Talk:Religious war

What is this article about?

I find it bizarre that this article nowhere mentions the two movements Al-Qaeda and Islamic State which most obviously represent religious war in this era, and it made me examine the idea more closely.

The term 'religious war' seems to be a folk term not found in most dictionaries. When originally introduced to Wikipedia [1] it was described as a "term used in the programming community" (and at least I recognize that). The older term, "holy war", which Encyclopedia Britannica describes as "any war fought by divine command or for a religious purpose" [2], puts a rather different slant on the idea. Mirriam-Webster defines it as "a war or violent campaign waged often by religious extremists for what is considered to be a holy purpose" and the Oxford English Dictionary similarly characterises holy war as "a war waged in a religious cause". Even Wiktionary defines holy war by referring to motivation (and doesn't currently include 'religious war').

There is no citation for this article's definition as a war "justified by religious differences" and I wonder where it came from. Most of the (secular) references used in the lede discuss the idea of "religious violence" rather than religious war, mainly discrediting it as a separate category. Cavanagh quotes Andrew Sullivan's New York Times article ("This is a religious war") but that article itself stresses that it's not "a war against the west". So is the emphasis on participants rather than motivation leading to a spurious article? Maybe it just reflects the confusion in a mainly secular society about what motivates people.

The most recent attempt to create a "Holy war" article ([3]) used the more widely accepted definition ("any war declared or waged in support of a religious cause, by divine command or for a primarily religious purpose") and showed some promise but as is the way in Wikipedia, it was deleted after a day to point to the current less informed article.

The emphasis on participants has a curious side-effect that it becomes impossible for religious war to occur unless there are two religious sides. Since most nations these days are secular institutions the possibility of a religious war becomes much smaller, though certainly not impossible in the Middle East. If motivation is used as the criterion this artificial limitation does not exist.

I propose that the definition of religious (or holy) war at the beginning of the article be changed to one of the above definitions and the article be revised to reflect this. Chris55 (talk) 16:12, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

I too am a bit puzzled as to the purpose of the article but There are not that many religious wars if you go by the definition you mentioned "any war declared or waged in support of a religious cause, by divine command or for a primarily religious purpose". I don't see how Al-Qaeda or ISIS are doing a religious war when many other factors are involved in their enterprise such as economic and political reasons for their activities. It is obvious that they are not really fighting to convert people to their belief systems (not sure how anyone would become a Muslim by war). This is not their main purpose. I think the lead can be adjusted because religious differences are usually not the motivation for any war. Rather ethnic and cultural differences define groups and these can delineate areas of conflict. Like in the religious wars of Europe, they were not really over religious, or sacred texts, but over power and economics. Purely religious wars are not easy to come by since not one really just engages in war without secular reasons heavily involved. Huitzilopochtli1990 (talk) 00:01, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Are you reading "and" for "or" in the definition you quote? It seems to me there are plenty that come under one or the other head. Why does the existence of other reasons exclude the religious element? Has there ever been a war waged for a single reason? It doesn't need to be about conversion or theological notions. Usually one side thinks the other is evil for a whole variety of reasons. The crusades were fought firstly to protect Byzantium from Islam, then to liberate Jerusalem and by the way to enrich the crusaders. The Taiping Rebellion was caused by the uprising of a millenial sect but was put down to restore imperial unity. ISIS may have been created by disaffected Ba'athist generals carving out territory between Iraq and Syria, but it was largely fought on the ground by young people inspired by religious reasons many of whom travelled from Europe to take part. In many cases these simply would not have happened without the religious component. Even more obvious ethnic conflicts, like the Rohingya conflict, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Troubles in Northern Ireland would not happen without it. So what is the purpose of calling them secular? Chris55 (talk) 13:44, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

