ABSTRACT
What causes terrorism? A fundamental basis of civilizational identity, religion has been implicated in most violent conflicts in history and in almost all cases of genocide in the 20th century. At a forum entitled Asia Vision 21, organised by the Harvard University's Asia Center in 2002, one speaker—a Harvard professor—argued that the secular nation state is a fairly recent phenomenon in history, but the link between religion and politics long predates it. Nationalists have frequently used religion and ethnicity for political ends, despite professing a secular ideology. Religion can be used for political ends in a variety of ways. One recent example which associates religion with terrorism is US President George W. Bush's use of Christian rhetoric, including a reference to the crusades, to justify revenge after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US.
