysis,” The American Political Science Review 94, no. 4 (2000): 779-801; DeRouen and Bercovitch, “Enduring Internal Rivalries.”

74. This variable is collected by RAS dataset, while religious support ranges from 0 to 51 based on fifty-one individual types of support contained in the dataset, see Fox, Political Secularism, Religion, and the State; On religious support and military force, see Davis Brown, “Religion and State Entanglement and Interstate Armed Conflict Initiation, 1990-2010,” Religion, State and Society 47, no. 1 (2019): 48-66.

75. I collected the data from the previous year of the conflict termination based on Polity IV data and coded as follows: 0 = Autocracy; 1 = Semi-democracy; 2 = Democracy. See: Monty G. Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr, “ Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2018,” Polity5 [dataset], http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html (accessed January 1, 2017).

76. I collected the data from the previous year of the conflict termination, based on World Development Indicators (WDI) of the World Bank collection, see: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators.

77. Based on the World Development Indicators (WDI) of the World Bank collection, see: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators.

78. Based on the PITF dataset, I coded as follows: 0 = Less than 100 fatalities; 1 = 100 to 1000 fatalities; 2 = 1000 to 5000 fatalities; 3 = 5,000 to 10,000 fatalities; 4 = More than 10,000 fatalities; 9 = No basis for judging.

79. Based on the PITF dataset, I coded as follows: 0 = Less than one-tenth of the country and no significant cities are directly or indirectly affected. 1 = One-tenth of the country (one province or state) and/or one or several provincial cities are directly or indirectly affected; 2 = More than one-tenth and up to one quarter of the country (several provinces or states) and/or the capital city are directly or indirectly affected; 3 = From one-quarter to one-half the country and/or most major urban areas are directly or indirectly affected; 4 = More than one-half the country is directly or indirectly affected; 9 = No basis for judging.

80. This variable is collected independently by the author and coded as follows: 0 = No intervention; 1 = Diplomatic intervention; 2 = Military intervention.

81. Both central and marginal religious content leads to durable conflicts.

82. The interaction variable of both Religious Identity Dissimilarity and Religious Content has a positive significant influence on a duration as well.

83. The variables of Religious Identity dissimilarity, Religious Content, Religious Content Centrality and the combination variable of Identity and Content has no influence on termination outcome.

84. The variables of Religious Identity dissimilarity, Religious Content, Religious Content Centrality and the combination variable of identity and content has no influence on conflict reoccurrence.

85. The variable Religious Content Centrality has no influence on the violence intensity level as well.

86. In addition, the more territory that is affected by the fighting the more fatalities in the conflict. Also, Reoccurrence of the Conflict has a significant influence.

87. Ellingsen, “Toward a Revival of Religion and Religious Clashes?”; Svensson, “Fighting with Faith,” 930-47.

88. Collier et al., “On the Duration of Civil War”; Tusicinsy, “Civilizational Conflicts.”

89. Walter, “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement.”

90. Svensson, “Fighting with Faith.”

91. Mehmet Gurses and Nicolas Rost, “Religion as a Peacemaker? Peace Duration after Ethnic Civil Wars,” Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 10, no. 2 (2017): 339-62.

92. Susanna Pearce, “Religious Rage: A Quantitative Analysis of the Intensity of Armed Conflicts,” Terrorism and Political Violence 17, no. 3 (2005): 333; Fisch et al. found that Islam is considerably involved in internal violent conflicts, but the level of violence is not unusually different. See Steven Fisch, Francesca R. Jensenius, and Katherine E. Michel, “Islam and Large-Scale Political Violence: Is There a Connection?” Comparative Political Studies 43, no. 11 (2010): 1327-62; See also De Philip G. Roeder, “Clash of Civilizations and Escalation of Domestic Ethnopolitical Conflicts,” Comparative Political Studies 36, no. 5 (2003): 509-40; Indra De Soysa and Ragnhild Nordås, “Islam’s Bloody Innards: Religion and Political Terror, 1980-2000,” International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 4 (2007): 927-43; Fox, An Introduction to Religion and Politics, 51.

93. Henne, “The Two Swords”; Sussan Olzak, “Does Globalization Breed Ethnic Discontent?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 55, no. 1 (2011): 3-32; Rudolph J. Rummel, “Is Collective Violence Correlated with Social Pluralism?” Journal of Peace Research 34, no. 2 (1997): 163-75; Toft, “Religion, Civil War, and International Order,” 17-8.

94. Pearce, “Religious Rage,” 333.

95. Olzak, “Does Globalization Breed Ethnic Discontent?”

96. Bethany Lacina, “Explaining the Severity of Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, no. 2 (2006): 276-89.

97. Fox, Religion, Civilization, and Civil War.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by The Israeli Scholarship Education Foundation (ISEF) for excellence in academic and social leadership.

Notes on contributors

Mora Deitch

Mora Deitch is a doctoral candidate at the Political Studies Department of Bar-Ilan University and a Neubauer Research Associate at the Institute for National Security Studies. Her research focuses on the influence of religion on politics and conflicts.