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Religious Conflict
© 2004 Neils Clark

Even the simplest communications are often thwarted quite easily. The norm, conflict, is truly inevitable in human life. That religiously-fueled conflict arise should hardly be surprising. The mélange of religious groups spread about our world each hold views that vary in their divergency, and their ability to reconcile such. While a background in information regarding world religion is an excellent compliment to the cultural competency of any individual, such detail will not be belabored in this paper. Here will be discussed two theoretical ways in which religious conflict enacts itself: actual and latent. Following that will be a discussion of the positive and negative ways in which theoretical cultural factors influence discourse among religions. Think of it as a formalistic cookbook for both the problems and solutions of interreligious communication.

Before religious conflict can be effectively dissected for study, one must engage in a vivid examination of its major source: human beings. Martin Buber wrote on two major ways in which human perceptions of other human beings took place. One was the I-Thou relationship, wherein a human being, full of a life’s experience, viewed others also as a collection of experience, or traits, taking in their whole being. This dialogued approach contrasted with the second way perception took place, I-It. In the I-It relationship the human, full of life’s experience, viewed others in an objective way, isolating only specific qualities of other human beings.

The application of this concept should be evident in any discussion of conflict. Those who see another as simply one or two qualities, for instance “caucasian” and “portly”, will not be quite so effective in their communications as one who does not limit themselves to very specific qualities, least of which could be religious differences. While these two ways of perceiving perception are said to be interchangeable by Buber, which is to say that we need not be restrained to one or another at all times, it seems reasonable to think that placing them instead on a scale would be more effective. This means that instead of seeing I-Thou and I-It as a switching mechanism, either on or off, it can be seen as occurring to a specific degree, in one direction or another. Consider that most, if not all, men would be caught fibbing if they were to claim to have never once seen a woman only for certain qualities. This does not, however, preclude them from a deep understanding of any particular woman in her entirety.

The concept of I-Thou is an essential beginning, yet to understand conflict we must understand it’s base origin: personal development. Where Buber represents a simple starting line in analyzing conflict, Jergen Habermas, of Germany’s Frankfurt School, shall enter as the beginning of the uphill portion. Habermas combines the work of many minds to portray development of humans as facilitating three distinct methods of information garnering. The first is knowledge, and the precepts which shape the processing of that knowledge. Second are the social, cultural influences which mediate all social experience. Third, and in the mind of Habermas chief among reason, is reflection, or that time which is spent truly trying to understand one’s experiences.

Experience, frames of experience, and reflections on experience all affect the ways in which we view our world, and necessarily make each one of us critically different from every other. There is literally so much information contained in but a brief few seconds of life’s experience that even these brief instants cannot ever be truly shared with others. Imagine two individuals in the same time, and nearly the same place, viewing and experiencing the same event. At the outset, their knowledge, culture, and past reflections will inherently shape the ways in which they each view the event. Even if the sound, image, and feel is identical for each, the frames created by their experiences up to that point will make the experience different for each. As the two individuals spend time with one another, they begin to create a reality wherein they have true understanding of specific events, yet, especially when considering reflection, they will always be independent of one another. It is in this way that even interactions between two individual people, when seen in the light of one’s unique and personal build of values, may be in certain ways intercultural.

While theories of Buber and Habermas do figure into religious conflicts, they do so as both a backdrop and a specific element to its two types: actual and latent. Actual are the conflicts that erupt as a direct result of religious elements. These can include sacraments, rituals, dogma, and any other specific object or activity of any specific religious faith. These represent specific difference between two religions that lead one or both to declare reconciliation impossible. Latent, by contrast, represents a conflict that has arisen as a result of another nonreligious force. The great many of religious conflicts seem easily teased away from their underlying causes, whether these be political, geographical, cultural, or among any of the other ways in which humans may find to construe the “it”. Considering the valuation of peace, and the devaluation of murder in most major world religion, most conflict seems obviously latent. Sacralized killing seems to appear only at the behest of outside forces. Nonetheless, whether by strict theological reading, or the misunderstanding of but a few people, conflicts do arise from simple exclusiveness of religion.

These two terms, as near all academe, should not be misread as dialogical. Examples of actual religious conflict are easy to come by on a more micro scale. For instance, take the Hindu who for the first time in his life bears witness to a group of humans as they indulge themselves with a delicious steak dinner. This is at the very least a major internal conflict. Cows are not only sacred to the Hindus, they are a major symbol of religious devotion. If these steak-eating people are additionally from an ethnic group which this Hindu decidedly dislikes, let’s say British, he may find additional reason for anger and disgust in their insensitive ways. (you forget your theoretical base of framing here) It seems very reasonable to think of religious conflict, then, on another sliding scale for the causality of religious conflict. On the one hand, conflict rooted in absolute theological clash would fall on one end of the scale, actual religious. Meanwhile religious conflicts with obvious primary factors, for instance border disputes and resources, would be falling upon the opposing end of the scale. In this way we can rate the presence of religion as a factor toward the conflict, so that we might better judge uses of religion in moving toward peace.

