Religion as a Cause of Conflict

My atheist friend Jeff Harmson has claimed several times, in the “Comments” section of this blog, that “90%” of all wars are caused by religion, that all terrorists are inspired by the Bible, and that most, if not all tyrants, are religious.

If Jeff alone believed this, it would not be very important. But it is not just him; the mass media generally seem to be pushing the same line. Just one example: the other day, in one of our student reading rooms, I picked up a copy of BBC Focus magazine. It had an article titled “the ten worst inventions of all time.” Number ten turned out to be “religion,” purportedly for spreading conflict.

The claim seems bizarre: all the great universalist faiths preach peace.
But how might we test the thesis objectively?

With regard to tyrants and warmongers, I happen to have a book in my library, a bit of recreational reading, titled The World’s Most Notorious Men. Not a scholarly work; but a handy objective list of the people popularly considered the worst tyrants of history.

Let’s look at their list, and try to determine the religious affiliations involved, to test Jeff’s thesis. Ninety percent, according to him, should be devoutly religious.

Idi Amin - nominally a Muslim convert, but apparently only for the sake of massive aid from Libya. His mother was a shaman, and he seems to have inherited her views.

Pol Pot – atheist.

Jean Bokassa – also converted formally to Islam, also apparently for the sake of massive aid from Libya. But he practiced cannibalism, apparently as a shamanist rite.

Papa Doc Duvalier – shamanist.

Josef Stalin – atheist.

Attila the Hun – shamanist.

Genghis Khan – shamanist.

Tamerlane – Muslim.

Ivan the Terrible – actively anti-religious, apparently Satanist. “Ivan founded a pseudo-monastic order: he was the 'abbot' and his Oprichniki were the 'monks.’ They regularly performed sacrilegious masses that were followed by extended orgies of sex, rape and torture.”

The Ottoman Sultans – Muslim.


This list is obviously incomplete. No Hitler? Let’s augment it with “The World’s Most Notorious Despots,” courtesy of FactMonster:

Maximilian Robespierre – he imposed a state religion of “Reason.” Atheist, probably.

Adolf Hitler – neopagan.

Mao Zedong – atheist.

Nicolae Ceausescu – atheist.

That’s it. I would have included Slobodan Milosevic and the two Kims, Il-Sung and Jong-Il, all atheists. But let’s stick with what we’ve been handed, to ensure our conclusion is unbiased.

So here’s the tally:

Atheists: 5 (counting Robespierre)

Shamanists/pagans: 4 (6 if you count Amin and Bokassa—as we probably should).

Muslim: 2 (4 if you count Amin and Bokassa).

Satanist: 1

Christian: 0

A case might be made from this that, as the universalist faiths go, Islam is a violent religion. But still not as violent as atheists and shamanists. The clearer result is that, contrary to Jeff's assertion, it is atheism and shamanism that promote and abet tyranny.

Leave aside Islam as a special case, and the great universalist faiths seem to quite effectively prevent despotism and violence: they have produced no tyrants at all. No Buddhists; no Jews; no Hindus; no Sikhs; no Christians.

Most striking is the lack of Christian despots, since Christianity is the largest world religion, and the Christian world has been the most militarily powerful for several hundred years—the sort of place where a despot could really do something world-class.

Now let’s look at it from the opposite side of the spectrum: for, to determine who is and is not violent, it is also important to see who stands up against violence. For that, a reasonably objective test is the Nobel Peace Prize. Discounting awards to politicians for merely stopping a war they began, and awards to institutions, who tends to predominate, atheists or the religious?
Here’s the list of those who’ve won, and whose religious affiliations or lack thereof are readily accessible on the Internet, back to 1970:

Jimmy Carter – devout Baptist.

Kim Dae-Jong – devout Catholic.

John Hume – devout Catholic, ex-seminarian.

Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo – Catholic bishop.

José Ramos-Horta – devout Catholic.

Rigoberta Menchu – Catholic.

Aung San Suu Kyi – observant Buddhist.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev – atheist.

The Dalai Lama – Buddhist spiritual leader.

Elie Wiesel – devout Jew.

Desmond Tutu – Anglican bishop.

Lech Walesa – devout Catholic.

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel – devout Catholic.

Mother Theresa – Catholic nun.

Mairead Corrigan – devout Catholic.

Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov – agnostic.

Here we have almost the mirror image of the stats for tyrants and warmongers—neatly confirming our findings there.

Christians: 11 (a striking 9 Catholics)
Buddhists: 2
Atheists: 1 (2 allowing Sakharov)
Jews: 1
Muslims: 0
Shamanists: 0

So there you go; 70% Christian. You want world peace, you want more Christians and fewer atheists.

What about terrorism?

There, our work is done for us. The MIPT Terrorism Database keeps stats by “group classification” going back to 1970. According to them, of terrorist incidents worldwide since that year:

4867 were by Nationalist or Separatist groups.

3749 were by Communist or Socialist groups—broadly atheists. An additional 433 were by “leftist” groups. Total 4182.

2641 were by Religious groups.

Anarchists, anti-globalisation activists, environmentalists, racists, and rightists account for a further handful each.

So religious motivations account for only a fraction of terrorist attacks; atheists again account for a much larger proportion.

Further, when one examines the names of the groups listed by MIPT as “religious terrorists,” you find that they are almost exclusively Muslim (or rather, Islamist). Discount the Islamists, and all other religions seem virtually devoid of such activities.

