Rationale for conflict is now shifting away from the need to "keep the world safe for democracy," "to promote the socialist revolution," or to gain independence from a colonial power, toward the call to establish an Islamic state, to expand a Jewish state, to preserve and expand a Serbian Orthodox state, to form a Chechen Muslim state, to gain independence for Muslims in the Philippines. Many current religious conflicts come from the desire to have homogeneous ethno-religious populations in states: a Catholic Croatia, an Orthodox Serbia, a Jewish state in Israel, an Islamic government in Algeria, a Christian America, an Orthodox Slovenia and Eurasia. The first adjective in each of the phrasal descriptions of these emerging political realities is religious.

On the macro level, after the global convulsions of each of this centuries' world wars there came a significant change for the Islamic world. The end of World War I resulted in the final dismembering of the Ottoman Empire and the eventual, or deepened, occupation of most of the Muslim world by Western European nations. In the twenty years after the end of World War II almost all Muslim countries gained their independence from Western colonialism. After the Cold War, the Muslim republics of Central Asia are asserting their identity and many Muslim countries are facing calls for an Islamist reform of the mostly western-style governments in Muslim countries. After each of these world wars, the mostly Christian nations of the West and the East eventually realigned themselves against each other in various configurations. But, after the Cold War this does not seem to be happening, leaving open for both East and West the category of global adversary.

Identified below are eight trends that focus the ways in which conflict has increasingly moved along religious lines. The statements and actions submitted as evidence of the trends are representative and not exhaustive. These accounts should be read for the relationship of the triad of identities. The evidence spans a range of sources from the official to the incidental. A more extensive survey of religion and conflict can be found in the recently released book, Holy Hatred: Religious Conflicts of the '90's by James A. Haught.

Trend 1 : There is an increase in comments made by religious and political leaders that threaten or expect religiously-oriented conflict.

In May 1995, a statement was made by Chechen military commander General Aslan Maskhadov concerning the existence of a Chechen state: "If Russia does not accept this, then the war will take on a different character. The people who have slept will wake. ... It's going to be even more terrible when it becomes a religious war" ("Jets blast Vedeno").

Tansu Ciller, Prime Minister of Turkey, said in the beginning of 1995 when Greece threatened to veto Turkey's inclusion in the European customs union, "People were very vocal saying that Europe will never accept Turkey because we happen to be a Muslim country. If our European friends reject us on the grounds that we come from a different religion, then they will make themselves a Christian club, and there will be a confrontation in the world" (Darnton, p.14).

In the spring of 1995, Lebanese Muslim Shi'ite Sheikh Fadlallah said, "The US is fighting a world war against Islam under the pretext of fighting terrorism. Islamic groups around the world should close ranks and defend themselves because the American enemy wants Islam's head" ( Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs, April/May 1995).

In January of 1995, William Claes, head of NATO, identified militant Islam as one of the threats to the NATO nations. This comment was considered by many to be ill-advised and received a strong reaction in the Middle East and the Muslim world.

The radical Palestinian George Habash said, in a speech broadcast on the radio from Damascus in May 1995, that the greatest threats to the Palestinian people are the forces of Zionism and conservative Christian evangelicals in North America. Both examples claim religious groups as the source of conflict.

In June 1995, a day after the opening of the first mosque in Rome, the Catholic Council of the Northern League, a right wing federalist political party, said, "The new mosque was not so much a place of worship as ´a veritable foothold in a Western country, a general headquarters for the expansion of Islam'." In a speech at the opening ceremony, Italian President Oscar Scalfaro strongly appealed for reciprocal religious tolerance in Muslim countries. (Bohlen, p.3)

Result: When political or religious leaders set the framework of any conflict in religious terms, the prejudices of many people are validated and the development of hate for the other on religious grounds seems justified by their leaders' statements.

Trend 2 : There is an increase in physical and verbal attacks on places of worship, religious symbols and religious leaders, and attacks on religious targets in open conflict.

The following events may seem isolated, but the attitudes and sentiments behind them are more pervasive. These events can be seen as the spilling over of those sentiments.

Serbian Christian militants in Bosnia have massacred many Muslims, including clergy, in Bosnia, while Palestinian Muslim militants have massacred over 70 Jews in suicide bombings in Israel from 1994-95. In Kashmir, Hindus and Muslims are killing each other over control of the area. In Southern Sudan, Arab Muslims from the north and African animist and Christian forces from the south have been fighting for over fifteen years.