If all personal religious interpretations are, according to Habermas, fundamentally divergent, and if conflict is of uncertain religious pertinence, then the draw toward familiarizing oneself with the beliefs of any one specific religion is not to gain absolute redress. Religion provides a skeleton frame toward understanding individuals from another religion. While this can be a powerful beginning to a relationship, care must be taken not to allow knowledge of religion alone to place an unknown individual in either a positive or negative light, lest we approach Buber’s “It”. Clifford Geertz’s words highlight why caution must be taken in using any such method for familiarization,

“I have been impressed with claims that structural linguistics, computer engineering, or some other advanced form of thought is going to enable us to understand men without knowing them. Nothing will discredit a semiotic approach to culture more quickly than allowing it to drift into a combination of intuitionism and alchemy, no matter how elegantly the intuitions are expressed or how modern the alchemy is made to look.” (Geertz, 1973)

While neither linguistics nor computer engineering, pure information regarding religion must be tempered with both patience and understanding. We must realize that due to the experiences of the individual, religion may have built muscles over this skeleton frame mentioned earlier. Alternatively, another understanding of religion could have, figuratively, atrophied this person severely. Cliché notions of individuality must be panned for their gold, as it is true beyond most of our perceptions how different we all are. So different, that one of the most fundamental aspects of understanding one from another culture, even another body, is not just to understand what we can. Most powerful is to accept that we will never know them utterly. The extreme of Buber’s Thou, then, cannot be knowing another fully. It becomes less about needing to know every aspect of a person, and rather coming to know and appreciate the actions which flow from that experience. The height of Thou could, then, be the realization of the value added to all experience that is shared.

Understanding and acceptance are valuable, perhaps moreso when one considers numerous ways in which world cultures intentionally and unintentionally manufacture “Its”. When personal understanding is applied to these concepts, which include ideology, cultural politics, cultural emotion, the political context between cultures, transparency, hybridity, and concept ascription, it highlights the challenges even within cultures. These problems so often complexify the latent aspects of religious conflict within, and especially between cultures. These critical areas are often the locus of what concurrently or afterward become the political, or otherwise latent cause of what then become vicious religious conflicts.

Ideology represents the valuation or devaluation of certain concepts which operate within a culture. Ideological conceptions of religion, then, are any religious words that hold special significance for a culture. Religions can themselves fit this bill, Christianity for example being a powerful ideology, subject to immense bodies of evaluation, opinion, and postmodernist deconstruction. While themselves ideologies, religions operate in cultures alongside other ideologies which maintain varying degrees of mutual exclusivity with said religions.

Religion as an ideology can be extremely problematic when dialectically opposed, or at least seemingly so, to another ideology. The debate between science and religion is one example where long standing debate over numerous concepts, the least of which being evolution, has caused scientifically inclined members of the Christian church no end of anguish. Understanding the meanings an individual ascribes to their ideology, just as with religion, will grant the critical first step in understanding how dialogue might begin. Another popular ideological struggle occurs between the seemingly clear-cut “pro life” and “pro choice” camps. One favors a right to choose whether or not an individual may legally seek abortion, the other believing that such a right is amoral. Refusing to ascribe the “It” allows for actual communication, whereas dropping another into a pre-defined conception rules out the possibility of compromise before dialogue can even begin. In this way, the focus on the elements of religion that encourage openness and discourse allow religion, though also an ideology, to encourage rather than hinder intra and intercultural communication.

Cultural politics reflect the distributions of power within a culture. Precious few, if any, peoples have ever been on equal footing in regard to the power allow them by their culture. While it is said that all are to be treated equal within the United States, it is often the case that those with very little money do not have the same opportunities as those who do. Take two members of the same faith who happen to live in America. Both are equally interested in the theology of all religions, and both wish to undertake deep study of the topic. One happens to be both wealthy, and white. The other is poor and black. This particular country happens to favor whites over blacks, and happens also to have an extremely expensive education system. In this way the social capital of race and the actual capital both give the rich white student a higher cultural power in this society, while at the same time they give a likely preclusive two strikes against the black student.

In cultures where specific religions are to be treated as secondary to other religions, we see cultural politics as derogatory to the beginning of any kind of cultural dialogue. This is the case with Habermas’ second aspect of influence in human organization of experience, the cultural frame. When culturally enforced perceptions restrict certain people as inferior, communicators will begin any dialogue with that particular “politically inferior” culture with concepts of “It” that will need to be circumvented before meaningful acceptance, to say nothing of dialogue, can take place. Focus on the aspects of religion that therefore reject cultural notions of any type of cultural politics, then, assist not only in the lucid examination of religion, they assist the examination of literally all groups within that culture.

Cultural emotion reflects the ways in which one culture might construct and value emotions differently. While religion can figure into the ways in which certain emotions, such as guilt, joy, and sadness are acceptably felt or expressed, the process is very heavily tied to the host culture. In this way two cultures of the same religion may find each find themselves extremely uncomfortable in the presence of the other’s mannerisms. In this case, the uniting factor of religion can play a special role in establishing a connection through which fruitful communication, and understanding, might possibly occur.

