What role does religion play in ethnic conflict?

1. What role does religion play in ethnic conflict?

2. Conflicts along Religious Borders • Religious beliefs and histories can bitterly divide people who speak the same language, have the same ethnic background, and make their living in similar ways. • Religious conflicts usually involve more than differences in spiritual practices and beliefs. • Divisions are not strictly between major religions but also within major religions. • Some countries lie entirely within the area where a major religion is practiced and some straddle interfaith boundaries • Intrafaith boundaries also exist in major religions. • These boundaries can be very peaceful, or can cause extremely violent political conflict.

3. Israel and Palestine • The region of Israel and Palestine is home to one of the most argumentative religious conflicts in the world today. • After World War I, European colonialism came to a region that had previously been controlled and fought over by the Jews, Romans, Christians, Muslims, and Ottomans. • The British called the region Palestine and it housed a majority of Muslim Palestinians. • The British wanted to create a Jewish homeland within Palestine, they assured that the religious and civil rights of existing non-Jewish people in Palestine would be promised. • Jews and Palestinians engaged in open warfare by 1947-1948.

4. Israel and Palestine cont. • During World War II and the Holocaust, numerous Jews fled to the region. • After the war the British rule ended and the United Nations decided to split up Palestine, creating the independent Israeli and Palestinian states. • Surrounding Arab states reacted violently to the new Jewish state, Israel survived through numerous wars in which the Palestinians lost their lands, farms and villages. • Palestinians migrated or fled to refugee camps in Arab states around Palestine. • In the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Israel managed to get control of lands in Gaza, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. • Over the past 30 years Israel has expanded Jewish houses farther and farther into the West Bank, and expanded Jerusalem eastward toward the West Bank. • Palestinian building was limited by the Israeli Government.

5. Israel and Palestine cont. • In 1995 both sides talked out a peace consensus that would have created a substantial Palestinian state but in 2000 Palestine rejected the offer. • Israel evacuated the settlements that were built in the Gaza Strip and burned down the remaining buildings and gave Gaza independence. • Palestinians in Gaza rejoiced , however within a few days the border to Israel was closed along with the Egyptian border and many Palestinians could not get to their jobs. • The Israeli government tightly controls migration and flow of goods in and out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Gaza is surrounded by fences, and in some places walls, land mines in certain areas and a dust road to show footprints. • The bloodshed of this conflict is enormous because both sides believe that the land belongs to them.

6. Israel and Palestine cont.

7. The Horn of Africa • Religions that are practiced in the Horn of Africa are Islam, ancient Christian sects and Christian sects of European colonizers. • In mountainous Ethiopia and 4000 years ago the cultural core of Amharic Christians existed, for centuries the Amharic’s were able to control the lowlands until Islam began to spread into North Africa, and convert some people at the base of the mountains. • With European colonialism, Italy took Eritrea as a colony, but after World War II Great Britain controlled the region and in 1950 the United Nations decided that it was best for Eritrea to become a part of Ethiopia. • This was not very welcome by the Muslim Eritreans to accept control by the Amharic Ethiopians.

8. The Horn of Africa cont. • The Amharic’s did not only control the Eritrean Muslims in the north, but they also controlled the Muslim Somalis in the east. The Amharic’s maintained control of these areas even after Ethiopia was overthrown by a military dictatorship. • Eritreans continued to fight for their independence and were finally successful in 1991 but the situation remains tense and a lot of border conflicts sprung up in the early 2000s. • Ethiopia still has a large Muslim population of Somalis in the east, and in the south and west the Amharic’s continue to control their highlands.

9. The Horn of Africa cont.

10. The Former Yugoslavia • A number of religious and linguistic borders run throughout the Balkan Peninsula. • The division line between the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church runs directly down the middle of the Balkan Peninsula. • The Slovenians and Croats in the west are Catholics and the Serbians and Montenegrans in the east and south are Eastern Orthodox. • The Ottoman Turks brought their military to the northwestern front and converted some Serbians to Islam. • Yugoslavia was formed in the aftermath of World War I and was another example of a country thrown together and left struggling with a significant diversity.

11. The Former Yugoslavia cont. • During World War II the Nazi-supporting Croats fought against the anti-Nazi Serbs that lived in Croatia and Bosnia, by the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s Slovenia was the first republic to declare its independence, followed closely by Croatia and Bosnia. • Ethnic Cleansing came into use when describing the Bosnian Muslims leaving their homelands and sometimes their deaths. • In the later part of the 1990s a group of Albanian Muslims demanded their independence from the Serbian government and the government’s reaction was once again ethnic cleansing.

12. The Former Yugoslavia cont.

13. Northern Ireland • For centuries the island of Ireland was its own entity, marked by a mixture of Celtic religious practices and Roman Catholicism. • Colonization began in the 1600s and by 1700 the British controlled the entire island of Ireland and would treat Irish Catholics very harshly by taking away their land and legal right to own property. • By the late 1800s the Irish Catholics began to revive their Celtic and Irish traditions in doing this they strengthened their resolve against the British and Irish Catholics rebelled against the British in the 1900s. • The British partitioned Ireland and Northern Ireland was created to protect Protestants and was apart of the United Kingdom. Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland completed separated themselves. • An Irish Geographer, Frederick Boal, used the concept of activity space to explain how Protestants and Catholics had each chosen to separate themselves in their everyday activities. • Although people believe religion is the big issue in Northern Ireland it is actually more about economics, access to opportunities, oppression, political influence, terror, and civil rights. • Northern Ireland finally rendered a peace agreement in 2007.

14. Northern Ireland cont.