Center for Reduction of Religious-based Conflict

Here you can find all of our publications. The most current ones are listed directly below, the rest is available via die Index of Publications file. To receive the updates on a regular basis please sign up for our free newsletter.

Read into our Winter Update:

THOUGH the October Israel/Hamas War in the Middle East was not directly a religious-based war, it will have had a significant effect on worldwide religious-based conflict itself. Clearly that centuries-old conflict has many grounds other than religious - beginning before Hamas’ religion of Islam was even founded. But the effect of this War will be long-lasting outside its narrow premises.

What it has exemplified is that a small group of highly motivated attackers can cause incredible damage and death against a militarily superior power - even though that power felt it was clearly prepared to defend against major border aggressions. What apparently was not taken into account was the enduring mentality of (at least) the Hamas military wing of Palestine. It is reported that Israel felt that if it was just moderate and not overly aggressive in its defense of the continuing Hamas air and ground probes, Hamas would eventually come around and change its personality from one of hate to one of “reality” and be willing to negotiate politically with it. They were wrong.

Over a half century ago America tried to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people in that war and failed, finally learning the lesson that the changing, by an outside force, of the hearts and minds (that is changing ingrained perceptions) was not something that could easily or quickly be accomplished, if ever. Israel has now re-learned the same lesson.

The impact of this War on our perceptions hopefully will change. No longer should we believe that we can change the “hearts and minds” of those who want to reap death and violence on us as they use religion as the basis for their purpose. History shows the very real difficulty in that approach. No longer can we smugly feel safe from them simply because we are militarily stronger or because they are far away from those of us in, say, the West.

Ultimately, the only way to reduce religious- based conflict and violence is not to change the perceptions of those who would bring that violence to us, but to - by education, training and government assistance - bring about a reduction in their emphasis of religious differences and instead diligently work to bring an increased emphasis on those similarities which all religions and peoples have. A long term but necessary approach. Ingrained perceptions are very difficult to change - as we have seen - but their emphasis can be reduced. We see that being done almost daily by, for instance, scientists, intellectuals and even politicians.

As we have stated many times, this process of changing emphasis must have the full and wholehearted support of major free world governments led by the US Government and/or the European Union to succeed. The Center continues to us all its energies to bring about this end.

For more click here or navigate to the Winter Update 2023/24 below.

2022 & 2021