I used the quote you mentioned. I did not say much on exclusion of any element, but I am curious about "religious components" if such things even exist. In terms of definition of a holy war I think it can be refined since it is an ambiguous concept that was barely invented a millennia after Christ in Europe. Your suggestions look reasonable. I only mentioned that all conflicts are motivated by many factors of which religion usually plays a minor role, if any, in terms of both causes and outcomes. The religious and secular dichotomy is western invention that has no historical basis because people in most cultures today and in the past do not divide their worlds under such categories or false dichotomies. All of the examples you have mentioned clearly did not need religion to start any particular conflict at all because you still have the people in those regions with the same belief systems before and after the conflicts have ended and yet the conflicts ceased. Obviously the Israeli Palestinian conflict began when Israel took over Palestinian land and high foreign immigration in those lands (despite Jews and Muslims co-existing for centuries), the troubles in Northern Ireland was caused by people who wanted their lands back from the UK (Protestant and catholics still coexist without much of an issue today), ISIS and the rest of the breed have been fighting against international exploitation by foreigners (aka Western nations that have a history of exploitation of resources and people of other countries), etc. Clearly conflicts of major magnitude such as most civil wars, WWI and WWII did not need religion to start any conflicts whatsoever - and people still coexisted after the conflicts have ended . In civil wars in general, people of similar cultural and religious backgrounds fight each other for various reasons such as independence, economics, grievances, etc. This stuff is very complex, not reducuble to abstraction like religion, for which most scholars have no consensus over a definition of religion and most languages do not have an equivalent terms for it in their native tongues. Huitzilopochtli1990 (talk) 22:41, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

It all sounds rather abstract to you. I wonder if you've ever got to know anyone who's prepared to die for their faith? Chris55 (talk) 08:13, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Check out Robert Pape's "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism." He did a detailed study on exactly that and came to a similar conclusion on the matter as me - religion plays a minor role. One really needs to ponder as to why people of different faiths coexist before and after conflicts. Its not like massive conversions occur at the end any of these conflicts. War is not really a good way to win peoples minds and beliefs (it usually makes one group really dislike the other and vice versa but since people from different religious backgrounds are intermarried down the family lineages there is sympathy for "others"), but it sure is effective at getting independence, rights, land, resources, etc. Not one single religion tells people to die for their faith (the concept of religion did not exist for most of history in most languages and cultures and certainly was not found in any religious scriptures). Try finding one verse in the Bible that states that one should attack a Muslim or a Hindu or a Jew. It will be impossible because Muslims and Hindus were not part of the Biblical world and the earliest Christians (Messiahism if you translate that term) were all Jewish, Jesus and his disciples were all Jews, Paul was a Jew, most of the New Testament was written by Jews, Christians read and revered the scriptures of the Jews (Old Testament), etc. There are good resources on the history of the modern invention of religion. Huitzilopochtli1990 (talk) 18:02, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

As of 2/11/2021 the opening section obviously aims to minimize the impact of religion on war. I find it bizarre that the second sentence references the Encyclopedia of Wars as having only 123 religious wars. It's easy to check that book, the authors, Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod, did not intend to categorize wars as religious. The 123 wars mentioned comes from the index, they didn't intend to categorize wars as religious, and using their index to make this argument in a dictionary is really poor editing. Not sure who is managing the page but that is clearly intent to minimize the connection between war and religion. And it's poorly done. I had no intention of disputing the editing of this page but it's just so strange to come to a page and see such an obvious agenda in the main section. Hopefully it's only a temporary bias in the editing and will rectify itself over time. I'm not suggesting anyone overstate the connection between war and religion either. Just because social, political, economic, cultural, and religious factors are present in a war doesn't mean religion isn't a primary factor. It's just weak to use a page like this to push a "religion-doesn't-cause-war" narrative.Lecky333 (talk) 03:26, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Actually they did intend to classify cases by religion which is why they indexed them under "Religious Wars". The authors intended that. You can see that even other sources like The Great Big Book of Horrible Things that religion only made up 10% - they classify them accordingly too. So it is not an exception. Most conflicts have nothing to do with religion and for most of history there was no concept of religion in their languages or cultures. The Bible, Quran, and all other holy texts did not such a concept either.Ramos1990 (talk) 04:24, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I definitely agree it is clear that the lead of this article was written as an argument that religion doesn't cause wars, which of course is laughable. Of 19 (talk) 23:19, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

The use of "some historians" when referencing a single theologian is far from appropriate on wikipedia.

