Conclusion : war and peace

One obvious but important conclusion to be derived from the present volume is that religious violence in the modern world appears to arise when different religious claims to Truth overlap in the same space, and when the secular framework of the rule of law and citizenship fails to produce a "level playing field" between minorities and the majority. The state is typically implicated in such conflicts in civil society, and in these circumstances religious conflicts or tensions are magnified when religion becomes deeply embedded in ethnicity or nationalism. With globalization, these tensions are exaggerated by conflicts over resources (both symbolic and material) in societies where, through global migration, minorities compete in a context of economic scarcity. The nation-state is deeply involved in such conflicts insofar as it attempts to impose a religio-cultural homogeneity on its citizen-subjects in defense of its own sovereignty. Generally speaking, states do not abide by the idea of the freedom of religion; they prosecute cults, regulate school curricula regarding religious instruction, proscribe certain dress codes, prohibit certain forms of marriage, suppress blasphemy where possible, and limit the application of religious law. This hegemonic role of the state over religion is the logical outcome of the system of confessional states created in the seventeenth century in the West by the Treaty of Westphalia.