Bloody, intense, and durable: The politics of 'religious conflict'

Abstract

A growing number of scholars argues that we are witnessing a resurgence of religion in world politics, accompanied by an increase in religiously inspired conflict. Empirical studies demonstrate that religious conflicts are more violent, more intense, more durable, and more difficult to resolve through negotiated settlements than their secular counterparts. In this paper, we argue that these conclusions are unreliable, because they fail to provide convincing criteria for separating religious conflicts from non-religious ones. Our main concern is with the categorization problem. What characteristics or factors make a conflict party, conflict issue, or identity religious, and what characteristics or factors frame a conflict party, conflict issue, or identity as non-religious? A basic assumption behind much of this research is the contested idea that religion is a universal phenomenon embodied in various forms such as Islam and Christianity. The majority of scholars simply assume a sharp division between religion and the secular without problematizing or justifying such a distinction. In this article, we argue that religious conflict is an ideologically charged concept, and that the study of the religion-conflict nexus reinforces the neoliberal status quo and current systems of power.