Mosques have been destroyed in Bosnia by militant Christians and in India by militant Hindus. In Bosnia one Croatian Catholic Church had five priests killed by Serb militants in the last three years.

David Steele notes that when the war in the former Yugoslavia erupted, "The presence of religious symbols, religious targets, and even religious leaders in the war effort served as indication that a form of religious identification had accompanied nationalism into the souls of even those who were avowedly nonreligious. Religious symbols appeared in many forms -- on military weapons and vehicles, in the use of the three finger cheinik sign (symbolizing the Trinity), and in signs of the cross which were carved or burned on the bodies of Muslim people" (Steele, "Former Yugoslavia," p.11).

In India, there have been over 2,700 incidents of religious clashes in the 1980s alone (Gnanadason, p.3.). In the 1990s thousands were killed in riots after the destruction by Hindu militants of the Ayodia mosque that was built on an ancient Hindu shrine.

In Lebanon on June 23, 1993, Muslim militants attempted to blow up a busload of Eastern and Western bishops on their way to a conference at Balamand University. Six persons were sentenced for the attack that failed when the bomb went off early, killing one of the attackers. The attackers mistakenly believed there were Serb and Croat clerics on board and wanted retaliation for the killing of Muslims in Bosnia.

In the Philippines in 1993, a Christmas day attack on a church killed seven persons. In the Spring of 1995, a multinational group of Arab Muslims living in the Philippines was arrested and tried for this attack.

In Egypt, in 1994, Muslim militants attacked a monastery and killed five persons including a priest. During the last four years, many Christians have been killed in Upper Egypt by Muslim militants simply because they are Christian.

On February 25, 1994, an Israeli-American Jew, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, massacred 29 Muslims praying at the Hebron mosque beside the tomb of Abraham. The epitaph in Hebrew on his tombstone in a nearby Jewish settlement reads, "Here lies a man of clean hands and a pure heart, whose blood purified the land."

On May 28, 1994, three bombs were thrown into the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul but were defused before they exploded. Letters claiming responsibility for the attack were found nearby, signed by the Islamic Attackers of the Great East.

On June 8, 1994, Italian police arrested four neo-Nazi skinheads for beating up a Muslim cleric in the town of Latina south of Rome ("Neo-Nazis..").

In Yemen on July 22, 1994, Muslim militants destroyed a 19th Century Catholic church after Friday prayers. Six months later militants also desecrated a French cemetery, where the crosses were knocked off all tombstones and the stones re-cut to look like Muslim tombstones.

In the Macedonian town of Kumanovo, in March 1995, over 130 Christian tombs were vandalized and crosses were broken off and stuck in the ground upside down along a half-mile stretch of the cemetery. The town of about 120,000 is two-thirds Orthodox Christian and one third Muslim ("Tombs Vandalized," p.9).

In 1995, the Jewish Anti-defamation League in Europe reported that attacks on Jewish cemeteries and synagogues were up over previous years.

In Israel in May of 1995, a young Israeli set a gas fire at the Church of All Nations at the foot of the Mount of Olives one week, then machine gunned another church in Jaffa the next week. The soldier said, "I was fulfilling the commandment of the Holy Bible which says it is blessed to destroy graven images. That is why I did it" ("Soldier pleads ..." p. 8). Numerous Arab Christians were arrested after rioting to protest the attack. On August 27, 1995 there was an arson attack on the St. Andrew's Church in Tiberias. In September 1995 a priest was attacked on the Mount of Olives.

There are reports that Christian military officers in a number of Middle Eastern Muslim countries have received death threats from Muslims who don't think a person of any other faith should rule over them.

In California, a mosque was burned to the ground in 1994 just after it was completed. This mosque was burned around the time some Muslims were tried for sedition for intending to make part of California a Muslim state. A Muslim group with similar intentions attempted to take over the Muslim Student Union at a university in southern California. On August 25, 1995, the Voice of America Arabic service reported that in the United States five mosques had been burned or vandalized in the last five years. The report also said the number of Muslims in the United States is now around six million, more than the number of Jews, making Islam the second largest religious group in the United States.

In May 1993, all non-Muslim shopkeepers in Iran were ordered to put up notices announcing their religious affiliation. In June 1993, all Christian churches were ordered to sign a statement declaring that they would not evangelize Muslims. In October 1993, a law was passed requiring religious affiliation to be stated on identity cards. In 1994, several pastors and church members were killed in mysterious circumstances in an apparently coordinated fashion ("New Pressures..").

