Religious War: Religious War: Strategies and Tactics in Faith-Based Conflicts

By Fouad Sabry

What is Religious War

A religious war or a war of religion, sometimes also known as a holy war, is a war which is primarily caused or justified by differences in religion and beliefs. In the modern period, there are frequent debates over the extent to which religious, economic, ethnic or other aspects of a conflict are predominant in a given war. The degree to which a war may be considered religious depends on many underlying questions, such as the definition of religion, the definition of 'religious war', and the applicability of religion to war as opposed to other possible factors. Answers to these questions heavily influence conclusions on how prevalent religious wars have been as opposed to other types of wars.

How you will benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Religious war

Chapter 2: Religious persecution

Chapter 3: Persecution of Muslims

Chapter 4: Crusading movement

Chapter 5: Religious discrimination

Chapter 6: Religious violence

Chapter 7: Religious fanaticism

Chapter 8: Communal violence

Chapter 9: Christianity and violence

Chapter 10: Freedom of religion in Asia by country

(II) Answering the public top questions about religious war.

Who this book is for

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Religious War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: May 26, 2024

Book preview

Chapter 1: Religious war

A fight that is primarily motivated by differences in religion and beliefs is referred to as a religious war, war of religion, or holy war (Latin: sanctum bellum). The degree to which religious, economic, ethnic, or other components of a conflict predominate in a given war is a topic of recurrent discussion in the contemporary era. The extent to which a conflict can be characterized as religious depends on a number of underlying issues, including the definition of religion, the definition of religious war (taking religious traditions on violence like holy war into account), and the applicability of religion to conflict as opposed to other potential factors. Conclusions on how often religious wars have been in comparison to other sorts of wars are greatly influenced by the answers to these questions.

Conflicts may not be primarily motivated by religion, but rather by secular power, ethnic, social, political, or economic factors, according to scholars like Jeffrey Burton Russell.

Konrad Repgen (1987) argued that calling something a religious war (or war of succession) based solely on a motive that a belligerent may have had, doesn't necessarily make it one. Belligerents may have had multiple intentions to wage a war and may have had hidden motives that historians can no longer uncover. Repgen came to this conclusion:

Wars should only be referred to as [religious wars] insofar as at least one of the belligerents lays claim to'religion,' a religious law, in order to justify his warfare and to make a case for why his use of armed force against a political authority should constitute a bellum iustum in public..

Repgen's concept of religious war was too limited, according to Philip Benedict (2006), because both justification and motivation can occasionally be proven. Thus, his understanding of a religious conflict:

a conflict that is justified by religion or is waged with a religious goal (but possibly fought by secular leaders and soldiers).

Some critics have questioned whether religion should be used in combat, mostly because the term religion itself is ill-defined, generating difficulties in particular when one attempts to apply it to non-Western cultures.

Secondly, Religion has been said to be difficult to separate as a cause, This is frequently only one of several elements causing a war.

For example, When two rival claimants to a throne also represent different religions, many military battles may constitute both wars of succession and wars of religion.

Examples include the Succession of Henry IV of France during the French Wars of Religion and the War of the Three Henrys, the Hessian War and the War of the Jülich Succession during the Reformation in Germany, and the Jacobite risings during the Reformation in Great Britain and Ireland, including the Williamite-Jacobite Wars.

According to John Morreall and Tamara Sonn (2013), it is incorrect to categorize any violent event as religious because there is no agreement among scholars on what constitutes religion and there is no way to separate religion from the other more likely motivational dimensions (social, political, and economic).

How many conflicts may legitimately be classified as religious wars and how applicable religion is to conflict have a significant impact on how common religious conflicts have been relative to other conflicts.

As per Kalevi Holsti (1991),, p.

308, Table 12.2), whose 24 categories of problems that created conflicts were used to record and classify wars from 1648 to 1989, 'protect[ion of] religious confrères' (co-religionists) was (one of) the primary cause(s) of 14% of all wars during 1648–1714, 11 percent from 1715 to 1814, 10% between 1815 and 1914, and 0% from 1918 to 1941 and 1945 to 1989.

Early empires were henotheistic, or governed by a single god of the ruling class (such as Marduk in the Babylonian empire, Assur in the Assyrian empire, etc.), or more directly by deifying the ruler in an imperial cult, but with the rise of monotheism, the idea of holy war enters a new phase.

The Greco-Roman world had a pantheon with specific characteristics and focus regions during classical antiquity. Ares was the god of war. There was only a very little cult of Ares, despite the fact that he occasionally received sacrifice from armies in battle.