The listing of non-religious wars as proof that religious wars don't exist makes this article look like a joke. Of 19 (talk) 23:24, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Sorry but the arguments you have presented here are for your edit are not convincing so far. Perhaps will change to "scholars" because that is more generic. I will also add another source for that claim.Ramos1990 (talk) 23:54, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

This isn't a highschool essay where a child may present a straw man just to knock it down. Do not list non-religious wars just to point out they are non-religious, it makes the article look like a joke. Also do not present a single theologian as multiple historians, how is that not obvious? It is clear you have been editing this article for a while, so why is it still so horrible? Of 19 (talk) 00:03, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Actually its multiple other sources making similar claims. I added a source and crosslinked another. I am not sure how you can honestly say that article says no religions cause war, the lead even mentions them, the problem is that they are a very low percentage. Most violence and wars are secular, not religious either way. There is no evidence that religion causes much of this stuff, but certainly a little.Ramos1990 (talk) 00:05, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Proposal

@Ramos1990: and I have done some improvements in recent days to try and make this article more balanced. Would it be okay to remove the "Unbalanced" template that @Of 19: put here in April 2021? Secondly, I hope we can agree on what the purpose of this article should be. In my view, the most appropriate approach to writing this article about this subject is:

A. to write/edit/present this article as a continuous scholarly discussion about what a religious war is and isn't (and whether such things even exist(ed));

B. to which degree scholars think that one should or shouldn't regard/classify conflict X as a religious war; and

C. to provide some room (a sentence or two per example) for expressing the ways in which conflict X is or isn't popularly regarded as a religious war, and what scholars have to say about these popular opinions.

Most theoretical aspects (broadly coinciding with A.) are to be reserved for the first sections (1. Definitions; 2. Applicability of religion to war; 3. Prevalence; and 4. Holy war concepts in religious traditions), while the practical application of theory to historical events (broadly coinciding with B.) is to be reserved for the latter sections by historical timeframe (which I've based on the common (Western) historiographical convention of Antiquity, Middle Ages, Early modern period and Modern period, while the Timeline is grouped by continent).

There is room for C. in all sections wherever this is suitable. E.g. I think it would be fitting if critics of religion and religious apologists got a say in sections 2 and 3, as a lot of discussions in popular culture involve claims about how many/all wars ever fought have been (primarily) caused by religion, or that on the contrary relatively few or none of them actually really were, and other factors were (also) partially or entirely to blame. Heated discussions about this are well-known, and Wikipedia should say something about it, but then also let scholars nuance views on both sides of these popular claims and show that it's a bit more complicated than what many non-scholars are saying.
For the historical sections, it's also possible to do this, e.g. in the case of the Greek War of Independence. I've written that subsection with a balanced scholarly summary to say it was especially religious in the early phase, but more nationalistic in the later phase. But if we wanted to add some relevant popular opinion, we could quote some influential Greek nationalist to say it wasn't about religion, it was about independence and building a nation-state for all Greek-speaking inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire, while also quoting some influential Christian church leader or theocrat to say that it wasn't about nationalism, it was about restoring the multi-ethnic Byzantine Empire under the dominion of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople. That way, Wikipedia could give a balanced view of scholars and relevant non-scholars about the degree to which the Greek War of Independence was or should be regarded as a religious war. But popular opinions are secondary; we should first and foremost give a balanced scholary summary.

