History and the use of religion by political powers

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I don't think religion has anything to do with wars!! Looking through history you would find communities with several religions who live together in peace.

Wars I think are strictly for economic reasons or greedy people who use religious people to fight with them in the name of religion.. Even faithless people could be terrorists and extremists ..

An extremist would be an extremist .. despite of religion gender or race.. extremism is a personality type.

Thats my opinion .. I live in middle east I know.

I live in a muslim country my teachers were american Christians .. I know many jews who live in my country in peace .. my servant is christian .. I just let her celebrate Christmas and gave her some money to have fun.. although we have wars with america and jews and Israel. . I don't mind !!

I know the governments and Zionists are behind all the wars in the world and they don't care about us people.. they don't care about our religions faiths race or whatever.. all they care about is their power and position.

So why blaming others.. why blaming religions and innocent people for this?

Whatever you can surely say I'm wrong

It depends on how one wants to perceive history/conflicts per se.

The instrumentalist in me agrees that religion is often a smokescreen or a cover for a greater issue behind the scenes (whatever it might be).

However, as a (de)-constructivist, often original causes for conflicts are lost as generation after generation become entrenched in their otherism, and the reasons why they dislike each other morph with them.

Religion in this instance is very much a cause for conflict, equal to any political or economical difference. Indeed, if I may take your own religion, the cultural and economic aspects of Islam are tied very much to the religious structures themselves, meaning it is often very hard to discern a difference when one wages war in the name of an extreme Islamic ideology or whether it's simply because they want more money for their tribe/state/clan etc.

Truth is, even if religion per se isn't the cause for conflict, removing it at the very least as an excuse for the myriad of reasons why someone might want to harm another is surely a task all should strive for?

Take the recent murder of a solider in the UK recently by two indoctrinated fundamentalists in east London. They said on camera after butchering the guy with a meat cleaver that their actions were retribution for the west's 'transgressions' in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Prima facie that could be enough, but what motivated them to act beyond the simple cause? It was the Quran that gave them the justification that sought, at least in their minds. Whether one disagrees with their actions (which surely all same people would), the fact that in their mind the religious aspects of their cause gave them the legitimacy to act on their political grievances lends weight to the argument that religion as a cause cannot be dismissed so easily.