In 1994, in Turkey, the Islamist Welfare Party that won local elections in Ankara, Istanbul and other municipalities had initially called for Istanbul's ancient walls to be torn down since they were symbols of Byzantine Christendom. This position was dropped after much protest. The telling signal is that the suggestion was made at all (Darnton, p.14).

During 1995, in Moscow, Amnesty International reported Russian soldiers forcing Muslim Chechen captives to make the sign of the cross in order to receive medical treatment.

On September 3, 1995, two nuns were shot dead in Algeria on their way home from church. This occurred a day after two Muslim doctors who worked for a Muslim relief organization were shot dead in Ethiopia.

Result: The resentment of the other on religious terms, both expressed in and generated by these attacks, is adding to the cycle of violence.

Trend 3 : There is a change in the categories of conflict toward religious categories, with an international frame of reference that includes informal and formal international cooperation of blocs of peoples of the same religion.

During the Balkan conflict David Steele noted that the various groups held conspiracy theories about how global, mostly religious, blocs were out to get them: "To the Serbs, there was both a Catholic plot masterminded by the Vatican and a Muslim fundamentalist domination of Bosnian politics. To the Muslims, there was a Christian plot to rid Europe of Islam. To the Croats, there was a Serbian communist attempt to exert control over them, an effort that was being aided by the UN" (Steele, "Evaluation of..." p. 4).

In August 1993, a secret Greek government report that was leaked to the press said that "Only Greeks who are members of the Orthodox faith are fully Greek and that the Orthodox religion should form the basis for foreign policy, with Greece seeking to create an orthodox axis in the Balkans ´to set against the Turkish Moslem arc in the region' " ("In Greece," p.2).

In July 1994, terrorists bombed four different Jewish targets in three countries within a week. One of the attacks was on the Israeli embassy in London and the timing evidences international coordination.

Early in the Balkan conflict, Bosnian President Izetbegovic issued his Islamic Declaration that "envisioned the creation of a great Islamic federation ´from Morocco to Indonesia, from tropical Africa to Central Asia.' He pictured the creation of supranational Islamic structures in economic, cultural and political spheres." Before the collapse of Yugoslavia he made secret trips to Libya and Iran and freely used religious language to heighten the fighting spirits of the Bosnian troops, but down-played the religious when talking to Western press or politicians (Steele, "Former Yugoslavia," p. 15).

During the Balkan conflict there were complaints from the Croats and the Bosnians that the Russian troops who were stationed there as supposedly neutral peacekeepers sold gas to the Serbs and played soccer with them. The complaint questioned how the Russians could be neutral with their fellow Orthodox Serbs.

For the first time, the foreign ministers of Western, mostly NATO, countries in the Bosnia Contact Group and the foreign ministers of Organization of the Islamic Conference met in Paris on September 7, 1995 as two distinct blocs to discuss the resolution of the conflict in the Balkans (BBC English Service September 7, 1995). A week later, on September 13, 1995, the Organization of the Islamic Conference member nations met in Kuala Lumpur and approved a military and material aid package for Bosnia.

The modern perception of alliances is revealed in the Russian Duma's call to Yeltsin to support the Serbs in reaction to NATO attacks on Bosnian Serbs in September of 1995. A deputy of the Duma asked, "Does the West think that they can defeat the Serbs? The Serbs held off the Nazi army -- the best army in the world at that time -- longer than any of its neighbors. The Serbs were also the first to defeat the Turks in the Balkans." Here the Russian deputy is speaking from the East and defining Serb resistance to assaults from the West and from the Muslim world (Interview with a Russian Deputy in the Duma, BBC English Service, September 10, 1994).

During 1994, in the Middle East, I was present during a conversation between two Orthodox Christians who were discussing the Bosnian conflict when one of them said, "It is a shame that the Catholic Croatians have joined the Muslims against us." ´Us' was understood as ´we Orthodox people.' The two Orthodox persons were ethnically Arab and the only identity they had in common was the Orthodox Christian faith.

In February of 1995, the Russian ultra-nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky met with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, Iraq and suggested, "I want to prevent confrontation between north and south. North is Russia and south includes Arab and Muslim worlds. We are friends, we are not enemies. Our general enemy is the West." The point is that he was talking about religious blocs and arguing for a realignment of blocs. It is significant that his 50 member delegation included 20 Russian parliamentary deputies ("Zhirinovsky aims..." p.6). In another effort at ´contextual truth,' Zhirinovsky promised, "If I get elected and if the government of Cyprus asked me to send Russian troops, I would." Northern Cyprus is occupied by Turkish troops ("Zhirinovsky vows..." p.9). The item of note here is not Zhirinovsky's credibility but that he is using the language of religious blocs and conflict.