Everything else seems to be beyond the scope of this article. E.g. I don't think it's of particular importance here to tell the reader that al-Ghazi's nickname was 'the left-handed', or that Cristóvão da Gama was 'son of the famous navigator Vasco da Gama', because that doesn't tell us anything about whether the Ethiopian–Adal War was a 'religious war' or not. Similarly, I doubt whether it is of much added value for the purposes of this article to mention how many casualties this or that war has had, unless we compare such figures with wars that one or more relevant scholars do not consider to have been 'religious' (e.g. wars of succession, wars of territorial conquest, violent trade wars, colonial wars, revolutionary wars against own government (e.g. wars of independence), wars caused by ethnic tensions, etc.). It seems to me that such figures are only relevant when they are part of an argument about how costly religious wars are/have been vis-à-vis other wars, otherwise it's useless information for the purposes of this article. Anyone who is interested in how many casualties or damage war X has done, can read the main article about that war; as an overview article about a particular type of war, or aspect/dimension of war, this article need not be concerned with such details. Note that it is very well possible and legitimate to try and make up a balance of a death toll of a particular war, or a well-defined set of wars, as has been done in European wars of religion#Death toll. However, because unlike that article, this article covers all religious wars that there have allegedly ever been in the history of the entire world (a hotly-contested set – or rather category – of wars, as this article as well as this talk page shows), I would seriously discourage such an enterprise. It may have some room in the Prevalence section, but casually mentioning the number of casualties in examples in the historical sections of this article seems pointless and gratuitous to me.

I am interested in what you two and others think about this approach to this article. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 15:26, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

I think we can remove the banner because it is certainly much more balanced than before. I think that the purpose of the article is generally understood. It was resolved 4 years ago in this section of the talk page. What normally happens in this page is that some people wish to push anti-religious agendas complaining about it because they are not familiar with the scholarly discussions that contradict their "religion is the cause of all evil" narrative. But the way it is currently written is more nuanced.

I think the article is well and not in need of major changes. Perhaps you can remove the number of casualties since, as you said, they are not particularly relevant and the lack of comparison with secular wars, which is the most prevalent type of war in all of human history if you think in terms of religion-seculars dichotomy, are not mentioned for comparison.

Peripheral details like "al-Ghazi's nickname was 'the left-handed'" seem to be side info and can probably be removed is they do not add to any historical value aside from trivia.

I do not think we should do C. from your list because it is not the goal to make an article debating popularity of perceptions of which conflict is seen as a religious war. As you said the discussions are heated, and will likely not help inform readers. Most of the religion blaming for war comes from anti-religious sources almost exclusively, such as the New Atheists, without seeing the mundane basis of war. Popular literature is full of nonsense and hyperbole - which is why it is popular and so we should not have a section where claims by popular writers are brought up (e.g Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, etc) and then have scholars address them. We can make some room in some sections for to mention some popular claims, but it should be limited since they are usually not popular, but stereotypical (e.g. the Crusades). The presence of a section on a war on the historical part of the article is where any discussion of whether that war is religious or not, should be discussed and be left at that.Ramos1990 (talk) 18:56, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your response and compliment. Could you indicate where I can find this understanding of the article's purpose of 4 years ago? Is it to be found in the comments of Chris55 and Huitzilopochtli1990 from May 2018? Because I do not find any agreement between them on the purpose of this article; it reads like an exchange that doesn't seem to reach any particular agreement.

Indeed, this page should neither promote an anti-religious agenda (which you called the "religion is the cause of all evil" narrative), nor should it promote a religiously apologetic agenda (which I'll conveniently call the "religion has never done anything wrong" narrative). Users such as Of 19 have raised legitimate concerns about the latter of these two, and I wonder if this concern has now been addressed, or whether it is still too apologetic in some areas.

Especially regarding the Prevalence debate, I'm worried that the tone is still a bit too apologist, and/or merely a few unscholarly or semi-scholarly assessments of the issue. What we've got is Phillips and Axelrod having categorised 121 (or 123) wars out of a non-exhaustive list of wars as 'religious wars' without a clear explanation as to why, and three non-scholars (Vox Day, Alan Lurie and Bruce Sheiman, each of which has an apologetical or pro-religious agenda - Day even has an explicitly anti-atheist agenda) who then run with it and make their own interpretation out of it, and then one fact-checker (Holt) who says that the number of 121 is essentially correct, but cannot be readily interpreted in the way the three non-scholars have done. This is hardly satisfactory if we want only scholarly assessments and no agendas. Especially if you maintain that popular opinions (C.) have no place in this article, then the entire paragraph of Phillips and Axelrod and their non-scholarly interpreters will have to go, because it cannot live up to the standards that we would like to see here. If the three apologist non-scholars are acceptable, then it would also be acceptable to present the views of some New Atheists on the prevalence of religious wars in this section, and I think you will agree that would not be appropriate (e.g. Dawkins may be an expert on biology, but not on history, and so is a non-scholar with respect to this subject). Howe can we best solve this?

