Religious Driven Wars

When we think of religious extremism these days .... 

ISIS Flag Burning

 ... most of us think of Islam, with ISIS and the Taliban fresh in our minds. 

But we often forget that adherents to most other religions can display similar hardline, extremist behaviours. In the US for example, the violent attacks on family planning clinics, are largely led by Christian fundamentalists. In Israel, hardline Jewish groups often clash with less strict Jews, as well as Muslims and even recently have been attacking Christians and Churches.

While in India, support for the BJP government is almost entirely based upon hardline Hinduism, which is reflected in sporadic interfaith conflicts with Muslims, and other minority religions .... In Burma, the Buddhists have come into conflict with the Muslim minority. In India, some Sikhs beat a man to death (assumed to be a Hindu extremist), who was trying to commit a 'sacrilegious act' at Sikhism's holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, where Sikhism's holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, is kept.

Now as an atheist I am always at a loss to really understand why people even believe that they are immortal (via their 'souls'), but even more so, by their apparent willingness to kill any people who don't believe in the same form, that this belief in an immortal soul should take. 

Apart from the Communists, who killed the religious, because they thought it was the 'the opium of the people,' and whose followers they also believed opposed them; the Nazi's who killed the Jews, and some Christians, partly on the basis of their religious beliefs (but also racist reasons for the Jewish genocide), and Pol Pot's Kyhmer Rouge, who were just generally genocidal communists, not many other political parties have killed purely from their ideology of itself.

By that I mean, I can't think of a political ideology whose core stated belief was to kill all those who were religious, or of a different religious belief, or even just those who didn't agree with their political aims and objectives. This of course didn't stop them later deviating into those types of actions when they were in power:

• So the Nazis didn't declare the 'Final solution' in their manifesto's, or that they would kill the physically or mentally handicapped, nor the Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsy's and others ... it only later became 'policy,' rather than being the original ideology, after seizing power. 
• Similarly, Karl Marx didn't specify the gulags and labour camps, nor the execution squads and show trials, but they all quickly became the Communist 'normality' (as they are fast becoming again in today's Russia) in every country where a communist government seized power (except where they were too weak to enforce these actions, such as Afghanistan).
  

But most religions have killed people, either to defend or often simply to promote their own religious beliefs at the expense of another's, as a matter of credo, at one point in time or another:

• The Bible is full of accounts of wars, with the Jews and the other inhabitants fighting over what the Jews called their 'promised land' and to eradicate any rival peoples living in it, on the basis of their religions ideology.
• The Christians launched Crusades against the Muslim invaders of Jerusalem, as well as against the Cathars in France, and the northern pagans in what later became East Prussia, Poland, Latvia and the other Baltic states. They also had schism wars over religion such as those between Catholics and Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries.
  
• Islam was spread by a series of military conquests and wars against the Christian Byzantine Empire of North Africa and Asia Minor (Turkey), and the Persian followers of Zoroastrianism, as well as the Buddhists in Afghanistan and India's Hindus. They also had schism wars over religion such as those between Sunnis and Shias in the past, that still fester on up to this date (Saudis v Iranians).
• The Buddhists once also had wars of conquests with a large number of Buddhist kingdoms and expansive empires in South East Asia.
• Hindus are becoming ever more nationalistic and confrontational with the vast numbers of Muslims inside the country, as well as with Muslim atomic power Pakistan. Their main disagreements are based on the two religions.
  

But the difference is that while the secular states often degenerate into mass killing, but more as a state control tool, and not usually from any ideological conviction, and rather in fact from the corruption caused by power, and the need to hold on to that power.

Religious wars on the other hand, are not just about the seizure of lands or peoples, but often also are about imposing your religion, on those you have conquered, and who don't follow your beliefs or eradicating them: 

The Spanish Armada for example was not just an enterprise to defeat England militarily, but also to overthrow Protestant rule in England, and reimpose Catholicism in the land. All those who resisted converting back to Catholicism would be killed or be forced to flee. 

Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq, were not just about seizing land and power to gain power, and imposing a top-down religious structure to rule it, but also about the eradication of non believers by forced conversion, rape marriages and beheadings etc, in fact of anyone who was not Sunni Muslims such as the Yazidi in Syria and any Shia's in Iraq they overran. 

By ISIS following takfiri doctrine (the practice of excommunication), even being a Shiite, as the majority of Iraqi Arabs are, meets the standard of apostasy in the eyes of Sunni Muslims, because the Islamic State regards Shiism as an innovation, and to innovate on the Koran is to deny its initial perfection. So roughly 200 million Shia were to be killed or converted, as well as many more across the Sunni Muslim world e.g. Anyone who had voted or held political power (i.e those who have elevated man-made law above Sharia by running for office) or enforcing laws not made by God. 

If they ISIS had spread to Egypt they would have attacked even the Muslim Brotherhood as being considered apostates (the punishment for apostasy is death). The Christians under ISIS rule would be spared death, as long as they did not resist their new ISIS government. They of course would have had to pay a special tax, known as the jizya, and acknowledge their subjugation (forced conversion via rape marriages would be a risk). All on religious grounds.

The West has never really woken up to the fact, that religious regimes have entirely different reasons for us to fear them, rather than simply secular states:

• We fret about Russia or China because of their military might and possible ambitions to use that might e.g. Ukraine, Taiwan, South China seas. But not that they want to conquer the world or eradicate entire populations
  
• Or a mad dog North Korea, that starves its own people in order to arm itself with ICBM Nuclear weapons to possibly attack the USA, but then be immediately and utterly destroyed in the retaliation ... so it probably won't dare use its arsenal as its suicide.
  

...... but not so much over Iran, a Shiite autocracy that has vowed to eradicate Isreal one day, and by eradicate, it means wipe it and its peoples out, and that considers this to be a holy mission (so no cost too great, including the destruction of its own state) ... surely that type of mindset is something for us to worry a little bit more about? 

We in the West forget the power religious ideology can have in wars, and in getting peoples to be willing to commit mass killings of others, simply because of religious ideological differences .... its been many centuries since the last wars of religion in western Europe, when men died in large numbers because of arcane theological disputes ... but what was Kosovo, if not a Christian v Muslim dispute?

Dabiq - A Place Of Relevance To Islamic State

But that is not the case elsewhere, where Islamic thought patterns are often more apocalyptic .... ISIS thought in terms of its actions (as 'Khilafah'  The Caliphate), leading sooner, rather than later, to the appearance of the armies of the anti-Messiah, whose eventual death — when just a few thousand ISIS jihadists remained, would usher in the Malahim (apocalypse) and appearance of the Mahdi (the Guided One - in some versions this is Jesus) to kill the anti-Messiah, and convert the masses to Islam. The world’s non-Muslim territories would be conquered. This battle they thought would be at Dabiq (not Armageddon) a village in northern Syria, where the Islamic State believed there would be a decisive fight between all Muslims and their enemies, shortly before the world ends.

They are not the only ones in that region, to believe that this will occur (and soon). In a 2012 Pew poll, with countries surveyed in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, half or more of the Muslims in those countries believed that they will personally witness the appearance of the Mahdi. This expectation was most common in Afghanistan (83 percent), followed by Iraq (72%), Tunisia (67%), and Malaysia (62%) but was generally a high belief across the Muslim world.

Belief In The Mahdi Returning In Current Lifetime

Many Christians, especially in the USA, believe that judgement day is soon to come and constantly look for 'signs' that its started as foretold in the scriptures .... Again Pew Research in December 2022 showed how many.

US End Of Time Believers

 

In other words, there are many religious people around he world who already wired up by religious belief, to the idea of the end of times being imminent, and a willingness to participate in it ... meaning a willingness to expect mass deaths.

Its from this strong belief in many religions that we should probably fear religious wars returning ....