According to historian Edward Peters, Christians did not establish the idea of holy war (bellum sacrum) before the eleventh century, when engaging in combat might be seen as a penitential and spiritually praiseworthy deed. From the end of the 11th century to the beginning of the 13th century, a series of armed conflicts known as the Crusades were fought against the Muslim conquests. The original mission of the Crusaders was to retake the Holy Land and Jerusalem from the Muslims and to aid the besieged Christian Byzantine Empire in its battle against Muslim Seljuq expansion into Europe proper and Asia Minor. Later, Crusades were launched against different targets, either because of political upheavals like the Aragonese Crusade or religious motivations like the Albigensian and Northern Crusades. Pope Urban II elevated the conflict from a bellum iustum (a just war) to a bellum sacral at the Council of Clermont in 1095. (a holy war).

Dharma-yuddha is a term used in Hindu texts to describe a conflict that is waged in accordance with a number of laws that make the battle just.

The Muslim conquests, which began during the lifetime of Muhammad and continued through the centuries, up until the Ottoman battles in Europe, were a military expansion on a scale never before seen. The Muslim conquests up until the 13th century were those of a more or less cohesive empire, the Caliphate, but after the Mongol invasions, expansion continued on all fronts for another 500 years until the final collapse of the Mughal Empire in the east and the Ottoman Empire in the west at the beginning of the modern period.

There were also several instances of Muslim rivalry; they are referred to as Fitna and mostly concern the early years of Islam, from the 7th to the 11th century, that is, before the Caliphate fell and numerous later Islamic empires emerged.

Although the millennium of Muslim conquests might legally be categorized as holy war, the term's relevance has been contested. The Western idea of separating Church and State is what led to the idea of a religious war as opposed to a secular conflict, which is why. There has never been a meaningful distinction between religious and non-religious battles in the Islamic world since there has never been such a split. Since the time of Muhammad, warfare has been an essential aspect of Islamic history, both for the defense and the propagation of the faith. Islam does not, therefore, have a normative heritage of pacifism. This was codified in Islam's juristic definition of war, which still has normative influence on modern Islam and indissolubly connects the political and theological justifications for war.

Following Muhammad and his small band of followers' relocation (hijra) to Medina from Mecca and the conversion of a number of locals to Islam, the first instances of military jihad emerged. Quran 22:39–40 contains the first revelation regarding the conflict with the Meccans:

Because they have been wronged, people against whom war is declared are given permission to fight; undoubtedly, Allah will come to their help with great might. They are people who have been driven from their homes against the law and without any justification other than the claim that our Lord is Allah. If Allah had not checked one group of people through another, monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, all of which prominently feature the name of Allah, would have been destroyed. Those who support Allah's (cause) will undoubtedly receive assistance from Him, for He is Strong and Exalted in Power (able to enforce His Will).

— Quran 22:39-40 - Abdullah Yusuf Ali Translation

Numerous instances of this occurred throughout history, beginning with Muhammad's conflicts with the polytheistic Arabs, such as the Battle of Badr (624), as well as conflicts in Uhud (625), Khandaq (627), Mecca (630), and Hunayn (630).

According to Reuven Firestone (2012), "holy war is a recurring topic in the Hebrew Bible. Holy war was for the Jews of antiquity a historical fact, divinely sanctioned by the authority of biblical literature and its interpretation. Holy war was a practiced institution among at least certain Jewish groups from the time of the late Second Temple to the middle of the second century C.E. Jews participated in what is referred to as holy war, in other words.

In Sikhism, dharamyudh, dharam-yudh or dharam yudh (Gurmukhi: ਧਰਮਯੁਧ) is a term which is variously translated as 'religious war', Four (or five) wars were fought in and around the Panhellenic sanctuary at Delphi (the Pythia (Oracle) lived in the Temple of Apollo) in ancient Greece against individuals or states who were supposedly involved in sacrilegious conduct in front of the deity Apollo. The following things stand out::

First Sacred Conflict (595–585 BCE)

449–448 BCE: The Second Sacred War

Sacred War III (356–346 BCE)

(339–338 BCE) The Fourth Sacred War

(281-280 BCE) The Fifth Sacred War

According to Firestone (2012), in the eyes of traditional Rabbinic Judaism, 167–160 BCE, the Maccabean Revolt, the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE) and the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) were holy wars or Commanded Wars (Hebrew: מלחמת מצווה Milkhemet Mitzvah).

"This war was the longest and cruelest one ever, and it also took the most effort from the Frankish