Understanding Conflicts with Religious Dimensions in their Transnational Interrelations

Abstract

Jihadist terror attacks in Europe, religious sectarianism in Syria, Iraq, regional power politics of Saudi Arabia and Iran, tensions between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Bosnia: While those phenomena emerge within their own distinct social, political, economic, and cultural context, they also interrelate with another to varying degrees. Accordingly, local socio-political issues intersect with religion and foster dynamics that transcend into the national, regional and international realm, where they intersect anew with further dynamics. With social processes increasingly transcending the geographical and political boundaries in most regions of the world, conflict dynamics do not remain unaffected. A growing transnational interplay seems to concern conflicts with religious dimensions in particular. After all, most religions claim universal truths. This paper sketches a theoretic approach to describe a conflict with religious dimensions and the transnational dynamics that underlie it. In order to do so, it introduces a concept of religious practice which allows to both grasp the subjective significance of religion for the believer and to describe transnational processes.

Keywords: religion in IR, religious violence, religious conflicts, religious peacebuilding, transnational