In April 1995, following an attack on the city of Ipil by Muslim militants who killed 50 persons and destroyed the downtown, Philippine President Fidel Ramos said, "It's a Christian country, the only one in Asia. They have an axe to grind against Christians. These guys are a throwback to the Middle Ages. They want to see the resurgence of the Islamic Empire ... They want theocratic rule" ("Ramos Arrives..."p.11).

In response to a motion by some US congressmen to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, PLO representative Nasser Al-Kidwa said, "We want to warn of the catastrophic consequence that these attempts might cause if successful. We will work to build an Arab-Islamic position on it and we will be obliged to fight it despite our slight capabilities" (" Muslim countries..." p.8 ). Major opposition in the U.S. to moving the embassy came from churches in the U.S., who pointed out its implications for world peace and interfaith relations.

A summary of the emerging sentiments of religious alliances noted above can be heard in the statement of two Macedonians. The first, a tape shop owner, reflected the growing pro-Serb sentiment among the Macedonian youth when he said, "The time is coming when we will have to unite with the Serbs against the threat from the Muslims." Second, a 64-year-old Macedonian shepherd responded to the presence of troops from the United States to check Serb claims on Macedonia by saying, "If they (US troops) left, then the Serbs would pull back. They (the Serbs) are not a danger, for we Orthodox Christians will never kill fellow Orthodox believers." (Borger and Smith, p.6)

Result: National boundaries break down as mobility and religio-ethnic solidarity supersede traditional political structures. People look to the past for terms and frames of reference to form and describe their current conflict, thus making it more likely that they repeat the conflicts of the past.

Trend 4 : There is a growing move to construct politics from a religious world view and an absence of religiously-neutral ideology. Within the triadic analysis, religious identity is increasingly forming political loyalty.

An article published in the new Russian religious news journal, Metaphrasis, was titled, "The Orthodox Christian Faith is Playing a Special Role in the Formation of the Slavonic--Eurasian Ideology". The article stated, "With the blessing of Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia the second international Slavonic-Eurasian Congress: ´50 Years of Victory Over Fascism and Contemporary World' was held in Moscow May 27 to 29 ..." The main motto of the congress was restoration of the Orthodox state, at least in the borders of the former Soviet Union. The final resolution of the congress read as follows: "It is the Orthodox Christian faith that should become the state religion of the Slavonic-Eurasian Union -- a reborn monarchic Russia and the USSR." ("The Orthodox Christian Faith ...") The Slavonic-Eurasian Union sounds much like the former Soviet Union in both ideological and geographical scope.

On September 1, 1995, Muslims in Russia held the first meeting of the new political party called the Muslim Union, to prepare Muslims living in Russia for the coming elections.

The Christian Coalition was a major player in the 1996 United States presidential elections. The nature of its religious influence is a concern to some religious minorities. In a recent American Jewish Council (AJC) meeting in Philadelphia a national staff council member of the AJC noted that, "America has ´never been a secular country, and it never will be' religious beliefs have ´always shaped the public dialogue'." Another staff member of the AJC noted the provocative statements made by Pat Robertson: "Only Christians and Jews should be entitled to hold public office" in America. (O'Reilly, p.E8) American Jews could wonder when that statement will be narrowed to "only Christians."

Commenting on Christian nationalism in America, the Arab American leader James Zogby writes: "When former Vice President Dan Quayle spoke to a Christian Coalition training conference in January of this year, he led the group in their pledge. Facing the flag with a cross on it and with hands over their hearts, Mr. Quayle and the audience of 2,000 recited: ´I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior, for whose kingdom it stands, one savior, crucified, risen and coming again, with life and liberty for those who believe.' The Christian Coalition's newspaper runs articles with titles like, ´Think Like Jesus, Lead Like Moses, Fight Like David and Run Like Lincoln'." (Zogby).

From this comment and others, it could be argued that conservative Christians' attacks on liberalism in North America include veiled attacks on secularism. The content of many suggested reforms would modify the secular nature of North American society: restoring prayer in public schools, establishing a national ethic on various moral issues, and limiting leadership to Christians and Jews (religious criteria). Also, considering these comments, is United States the global champion of democracy and freedom, or the main power moving in the interests of the Christian West? Many Muslims believe the latter.

