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Can religion be blamed for war?
George Bush was in little doubt about how the US-led coalition would bring down Saddam Hussein.

At a prayer meeting, shortly before the invasion of Iraq, he said: "Behind all of life and all of history, there's a dedication and purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful God."

But God's help was being invoked in Baghdad, too. Saddam Hussein told Iraqis: "Fight as God ordered you to do."

So does that makes last year's Iraq conflict a religious war?

The authors of the War Audit suggest that it was arguably a war driven by religion.

But, as they point out, the Pope and the US Catholic bishops, the Archbishop of Canterbury and many theologians around the world argued that it fell well short of the rigorous criteria for a "just" war.

President Bush and Saddam Hussein were only the most recent of a long line of political leaders who have drawn on religion to help them in battle or to justify a military campaign....

...The War Audit says that although armed conflicts may take on religious overtones, their genesis invariably lies in factors such as ethnicity, identity, power struggles, resources, inequality and oppression - and one factor is often exacerbated by another.

It is often suggested that there has been a sharp rise in religiously motivated conflict.

But the authors of the War Audit say there have been very few genuinely religious wars in the past century.


A Knight Templar from the time of the Crusades
The Israel-Arab wars from 1948 to the present day are often seen as wars over religion.

In fact, they say, they have been about nationalism, self-defence or the liberation of territory.

So why is religion a factor in war at all when all the main faiths have little time for violence and advocate peace?

Because, it is suggested, leaders use differences over faith as a way of sowing hatred and mobilising support for political wars.

As the American civil war leader Abraham Lincoln put it almost 150 years ago: "The will of God prevails. ...