Where's The Religion In Religious Wars?

The "Global War on Terrorism" is a religious war, right?

Islamists and their armed force, the jihadists, are fighting for religious reasons, right?

Must be.

All sorts of bloviators, politicians, journalists, academics say so. We are warned against the dangers of something called Islamophobia by defenders of sensitivity and multiculturalism. We are cautioned against the dangers of discriminating against religious beliefs and believers. We are urged to recognise the great contributions to human civilization made by members of all religious faiths.

The Geek has to blow the whistle. It's time to get a grip on a few historical realities.

Religion has often been used as a motivator for war. It has been used to rile up societies, gin up the troops, and head a country into war.

Now comes the big "but."

But, the wars fought under the banner of religion when examined with the cynical eye of history show themselves to have been fought for the usual reason. Politics.

First, a rule of the thumb, historically justified definition of the word "politics." Politics means quite simply the acquisition, expansion, or defense of authority over the population of a defined territory. To make it simpler: politics describes the struggle for power.

Take as an example the war(s) so often invoked rhetorically by Islamists--the Crusades. When Urban II preached the First Crusade, he used "liberation" of the Christian holy sites in and around Jerusalem as the hot button to motivate the population of Europe to go to war.

While that might have been one reason, it was not the primary one either for the papacy or the secular rulers who organised the armies, waged the war, and waded through the bloody streets of Jerusalem. The primary reason was the expansion of power. The papacy sought to extend its power over the several secular rulers of Europe. These secular princes and kings sought to expand the extent of territory under their sway.

How about the grunts of the day, the knights and men-at-arms? Their goal wasn't necessarily power per se. They were men with a firm, hard eye fixed on the main chance. The chance for land, wealth, status, glory--and power.

The same may be fairly argued about the Islamic figures who waged the Counter-crusade. Salah al Din may have been a good Muslim, the Geek is not in a position to evaluate that. He can say that Sala al Din was a man ambitious for both military glory and political power.

The ebb and sway of Crusaders and Counter-crusaders over the years following the final ejection of the Christians from the lands conquered during the First Crusade show (as does the original Muslim expansion across the Mideast, the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, and the Iberian peninsula) the same political goal under religious garb.

Politics, the struggle for power over the people of a given piece of real estate, was the reality. Not the greater glory of any given religion. Religion was simply the cosmetics on the face of war.

Flash forward to the bloody century (more or less) between Martin Luther's nailing of his theses on the cathedral door in Wittenberg to the end of the Thirty Years War. This was the period of the Reformation and Counter-reformation. It's often called the the time of the Wars of Religion.

Get a grip!

The wars were political. They were waged for power. Protestantism and Catholicism were cosmetics. Even a man such as Philip II of Spain, who was at least as devout a Catholic as the Pope, was more concerned about maintaining and expanding the political power of the Spanish Empire than about the destination post mortem of his immortal soul.

(And, there is no doubt but this king was quite worried about getting his ticket punched for heaven.)

When Phillip took on Queen Elizabeth and England, it was against the background of the long-standing, bloody insurgency waged by the Dutch against Spain. Sure, Henry VIII had broken with the Catholic Church. Sure, Bloody Mary hadn't lived long enough to reclaim the apostate English for the Holy Mother Church. True, Elizabeth had declined marriage (and subsequent conversion to Catholicism) with Phillip.

The reason for the Armada was quite simply to take out England as the "over-the-horizon" external sponsoring power of the Dutch insurgents. The Spanish equation was simple. Dutch rebels minus English support equalled Spanish victory. Holland would be maintained in the Spanish Empire--and England gained.

Doesn't that hit you as a purely political calculation?

The same sort of calculus can be seen at work under the cloak of religion in the Thirty Years War. Sweden didn't head south into the cockpit of the German States out of a sense of Protestant solidarity. No. The move was defensive of Swedish royal authority at home. At the same time it was offensive--a seeking to expand the scope of Swedish power.

The grunts, the guys who did the fighting and dying, as well as most of the commanders were not after power in its own right as they were men with an eye on the main chance--the chance for loot, booty, land, status, glory--and the power those might bring in their wake.

In recent years, conflicts such as those in Northern Ireland used religion as a means of choosing sides and motivating combatants as well as those who supported them. Nonetheless, the reason for fighting was political.

Who would have the power over whom? That was the question over which bullets whined, bombs exploded, and people died. The same dynamic existed in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion.

Regardless of what Osama bin Laden and his coterie might believe and say, the multi-party war during and after the Soviet invasion was all about politics. Taliban eventually triumphed over the others because religion is a very good way to assure both group coherence and sufficient combat effectiveness.

Right now and into the future there is no religious war being waged. It's the same old, same old. It is as Karl von Clausewitz correctly stated, "continuation of politics by violent means."

The enemies are not religious. They are ideological, that is to say of antipodal political views. On one side is the defining ideology of the West with its emphasis on the free individual: dynamic differences of political, social, economic and cultural views, electoral processes, and a functional separation between the institutions of religion and those of the state. On the other is Islamism with its emphasis upon the collective: subordination of the individual to authority, and a complete melding of religion and state.

The war can be (and should be) primarily of the "cold" variety. However, the initiative to make it "hot" lies with the Islamists, not the West, not the US.

If the jihadists, the men with an eye on the main chance--the chance for glory, family status enhancement, a perceived avenue out of a life of self-ascribed meaninglessness and impotence--and those who give the orders and make the plans, choose to make the war hot, we have no option except to defeat them. As we fight them in the field and take the war to their lairs, we also must wage the "cold" side of the conflict.

To do that it is necessary to remember that this struggle is not about religion. It is every bit as political as past wars--both hot and cold--which we Americans and our allies have fought and won.