How many wars (actual shooting wars) between countries were fought over religion?
If you can't count that high, an estimate will do but include some examples.
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M$5 Answers
There was the French Wars of Religion during the 16th Century which was a civil war inside France between Catholics and Protestants.
How about the Reconquista.
Those are some of the Major ones, Wikipedia has an article that details some of the lesser known ones too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_wars
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M$Approximately zero.
While people are good at rationalising their actions, and rationalise them in terms of ideology and religion, most wars between nations are fought for the same reason as "wars" are fought between drug gangs.
Resources, turf, money, status, or sometimes on the basis of "get them before they get you".
Did Great Britain and Germany have deep religious differences throughout the first half of the 20th century? I don't think so.
Did the Spanish conquer South America because they disapproved of the local religions? I woud suggest probably not.
Did Saddam feel that the Kuwaitis were not pious enough? Did he feel that the Shias of Iran should be taught the Sunni way? I somehow think it was not a major factor in his thinking.
Even when a conflict apparently has a relgiious dimension like Protestant/Catholic conflict in Northern Ireland, in reality the dynamics are not much different than you'd find between the tribes in Kenya, where there is no religious difference invoved.
It just comes down to one bunch of people thinks another bunch of people has got too much and they haven't got enough. Or some group of people finds it unacceptable that people from another part of the country are coming into their valley.
I'm not sure that any war has ever actually been fought over religion.
Sure, the people involved have said they were. But given people's capacity for self-delusion, rationalisation and plain lying., I'm going to take a lot of convincing that there wasn't something much more basic going on.
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Hi @albanian,
When you say "shooting war" do you mean to exclude wars before the use of gun powder? Do arrows count or did you mean it in a more general way?
I'm not the historian to answer this one, but I wanted to clear that up in case one comes along.
Actually, I think this remark is spot on, even the crusades were more about mone, territory and power than about religion, even though the Roman-Catholic church would of course tell you otherwise.
Think about it: the inquisition never truely was about converting people to the RC church. It was about submitting powers that were growing too strong, and could threaten the power of the RC church.
I would like to make a point here that fear breeds violence. Only when a person is truly terrified will they lash out, almost irrationally. And what on this planet has historically been the source of major fear for the masses? Religion! The idea that if we do not do our best to convert the "infidels" or "heathens" that we will be spending an eternity in a horrible place full of fire and brimstone. Of course, these days, people are easing way up on this notion, but historically the church has been a source of great power, at one time being more powerful than the government itself.
Maybe recently the conflict in the North became about drugs, etc. But in the early years did it not have anything remotely to do with resources, etc.? if you were Protestant or Catholic you were subject to the war from the other side, end of.
Did you see the interviews with the Mumbai terrorist that was captured?
People's motives are all mixed up. (Why should they be any different to you, huh?) A big part of his motive was that the money his family would get for his suicide mission would give his kid brothers and sisters a shot at getting out of poverty, and his dad told him to do it for that reason. The rest of his motive was ignorant beliefs about what "the enemy" was like, and he was surprised to be treated decently by the Indians after capture.
As for the crusades, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the people that took part did it because it was a better option than being dirt poor at home, or it got them advancement with their feudal betters.
The history of conflict is that whatever differences exist between groups can become a focus for violence, whether the differences are big or small, religious or otherwise. The fact that relgion got picked as a marker in a fight just means it was the obvious difference between two groups of people that were antagonisitic. It doesn't mean if they had happened to be the same religion the conflict would never have happened, they'd just have used different markers, and told themselves a different story about what the fight was about.
You can't possibly be serious...
Shooting with bows and arrows counts. I meant it in the common sense of distinguishing shooting wars from trade wars, cold wars, and all the other non-military uses of the word war. I mean actual fighting by armed men in an organized manner sanctioned by governments.
If the soldiers were fighting because of religious beliefs that's good enough for my question. The leaders would not have been able to get away with their power grab without using religion as a tool, which makes religion an enabling cause.
I would just throw in the idea that:
A) Many leaders of "religious wars" had other motives above religion (like power)
B) Many of the soldiers fighting in the field were doing so based largely on religious beliefs (and a pride for their country, which went hand in hand with religion in many cases)
Plausible?
I think your answer is a good counter to any answer that says all wars can be attributed to religion, but you go too far in saying none were. There were plenty that were primarily over religion and it shouldn't be too hard for history buffs to list a few and try to count them.
Now to the difficult part, what makes a war about religion, does a war only partly about religion count? I have to completely disagree with robbrown here, many many wars in history have been fought in the name of or because of religion. To get an estimate of total religious wars in all of human history is probably near impossible and I would need alot more time to research and look through some of those Uni notes.
Religious wars include as you already pointed out the Crusades but also for example the current war on terror. US reaction to invade Afghanistan was due to 9/11 which was based on the belief of the Holy Caliphate amongst other things. Europe experienced many religious conflicts especially around the 14th to 17th century between Protestants and Catholics. One could also take the Spanish Inquisition in South America as a religious war, partly. Even though at first it was about resources and land it soon became religious when natives were given the choice between the sword or the cross.
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I understand what you mean and I hate half answering a question like this. The truth is I'm on vacation far away from my books and notes and cannot find the relevant statistics online unfortunately. I really liked this question though and wanted to answer it. If I find something more conclusive on the web I will let you know. If you are really interested in the subject this book should help: The Gods of War: Is Religion the Primary Cause of Violent Conflict?
http://www.amazon.com/Gods-War-Religion-Primary-Conflict/dp/0830834907
For the purposes of this question, if you could estimate how many of those 195 wars were fought over religion we could multiply by 20 for a ballpark overall estimate. I'm looking for something more precise than "all", "none", or "lots" but I can't really expect anything exact.
It probably all started when the first "prophet" came and started screaming "the deliverer is coming!, the deliverer is coming!" , each religion started with some form of this. Even the Qur'an (pronounced kor an) tells of a prophet.
A great resource I have come to find in my travels of surfing is the MapsOfWar site. They have very interesting timeline maps for users to literally see what religions movement was over time up till today.
http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/Religion.swf
- MapsOfWar.com
- My Brain
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