Refugees and Religion: The Anatomy of Religion Traps

Abstract

The fact that there is a highly uneven pace of economic development in the post-Cold War period suggests there may be traps to successful economic and social advance. This paper argues that religious nationalism can trap, and has trapped, countries. It demonstrates that countries under the thrall of religious nationalism are likely to be extremely corrupt, spawning rapidly growing reform movements within established religious committees that are committed to purification of the body politic through an appeal to ancient texts and atavistic practices. Contemporary examples are the Christian Pentecostal movement in Africa, the spread of the Islamic Salafi movement in the Middle East, and the Hindutva movement in India. Unfortunately looking backward is not a recipe for progress. These movements engender conflict, closure to foreign ideas, all the while failing to curb corruption. They fragment the very communities they purport to cleanse. Using data on refugees over the period 1990-2012, statistical analysis demonstrates that the most important humanitarian refugee crises in the post-1990 period have arisen from civil wars, most engendered by religious conflict and or the overlap of ethnic and religious conflict.