Now let’s look at the examples Jeff offers in support of his thesis that religion causes ninety percent of the world’s violence:

He cites, as religious tyrants, George Bush and Osama Bin Laden. He cites, as religious wars, the current war in Iraq, the Israel-Arab conflict, Catholics vs. Protestants in Ireland, the Crusades, the Inquisition [sic—not a war], “Christians vs. Jews,” “Christians vs. pagans,” “ongoing war in Africa,” Serbian Muslim massacres, the Holocaust, and “India.” He does not cite any Christian “terrorist” groups.

Let’s look at each of his examples in turn:

George Bush
Not, by dictionary definition, a tyrant. To see him as a warmonger, it would be necessary to see the Iraq war as a case of unambiguous aggression. This claim is, shall we say, controversial. Certainly it is absurd to put him in the same category with Hitler or Idi Amin. He is a devout Christian.

Osama Bin Laden
Also not, by dictionary definition, a tyrant—he is not even in power. Clearly, he is an advocate of violence. But is he actually religious? His training is in engineering; he appeals to Muslim values, but his Islam seems heretical.

The Current War in Iraq
Not religious. Saddam’s regime was strictly secular and actively anti-clerical. Of the US State Department’s original list of thirty coalition partners, six were majority Muslim nations; two were majority Buddhist. On the Christian side, the Vatican opposed the invasion.

The Arab-Israeli conflict
The press loves to portray this as religious, but the characterization does not hold up to scrutiny. It is an ethnic conflict. On the Arab side, thirty percent of Palestinian Arabs are Christian. The PLO is officially secular. Al Fatah, until recently the largest Arab political unit, is officially secular and Marxist. So is the PFLP. Hamas, a religious or pseudo-religious party, has come to the fore only recently—since last year. It was created only in 1987.

On the Israeli side, Israel was founded, not by religious Jews, but by secular Marxists, as a Marxist state—hence the kibbutzim. The most devout Jewish sects still do not recognize its existence as legitimate.

Marxists fighting Marxists; atheists fighting atheists.

Catholics vs. Protestants in Ireland
The situation here is very similar to that in Israel: the press wants to make it a religious conflict, but it is not. It is a conflict between colonizers and the original inhabitants of the land. The IRA is not a Catholic organization; it is officially secular and Marxist. It is condemned by the Catholic Church. Most of its leaders, and most of the leaders of the Irish Independence movement, have been Protestant. On the other side, we have the “Reverend” Ian Paisley—but his religious credentials are similar to those of Bin Laden. He is self-ordained, and is not recognized as a minister by any established Protestant denomination.

The Crusades
Here we have a conflict genuinely motivated by religious ideals. But it was a just war; the Crusaders were summoned in the name of collective security to defend the Byzantine Empire as it was being overrun by the Seljuk Turks. It is immoral not to fight a just war—just as it would have been immoral of Britain and France not to come to Poland’s aid in WWII. And the overall effect of a just war is to reduce the future likelihood of war.

All this could be said, indeed, of the current Iraq conflict.

The Inquisition
Not a war, as noted, but violence was involved. How much? According to the curator of the Museum of the Spanish Inquisition in Lima, Peru, about one thousand fatalities, worldwide, over three centuries. To get some idea of how significant this is, note this is about the number of people currently executed by the (atheist) government of China every month.

It’s wrong to kill anyone for their beliefs; but in the broad historic context, this is almost trivial.

Christians vs. Jews
There have been many pogroms against the Jews in Christian countries over the past two thousand years. But is the impetus religious, as opposed to ethnic? The evidence suggests not. For, before the Jews were persecuted by Christians, they were at least as actively persecuted by, in turn, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the pagan Greeks, and the pagan Romans. The worst anti-Jewish persecution in history came at the hands of the Nazi regime in Germany, for whom the issue was expressly race, not religion. Conversely, other minority groups have been similarly persecuted without any plausible religious motive: the gypsies in Europe, the Hakka Chinese in Southeast Asia.

Christians vs. Pagans
There seems to have been quite active persecution of Christians by pagans in the first three centuries of the Christian era. Some time after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, paganism was officially outlawed, but there does not seem to have been widespread persecution.

Jeff may have been thinking of the witch trials in Europe. But this, again, does not seem to have had anything to do with the witches being “pagan”—if they were. After all, witches are commonly put to death in African shamanic society even today. Witchcraft is no more popular among pagans than among Christians.

“Ongoing War in Africa”
I’m not sure what Jeff is referring to here. Darfur is often in the news, and the media have portrayed that as a Muslims vs. Christians struggle. But this is false: it is a struggle between camel herders and settled farmers; most on both sides are Muslim.

Then there is the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. It has some features that look Christian; but it is really shamanist. The leader, Jospeh Kony, claims to be a spirit medium, which is to say, a shaman; so did the founder, Alice Auma.

Serbian Muslim Massacres
Again, ethnic, not religious, conflict. After all, the Serbs were at least as eager to massacre Croats, who are fellow Christians.

The Holocaust
Perpetrated by a neopagan, anti-Christian government, for expressly racist reasons. No religion involved.

India
There is some interreligious friction in India. But how bad can it be, when the president of this predominantly Hindu country is Muslim, the prime minister Sikh, and the leader of the largest party Christian?