Transforming Conflicts with Religious Dimensions

Methodologies and Practical Experiences

Author(s): Hagen Berndt Abbas Aroua
Editor(s): Simon Mason, Moncef Kartas
Journal Title: CCDP Conference Report
Publisher(s): Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP); Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich; Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA)
Publication Year: 2010

How can one deal with conflicts that have a religious dimension, and how is this influenced by a particular conceptualization of religion? This report aims to provide some tentative answers to this question, focusing on experiences in Algeria, Denmark, Israel-Palestine, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Syria-US, Tajikistan, and the US and Canada. Religion can play a role both in escalating violent conflicts and in supporting the peaceful transformation of conflicts. Religion shapes perceptions and behavior patterns; it can be a source of meaning-making and values, or it can be used as an identity-marker to forge group cohesion. Awareness of the specific role of religion is essential for designing appropriate conflict transformation strategies. Besides developing ideas on how to deal with the religious factor in conflict, the report shows how the various peace practices relate to various conceptualizations of religion: functionalist, experiential and constructivist.

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