One ousted moderate Republican party official said of the Christian Coalition, "These people aren't interested in politics. They are interested in establishing a theocracy." Other more conservative Christian groups advocate Kingdom Theology and Dominion Theology, proposing a return to the era of the 17th century American colonies that were governed by the principles of the Bible (Freeland, p.7).

The Muslim communities in various secular western nations struggle with the degree of their political participation. In the United States, the Director of Islamic Studies of the Joint Committee of Muslim Organizations of New York, Imran N. Hosein, called for the political separation of Muslims. "When Muslims and non-Muslims coexist in the same state, political relations between the two groups are determined, bilaterally or mutually, on the basis of treaties and agreements. ... It is clear that Muslims cannot participate in the secular political system of North America in the manner permitted to them (and all citizens) without compromising their supreme loyalty to God and violating His commands regarding submission to political authority. Participation would also entail a violation of the example (sunnah) of the Prophet, who determined that Muslims must participate as a community, rather than as individuals, in a plural polity" (Hosein, p.53).

Also, in North America a small Christian denomination called the Mennonites have issued a new confession of faith in which they call the church "God's holy nation, called to give full allegiance to Christ its head." In line with the triadic alliance used as an interpretative grid in this paper, the confession of faith states, "The church is the spiritual, social, and political body that gives its allegiance to God alone."

Results: From the above statements it can be noted that extremism, fundamentalism and religious militancy may be efforts revealing the waning of secular influence and a return to religio-ethno-political entities.

Trend 5 : There is an increase in religio-ethnic reconsolidation and an increased separation of populations along religious lines.

In the 19th century one third of Turkey was Christian and now one third of one percent is Christian, while on Turkish identity cards the religion of Christians is noted as "other."

Palestine at the turn of century was 30% Christian; now Christians are 3% of the population. Syria was 30 - 40% Christian in the 1940's and 1950's. The figure is now 8-10%. Christians make up 4% of Iraq's 20 million population, but about 30% of those leaving the country after the Gulf War were Christians.

Jews have been leaving the Arab world and Eastern Europe to the point that it could be said that these regions are becoming empty of Jews. Three years ago there were almost 3,000 Jews in Syria. Now there are about 300.

Since the fall of the former Soviet Union, Mennonite Central Committee workers in Russia report that there is increasing pressure from Muslims in the Central Asian republics to push Russians and Germans of Christian background out of the region. Many of the Russians are resettling in Russia and the Germans in Germany under the sponsorship of the German government. West of Chechenya, in the region of Kabardinia-Balkaria, Russians are selling their apartments and leaving for fear that they may be forced to move in the future, though there is no conflict yet.

In 1995, an Arab Christian told me of significant changes in a popular calendar produced in the Middle East. Dates for the Christian feasts were not listed as Christian but as Western. The Arab Christian who told me this story felt himself as a Christian disowned in the Muslim Arab Middle East though his people and his faith are from the region. He feels that one's faith is slowly becoming the determining factor for acceptance.

"In March 1979, the Israeli Supreme Court, in dealing with the case of an American Hebrew Christian, ruled that a person who believes that Jesus is the Messiah cannot be considered a Jew for the purpose of the Law of Return, which grants virtually any Jew the right to immigrate to Israel and thereby obtain citizenship" (Kvarme, p.315).

Results: This trend decreases the plurality of perspective and population in countries, reducing the possibility of "the religious other" being understood and increasing the likelihood of "the religious other" becoming an enemy.

Trend 6: Aid, trade and arms are increasingly directed along religious lines or lines of the various blocs. There is much cross-bloc economic and political activity, yet there is also a shift to "our own" in the formation of alliances.

In response to the fall of Muslim safe havens in Bosnia in July of 1995, many Muslim countr ies sent relief aid to the refugees: Jordan raised $7 million on a day of solidarity on July 22, 1995; the United Arab Emirates pledged $45 million; Saudi Arabia held a national telethon on August 11, 1995. In addition, many young Muslim men and women from around the world volunteered to fight with the Bosnian army. A young Kuwaiti fighter was killed in Bosnia on July 21, 1995, the second from Kuwait ("Kuwaitis march..." p.1). I heard on a Lebanese radio station the report of the death of a young Lebanese Muslim fighting in Bosnia in 1994.

Noting the aid of co-religionists to fellow Serbian Orthodox, the Arab Times reported that

"Greek Cypriots have raised more than $250,000 for Serb refugees who fled the Krajina region in Croatia," while "Orthodox Archbishop Chrysostomos said the church has donated about $40,000 to its appeal started last week for the Serbs who fled from ... Banya Luka" ("Nicosia," p.6).

