From Pope John Paul II to US President George Bush, from liberal political theorists to conservative journalists, many have warned of a world divided along religious lines in a “clash of civilizations.” Following the argument of political scientist Samuel Huntington’s book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, they have adopted the view of a West defined by its Christian tradition and heritage, established and conducting itself as a single, coherent Christian entity. Moreover, many have begun to speak of a war pitting 21st century Christendom against a league of Muslim states as inevitable.

Yet such a worldview is an exceedingly narrow one, failing to acknowledge that Christianity is no more a united religion than the West is a united continent. Rather, 500 years of interdenominational discord and disunity have bred religious hatred among Christians as potent as that toward Muslims. One need only look at the violence that has ravaged Northern Ireland and the former republics of Yugoslavia in the last century to see that religious hate among Christians has not subsided in many corners of the world.

Tough Talk

On the whole, the fierce rhetoric describing a world war between Christians and Muslims began in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11 as US citizens sought to express their anger while others attempted to divine the future in a world turned upside-down. Ann Coulter penned one of the most noted responses in her syndicated column, asserting, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.” While Coulter may be an example of the far right’s response, even those who have tried to walk a middle ground, such as Bush, have made similar statements. In remarks to the press on September 16, 2001, Bush referred to the war on terrorism as a “crusade,” a single word which, although overanalyzed in the media, nonetheless conveys at least the unconscious pervasiveness of religious war imagery.

Perhaps surprisingly, in the months following the attacks, there was only a slight increase in crimes against Muslims; in fact, according to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Hate Crime Statistics for 2001, anti-Jewish bias was the cause of more than twice as many crimes as anti-Islamic bias. Nonetheless, some media outlets portrayed even slight insensitivities toward Muslims as gross injustices. Yet in this era of what one British journalist called “rampant Islamophobia,” for every printed word that criticized the response of Muslim clerics and states, there were two articles decrying it as bigotry the next day.

The generally restrained reaction of the mainstream public, however, was overshadowed by inflammatory statements from isolated extremists, further provoking fear of a civilizational war. In September 2002, the Reverend Jerry Falwell called the Prophet Mohammed “a terrorist” on the US television show 60 Minutes, provoking severe rioting in India that killed five people and injured dozens. Additionally, the Reverend Franklin Graham, son of Reverend Billy Graham, called Islam “a wicked and evil religion,” while fellow conservative Reverend Pat Robertson denounced Muslims as “worse than the Nazis.”

In turn, Muslim extremists have fanned the flames of civilizational conflict by propagating acts of violence and fanaticism throughout the world. Slightly over a year after the September 11 attacks, Muslim extremists with ties to Al Qaeda placed a bomb in a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, killing nearly 200 people. Even the Miss World beauty pageant in Nigeria last year sparked deadly attacks by Muslims against Christians. Consequently, this duel between inflammatory Christian rhetoric and violent Muslim extremism has produced the perception of an imminent clash of civilizations throughout much of the world.

As a result, the media has increasingly portrayed world events under a dualistic framework of Christians versus Muslims. In a November 2002 New York Times editorial, Thomas Friedman wrote in a satirical letter to the “Leaders of the Muslim world” from Bush, “Unless you have a war within your civilization, there is going to be a war between our civilizations.” Similar references to a future clash between Muslims and Christians have entered the language of world figures, including Pope John Paul II, who in a recent speech instructed Christians “to be people of dialogue [with Muslims] in order to resist that clash of civilizations that at times seems inevitable.” With both the media and world leaders referring to a future clash of civilizations, a religious war between Christians and Muslims can indeed appear unpreventable.

Christian Concord?

However, this view of an imminent battle between Christians and Muslims presupposes that Christianity is a united movement; in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Christianity as a whole has not been united in over a millennium. Moreover, the divisions between Protestantism and Catholicism and between Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism have produced an interdenominational hatred to rival that of any Christian hatred of Muslims. In cases where Muslims mingle with Christian denominations, such as in the former Yugoslavia, the intra-faith conflict remains as great as in those areas where only Christian groups live and fight.

One need only look to Ireland to see that religious hatred between Christian denominations remains both passionate and extreme. Although religious antagonism existed well before the 20th century, the Easter Rebellion of 1916 marked a turning point as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) took a prominent role in spearheading the cause for a unified and independent Ireland. When Ireland’s northern six counties refused to join the Irish Free State in 1920 and instead remained loyal to Great Britain, politics and religion became visibly and permanently inseparable. These counties were politically motivated against unification by Protestant majorities who felt attached to Anglican Great Britain. Because these political divisions over the cause of unification were drawn along religious lines, the resulting tensions fueled the centuries-old antagonism that had existed between Protestants and Catholics. As a result, groups such as the IRA were two-faced: they were political entities with political goals, but also a source of religious violence.

During the past 80 years, however, the violence between Catholics and Protestants, as well as between large groups such as the IRA and the Orange Order, has been fierce and unending. In the late 1960s, as the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland began to demand civil rights, the IRA became heavily involved and conducted numerous attacks to further its dual political and religious agenda. In response to this increased presence, Protestant paramilitary groups such as the Orangemen emerged to counter the Catholic IRA and regularly incited riots in the Catholic towns of Northern Ireland. The mutual antagonism between Protestant groups and the IRA led to a perennial cycle of violence. Heated Protestant attacks and riots followed by numerous bombings by the IRA, which only spawned more Protestant aggression.