In his book Cruel Creeds, Virtuous Violence, Jack David Eller speaks of the conflicts between ethnoreligious groups. He starts off by explaining how religion and ethnicity are often infused in creating "ethnoreligious" groups that embody the classical theory of "us" vs "them," leading to conflict between these groups that "are not exclusively about religion but are about other things too" (Eller 208). This, consequently, creates conflicts between ethnic and groups that is often pinned on religion but, as Eller proves through multiple case studies, is rooted in various other factors as well. One of the factors that stood out to me was the fact that the boundary that separates two groups often becomes the focus of each group, rather then "the cultural stuff that encloses it" (Eller 210). This presents the idea that these ethnoreligious groups function on the grounds of self interest. As Eller explains, "they are certainly not trying to covert each other to their religion nor are they disputing each other's doctrines," rather "what they are disputing against each other is access or control over 'mundane areas like development plans, education, trade union, land policy, business/tax policy, army' and other worldly concerns" (Eller 212).
This is an important point to notice because it displays how religion becomes the blame for global violence, when often time it is only one of the factors that separate these groups and not the cause of violence at all. All it serves as is a distinction of "us" vs "them" and once "us" starts fighting "them" it is blamed on their religious differences. But if one were to step back and look, they would see that the fighting may be instead over access to goods and political power. This makes me wonder, if a common nationality that became the primary form of self identification could be be established among the warring religious sects in various nations, could this creation of a common interest group through nationality help end ethnoreligious violence? or would it only bring escalate it to a national level?
To answer your question, whether or not a common sense of nationality could alleviate ethnoreligious conflict, I don't think that anything would be solved. What I'm thinking of at the moment is Sudan, whose southern portion voted last year to split from the north after decades of civil war (for religious as well as ethnic and political reasons). I think it would be near impossible to unite such aggressive opponents as any involved in such serious conflict, unless the united front was formed to face some other, larger foe. I really believe that religious teachings themselves must be modified.
ReplyDeleteI think you present a good point with this common nationality thing. I know we talked about it in class a bit last week, and it seems to work when the religious conflict is actually grounded identity. However, if the religious conflict is grounded in access to opportunity and power as Eller talks about, I don't think identity would do the trick. There would still be sub-groups within the nation with less access, and no one would identity primarily at the national level until inequalities at the micro level were resolved.
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