{"id":987,"date":"2008-12-20T18:56:07","date_gmt":"2008-12-21T02:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=987"},"modified":"2008-12-20T18:56:07","modified_gmt":"2008-12-21T02:56:07","slug":"ireland-the-middle-east-and-religious-strife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/ireland-the-middle-east-and-religious-strife\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland, the Middle East and religious strife"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commenter Ploni Almoni<\/a> chides me for describing Northern Ireland’s Troubles in my post yesterday<\/a> as an instance of “tribal violence based on religion” when in fact (Almoni says) the strife was “based on nationality, or ethnicity if you prefer”, between Irishmen and Orangemen, and sectarian only as an incidental corollary. Perhaps more surprising, Almoni contends a similar analysis would apply to “other national conflicts such as the Israeli-Palestinian war. You can\u2019t blame these fights on religion.”
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\nOne way of looking into this question would be to examine how the various sects and their clergy behaved: did their doctrinal holdings, actions and associations tend to fuel intergroup hatreds and frictions, or overcome them? Commenter Dave offers a few observations<\/a> along these lines, as does the Daily Telegraph obituary of Conor Cruise O’Brien<\/a> linked in the original post (penultimate paragraph). I wouldn’t be entirely surprised, though, to hear the argument made either way on the Ulster Troubles.<\/p>\n

As to the Middle East, on the other hand, I’m tempted to let it go by linking the funny Onion satire from 2006, “War-Torn Middle East Seeks Solace In Religion<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

By most accounts, both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland have become drastically more secular in the past couple of decades, even as the South and increasingly the North as well have enjoyed an extraordinarily fruitful period of prosperity, civil peace and dynamism. Interesting posts on this topic can be found at AtlanticBlog<\/a> (taking up some more problematic aspects of modernity) and at the U.K. Conservative Party Northern Ireland<\/a> site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commenter Ploni Almoni chides me for describing Northern Ireland’s Troubles in my post yesterday as an instance of “tribal violence based on religion” when in fact (Almoni says) the strife was “based on nationality, or ethnicity if you prefer”, between … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[43],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=987"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":993,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions\/993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}