Religion: The Scapegoat of Conflicts, Part III: Religion as a Casus Belli

INDEX
Part I: Introduction
Part II: The Axial Age Religions
Part III: Religion as a Casus Belli
Part IV: The Extremists
Part V: Conclusion

However peaceful the goal of a religion is, the fact remains that there are still conflicts and wars on the behalf of religion. Numerous religious wars have happened, even between the two closely related religions that became our exemplification before: Hinduism and Buddhism. As said before, both religions were made to bring about peace and order, however, religions are still an extremely sensitive matter concerning the central belief of humans, and thus even a little difference could spark a conflict.

Hinduism and Buddhism have a central difference, in the belief of castes. Thus, they did not always get along, since the start of Buddhism's rise in India, especially after the death of Emperor Ahsoka Maurya, the religion's most powerful supporter, at the 3rd century BC, where his empire was fractured into different Hindu factions.

This battle continues even until today, such as in Sri Lanka the past decades. Hindu Tamil separatists fight against the Buddhist Sinhalese majority for more political autonomy. Though the center of the conflict is those political reasons, it has been heated up even more with the difference in religious beliefs.

If scrutinized, almost all holy wars among nations have a political background. In the Hindu-Buddhist conflict in Sri Lanka, the political reason was for freedom, and fueled by difference of religion. Wars were, and still are, almost always fought over lands and resources; even holy wars (i.e. crusades) and wars fought over ideology (i.e. the Cold War) always have economic reasons, as a costly war could never logically be fought when there are no profit to be gotten by the belligerents.

However, in international relationships, according to human morality, and reminded even further as the rules of war, Jus ad Bellum, were laid out, a side must have a justifiable cause for war. To further their political and economical reasons, a nation could drag along the sensitive matter of religion and ideology as a casus belli (reason for war). With this, a holy war is started, by pointing out that their rival has a lesser belief according to their doctrine. Thus, a religion is only used as the 'motor' in a conflict, which means that while religion still plays a factor, it is merely a tool to initiate a war, fought over political and economic reasons.

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Next time, we will discuss the importance of extremists in making religion the scapegoat.

Once more I must say, due to the sensitive matter of these posts, please discuss your disagreements in an educated manner.