Many Muslims saw the establishment of Israel as a convenien t alliance of Zionist interests and the West's goals to keep a foothold in the region following their colonial presence. Prominent United States politicians have called Israel, "The US's biggest aircraft carrier in the Middle East." What else are Muslims to think when they find "Made in U.S.A" on weapons fired into southern Lebanon, and learn that the bullets used in the Hebron massacre were made in Pennsylvania?

Walter Bergen notes that the IMF loan of $6.3 billion granted on March 10, 1994 to the Russian government would inevitably help cover the costs of the Chechen conflict, though conditions may have been attached trying to prevent it (Bergen, p.17). In this move Muslims see again the West and the East "against the Muslim nation" in the same way they have seen the West and Zionism against them in United States' indirectly paying for Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land -- evidenced in $10 billion in loan guarantees.

Results: The flow of finances and support reveals alliances and reconfirms in each instance the fear of the alliance of ´the others against us.'

Trend 7: Though the practice is not new, various parties are using religious conflict for their own short term goals and are finding that their attempts at manipulation backfire.

In 1980, a Baptist Christian president and now well-respected peacemaker, Jimmy Carter, signed the presidential "finding" which started the first U.S. covert aid flowing to the Muslim Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation. Under other U.S. administrations this aid was expanded and would total $2 billion and run three training camps for mujahadeen (holy warriors). The head of the CIA under President Bush, Bill Casey, wanted to extend the subversion into the Soviet Union. He and the Pakistanis agreed to send to Uzbekistan thousands of Korans, books on Soviet atrocities in Muslim Uzbekistan and books on heroes of Uzbek nationalism (Call). Three camps for Afghanis and Muslim volunteers from other countries trained thousands of volunteers from around the Muslim world. After the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, these mujahadeen, who returned to their home countries and fermented seditious violence in the name of militant Islam, were known as the "Afghanis."

In the sinister synergy of human history, the last battle in the long Cold War bred the first battles of the "New World Disorder" of religio-ethnic conflict as these "afghani" combatants bred other conflicts.

Results: These schemes, among others, sowed a wind and reaped a whirlwind. The Americans saw their World Trade Center in New York allegedly bombed by Muslim militants, some of whom had their training in Pakistan.

Trend 8: In reaction to the failure of secular institutions to provide adequate formation, there is a move by religions to assert increasing control over the means of cultural reproduction.

There is a proliferation of religious schools and colleges. Christian and Jewish schools and colleges are increasing in the West. In North America in the last twenty years, Christian day schools and academies have tripled in number. Islamic schools and universities are growing in Egypt and elsewhere in the Islamic world, where the prime formation is Islamic in addition to nationalist.

Religious groups are increasingly involved in medical work, providing social services and producing media and running radio and television stations. There is a new Islamic Hospital in Amman, Jordan. In Egypt many mosques have medical clinics, social service centers and centers for students. There are now Islamic satellite television stations in the Middle East (based in London for reasons of freedom of expression) and plans for a Middle Eastern Christian satellite television station.

Results: These various efforts result in an expansion of the religiously based component of identity formation and therefore increase religious institutional territory.

After surveying these curtains of fire a number of observations can be made. Conflict becomes more volatile when expressed in religious terms because of the nature of faith, in which every religious person has a sense of direct connection to the faith and direct ownership of the identity of the faith group. The distance between politics and the people is subsequently absent; the buffer of political ideology is missing. This lowers the group's anger threshold and makes diplomacy more difficult because people cannot negotiate over their faith. Conflict at the religious level leads to hyper-sensitivity to the treatment of religious symbols, leaders, territory and beliefs.

Considering these trends one could argue that we are entering a different world where:

1. Because of the volatility of religio-ethnic sentiments and the entrenched nature of the religious identities in a conflict, Rapid Deployment Forces may not be quick enough or effective enough. Solutions to conflicts are no longer just political or military.

2. The use of force from outside a situation could only compound and potentially spread the conflict to like-minded contexts.

3. Because of the increasingly religious nature of conflicts it may be difficult to find neutral parties to mediate, or international parties such as the UN that are trusted by all (Muslims note that most permanent members of the UN Security Council, who can veto any resolution, are Christian nations. A meeting of the Arab League on September 21, 1995 called for a permanent Arab seat on the UN Security Council).

4. The solutions to conflicts can only come from building and maintaining contact between faith communities and ethnic groups at various levels.