Clash of Civilizations or Clash of Religions?

Abstract

Religion, Civilization, and Civil War: 1945 Through the New Millennium. By Jonathan Fox. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004. 312 pp., $75.00 (ISBN: 0-7391-0744-5). The broad question motivating Jonathan Fox's Religion, Civilization, and Civil War: 1945 Through the New Millennium is interesting, both theoretically and empirically: What is the overall influence of religion and civilizational divides on intrastate conflicts? Fox begins by noting that the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, brought renewed attention to the role of religion in conflict and highlighted the inadequacies of our understanding of this relationship. He argues that much of the conflict literature on the causal impact of religion—as well as its kin: civilization—suffers from ad hoc analyses, too little large-N empirical testing, and too little theorizing. Thus, Fox sets out to correct these shortcomings by examining the role of religion and civilizational divides in intrastate conflicts between 1945 and 2001, utilizing both the Minorities at Risk data on ethnic conflicts and the State Failure data on civil wars, mass killings, and revolutions. The primary achievement of Religion, Civilization, and Civil War is to establish correlations between a number of religious variables and types of intrastate conflict. Indeed, to this end the book contains 188 tables and figures as well as a detailed data appendix. Fox expands the Minorities at Risk and State Failure datasets, both of which are frequently used in conflict studies, by collecting information on several religious indicators that are hypothesized to cause conflict: religious identity, religious grievances, demands for religious rights, official religion, and religious institutions. The book falls short of providing convincing causal accounts of how these religious variables affect intrastate conflicts as well as why this relationship has, as the data indicates, changed over time, but the hypotheses and findings are a fruitful point of …