Political struggles between countries, in a similar vein, should rely on religion to unite and ameliorate such problems, rather than to exacerbate them. The latter is, most unfortunately, the standard rather than the exception. This has been the unfortunate divider of countless religions who, despite sharing so much, end up battling each other under the aegis of their differences. Herein is the true need for religious education despite dangers of objectification. If one religious individual realizes, through the study of hostile cultures’ religions, their similarities, he has a powerful tool in the deconstruction of his culture’s ascription of the “It” status. This trades the possibility that he might over generalize the effect of teachings that the opposing culture espouses, for the possibility that he will actually give individuals of that culture a sincere attempt at understanding.

Power of these countries then would reflect the effort and processes needed in order to level the religious, social, or otherwise culturally significant power differences in order to provide for meaningful dialogue. One of the centers of Jergen Habermas’ theoretical works involves what he calls the “ideal speech situation”. What he calls "one-sidedly binding norms", so often found in fundamentalist discussions, allow the creation of a monologue where others happen to be present, rather than the dialogue requisite for intercultural religious tolerance. In the words of the University of Hawaii’s Dr. Majid Tehranian, “Moral self-righteousness is the first step in descending into the fire of anger and violence.” And indeed while moral self righteousness, so often a counterpart to cultures where religions happen to be different, enflames hate on the part of either a high-power culture or a low-power culture.

Transparency of a culture, or the degree of difficulty associated with understanding one’s own culture, in a large part can be assisted by knowledge of the religions that reside in its locales. We all work within the limitations of our own understanding, and as has been asserted before, knowledge gives a skeleton frame that can be used as a starting point toward a meaningful dialogue. Beyond that, religious understanding can provide the critical tool in penetrating into the deep structure of a culture in order to determine causes for religious and nonreligious conflict alike. In such cultures, religious knowledge can afford insight despite restrictively high context situations, or may provide support despite confusing or offensive low context circumstances.

Hybridity represents the degree to which the variegate of world cultures intermix within a given host culture. Religion potentially poses inordinate communication difficulty when those of two religions are placed in close quarters. And yet as hybridity is becoming increasingly the norm irregardless, the stakes of all cultural understanding increase. The amount with which all people are able to cope with each other will influence, among many things, viewpoints. Those with bad experiences living abroad will doubtless tell tales of the ignorant host cultures they encountered, fueling further notions of the objective “It”. Hybridity is then both engorging the importance of successful intercultural communication, while at the same time presenting a problem of such. When assaulted with so many various views, how do we distinguish who is who? How can we possibly absorb the information needed to relate to others? Here again we see religion as offering solutions that, when kept in perspective, offer restrictive albeit critical start points. Most cultures host religions. Knowing them gives any communicator that same start advantage, but with high hybridity and high religious knowledge, the advantage clearly increased.

Concepts use signs and symbols to transfer their meaning. (Fiske, 1990) At times, a culturally, or religiously charged word will have no counterpart from one language to the next. This can be difficult. No matter how competent a communicator, learning an entirely new idea, or accepting that your fundamental idea is not recognized, takes immense patience to overcome. In especially fundamental religiosity, divergent meanings for symbols, as well as lack of sign meaning can be taken as an immediate justification for the object status of that culture.

The most obvious concept challenge is an unknown language, or a language barrier. Talking to a person who does not understand you is very much like talking to a tree. Both are alive, and you may increase reflective understanding of ideas as you speak, though neither is very useful. Nonverbal signs may also have different concept meanings, so that the more you speak, the more your nonverbal differences have the potential to offend. In areas where religiously fueled violence is the norm, an inability to establish base understanding is a serious lack of defense. The signs of religion, if free of negative concept ascription, can help to reduce this problem. Signs without language, however, are of very restricted use, and generally preclude knowledgeable acceptance.

While these lofty concepts give you some idea of the intercultural competency to be gleaned from religious knowledge, they are in no way exhaustive. As any good cook, one must be constantly cooking, and experimenting with any and every ingredient, recipe, and stovetop they can get their hands on. Such is the case with the proficient communicator. Study a culture, know enough about their religion that you do not offend, and at best you impress, yet spend most of your time communicating. It is not just understanding of self, or of others that is the most critical component to building lasting relationships irregardless of culture. Accepting others and growing meaning based on actual experience. This is what lets you understand someone.

Very few religions are truly mutually exclusive. Most that are construed as dialectically opposed are indeed quite the opposite. While used by and for cultural reasons to fuel conflict, religion holds a special ability, and therefore a special responsibility, in taking the critical baby steps that potentially could begin a trek toward global understanding of the globe’s cultures. Understanding the world’s religions is powerful. One must take care to avoid seeing religious knowledge as a panacea, though the use of religion as just one more method of intercultural competency clearly holds both face, and theoretical value.

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