I'm glad that you agree with me to remove some irrelevant statements such as those I mentioned, including casualty rates without attempts at comparison (as this could theoretically indicate the impact of religious wars versus other wars). Indeed, I do not think in terms of a dichotomy of 'religious wars' on the one hand and 'secular wars' (for lack of a better term) on the other; such a view seems oversimplified and generalised. From the evidence I've seen, I think a great many wars in history were primarily religious, but it's plausible that the majority wars in history were not primarily or even significantly driven by religious motives as opposed to other motives (with wars of succession being the main competitor in my submission, although many conflicts were both wars of religion and wars of succession simultaneously).

I hope that we could find some scholarly evidence for this, but I've found that scholars themselves are frequently puzzled by how to even calculate the prevalence of wars by cause. One place where we might start such an endeavour might be here: Bear F. Braumoeller, Only the Dead: The Persistence of War in the Modern Age §Issue and War p. 160–162. He lists several scholars who have attempted to categorise wars by causes, and to caculate their prevalence, but they don't seem to agree on what the categories should be. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 20:23, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

I am was saying a section on only popular opinions does not really help. I am not saying that an opinion piece is unacceptable. It goes down to what would be a reliable source. I am not saying there was an agreement in resolution 4 years ago, I am saying it was resolved in the sense that there was no consensus. Most of the complaints seem to be that they could not find sources blaming only religion in scholarly sources. Most scholarship does not have a consensus on causes of wars, let alone "religious wars" especially since the category of "religion" is a modern category - not a historical or ancient designation or idea. To talk about religious wars is generally anachronistic and is indeed foreign to people in the past.

Perhaps that is why Phillips and Axelrod and Matthew White both designate wars under "religious" in their texts and they list specific conflicts under these categories as a quick reference but they do not elaborate much, though they do a little - there is even a quote cited from Phillips and Axelrod on this. Sometimes the best thing to do is to leave controversial statements juxtaposed. Source A says x and source B says y. Let the readers sort out who is right or wrong. We as wiki editors don't solve issues that even trained scholars cannot get any consensus over.

I agree that the commentators paragraph is not the best but that would likely be the place to put in some of the popular views in there by more adequate scholars. You kind of have that in the "Applicability of religion to war" section already. Maybe make the "Prevalence" section a minor section than a major section and remove the non-academic ones (Vox Day, Alan Lurie and Bruce Sheiman, Andrew Holt (its a blog))?Ramos1990 (talk) 23:37, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. Ah, I think I now understand. I wasn't advocating writing entire sections full of only popular opinions, but to add a sentence or two containing relevant popular opinions to existing sections; I see that you agree that is acceptable if it comes from a reliable source. I've added "(a sentence or two per example)" to C. to make this clear. Preferably, a popular opinion should be presented by a scholarly RS (e.g. not a mainstream media article – which would be an adequate RS in other articles, but not here –, but a rather a historian's book or an academic journal paper), and then somewhat nuanced by the author of that same source. This is essentially what I've tried to do by having Ian Morris explain the goals of the two groups within the Filiki Eteria, and the philhellene Western volunteers, and to draw conclusions about what motivated each group to participate in the Greek War of Independence (Morris concedes it started out as 'mainly a religious war', but shifted focus to Greek nationalism, backed by philhellene ideas about Greece as the 'cradle of European civilisation' that needed to be 'regenerated'). Shall we take this proposed set (A., B. and C.) as our guidelines to improving this article from now on, then? Feel free to suggest additional suggestions or corrections. :)

