Religious Wars

I don’t think there’s such a thing as a good reason for a religious war, since I think religion is a misguided premise on which to base any endeavour.

Question from John:
I was just wondering, but why are some good reasons for religious wars and what would it accomplish?

Answer:
I don’t think there’s such a thing as a good reason for a religious war, since I think religion is a misguided premise on which to base any endeavour. That’s not to say that everything done in the name of religion has been worthless; the right thing may be done for the wrong reason.

Religious wars, by definition, are waged for one principal reason, good or not: the welfare of the participants’ personal religions. In practical terms this can mean forcibly converting people of other faiths, killing them outright, reclaiming artifacts and/or locations of religious significance, or conceivably, bringing about the end of the world so that certain prophecies will be fulfilled and true believers will get their ultimate rewards.

Clear-cut examples of religious wars can be hard to come by, but they do exist.
_

  • A series of them ravaged Europe over two centuries, mainly as a result of the Protestant Reformation.
  • The Crusades were a long series of turf wars between Christians and Muslims over the two religions’ shared designation of the “Holy Land”.
  • The current Muslim Jihad waged by extremists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia and so on is a struggle in the name of Allah, though no nation has yet been suicidal enough to commit itself officially. (Iran may sanction calls of “Death to America”, but it hasn’t actually declared war.)
  • Though the conflict between Jews and Muslims in Palestine and Israel may be about racial tensions and property disputes as much as religion, there are many around the world who actively hope and pray that it will escalate to the point where it fulfills an end-time prophecy in the Bible.

    • _
    There have of course been wars whose causes had little or nothing to do with religion, but that doesn’t let religion off the hook for the destruction that has indeed been done in its name.

    – SmartLX

    One thought on “Religious Wars”

    1. Pingback: Kevin Skinner « Popular People

    Comments are closed.