ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the conflictive dimensions of religion and asked: Did religion do it? By ways of unpacking the complexities of “religious violence”, it discusses six different ways of approaching religion in conflicts: religion as community, as a set of teachings, as spirituality, as practice, as discourse, and as an institution. This orientation will be followed by three case studies, spelling out the concrete implications of religion in different conflicts, namely, in Israel, Rwanda, and Pakistan. Much of conflict analysis tends to view religion as either irrelevant, and hence neglectable, or too complex to be of any use, thus relegating it to the realm of specialists. Spirituality refers to personal experiences of faith and bestows a sense of motivation and meaning. Spirituality often plays out in a particular lifestyle and in certain ethical choices, individually or as part of community life, such as in a religious order, ashram, or Sufi circle.