Ah ok, well I agree that there is no clear consensus about the existence or nature of religious wars, and I would be surprised if there was any scholar bold enough to claim that war X, or that set of wars Y, was exclusively religiously driven. A number of fairly plausible claims have been made and some tentative agreements have been reached by scholars about particular wars or sets of wars, such as the Crusades and the European wars of religion, in that religion was a key factor in them, but not at all the only cause, justification or legitimisation in each and every case (in my view, Onnekink is a good example of a nuanced scholar on the latter set). No doubt discussions on these will continue, however (as they should). I also agree with you that what we now call "religion" and "religious wars" are fairly modern concepts, which I would situate in the early modern period (c. 1500–1800; most probably the concept first arose in French as guerre de réligion; we could try and delve into the etymology to settle the matter). So, they aren't 'ancient' (c. 3000 BCE - 500 CE), but I would contend that they have become 'historical' from that period onwards; nevertheless, we should indeed be very careful about how we use the source materials to use the designation 'wars of religion' or 'religious wars', and contrast them with other terms and factors that likely played significant roles in each case. Likewise, we should be careful when using scholarly literature which adjudicates on the question whether pre-modern wars can be considered 'religious wars' according to our modern ideas, even though these conflicts probably wouldn't have been called 'religious' by people living at the time. (Case in point which you'll probably agree with: the word 'crusade' itself doesn't necessarily mean 'war', and arose fairly late (13th century). Early sources in the 11th and 12th century simply called the movement of armed pilgrims from Europe to the Holy Land 'iter' or 'peregrinatio' (from which derives pilgrimage), which simply meant 'journey' and had no military or religious connotation at the time which they, but especially 'crusade', later attained. However, it would be rather silly to claim that these movements, which we now generally call 'the Crusades', weren't military in any sense, and had nothing to do with religion whatsoever. Classifying them as in some sense 'religious wars' avant la lettre is a legitimate scholarly move).

Hmmmm yes, I think that is a good suggestion how to treat the Prevalence section. I'd like to try and find a more scholarly exploration, discussion and reflection on the prevalence of religion as a cause of wars as opposed to other causes along the lines of Braumoeller. I hope to establish several categories of wars by cause, such as religion, succession, territorial conquest, trade disputes, water conflicts, colonialism, revolution, ethnic tensions etc. rather than lumping all non-religion-based wars into some artificial anti-category like 'secular wars' or 'government wars', because this reinforces the dichotomy that we agree is false, and exclude the demonstrable fact that these causes often (and perhaps always) overlap(ped) in practice. We could tolerate the non-academic sources for now, until we find scholarly sources who've got a more evidence-based approach to the issue, and then replace them. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 09:23, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Biased or incomplete article

I notice some bias here. I feel like the author of this article may have tried to write it so like religion comes out blameless by making very narrow definitions on what it considers religious reasons, dismissing many wars because they also made material gains.

Example:

Ghenghis Khan was litterally the messenger of Tengri, the entirity of the mongol conquest should definitely be clasified as a religious war, even if it's a religion Western Scholars dismiss and the mongols where friendly towards other religions (as long as Tengri was greatest) after those conquests and is not as totalitarian as Abrahamic relgions.

Also: regardless of secular gains, would it not be more logical to look at reasons for mobilization? Of course most people at the top have (mis)used religion for political gains since it's conception, but that does not take away that the millions actually getting slaughtered did in fact believe they were fighting for their god(s) 94.111.220.203 (talk) 14:49, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Ukraine

The Russian-Orthodox patriarch Kirill has declared that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a holy war, and encouraged his one hundred million followers to support the holy war. Why isn't this mentioned? Either the war is a holy war, and then it should definitely be mentioned, or it isn't, and then it is a clear example of the term "holy war" being misused by a major religious society, which should definitely be mentioned. Likewise, the North Korean foreign minister Choe Son-hui has talked about "holy war" while sending North Korean troops to participate in the invasion. 89.8.249.214 (talk) 15:05, 5 November 2024 (UTC)