Religion And Religious Conflicts

Since the beginning of time, human beings have encountered endless conflicts. Some conflicts occur due to territory or due to lack of resources, whereas other conflicts are due to differences between nations, groups and people. African conflicts are caused by many factors due to ethnicity, race, religion and resources (Barnard 1). However, religion has been one of the main causes of many present-day conflicts especially in Africa. Many people are sensitive when it comes to religion since religion to them forms part of their individual identity. Religion is not only important for one’s individual identity but also for group identity due to nationalism (Barnard 1). Therefore, most religious conflicts are types of identity based conflicts. In other words, threatening one’s beliefs means threatening one’s religion, and this is the reason why most people would fight for their religion (Barnard 1).

Furthermore, religion can be a tool for either unifying a nation or a group or it can lead to the destruction of nations as well as internal state conflicts. However, the relationship between religion and conflicts is very complex (Barnard 1). Therefore, one must take into consideration many other factors before considering religion as the main cause. Most religions actually teach people that war is wrong and violence must be considered as a last option. Religious writings and books give guidelines on how people should act and when to use violence and when not to. Most people interpret these guidelines in their own different way, and end up abusing these religious scripts which may lead to conflicts (Barnard 1). However in many parts of the world, people from different religions live in harmony and coexist in peace yet in other parts of the...

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...n to unify Sudan as an Islamic state by politicizing religion and placing religious ideologies at the heart of the conflict (Kustenbauder, 2012).

Religion being politicized has been stuck together with globalization processes in two important ways. First, the religious conflict helped local actors from the northern government and southern rebels to gain support within the region and from international actors abroad. The colonial era may have been the origin of the concept of South Sudan, but the wars waged by Khartoum gave way to its reality (Kustenbauder, 2012). Second, Sudanese people living in the Diaspora abroad have played an important role as representatives of the New Sudan. Their perceptions have been by formed by their emigration and they have kept alive a vision of a new independent Sudan that’s different from the control of Khartoum (Kustenbauder, 2012).